Harvard MBA and Serial Entrepreneur on Building Winning Brands

In this interview, Nick Jain, a young Harvard MBA and Serial Entrepreneur on Building Winning Brands, shows us the way. Nick Jain was one of the top of his class at Harvard Business School. He also earned degrees in theoretical mathematics and physics from Dartmouth College.

Nick Jain, Harvard MBA, CEO of IdeaScale, former Wall Street professional, serial entrepreneur, and trending thought leader, talks about how he co-ran an execs (but did not found) a trucking company that broke over $100M in revenue, and then co-ran a shoe start-up that made several million in revenue.

IdeaScale is an innovation management and software solution that links organizations to people with ideas. Nick has helped leading companies and organizations like NASA, New York University, Toyota, GoPro, United Way, Freddie Mac, Cisco, Comcast, Target, and the U.S. Air Force. Nick and the empire he has built with IdeaScale, has connected entrepreneurs and federal institutions to innovative strategy, revolutionary software progression, and so much more.

IdeaScale is recognized as the industry standard, and the most robust innovation management platform available in the market. Their ideas and innovation management softwares, services, and crowdsourcing platforms will help you to take innovative efforts to the next level.

Work with Nick and IdeaScale:
https://www.ideascale.com/

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You are in for a rewarding interview and one of great value to your own business objectives and long term goals. Sit back, relax, grab your popcorn, and enjoy the education for the next 40 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTNC_uiXoQ4

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Chapters

• 0:00 Building Networks Through Persistence
• 4:50 Harvard and Path to Success
• 8:07 Setting Goals and Making Sacrifices
• 12:38 Wall Street to Entrepreneurship
• 18:07 Marketing Strategies That Actually Work
• 26:10 Creating Your Own Professional Networks
• 31:41 The Importance of Dedicated Learning
• 36:12 Maintaining Motivation and Momentum

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The way you build those networks is you create those networks. You don't get invited into those networks. You have to build them right and you build them with you as the center of that network. And the practical advice is okay. Look, let's imagine I want to build a network of real estate experts and investors. You go reach out to a thousand people and say like, look, this is what I'm trying to do, and guess what? 950 of them are going to say no, but 5% are going to say yes. And of those 5%, like 50% of them are going to be useless. But 50% that's 25 people is going to be pretty good. But to achieve those 25 people you have to reach out to a thousand qualified people. It's very much like sales.

Speaker 2: 0:37

It's a volume game to build networks. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Brendan Acker Influence, where we dive deep into the minds of industry leaders, innovators and game changers who are shaping the world of business and beyond. Today we have a very special guest, nick Jane, who is a Harvard graduate, a serial entrepreneur and a visionary who's been at the forefront of several transformative ventures.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Tell us about Harvard. What did it take? I mean, that's a major accomplishment, a huge accomplishment, as a matter of fact. How did you do it? It's a major accomplishment, a huge accomplishment. As a matter of fact. How did you do it?

Speaker 1: 1:05

I grew up in a very typical kind of immigrant family. You know shirts on their back type of story. My parents immigrated here from the 80s to Canada in the 1980s. I grew up a middle class farm town kid. Look, I think the biggest thing that has enabled success, both at Harvard and professionally, is just being willing to put in the hours and work. I think a lot of people underestimate how much effort and years and years of effort goes into successful people's outcomes. For me to get into a good business school like Harvard meant that I had to work my butt off in high school to get into a good college, had to do well at college to get a great job. That then you know, once you get a great job you can say look, then you can apply to a good business school. So I think it was many, many years of success compounding, probably from the age of 13 onwards, and I think that's something a lot of folks might underestimate or appreciate. You know I'm just brilliant, or my last name is Rockefeller. None of that, in fact.

Speaker 2: 2:09

So what advice would you have for somebody who's trying to go to Harvard, trying to compete at that echelon I mean, that's just a whole different level right. So what was kind of your experience and some of your hardest parts in that process?

Speaker 1: 2:18

I think the hardest part and there's probably two pieces of advice right, set your goal in life, right. Some people want to become millionaires, some people want to become professional athletes, some people want to, you know, to fix cars. Figure out what matters to you in life. For me, I always really, really wanted to go to a good school. I wanted to accomplish something, you know, in the academic or business world. And then, if you're, if that's my, if that was my goal at age 13, I could have told you look, I want to work my butt off and have a shot at making it to a place like Harvard. I could have told you that at age 13 and I cranked for like a decade plus.

Speaker 1: 2:53

Number two be willing to know what you're willing and not willing to sacrifice to achieve those goals, right. If you're not willing to put in 80, a hundred hours a week for 10 years, then that's probably not the right goal for you. And, by the way, that's not just for business school. Like LeBron James, like I, can't play basketball worth crap, but I also haven't put in, you know, 10,000 hours into being a professional, you know, athlete, right, I'm five foot six. I don't think I'd ever be in the NBA, but even if I you know I was six foot five. I'm not willing to put in the hours to be a pro basketball player because that is not my passion in life.

Speaker 2: 3:24

Yeah, I think that's important to really hone in on the things you're good at, the things you're passionate about, because it really is the things you're obsessed about, the things you're passionate about. That's where the magic happens, from my experience, and you know, especially when you're chasing something as big as Harvard. I never went to Harvard. I went to a basic little private school it was Olivet College, and had a very low amount of people there who went there. But you know, I could definitely say even going there was a challenge and I couldn't imagine what Harvard must have been like. Were you ever tapped like the social network? Were you ever put in any of those secret societies?

Speaker 1: 4:02

So I was not. But look, some of those are only accessible to kids you know who have the last name Rockefeller and things like that. I certainly had classmates. Again, my father's a janitor, right, he cleans toilets for a living. So, coming from more humble beginnings, you, you know, are less likely to get tapped into those secret societies. Because, look, a lot of classmates says you know fathers and mothers were presidents of countries or billionaires or you know somebody you would know about. So I think a lot of the secret clubs like that are for people who come from a different walk in life and that's I'm okay with that, right, like I wasn't born with that and so be it.

Speaker 2: 4:36

So what was the biggest challenges you faced? Going from academic environment and Harvard to the world of entrepreneurship and adjusting to that.

Speaker 1: 4:48

So it was a bit of an easier transition, because I spent the first about 10 years working in Wall Street and the good part about there's kind of Wall Street is, I think, a really interesting place because on one level, you're getting to work with very high power people in a structured environment with a lot of resources. On the other hand, it is very individually a Wall Street. You are, you know, working alone, alone a lot, a lot of the time and you have to develop a lot of diverse skills. Right like it's not like you can just call up a team of people. It's like you're when your boss tells you to do something, you figure out how to do it. And that's very similar to being an entrepreneur. Right like when you're running your own business. No one's going to teach you how to go do marketing or how to take out the trash, you just got to do do it. And I think Wall Street was really good training for that, because your boss says go solve a problem. You may be 22 and have no idea what you're doing because you're fresh out of college. You may have no real world skills, but the mentality is look, I'm just going to go figure it out because no one's going to spend like a thousand hours teaching you how to be a great marketer or build a financial model. I'm just going to go do it.

Speaker 1: 5:42

I think that has eased the transition into kind of running businesses. In addition, I've been fortunate to manage businesses at very large scale, both very large and very small scales. The largest company I've run was $100 million in revenues. The smallest was like a 15-person men's shoe startup, and so you just learn to be scrappy as well as either A if there's a skill you need, you teach it to yourself like go Google it, go watch some YouTube videos or B you hire someone who's better than you at it. Right, I suck at graphics, for example, so I know 100% of the time if I need to do anything musical or graphics oriented, I'm going to hire someone, because that's just not how my brain is wired and I don't have the skills to do it.

Speaker 2: 6:19

That's a fantastic answer. So if you're building something of your own today, let's say you're starting a company and you're trying to do it in the best possible way, you want to make ROI as soon as possible, like right off the bat, but you don't have any funds. You have very low capital. What is the best, most strategic way to make a successful business right out of the gate, based on what you've been taught at Harvard and some of your own experiences?

Speaker 1: 6:42

So if you want to generate kind of cash flows and ROI right out of the gate, you have to think about which business have the shortest sales cycles, because to make money you basically have to have someone willing to pay you. And if you think about that, who is it easier to sell to a human being or a big corporation? Right, human beings make spur-of-the-moment decisions. You can go to the whatever and you're like I'm going to make that decision, I'm going to buy it right there. You try and sell a can of Coke to I don't know Walmart. Let's imagine you invented you soft drink and you want to sell it to Walmart. That's going to be like a 12 month procurement process and an insane amount of bureaucracy.

Speaker 1: 7:14

So the answer is don't sell to businesses, right? You want to sell to something that has a short business cycle or short decision cycle. That's number one. Number two figure out a product that actually generates some value, right? No matter how good a salesman you are, if you're, so that only lasts for a little bit catch on, you're selling a crappy product. So, like, go make sure that your product actually generates value for someone somewhere, and that I've left it entire very ambiguous, because there's things that generate value for you as an individual. That don't matter to me at all, so I just but make sure there's a market for people who are willing to pay for it. Um, and then third, like, figure out if you can do it yourself. Right, you may have this great idea, you have a great idea, but you have no useful life skills. Go hire someone else to do it. That's perfectly legitimate, right? Like, don't don't be ego driven. Figure out what is needed to make your business successful and better done.

Speaker 2: 8:10

Awesome. So what is the best way to incentivize somebody? Or to motivate somebody with like 15, 20, 30 years experience doing what they do, who loves what they do? What's the best way to motivate them to work for you and to help you build your business? Or, like you said right, nobody's going to come and build your business for you, so where does that? What's the best solution for that?

Speaker 1: 8:30

That their people are motivated by what are called the 4Gs gold meaning money, guts. To just show you can do it, right, like, why do people run ultra marathons? It's just proof to themselves that they can do it. Not even to brag to the world Glory, that's bragging to the other world. You want everyone else to know what you did. Or the good, like the common good. Some people are just truly altruistic and want to help others at either a local scale, a national scale, an international scale, whatever. No-transcript being a CEO of a company anymore, but I still want to keep, you know, be relevant, keep my mind active, I'll do it. For, you know, there's a CEO. She probably, you know, is doing a job that, like, effectively, they get paid 10 bucks an hour or something now because they just want to be active. They don't care about being paid. Whatever they were before, they've made their money in life Now they just don't want to be sitting at home, like you know, waiting to die.

Speaker 2: 9:35

So imagine getting this money. Yeah, really want to find those people who. You want to find those people who love what they do.

Speaker 1: 9:45

Money's not the only thing. That money's, in fact, a very small fraction of what motivates people to get up in the morning right Once your basic needs are met, a lot most of what you do in life, most of what I do in life, is not motivated by money, like I go play poker, because I don't, not because I want to make money, but because I enjoy playing poker.

Speaker 2: 9:58

right, I actually have a mentor and he's a bigger personality. I'll just say you went to Vanderbilt and I was asking him I'm like, how did you make it work? And he's just like my lowest product was like $600,000. And now he had run like his own agency sort of thing and he was kind of on the. He was essentially at the head of the entire movement for social media, marketing and things like that. So he had gotten a large part of the market share and things like that. So he had gotten a large part of the market share. But what do you say about that? What is like working today? So like marketing is super saturated today right, maybe even SaaS could be saturated. What? What makes you stand out? What's the best way to get those clients in the door and to retain them?

Speaker 1: 10:37

Certain types of advertising or marketing are absolutely saturated, the ones that are like, basically dead and almost a waste of money. And I'll give an example. It's basically paid advertising. So your Google ads, your Facebook ads, your LinkedIn ads, your TikTok ads, right? Anything that anyone can do easily, where you just pay some money to try and make a problem go away definitely should mean definition means that it's a race to the bottom right. It's a thousand dollars to half a million bucks a year to large organizations.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Most of my competitors advertise on Google ads and LinkedIn ads. They spend a lot of money. I spent exactly zero on those ads. Why? Because I don't want my ad to be shown next to like nine other ads, and basically the only one making money then is Google, right, and I'm not here to line Google's pockets. So what we do instead and the same is true for you know, if you are a company selling, let's say, clothing, if you advertise on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, guess what? So is everyone else right, even Under Armour, right, like you don't want Under Armour to be advertising right next to Nike, to Adidas, to Reebok or whatever.

Speaker 1: 11:39

So a lot of the paid advertising markets are saturated. There's two examples I can give you you can generate a lot of. The paid advertising markets are saturated. There's two examples I can give you. You can generate a lot of value quickly on the markets. One is on organic search, and I'm not just talking SEO, I'm actually designing for it. So what I was saying was number one paid advertising, such as on Google ads or LinkedIn ads or Facebook ads, instagram ads. That's a very saturated market because you and your competitors are all advertising in the same place for the same keywords and same audience, and so that's the worst possible outcome for you as a business. Whatever you're selling whether you're selling chips or you know highly expensive B2B software like us If you're just on a shelf with eight other people or eight other competitors, you're going to get lost. You're not going to sell anything. You don't want to be in a grocery aisle right Conceptually, I mean in an advertising market.

Speaker 1: 12:27

So what we do, for example, we spent all my competitors spend a lot of money on Google ads advertising their innovation software. We spend $0 on it. What we did was we said that's stupid, we don't want to be one of a crowd, we're going to just dominate the organic search market. So we went and created just really really high quality content. Our area of expertise is innovation software. So we said we're just going to have the world's best blog on innovation, right? So whether you're a small company, whether you're NASA, whether you're McKinsey, whether you're Pfizer, you should come to our company to learn about how to make your organization more innovative.

Speaker 1: 13:02

And we don't even. We don't. Our blogs don't even mention our company name. The only way you'll even know it's hosted by us. It's anyone in the world who wants to learn about innovation just will come to us because we are by far the best and that didn't actually that cost us I don't know $10,000 or $20,000 to accomplish. That's less than my competitors spent a month on digital advertising and yet I get roughly 10 times the traffic and leads that any of them do. That's not so like you have to find a market that people like just miss is like everyone talks about SEO, but that's just their gaming keywords. Just create good content. I mean, don't suck at the SEO part, just create good content. If you are the best place for whatever you do in life for information, people will be like hey, nick was really good at educating us about innovation. Hey, maybe we'll give a software shot, even though Nick's not even trying to sell us the software that can apply to, you know, chips, that can apply to workout gear, that can apply to fast food. That's number one. Number two is do something really crazy and creative.

Speaker 1: 13:58

I used to work in the in the shoe industry and up and coming sneaker industry. A sneaker company did was Nike holds these launch parties when they're releasing new sneakers like Yeezys or things like that, and there's lines out that I don't know if you've ever seen them in front of Nike stores but there's lines for like 12 hours when they're about to release one of these new hot shoes. And these guys literally the shoe company was like we're never going to get Nike to convince to hold our shoes because we're some tiny, dinky little company. So they hired a bunch of college grads to walk around with signs around their necks in front of the lines just hanging out coffee. You know you paid a college student like eight bucks an hour for six hours Cause like people are desperate to call for coffee at three in the morning to stay awake while they're sitting in a freezing cold line waiting for some stupid shoe to drop Right. And that's really crazy In the age of digital advertising. These guys literally just hired a bunch of college students with signs around their necks.

Speaker 2: 14:49

Yeah, yeah, I love your answer too, cause it's true, what's funny. I'm like, okay, what works for Elon Musk? What does he do? And then I'm like, oh, he doesn't really advertise, he just basically creates a great product. That's so exceptional that it just you can't help but not look at it. We're going to put it in your brain and it's going to read your mind and essentially be able to make you walk again and see again, if you're blind, like that's crazy. That makes a lot of sense and it goes back to what you're saying create a great product over trying to follow the leader when it comes to the advertising part and whatnot. Create a great product.

Speaker 1: 15:18

Marketing is supposed to be, you know, good marketing just lets people know you exist, right? Bad marketing tries to convince people to buy a crappy product and I think too many companies have a very mediocre product that they spend a lot more on marketing on. The classic example is perfume companies. Perfume companies spend very little money researching and making a perfume, but they spend an insane amount of money hiring celebrities to convince you to buy that perfume or same with whatever fancy watch you see in airport ads.

Speaker 2: 15:46

It's very true, yeah, yeah, you look at a lot of the advertisements. What was it? It was Lamborghini. They said we don't run television commercials because our target audience isn't sitting around watching television. I'm like, wow, that hit me hard. That's really insane, though, because that's a very effective advertising campaign in itself because of how powerful and profound that is. So what do you?

Speaker 1: 16:10

think, yeah, I've never seen a Lambo, for that, I've never thought about that. But even in the Financial Times, right, I don't think I've seen a Lamborghini. Financial Times is aimed at a very affluent audience. I don't think I've ever seen a Lambo ad there. Because, like you don't want that stuff sold to you, you just want to go to a deal. And I'm not a car guy, by the way, at all. Right, I drive a Kia Rio. But I certainly don't want luxury goods advertised to me. If I want them, I will go get them.

Speaker 2: 16:34

It's just wild. You know it's wild. What do you think is? Where do you think is the best place to find a good network of people? Right, so it's just a brick and mortar business. What's the best way to find the networks? What do you think is the best way?

Speaker 1: 16:55

Have you ever heard of that old Groucho Marx quote? I wouldn't want to be a member of any country club that wants to have me as a member. Yeah, I have. I have heard that quote.

Speaker 1: 17:03

Okay. So the idea is like, look, any club that's inviting you is probably beneath you to be in, right? It's like I get ads for joining some real estate investor clubs all the time. I'm like, you know, if they're inviting me and I know nothing about real estate, they clearly are like are you know, just terrible at what they do? Right, you want to be invited to the clubs that you don't get invited into, right, you want to go to the Met Gala or whatever your you know passion life is. So, to answer your question like, you don't get invited into those groups because if they're good at what they do, they don't invite you. You have to earn your way in. Um, so the way you create those networks if, if you know, you're not going to get invited until you've already made it, at which point you know, if you've already made it, you don't need to be invited to those clubs. Anyways, the way you build those networks is you create those networks. You don't get invited into those networks. You have to build them right and you build them with you as the center of that network.

Speaker 1: 17:53

And the practical advice is okay, look, let's imagine I want to build a network of real estate experts and investors. You go, reach out to a thousand people and say like, look, this is what I'm trying to do and guess what? 950 of them are going to say no, but 5% are going to say yes and of those 5%, like 50% of them are going to be useless. But 50% that's 25 people is going to be pretty good. But to achieve those 25 people you have to reach out to a thousand qualified people. It's very much like sales. It's a volume game to build networks. It's like dating, right, you don't get married to the first man or woman you meet. You probably go on a thousand dates over the course of your life. How did you build your relationship network with your spouse? Through basically a lot of kind of experimentation, meeting people, going on dates. You know not getting second dates, whatever it is.

Speaker 1: 18:40

Building a professional network is no different. You reach out to a lot of people. You know, as I try and build networks with other tech CEOs, I reach out to a lot of them. Most of them don't even respond to me, even though I'm a fellow tech CEO. They don't respond. But guess what A small proportion of them do and I've, as a consequence, been able to build networks with like the CEOs of billion dollar companies that I just cold reach out to and said look, I'm trying to build a network here. Give me some advice. I'm young, I'm stupid. Help me, like, get to where you are in 10 or 20 years. And most people say no. Couple say yes.

Speaker 2: 19:07

And I think what you said there, too, is a big part of it is humility, right, like the volume, of course, and you know the hustle and doing that part of it, but also it's the humility and willing to admit like, hey, listen, I know nothing, I tell me how to do this, right, you know, I've had a couple of mentors who have taught me very similar things, the things you're learning. Spend 12 hours, lock yourself in a room, youtube it and learn how to do it. So, like when I was first learning how to run Google ads, I'm like how do you do this? This makes no sense. And my mentor is just like, lock yourself in a room for eight hours and look it up on YouTube, shut the lights off and just do that all day and shut your phone off. I'm like, okay, and I did it and it worked.

Speaker 2: 19:46

What a concept. But why is it that we miss that? What is it that distracts us? Is it kind of like Napoleon Hill's book Outwitting the Devil? Is it that we're all just a bunch of drifters or we're just not focused enough? What do you think causes us to drift?

Speaker 1: 20:03

I think this is so. I think a lot over the last 10 or 20 years, as cultures have shifted, I think we have begun to undervalue you like formal education and formal doesn't mean going to college, but just like sitting down reading a book to learn something. You, we all assume that it is easy to do something or that there, you know, people are with natural gifts, and certainly there are people born with extraordinary natural gifts, but we under you don't. You don't become like a PhD in physics just by being brilliant.

Speaker 2: 20:33

You, somewhat you have to spend a crap ton of time like studying textbooks and studying last 300 years of physics does the same thing.

Speaker 1: 20:41

I'm kind of terrified she's going to do so now. But that's that's number one, like what you said about locking yourself in a dark room. That's not how people think of learning. Learning is supposed to be easy, it's supposed to be like candy, right?

Speaker 1: 20:50

I think over the last 20 or 30 years we've assumed that, hey, learning is not good unless it's fun. And guess what? Sitting down for 12 hours reading a textbook or watching a technical course on Google Ads is probably not fun for most people. Fun for most people. And yet you know, we've been taught in school like, if it's not learning it's, if it's not fun, it's not worth doing. No, no, no. There's lots of things in life that are worth doing, that are really tough and boring, and yet they're worth doing.

Speaker 1: 21:14

And the people who excel are the ones who are willing to sit down and like, read that, like I'm trying to take a computer course on algorithms. That is not fun, that is not interesting. Guess what. I sat my butt down on Friday night or, sorry, on Saturday all day and studied it for 12 hours, when I could have been out there running or spending time with my wife Trust me. I don't want to be reading a technical textbook from Princeton on algorithms. You get better things to do, but it's whatever you know you need to do. And that can be true on Google ads, that can be true on LinkedIn advertising, that can be true on design, like art. Right, I'm not an artistic person, but I like great artists. Don't just become great artists. They, like most of them, went to some form of art school and spent like thousands of hours perfecting their craft absolutely, yeah, like dave ramsey said, reading is leading and I like that.

Speaker 2: 21:56

You mentioned that. How, how important reading is? What are some good books that will got that can really guide a new entrepreneur in the right direction? And if, if you wanted to get them right, like the fastest route to understanding this entire, like the mindset of it, the technical aspects of it, the like everything together, what's what are like few good books that you would highly recommend?

Speaker 1: 22:19

Sure, so uh, two come to mind right away. I'm trying to come up with the third. I'll say the two and then maybe a third will come to mind. First of all, there's a classic one called by Dale Carnegie how to Win Friends and Influence People. There's a quote with me that sticks with that book, like who's the person you love most in your life? It's the person who jumps up, you know, comes to you every time you come home and just loves you unquestionably, doesn't care, and that's an important skill. Whatever you do, whether you're selling, whether you're engineering, whether you're leading a billion dollar company or just starting out, you know, uh, selling lemonade on the street, I've done all those jobs right you have to know how to kind of win friends and influence people. So, dale Carnegie, that's like a hundred year old book. You know, it's been on the bestseller list for literally a hundred years and it's short. It's like I don't know a hundred pages long and, like you know, small pages. It's not complex.

Speaker 1: 23:19

The second one is a more technical book. It's a book that I personally love. It's called Valuation, by Aswad Damodaran. He's a professor at NYU. This is a book that's like a thick, meaty, heavy textbook. It teaches you how businesses make money. It's the best book to make on how businesses work and he's the he's considered the godfather of modern finance or valuation theory right so super. It's a technical book.

Speaker 1: 23:41

You need high school level math to do so. You don't need advanced calculus. But it's not a book you can read while falling asleep, right? You need to, like, sit there in a room, have pen and paper and be able to, like, you know, do the math that he's asking you to do. Those are the two that come to mind immediately. It's a third one that comes to mind. Third would probably be like less a book and more like go take a technical course on Coursera or Udemy or something on some form of marketing. That's a very quickly learnable skill. It's easy, it's digestible. You come out with some really useful skills that you can start using the next day to make. Go make money.

Speaker 2: 24:12

It's just so important to be a learning machine. I think that's definitely a key to this entire game because, like you said before, you know being an entrepreneur, you have to control your own paycheck. You control everything, right. How important is that? And you know what is the thing that allowed you to stick to it without giving up, without quitting, without letting all the white noise around you just get to you.

Speaker 1: 24:35

Look, I'm a human being. I have good weeks and bad weeks. There's some weeks where I just feel like, demotivated, the world is crappy, we're not selling anything today, I'm sleepless, whatever. And it could be because the weather sucks. It could be because I had a terrible week last week at work, right. So there's going to be ups and downs in every journey, right, and that could be determined by your own you know hormonal balance. That could be turned by sunlight, that could be turned by. Like you know, the markets had a rough week. Whatever, it is Right.

Speaker 1: 24:59

So don't assume that stuff will always go right for me, and certainly hasn't right. There's weeks, there's months where I'm just entirely demotivated and do crap, and then there's other months where I'm just like on it on my a game. So I'll say two things. Number one is when you have those high periods, when you know you're on your a game, focus on that. Go just get as. When you are performing at your peak performance, go get as much out of you as you can during those peak performance. I'm just in the zone, not's. Number one Make sure you are.

Speaker 1: 25:29

Whatever you're doing is part of a process you believe in, because if you don't believe what you're investing right now is going to pay off at some point, you're going to get demotivated. I know that, like if I just grind and talk to a lot of people for sales conversations, or if I write a ton of code or whatever, I know I will get the output, so I never have to doubt myself. But, or whatever, I know I will get the output, so I never have to doubt myself. But I know that process works. It's something I've been doing for 10 years. It's something that you know people salespeople have been doing for a thousand years. I know the process works.

Speaker 1: 25:55

I never lose faith in the process, just like look, sometimes the process has shitty your weeks and some people it's sometimes good weeks. So you have to have faith in your process, whatever it is or whatever you're doing. Number three remember, celebrate your successes. Remember, just because this week sucked doesn't mean go back and think about hey, a month ago it was awesome, right, you've got to ride those highs and remember those highs. I think what a lot of people do poorly is when something good happens, they're like, okay, great, let's pop a bottle of champagne, and they forget about it, rather than realizing the great feeling of that victory that comes and using that to fuel your next low period in life.

Speaker 2: 26:28

Yeah, and it is those dopamine rushes, right. When we see a little bit of success and you're like, oh my God, I just made 40 bucks off this book I'm selling, or whatever it might be, and that was when it changed for me, I was like whoa, this is scary, is this legal? Because I came from this world where I was like a farmer at it was an asphalt and just a lot of hard labor jobs and then went to a police officer, right. So a lot of my life was just so structured in that nine to five and I learned quickly how important it is to actually be a leader in that sense of being an entrepreneur, because it does allow you a little bit more flexibility and freedom. So what would you say to the nine to five employee and why it is important? Even if they're happy at their job, which is great why should they really learn about this world of entrepreneurship and kind of being in control of your own destiny?

Speaker 1: 27:16

So I would say a few things. It goes back to what you want in life right. If you want absolute stability in life, nine to fives are great. You get great benefits. You know you're going to get your salary at the end of the year. You can support your family.

Speaker 1: 27:26

Both my parents chose that, right, like they were immigrants. They wanted to have a nice, stable life so they could provide a foundation for me and my younger brother to have, you know, to take more risks in life. Other people want other things in life. Right, they want to be famous. They want to make money. They want to work their own flexible hours. Right. Entrepreneurship while it offers greater risks, it also offers a greater flexibility and be greater rewards, and those rewards are not just monetary. I don't think Elon Musk is doing it for the money anymore. Right, he's the richest man on the planet. He's doing it because he wants to be the guy who's remembered 500 years from now as the guy who took us to Mars or, you know, cured, aging or whatever it is that he's working on these days. Like whatever that great reward is right.

Speaker 1: 28:07

He doesn't need to start his next business right. He's run, however many you know, billion dollar businesses at this point. So that's why I think it's important, right. If you truly just want a nice, stable job which nothing wrong with that 90% of people like work nine to five jobs, my folks included then that's good. But if you want the chance at greater flexibility or greater rewards, you have to be willing to accept the greater risk that comes from entrepreneurship. For a lot of people, that's really exciting. Even if you make less money or have less reward, that flexibility itself has a lot of value for people.

Speaker 2: 28:39

And what really got me into it too, is I started reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That was kind of the first book that really got me on the course of entrepreneurship and just completely changed my mindset.

Speaker 2: 28:50

everything like just turned on a completely different switch and I learned very early on that, wow, this is a very beneficial career. If you can make this work, you know, you can actually build a pretty good life and you also don't have that capped income, which is also important. So tell us a little bit about what was your experience when you were starting your first business and what were some of your setbacks before you saw real success.

Speaker 1: 29:15

So I've only started one business. The rest of them I've been like a hired CEO at both large and small scales. But the business I attempted to start, or did start, was a small hedge fund. I'd worked on Wall Street. I'd come up with a really cool way to invest in stocks that was not just me picking stocks based on my feelings, but a really like data-driven, mathematical way, and I'd done this very successfully at scale for somebody else. And I said look, I'm the guy who came up with this idea, I know how to do it, I'm doing all the work. Why should I not go start my own company and try and make it and scale it? So I raised a small amount of capital, right, literally called up you know thousands of rich people and said hey, I want to start a hedge fund. Can you give me a little bit of money to get started? Most again 99% of people said no. A couple of guys said yes and gave me a shot. So I think like and that failed, by the way, right, like it, it was interesting because my, from a objective returns perspective, I was doing well. There's this platform called SumZero which ranks hedge fund investment ideas. I was ranked number one on the planet for like 12 months, which is really beating out 20,000 other professional investors.

Speaker 1: 30:17

But I wasn't able to raise enough capital or scale the business, and part of that was I was not a great salesperson. Part of that was I was too young and didn't have the relationships. Part of that was I didn't have the brand names behind me. Um, but that failed and that sucked right because, like, I was like, okay, my product is actually really good, but I'm unable to turn the product into a business. And that's reality again. It could have been wrong timing, bad luck or it could have been failures on my part. So the learning coming out of that is like, look, well, there's two things. Number one, I took that risk in a way that made sense for me, where I knew, even if I failed, I'm not going to die starving on the streets. And number two is that I have come out of that with a learning that, look, if I'm ever going to do this, I need to think more about the business aspect of it rather than just having a great Wow, yeah, super simple, right, but most people wouldn't think about that.

Speaker 2: 31:08

So, with a hedge fund, for example, what does it take to get started? What makes a hedge fund successful? I mean, what causes somebody who's super wealthy to say, yeah, I'll help you out, kid you know and invest in your business?

Speaker 1: 31:23

Sure, so I think a few things right. Number one is you have well, look, actually I learned this the hard way. I think when people are talking about their money, it is often an emotional decision rather than a rational decision. I had made the incorrect assumption that people think about money irrationally, that it's a number on a page and you're thinking about maximizing your returns. Turns out, people whether you're poor or rich, most people are really bad at managing money and are thinking about how to manage money. Even financial professionals often violate well-known principles of how you should manage your money. And so I think the big kind of thing that for hedge fund world, that the realization, like how to convince people to give money, it's you make them a deeper emotional connection with them rather than try and sell them a better product. And again, I was not mature enough or skilled enough to do that effectively when I tried to.

Speaker 2: 32:19

It's really cool to hear you talk about this too, especially somebody coming from Harvard and such a prestigious background In terms of Harvard. What were some of the big things that you learned that most schools just won't teach you?

Speaker 1: 32:32

So again, just to be clear, I went to the business school, not to the undergraduate, so a little bit of a different atmosphere than an undergraduate university. There I think one of the things Harvard does really well I think from a content perspective, the business school was terrible. We didn't actually learn very much there in terms of, like, new knowledge, but one of the things they did really well was they forced you to practice speaking and articulating your views effectively to other people. So the way Harvard Business School works is you basically the professors don't teach you real content, students basically debate against themselves or against their peers, and what that means forces you is look, if you're surrounded in a room of very, very smart, motivated, like um type a people and you are forced to continuously speak both on areas where you know a lot and both on areas where you don't know a lot, and you're forced, like people who may not know about finance are still forced to talk about finance, it forces you to number one, get a base level of understanding and everything, so you're not stupid at any.

Speaker 1: 33:31

You get a base level, competence and every, because you just don't want to sound stupid in front of your you know, communicate clearly and succinctly. And number three it tells you how to have uh, be, uh communicate effectively. There's the content of your communication, but then the the uh emotion, or content of your communication, but then the emotion or impact of your communication. That's important too right, and I think HBS forced you to learn that really, really well, because for two years that's all you did. You just debated and made speeches, and so you got really good at communicating views effectively and defending them against people who may be skeptical of your views or have been asked to take the opposite perspective.

Speaker 2: 34:13

And in terms of the future of America, where do you think we're heading? Where do you think the US dollar is?

Speaker 1: 34:21

heading. So I have no idea on the US dollar. I don't dabble in forex markets. No idea on that. Right, I can offer you a theoretical answer. That's not useful. The, the, you know this european central bank is going to cut interest rates, and because the federal reserve just cut the answer, uh, the interest rate two weeks ago. What that means is that when the european and bank cuts their interest rate into in a couple of months, uh, then the euro. The euro should fall in strength versus the dollar according to economic theory. But that's that's something markets know, so you're not going to make money off that For America.

Speaker 1: 34:52

Look, america is. I'm an immigrant. I only got my citizenship about a year ago. Right, I've been here for 20 years, but got my citizenship a year ago, went through the entire process, so I'm proud to be here. I think America is a really unique place where the American dream holds true, where a poor immigrant kid whose parents don't speak English can grow up and go to good schools or run companies. That's really unique about America. That's not true almost anywhere else in the world. Right, the American dream is alive and well. You got to work hard to do it. The second thing that's really cool about America is we appreciate ideas here, right? Good ideas, regardless of where they come from. You see, all these CEOs with funny accents, right? Good ideas, regardless of where they come from. You see, like all these CEOs with funny accents, right? People don't care If they were good at what they do. You succeed here. Number three is we reward people here, whether that be in terms of money, hollywood, fame, whatever it is, we reward people really well here for contributing to society.

Speaker 1: 35:48

The big challenge for America is, I think over the last 60 or so years, america has been the predominant hegemonic power in the world. There was America and then there was no one else. Everyone else was second tier. I think today, americans are, you know, having to deal with a more competitive global economy, right? You're not Americans competing just against Brits. You're competing against Indians, chinese, vietnamese, australians, nigerians, and that global economy means that both America as a country as well as Americans as individuals need to be willing to be more competitive, because 20 or 30 years ago, you only had to compete against the 300 or 250 million Americans in this country.

Speaker 1: 36:24

Today, if you're an American, you are out there competing for jobs, for talent, for capital, for money, for products against 7 billion other people who are smart, who are hungry, who want to win it. The Chinese companies want to sell products, too, just as much as American companies, the Indian companies, the Australian company, and what that means is we just got to be a lot hungrier and more competitive than I think we've been used to for the last 30 or 40 years, but again we have these unique advantages where we are the only country in the world. I think that truly creates opportunity for those who are willing to work for it. The American dream is truly alive and well, and I think people underappreciate how powerful a force that is. That's why everyone wants to move here, right, because we create opportunities and is there anything else that you'd like to promote?

Speaker 1: 37:11

So, look, I run a B2B software company. My software is 100% free for anybody less than 100 people. So whether you're a solopreneur with a Gmail address or a small hardware store or a 99% midsize software company, I would love if you come and try it out at our product. It is the best-in-class innovation management software, so you can think of it as a notepad for your ideas. Or, if you're a large organization, helps you figure out what your new marketing campaign should be or what your new product feature should be or what new color soft you should make. Whatever it is, it helps you manage your portfolio of ideas really effectively. Again, whether you're one person and obviously if you're a large company and you're hearing this podcast, you should come to me and buy my software. But if you're a small company or solo entrepreneur, use my software for free. I would absolutely love that. Ideascalecom just click, get started free at the top.

Speaker 2: 37:56

And is there anything else that you're working on in the future, any big projects?

Speaker 1: 37:59

So two or three things. Number one is in my personal life, I've just started to get into recreational sorry, into real estate investing. So that's just something I'm trying out more more for fun than for you know, trying to become a guy Kawasaki real estate guy. Number two is idea scale. I think our company is about to do some really really cool things.

Speaker 1: 38:20

So for the last like 15 years, we basically had one product. We've been very good at it. Just this week we launched our biggest or actually just on last Friday, like three days week, we launched our biggest uh, or actually just on last Friday, like three days ago, we launched our biggest feature release in like five years. So we just revitalize the entire application. In addition, over the next three months we are launching our, our, uh, entirely new products, not like add-ons to our existing product, but like entirely new products. So that's something really we're excited about in a 15 year history of the company where we've been like a one trick you know one trick pony, a very good trick, but a one trick pony and now we're going to have a lot of you know tricks up our sleeves or a lot of tricks our pony can do, which we are really excited about.

Speaker 2: 39:01

That's so amazing and congratulations again on all your success and I appreciate you coming on the show today and telling us about your story and your journey, because it truly is a pretty awesome one to hear. And when I do build out my studio, I'll definitely fly out and we'll have, we'll do the real thing, we'll do the real podcast interview. For sure.

Speaker 1: 39:17

Sound good that would be awesome man. I would love to come. Where are you based, by the way?

Speaker 2: 39:21

So I'm built uh based in Michigan at the moment. Yep.

Speaker 1: 39:35

So we're just, we're coming into, into.

Speaker 2: 39:36

We're coming into winter at the moment, um, but I, uh, I do do a little business. Not in winter, please, not in winter. Okay, I don't want to be. I'm with you, I'm a snowbird, I like florida, I like, I like my nice weather, for sure. So I don't blame you.

Speaker 1: 39:44

I stay here, mostly for I love the heat, I love, love the sun, Absolutely Cool man yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:50

And thanks again. I'll probably release this episode in about a month. Typically, we have like literally seven or eight podcast interviews we need to catch up on, so I'm going to try to get everything done within the next month. I got to get the other guests out, but, like I said, it'll be really good and soon we'll be promoting the YouTube channel at larger scale. So I anticipate we'll get at least probably 30,000 views.

Speaker 1: 40:11

When it's ready to send out, send us all the materials and collateral and my marketing team will cross-market and make sure that we send it out through all our channels.

Speaker 2: 40:17

Yeah, for sure. I'll send you a Google Doc with the Google file and then all the directory links too. Awesome, Perfect man. Yeah, thanks again for coming on. Thanks so much.

Speaker 1: 40:33

Take all right, perfect man. Yeah, thanks again for coming. Thanks so much, take it easy. Thanks for having me.