Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome to Hoops and
Crumbs with the Browns, the
podcast where life lessons arebaked in like chocolate chips.
And I'm Maria Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And I'm Estevan Brown
.
Together, we're always talkingbasketball, life and everything
in between.
Whether we're dunking on thecourt or in the milk, there's
always something cooking.
So grab a snack and tune in.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Wow, ezzy, it's been
a long time.
We took two months off ofpodcasting and now here we are
with a second season.
Do you even remember what wetalked about our last episode?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
yeah.
So the thing that I was talkingto you about earlier, and I'll
share with the view thelisteners, is that, uh, the last
episode the nba playoffs hadjust started.
Now we're a month out of thenba finals crazy.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
What were, do you
remember, your predictions for
the NBA playoffs?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I actually don't
remember my predictions.
Probably had something to dowith, like, boston and Oklahoma.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
And are you happy
with the outcome?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, I'm a big OKC
fan, so OKC OK.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Well, before we jump
into the first episode of our
second season, let's recap thelast few months.
What have you been up to?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So the last few
months I've been up to not too
much really.
We did a bit of traveling afterthe podcast in May I graduated,
but aside from that, not reallymuch.
I mean just like some training.
I went to camp and that's kindof it.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah, I feel like May
and June were super busy with
going to your basketball gamesand recitals.
Oh yes, lots of practice andgames, lots of practice and
games.
Packing you up for camp,picking you up from camp,
unpacking you from camp.
Now we've got a bit of a break.
Before you start up the grindagain, what crumbs do you have
(02:06):
in front of us?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Oatmeal chocolate
chip cookies made with dates and
tahini, and Well, I don't haveone right here, but I had one
earlier and it was pretty good.
But I'm not a big fan of tahini.
It tastes kind of like peanutsand if you know me, you know I'm
definitely allergic to peanuts.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I know they aren't my
favorite, but we do have a
guest here today.
That gave them, I think, a 10out of 10.
Before we introduce our guest,what are we talking about today?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So today we're going
to talk about what I want to be
when I grow up andentrepreneurship.
And our guest for today is theone and only Jeff Charlton.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
So are you
introducing Jeff now?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah, okay, do I go?
Hello, I'm Jeff.
Hi, good to meet you.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
And who is Jeff?
So Jeff is my stepfather andhe's an entrepreneur who started
his own business called Flexer.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And he is one of, as
he's great admirers.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Well, this is going
to be a great episode.
I think it will be superinteresting to find other people
in your life that you caninterview to understand their
career path as you start tothink about your own.
So I'm going to take a backseatthis episode and leave it to
you.
Gentlemen, how does that sound?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Sounds good.
Okay, you're ready for thefirst question.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Let's go.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Okay, when did you
first decide that you wanted to
be an entrepreneur?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Long before I became
an entrepreneur.
It was funny because I mean, Iwas working in large
corporations and I was sellinglots of business.
I hope my bosses are my formerbosses aren't listening to this,
but I was selling tons of work,literally in the hundreds of
millions of dollars, and I wasmaking a lot of other people
(04:06):
very wealthy.
And I kept hearing from folkshey, why aren't you doing this
for yourself, why are you doingthis for other people?
You're making all kinds ofother people rich and you know
how to sell, so why don't you doit for yourself?
And so it was something that Iwanted to do for a long time.
The problem was is that growingup in the corporate environment,
you kind of like in my world, Ididn't really know a lot about
(04:30):
small business, even thoughactually my father was a small
businessman.
I really, you know, gettinguniversity educated.
So you know, I had anelectrical engineering degree,
an MBA.
I really my mindset, driven bythe educational environment I
was in, was to go and work forlarge corporations, even though
(04:51):
in my MBA I did take a smallbusiness course.
But it was kind of like, no, ifyou want to make it, you got to
go and work for a largecorporate and you got to make it
up into the senior executive.
And you got to make it up intothe senior executive and, after
being in that world for manyyears, I thought you know what,
um, you, you, you know, I feltlike I was a very small cog in a
(05:14):
very big wheel and I got I youknow, I was working with
presidents of CEOs of, you know,large institutions, banks and
insurance companies.
So I had exposure to that.
But the more I worked it, themore I saw how political it was
and how it was.
(05:34):
You know, it was who you knewand it just was like a world
that I decided.
Ultimately I didn't want to beit.
So I made the decision that Iwanted to go into small business
.
But the problem was is I didn'tknow what I wanted to do.
I mean, it's one thing to say Iwant to start a business.
It's another thing to know well, how are you going to start
(05:56):
that business?
What are you going to do?
How are you going to make money?
How are you going to be betterthan your competition?
What's your niche?
And so it took me a long timeto actually figure out how I
could start a business and whatmy niche would be and how I
could be really successful.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
What do you think of
that Izzy?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
That's a great answer
.
You know, it's interesting tohear all that.
And, like, from what I've heard, I mean I don't really know
many other entrepreneurs, butfrom what I used to think mean,
I don't really know many otherentrepreneurs, but from what I
used to think it was you wantedto be an entrepreneur because
it's like your dream, but foryou is more about like, after
you uh had your career, you kindof realized that that's kind of
(06:37):
just what you wanted to do yeah, and and I guess part of it too
, was the recognition that whenyou're working in a large
corporate, you're working forsomebody else.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
There's always
somebody else pulling your
strings.
There's always somebody elsewho's making the ultimate
decisions.
If you're good at what you do,you make recommendations, they
get accepted.
Ultimately, you almost assumethe role of your boss, and
that's when you show that you'reready for promotion.
But you know, I was looking atit and I'm going why am I making
(07:10):
all these other people, likeyou know very well off?
Why don't I do the same thingfor myself?
And so you know it wasinteresting because, uh, the way
it actually evolved was I endedup running a number of
high-tech businesses.
I ran three high-tech businesses, and so I was in a position
(07:32):
where I needed a CFO, a chieffinancial officer, I needed a
controller, a bookkeeper, Ineeded HR, I needed IT, I needed
legal, I needed all thefunctions that make every
company work.
Now, that's in addition.
Of course, the most importantthing is sales and delivery, or
sales and product, but there'sall the backend corporate
(07:53):
services that I just talkedabout, that every company needs
to basically to launch and thento be successful, and what I was
fortunate enough was.
Having come from the corporateworld, I recognized what a good
quality controller looked like,what a good quality bookkeeper
(08:14):
looked like, hr, it, legal, etcetera.
And in each of these threebusinesses that I ran, I
recognized that I needed people.
It could be a day a month or itcould be a couple of days a
week, and there was nowhere thatI could turn to to hire people
(08:35):
on that basis.
Because if you go to all thejob sites you're looking like,
typically they're for full-timepeople.
It's very hard to go to like ajob site like Indeed and say
Typically they're for full-timepeople.
It's very hard to go to like ajob site like Indeed and say I
want somebody for 10 hours amonth.
It doesn't work that way.
And so there was no one in theCanadian landscape where I could
say you know what?
I need an HR person three daysa month, I need a bookkeeper two
(08:58):
days a week and I need acontroller a couple of days a
month, that kind of thing.
And so at first I thought tomyself you know what?
Maybe it's me, maybe I justdon't know how to run a business
, maybe everybody else hasfigured this out.
And so what I did was.
I was fortunate enough to be amember of an executive support
(09:18):
group, which is essentiallygroups of presidents and CEOs,
and I conducted focus groups ofabout 120 presidents and CEOs
and I said to them guys, is itme?
I shouldn't say guys, it wasladies and gentlemen, is it me
or do you all have the same kindof issues?
And 120 of them said, yeah, weall have the same issue.
(09:40):
And so I recognized at thatmoment that it wasn't just me,
that this is a common problemamongst small businesses and,
like they say, necessity is themother of invention.
So when I saw this opportunity,with all these folks saying
they needed the same thing, Ithought, you know what?
There's a great marketopportunity.
And that was the eureka momentfor me, where I realized, okay,
(10:05):
finally I can break out of thecorporate world, I can start my
own business, I can be my ownboss, I can go out on my own and
I can tell you the next steps.
But uh, I'll, I'll, I'll stopthere.
And and uh, let you ask thenext question.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, that's.
That's a great, that's a greatanswer, and it also gives the
viewers a taste of what yourcompany really does.
So my next question what is theprocess like starting your own
business, which you kind of yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:34):
So so there's kind of
the.
There's the methodical stepsthat you can go through and I
can cover those, and there'salso the, the emotional process,
and and you know what it's like, and those are two very
different things you know.
So, in terms of the process,you know, part of it is really
getting up the guts to say, yeah, I can do this, uh, and I'm
(10:56):
going to do this.
And the funny thing is is thatyou know, you recognize, I
recognized afterwards thatthere's 1.4 million businesses
in Canada or thereabouts.
So, like I thought about itafterwards, I go you know what?
I'm not paving a new path here.
There's 1.4 million otherpeople who have done this before
me and you know what.
(11:18):
There's a clear set of stepsthat you can go through.
And then I started to inquireand quickly figured out okay,
here's what you need to do.
And the fun thing is is that itactually costs very little.
So you know now we help otherbusinesses get into business,
(11:38):
particularly businesses fromoutside of Canada.
We help them establishoperations in Canada, and so, to
answer your question in termsof how do you start a business,
it's very much the advice thatwe give to these organizations.
So the first thing is is knowwhat your product and or
services that you want to sell.
(11:58):
And you know it's interesting.
I was at a networking event lastnight and I met a very fine,
interesting gentleman fromabroad and he wants to break
into the Canadian market.
Gentleman from abroad, and hewants to break into the Canadian
market and he told me what hedid and I said to him you know,
(12:21):
there's a lot of other companiesin Canada who do what it is
that you do, but maybe you havesomething that's unique about
your offering.
But what you need to do is youneed to look at the Canadian
market first and get a good ideaof what's already out there so
that you can figure out how tocome up with your own
competitive, your strategiccompetitive advantage, what
(12:42):
makes you different and betterfrom all of the other options.
And he goes.
You know you're right, he goes.
Thanks for letting me know hegoes.
I didn't realize that therewere all these companies doing
similar things to what we do,but that doesn't mean that he's
out of the running.
It just means he needs tofigure out how he's going to
position his company.
(13:03):
Then the next thing is to dosome tax planning and people say
, well, why would you do taxplanning before you would
incorporate the company?
And people say, well, why wouldyou do tax planning before you
would incorporate the company?
And the reason is is becauseincorporating the company.
What that means is essentiallyyou're defining, among other
things, the classes of sharesthat you want in your company.
(13:23):
The simplest company has justone class of shares common
shares but you can be moresophisticated than that and it
comes down to really figuringout what is the most tax
efficient way to establish youroperations.
Now, if you're a youngentrepreneur, you're not going
(13:44):
to spend a ton of time on thiskind of stuff.
But there's a lot of lifedecisions and a lot of things
that can go into this.
And the reason why I suggestdoing the tax planning ahead of
time is because it costs youless to do the tax planning at
the beginning than it does tocrystallize the value of your
(14:08):
firm.
So say, for instance, you wantto change your incorporation
later on.
It can cost you a lot more tomake that change later on than
if you figure out what it isthat you want to do now.
So like, as an example, what amI talking about?
So, for instance, if you wantto have employees who have stock
(14:29):
options or shares in thecompany, who have stock options
or shares in the company, youmight give them another class of
shares with different votingrights or no voting rights, as
an example.
So it's not really that complexor complicated.
It actually can get that way,but there are very simple
concepts that will drive you todetermining whether you want one
(14:49):
class of shares or multipleclasses of shares, and a good
tax person will help you figurethat out.
Once you've got that figuredout, then you go to a lawyer, or
the tax person can actuallysend instructions to a lawyer
and say, okay, we want toincorporate this company with
these classes of shares, and thelawyer does that.
(15:10):
The next thing you need to dois, essentially, you need a bank
account, but, most importantly,you've got to get out there to
market and sell whatever you'redoing.
So it's a good idea if you'vealready had the opportunity to
start either developing yourproduct or service and know what
it is that you want to sell.
The most important thing thatdrives every company is sales.
(15:33):
You don't have a company reallyuntil you have sales, and sales
, of course, is going to driveyour profits.
It's going to drive all of thethings that you can invest in,
the types of staff that you'regoing to hire.
So my thinking has always beensell.
Have a really goodunderstanding as to how you're
(15:55):
going to deliver.
You don't have to have all ofyour ducks lined up depending on
what you're selling.
You might have a good idea andbe prepared to deliver when you
sell.
But sell first and then deliverquickly thereafter and deliver
outstanding quality Deliverstuff that is going to make your
(16:18):
client absolutely tickled withwhat they bought, because you're
going to need every one of yourclients, especially the first
ones, to be able to stand up andsay you know what?
Ez delivered the most amazingservice.
We were so happy with what wegot from his company.
We would happily refer him toanybody else.
(16:40):
So those are kind of the stepsthat you take in starting a
company and then it goes on fromthere.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
As he was there at
one of those steps, I said I
take a backseat, but I'm lying.
Was there?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
one of those steps.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Thanks said.
I take a backseat, but I'mlying, that doesn't matter.
Was there one of those steps?
Thanks, jeff, that was prettyawesome.
Was there a step there that wasinteresting to you?
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Well, first, which
step was most interesting to you
?
That's a toughie.
There were a lot of steps.
I think the last one, where youtalked about sell first and
then deliver to higher than yourexpectations, was interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, I think you
like to sell, don't you Me?
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, youreally enjoyed that.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And then of all the
steps, what was the most, what
seemed like it would be the mostchallenging to you or would
require more work?
Starting the shareholding spots, I guess?
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, that did seem a
little bit complicated.
So, like when you have yoursnow business in the winter, do
Jeff and I get to beshareholders?
Speaker 3 (17:47):
If you want, you know
the great point, and that is,
some of this stuff seems complex, but it's important to remember
that you and I say you, anycompany leader you're not going
to be the expert in all thesethings.
You can't be the expert in allthese things.
You're going to be the expertin the product or service that
(18:10):
you're delivering and thatyou're selling all of these
other things that I've justtalked about.
There are great people outthere who you can hire and they
will do, they will help you dowhat you need to do.
So really, your job is theleadership and and guiding them
(18:31):
and recognizing that they arehired, help.
You know you can hire.
There's lots of lawyers outthere.
There are lots of accountants.
There's lots of other businessadvisors.
You can hire tons of differenttypes of people.
It's always good to get thosetypes of people by referral, in
other words, people who haveworked with them before and know
(18:53):
the quality of their work, theservice levels, their pricing,
the value that they deliver.
So, but the bottom line is isyou don't have to be the expert
in, for instance, sharestructure.
That's what you have lawyersand accountants to do.
What's important for you isthat you get the right solution
for the company that you want tobuild, and that's what they're
(19:15):
there to help you to do yeah,that's great advice.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I think the good
thing is, if ever you wanted to
go the entrepreneurial route, wemight have a discount on
accounting services in the roomwith us.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
That would be useful.
So the third, last but notleast question what would you
have done if not for startingFlexer?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Suffered terribly.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
You know I probably
would have continued to look for
other business opportunities,but at the end of the day, you
know, I probably would havecontinued to look for other
business opportunities.
But at the end of the day, youknow, you got to put food on the
table and so I probably wouldhave continued in a corporate
role, doing my best andcontinuing to sell and make
(20:08):
other people rich.
I would have done that until Ihad another good idea to form a
business.
But you know, what I encouragefolks to do is, you know, in
your first jobs, look and see,like when you have a client, try
(20:28):
and understand where they seegaps in the product or service
that you may be delivering.
So it's not necessarily yourfault.
You might be working for acompany and the company might
provide a set of services.
But in talking with a clientyou come to understand that you
know, if we had our druthers, wereally wouldn't have the
(20:50):
services delivered like this, wewould have them delivered like
that.
And that's what you'relistening for.
You're listening to your clientbecause often I mean, clients
are the best source of that kindof information right, they're
the ones who are going to bemaking the buying decisions.
So, if you understand what yourclient wants, you can then take
(21:12):
what it is that you're doing,and perhaps, either within the
context of your existing workenvironment or outside you can.
You know, you want to do itproperly.
When I say properly, you don'twant to go in and basically do
bad to your current employer.
What you want to do, though, iseither A you recommend it to
(21:35):
your employer on how they can,you know, offer a new product or
service or offer it in adifferent way, or, alternatively
, you can form your own company.
You know, there's a gentlemanwho I've known for you know,
most of my life, and he startedworking in a mutual fund
environment, and this guy wasvery brilliant, and he
(22:00):
recognized that clients didn'tlike the dog food that was being
sold to them, and he decided,he recognized that there was a
much better way.
In this case, because it wasmutual funds, it was much more
quantitative, there were verygreat ideas in terms of how he
(22:22):
could provide better returns tohis customers, and he tried
forever and a day to get hismanagement to adopt his way of
thinking and to adopt hismethodology, and he had very
detailed methodology that he haddeveloped, and his current
employer basically said yeah,you know what, I'm not so
(22:43):
interested.
Or in one case, they finallydecided, yep, they were going to
do this, but then, instead ofclients following the
methodology that he laid out,clients would use his
methodology.
But you know, like there's thiswhole commercial that says but
we know the management of ourcompanies we invest in.
(23:05):
And so some of his clients wereactually overriding or ignoring
the advice that he was givingwith what they thought was a
better way.
And he said you know what?
These guys aren't listening,they aren't taking the
methodology that we have, themethodology that we have.
If they followed it to theletter or to the number, they
(23:28):
would actually do much better.
And so, because his currentemployer really didn't employ
what he was coming up with, hedecided to form his own company.
Make a long story short he's avery wealthy individual today,
many years later.
He developed his own company,he hired his own staff.
(23:50):
He went on to be verysuccessful, and it was by
listening to clients coming upwith a good idea, listening to
clients and being able to go outand sell to them, and he became
very successful doing that.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So it sounds like.
So persistence andthoughtfulness were kind of keys
to your thought process whenstarting FlexServe.
You definitely had to havepersistence.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Boy, did I have to
have persistence?
You know it's funny because youknow, as I mentioned, I grew up
through a technical workenvironment running large
projects, environment runninglarge projects.
And you know, I finally decidedthat I was going to sell
(24:38):
accounting and HR services Now,the businesses that I ran.
I had folks working for me inaccounting and folks working for
me in HR, but I had never soldaccounting or HR services.
And I remember telling myfather at the time that this is
what I was planning to do and myfather was very pragmatic and
he goes Jeff, how are you goingto sell accounting or HR
(25:00):
services?
You never sold them before.
How are you going to sell them?
That was a great question.
And I said to him I said, dad,by this point I've sold about
$360 million worth of work.
Yes, it's not HR and accounting, but there's 1.4 million other
businesses in Canada and everyone of them has sold or most of
(25:21):
them have sold something.
If they figured out how to doit, well, I probably can take
the experience that I have andapply it to accounting and HR.
Can take the experience that Ihave and apply it to accounting
and HR.
And you know, I was glad.
It was great that he asked methat question because it gets
you to think you know, okay, howare you going to do this and
how are you going to do itbetter than other people out
(25:42):
there.
So it was a fun challenge.
But I think you know that isactually, and I'll segue for a
minute.
I think you know that isactually and I'll segue for a
minute.
If you come up with a good idea,there are going to be naysayers
.
There's going to be.
(26:06):
There are people along the waywho will criticize anything and
everything you come up with.
There are going to be peoplewho say you know, instead of
like the, you know, there's somepeople who will be great
enthusiasts and will be verysupportive and say that is a
fantastic idea.
You could get introduced to theold person who goes I'm not so
sure.
I see the opportunity in thatand you can't let yourself get
(26:32):
taken out by people who don'tknow your space.
So you know, you have somebodywho's introduced to you and I
had people introduced to me aswise old businessmen, you know,
and I was supposed to listen tothese guys because you know they
had made it in their respectivefields.
But here I was coming up withtechnology ideas.
(26:53):
These guys hadn't the faintestclue.
They had never worked in tech,they had no idea what I was
talking about, so it was foreignto them, and they were opining
and saying, oh, I don't thinkthat's going to work, there's no
way.
Well, so you know, early in mycareer, I probably listened to
some of these old farts too much, and you know, I probably.
(27:18):
I know that I could havelaunched other businesses before
I did, and part of it was, youknow, it's good to seek advice,
but you also want to make surethat the people that you're
seeking advice from are peoplewho are qualified to give you
the advice in the domain thatyou're actually asking.
And you know, some of thesefolks actually may have been
(27:41):
great to give, for instance,financial advice, but not
necessarily advice as it relatedto the product or service that
I was suggesting.
So I think it's reallyimportant not to listen to the
naysayers.
Uh, and by the same token,though, if you have a good idea,
what you want to do is prove itin, and there's ways to prove
(28:04):
it in.
You can do focus groups, youcan do market analysis.
There's a whole bunch of waysthat you can kind of test the
ideas.
But you know, I'll give you anexample.
Where that was tough, so manyyears ago, there was this thing
called a Palm Pilot.
Okay, I'm dating myself.
There was this thing called aPalm Pilot.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Do you know what that
is, essie?
There's one downstairs, we'llshow you.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
So a Palm Pilot was a
device where you could enter
contact information, and thatwas it, so you can enter is it?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
is that that little
phone thing that has the pen
inside of it?
They show me?
Speaker 3 (28:41):
uh, that is the next,
the next generation, and I'll
talk about that.
This is actually before that, Ithink.
If I know what you're talkingabout, I think you may be
talking about the BlackBerry,but if not, if you're talking
about the Palm Pilot, the PalmPilot, all it had was contacts.
It was unusual, like what youhave in, for instance, microsoft
(29:02):
Contacts today.
It had name, title, address,telephone number, all that kind
of information, address,telephone number, all that kind
of information.
And at the time you had veryplain cell phones.
They were cell phones, theyweren't smartphones, they were
(29:23):
just phones with 10 digits, apound and a star, and that was
it, Listeners.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
a pound is also now
known as a hashtag.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yes, hashtag.
So I had a very good friend ofmine at the time who worked for
one of Canada's three largesttelcos.
He was the product manager, sohe was the guy who was
responsible for this very largetelco in determining what would
be the next products andservices that they offered.
(29:53):
So one day I had a eurekamoment and I went to him and I
said you know, I have this dumbcell phone and I have this Palm
Pilot, the cell phone callsnumbers.
And in those days if you wantedto store 10 numbers in your
phone, you actually had to.
You know, like.
(30:13):
You know, like, on the one ortwo key was A, a, a, b, b, b.
You know you had to dial out,like you know, uh, the, the name
of the person and you couldstore 10 phones phone numbers.
And I said to him you know, yougot this Palm Pilot where you
have all your contactinformation.
You got this dumb phone.
Why don't we put it togetherand develop a device which
(30:37):
actually has phone numbers andthe capability of making phone
calls?
And his response to me at thetime was this is the product
manager of one of Canada's threelargest telcos.
He said to me Jeff, you maywant that, but our customers
(30:58):
don't want that, and I thoughtyou must be kidding me.
Now, the thing was is thatnobody had come up with the idea
, nobody had actually developeda product that did that, so of
course there was no market totest it out in.
So you could do focus groups.
You could go out and say topeople so if you had a device
(31:21):
that does this and this and this, would you buy it?
And then, if you would buy it,how much would you buy it for?
But here was a guy who wasresponsible for forward thinking
and he was not forward thinking.
Of course.
Soon thereafter came along thislittle company called RIM
(31:41):
Research in Motion thatdeveloped the BlackBerry, which
is now long since defunct, butBlackBerry for a while they had
the largest customers in theworld.
They had the presidents of theUnited States and every other
country using their devices.
They came along.
(32:01):
Yeah, listen, if only it was mewho'd formed that company.
But my point here is don't letthe naysayers take down a great
idea.
Right, and here this guy wassupposed to be an expert in his
domain.
He was, he knew the market, buthe was still a naysayer.
(32:24):
And the the idea is is if youhave a great idea that you think
has merit, objectively convinceyourself, yes or no, whether
this is going to be successful,and get good advice from people,
a whole bunch of people whoknow that type of market, your
(32:48):
product or service is going tobe new.
But if you get lots of inputfrom other people and of course
you want to do it protectingyour intellectual property, et
cetera but the point is that ifyou have a great idea and are
confident that this is a winner,keep going with it.
Don't let the naysayers get youdown, don't let people put
(33:10):
hurdles in front of you.
Keep jumping over those hurdlesand you, you can be a star, you
can be unicorn.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, I actually
remember when you told me that
story, uh, about the uh guy whoyou gave the idea of the
blackberry.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yeah, did you learn
anything from all of that, uh?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
yeah, uh, of the
Blackberry.
Yeah, did you learn anythingfrom all of that?
Yeah, like you said, don't letthe naysayers get you down.
Entrepreneurship requires a lotof perseverance and it requires
a lot of guts or fire in thebelly Chutzpah.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, it requires all
of that.
Well, I think, even if yourcareer is not going to be in
entrepreneurship, there'sdefinitely a lot of great
lessons that you can take awayfrom that.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah, for sure, and
it was a great conversation.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I really loved
listening to you, jeff, share
your story in this way.
I haven't been able to hear itin this way before, so it was
really awesome to hear, and Ithink our listeners will
probably enjoy it as well.
So thank you for taking time torecord season two, episode one,
with us.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
It was an absolute
delight, and if there's any
questions that any of yourlisteners have, I'd be happy to
answer them.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, for sure, we'll
see if anybody dms the
instagram.
So join us on the next time.
Uh, for more hoops and crumbson apple podcast, spotify,
amazon music and anywhere elseyou can find your favorite
podcasts.
We'll talk basketball cookiesand share other random life
musings.
Uh, if you have any questions,dm us at hoopsandcrumbs IG.
(34:54):
We'll be sure to add them infuture chats.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Thank, you Goodbye,
ciao, bye.