2026-01-12

 Jan 12 2025 - transcript

Okay, let's get started today. We're gonna talk about founders, fighting. It's such a challenge. I have been in this situation. In fact, this whole thing is about me, frankly, um, we weren't really fighting, but there was definitely conflict going on every day. And ultimately, we decided, um, well, here's what happened. We kept, we had clients, we were working on getting clients, we were working on delivering to the clients, but we disagreed on how to deliver to the clients. Not one right, one wrong, just disagreed. And because we disagreed, it came across wrong to the clients, came across wrong to the team. And so, I tried to back off, but I knew that if we kept going down the fulfillment road that we were describing and delivering to our customers, we couldn't scale. And so I was trying to work with the team to get the ideas that we could then build a scalable system. It never worked out. So, ultimately, what happened was, I had a meeting with the cofounder, and we said, listen, here's here's the situation. It is just not working for me. We're not making as much money as we should. We're not being profitable. We're not doing those things. And instead of continuing down this road and becoming into, you know, creating even more challenges, we should probably just stop and stay friends. And that's exactly what happened. We transitioned our clients to some other companies, and we dissolved the entire company. And we're still friends today. So the problem is, when you are in the midst of it, and you are talking to clients in front of clients in front of the team, you disagree on the message. The problem is, somebody has to be right. There has to be one leader. This is the lesson I learned. One liter, there has to be one voice, and there can only be one decision. If there is decision making that spread across the environment, you end up with life by committee, and that sucks for everybody, everybody. If you agree with the leader, cool. If you disagree with the leader, cool, but if you are having to be part of the committee where you're trying to contribute to the direction of the company, And there's no clear vision, you're just, you're, it's just gonna fail. It's just not going to work. And so as a result, we need to build systems and company structures that always have a leader to start with. This is why I'm so big on leadership, because I've been there, done that. This was my problem. Uh, everything suffered, and ultimately the company crashed and is no longer because we couldn't make it work. And that's okay, as long as you maintain friendships. But if you create a company, you, you then build a structure, you create clients, you create revenue, and you still can't agree. All that's gonna happen is you're gonna lose the company, you're gonna lose your revenue, and you're ultimately gonna have to not be friends. And that's, we should don't do that. Okay, so, anyway, that's my story. That's page, that's the number 19 in my book, the 111 Leadership exposed. By the way, when I say leadership exposed. That's me, almost every one of these problems is, me, what I did, and the answer is either what I ended up doing or what I didn't do and I should have done. And so this is the things that I've experienced. I've gone through and I've had these problems. So I just thought I would share them with everyone. Anyway, thank you for joining today. That's the, the, Andy's thought of the founders are finding what can you do? So let's go to Luisa. Hello, Louisa. How are you today? Good morning, Amy. I am great. Another beautiful day. Another lovely topic. Um, I saw your chocolate earlier and I thought, this is really interesting because When I was younger, I tried to start a little fashion business with a friend, um, who promised to put in money later. So, we used all my money before she said she wasn't gonna put any money in. So, and we couldn't agree on a lot of things. Um, so it didn't last very long and I, you know, if I had the skills to be able to negotiate and talk about things and know when to pull out, it would have been really handy. back then. Yes, great topic. I think there are more people who have tried to start something and failed than want to admit it. And the, the challenge of entrepreneurship is, So you tried. awesome. So you failed. Even more awesome. But you quit and went and went got a job or did something else or I said, ah, it's not for me. As if the 1st time you tried to walk, you got up and could run around the house. First time you tried to walk, you knocked over a couch or you pulled down a lamp or you pulled down the curtains or... You just were grasping for something to figure out how to balance, yet nobody succeeds the 1st time they try almost anything. No, maybe there's an exception. But for the most for the most of the rest of us, We always fail when you 1st start. I have started, at least a dozen companies. 11 of them failed. Number 12, or maybe it was like number 10 succeeded. And then the last 2 that I tried, they didn't they didn't go anywhere either. But, um, You have to be willing to look silly at first. And if you disagree, it's because you set up the wrong structure. So these are the 2 lessons I learned. First, When you set up the company structure, there has to be the final decision maker, end of story 100% of the time. If you don't, you've already failed. Just a matter of time. Second thing is If you're the leader, you are responsible. You're responsible for everything, good that happens, and you're responsible for everything bad that happens. It's on you. Now, if you look at all of humanity, you know, the 8000000000 of us on this planet, or whatever, 74000000 depending on, if you believe, some countries count more or less. Whatever. Let's just say 7 +000000000 people. Some very small percentage of them have all of the attributes necessary to run a company and to be an entrepreneur. They have to be. Well, Alex Hermosi says, the best way to find somebody who is going to be successful is somebody who believes they're made for more, who believes they have a great idea and that nobody else can do it as good as them, has a crippling sense of insecurity. And is just stubborn enough to keep going. And the problem is, there's a lot of people who feel like they've called for something better, but they're not very stubborn. They can't withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune has Hamlet said. There also are not willing. To be made a fool, to look foolish along the way, because when you start an entrepreneurial journey, When you start and people say, who are you, you can't do that. You've never done anything like that. They're right. And you have to just be able to withstand whatever they say long enough until you can say, you're not right anymore. And then they're going to say, well, you didn't do enough. You're not very profitable, whatever. Uh, And you have to be able to withstand that as well. Here's a practical example. My blog, 40 x 50.com. 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, has been running for 17 years. The 1st 16 years, 15 years, I got 500,000 people to read it. Cool. In 15 years. That a lot. But it means I was consistent. Here's the 2nd problem. It didn't become profitable until 2 months ago. So for 16 years and 10 months, No money. No revenue. Just lots of organic traffic. Finally, I made some revenue. And then I started putting the concepts and ideas I've used to generate organic content into newsletters, and now I have 3 profitable newsletters. They don't make a lot of money, but they make more money than they cost. That's profit. So I have 3 profitable newsletters. And now I'm considering how do I make it 30? Or whatever. And the challenge for me is that you have to start somewhere. If you start somewhere and have some level of success, little tiny bit. And you can amplify that and make it more. Most people try something, make $100, and then go, oh, it's not worth it. Before we jump into the rest of the speakers, and by the way, feel free to grab the mic here on this open mic. Uh, conversation. I want to describe to you what a $1 million business looks like. It's way smaller than you think. Okay? If you took $1 million in cash, put it in the bank right now, and put it in a CD or in a money market account, and got a 6% return. 6% 6% of a million dollars is $60,000 a year. Which is $5000 a month. So reverse that. If you have a business that makes $5000 profit a month. That is the same amount of money that you would make if you had $1 million in the bank at 6%. So there's hope for all of us. It's not difficult to create a company that makes $5,000 a month. You may or may not be able to live off that. But it is a $1000000 asset when you do. And if you apply that to newsletters, Roughly, a newsletter makes between $25 and $one per month per subscriber. So if you get 5000 people to join your newsletter, you should be able to turn that into about $5000 a month, which means a newsletter with an email list of 5000 people is worth a million dollars. I hope that gives you hope. I hope that your mind just went... Wow. That's amazing. You never thought of it that way. Because if you can, out of nothing, create 4 or 5,000 people to follow you and engage with your content, And you can turn them into a newsletter subscriber, and you can, and they pay you a dollar a month, $one a month. That's the exact same as putting a million dollars in the bank at 6%. So, Luisa, how does that apply to the way you think about your business there in New Zealand? Well, I definitely need to get my newsletters happening. I got it all set up. I've just, now that I'm over the holiday season, I'm being jotting down notes about what to write about. So I'm in Crystal's, um, spaces, so I just need to write something, put it out there, not worry about it, and just get the ball rolling. And stop progress, the nating. 2026. Yeah, yes. Absolutely. Okay, let me let me pull up my blog real quick. And I want to give you hope. Ready? I have posted 2685 posts over 17 years. Probably 2500 of them are garbage. They're, they're okay. There's somebody else's road. They're not that great. Maybe there's 10 that are really good. Maybe the rest of them are average. Go ahead, find the ones that are garbage. Go ahead. Go go to the website, look it up, you'll see that every every one of them gets better and better and better. Which means 17 years ago, when I posted, I turned off the comments and I decided, I don't care. I'm only going to track if people click on the button and go to the page. I'm not going to track comments. I'm not going to track anything. I'm not going to, I don't care other than, did you go on the page and read something? Yes or no? And so that number, which, by the way, right now is $2,686,721 page views. 17 years. And 90% of it is garbage, really, literally garbage. If I had to convert it to a different platform, I probably wouldn't even pull over 2000 of them. That's... That's just the way it is. Don't be afraid. Post the ugly, fumbling, garbaging stuff. And and I really encourage you today to set up a newsletter, go to like kit.com or beehive.com, set up a newsletter, post stuff. Sign yourself up and your mom and your sister on your email list so you have 3 subscribers and then post something two, 3 times a week. It will go into a blog. It'll look like it's a website. Cool. It's easy. Click a button and say make it look like this one and just let it go. Say I like the whatever colors you like, and then just, it's there. I know somebody who does exactly that. You guys know are Ani. She makes like 5 to $10,000 a month. From doing exactly what I said, writing stuff, clicking on things. She doesn't have a domain, she doesn't have any email, there's no extra cost. It's just people who are interested in what she's writing about. You can do the exact same thing. If you're a founder, Oh, go ahead, Luisa, go ahead. I was just gonna say, I totally love Bonnie. She is such an inspiration. Is she? She's awesome. Yeah, she's just, um, evolving as well. Like, she's doing a newsletter, she's got that role in. Now she's getting into her music. You know, just finding the passions that she enjoys and putting it out there and creating the content and yeah, and everyone starts somewhere and I think that's what I've learnt from listening to everyone is just get out there, give it a go. Don't be shy and um, And don't worry about what people say. You're always gonna have some people that sees random things to you online. And you just have to, you know, tuck it up and... Well, okay, how about this? Ready? Okay. What kind of post was that? That was garbage. What, are you kidding me? Why would you post that? Okay, there you go. being critical. Yeah, you did. I've had that. Does it matter? posting about the subject. Right, doesn't but does it matter? No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter when my wife says, Andy, when you do that, the ads get all mixed up in the text. That's a good idea. I wonder how I can fix that. Yes, great feedback, but her point was, it's terrible. Oh, yeah, okay, right. Well, how do I make it better? Oh. What if I put it in a box? What if I put the ad inside a box? So you see, here's my text, box of advertising, and then my text again. Cool. You could do the same thing. That's what Ani does. I looked at Ani's newsletter and went, huh, that was a really good idea. She puts her advertisement in a box. How brilliant. Yeah, they've got so many different ways. So it's just finding your own way and coming to their spaces, talking about it, learning from everyone. is, um, the key. Yep, just show up. write your stuff. And Do what you want. If you, if you, by the way, if you run, okay, we've twisted over a little bit from Founders fighting to newsletters. Okay, fine. I'm totally cool with newsletters, but I mean, I did the whole thing myself, so it's my fault. Um, If you want to talk about founders, go ahead, grab the mic. If you want to talk about newsletters, going, I can change the title. is not a problem. The, to me, To me, the only important thing is, are you getting value? The only way that I know if you're getting value or not is if you show up and listen. If you engage, it's even better. If you give me thumbs up or a heart or a 100 or whatever, Cool. That's great. If you're just listening in the background and you're doing other stuff and you can't do it, I'm fine with that. I appreciate every one of you coming here, because here's the thing. There's what, 14, 15 people live right now. If you, you can't fit in my office. My office isn't big enough to hold 14 people. So if you all showed up and knocked on the door, And like, you can't, it's a, it's a converted little tiny bedroom. It's not even a full size bedroom. It's just a little office. So you can't even come in here. So don't ever think, I need 100s of people at, no, yeah. You know, you know what you need to be successful? 10 to 20 clients who are loyal fans who are interested in buying the stuff you want to sell. That's it. Take whatever money you want to make per month. Divide that by 10 or 20, say that's what I'm going to offer as value, and that's how much I want to earn. And then, figure out a way to go sell it. And if you don't know how to do that, go buy Alex Hermosi's 3 books, $100 million offers, $100 million leads, and $100 million money models. There are about 20, 30 US dollars apiece, spend $100, invest in yourself, read the books over and over again until it becomes part of your brain, becomes part of the way you speak, the way you think, what you actually do. And become a student. Become the best student of people who are doing the things you wanna do. By the way, my newsletter started off with five people. Each. Five. Five, and four of them were friends and family, and me. So, You can do it too. And you may think, I, see, I'm going to try to, just, in your brain. I can't do it. What am I gonna talk about? There is something you do that everybody in your family asks you to help with. There is something you do that at work, they go, hey, could you please come show me how to do that thing again? Show me how to do this thing again? Whatever they tell you. That is the thing that you're a superpower. That's what you talk about. How does it work? What do you do? How do you think about it? You may think it seems so... Kindergartenish. That you're describing something that you do, like so easily, like, doesn't everyone do this? No. They don't. They can't. Including me. I might be really good at two or three things, but that means the whole rest of, like, the 1000000s of everything else that I'm average or below average at. Probably not even average it most things. I'm probably below average at almost everything, handful of things I'm average at, maybe one or two things I'm good at. You're the same. So. There are people right now who would love to be on an X-space live. They don't know how to do it. When you tell them live social audio is the next big thing, they go, what are you talking about? Well, go on X, create an account, click on the little purple pill, and join the space and listen. They think you've fallen off a truck. Hit your head too hard. Need to go to the hospital, put some ice on it. In the Sacramento area, we grow a lot of tomatoes. And so there are these big, double, these, these trucks that have a cab and then they have a, a big bed, and it's open top with, with a big pile of tomatoes over the top of them, and then another one behind it. And when they hit a bump, the tomatoes bump off and hit on the ground. You fall off light, you know, you just, like, you fell off a tomato truck. Then you say that in Sacramento, that's what it means. Picture this big, huge truck driving, you know, £8000 of tomatoes in each one of its beds. Hits a little bump and the tomatoes, boom, they fall off and splatter on the ground. When somebody says you just fell off, like you just fell off a tomato truck. That's what they mean. Like, oh, you hit a bump? Boom, Splato, you're nothing, right? You just, But that's not true. The truth is, you do something super awesome. Every one of you. And you do it so easily that you think it's not a big deal. You should take the time to write down, this is what I do. This is what I think about. This is how I organize it. This is how I go through the process. This is how I get the result. If you do that, now you have a lead magnet. Take your lead magnet, and tell people, this is the thing that I do. By the way, you can get my step by step instructions by clicking here. That's your subscribe list, your email. Landing page says, if you give me your email, I'll give you the cool thing I just wrote. That, that's it. That, that's all it is. Do that enough? Do that with topics that are people are interested in enough. You will get a big, huge email list. Big as big as you want, right? We have guys who come here. I think you guys have seen Jin the lazy Canadian investor. His email list is like 30 to 50,000 people. He's gaining two, 300 a day. Last week, he told us that he had, uh, a million. He has over a 1000000 views on one of his YouTube videos. And he puts out 3 to 5 Instagram TikToks a day. Used to put out 10 a day. At the end, it's like, Hey, get this PDF and join my newsletter to learn, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And 200 people are signing up a day. A day. Again, The economics of a newsletter should be something around a dollar per person per month. Wouldn't you like to have an email list of 30,000 people? I would. That's my goal. Email list. Enough email list to get, you know, a couple 100000 a 1000000 people on an email list. Not on one. A 1000000 people are going to join one email list. I'm not Britney Spears or anything, you know, crazy like that. Oh, come on, that was funny. That was funny. Come on. I am not Britney Spears, please. I'm an old, bald guy. Anyway, okay. Yes, Saturday today. Oh, I don't know. I'm trying to be Trying to be funny, not always funny, but anyway, try, give it a shot. Hello, Stephanie. Thanks for joining. How are you today? My, okay. Can you hear me? Yes, loud and clear. Great. Um, I'm doing great. Um, and uh, to address your founders issue, I've read that book 0 to one. My husband actually used to quote that all the time when the kids wanted something and he said no. He would say, this is 0 to one vote here. Yes. Exactly. Anyway, anyway, yeah, no, that's, and he was involved in, um, mini startups, um, Uh, the. Anyway, he built them into $300 million businesses, but that was a product. Um, and he's in military deterrent, so... Interesting. You know, Black Hawk, helicopters, communications, AWAX, drones, airport scanners, more benign. Wow, cool. But millimeter ways is what it does, which is really interesting. Um, me, I was a software developer, um, I still am, but I used to do the back end development for Fortune 1000 companies, and then, I had kids, and then I kind of migrated to, um, environmental education, and hosting events with the land trust, and, and then I, I went back to school, and... got a, um, a bachelor's degree in environmental science with a 18 unit concentration on maps. So I was making maps for conservation groups and hanging out at water symposiums and that kind of thing, but, I'm in Michigan now. I was in California, and I kind of want to start a business, but I don't know what, and I don't know if I want to do the, um, like a newsletter, although, for the, maybe the, um, boomers, that's not a bad, you know, um, I guess, channel. But, but with knowledge based economy, I think a lot of that stuff, you know, people are just going to use AI to, to, you know, ask the AI questions, you know, it, well, you know, agents will do part of the business for them. That's why there's a lot of startups now with, you know, a couple people. But, um, Absolutely. But, um, and I watch, uh, when I tell everybody to the, that's, there's a couple podcasts, one in particular, I really like the startup ideas, and, um, I would definitely watch it on Spotify because you see the screen and you're not just listening or breathing a transcript. But there's a lot of info there on just using AI, but, you know, I'm just at a crossroads right now. I want to do something with, um, fondue table and sustainable food and, you know, more health. So, um, and then there's this new, um, uh, America's Ranchers Alliance. I, you know, I actually had a few posts because I don't like, you know, the lobby that they're getting squeezed from, but, you know, people want food that's not full of antibiotics and, you know, maybe it's imported, you know, that I know where it's from. And um, being in California, where I was living, that farm to table movement really took off. In fact, uh, I was in Napa Valley. So, um, that's like the, Chef's, you know, capital of, yeah. the culinary institutes there and, you know, my goodness, all of the wineries and the Michelin star and restaurants up and down the drive there. That's amazing. Right. The French laundry is the one that's, yeah, the, I think it's, what is that, a 4 or 5 star? Three. Three star. Yeah, 3rd star. I think. The, um, the French laundry. I I think it's. there's only 3 stars. I think you only get 3 stars. Oh, I see. I see, I see. But I could be wrong. I mean, here, I'm gonna go check, but... Yeah, um, but anyway, I was there and then where I was doing a lot of events, we kind of included people that were in the community and um, helping teachers with that farm to table with seeds and we had a, we finally got a greenhouse and it's awesome. It was awesome. We ended up, even got branched out into the environmental teachers coalition, but I'm good at organizing people and events, but I've been out of it for a while, and, but I'm really good at spreadsheets and just organizing and networking. But I don't know what I want to do right now. I don't know if it's a newsletter. I just want to maybe get more people in touch with local farmers and local, you know, local food sources. And, and then, and, um, I see that I see that they do that here. They have like farmers markets and stuff, but, but I, I would say, the average person, you know, goes to the, you know, Walmart or Aldi's or whatever to get, you know, the bulk of their food, especially, you know, what the farmer's market usually is starts in the summer and then it prompt, they close shop around October. Right. You know? Well, think of it, think of it the other way. Okay, I think of a newsletter like, it's an email list that you talk to once or twice or 5 times a week. And really, the key is you own the audience, you can communicate with them whenever you want. And a newsletter is just an easy way to do that in exchange for their email contact information, you'll share with them something of value. But it's the ability to contact them, that is the key. Because those are warm leads. They're people who are interested in and have given you permission to talk to them. Mm hmm. Yeah, well, engagement is, is you just build trust with that. So, um, it's great to have that. Uh, I'd probably tie it in with some, uh, educational stuff here too. that I might design, but potentially, I would want to workshop that with, um, maybe some, an agency here, like Fish and Wildlife. So, because I don't know what, I've only been here, you know, a couple years, so, and getting to know, people, but, but yeah, you, you, you do that on newsletter stuff a lot. really working for most people here. Is that what most people are doing? I... don't know if I can answer for most people. I would think of it the other way around. I recommend getting your name and your product service idea out into the world, telling people what value that you offer for them. whatever it is. Right? Uh, and telling them that's what you do. The more you can tell people, the longer you can tell them, the one problem you solve, the better chance you're going to get in finding other people who have that problem, who are going to want to talk to you about solving it. So, I have a tendency when if you're asking, I would look at it the other way around. What is it that people that you know and like? What did what problems do they have that you can fix? Not the other way around, not saying, well, I fixed this problem, let's go find people who have it. Go find people who have a problem first. Right. Oh, well, a lot of people, before they start any type of business, they're gonna look at, you know, search, um, data. No, you'd be surprised. No, they don't. Most people decide they're going to start a business. They go, hey, there's a there's a building open on the corner. I've always wanted to start a restaurant. I'm gonna open one right there. It's like, well, Did you do any research? Nope, I'm gonna just make it happen. And most people, that's the way they operate. They're going to start a newsletter, start a blog. I'm going to start with they just start. And that's cool. I'm all for starting. absolutely. But if you want to be more successful, find people with a problem 1st, figure out how to solve it 2nd. And then start a problem or a business or a company or whatever to solve the problem that you know they have. Because it's a whole lot easier to, to go fishing where the fish are. then to I use this analogy a lot. Here's here's the story. People want your, you're in Michigan. My family's from Michigan and Wisconsin. I know all about the area. I've got family and relatives all over, including the UPs. So everywhere. Here's here's the thing. Most people when they want to go fishing, in Michigan or Wisconsin or Minnesota, what they do is they go, Get a get a little boat. They get, uh, life preserver, they get some poles, they get some lines, they get some hooks, they go buy some lures, they get a box, they put all the stuff in, they put it in their little boat, they roll the boat out to their favorite little lake and they go out in the lake and try to fish. That's pretty or they stand on the shore and try to fish, right? Well, Think of it this way. What if you? What if you did all of that, and you roll that beautiful little boat and all your fishing gear, and you parked it in the desert? How many fish are you gonna catch? That's right, zero. That is not where the fish are. Right? Most people make, it makes sense. You don't grab all your fishing gear and go in the desert and try to, there's not even water there. So there's no fish. Got to have fish are in the water. You got to have water to have fish. Okay. Secondly, so you got to go where the fish are. If you're gonna start a business, find where the fish are first. And then if you're a fisherman and you grew up fishing like I did, what's the 1st question you ask? What are they biting on? What kind of bait to use? The fish will eat. So then you go get the same thing that the other guy's doing right next to you. And you put it on the same line hook, everything that he's got, and you throw it at the same place that he's at, and you'll catch fish too. Oh, but everybody understands that about fishing. Everybody understands, oh, if he's fishing with worms and a hook and a bobber, you go get worms, put it on a hook with a bobber and throw it in the same spot, you'll probably catch fish too. Oh, but you know, when we decide to do a business, Oh no, no, we got to be special. Oh, no, no. They're doing it with hooks and worms? We're gonna do it special. We're gonna do different. We're gonna we're gonna get flies. We're gonna do fly fishing. We going to cast in exact... Fish aren't biting on flies right there. They're biting on worms because they're not coming to the surface. Please, use what works. Don't try to create something new. Go find where fish are, where people are buying stuff. And go figure out how to do the exact same thing. And tell people, oh, you can do that one, you can buy it from them, you can buy it from me. Some people will buy it from you because they're already buying it from somewhere. Well, that's sort of the same principle with software too. You don't want to reinvent the wheel. You know, any signware. Somebody's created it, it's working, maybe you can customize it, but that's why a lot of software, developers say that they're, they have a pirate hat, but the truth of the matter is, is that now, as even with AI, you can, you don't even need to, um, code, you can vibe code now. Well, kind of. You know what? Here's my opinion on that real quick. Um, vibe coding is unbelievably awesome to create prototypes that work unbelievably awesome, lovable NAN, Replet, they're freaking amazing. But they're not enterprise level yet. You can't run a 1000000 transaction through something that you built and lovable. This is not going to work. However, If you have a proof of concept and you want something up running, I've was listening to a meeting where the guy was talking about this idea, and the other guys in the back went to Lovable and whipped out a user interface for it. And then when he got to the point in the presentation, they showed it. And they said, yeah, we just did this in replica. don't know if this is the right colors or the right process or the right workflow, but look, here's something that would actually kind of work. Boom. Let's start from there. And then we talked about it from that point on. It was amazing. It was for prototyping, vibe coding, rocks, for enterprise level stuff, you know this. It's a little bit harder to, you know, you can't go to Visa and say, we're going to create your entire new workflow and you guys are managing, you know, a 1000000 transactions a 2nd and go, here, let's just, you know, create, you know, replet to recreate it, boom, boom, clod code. Let's cloud code a new optimized workflow. Yeah, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. Not yet. It will one day, but not today. I agree. And also, too, um, um, having it, you know, you, you, you actually, the process is iterative too, you know, like, you're not coming out with the most fantastic product. You know, it, over time, you, you understand what is missing, what's not working, et cetera, et cetera. So you, you don't, you change, you keep changing, and that's, I guess there's a, there's a book on that too, that lean startup kind of concept. Anyway, I'll I'll yield to others. I'm sorry to... No, I appreciate it, Stephanie. Thanks for coming up. And I also... I'm sorry, I was gonna buy your book too. I just haven't done that online yet. No, listen, it's okay. I'm, um, I'm almost, I almost have it all prepped for to be on Amazon so you can go buy the real physical one. If you want the physical, because I know you said in the past, you wanted a physical one. If you want the physical one, uh, probably by Friday I should have it up. Yeah, just a couple more days. Sounds good. Okay. Oh, AJ, what happened to AJ? AJ was up here. Uh, ready to speak and then now he's back in listeners. But thanks, Stephanie. App appreciate it. Okay, so if you have uh, Ever worked with founders that were disagreeing, I call that fighting. But really, if you disagree with each other in front of everyone, everybody thinks you're fighting, everybody doesn't understand, and they start the team starts to wonder, what is going on? Who's really in charge? How does it actually work? I, I don't know that, uh, if you have seen that, if you've been there, if you've been part of it, But if you have, it's always a challenge. So let's let's not go there. Let's try to keep it uh, whatever. So again, back to the point. Build your company so that one person's always in charge. The final vote comes down to one person. As the person in charge, you can offload that responsibility to someone else. But if it doesn't go the way you want, you can take back the control. Uh, I set up a company that was 50-50 My bad. And I'll never do that again, but that company ended up failing because we couldn't agree on how to do the delivery fulfillment to the customers. So we had to shut down the company because we couldn't figure out how to, You do this part, I'll do that part. I'll be this charge. Well, I want to do okay, fine. Well then we'll just, I'd rather be friends than keep going. We'll just shut it down. So that's what we did. All right. We've got Neuracare that's come up to grab the mic. Luisa, what other problems did you face with? I know you mentioned that you had a challenge with this in the past. Is there any more you want to share on that? Otherwise, maybe today we'll just, uh, unless we have some more speakers, maybe we'll just end a little early today. Yeah, I'll share a little bit more. Um, I think we didn't decide who was going to make the important decisions. Um, based on the fact that I was funding everything. I should have probably been more the leader in the decisions at the beginning. So, when you start a partner, you have faith, a partnership, you have faith that the other person will come through with their promise to invest, um, later on. As was agreed. So, and just the age difference as well. We had different points of views, um, and me being young, just being confident enough to get my voice heard and put across was very tricky. Um, and that sort of, like, degraded the relationship and our ability to talk openly because then it becomes, you know, um, a competition of whose decision and who makes the decision. And then later, to be disappointed that, um, She didn't invest the rest of the money, as promised. So therefore, we had to close up the business. Yeah, it's pretty common. I'm sure that as you've talked to other people or heard other stories, you're like, oh, I've been there. Oh yeah, I understand that. It's because it happens a lot. Yes, and it's put me off actually doing it again. Like, I, when I started the shop, I had a couple people approach me and say, oh, I could come in and do this and that and I thought, yeah, no, I've been there before. I've been, you know, I've been bit by this before and it's promises are easy to give. It's more the actions and if they're ready to go was what I was looking for and they weren't, it was just easy to say, yeah, I'll be keen because they weren't putting in any money or it wasn't near name on the lease. So it was easy for them to do that. So I'm glad I didn't because Um, I don't think I would have been able to make decisions with them. They weren't really the type to be able to compromise or agree on certain things. And maybe I'm that person too. Well, aren't we all? aren't we all that kind of person? And eventually, if, if, It's kind of like, if you try to pet every stray dog, one of them's going to bite you, and then from then on, you may not try to pet every dog. Right? So... It's always interesting when we talk about how humans interact with each other in a leadership position. It's kind of like sales. Everybody wants to buy something. Nobody wants to be sold. Everybody wants to be in charge, but few people want the responsibility of when it all goes bad to just go, yeah, it's my fault. 100%. And when it comes down to it, you do have to make selfish decisions for yourself. Because it is your ass on the line. It is your, um, Yep. Money, you know, and and it will be your problem when it fails and they will just get to walk away. Yep, there's one more thing, and then we'll go to AJ, and that is leaders have to make decisions that's best for the whole, not for themselves, and not for each individual person. And that means that leaders, at least at 1st, are, Looked at with a healthy dose of skepticism, and then eventually, A full dose of skepticism, only afterwards, to be looked at with admiration and respect. It's never during. It's always after that people look at leaders and think, oh, that was a good leader. During the situation, they think, what the hell is he thinking? Why would he do that? That doesn't make any sense. Blah, blah, blah, on and on and on and on. And they're all true. But you still have to be able to withstand it. Anyway, let's go to AJ. We've got about 10 minutes left. Hey, AJ, thanks for coming back up. Oh, great to be here. I have a little audio glitch. Yeah, um, and then my apologies for being late. I'm working on some, uh, code compliance stuff, uh, for my, um, short-term rental renewals, and I've seen leadership conflicts even at my town hall meetings where, uh, the fire department was, uh, angry about, uh, some, not getting enough funding or something or something that was written in the bylaws that was misinterpreted by the clerk, and I've seen uh, leadership conflict, one-on-one, where my, uh, my business partner was also my significant other at the time, and I remember one time she and I were arguing over something, and our Airbnb guests were walking right by us as we were doing it. And I felt so mortified, and my conscience just hit me and said, there's definitely a better way to handle this. And, uh, your post about how this uh, conflict can really tear down the company fast, boy, there's nothing, that that is really true. And the last example I can think of, um, and I'm trying to put a positive spin on this, but I'm just telling real life accounts. I was I was a front desk employee at a gold's gym in Santa Maria, California. Uh, right where the Michael Jackson trial happened. Anyways, at the golds gym, there were 2 sales dogs, and these guys were always neck and neck. Like, that's that's my customer. They were here the other day That's you stole my sale. And they would wad up the paper contract and throw it at each other. And I honestly one time thought these 2 meatheads are about to fight over a sale. And, um, one of them got let go. And I remember, I knew both of these guys were shady. They would they would cut each other out of a deal or they wouldn't share. They wouldn't split the commission. I knew both of them were kind of shady guys. They love making their money. But what I learned, what I noticed, was the one guy, Jeremy, he couldn't keep his cool. He would blow his top and you could hear him across the gym. And the other guy, Andrew, he would always keep his cool. And even though they were, in my opinion, they were both not always scrupulous. The person that kept their cool, the longest won. Jeremy got fired. They eventually hired him back because they needed somebody with the sales skills. But the guy that kept his cool the longest won. So there's, I guess, a little moral to the story. Yeah, well, that's pretty common. I mean, emotional control is the that is the answer to just about all leadership issues. Um, and the fact that you can withstand some amount of discomfort. Uh, especially when you're making decisions for other people or you're making decisions that impact other people. The discomfort is real and it's something that you have to deal with. So, it's uh, it's always interesting. But, It is fascinating that you finally figured it out, and when you saw it, when it became obvious, like the mirror was in your face. You made a change. Uh, for whatever reason, but yeah, you made a change and that's always one of the more fascinating parts of humanity. Well, sure. Yeah, I'm still learning. I still learned to keep my cool. I've got, I'm doing my little code compliance stuff. I'm actually sketching out a new... Uh-oh. We lost him again. Well, let's go to Asia Nicole. Hello, Asia. Hello, Andy. How are you? I'm good. What's going on? We have just a few minutes left, but what have you been thinking about? What do you want to bring today? Yeah, so, um, in regards to founders, uh, fighting, um, I had a question in regards. I ran a couple businesses and I'm starting another business now. So when it comes to, uh, creating how I work with my partner, typically, we graft what the relationship is gonna look like, and then from there, also, what it would look like if we disagree, and we typically have a, um, a 3rd party that we would consult with, that's unbiased, that could help us come up with that decision. And if we really can't come to an agreement, what would the exit look like? Um, so I was curious, uh, is this typical when you're drafting up, um... Yes. A partner or like, um, and what does that look like for you when you're approaching um, when you're creating that? Well, I think the most important part is to recognize that every single relationship ends. Every single project is temporary, every relationship is temporary. One of you is going to. Exit or leave, Uh, before the other one. That's it. And it's, It is always best to start with the end in mind. And the end needs to be. How do we walk away friends? And then once you do that, then you step back and say, okay, now we've decided how we're going to exit when this is over, then I want you to go to the next step, which is, how are we going to operate while we're here? Because if you if you can figure out a way to very graciously say, when these things happen, this is how we're going to walk away. And this is how it's going to look, and everybody agrees on that to start with it. A lot easier to do at the beginning when it's nice and calm. But it's very difficult if you haven't done that and then you try at the end. Ooh, it can be challenging. Feelings get hurt, all kinds of things happen. But if you start with the end in mind and back into it, you have a better chance of success. You also have a better chance of recognizing the relationship along the way because you understand what the implication is. And the impact if you violate those boundaries, then you know that those actions will just automatically take place. And so you're building in some kind of, uh, defined constraint in the relationship. And that that is a good thing. You can adjust it over time, but you have to start somewhere. Does is that helping? Is that helpful? Oh, yes, absolutely. Um, Yeah, absolutely. Um, cause, during, it's, um, in my experience, we are still good and collaborate with on other projects as well. So I was just curious if that was something you lead with, personally. Yes. I always start with the very end in mind. Um, of everything. Everything. If we're going to run a project and we're going to spend money and use people's time to produce an objective, the 1st thing I do is to find, when we're done, what does it look like? How do I know when we've crossed the finish line and I can say, check done? And then I back everything else into that. How much does it cost? Who we're going to get? How long does it take? What is the real results? Who's going to use it? What happens if it doesn't work? I ask all those questions up front, and then we back everything in to that. And if you, if you, if you think of creating a relationship or a business structure where you're going to bring multiple owners or multiple leaders into the organization, start with that. Okay, when we're done, somebody buys the company, we decide it's over. somebody passes away. For whatever reason, we get sick and can't continue. For that plus a 1000000 other reasons. What happens? Start there. How do we break it up? Do we do we continue? Do we do it somebody else? Do we sell it to someone different? Do we just dissolve it? Do we just walk away? What is it, right? And then you decide from that and then you back into how to build it up. And by the way, it's an it's annoying. It is tedious, and it is full of questions you may think are stupid at the time. But they're not stupid. And the other problem is, if you shortcut that any step along the way, it will come back and bite you in the butt. It will. It's inevitable. 90% of it's good, 10%'s left over, the 10% you're not watching. That's what's going to kick you in the ass. That's just the way it is. Uh, it doesn't matter if it's, People finances, staffing, location, leases, equipment, rental, software systems, decision making, workflow, onboarding, whatever, whatever you don't put enough attention on is the thing that will become your bottleneck. Yeah, thank you. I typically tend to overanalyze, so I was just curious how you approached it if you build with the end in my. So... Yeah, I, I look at it the, Okay, so here's and we're going to end this because I've got to go, but here's the way I look at Founders Fighting, email list, business, and everything else. It goes like this. It's easy to pick the fast, easy, everything's good path. Okay? And then once you do that and you start from the end saying, when we're done, we're going to have this. Here's the easy way to get there. Then you have to take your mind, step back from the situation, and look at every single thing that can cause it to kick it sideways and take it off the path. What happens if we lose people, what happens if we do more people. What happens if we, if they make too much money, what happens if they don't make them much money? What happens if they get pissed at us? What happens if they yell and scream? What happens if they say bad things about us? What if they sabotage us and screw us over? What if they take all of our secrets and sew them to somebody else? I mean, everything. But you can't do it publicly. You have to... This is the private burden of leadership. You have to go through and say, how do I eliminate or at least identify so you can prioritize and mitigate all of the other risks? It's easier if you've done it 4 or 5 times. Um, but you still have to do it. And that's the way I look at it. When you have a project, we're going to deliver a software product to do this one thing for this group of people. Cool, great. This is what they get when they're done. Here's the definition of done. And then we back into the process to get there. And then outside of the team, I start applying all of my experience and say, What is the worst possible thing that can go wrong? The worst possible thing. You know, the thing that ends up, 0 God, everyone gets fired and we end up in the front page of the newspaper. Let's avoid that. And then we start to build out, well, what if it's not quite that bad? We just everybody gets fired. What happens if just some people get fired? What happens if we lose all the money? What happens? And then you just build back all of those steps and identify and eliminate as many risks, which are potential things that could cause the project to go sideways, or cause the team not to be able to deliver. Those are the 2 criteria. You build those, and then you list them out and you do as best you can with all of them. And that's really the way that I operate. Every business and every project, I go through that process, that is my process. Um, And that's why... That's why you can read stuff about me on the internet. That's why it says that. So, let's go to Katie. Hello, Katie. We're just about to end, but thank you for coming up and grabbing the mic. How are you? I'm doing great, thank you, but I do have to do my duty, and I do believe that Nuracare is entirely up to you. Nureka does have the hand up before me, but I'm happy to speak entirely up to you. Well, you go ahead real quick, and we'll bring neurocare on tomorrow if we if that can come back. Oh, okay. No, no problem. So, yeah, I um, I always like to support you and your spaces and what you share. Um, et cetera. You know, it's quite alarming when founders are fighting. Um, I'm curious to hear a little bit more about this situation with the email lists. Um, but, you know, given just going off of the space title and the short, um, fragment that I heard just now, um, it's always great to, to create, um, multiple ways to stay in contact and communication with those who are interested in your product or service, uh, whether you've launched or yet to launch. Um, but it is also just as important to register with like, here in the UK, we have the ICO, Um, and protect people's data and information. But I'd love to hear just a little bit more, either from yourself or others, um, so I can contribute in the best way I can. Okay, so basically what I said was at the beginning, um, And you can go back and listen to the recording and I'll do a real quick recap for everyone, then we'll close up the space. I have to go. The, I started with a company with somebody else. I didn't establish. We were 50-50 partners, which means great, but joint decisions until we disagreed, and then we couldn't agree on who's the leader and who's doing what and who who has the final say. And so even though we had we had customers and we were making money, um, not a lot, but we were making a profit. Ultimately, we couldn't agree on how to fulfill. My point was, we can't, if we continue to operate that same way, we would spend so much time per customer for such little amount of margin that we couldn't scale big enough to to become a profitable enterprise. And my partner disagreed. And so eventually, we just said, well, instead of us disagreeing in front of other people or having the team wonder what the hell's going on, or having the customers think, what the hell's going on, why don't we just give the customers to somebody else and close down the company and maintain our friendship. And that's what we did. And as a result, and as a result, all of those people are on email lists, and then I talked about, you need to, you know, if you're going to build a business, you need to be able to get into contact with people. And so we had customers because we were reaching out to folks and on and on and on, right? Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Um, but the immediate thing just quickly that came to mind is it's so important to define the terms. And what I mean by defining the terms is, my old music manager, many, many years ago, used to say to me, right, Kate, you're gonna take your personal head off and put your business head on, and, and I was able to kind of switch gears there. Um, but it's really important to, uh, especially when it comes to friendships and founders and dual founders, et cetera. to really define the terms on the outset or offset. Um, and making conscious, fair, just, and reasonable decision in the best interests of whatever you feel is a priority. I'm sorry that you went through that. That's, that's really, uh, not very painful. No it's okay. You know what? is what it is. It's it's fine. I get to tell a great story now because of it. Um, it's in my book. It's the blog post that I put out today. It's my newsletter. But, The, It was at the moment, It was a challenge. But then I decided, well, what is more important? And to me, I don't know if you guys have a lot of friends. I don't have a lot of friends. I don't like people who are real honest, goodness friends. You know, the kind you could call in the middle of the night and go, 0 my god, I need help. And they would come. Right? I don't have a lot of friends like that. I'm not sure anyone really does. And, uh, that is more important to me than making an extra few, whatever it was per month. So, That's why. And besides, I can go make other businesses. I mentioned that I've, I think I've started a dozen businesses and one of them was successful and the rest of them not. So that just means that guess what's going to happen in the next few years? I'm going to start more. I'm going to acquire more businesses. I'm going to build more audiences. And then I went into, do you know what a, What a $1 million business is. I'm going to end with this, okay? If you took $1000000, 10000 pounds, what doesn't matter, 1000000, whatever, liri, whatever your currency is. It says, kisses, does kisses count? Well, yes, sort of, but this is actual money. So if you put a 1000000 of them in the bank and you get 6% return, you get $60,000, $60,000, lir, whatever. Okay? You divide that by 12. That's 5000 a month. So, in the US, if you put $1000000 in the bank and you get a 6% return, you will make $60,000. Which means $5000 a month. So I said switch that around. If you have a company that makes $5000 a month profit, it's a $10000 business. Because you're making the same amount of money as you would if you had a million dollars in the bank as 6%. Probably 10% and nothing is nothing, so if you, if you can't agree and and to move it forward, then, then, you know. Right. The beautiful thing is, if you can, if, and I turn that in from $5000 a month to, if you have 5000 subscribers on your email list, And you, you should be able to make somewhere around the economy of an email list is about a dollar a person. A month. So if you can make $one a month from each one of your subscribers, you can make $5000 a month, that's the same as having a $10000 in the bank at 6%. And we have people who join this that have 30, 40, 50,000 people in their email list. I've got an email list, one's 3500, one's almost a 1000 I'm not making, I'm making ¢25, not a dollar per user. I making ¢25 a year. I learning how to do this. I don't how to do it yet. I'm learning. But as soon as I learned how to make a dollar per subscriber per email list, And the question is, well, how many email lists do I want to add? Right? You can do the same thing. Ani does it. Christelle does it. Kevin does it. Justin does, all the people that, you know, on the startup circle, they're all running their own email list. They're all creating their own, Economies, they're all creating their own email, contact list. And you can be on all of them or none of them, and none of that matters. We are not competing with each other. This is what you got to understand. We're not competing with each other. We are sharing information. But the audience that likes to talk to me is different than the audience that likes to talk to Justin or Anya. Just different people. Yes, Katie, one more thing. Two seconds, two seconds. Because, yes, I agree, and I just really want to do from a league legal standpoint and a protection standpoint for everybody. No matter what list that you create, no matter how you do it, please, please, please, um, make sure that you as an individual or as your company are protected, um, with uh, the relevant uh, information, data commissioner's office, et cetera. Um, so that nobody can potentially sue you for misuse of their data or mishandling of their data, et cetera. Just put it into any AI that not not people's info, but this question, I'm happy to create a one sheet, but even if you're going through a 3rd party, like male chimp or any newsletters, please, please triple check and read through those terms and conditions if you need help, my inboxes open. But, you know, it's important that all of our data and privacy is absolutely protected in any which way, shape or form. Yes. Absolutely. Follow all the local rules and guidelines. But that shouldn't stop you from trying to give something free to people in exchange for their email list so that you can contact them. Right, but wouldn't they be more inclined to join your email list knowing that their data is safe and protected? See? When there's a will, there's a waste of landing. Oh, that's pretty clever. I've never heard you say that one before. I like that. Anyway, thank you, Katie and Stephanie and AJ and others. Neurocare, if you want to come back tomorrow, we do this at noon Pacific time tomorrow. We're going to end up. So, Luisa, what's your big takeaway for today? Um, just... be... a bit more iPad organized. Get your ground rules in place. Um, interesting that you said start with how you would end. Because that is always the hardest part of ending it. Ending a relationship, business relationship with someone because, um, especially if you've just put it into trust and not documented anything. So, it can get really messy. So, yeah. Just, um, Document everything. Document, everything. Yeah. With AI and the tools we have available to us, there's no reason why you can't document it. You can simply just start talking and have it record that, have it turned into a standard operating procedure, or at least a big guideline, and then it's so much easier today for some things. Anyway, I appreciate that. So the reason that I do this every day is because I assume you want to make money that's maybe good, maybe bad, doesn't matter. But if you want to make money, the most important thing is that you need to find somebody who has done the things that you want to do. And then find out what they're doing and then do what they do. Right? Like we were talking about fishing earlier. When you fish, the 1st thing you do is you ask the other fisherman, what are they biting on? And then you go get the exact same thing and throw the line in the exact same place that they are. To catch a fish. You don't go create brand new lines and brand new hooks, brand new bait, and throw it in the thing hoping people will catch it. No, you go, get the thing that works, and you go put it in the place where there's the fish. And that is what I want you to do with your business today. Right? Newsletters work, they've been working a long time, and until you don't have to use your newsletter to get into your bank, newsletters are still valid. The value that you bring is special to you. Everybody has different things. everybody has amazing capabilities. And what I want you each to do is to figure out what you can do, that other people have done, and you can just, Do what they've done. So that you can make the money that they're making. That's that's it. I don't think you need to be super special in anything. I think you need to be able to be willing to do it. And most people are brilliant and smart and capable and scared. So they don't do it. You should do it. Take your torch, light it carried out in the dark world. Tell people that you're available. Tell people that you can help solve their problems. And they'll come to you. You still may have to search them out. You may have to go where the people are, and then say, and explain to them why you're carrying a torch in the dark world. But at least you have an opportunity for discussion. Have a wonderful day. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye bye.