Mastering Clear Communication and Strategic Networking: Garrett Dailey's Entrepreneurial Journey

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, everybody like you just heard inside of
that intro.
You are listening to anotherepisode of the Modern
Independent, so let's dive rightin.
Today I will be interviewinganother Indie Collective grad
named Garrett.
He was an Indie Collective grad, I believe, initially in the
you're going to have to help methe fall spring, the fall this
past.
Fall me, the fall spring, thefall this past fall.

(00:22):
Yeah, so fall of 2023.
So very, very, I'll say I won'tsay fresh, maybe fresh from any
collective grad, but not freshto the world of entrepreneurship
and his passion for businesskind of overall.
And one thing that really stoodout to me when Garrett and I
first connected inside of ouroffice hours during the fall

(00:45):
cohort was this idea of reallylooking beyond the superficial
when it came to whether it wasbranding, it was business
building, it was pretty muchanything.
You ask a question about aprocess and Garrett was like,
well, have you thought about theprocess from this angle?
Or what about this person'sinsight?
And so we were able to.

(01:07):
I think our first office hoursession was supposed to be half
an hour and ended up being likean hour and 15 minutes.
I mean, there's so many waysthat he's able to kind of
dissect situations and look atthings differently.
That I'm super excited for youto listen to this episode and
kind of get that full experienceas we go through the next hour
and some change together.
So, garrett, welcome to theshow.

(01:27):
Thank you for taking the timeto come hang out.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
So I mean, as we were talking about before we turned
the mics on, there's so manydifferent places that we could
start off this conversation, butI think you know, for the sake
of everybody that has never metyou before is tuning into the
show for the first time, kind ofthing.
I think maybe we back it up andstart with the basics, right,

(01:55):
when are you located and whatwas the initial call to going
independent or entrepreneurship,whatever you want to label it
as, but everybody has thatjumping off point.
So what was that point for you?

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Let's see.
Yeah, so the older I get, themore I realize my backstory is
insane and abnormal.
So I grew up in rural NorthCarolina.
My dad was a Marine, so it waslike half California when I was
a kid and half rural NorthCarolina in a relatively
miserable town um calledJacksonville uh, not not the

(02:34):
cool one in Florida and I wasalways trying to do stuff.
Uh, but it's.
You know, if you have a, mygraduating class is like 200
people, so I was always tryingto.
You know I wrote a script for amovie like a zombie movie
before it was cool.
Uh, I, you know, I tried doingum like a video game design team
in high school.
I was always trying to do stuffright, I would never, ever,

(02:56):
ever get anyone to do anythingwith me.
So very unpleasant place tolive.
Um, I originally I almost wentin the military, but my mom
talked me out of it.
My dad was Special ForcesMarine.
She was like don't do that tome.
I was like okay, fair.
So the only other option to getout of my hometown was go to
school.
I went two years late and I wasonly there for three semesters

(03:20):
total.
I did not enjoy the process,but I was at Poole College of
Management at NC State and thatwas, I don't know, not the best
time in my life, but I ended up.
Right before I failed out ofschool, a friend hit me up that
I used to sell hairstraighteners on a mall kiosk
with and was like, hey, we'restarting a business.

(03:41):
I was like, all right, perfect.
I had no plan.
So I fell right intoco-founding a valet trash for a
multifamily housing companycalled Freedom Way Waste Valet,
and this is in Fayetteville,north Carolina.
I did that for a while.
That was the first time I hadtotally free reign to do

(04:03):
whatever I wanted.
So I had done some graphicdesign and stuff in the past.
I built out the brand.
I built out the first website Iever made.
We would stay up all night andjust do research on all these
different complexes that we weretrying to target and all kinds
of stuff.
We did this for a year.
At one point we even did littledollhouse trash cans that we
put our logo on, filled them upwith candy and business cards

(04:28):
and we'd give them out to people.
We did a co-drive Everything inthe world you can think of to
market this thing right.
We did it for a year.
We got absolutely zero traction, just blew a bunch of money.
We were like whatever?
So there's some otheruninteresting stuff in the
middle there.
Three years later, on LinkedIn,the primary person that we were
trying to get in contact withsaid we're ready to talk now.
And I learned at that point alesson which is OK, the next

(04:51):
thing I do.
I should just stick with it,because if we had done something
that wasn't trash which noone's passionate about, I assume
probably we could have stuckwith it, but that was not a cool
business.
It, but that was not a coolbusiness.
And later I learned that if Ihad known about the B2B sales
cycle, then I would haveunderstood that there was about
one month of the time that wewere active that we could
actually gotten a contract, andthat was very early in the

(05:13):
process in October, when they'redoing the budgets.
We didn't know.
So I floated around the country,went out West, worked in some
other not super well thought outstartups with different people
there's.
One of them was like a vapedelivery company that was based
at NC State that I had somebranding for, and I started a

(05:33):
small media company when I wasin Reno, nevada, doing.
I had been writing a lot oftime.
I wrote a lot of abstractphilosophy and did tons and tons
of podcasts.
We ended up as a groupproducing like an ebook and we
did a like 32 speaker conferenceUm, I think we made a grand
total of like $3,000 from thatCause.

(05:54):
Just, we were missing pieces.
It was good.
The conference itself was cool,um, all kinds of stuff with
that.
So I just I like a lot ofmisadventures for a long time,
right, I came back to NorthCarolina and got a job at
eventually working at thisdesign agency and it was there
that I kind of like it startedto click for me, right.
So we worked mostly with earlystage startups, which I always

(06:19):
loved.
You know, I had at that point alot of experience early in the
process of like what are all thethings you have to do to like
build legitimacy, look likeyou're serious.
And then I learned a lot moreformal process for how you kind
of deal with that stuff While Iwas there.
This is not a particularlywell-run company, but by the end
of it I was in charge of likeall the accounts.

(06:40):
I was hiring and training andrunning design teams, doing all
the client management stuff likethat, and I realized that we
had these exercises we would dowhen we'd onboard clients,
called sprints.
I had started trying to makethem make more sense, because
these are just generic documentsand I realized like, oh, if we

(07:00):
spent more time on these, wereally dug into the values, we
dug into the mission, the vision, a lot of the philosophy of the
company, that we can get abetter result Because we would
do them in an hour.
No matter what we got theanswers, no matter how it came
out, I was like, oh, we justspent more time on this and
really dug into it, we can makebetter brands, better decisions.
So after a year and a half atthat agency, I started my own

(07:30):
and for the last two and a halfyears I've run Ion Enterprises,
which was originally a businessphilosophy and design agency.
In the process of doing that, Ioriginally just started doing
brands and websites and kind ofmoved into pitch decks.
I was raising for a startup ofmy own in the middle there and I

(07:51):
was also chief of staff for acrypto company for a little bit
before the market blew up and Irealized, man, I really like
pitching, I really like helpingpeople explain complicated stuff
because I've written like 160five to 10 page philosophy
articles for years.
But most of the people thattalk about this stuff talk about
it in this academic, abstract,unnecessarily complex way and
you really don't.
Everything can be explainedsimply if you get it right.

(08:11):
I know that's kind of aplatitude, but it's true.
And if you can't explain itsimply, you don't get it.
Yet the problem that I had waswith ION.
This was like a this is apersonal art project for me.
That also happened to be abusiness.
It was not the other way aroundand in the process of trying

(08:33):
every possible version of how topitch that, when that finally
clicked for me in January, whathappened was kind of this
cascade of I just understood allthe mistakes I'd made for all
these years.
That just clicked and so whatthat led to?
There's a couple differentthings.
One is that I'm fundamentallyan artist type of person.

(08:55):
I really care about the workitself.
I want to do great beautifulwork and I really enjoy helping
people do stuff.
I'm very service oriented asfar as the business side of
stuff, like building outprocesses and systems, all that
kind of stuff.
I'm very service oriented asfar as like the business side of
stuff like building outprocesses and systems, all that
kind of stuff.
It's not my forte.
I just I want to just do thework, right.
So I realized I was like, oh, Iprobably need to bring on a

(09:15):
co-founder that is moreinterested in that kind of thing
.
Right, and I happened to haveworked with a guy who was an
advisor for my startup.
We had done some work togetherafter the fact.
His name's Brian Schuster and Imessaged him when I had this
realization.
I was at Tony Robbins BusinessMastery.
It was like halfway through theweek oh my God, I get it Highly
recommended, by the way and Imessaged Brian.

(09:36):
He was like, let's go.
At the end of that process theyhad Donald Miller, the guy who
wrote Building a Story Brand andseveral other very good books.
I'm working my way through hiscorpus.
Right now I have Story Brandover here.
But there's this exercise hedoes, which is the one liner
where you have to explain yourbusiness in one line, and this

(09:56):
kind of thing where I couldexplain what I am was simply, I
was never able to do it becausewhat it was to me and I think
this is common with not allentrepreneurs but a certain
subset of entrepreneurs Itypically end up working with is
that you have thismission-driven or vision-driven,
like values kind of person thatloves the work.
They love this big, beautifulthing.

(10:17):
It's very personal to them.
That's the obstacle.
The love that you have for thething that you're trying to do
is, in fact, an obstacle for youto do it effectively.
And I only know this becausethis is me, for the entirety of
my career was oh, I'm soattached to this that I can't
see what it actually is.

(10:38):
It's not about me.
Business philosophy, I think, issuper, super valuable, but
nobody knows what that is.
And I can try and explain topeople what that is, but that's
not why they're hiring anyone,right?
What somebody says is I need abrand, I need a website, I need
to scale my revenue, I need toprocessify our operations, right
, all that kind of stuff.
The things that go into thatare, in fact, philosophy.

(11:01):
But I no longer pitch that it'sphilosophy because, a it's the
worst possible pitch you couldever make and B nobody needs to
know how the sausage gets made.
If you're hungry and somebodyoffers you a sausage, you'll eat
it.
If somebody explains to you howthe sausage is made, you will
not be hungry at the end of thatexplanation, right, and this,

(11:24):
this realization is reallyprofound.
How doesn't really matter thatmuch, right?
What matters is the problemthat a person with a problem and
the means to solve it uh, youknow they have the money and the
resources to dedicate to it.
You can communicate, that youunderstand their problem, you

(11:44):
know empathy and can help themsolve it.
Authority, and you can do thisto a large enough market that
you can build a business.
Right, this is the most basic.
That's it.
A business is ultimately a toolor a system that solves a
problem for a specific person,repeatedly, right, a specific
type of person.
And when I realized all this,the culminating thing that came

(12:08):
out of this was the one linerfor what is now my consultancy,
lucid.
It's hard to grow your businesswhen you don't know how to talk
about it.
Lucid helps you talk about yourbusiness with clarity so you
can close more deals.
If you don't know how to talkabout your business, there are
about 400 other things that wehave to sort out in that process
.
That is not the point.

(12:28):
People are not buying the how.
What they want is to be able togo out in a room with their ICP
, say what they do and have theICP understand that they can be
helped and give them money sothey can help them.
Getting to that level ofsimplicity was three years of

(12:48):
pitching Ion wrong right, thosethree years of going through
every possible variation ofwords, of angles, and now it
works right.
So the difference was I am aprolific networker.
I go out all the time and Iwould maybe get like one person
that I might be able to workwith out of like five events or
something like that, whereaswe've been going super hard this

(13:11):
year.
We were at East Denver two weeksago and then Brian came in to
Austin, where I'm located now agreat city, and he just left
this morning and I think we'vegot like 20 meetings booked over
the course of the next fourweeks and we only did two days
of networking in Denver and Ithink maybe left the house twice

(13:34):
in Austin while he was hereother than for us doing work or
doing work with clients, right.
So all of that to say what Ithought I was getting into this
for was how do you solve bigproblems in the world?
And that's true, the way Ithought you solved that was by
trying to teach people betterphilosophy and that business is

(13:56):
actually the greatest problemsolving system ever created and
if you had better philosophy inthe business, you'd be able to
solve bigger problems, when inreality, it's like okay, there
are people out here solvingproblems already.
The real problems they're, youknow, like building, like that
is a problem.
People have that their clothesare dirty but nobody needs to

(14:18):
have a laundromat explained tothem.
Real problems are complicated,they're abstract, the solutions
are usually obtuse.
Right, and if you could helpthe people who are trying to
solve the real problems in theworld communicate that
effectively, then the stuff thatgets funded and the stuff that
gets marketed and the stuff thatgets sold is going to be the

(14:41):
stuff that matters and not justlike B2B SaaS, number 407 or
Uber for blah, blah, blah,because those are easy to pitch,
because everyone already getsthat.
So that's what I'm reallypassionate about is help people
that are too smart for their owngood learn how to talk about
what they do so they canactually do the thing they're
passionate about in a way thatscales Long intro, but feel free

(15:03):
to jump in wherever you wantwith that yeah, yeah, no, I'm, I
think, long but necessary,right I?

Speaker 1 (15:10):
the way that you explain so many different things
inside of that you knowstoryline is so many things that
I try to hit on with peopleinside of you know whether it's
office hours or we're at anevent or you know anytime.
I'm talking about indie,because a lot of people will
look at this 10-week bootcampand they're not saying that we
don't see people that withinthat 10 weeks make massive

(15:32):
improvement, that don't see areturn on their business, that
don't end up partnering withsomebody or landing another
community member as a client.
That happens pretty frequently.
But that 10 weeks isn't meantto solve all of your problems.

(15:53):
You're giving yourselfprocesses, systems and learning
to ask questions that will setyou up to solve more problems
exponentially more effectivelyover the next three years, until
you realize you've beenpitching your business
completely wrong.
And then you know ourbulletproof psychology section
at the end is to give you theresilience so that when you have
that realization, you'rewilling to make the pivot you

(16:15):
know like.
So there's so much that youjust said inside of that that
that resonates with what I'veseen continuously, cohort after
cohort right, because at thispoint I've been involved.
I've been the head of communitynow for almost two years, which
is bonkers, but before that Iwas a student.
So I've been around Indy nowthree and a half years and

(16:36):
gotten to see people thatgraduated, that are now one year
out, two years out, three yearsout and beyond.
You know some single cohorts,some coming back for multiple
cohorts and everything, andthere's always new problems
popping up that are differentand bigger and hairier.
And you think your problems arebig when you're at $80,000 in

(16:57):
revenue and you're a solo shop,when you want to get to that
quarter million mark.
When you get to that quartermillion mark, you have quarter
million dollar problems that youhave to solve and it keeps
iterating.
And to hear you constantly say,okay, I'm willing to re-explore
this, I'm tinkering, I'mre-pitching, I'm looking at, I'm
having an aha, I'm calling afriend because I had an aha.

(17:19):
I'm starting that conversation.
I'm.
You know all of those things areall I mean.
Those don't just appear insideof somebody right, like you were
.
You were either taught to dothat, you have it naturally as a
gift, you know, or somethingkind of keeps that engine,
engine running.
So I don't know exactly wherethat, where that takes the

(17:39):
conversation now.
But you know, I just wanted todouble click on that because I
see it so often as like a theme,you know, for people that come
through the program and stuff,and you just hit on like a whole
bunch of stuff that I wastrying to figure out how to put
words to, um, which is prettytypical for our conversations
for everybody listening.
Like every time I have aconversation with garrett I'm

(18:00):
like, oh, you said something Iknew but didn't know how to say.
So thank you for that.
Yeah definitely, I think thatthe benefit.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
I happen to be much, much more stubborn and obstinate
than the average person, whichis not necessarily a good thing.
In a lot of cases, However, Ihave a much higher capacity for
punishment, I think, and ifyou're willing to go do things
wrong for basically a decade, bythe end of that you have seen

(18:37):
more problems than the peoplethat were not, by a factor of
some insane amount, Right?
So, having been in so manystartups that didn't work and
like it, especially in theearlier stages, why I still had
like a jobby job that I wasdoing whenever on the side, um,
I think I've had like 28 actualjobs before I even was like

(18:58):
full-time entrepreneur.
Some of those were small teams,some of them were bigger
companies, whatever.
But when you can see all ofthat, you start to see things
right, and I think that's partof what led me to consulting is
because I was always ageneralist as a kid and that's
not a good thing to be untillater in life I've learned, but

(19:22):
just being able to be exposed toA lot of people.
If you think of the normalcareer path, maybe it's
different now.
I know people don't stay atjobs as long, but if back in the
day you can have one jobforever, and maybe some people
have like five or six jobs theirwhole lives.
So they've seen five or sixteams.
They've seen five or six typesof problems, right.
Especially if they'respecialists, they may have their

(19:44):
niche of stuff sorted, butthat's it.
And even with founders who tendmore towards being generalists,
if you're a founder and you'reworking full-time on solving
whatever problem your companysolves, you only see that right,
and you end up blind to a lotof other stuff.
And so, watching not only thatkind of constraint but also the

(20:05):
personality dynamics that gointo founders that are
successful and founders thataren't, that perspective is it
just required 10 years ofprocessing all that stuff before
it's like ah, okay, now I getit.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Yeah, I want to double click on that real quick
too.
But just because, if you'relistening to this and you're
somebody that has been beatingthemselves up because you're
like I've been at this for threeyears and I haven't made a
bunch of progress or this ishappening, or this is happening,
I want you to pay attention tothe timeline that Garrett just
chose to throw out right thereDecade.
For whatever reason, we getinto consulting and maybe it's

(20:45):
because some members come in andthey're literally launching
their business with that 10-weekcohort, so they're starting in
at ground zero, have veryminimal expectations about where
things are going, becausethey're just like I don't know
what's going to happen, but I'mgoing to do this thing.
But then we also haveindividuals that have been
inside of the corporate spacefor 10 years, 15 years, and then

(21:10):
they come in and they expectthat 10 years of experience to
directly transfer into theentrepreneurial space, and it's
not a one-to-one ratio.
And so you come in and you mayhave a decade's worth of
experience.
But when you read startupliterature whether it's from Y
Combinator or it's from Deloitteor Accenture or any of the

(21:33):
consulting firms that do studieson startups and their average
lifespan and the cycles thatthey go through and stuff like
that.
You're looking at at least fiveyears to make it through the
ideation, the storming phase,leveling, actually getting
sustainable, profitable, havingsystems and stuff like that and
courses like Indie can helpaccelerate that process and

(21:54):
everything.
But really the first five yearsare experimenting and trying to
grow.
It's not like you're going todirectly take that 10 years of
experience and then boom, I havea fully functional.
I know exactly how to talkabout myself, all my systems are
in place, I've got a good VA, Iknow how to invoice, I'm an
S-corp.
All of that stuff doesn'thappen boom overnight.

(22:15):
It could take five years foryou to get there and if you just
mentally commit to that frameversus trying to put the
pressure on yourself, whereyou're like I have to make this
work, granted, sometimes there'sfinancial stuff that goes on
where you're like I have to makethis work in the next three

(22:35):
months.
I've personally been there.
There's been stages along myjourney where I was donating
plasma to buy groceries.
Sometimes you just end up inthose spots to be a battle for

(22:56):
the next three to five years andI'm just going to accept that
it's going to be tough.
I'm going to have to changedirection a lot.
I'm going to have to put myselfin uncomfortable growth
situations.
I'm going to have to network IfI'm not a natural networker.
If I am a natural networker,I'm going to have to learn how
to draw stronger boundaries withmy time so I can actually
fulfill on work, depending onwhat type of personality type
you have, the different thingsyou're going to have to work on.

(23:20):
But then you get to that end ofthat five years and you can
look back and you're like man.
I am so grateful that five yearago me decide to take this leap
and commit to it.
You know I think about that allthe time Like man.
23 year old Jan was a nutcasebut God bless him.
You know I'm glad that he didwhat he did.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Amen to that.
Yeah, the?
Um.
I want to touch on somethingyou said.
Well, first off, like man, whata great thing If you were
starting out.
Indy would save you so muchtime.
Um, that, right off the bat,that would be awesome.
Um, I wish I had known about itsooner.
Um, I wish I had known aboutsooner the thing like on that
note, on the indie note, the ICPstructure that you guys use.

(24:02):
I think that was a pivotalshift.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
It's not just it's ideal customer profile is what
ICP stands for.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
for those of you listening yeah, so I've kind of
played with that.
The version that I'm using nowis basically the same thing, but
it's easier way to remember.
It is ideal.
Customer profile.
Icp squared equals person plusproblem or person times problem.
Right, and that was a big oneof the sessions that.

(24:29):
That really opened my eyes.
It's easy If you put thesquared in there.
It's easy to remember.
There's two P's.
Right, you have the personyou're serving and the example
they give an Indy, which I loveis you have a 30 year old guy
who works, you know he has atech startup and all this other
like demographic information andstuff.

(24:50):
Does he go to a cheap pizzaparlor or an expensive Italian
restaurant?
And they let everyone answerthis question.
Everyone's like, oh well, yougo here because of this or you
go there because of that, andthe takeaway from it is it
doesn't matter until you knowwhat his problem is.
So there's a version of thisI've been riffing on as an
adjacent kind of concept, whichis why does someone go to

(25:12):
McDonald's or a Michelin starrestaurant, right?
Why does someone go toMcDonald's or a Michelin star
restaurant, right A?
Regardless of which restaurantit is, a person who has just
eaten a five course meal is notgoing to either of these
restaurants.
So, acknowledging these twothings serve the same basic need
, which is you're hungry, right,but then outside of that every
other need that they serve iscompletely unrelated.

(25:35):
Right, mcdonald's is like cheap,fast, volume of food,
convenience, whatever.
The Michelin star restaurant islike status, prestige, quality,
the experience, whatever.
That's a really interestingconcept.
It's like you have basic needsand secondary needs, um, or

(25:55):
wants, and that's that'ssomething you kind of have to
grapple with.
Right, it's like um, at anyrate, that was going to go off
in the tangent but, um, but thatwas something.
That huge takeaway from indiewas that, uh, the two parts of
the icp, like I hadn't seen thatanywhere else and that is
something I use literally everyday with my clients.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah, I agree with that too.
Like when I first went throughthe program, I remember hearing
that and then realizing it wasI'm only looking at them based
on a perceived need that I thinkthat they need as a marketer,

(26:44):
not what they know they need asthe customer.
So I was looking at people like, oh, you need a new website
because I see it hasn't beenupdated for whatever, whatever.
And the customer would be likeI don't ever get leads through
my website, I just have it thereas a placeholder, I don't care
about it.
I'd be like trying to make themcare about their billboard site
that they just didn't care andI wasted so much time trying to

(27:08):
educate like the wrong customerprofile.
But then when I startedrealizing, oh, I should be
putting out content tellingpeople how to ask other agencies
questions so that they canfigure out whether they're
getting good service or not, weimmediately started getting a
crazy amount of referrals justfrom organic content that we

(27:30):
were putting out, because theywere like, hey, I asked my
agency this question.
They couldn't answer it.
Could you audit my stuff?
I'd be like, of course, and sowe weren't causing a problem.
But what I found is a lot ofagencies had practices that were
little sketch and I justempowered a group of people to

(27:53):
ask the right question and thenext thing, you know, I'm
starting to realize, oh like,the real problem is they stopped
getting leads randomly a monthago and they're still paying the
same amount.
Or, you know, you start touncover all of these
conversations that they'rehaving, and I was able to put
together a product that, insteadof just trying to sell SEO,

(28:14):
sell Google ads, sell webrefresh, sell branding, I was
able to say this is a lead genpackage.
Here's how much it costs,here's what it looks like,
here's the sprint.
I was able to take it and turnit into a bunch of processes for
my team to go right down theline.
So I'm able to take somebodyand drop them into this bucket
now.
So I'm able to take somebodyand drop them into this bucket

(28:34):
now, and I'm selling fourservices instead of one.
The customer feels really goodabout it.
It's predictable for the team.
They know exactly who's goingto be working on what in which
stages, and typically, once theymake it out of that sprint,
they just want to keep us aroundto maintain it all.

(28:58):
So it was a great like pairingthose two was.
It was a great transition onour side too, which actually, um
, makes me, makes me wonder ahow did you even find indy in
the first place, right, and then, because you said like I wish I
would have found sooner, butthen like it could potentially
have saved a bunch of time, sowhere did you end up finding it?

(29:19):
And I know me personally, Iactually deleted the first email
that I ever got about IndieCollective and I was like,
absolutely not.
Um, you know, I've seen so manycourses I'm not, you know,
dropping four grand, five grandon this course, um, so you know
what actually made you follow upon the email, yeah, so part of

(29:42):
the process that I would say,the beginning of me, the first
series of things that happenedthat led to the series of
realizations that created Lucid.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
I had the only time at ION I ever had retainer
clients.
I had one that hired me.
They're the only people thatever paid me just for philosophy
.
It was a leadership managementconsultancy that I did I worked
with for like a year and a half.
I was there for a long time,longer than a lot of the
full-time employees by the endof it.
And there was another companywhere I worked this is the first

(30:16):
time I did teamwork, teamproject stuff with my current
co-founder.
That was a smart contractauditing firm.
So for exactly two months I hadtwo retainers at once and both
of these retainers caught me inthe same month.
It was right after I got a carI have a car payment now that I
was like, oh well, I can affordit, I have retainers, so this is
stupid, don't do that.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Um, so anyway, I'm laughing cause I've also been
there.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah, it's, it happens.
You're going to do it, justdon't do it yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
At least if you're listed, you can.
You can, you know, relate tothe fact that crazy stuff
happens to everybody.
It's not nobody has like aspotless story when it comes to
entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
So yeah, certainly not me.
Mine is nonsense.
And then it started to work atsome point, you know, but it's
really it's not impressive to tohear about Um, but it is
informative if you avoidmistakes that I've made.
But anyway.
So they both caught me at thesame time, and so I was having
like the worst existentialcrisis in my career, right, I
was like, oh my God, I don'tknow what doing.

(31:17):
I screwed everything up becauseI thought it was my fault at
the time.
So, as a consequence, um, whatI did is basically the entire
month of august last year I wentto canada to go visit my old
co-founder for my startup uh,good friend of mine, him and his
wife, and this is right whenhermosi was putting out the $100

(31:38):
million leads webinar and stufflike that.
So I had pretty much a wholemonth with no work to try and
figure out what went wrong.
And so one of the exercisesthat they do in indie that I
actually just decided to dobeforehand, before indie was
this you make a spreadsheet witheveryone you ever worked with
how much they paid you, how muchyou liked them, where the lead

(32:00):
came from, how long they lasted,what are their industry type if
it's a startup, what stage arethey every piece of information
you can get.
And so for the first two yearsof ION, I thought I was
targeting early stage startups.
It turns out that 80% of myrevenue had come from four B2B
companies and one post-seedstartup that had raised a

(32:21):
million.
So when I was targeting what Ithought I was targeting, I was
shooting myself in the foot.
It was a giant waste of time.
That was the beginning of whenthings started to make sense.
After that month, conveniently,the consultancy that I was
consulting with cut.
Somebody that I know is awesomeand I had theories.

(32:43):
Side note good, importantlesson for everyone.
While I was consulting withthem, one of the things they did
when I first came on we didvalues exercise and established
a business philosophy and stuff.
Somewhere around there.
They brought someone else in,established a business
philosophy and stuff.
Somewhere around there, theybrought someone else in.
They changed the company valuesand that was the beginning of
the end.
Now I tried to tell them this,but it's so abstract and nobody

(33:05):
really believes you.
That company now has lost alltheir contracts.
They fired almost everyone onthe team and they're probably
going to go under.
But at the time I was like, ohmy God, it was me, which is a
good, valuable exercise.
You should always, if somethinggoes wrong, always assume it's
your fault until you can proveit's not.
That's one of the best rules inlife.

(33:26):
You will pay the price forhaving that rule, but it is
better to think it's your faultand have it not be your fault
than to not think it's yourfault and have it not be your
fault.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Then do not think it's your fault and have it be
your fault.
I've gotten that piece of advicefrom so many different mentors
and it's so counterintuitivebecause we operate on this
premise of innocent until provenguilty and so to have the
assumption of guilt and thenprove innocence and actually
it's difficult to adopt thatheadspace at first but as you
get used to it, I mean you canprove innocence relatively

(33:57):
quickly.
But if that base levelassumption is, I'm going to, you
know, it's kind of the samething as the anecdote of like,
for every finger is pointingoutward.
You have three pointing back,you know, or start with the
person in the mirror, right,there's all of these references
that we have across differentyou know eras and people
conveying it in different ways.
But it essentially comes downto audit self before you audit

(34:22):
external factors, pull the plankout of your own eye before
attempting to pull the plank outof somebody else's.
So I 100% agree with that.
If you're in a situation andyou're looking around especially
if you've lived your entirelife kind of pointing outwards,
um, you know, it may be aintense uh, coming to moment to

(34:42):
have that realization you'relike shit, like I've had a to
play in, like all of thosesituations.
But it is so unlocking and sogratifying to then finally
constantly chip away at thosethings that you were
consistently messing up on orwhatever else, and then learning

(35:03):
that reflex to prove yourinnocence mentally relatively
quickly, because otherwise everytime you fail can be crippling
mentally.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, I didn't learn how to do the fast part of that,
so that was a lot.
I spent a huge amount of this.
Also probably is because I likedo the fast part of that, so
that was a lot.
Like I spent a huge amount ofthis.
Also probably because I likephilosophy and like that's a lot
of that is like beself-critical, you know.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
question your questions Ask meta questions
about your questions, and itgoes on forever.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
And then eventually that's kind of where it's also
like with the philosophy stuff,where it's like man, so much of
this stuff is a giant waste oftime, like the field of
philosophy as a whole in themodern day, like probably the
last 400 years of it's kind ofcrap, uh, unpopular opinion, um,
but kind of like what.
What I watered that down intois like what is the point of
philosophy actually?

(35:48):
And I've argued with likephilosophy phds on twitter
because I'll occasionally postsome spicy thoughts about
certain philosophers who shallnot be named, but it's like the
point of acquiring knowledge isnot to acquire knowledge.
I have a little bit that I'mtrying to workshop into it being
the right way to say it, butthought is not made complete.

(36:11):
No, thought is made complete inaction.
The point of thinking is notthinking.
The point of thinking is to dobetter, like literally doing
stuff more effectively thanyou're doing it now, right?
Um?
So the point of philosophy thenas a whole should be like how
do I live better, how do I be abetter person?
How do I help the people aroundme better?

(36:33):
How does the world functionbetter?
And if it's not about thatstuff, it's just don't read it,
it's not going to get youanywhere.
You're just going to becomelike a nihilist or miserable or
whatever, and many philosophersare.
As a consequence, you have toground yourself in something
useful, right?
Everything should be about likewhat are you actually doing?
It's not just think, think,think in a cave for your life.
That's not effective, right.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
If you want different stuff maybe.
Yeah, I just had a conversationyesterday with a guy that I
think I'm going to end up doingsome work with.
He's looking at starting like aconstruction firm.
He's a general contractor, youknow, making a couple hundred
thousand dollars a year, butreally wants to take it to the
next level Prior service Marine.
And so, being prior service AirForce, like I Force, regardless

(37:18):
of what branch you were in, Iam always able to connect
because we have this base rootin just like, if it's not
practical and it doesn't makesense, why are you overthinking
it?
And so I was laughing to myself, though, because I was
explaining to him.
He was like, oh yeah, like youknow.
So what do you do with thebusiness coaching stuff?

(37:39):
And I was like well, you know,we set goals out and then we
start talking about blah, blah,blah, and then we add this here
and we add this here and like doall this other stuff?
And he's like, oh, so you helppeople reverse, engineer,
backing up to a goal?
And I was like, yeah, yep,that's it After I had just
gotten done talking for like 30seconds straight, and then we
both just started laughing and Iwas like, man, I'm getting

(38:04):
corporatized.
He was like hey, you could havejust said that you just help
people reverse engineer a plan.
I was like, yeah, fair, fair.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah the best.
Usually it's not you that knowswhat you do.
The universal problem of peoplethat know stuff is they forget
what it's like to not knowthings.
Uh, as a consequence, we don'tunderstand what words actually
convey the information thatwe're trying to convey.
And then somebody else whoactually gets what you're saying

(38:31):
.
This is like more or less whatmy actual job is with my clients
, outside of all the othermyriad things that I do is like
I know what you're doing, but Ialso know what words describe
that, and it's not the ones youjust said.
Right, I can intuit what you'retrying to say when people are
talking about their business,but we're going to get to the
place where someone that doesn'tknow what you're doing knows
what you do, right?
and that part of that is likereframing, because it's not

(38:54):
about the thing.
That's a really hard thing.
It's not about you.
Nobody cares about you firstoff, as a rule, and nobody cares
how it works or what it is.
What they care about is I havea problem, I need a solution, I
want to benefit and if you wantto add an extra little bit
that's useful is I have aproblem with a pain.
I need a solution with abenefit.

(39:16):
Right Problem, pain, solution,benefit.
It's the easiest way to writecopy in the world If you just do
that for any time you'retalking, start with their
problem, explain why it'spainful.
It's hard to grow your businesswhen you don't know how to talk
about it.
Or you could do a version ofthat, which is it's hard to grow
your business.
It's even harder to grow yourbusiness when you don't have to
talk about it.
Right Problem paying so that Idon't know?

(39:43):
That, I think, is so criticalbecause it really like what?
What is the thing that actuallyallows you to communicate
better is taking yourself out ofyour own head.
And so to the earlier point you, if you are not interested, or
you don't have the affinity forit, or you don't want to be
relentlessly self critical, thisis not entrepreneurship, is not
for you.
Get a job, do something else,like go work for somebody, is

(40:04):
not for you, because you have tobe the person that is
responsible for everything thathappens and the you know there's
a myriad list of um personalitydefects that prevent people
from getting out of the earlystage of a company.
And the absolute number onekiller if you're going to work
with other people in your lifeis not blaming yourself first.
Leaders, eat last is a way tosay that or extreme ownership.

(40:28):
I was just about to bring upJocko.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
Extreme ownership.
That seed got planted in myhead in 2017.
And it's been's been.
You know, because you don't toyour point, you don't realize,
when you're on the outsidelooking into entrepreneurship,
that having complete freedom todo whatever you want with your
time is the most intoxicatingand terrifying thing that you

(40:52):
will have to learn how toself-manage.
You know, there's no, there'sthere's no outside of financial
and like you know otherexistential stuff, but they can
be very vague.
You know, sometimes thesethreats or whatever, but you
don't have like your bossthreatening to fire you if you
show up late, Right?
So, you know it's easy, it'sreally easy to get into a

(41:12):
slippery slope where you're likeI'll start work at eight.05
today instead of 8.
Or oh, I'll move this aroundbecause I can do this.
Or like, oh, I'll just cancelthat meeting and reschedule it
for later Instead of having thediscipline to be like, no, I
don't care if I don't havemeetings until 10.
Every day I'm waking up at 7.30.
And I'm going to have that timeto go on a walk and think about

(41:33):
my business and plan ahead andjournal.
And you know you have to buildall these other habits and stuff
to kind of keep things movingand keep things on track.
Or at least I have right, andmaybe that's somebody that's,
you know, dealing with a littlebit of neurodivergence, having
to police themselves and keepthemselves on track.
But I think it's prettyuniversally applicable across
all entrepreneurs in general too.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, absolute freedom is absolute
responsibility.
There's no one to blame exceptfor you, right, and that's just
again.
It's so, so, so common thatpeople are like, oh, it didn't
work out because of this, itdidn't work out because of that.
You can any legitimate thingthat someone else did that
caused you a problem assomething that you failed to

(42:20):
anticipate or deal with inadvance, right.
So, even if it is someoneelse's fault for example, um,
where that, uh, the consultancythat I was at or that I was I
was consulting with um.
There were a couple criticalmistakes I made over the course
of that long time that I waswith them, which is A the first
thing, I went from beingstrictly a consultant to having

(42:42):
a scoped role, at which point Imore or less became the lowest
paid employee instead of apart-time consultant.
So as to advice to anyone whodoes anything approaching
retainer work, a sufficientlylong retainer is
indistinguishable from you're anemployee In most cases.

(43:02):
It's very, very difficult tomanage that.
And also, just like time boundyour retainers, you don't want
to be on a retainer forever,cause probably not providing
consistent amounts of value overtime in a linear fashion.
Right, which is another goodindie thing is like talking
about value-based pricing.
That's a different discussion.
But so when I switched roles, Igave up agency and that changed

(43:26):
the way that I was perceived bythe company, because instead of
being, hey, this is the guyyou're supposed to take advice
from, this is like hey, here's aperson who has this weird set
of tasks that it was really hardto scope.
That was the beginning of melosing a lot of the impact that
I needed to have to be able tohelp them.
There's another series ofproblems which is specifically

(43:46):
the thing I think happened isthe founder didn't want to sell.
They hired people who weresupposed to help with selling,
but a rule a universal rule thefounder of a company is the
first and last salesperson.
If the founder cannot sell, noone else is going to figure it
out.
There are probably exceptionsin the sense that you could

(44:07):
theoretically have a simpleenough thing that you could hire
someone to sell for you, but ifyou're starting a company, it's
a novel company.
If you don't figure out how tosell it, nobody else can figure
it out for you, because you knowmore about it than they do.
That is the number one startupkiller, because if you can't
pitch your thing you don't havea company.
If you can't do sales, yourcompany doesn't exist.

(44:28):
So that was more or less thereal problem.
There were other problems,including some hiring decisions
they made that were questionable, abdicating a lot of
responsibility away from thefounder towards other people
that should not have had thatmuch responsibility, which is
ultimately the founder's fault.
Even if you set up youremployees for failure, that's on
you.
It's not their fault that yougave them an impossible task.

(44:51):
But that's a really commonthing is people say I'm going to
bring on someone else to dothis or someone else to do that.
You have to know how to do itfirst, like one of the rules I
learned at the agency, cause Iwas in this one like awful,
awful mess of a project wherethere was a client who hired an
agency, who hired us, and thenmy boss hired a subcontractor
who hired a guy somewhere elsethat didn't speak English and

(45:13):
these guys barely spoke English.
It was a giant nightmare, right, and this was a development
project.
I am not a developer.
I was managing our part of this.
There's nothing I could do whenit went wrong, and it went so,
so wrong.
It was giant.
It became a legal problembetween my boss at the time and
the guys who hired him, but theywere also completely advocating
the responsibility because theywere just like subcontracting

(45:34):
the people they hadn't vetted,they did Subcontractors.
If you can't do thesubcontractors task, you should
be very cautious before you hirethem.
My rule when I made my agency isI did three things right, or
technically four, but like three, which is brand decks, websites
, because I also did all thework myself.
I experiment withsubcontractors.

(45:55):
It wasn't worth the margin forpeople that are not as good at
it as I was, so it was just apain.
But yeah, do not start tryingto outsource stuff until you
know how it works, unless youhave someone who has an equal
amount of responsibility thatcan own it.
So my co-founder is like theprocess and systems guy.

(46:15):
I am not that Ion never hadthat, other than my core process
, which I provide to my clientsbecause I love the work.
My co-founder, we have verydistinct, separate areas of
ownership.
That's how it works.
I'm not subcontracting someoneto figure it out for me.
We both are equal owners whohave to figure it out together.
So it's different.

(46:36):
In some cases you will have tohire people to do things that
you don't know how to do.
Avoid that as long as you can.
Try and understand at leastenough about whatever you're
managing so that you can see ifit's going wrong.
You kind of know how it'ssupposed to work.
But again, you really wouldjust be better off staying in

(46:57):
the realm of stuff you knowbetter than your clients know it
.
And if you, if you don't knowyour clients don't know it.
That's why are you doing itright?

Speaker 1 (47:04):
it's that that entire story is reminding me of a
story that I?
Um was told when I was at a?
Um, oh, it was like anaccelerator clinic that I went
to before I was in indy.
Um, there's a local universityhere in ohio called the
university of akron and theyhave a I'm pretty sure it's a
national program called I-Corpsand it's basically like an eight
week or 10 week, you knowprogram.

(47:26):
They force you to build abusiness plan and you're doing a
lot of customer interviews andthey hook you up with CEOs that
you can ask questions and allthis other kind of stuff.
And I remember talking to one ofthese CEOs and he said, well,
he was like I'll tell you astory.
He said, well, he's like I'lltell you a story.
He said my son was in tradeschool and in this trade school
they had plumbing, they hadcarpentry and I think it was

(47:47):
auto or something like that onthis campus and he ended up
sitting next to this kid atlunch and they would talk all
every day and he ended uprealizing that he was the one of
the sons of the Kohler familyfrom, like you know, every sink
and urinal yeah, like, everysink and every uh urinal like

(48:09):
made in the U?
S.
Basically, you know one of thelargest plumbing companies in
the country, um, and probablyyou know globally at this point
I don't.
I don't know the size of theircompany, but big, and probably
globally at this point I don'tknow the size of their company,
but big and they got to befriends and at one point his son
was just like dude, why are youhere?

(48:34):
Why are you in entry-leveljourneyman plumbing training
when you're a Kohler?
Shouldn't you be working incorporate?
Shouldn't you be learning thebusiness side or figuring out
all this other kind of stuff?
He said that his old man had arule that if you couldn't plumb,
you couldn't sign contracts.
And I don't know if that's theright way.
I don't know if plumbers plumb,but if you couldn't run pipe in

(48:57):
a house or troubleshoot copper,or know the difference in the
price between one type ofcoupling versus another type of
coupling, or understand what acontractor is trying to tell you
when they say, oh, this job isgoing to take X amount extra
time because we ran into XYZ andbe able to call BS or not, if
you didn't have all of thosetraits, you weren't going to be

(49:19):
successful at those higherlevels and so he was like every
son um, you know that wanted todo that.
Uh, cause I think that it wasmostly boys inside of the family
or whatever, like they had togo through that training and
then they were allowed to workin the business.
And I've always kind of thoughtI don't come from an affluent

(49:45):
family by any means or anythingelse, but the principle of
having to be in the trenchesbefore you're able to lead, I
think has been pretty universalacross my life, whether it's
been in the military.
They are really good at forcingyou into that structure.
You start out with your headshaved at boot camp, learning
how to tie your boots whilegetting screamed at all the way
up through.
Now you're 20 years old, incharge of a unit of five to 10

(50:06):
people and they give you thetraining and equip you to do all
that other kind of stuff.
But then in the business world,in my career as an RN, anywhere
that I've been in life, if I'mable to relate to the people on
the ground floor because I'vebeen there, it saves so much
time and it saves you know,you're able to empathize, you're

(50:30):
able to push them, it gives youthe.
You know how to throttle thatdial.
You know if somebody, if you'vedone the task and you know hey,
I know this is possible in 72hours.
I know you think it takes twoweeks, but let me show you how
to get it done in 72 hours.
They might get it done in fivedays, not three, but you still
just took them from 14 down tofive because you were able to

(50:53):
empower them by showing themsomething that you've kind of
figured out in a sense.
So I am a huge proponent ofthat principle and being aware
of that principle in life ingeneral.
And so if you're somebody thatis entering the space and Ashley
Quinto-Powell actually talksabout this inside of her session

(51:13):
there's a reason why creatingan army of advocates for
yourself and leaning on yourwarm network is so important as
a founder-led organization,because, to your point, you're
the one that's going to be ableto talk about it the best.
Like.
If you are thinking, if you'relistening to this right now, and
you're thinking you're going tooutsource sales for your
founders-led consultingorganization within the first

(51:33):
year of you doing it, may theodds be ever in your favor,
right?
I don't think that it's goingto happen.
And learning how to do all ofthat stuff up front.
Yeah, it could be a pain.
Yeah, you're having to learn awhole bunch of new skills.
Yeah, it may not be funlearning how to do LinkedIn copy
, or it's uncomfortable gettingin front of a camera, or it's

(51:55):
terrifying to get on a podcast,or you hate having to track
stuff in an Excel sheet to makesure that numbers actually
balance out.
You don't want to have to talkto your bookkeeper.
These are all just.
You're getting insight into thethings that I find frustrating.
Right, but all of those thingsbecause I know them or because
you end up learning them overthe course of the process.
You're able to be so functionalacross so many different

(52:20):
avenues that when you go tointerview that person to your
point, you go to interview thatbookkeeper that's going to take
care of you and they start tosay like, oh well, we're going
to do this, this and this.
You're like I don't know, maybeI'm going to have two or three
more interviews and see if itlines up.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
That's it.
That's actually a good seguefrom that Ties into, kind of the
problem that we're solving now,right?
So what I've discovered in fiveyears of agency work and 10
years of startups that overlapwith each other, there's a I'm

(52:57):
calling this like the I thinkI'm going to call it zero to two
phase.
There's a like a Zen saying orBuddha saying, to the effect of
if it happens one times, it's a,it's a miracle, and it will
never happen again.
If it happens twice, it willhappen three times.
And so that's where I'm insteadof zero to one, zero to two.
And what I mean in the zero totwo phase is can you Get the

(53:21):
thing that you're doing to workmore than once, right?
If you're doing, uh, personalitydriven sales, every single one
of those is a one you're notsaying the same stuff.
People are buying it becausethey like you.
People are buying it becauseyou have a reputation, but
they're not buying it because ofthe words coming out of your
mouth, which means you're goingto be stuck in founder-led sales
and the lower form of that,which is personality-led sales,

(53:42):
when businesses can do thatconsistently, even if it's still
the founder selling, butthey're saying the same thing
and the messaging is good.
That opens the door foreverything else.
To start working your messagingand marketing your overarching
market positioning.
If you're going to be pitching,pitching, if you're gonna be
doing sales calls or you'regonna hire salespeople, you have

(54:03):
to have gotten it from zero totwo, because you've gotten that
one thing that actually worksRight.
So I lived in that phaseforever and I don't want to live
in that phase.
I wanna help people who'vegotten to two get to 10, right,
and so being able to do thething, figure out how the thing

(54:23):
works.
You have to do that.
You.
You, the founder, are the onlyperson that's going to be able
to do that.
Nobody can do it for you, evenif you hired consultants and
stuff to help with yourmessaging.
The things that lead into beingable to talk about your thing
are so nebulous and abstractunless you have a
straightforward business where,like a laundromat or something,
none of this pertains to you.

(54:45):
That's a different set ofproblems.
What you actually have to do isbe able to pull your ego out of
it, empathize with the personthat you know really well that's
in your ICP understand theirproblems and be able to speak
their language better than theycan back to them, right, and the
things that are required to do.

(55:05):
That is actually just doing ityourself a bunch of times until
you get it right.
There's no bootstrapping thatthat thing and other people can
come in and tell you stuff, butit's not going to be the magic
of having that perfect statementuntil you've done the work to
get there.
Now the kicker is actually a lotof people have this stuff.
They're just not good atmessaging, right?

(55:25):
So where I can sit down withfounders and start pulling out,
I hear, as they're kind of, youknow, usually just let them
ramble about oh, this, this andthat with the client, but you
can hear where it's like oh,that was it.
You just said a piece of it,right?
And people don't know when theysay the things that that hit
because they I don't.
Maybe that's just why I likemessaging so much, because, like
, in the process of trying toexplain philosophy to people for

(55:46):
years and years and years,going from hey, I'm going to
ramble about nothing importantfor four hours to like I can
talk about something reallyabstract and uh that most people
consider boring and make itinteresting.
You, you just have to attuneyourself to like watching when
people respond, when you startlosing them.
What when their eyes light upwhen they get it?
Um, but so something.

(56:08):
I guess in there, what you'retrying to do as the founder is
just go get as many shots of badas you can get right, talk to
everyone about your thing.
When I was raising for thesocial media platform I was
trying to build, uh, before weever went to pitch VCs, I had
done 20, 20 or 25 formal pitchesto people that would be users

(56:29):
of the platform.
There were content creators.
It was a content creator uhcentered approach to social Um,
and before I had ever talked tothe content creators, I had
pitched probably 50 randompeople on the idea.
And before I had ever talked tothe content creators, I had
pitched probably 50 randompeople on the idea and before I
had ever pitched those people, Ihappened to run a podcasting
company, so I knew all theproblems that content creators
had really, really wellno-transcript.

(57:04):
These are non binding contractsthat say I so and so would use
this if it existed.
There's two kinds of these theprice one and the unpriced one.
It's easier to get the unpricedone, but you can also, low key,
just tell people this is not alegally binding contract.
It says it in the contract, butemphasize that and say, hey, I
just need you to sign this so Ican go take it to the VCs, give
me some money.

(57:25):
It's better if you don't do that, because if they sign a priced
one, then they have more or lesslike you sold them it formally
and you could go sell them likewhen you could actually pay for
it, but anyway.
So when did that?
Pitch content creators nonstopby.
So I went and did that, pitchedcontent creators nonstop.
By the time we went to pitchthis was in the middle of 2022.
So if anyone understands whatthe VC environment looked like

(57:53):
in the middle of 2022, I cantell you it was not good.
So Brian, my co-founder he wasan advisor for the startup he
got us five VC intros.
That was all we ever got.
I didn't know how to meet VCsand I moved to Austin with the
intention of meeting more VCsand I mostly failed to do that,
which is cool because I don'tneed to do that anymore.
But I got an offer on the fifthpitch right, which also, if you
know anything about the numberof pitches required for startups

(58:14):
to raise is unusually high.
That's like getting one in fiveis not common.
I was going to say that's notcommon.
No, that's not common.
And then we ran out of VCs andthen the market completely shit
the bed and that was the end ofthat.
But so I realized I was like,okay, well, what I'm going to do
is start working on pitcheswith my clients, because
obviously I know what I'm doing,but by the time I'm going to go

(58:35):
raise for something in thefuture, I will pitch more than
anyone else ever pitches.
If you think about people goingto pitch, maybe you raise for
one company.
If you're an experiencedfounder, maybe you have a couple
of companies ever, but at thispoint I probably worked on
something like 50 pitches withpeople.
So trying to figure out how toexplain all these different

(58:56):
complicated things.
And especially now, um, once Irealized that I really don't
want to work with early stagebecause they may have problems
that even if we come up with thebest pitch ever, it still
doesn't work because there arefounder, founder center problems
or like business centerproblems that you just can't
they're gonna have to solve.
Um, also, if you're if you'rean early stage startup, you
should not be paying someone uh,probably to help with your deck

(59:17):
unless you have revenue orsomething like, you just need to
go pitch with a shitty deck.
A great salesperson can pitchwith a napkin.
A bad salesperson could takethe best pitch and the best deck
in the world and still screwedup right.
So the deck?

Speaker 1 (59:31):
doesn't really matter that much it's the story I use
that same analogy.
I just say sticky note, yeah.
So whatever it is, they canpitch with nothing.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Right, right, like the, the we work guy, whether or
not people like him, that guycan pitch right.
I got pitched like a stupidinsane raise to a 16 Z after he
screwed up.
We work cause he's so good atpitching Right.
You want to.
You don't want to be him andlike be an unethical business
person or something, but if youcould pitch like that guy, you'd

(01:00:00):
probably be better off thanhaving a really nice deck.
Yeah, but I guess the the pointof that being to get to the
point where you're actually inthe.
You know the.
I only have a finite number ofchances at bat.
I have to get this right.
Figure out how to practice somuch before you get there that

(01:00:21):
you you know what they say it'snot don't.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
Practice so you get it right, practice so you can't
get it wrong yeah, that was justyep, yep and I I always compare
this back to um.
You know my involvement incombat sports and you know if
anybody has ever trained inathletics and everything like
that you're the first time youget into.
I'm a boxer and a jujitsuplayer.
So the first time you get ontoa mat or the first time you step

(01:00:43):
into a ring, um, you're gonnaget hit, it's gonna suck, and
your intuition is off.
You can't trust it because youknow, yeah, exactly like when I
first got onto a jiu-jitsu mat,I was like I'm a fantastic
wrestler, like this is gonna begreat.
And then I realized that I havethis belly down reflex built
into my nervous system fromwrestling that will every single

(01:01:05):
time get you choked.
You know, because jujitsuplayers, that's a great place to
be full guard and you're onyour belly Awesome, kimura arm
bars, I'm choking you.
I'm putting an elbow in theside of your ear, like it's just
a terrible place to be.
So until I got reps and I wasable to get that reflex off,

(01:01:27):
then you start to get to thepoint where you can actually
trust your intuition and you cansurrender to like a flow state
and then your body just knowsokay, this guy's arms moving
here.
I'm not even thinking about it,I'm already countering.
I'm moving to this same thingin boxing.
Right, I can watch somebody'scenter of mass and I can see, oh
, their hip just shiftedslightly.

(01:01:48):
They're about to throw a punch.
I'm going to move before thatpunch even leaves the holster,
whereas in the past you're sofocused on looking at their
fists that by the time it's headand towards your face, you
can't even move.
And so in life in general,let's say you're not somebody
that's trying to pitch VCs.
And I know, when I was listeningto that and I heard people talk

(01:02:10):
early on, I'm like, well, I'mbuilding Squarespace sites for
people.
I don't need to go pitchinvestors.
Why does this matter to me?
The same principle applies ifyou can have a conversation with
the gas station cashier, withthe Starbucks barista, with a
close friend at a bonfire, whenthey ask you what you've been
thinking about working onAnybody that you can get to

(01:02:33):
listen.
And sometimes I say thecashiers and the Starbucks
baristas are great opportunitiesif it's not a busy day because
they're imprisoned behind theregister, they have to listen to
you for a short period of time,and if you can practice Exactly
If you have that captiveaudience and you can get it down
to where you're like hey.
When I first started trying toexplain this to my close friends

(01:02:53):
, they had no idea what I wastalking about.
But I just got a gas stationcashier in less than 45 seconds
to understand what I was talkingabout.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
And you don't want to impose it on them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
You don't want to impose it on them, but a lot of
times people will ask inhuman-to-human conversation you
make eye contact with somebody.
They're going to be like how'syour day going, what are you up
to?
And as soon as they open thatdoor, boom, hit that 30 second
elevator pitch, see if you canget it down.
And if you can get it down andto your point, next thing you
know you've got 100, 200, 300reps of talking about this.

(01:03:29):
Now go out and try to pitch thebigger companies, pitch these
other people, get intocurriculums, all this other kind
of stuff, curriculums, all thisother kind of stuff.
And that is a process,regardless of whether you're
launching your business for thefirst time, or you've had your
business for 10 years and you'rejust trying to launch a new
product or service, or you arekilling a business that you've
had for a couple of years andyou're starting a new one.

(01:03:50):
It's evergreen, any part of theprocess that you go into.
My friends know if they open upthat door and a lot of times
I'll get my buddies that'll belike hey, like let's go out to
Taco Tuesday.
And as soon as I sit downthey're like all right, like
fill me in what's going on.
You know what's new inside ofyour world and I'm like you know

(01:04:11):
.
Can I give you a couple ofideas that I'm working on and it
helps so much.
So it doesn't have to be VCs, itdoesn't have to be actual
clients that you're trying topitch.
It can literally be anybodythat you run into that's willing
to listen.
But you have to be willing totalk about it and sound dumb the
first couple of times.
You try to explain it andslowly get better at refining

(01:04:32):
that.
Just like I, when I first gotonto the jujitsu mat, would
consistently get choked out.
I mean, for like three months Iwas just getting choked
constantly would consistentlyget choked out.
I mean, for like three months Iwas just getting choked
constantly.
But then I'm probably one ofthe best I can defend the shit
out of a choke now.
Like ain't nobody gettinganywhere near being able to put
me in a rear naked, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
Oh yeah.
No, I had the opposite thingwith Jiu Jitsu.
I started Jiu Jitsu in highschool because I got in a fight.
I was like I neither thing withjiu-jitsu.
I started jiu-jitsu in highschool because I got a fight.
I was like after I neither wonnor lost, it was, it was a very
neutral draw.
But I told my dad I was like Iwouldn't be able to kick
people's asses.
He's like going to jiu-jitsu,um, I did that.
And then I wanted to go dowrestling and the first day that
we I feel so wrong because I'vebeen doing it for like two

(01:05:15):
years, uh, but like the whole,um, let them have your back.
I was like no, no, no, which isa shame, because I would have
loved to have wrestled.
And I will say wrestlers arethe most hardcore people of any.
Any basic sport like they, theway they train, is the most.
Um, statistically, wrestlerswin ufc by a factor of like 50,

(01:05:39):
like all.
Almost the most champions arewrestlers and I think it's
jujitsu and then it's kind ofarbitrary stuff after that.
But at any rate, yeah, I havenothing but respect for
wrestlers.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
Uh, that was not for me, um yeah, no, yeah, you've
hit everyone for sure pitcheveryone all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
You are always selling, selling.
Here's a really, reallyimportant reframe.
So, like I briefly mentioned, Ihad two sales jobs before I was
actually into entrepreneurshipproper.
One of them I worked at a moviestore at the Jacksonville mall
and we had magazinesubscriptions and membership
cards and I was obsessed with it.

(01:06:19):
I was like, oh my God, when Idecided I wasn't going to go in
the Marines because I prettymuch like had the thought to
myself was like either I'm goingto have to beat my dad at being
the most hardcore human beingalive, which is not possible,
because he did some things thatcannot be redone in the military
.
Uh, he was in the uh unitcalled detachment one.
That was the pilot program forMarine Special Operations
Command, marsoc.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
So you can't do that again.
They did it right.
Okay, that's intense.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
So I was like yeah okay, I can't beat him at his.
If I did my absolute best, Icould maybe potentially equal
him, but I can't win that game.
So it's like, okay, what's mydad bad at?
My dad is not a people personby any stretch of the word.
Right, it's like okay, well,I'm just going to become awesome
to people, uh, because then Ican optimize for something that
he's not good at.
I can beat him with that.
Right, that's a motivator forme.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
I don't know if everyone feels that way about uh
, is that maybe a firstbornsomething, but I was gonna say I
feel that way about my dad.
I'm also the older yeah, yeah,that's.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
You have to right job at that, selling movies, dean
subscriptions, stuff.
By the end of like the firstsix months I was like number
three in the region.
This is a Suncoast which isrelated.
It's a subsidiary of FIE, ifyou've ever been to those.
And then I went out likethere's a guy selling hair
straighteners with the Israelisit was the one American that was

(01:07:38):
allowed to work with theIsraelis, it was very uncommon.
And straighteners with theIsraelis.
It was the one American thatwas allowed to work with the
Israelis.
It was very uncommon.
And I had met him at the mall.
His kiosk was right outside ourstore and he was like what do
you do?
I was like, oh, I sell moviesand magazine subscriptions.
He's like you want to sell hairstraighteners?
I said okay, fast forward.
I'm now selling three $400 hairstraighteners to unsuspecting
strangers at the mall for 12hours a day and I got okay with

(01:08:02):
that.
I was never amazing at itbecause it's very high pressure.
And then somebody told me howmuch they cost wholesale, which
is $6.
And I felt really bad.
So I swore off of sales.
I was like God, if you let meget into college to get out of
this hellhole, then I will neverdo sales again.
So I went to school formarketing because I was like how
do you sell without selling?
Right, and that was something Iwas obsessed with is like could

(01:08:24):
you, could you have the wordsso good that they sell without
you having to push at all?
Right, and that was something Iwas kind of optimizing for is
like I just was morally opposedto the idea of any kind of
pressure in sales whatsoever, soI didn't use any pressure and
that as a general rule, youshould probably have.
You know, like, be at leastsomewhat comfortable with

(01:08:44):
pressure in sales.
I really don't care for it andI don't think you need it if you
do your job Right, but if youintend to do sales as a career,
um, it makes it really reallyhard.
I'll just tell you fromexperience, um, but that's kind
of how I ended up moving towardspitching, because it was like,
yeah, marketing, whatever.
And then it's like, oh wait,you're saying I could just tell
a story and then people decidethey want to buy stuff.
Right, and I've kind of made mypeace with sales now because I

(01:09:07):
acknowledge that actually I dosales all the time and I'm
pretty good at it.
But it took me, it took me mostof that decade to that and a
lot of that was just figuringout.
Ok, how do you just make itsound so appealing that people
want it without you having topush them right, and what that
really is?

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
go ahead.
I was going to say I just had aconversation with somebody that
I'm mentoring about a week agoand they are fantastic at what
they do, terrible at sales,right, and they're like I don't
even know what exactly I want todo in consulting, but I know I
need to have this skillset.
I've never worked retail.
I've never worked a sales jobbefore, I've never had to be in
front of people what do I do?

(01:09:49):
And we came up with this planfor them.
That I think is reallyingenious, because I had a
similar experience to you.
I was set up with these typesof jobs from a young age, so
kind of been through thecrucible of door to door
knocking sales, trying to sellknife sets to people that were
overpriced type of thing whichteaches you a skillset.

(01:10:11):
But for her she had never beeninside of that position.
So I was like well, find anonprofit locally that you
really, really love that'srunning their annual donation
campaign, and start doorknocking to solicit donations
for the nonprofit.
I was like same type ofprinciple You're going to have
to learn their pitch inside andout.
You'll probably figure out waysto improve on it after you've

(01:10:34):
been told no a couple of hundredtimes and, best case scenario,
you end up learning a skillsetraising a ton of money for a
nonprofit.
Worst case scenario you get 100reps, 80 of which say no.
Now you have more experience, aa little bit thicker skin,
because you've been told no abunch of times, which is a
skillset of its own.

(01:10:54):
But now you've gotten to pitch100 times and the only
reputation side effect is thisperson's really passionate about
this cause.
And she was like oh, I reallylove that and it's been working
really well for her.
We just had our check-in calltoday.
I'm like so how's it going?
She's like well, I've raised$500.
And I'm excited about all ofthis stuff and I feel like I'm

(01:11:14):
getting better at it.
My hands don't get sweaty whenI'm trying to talk to people
about it now.
And I'm like cool, that's great, as you continue to get through
this.
You've got one month left forthis campaign to be done.
And then what Do you thinkyou're going to be able to go
out and pitch your own stuff?
And she was like I'm startingto think about it.
But I'm noticing that there's aflow to things and I can talk
about it this way.

(01:11:35):
And I'm like oh yeah, that'sgreat, congrats.
But so there's so manydifferent ways that you can get
yourself exposed to it.
So if you're listening to thisand you're like, well, garrett,
jan, I didn't have the abilityto have a job like that.
I've never got the chance totry to sling hair straighteners
in the mall for 12 hours a daywhat do I do?
Now?
There's still ways that you canput yourself out there and
learn that skillset that's goingto benefit other people you

(01:11:58):
know in the cause and stuff likethat along the way.
So all hope is not lost, likethere's still chances for you to
get reps without necessarilylike putting your own reputation
on the line or the reputationof whatever you're trying to
build on the line to.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Yeah, on that note, if I had to tell myself what to
do without the ability to do anyof that stuff, this is what I
would say.
A the first and most importantthing is that you have to sell
something that you believe in.
If it's your own services, thisis hard.
What you can do to bootstrapthat is do it for free for a

(01:12:39):
number of times, right, nobody'sgoing to say no to that, unless
they absolutely don't need yourservice.
Go do it for free, get sometestimonials, track the metrics,
whatever it is right, cool.
Let's assume that your productor service is sorted.
Let's ignore that, right.
You have to fundamentallyunderstand that what sales is is

(01:13:00):
not persuading people to dostuff.
Sales is communicating thevalue of a solution to a person
with a problem.
Right, you are helping peoplesolve problems.
If the thing that you'reselling is not helping them
solve a problem, you should notbe selling it.
Let's assume that that'salready sorted.

(01:13:21):
That's the easiest first thingto do.
You are not trying to persuadeanyone.
This is the key.
If you're targeting the rightpeople, you have your ICP sorted
and they have the problem andyou know who the person is, then
all you're trying to do isbasically hey, you have this
problem.
This is going to sound moresalesy this is the right phrase

(01:13:43):
for it, but it sounds very harsh.
But, for example, if Jim goesto an office job that he hates
from 9 to 5, and then he getsoff and has beer and hangs out
with his wife and kids and hisdog and forgets how much he
hates his job, if you weretrying to say, convince or
suggest that he could get a newjob or do something about it,

(01:14:05):
right, your product or serviceremedies the pain of him hating
his job.
And you were doing this offhours.
You have to.
Tony Robbins calls it disturbthe prospect, like throwing a
rock into a still pond.
I call it twist the knife right.
So if you go to the doctor andyour arm's broken, the first
thing the doctor's gonna do islike, poke your arm right.

(01:14:26):
Because when he pokes the partof your arm where it's broken,
you're like uh, the point ofthat is not that the doctor is
hurting you.
That is the first step in thedoctor helping you is knowing
where the problem actually is,and and that the 95% of people
really more.
But 95% of people are notmotivated by pleasure, they are
motivated by pain, right, youare.

(01:14:48):
It's.
It's much easier to sellpainkillers than it is to sell
vitamins, right?
I think that's?
That might be an indie thing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
If not, um, that's a they talk close, close enough,
yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we talk about painkillerproblems, for sure, not vitamin
problems.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
Yeah, I love that framing as well.
That was really helpful.
But so you have to figure outwhere it hurts right To fix it
when you do this, right.
Hey, it's hard to grow yourbusiness when you don't know how
to talk about it.
My ICP knows that problem.
They're like oh my God, yeah,I've tried to explain it to

(01:15:22):
people all the time.
They don't get it.
Or I'm trying to pitch it andthe VCs don't like it, or
whatever.
Because I know the type offounder that I work with, who is
someone who's too smart fortheir own good, that has a
really big, meaningful thingthey're trying to do, and
instead of talking about howthis solves somebody's problem,
they're trying to explain whatit is to people, right, which is
the mistake.
Nobody cares how the sausagegets made.

(01:15:44):
They care.
I'm hungry, give me the sausage, right?
So that is the basic thing youhave to understand.
You are a doctor who solvesproblems for people, right?
You're not selling.

(01:16:04):
In the same way, the doctor isnot selling you on.
I'm going to set your armthat's broken or I'm going to
surgically remove cancer.
For you, it's like let me helpyou.
We need to get Let me guide youthrough the pain.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
We used to talk about that in nursing.
All the time You're not thereto make it is.
Make it is kind ofcounterintuitive, but like,
sometimes the nurse isn't alwaysthere to make sure you're
comfortable.
The nurse is there to make surethat we're guiding you through
some of the most painful thingsthat you're going to experience,
but we're not there to lie toyou.
I'm not going to sit there andbe like hey, when I stick this
needle into your lower spine,everything's going to be great,

(01:16:33):
Like it's not going to feel likeanything.
Blah, blah, blah.
I'm looking at you dead in theeyes, like this is just going to
suck for about 30 seconds.
I need you to trust me for like30 to 45 seconds and we're
going to make sure that we takecare of you afterwards.
It's a necessary process.
We have to make sure that werun this cerebrospinal fluid to
make sure that you don't havemeningitis and in order to get

(01:16:54):
that.
Here's why we have to do whatwe're doing.
It does not eliminate the factthat the process is going to be
painful in some instances, butwhat I can say is, on the flip
side of that process, we'll makesure that you're taken care of
and we'll be able to moreconclusively tell you whether
you just need antibiotics or youneed a spinal fusion, Because

(01:17:15):
those are two very differentproblems to try to solve.
We won't know which one it isuntil we do this diagnostic, so
Perfect example.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
That is the perfect example, because that is what
your job is right.
If I am for me to for that oneliner to function as it
functions, the person that I'mtalking to has to know the pain
of not knowing how to talk abouttheir business right, which, if
you have ever had that problem,you know that is the most
painful thing in the world,because you get this, you know
that it's good and you justcan't get people to see it and

(01:17:48):
that is the loneliest feeling inthe world.
You feel like a loser, you feellike you're wrong or you're
crazy, you feel useless, right,and then you can be resentful.
You're like they just don't getit because they're dumb or
something right, and I've seenfounders in every stage of this
grieving process of dealing withthat.

(01:18:09):
And a lot of people get stuckthere and then they give up or
they become jaded and they juststop trying to do anything.
They're like they'll neverunderstand my vision, right?
But that's what you're tryingto do.
Never understand my, my vision,right?
Um, but that's what you'retrying to do.
You're twisting the knife.
You're like, hey, where does ithurt?
pulling the knife out of youhurts, right?
I'm gonna patch you up, though,and so that getting over the

(01:18:32):
fear or the aversion to causingdiscomfort that helps, is very
important.
You have to.
You have to make people moreuncomfortable before they get
more, before they become morecomfortable than they were,
right?
Um, because you're trying tohelp.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
It takes a true expert to be willing to be with
somebody through that process Iused to.
When I first started, I mean Iwas like, oh, my job is to make
this as painless as I can, whichcan be important, but I would
do it to the point where, earlyon, I would shoot myself in the
foot and I'd lose contractsbecause I would try to say that
it wasn't going to be a zeropain process, instead of being

(01:19:10):
honest and saying like it'sgoing to take six months,
there's going to be a lot ofhighs and lows, but I'm here to
help you with the 80% of thestuff that you can't see right
now that's going to come up overthe course of that six months.
Versus saying like let me provemyself for 30 days and then
there's going to be theseresults and then you can renew
me for the next 30 days andwhatever, which only comes with

(01:19:31):
time.
You have to be working withpeople for a long period of time
and multiple types of accountsand you got to continue to learn
with different customers andstuff to be able to see and
experience those problems andand solve them.
But I mean at this point like Ithink we're just kind of, you
know, reiterating point afterpoint that we've been talking

(01:19:51):
about for this full, for thisfull hour.
And so if you're listening tothis, unfortunately we're coming
up at the end of our time tothis, unfortunately we're coming
up at the end of our time and Iwant you to be able to go away
from this conversation reallyunderstanding that there's so
many different skill sets,there's so many different things
that go into building thebusiness.

(01:20:12):
And if you are able tocontinuously be curious, ask
questions and open yourself upto change and criticism, like
you're going to make it, ifyou're listening, if you're in a
Valley right now, eventuallythe Valley turns into a Hill and
you have to climb it and theneventually you make it out and
you may be on a plateau for aperiod of time.
Guarantee you're going to findanother Valley.

(01:20:33):
It's an ever living cycle.
It's going to happen.
If you're listening to thisright now and you're on the top
of your mountain, you're like Ijust had a great win,
everything's going solid.
Don't rest on your laurels,enjoy it for what it is.
I'm not saying don'tcongratulate yourself, because
there is such a thing as justlike constant, chronic
self-deprecation.
You don't want to get caught inthat.
Either you want to celebrateyour wins, you want to take them

(01:20:55):
for what they are andacknowledge your successes, but
if you just get to the pointwhere you get so lost in the
horizon and enjoying the viewfrom the peak, a valley might
sneak up on you and you have noidea that you're even in it
until it's too late.
So where can people?
You know, if people want tohear more about the stuff that
you're continuing to build, orthey really enjoyed this

(01:21:16):
conversation and they'relistening to it and they're like
, hey, I actually don't knowwhat I'm talking about.
I'm constantly trying to pitchmy business and everybody's
giving me feedback that theykind of get what I'm saying, but
not really when is the bestplace for them to reach out to
you or get in touch with you?

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
Yeah, you can email me directly if you want.
Garrett G-A-R-R-E-T-T atlucidconsulting, you can go to
lucidconsulting.
That's our website.
There are about 15 buttons thatwill take you directly to my
calendar.
If you want to schedule with meand not, the buttons on the

(01:21:50):
website will take you to ameeting with me and my
co-founder.
If you want to schedule with medirectly, lucidconsulting slash
G is my calendar.
So any of those work we willhave content and stuff at some
point.
I haven't.
I'm working on a series of whatI think are like the
fundamental fallacies thateveryone does.
So I've gotten like threequarters of the way through
three articles, like theengineers fallacy, which is, if

(01:22:14):
you build a great product orservice, they will come.
That is, that's how anythingworks.
I have a list a great product orservice, they will come that is
not true.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
That's how anything works.

Speaker 2 (01:22:20):
I have a list of great products or services that
lost to inferior things.
New Coke is a good example ofthat.
Scientifically proven to bebetter, Almost destroyed the
Coke brand.
So at some point we're going tohave content and stuff like
that coming.
But honestly, usually when Istart a business it's like, oh,
we need to go find work.
We actually had clients.
We Usually, when I start abusiness, it's like, oh, we need
to go find work.

(01:22:40):
We actually had clients.
We haven't even finishedincorporating yet.
We're in the process right nowand we're already probably going
to be booked out in a month.
So that's a great set ofproblems to have.
I'm very fortunate for that.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
But content will come .

Speaker 2 (01:22:53):
So just hold your horses, we'll get there.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
I love that, though I love that you had that mission.
It took multiple years.
You pivoted, had theseconversations, did a lot of the
hard work and now you're seeing,hey, a simple swap to
acknowledging that I needed aco-founder, I needed to exist in
my own zone of genius and Ineeded to refine my ideal
customer profile and the serviceI'm offering.
Boom Led to you potentiallybeing booked out with business

(01:23:20):
before even finalizing theincorporation.
That's the statement in and ofitself.

Speaker 2 (01:23:25):
Can I say one more thing to bookend our overarching
topic the thing that really hadto happen for all this stuff to
work.
Obviously, we talked about aton of different pieces of
things that go into this andstuff I learned, but what really
had to happen is the, the painthat you feel when you're in the

(01:23:47):
valley, the discomfort that youhave when things aren't working
.
Part of who you are that isused to things being the way
they are has to die, and theexperience of part of yourself
dying is indistinguishable fromactually dying, as far as I can
tell.
Um, the that's the way that ourbrain works.

(01:24:09):
So usually the experience ofdoing this is called bashing
your head into the wall, tryingto solve the same problem
forever and when, when you'veactually finished processing it,
it doesn't feel like you did.
You feel like you're giving up,and that's actually that part
of yourself that needs to diefor the insight to come in
giving up.
Because for me it was like dude, I three years trying to say

(01:24:33):
the same thing, you know, likethree years.
And then, when we actually satdown to do the one-liner
exercise, me and a buddy of minewho's a fantastic salesperson
sat down for two and a halfhours to make that sentence work
, after I realized it was goingto be a different company, it
was different stuff, right, butthat was two and a half hours on
top of years and years andyears and years.
Right.

(01:24:53):
But what happened during thatweek was the part of my brain
that said, oh, it's the businessphilosophy agency and I'm the
business philosophy guy, had todie.
That was the last thing Ithought about, because that was
my identity, right?
I was like, oh, I have to bethis, that's not up to question.
I realized like, oh man, I wasa sales guy before I did
philosophy.
Right, I was like the sales andmarketing guy, which is weird

(01:25:16):
because I've just been thephilosophy guy for 10 years,
almost right?
Um, the point of this is notabout philosophy.
The point of this is youridentity to reach new levels of
stuff has to change, and theexperience of identity change is
the most painful psychologicalexperience that you're ever
going to have, because it, yourbrain doesn't know the

(01:25:37):
difference between that anddying, which is why if you
attack people's identity, theywill, um, literally fight you,
right?
Um, people can't tell thedifference between a threat to
their sense of self and a threatto their physical body, and
that's the same for you.
So when you are beingself-critical, like you know, in
a positive way obviously, don'tjust like beat yourself up.

(01:25:59):
That is the pain of that is thepain that leads to you getting
to the other side and you haveto be willing to let.
I think, um, something I'vealways said is uh,
entrepreneurship isself-development, right,
especially when it's early, isat a certain point, um, you may
have more technical problemsthan you do like logistical,

(01:26:22):
personal problems, but certainlyif you're a solo person and or
you're early, or both, all theproblems that you have are
problems with you, even if youthink they're external, if you
think they're, uh, like, my teamjust won't do stuff.
It's like oh, you're not theleader you need to be, yet right
?
Oh my, oh my, my customersdon't get it.
You're not good at pitching,yet Right?

(01:26:42):
Oh, my product isn't there.
You don't understand theproblem well enough to fix it
Right.
Everything is that and thatrealizing that hurts, get used
to it, it will not stop.

Speaker 1 (01:26:57):
I love that you put the word yet at the end of that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
Yeah, it's just either, if you choose not to
quit, you either win or you die,right, but at least you die
trying.
So learn from that one story Itold, which is that I just kept
doing this and it evolved intomany different versions of the
same thing.
Lucid is the spiritualsuccessor to Ion, and I would
never have gotten Lucid withoutdoing Ion, but I also had to

(01:27:23):
kill my baby for it to work.
Right, I had to cut myself outof it and make it something that
doesn't work for me and mypersonality-driven sales, my
idiosyncratic talking aboutphilosophy stuff, for it to make
sense, right?
Yep, that's how it goes.

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
I've got nothing else to add.
I think that's a great place toend.
Thanks for tuning in everybody.
Um, if you're interested injoining an indie collective
cohort I'm sure that you heardour pre-roll and our mid-roll
ads, but if you made it all theway to this point, then you're
truly a dedicated follower.
A?
Um, hit the subscribe button.
I keep an eye on that andnotice when we're having a whole

(01:28:02):
bunch of listeners and not awhole bunch of subscribers.
So go ahead and click thatbutton.
Make sure that you're gettingnotified whenever we're putting
out new content.
And then we also run cohortsevery spring and every fall.
So if you're open enrollmentpretty much anytime throughout
the year, you can get put on alist.
At this point we are buildingwaitlists for people to get into
cohorts, which is an amazingblessing to be in a position

(01:28:26):
where we're actually waitlistingpeople.
But make sure that if you areremotely interested in a cohort,
regardless of when you'relistening to this episode, reach
out and you can submit anapplication and at least have
your name kind of pre-vetted andon the list for when we are
opening up recruitment for thenext cycle.
So until next time, have agreat rest of your day.

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