EP 198: [Interview] Startup funding - How performance-based equity will accelerate a startup with Chris Joyce

Chris Joyce is the founder of 24 companies in high tech, consumer goods, health, and manufacturing. His products have been sold in more than 11,000 stores in 23 countries. He has users of his tech products in 148 countries across the globe. His newest venture is Gusher. Gusher helps Entrepreneurs to build startups without raising capital.

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EP 198: Startup funding - How performance-based equity will accelerate a startup with Chris Joyce

Chris Joyce is the founder of 24 companies in high tech, consumer goods, health, and manufacturing. His products have been sold in more than 11,000 stores in 23 countries. He has users of his tech products in 148 countries across the globe. His newest venture is Gusher. Gusher helps Entrepreneurs to build startups without raising capital.

In this episode Chris shares what he learned by building 24 companies, what worked and what did not. We talk about  the common mistakes of first time founders and how to avoid them. Finally we talk about the difficulties of funding a startup and how founders can change the game by focussing on performance based equity.

Guest Links: 

Chris on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dealrules/

Gusher: https://gusher.co/

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Transcript:

(This transcript is AI generated)

[00:00:00] Hello Chris. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? 

[00:00:02] I'm doing well. Thanks for having me, Jens. How are you doing? 

[00:00:05] I'm very good, thank you. Looking forward. Me too. Let's get going and see who you are. Tell us a little bit . We are laughing already before, which is always good. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

[00:00:20] Who are you and how did you get to where you are? . 

[00:00:23] Sure. My background is, I, I founded more than 24 companies in all different industries. Uh, everything from b2b, b2c, b2, b2c, and everything in between. Uh, consumer goods, manufacturing, SaaS, you name it. Uh, my consumer goods products have been sold in more than 11,000 stores in 23 countries and users of my tech products, I have in more than 148 countries.

[00:00:48] And currently I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Gusher. 

[00:00:52] Yeah. And I'm really eager to learn more about Gusher, but we will take that later. Sure. 20, 24 companies. How did you do this? You're not 20. You're, you're not 240 years old. How did you do all 

[00:01:06] of that? Well, I think your math is off there, Jens.

[00:01:08] It doesn't take 10 years to do a company, but I mean, really, I started off very young. Uh, some of the companies in the beginning stages had, you know, some type of relation to each other. Uh, but I always liked starting companies. I try to never do the same company twice. Uh, it just bores me and I like to do new things that, uh, you know, or old things in a different way, uh, is what I like to do.

[00:01:33] Te tell us what was the worst one? From a financial perspective, 

[00:01:37] oh, the worst one from a financial perspective, uh, would probably be also the best one from a financial perspective. So they're one and the same. Uh, I had the largest low carbohydrate food manufacturer in the world, so started with nothing, uh, ended up, uh, in a big way with almost nothing.

[00:01:59] Uh, but we went through a huge arc. It grew very, very rapidly. We became very, very big, and that was really the best and the worst, uh, of both worlds. 

[00:02:10] Did did you then sell most of the companies, or did, did you kind of just close them? 

[00:02:15] Typically what happens is, and, and some of 'em are purposely closed, so I'd estimate about 20, 30% of 'em were what I call like lifestyle companies.

[00:02:25] They were golden handcuffs. So for example, I had a business brokerage in New York and we grew that rapidly and we dominated the New York City market. Uh, but literally that every deal I had to be involved in. So it was only scalable to a point. And so with that company, that was more of close the doors move on.

[00:02:43] Uh, but about another third of 'em was basically really, uh, exits, just standardized exits. You reach a certain stage, a certain plateau, and you sell off to more of larger middle, uh, middle market companies or very large corporate entities, uh, depending upon the product. And the rest of 'em, about a third of 'em were really just kind of like in between.

[00:03:03] They were neither one thing nor another. They weren't just cut and dry. And so some of those operated for years, uh, and others just more or less were kind of like cut off when it didn't make sense. When the growth stagnated. 

[00:03:17] Awesome. Yeah, that must be fascinating. When you, when you started your first company, how was that?

[00:03:23] Cuz now you, you, you have so much under your belt that you, you know, what works and what doesn't. How did you get started in figuring things out? 

[00:03:31] Well, if you wanna go all the way back, Jens, I actually started a company when I was six years old. That, and I don't count that in my numbers. Okay. But I started a company selling, uh, flower seeds door to door on an Air Force base.

[00:03:44] But excluding that one, you know, how did I get started? I got started with nothing really in terms of my businesses. I always looked at some way to go ahead and generate cash flow some way that, that there was like a market aberration, there was a pain point. Uh, but my journey's always typically started with pain.

[00:04:02] Uh, there's some pain there that I'm trying to alleviate. Uh, there's some pain there that I'm trying to just make gone or make better in some way. So, you know, it's not like being an entertainer where you're trying to alleviate, uh, or make people laugh or something. I don't have that skill. Uh, but I do have the skill to go ahead and see pain points, uh, and to really create products and companies around those pain points specifically.

[00:04:27] Yeah. If, if we take that was it. Have you found out, uh, a way of how you solved these pain points? Or was it more kind of like a sport where you said, I will try this and I will make money with that? What was more the driver for you? 

[00:04:42] Let, let me get an example. That low carb company was literally me waking up one day.

[00:04:48] I had been on a low carb for years, and I just got so fucking frustrated and I wanted a blueberry muffin. I, I know that sounds absolutely crazy. Yeah. But that whole journey started with just me wanting a, a damn blueberry muffin. And I don't know if you can see, obviously on a podcast, but I get goosebumps when I talk about this story because that's how it almost always begins.

[00:05:12] It becomes with, with absolute frustration. And I personally reach a boiling point and I'm like, screw it. I'm gonna solve it. Uh, and I'm personally almost never the one to actually solve the specific science or the specific methodology or the specific how. Two, I'm great at finding those people, getting them to do what I want and then actually telling them what I want or, or, or figuring it.

[00:05:36] And they actually end up creating it as a team or as an individual or as a partnership. Uh, but I'm almost always never the one to sit there doing the bench chemistry on that one company. Uh, it took a while, but I knew that I needed a blueberry muffin cuz I had enough of bacon and eggs after years.

[00:05:53] That's how it started. 

[00:05:55] I, I get that. So I would love, love to dig deeper. How, how do you find the people or how did you do that in, in the old days? 

[00:06:04] Sure. Well, in the old, that company was done and it's, it's pretty funny because the template is almost still the same as it is now, but there's just different tools to use.

[00:06:14] So at the time there was the AOL membership. Okay, so.

[00:06:20] It's not like you have to go through all these layers. I teach founders that whoever you need, you can contact directly. And it may take a little bit of time, but you'll eventually get through. And that's really the key is just direct contact and head hunting, the right person. 

[00:06:35] So how did you head hunt this guy?

[00:06:37] So one part is getting connected to that person, talking to that. Most properly, like you said, you, you didn't have that much money to throw at the person to say, Hey, I hired you to give you a hundred thousand. I had no money to throw, whatever. And how did you, how did you convince him to work 

[00:06:51] with you?

[00:06:52] Well, this is the key. 

[00:06:54] When you're starting a company, you have to have extreme clarity of vision, and I knew what I wanted, all right? I didn't wanna sit there and build a billion dollar company. That wasn't the pitch. I didn't want to be all over the globe. That wasn't the pitch. And his name was Bob. I said, Bob, I, I just want a fucking low carb blueberry muffin, and it's gotta have less than three grams of carbohydrates and taste like a regular blueberry muffin.

[00:07:21] He's like, okay. He goes, I'll see what I can do. A month and a half later, we had a low carb blueberry muffin sitting right there, you know, at my home in a box that he shipped off, uh, UPS next day. And that's it. I mean, the convincing part really comes from. A founder being authentic as to what they're trying to do.

[00:07:41] Now, years later, when we had millions and millions of sales, I asked him, I asked Bob, you know, why, why did you say yes and you'd help me, you know, to this voice on the phone? Because we didn't even have video, uh, calls or anything like that. And he said a simple phrase that really is the reason that people do this.

[00:08:00] He said, you asked for help. You needed help. He goes, and I could give you help. So I just did it. That that's literally what, what launched that company. And that's the way that those companies come together. 

[00:08:14] Fascinating. , you asked for help and authentically ask for help. People want to help you. 

[00:08:22] Huh? I I'm interested even deeper into this.

[00:08:26] So you, you asked 500 people. 

[00:08:31] Oh yeah, it was, it was a bad road to start. Sure. 

[00:08:34] I just talked to, to someone I coach today, and she was, she was saying early morning and it's like, oh, I'm so frustrated. I talked to 10 people and all of them said, no, 10 people and 500 just to, I mean, it's a different topic, but it's, it's a different perspective.

[00:08:52] What, what is, what is your view on 

[00:08:53] that? Well, here is my thing, and if I was talking to that person, I'd say this, that's a great start, but you haven't started doing the real numbers. All right. You sometimes have to put up a, a hell of a lot of shots to get one in, and this is the way I view it. The more pushback that I get on any idea, the, the more that it's a lightning rod where people saying no, or tell me to go f myself or they don't get it, or whatever it may be, that means I'm onto.

[00:09:22] Okay. So I've always operated that way that if people went ahead and said, no, no, no, no. I don't care how many people it takes to, I'll, I'll do the numbers. I will sit there, I'll get up at five and I'll start making the numbers, the calls, emails, whatever it may be, and I'll go until I get what I want. Uh, when people tell me, oh, you're onto something, oh, that's a great idea.

[00:09:41] Oh, whatever scares me shitless. Uh, because it means typically that I'm after the curve. And so I'd rather be before the curve when people really don't want something and it takes me longer to push because then I can own or dominate the market. 

[00:09:56] Yeah, I would love to go into kind of like a case study. So I, I left the, the corporate well in 2019 and started like, Hey, let's.

[00:10:08] Get, I want to build my first business. Yep. I know a lot of people right now, specifically, let's say post covid, a lot of people thinking about this and are a little scared of, yeah, I can't fund this. I can't figure this out. What would be your approach helping someone who is saying, I'm a corporate person.

[00:10:28] I know how it works in the corporate world. I have a little bit of savings. I, I, I, let's say I will survive the next six months. What, what will, what advice would you give to that person willing to start a. . 

[00:10:41] First of all, I'd say this, I'd say 

[00:10:43] you don't need a penny Up until about the 10 million in sales volume level, regardless of industry, uh, you don't need a penny and you don't believe that.

[00:10:51] I won't go into detail, uh, right here and now, but you don't need a cent. Okay? Number two, never touch the savings. Never touch the savings for the business. The reason is because the business has to operate on its own two legs, okay? Period. Uh, whether you're getting investors or whether you're not getting investors, I personally don't believe in that road.

[00:11:11] Uh, but you know, you don't touch the savings ever. You don't use that to fund the business. The third thing is you have to set a standard from the very beginning, and this is important. You have to set the standard that this is either going to become self-sustaining. All right. Meaning that it's gonna be something that generates revenue can support itself from almost the very beginning, or you're gonna go down the capital raise road, which I don't suggest, but it's gotta be one or two of those.

[00:11:41] Self-sustaining or capital raising. It can't be a black hole research deal where you're there and gonna have to then draw on those savings after six months. You're, you have to create a product, create a service in a timeframe within less than six months to generate revenue hard and fast revenue. 

[00:12:01] Yeah.

[00:12:02] Interesting. Because I know someone, and that's not myself, , but a little bit myself as well, maybe. Sure. But no, I know someone who, who got the opportunity to do a, like a spin out of a big corporation and he was taking this over as the CEO of the startup, which is like going from, uh, I think it was 20,000 people company to starting, uh, a startup for the company.

[00:12:28] Which was just funded by the company. Yep. And the tricky thing, they started without revenue. And three year, three years later, zero revenue 

[00:12:39] still. Yep. Because hear me out. What, what happens with a company is whatever standard you set is the timeframes and everything that you set from the very beginning, the company is gonna expand to fill it.

[00:12:53] All right? I can't always forget what that law is called, but it, whenever you go ahead and give a timeframe, like let's say I give a timeframe of a year, well guess what? Then it's gonna take a year to go ahead and fill it up. If I say I'm giving myself 30 days, okay? You wouldn't believe how your brain operates when you shorten that timeframe down to almost nothing.

[00:13:13] Okay. When you say that you have to generate revenue, when you say that you have to meet this standard, you know, but on the other side, with the corporate thing there, you know, that person kind of did a wild thing because they did an entrepreneur instead of an entrepreneur. Yeah. Uh, they went ahead and used a company basically as almost in a way their anchor, their way to go ahead and get out there.

[00:13:35] But what they didn't do, probably they didn't get third party validation. And unfortunately, that's what happens when you do that. You're not talking to the market, you're not interacting with the market. So usually the products that are created, the company that is created, it's DNA is not market driven.

[00:13:53] And so unfortunately, that result in much higher failure rates when they go that route. And that's why, you know, we're kind of like, eh, when we look at something like that, 

[00:14:03] Yeah. And it's, it's finely enough, but they just closed it, I think last year, so Yep. Didn't work after almost 

[00:14:10] five years. Yeah. But it worked for him.

[00:14:11] He got three years worth of paycheck. 

[00:14:14] Yes. And tons of learning. Yeah. I think that's also very interesting for him as a person. It's super, super learnings because you basically glow the entrepreneurship route. You, you do kind of the the University of entrepreneurship in a safe environment. 

[00:14:33] Yeah. But also see, but you said something there that I actually, I'm not gonna disagree with, but I'm gonna go a little bit deeper.

[00:14:40] You said in a safe environment, There shouldn't be a safe environment. Agree. Yeah. That's kind of the point. See, you, you have to wake up and feel that fear you, because that fear forces you out of your comfort zone and makes you do stuff that you don't wanna do. That have to be done as an entrepreneur.

[00:15:03] When you're sitting there at 5:00 AM on a Monday morning wanting to vomit because you have a great day ahead of you, meaning that there's the fog of war. This stuff isn't defined and you have to quote unquote, make it happen out of nothing. Well, guess what? That's called the furnace in, in my opinion, we call it the furnace because when you face that in a startup as a founder, day after day after day, it either fries you up and turns you to ash, or you fundamentally turn into a different person, into a different company, into a product that actually sells and it's necessary.

[00:15:39] It's part of the process. Yeah. 

[00:15:43] It's, it's interesting because I have experience for myself as well now do, doing this for three years in different ways. Yep. Um, more in a consulting business, specifically in, in the beginning and now started couple of weeks. Uh, a real startup where I said, I'm not throwing money at it at all.

[00:16:00] Which I did in one of the first tries, and tried to solve it through money. Um, that's how you do it when you come from corporate. Yep. But it's, it's, it's very interesting because I agree this, this challenging, whereas there's no money. You need to figure it out and you are not putting a single Euro, in my case, into it just to solve it, just to get to the next level because the next level is not true.

[00:16:24] Next level, it's just kind of an artificial next level which you create with your 

[00:16:29] money. Well, you know, I, I, this has been said in, in a couple different ways from different people. There's a difference between resources. And resourcefulness. Okay, so when I say that a founder doesn't need a freaking penny for the first 10 million of sales, I quite literally do mean that, but I don't mean that they can just sit around twiddling their thumbs and hoping that it happens.

[00:16:58] What I mean is that they have to do things, meaning typically just what we're doing right now, just talking to different people to be able to get. Them to help to be able to get their resources, to be able to put their resources to work for them. It's not that you need resources, you need resourcefulness.

[00:17:18] You need to figure ways of getting what you want. If you need marketing and distribution, well guess what? There's people that have these contact lists that already have the audiences that already have the people that you need. One of our companies went ahead, uh, and, and in a period of 30 days, they were able to go ahead and do something like 12 times the amount of sales volume they did the previous year by simply using some influencers that had more poll than they did.

[00:17:45] So they didn't cut a check, they didn't do anything like that. They didn't pay the influencers, they just cut 'em in on their. All right. They, they made 'em as part of their deal based upon, you know, if it worked, they would get a piece of the deal and it worked. And guess what? They got a piece of the deal that, that's using your resourcefulness, you know, it's, it's not using cash to make it hap happen.

[00:18:07] It's using your voice, it's using you, your authenticity and really what you're trying to build has to be a good enough. , 

[00:18:16] yeah. Talk, talking about these mistakes, what, what are common mistakes you have seen with other founders, specifically? First time founders? 

[00:18:23] Yeah. I, I'm gonna say this and I, I don't believe necessarily in the cult of hustle.

[00:18:30] Okay. But you touched on it right off the bat. You said you were talking to a founder and make context. Oh, it didn't work, whatever else. The, the first thing that I always run into with founders is they give up way too early. Doing the, the small steps, meaning that, okay, they go ahead and they make a certain amount of contacts, let's say 10 contacts, when in fact they have to make 5,000 contacts.

[00:18:54] They have to make 10,000 outbounds to be able to get that momentum. So I come from old school, wall Street, where we did, you know, a thousand, 2000 dials a day. And so, you know, reaching out to voluminous amounts of people one on one is never a big deal for me. Okay. That's number one. But also, this is the key that founders.

[00:19:14] That I find is the most failure, but it's tied to that, is that they don't typically do the sales validation. So you may have a founder, and the founder may be a technical founder, and they sit there creating this great technical product with their technical team, but guess what? They're not making the calls.

[00:19:33] They're not interacting with the market from the very beginning. I'm talking like the very beginning, and validating the sales. And so the founder may be the worst person in the world that's sales, but they don't realize that to a buyer, they are a superhuman because they are a founder. So they're put in a different pedestal.

[00:19:51] They don't have to be the best salesman. They have to just get on the phone. They have to take the meetings, take the video calls, and make sales themselves. That is key. They have to make the damn sales. 

[00:20:03] Yeah. And do you, do you then say they need to interact in general with the market or with targeted potential customers who want to buy the product or whatever they 

[00:20:14] do?

[00:20:15] I'd say both. So let me give you an example. I, if you're an e-commerce company, it's very difficult to have the interactions with buyers because it's more of a passive type of relationship. You put up this site, you try to go ahead and do the analytics and people order and you say, okay, well if they're going down this funnel versus this funnel, well this funnel made more sense.

[00:20:34] But I still think that that is a very, uh, almost in a way as backwards system. The way that they should be doing is talking with whoever those target markets are talking with, whoever the, the, what I call the vested interest market. That's the people that have the most to gain from the success or failure of their product.

[00:20:52] And I mean, really spending time with them at all different stages. I mean, I have yet to find a company where the founders and it turned into a big company, didn't have interactions with the customers at a base level, almost nonstop. Interacting with customers is a never ending process. It's a never ending process.

[00:21:14] Yeah. 

[00:21:14] And I, I, I, I have seen it from, so I worked in Ikea and the, the founder of Ikea, when he was still alive with, I think he was 80 something years. He still interacted with customers on, maybe not daily base, but quite often to get the understanding of, Hey, what do you think about this product? What do you think about that idea?

[00:21:37] On, on a regular base, which is quite fascinating. 

[00:21:40] Yeah. But, but also there's a reason he did that and not just for the obvious hoe to make the business better and whatever. It's that it is the quickest way to get data. And I mean real data, not just, Hey, here's this data I'm talking about human interaction.

[00:21:55] Like right now we see each other, all right? We see body language, we hear each other's intonations. And when you're dealing with a customer, there's a difference between, yeah, I kind of like that product versus, yeah, I kind of like that product. You know, they're two very different things. They have different meanings and just data sets don't explain that.

[00:22:14] Interacting with customers face to face, hearing them, seeing them is, is invaluable. I mean, it is. The shortest path to success is interaction with customers. 

[00:22:23] Yeah, the person I talked to this morning would say, yeah, but I don't know where to find them. I only found 10. What would you say to them? 

[00:22:32] I'd say, you're not doing your job and if you only found 10, then you have a serious small ass market and you should think about getting to something else.

[00:22:39] Uh, that's really it because what you're trying to do is, is product market fit, which is the ass backwards way of creating a company. You shouldn't create a company that's in search of product market fit. What you do is create something that has product market fit that people are screaming for, that there's a defined problem, that there's a defined market to go after.

[00:23:01] You don't do it the other way around. That's the way venture capital companies are, are, uh, fund their companies and that's why they have a massive failure rate. You don't do it that way, you do it the other way. Get your damn product market fit from the very beginning before you. And, 

[00:23:15] and then, so we, we just talked before we started recording, um, about LinkedIn, and that is, uh, an awesome network in making connections.

[00:23:24] How, how do you, how do you advise someone who is into LinkedIn like we both are and getting into this connection? So I've had maybe giving you a bad example, at least from my perspective, a person sending me, uh, an email through, I dunno how it's called, through to the, um, promotional tool of, um, LinkedIn and then just saying, Hey, I want to sell you this.

[00:23:46] So it's not about the interaction, it's more about the sales straight away. 

[00:23:51] Yeah. So you wanna know the right way to do it? Yes. . Okay. There's a way. I've got a 99, I wanna say, plus percentage on penetration. I'm gonna say how to do it. Most people are not gonna do it because, a, it takes time, and B, it's not writing a message.

[00:24:09] All right. So basically the way to do it is, first of all, you have to start with asynchronous video messaging, something like. All right. Uh, where you're gonna create a personalized message. Number two, you actually have to do homework on the person. So if you're raising money or trying to seek funds, or whether you're trying to go ahead and get them to do whatever it is, you need to have some type of background on them, some point of commonality that you can talk about or bring up.

[00:24:36] They may have made a post, you may comment on that to show them that you've actually done the one-on-one, the customized, uh, leg work, because you and I both know, we get 20, 30, 40, 50 plus messages a day from people that want to connect, and then they instantly wanna sell to you instantly. And the ones that get my attention, the ones, Hey Chris, I saw your post about blah, blah, blah.

[00:24:59] You mentioned this. I'd love to discuss it with you. Or, Hey, Chris, you know, you said this and commented on this other one. I'd love to discuss it with you. It's the personal, it's to know that they're a human. Because honestly, 99% of the other ones are bots. There's automated ways of doing it, and that's how they automat.

[00:25:16] Yeah, 

[00:25:17] I, I love this because I know a lot of startups doing it the wrong way. 

[00:25:22] Yeah. Oh yeah. Well also, also that goes with capital raising and investors. Uh, quite literally, you can take a mass approach. You can purchase these lists of 10, 20, 50, a hundred thousand investors, send out a mass email and good luck.

[00:25:38] Or you can take the time and you whale hunt and whale hunting is fundamentally different than trying to cast just a net. But in the beginning stages, and this is what they've gotta understand, the non-scalable stuff, the stuff that can't be scaled, that is the path to scalable stuff. It doesn't mean you're always gonna be doing it, it doesn't mean that you're gonna go ahead and build your company and that's your one method.

[00:26:05] It means that those methods lead to the scalable stuff 

[00:26:10] go deeper into this. So can you give an examples? On what is scalable, what is not. . 

[00:26:17] Sure. So think of it this way. Let's say you're, you're going ahead, uh, and you're interacting with customers, okay? In the beginning stages, you're interacting with customers and you're selling directly to those As a founder is not having a sales process, is not having a sales team, is not having a marketing budget, is not having any of these things.

[00:26:38] But what it does get you is the following. It gets you initial revenue. It gets you the, the script, the words, the things that have to be said in order to now bring other salespeople in to start building off of your processes. People, founders, especially, they don't realize that you don't bring a, a, a chief sales officer in or a vice president of sales to just go sell your product.

[00:27:05] They sell it. Once you have a proven methodology, then they can build an organization around that. So one of our founders I'm looking at is product right now. I shouldn't bring that up, but like he would go into, actually I will. All right. So Matt Peterson, who runs a company called Smooch, all right? That's third generation product.

[00:27:25] He had a great methodology. He, he would go to these surf events and he'd talk to the people and he'd hear back from them what their objections were. He'd physically see who the people are that's buying his market versus these imaginary personas that don't exist. Yeah. He'd be able to know, hey, it's sold in these areas, which are this income level.

[00:27:46] That was the basis for him. Now, building up and scaling and going into larger chains and everything else, he gets the messaging correct. 

[00:27:55] I love that because a lot of people like myself coming from corporate, you have read all the books, , like you, you know all the different tools, but you, you try to do it with the theory, not with the practical.

[00:28:09] This is what I say in the beginning stages, Jen. The beginning stages. Okay. There is no standardization that you can do that applies in the corporate world. It is quite literally the fog of war. You try to standardize it, but it's kind of like you're driving in this, in this very thick fog, hoping that you're not gonna hit anything.

[00:28:34] And after a while you get better and the fog starts thin and out and you get better and your lights turn on and you get better. Now you can go faster. And now before you know, if the fog's lifted, well guess what? That's cuz you graduated to the next level. But there is no shortcut in the beginning stages of doing that.

[00:28:49] The stuff that you aren't in corporate is standardized. I mean, managing a business and starting a business are fundamentally two very, very different things. Very different. 

[00:29:02] So if we, if we take this, how, how do you think about building the product first or finding the marketing opportunity first? 

[00:29:12] I, I believe this.

[00:29:13] Okay. , I think that they go extremely hand in hand. I fundamentally don't believe in product development before proving the market out. So how the hell do you do that? Okay. There are ways to do it. So we quite literally have created and sold products and companies into chains like Walmart, into chains, like Target, into chains like cvs, Walgreens, whatever it may.

[00:29:38] By doing a very simple thing. We either put a website up with basically fake copy, fake renderings, fake everything, or we send a one page thing to the targeted buyer as to what the product is. They go ahead and either we start getting meetings. Or we don't. If we start getting meetings and a meeting set up three months, six months, nine months from now, well then we create an mvp.

[00:30:01] Then we create something specifically for that, and we're able to get our, our products created based upon knowing that there is a product demand. If buyers are taking the meetings, if people are, that you're on a website, are purchasing the product, even though there's no product there, you know that there's something there, why the hell would anyone go ahead and spend all this time creating a platform, creating a system, creating a consumer good, creating a SaaS product, whatever the hell it is, without having buy your validation.

[00:30:31] And I don't mean your mom, I don't need your uncle. I don't mean, you know, your, your business partner that you've been in business with. I'm talking about cold, cold, third party validation. You need to have that Absolutely. Before you create a company. How 

[00:30:46] much, when it comes to the validation, is it 20? Is it hundred?

[00:30:51] Is it. 

[00:30:54] I think that it depends upon the company. So if it's something like a SaaS company, their buy cycles are so long, it may be nine months, 18 months to get a sale, all right? But there's one thing about a SaaS company that once you get your first customer, you're gonna get your second, third, fourth physics, seven days.

[00:31:14] So with a SaaS company, I'd say, okay. Get one, one customer, two, hopefully. And then you have sales validation. One is in sales validation two is three. Definitely. Now you've got momentum starting to build. Okay? With a consumer company, it's the opposite. Okay? Uh, you need to have a hundred, 200 orders there.

[00:31:32] You need to have something there. So if I'm dealing with a $20 product, up to $200 product, I need to see a couple hundred freaking orders there before you go ahead and create it and before you go into it. Now, here's the thing about consumer goods. Consumer goods either are getting the messaging right from the very beginning or you're gonna see nothing.

[00:31:49] So it's not, it's not like you're gonna get one or two orders. It typically doesn't work that way. Mm-hmm. , when you get the messaging right, suddenly it's gonna start taking off. And that's important cuz messaging is everything. Branding is everything on a consumer good. 

[00:32:02] Agree. Investing. So you have validated, you got the first sales, you have maybe your first two clients, customers, and or have sold, let's say a couple of hundreds of whatever you produce.

[00:32:15] Yep. You, you're still, let's, let's even take a step earlier. You, you have zero money. You said you're not spending any money into the business. Maybe you have created a website just to let, let's say a lending page, which costs you, I dunno what costs it, $20 or whatever, maybe 50. If, if you're very simple.

[00:32:34] How did, how did you get any funding early on? 

[00:32:38] Well, I, I didn't have funding early on, but let me explain how I did it. But this is gonna be a simple explanation, but it's gonna be, it crosses industries. I mean, every damn industry. So when I end up starting the food company, I had 1200 bucks to my name, okay?

[00:32:55] The low carb food company. I mean, I had literally nothing. I had a software company beforehand. I got sick of it and literally just liquidated. I had 1200 bucks to my name cuz I went through all my savings, everything else. Well, figuring out the next idea, all right. Never did I think I'd go into the hardware manufacturing.

[00:33:11] What ended up happening is, and. I don't, I'm not making the shit up. I ended up going ahead and looking at factory space. All right? And the guy who owned the building was a food. Machine manufacturer for some of the largest companies out there. So I start talking to him about this, and sure enough, he just gets it.

[00:33:33] He got it. All right. So I ended up getting space, all right. That guy later ended up becoming a big investor, you know, a year and a half, two years later after I got it going. But what you start to see is if you're building the company like that from the beginning, how do you do it without money? I said something earlier that is the key vested interest market.

[00:33:54] Who are the people that have the most to gain from the success or failure of your company? So you come from the corporate world, alright? I deal with the corporate world, although I'm not corporate. So if I'm creating a startup like let's say a food company, Who are the vested interest players in that food company?

[00:34:14] Well, you've got all the different ingredients companies, you've got flavor companies, you have the sweetener companies, depending upon whatever artificial or whether it's sweet. You have the baking equipment companies, uh, you have, um, the food, the packaging, uh, packaging, uh, materials, everything else. So right off the bat, you've got at least 6, 7, 8 different players or key players, minimum, that basically what you do is you can start bringing them into your deal.

[00:34:42] Now, that may be in the term of going ahead and getting your initial manufacturing done. That may be your initial supplies. That may be, Hey, do they have any excess, uh, machinery that's not being used to help you get off the ground? There's all these different ways of doing it, but trust me when I say this, everything that you need to get a company going, somebody else has.

[00:35:04] They're gonna be willing to help you because it's doing nothing right now sitting there, whether it's excess capacity of labor, or whether it's a physical good, or whether it's a packaging line that's at 80% capacity, well, guess what? They willing to take a risk. A lot of 'em are, yeah, a lot. 

[00:35:22] And that, bridging that to, to our first discussion part, that means contacting all of them, as many as possible, to find out who has the 20% excess cap.

[00:35:33] But also what it does is, if you remember when we went back to the, the very beginning of how do you get people interested? You were like, okay, well how did you find that, that food chemist? And I went through the routine and told you what I did, but I also talked about my messaging. I said, Hey, I just needed help.

[00:35:48] I want a fucking low carb blueberry muffin. Well, believe it or not, that pitch resonated with him. Okay? It, it spoke to him. And so what it is, if you can't get these, the vested interest market interested in your deal, it's one of two things. The startup idea sucks. It just completely sucks. Or the way you're telling it, the, the way that, that you're explaining it sucks in either event.

[00:36:14] Both those, both those things are gonna kill you. So you can always make your pitch, if you wanna call it that better, your story better. But if you're not able to get, uh, somebody and your story ends up, uh, being crafted or good, or you're authentic, I'd go ahead and think about doing something else because it's gotta be able to resonate with somebody.

[00:36:32] And if you're having that much trouble resonating with the people that have the most to gain, imagine how hard it's gonna be to penetrate the market. . Yeah. It's 

[00:36:40] very hard. Very hard. Is that a, a skill? You can learn what, especially you, you work with a lot of startups and a lot of founders, do you train them on how to do that?

[00:36:50] Or is it natural? , 

[00:36:51] uh, it, it's two things. You have to train them to forget what they've seen on, uh, these pitch explanations and go back to what they knew as a 3, 4, 5, 6 year old. So, Jens, you're not an American, okay? You didn't grow up in the us So I'm gonna say a couple things to you, and this is how I explain it to them.

[00:37:14] There's these three stories, all right? And so I go, you fill in the blank. And I go, I'm just gonna say these three phrases. And I go, I think I can, I think I can. I, and then always they say, think I can. And I'm like, right. That's the, that's the little red engine that could, it's about a train going up a hill.

[00:37:32] I then say, okay, I will huff. I will puff. And I. They all say, blow your house down. And I'm like, right. I go, beautiful. That's the three, uh, three pigs and a big bad wolf, right? I then say, okay, it's time for graduate school and pitching. Okay? I will not eat them in a box. I will not eat them with a, and they say, Fox, I will not eat them here or there.

[00:37:55] I will not eat them. And they say anywhere. And then I say, I will not eat green eggs and ham. I will not eat them. And they jump in. Sam, I am, I've done this in front of audiences. By the end of it, all the people are saying literally the words, okay, because that's Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss is the greatest pitchman there ever was.

[00:38:15] So here's what you have to know as a founder. Just be a. Tell your fucking story simply, all right? If you just want a low car blueberry muffin, say you fucking want a low car blueberry muffin. That's it. I mean, you don't need all this other bullshit. Say what you're looking to build. If you wanna create, I don't know, the greatest startup engine in the world, then just say that, you know, you don't need all these complex pitch decks.

[00:38:40] Uh, Jens, if I'm gonna go create a hamburger company, all right, I'm creating a hamburger company, what's the first thing I'm gonna do? If I, if I'm dealing with an investor, what's the first thing I'm gonna do? I'm creating a new hamburger company. 

[00:38:54] I dunno. Go, go out for hamburgers together. Are, 

[00:38:57] are we right?

[00:38:57] I'm gonna get them goddamn hamburger. I'm not gonna give them a pitch deck. I'm not gonna give them a summary. I'm not gonna give them a pdf. I'm not gonna tell about the hamburger. I'm gonna give 'em a fucking hamburger so they can taste it. Well, there's ways to do that with every business. I don't care if it's sas, I don't care if it's a medical device, I don't care what it is.

[00:39:19] Uh, there are ways to do that. That's their job as founder. So, 

[00:39:24] uh, the now comes the corporate world. Again, the person from who comes from MBA school will tell you, but the, the investors, they all want to see the pitch deck before they even talk. . 

[00:39:36] Yeah. Well, they're, they're just not your investors. They're not the right investors for you.

[00:39:41] And now hear me out on this. What they're really saying is the following, the VCs and, and, um, and v and uh, angel investors that are standardized, want my deal a certain way. Now, what they don't realize is okay, they want those deals a certain way so they can put it down their funnel so they have the least interaction and they look at it as a commodity.

[00:40:02] Well, I don't want my business looked as, as a commodity, and I don't give a fuck whether or not a VC wants it a certain way because their chances of investing in my deal are a minimum one in a thousand, literally one in a thousand. Most of 'em, it's way higher than that, even in terms of the odds against you.

[00:40:21] So Jens, you're a guy that does, uh, sports, that does intense shit, okay? Would you play a game? Would you play a game where you had a one in thousand chance of winning it? Day in and right. Find out. So why are you playing this game? Play a different game. Make your own damn rules. Do it your way. 

[00:40:43] I love that.

[00:40:44] That's so non corporate. That's why. Why? I love it. . 

[00:40:48] Now hear me out. Our best founders have been previously corporate middle management. See, there is something in that crazy right. 

[00:40:58] How, how is it that, that I, I just read the other day, there's a statistic that people who are above 40 are more likely to, uh, succeed with startups dramatically.

[00:41:09] Yeah. Yeah. Why? 

[00:41:11] What is the reason? Um, I, I, I think it's a couple reasons. One, Uh, it's again, the furnace, right? They've been through shit, all right? Uh, they know that shit doesn't kill them. Uh, once you, you're, you're around, you've had kids, you've had a little bit of a life, you realize that it's just part of the process.

[00:41:28] Uh, good times come bad times come so long as you keep going, you go, all right. And also being able to suck down and take shit day in and day out is a lot of what the corporate world is. So, you know, you've learned to delay gratification and take crap for the better good, uh, whether it's your family or your kids, or, you know, dealing with lifestyle.

[00:41:47] That's, that's a choice. And guess what? That's something that gets valuable when you go ahead and become a founder. Uh, but also the other thing is, I think that because of that, the patience that's required to go ahead and do a startup the right way, it doesn't really. Freak people out from the corporate world.

[00:42:07] Now there's an unknown there, but once they take that leap in terms of the startup world, then they're just dealing with something new. It's exciting so they can handle all the other bullshit. So long as you can get 'em through what to do, they just don't necessarily know what to do next. 

[00:42:22] I think that's, that's, that's the biggest challenge.

[00:42:24] How do you help people in this situation, what to do next? To find out how, how they get started, how they get into it. They might even not have a pain point yet. Like you said, you start with a pain. Um, I'd 

[00:42:37] say this, uh, first of all, I think that's bullshit. I think everybody has a pain point. Um, everybody wakes up.

[00:42:43] Uh, everybody if they go ahead and do some self-reflection on their day, they come across shit left and right, the, it's just the ability to go ahead and accept that shit and say, oh, I've got no pain, and everything's rosy and perfect. That's just bullshit as a human being. You deal with pain points almost every damn hour on the hour.

[00:43:02] So maybe those interest you, maybe they don't. Um, I think that there's a big mistake when it comes to, to finding one's passion first. Um, I think that necessarily passion comes second when you're doing a business, meaning that you start a business and then it progressively grows on you to where you get passionate.

[00:43:20] But as for the pain point, everybody's got a pain point or multiple pain 

[00:43:24] points. Yeah, I agree. Especially when you come from corporate . Oh, . Let's, let's, let's talk about, um, gusher. I would love to love you to share a little bit as, as well about gusher. So what, what is gusher. 

[00:43:41] Sure. Gusher is a platform to launch companies without the need for capital, without the need for investors.

[00:43:48] People join your company in exchange for performance based equity. They don't get a damn thing in the company unless the company is able to achieve its goals, able to achieve its objectives. So what I say to founders is the following, if you had a million or 2 million in the bank account right this second, what type of company would you build?

[00:44:08] How would you build it? And then gusher that, because we do it all day, every day. 

[00:44:15] So 1 million at the bank account. But you don't use the 1 million, right? Right. 

[00:44:19] No, you, you don't need anything. You don't need zero. We provide the structure, uh, we provide the knowhow, we provide the hand holding, and we help you get it done.

[00:44:28] And we've got greater than an 80% success rate where these companies become either self-sustaining and or attract larger scale capital, which is unbeatable. 

[00:44:38] Yeah. , let's take me as an example. So I founded this startup, which is eight weeks old, and I've zero about the technology, but it, I, I foresee that there's an opportunity building a platform.

[00:44:50] So I, I'm, I'm looking for example, for a technical person that can help developing the first kind of prototypes. Sure. How would I use gusher as 

[00:45:00] an. Okay, well, let me tell you how I do it and what we would typically say to a founder. Okay? Uh, first of all, you definitely need a cto. Okay? You need a cto, a chief technology officer to architect the system, but you also need a front end, back end and probably a u i UX designer to go ahead and develop the flows.

[00:45:20] And really, obviously, the front end takes a certain amount of skillset, backend takes another. So at a minimum, you need those to create the technical solution, but you don't wanna create just a technical solution. You need to have the human element in there from the very beginning. So more importantly, uh, Jens, what I tell, uh, people that are developing that type of company is you are not a tech.

[00:45:45] You are a marketing company, and because you are a marketing company, you have to take that into consideration from day one. So you need a chief marketing officer, you need a chief marketing officer to identify the low hanging fruit, the path to initial monetization so that you can become self sustain.

[00:46:05] Not this long term growth model and everything else, which you may end up being, but to get you a path to that first revenue, you need a creative director to be able to go ahead and figure out the voice, how to go ahead and resonate with that market. Okay, you need a, a, um, uh, chief Sales Officer, chief Rev, revenue Officer, biz Dev, something like that, just to be able to act as a third party validator with you in the sales process.

[00:46:32] Okay? Now, if you heard me earlier, I said, a founder always needs to do sales validation. You need to absolutely do that. But also there's certain people out there in Biz Dev in your vertical, most likely, that have a contact base of customers already there. So you can go ahead and test some of what you're doing with a third party with another person on your team to get that going.

[00:46:53] And then you always need something like, um, you need to have a CFO not to go ahead and do your transactions, not to do your books or anything like that, but as a rainmaker, cfo, Why, because most people go ahead and think of raising capital as, oh, hey, we've got a guy in the garage or two guys in the garage.

[00:47:13] We send out our pitch deck and we magically have financing and, and get a, a, an investor to fund us, and we're off to the races. That's the fairytale. The reality is that you deal with investors, you hear nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Then you have to give updates, and then you give more updates and more updates and more updates, and then suddenly maybe an investor gets warm and hot and gets interested in your deal while a CFO is there to go ahead and really just facilitate a lot of that and take a lot of the work off on you.

[00:47:41] So at a minimum, you need 6, 7, 8 different people to create, not an mvp, a minimum viable product, but to create a market viable product to leapfrog generational development so that you're self sustaining from the very beginning and or attract larger scale capital. And that's really the way to do it. 

[00:48:03] So how, how do I find the right people using gusher?

[00:48:06] Sure. Well, the first thing is we have a community of 30,000 people plus. All right? It's growing more every day. But really it's based upon what your pitch is and how you put it up on gusher. Okay. So when a person comes on to gusher, they create a deal. They create their startup, they explain what they're doing, everything else like that.

[00:48:25] But we have a saying on Gusher that one plus one does not equal. one plus one equals done. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that if you're able to attract one person, all it takes is one person for performance based equity into your company. The deal's done, meaning that the rest of the people will follow.

[00:48:46] Those are the companies that are able to go ahead and create the product, get it into the marketplace. Those are the companies that are able to attract capital for the next stages if they need it. It's really all comes down to your ability as a founder to recruit that one person. And we give you the flows of the people, and we help people go ahead and find your company.

[00:49:05] So if, if we take, take the example I've had, the, the person that's just getting started talking to 10 people, zero idea about anything, but a huge passion of trying to solve a problem. So how, how do you guide this? Through Gusher. Do, do they log in and try to find out how, how, how this works? Or do you have training documentation?

[00:49:28] Yeah, sure, sure. So they basically log into gusher, they create an account, it's free, doesn't cost anything. Uh, then what happens is they start building a startup draft. As they start building a startup draft. We have videos. Everything else appear automatically telling them what to do. But really what they end up doing is contacting one of our people here.

[00:49:46] We walk 'em through everything. We hold their hands. Uh, we basically take 'em through all the different steps. Once a founder is able to get that one person, Then suddenly the light bulb goes off, alright. And they're like, oh my God, this really can be done. Because in the beginning they're like, there's no way.

[00:50:03] And then sure enough, they start seeing that they can build a company this way to get it off the ground. It, it does work. And as they progress that the issues get more complex. So if they need us in, uh, at CES in Las Vegas to close the ex-chairman of Silicon Valley Bank on their deal, which we've done, uh, we'll do it if they need us in the middle of Wisconsin in the wintertime, uh, to help close a manufacturer, uh, to get involved with their deal.

[00:50:29] We've done it. We'll do whatever it takes. Uh, if they go ahead and, and need somebody on Saturday morning at 3:00 AM because their production run went bad because the wrong honey was delivered and they ended up using it, well, we're the people to call and we help 'em walk it through it. So we we're, we're very involved in our companies.

[00:50:48] So you're, you're helping founders to find people that, that. Basically work for equity for free in the beginning, at least as we don't 

[00:50:59] say free, because that's some of the most expensive equity there is. Meaning that when you deal with a startup, you know, you gotta look at it this way. As a founder, typically what we say is always try to keep a minimum of 80% of your company at the beginning stages.

[00:51:15] Cuz as you progress, as you proceed and go through the process, you know you can end up being upside down and disincentivized further rounds. So the point is to go ahead and retain as much equity as possible in the beginning, but when people join your company, they're not working for free. They are working for that equity, they're there to have a piece of the pie.

[00:51:35] So when they're able to achieve their goals as a team, the company is able to reach launch stage. Then and only then do they get their equity. But afterwards and everything else, they may stay on with your company. They may not, but the company is really there. It gives you away to get to that square one, to get you to bring your product and company to market.

[00:51:55] That's what Gusher is. Yeah. 

[00:51:58] Digging deeper. So, sure. You said they get paid or they, they get pieces of the company, which means they get cash only after you, you basically make profit, if I understand you right. So it's not before because they're, they, they need to get it to a level where it's profit and then you share the profit or later on, of course you will sell it.

[00:52:20] That might be a d. 

[00:52:22] Right, but also, also think about this, okay, so they're, they're equity players. It's what's called founder stock. They're considered part founders cuz they're helping you found the company. Now are they listed as that? No. Typically they're listed whatever their role is. But let me tell you how teams come together.

[00:52:37] So we have a company on Gusher, it's a dog food company, all right? And this dog food company, when he started out, uh, literally he brought in these big people that had managed 50 million budgets, a hundred million dollar budgets, you know, pretty sizable budgets. All right? The company, the team imploded around week six, weeks seven, okay?

[00:52:57] At six weeks actually. The second team that he created, he finally listened to me, went ahead and took off like a rocket, okay? A year later, they're worth more than 10 million. They're growing 30% month over month. They just got a 2500, 3500 store chain, uh, in the US and kicking butt. All right? His second team all had something in common.

[00:53:18] Gens. This is not a trick question. It's a dog food company. His first team didn't have this in common, his second team did. It's a dog food company. What do you think all of his team members had in common on the second team gens? I guess a dog more than that. They, they, they weren't like dog owners. They were dog parents.

[00:53:40] They didn't have kids. They ate dogs, breed dogs, live dogs, shit dogs. I mean, they were dog zealots. Those are the teams that come together. It's not transactional. They either fundamentally believe in what you're doing and where you're going and, and what you're looking to do, uh, or they're just not interested.

[00:53:57] So it's, those are the teams that happen. We have medical device companies that come together with people that are in the medical industry. We have electronics, uh, companies, manufacturing that. Okay. They're creating new devices and they're people that have worked with or are working with Apple, Google, whatever you name it, that make up their teams.

[00:54:15] So they're people that understand the industries that come together and help you build your company. 

[00:54:20] Yeah, I love that because it's not, there are a lot of places out there where you can hire people, freelancers, let's say like this. Yep. Who, who might be able to do similar things. But they're in for the short term.

[00:54:34] Yes. They're not in for the long run to say, Hey, let's build a company. It's more about, Hey, how can you pay me couple of bucks 

[00:54:41] and ask yourself this? And, and, well, you don't have to answer this, but how many people would go ahead and join a company with a salary? With a paycheck that they don't fundamentally believe it.

[00:54:52] Okay. The vast majority of people. Too many. Okay. How many people would join a company in exchange for performance based equity that they did not believe in? How many would join that? Yeah. Not too many. Right. So what you're able to do is to build a team of people that really get the mission and are really trying to get to where you need to go.

[00:55:14] That's what it comes 

[00:55:14] down to. That's a good one. Because in, in one of my first attempts, uh, couple of years back, I, I built a team and everyone was enthusiastic around the problem. , but I wasn't able to pay anyone and they haven't been seeing the long term horizon of that. So it was more, right. Yeah, I'm, I'm putting a little bit of my work in, but only when I have time, so I'm not really giving, giving my best and I know I'm not getting paid, so I need to find another job.

[00:55:44] So I go back to corporate. It's, 

[00:55:48] listen, if we're doing a scenario like that and you're a founder on Gusher, I tell you immediately rotate that. . Yeah, I was about right. Because, and that's the point with gusher, everything is fluid. You know, if a person's not pulling their weight and not doing it, then they've gotta go.

[00:56:05] Uh, the fact of matter things happen to, to different people. I get that. Okay. And sometimes they just can't do what they thought they would do. But even so, when you're building a startup, it's kind of like taking care of a baby. That baby's gotta get fed. That baby has to grow, that baby has to be taken care of.

[00:56:23] And hey, just because you can't get to it for a month, that's not acceptable for, for a baby or a startup. You, you couldn't treat a baby like that. So, you know, if they have problems or battle luck or whatever it may be, let's keep it there, uh, with that person and not bring it into the company. You know? So you'll learn real quickly to cut people.

[00:56:44] Yeah, I think. Very important skill, which, which you can't do that way as well when we talk about corporate . 

[00:56:51] Yeah. Well, I mean, it it, it's different with a startup. I mean, startups, you know, I, I believe in doing that face to face. I believe in just saying, Hey, it's not working out, but you know, you've gotta do what you've gotta do.

[00:57:02] And so the keeping that company moving is, is, is priority number one. Yeah. 

[00:57:09] I will definitely have a deeper look into gusher, I promise . Sure. Getting us into the last part of the podcast where I ask a couple of questions that I ask every guest. Okay. First question. If you can work with a project that is impacting every human being on earth, what project would you choose to work with and.

[00:57:30] Excluding Gusher, , 

[00:57:32] you can take gusher 

[00:57:33] as well. I, I, I'd say gusher, hands down. The, the reason is because I fundamentally believe that talent is spread evenly. Opportunity is not. And so we're solving that. And I think that for me, there's nothing greater than untapping human potential. Uh, the fat matter is all across the globe.

[00:57:53] Uh, people have ideas, but their, their potential is just untapped because they think they're stuck in catch 22 scenarios. And so by untapping that human potential, I think it can send ripples across the globe. Ripples across economies, ripples across humanity that I'm never even gonna see. And I think that that's pretty damn important, and that's, that's the best that I can do.

[00:58:17] Awesome. Next question. What advice would you give to a young innovator that's just getting out of university?

[00:58:29] There's two rules that I say, okay, I have deal rules that I follow, written a book, but never actually published it. Uh, but one of the deal rules is basically I am enough. Okay? So what that means is the following, if people are shitting upon you, if it's a bad scenario, if people with all the degrees and all these different patents and whatever it may be, are still telling you you're wrong, you have to trust in yourself that you're right, that you are enough to handle whatever the world throws at you.

[00:59:03] And that's something that comes in handy almost on a daily basis. So number one, I am enough. And number two, even if you don't have that, it comes down to one thing and it's very simple, uh, and it's nothing new, but never give. Never, never, never give up. Uh, so long as you keep moving and, and trying to iterate, you will get there.

[00:59:26] As an innovator, never give up whether 500 food chemists tell you to go f yourself or not, you never give up. 

[00:59:33] Yeah. So important in these days where we all seek the direct validation. Everything need to be yesterday. 

[00:59:42] I, I, I think there, listen, I, I'm right now in shoulder therapy for a frozen shoulder. Okay.

[00:59:48] And there's one thing that the doctor went ahead and said to do, we're going into therapy and everything else, and I'm sitting there on the verge of crying because of what he's doing to me. Okay? And instead of crying, I start laughing cuz he's not gonna get the best of me. But there, there's something that he said that's extremely interesting and I really do believe this.

[01:00:09] He said, Chris, go into the. Go into the pain. And so what he means by that is don't avoid it, search it out, go for the pain. And I think that applies to business as well. Uh, you go for the difficult stuff, you go for the stuff that nobody wants to do. I call it doing the shit. Uh, you do that shit for a reason because it adds up in the long run and nobody else wants to do it.

[01:00:32] So do the shit and go into the paint. 

[01:00:34] Love that. Last question, where do people find you and how can people reach out to you? 

[01:00:41] Sure. You can find me@gusher.co g u s h e r.co. I'm easily found there. I'm also easily found on the social networks, but I'm pretty big on LinkedIn. You can find me there. I'm, I'm easy to contact.

[01:00:53] I reply, I'm easy to go ahead and I'll be more than happy to help anybody out. Yeah. And 

[01:00:58] I can recommend everyone have a look at, uh, Chris's LinkedIn. There are a lot of cool videos and a lot of interactions there. So had to LinkedIn and check him out and of course to, to gusher. Chris, thank you. Thank you very much for your time.

[01:01:12] Was a pleasure having you on the show. 

[01:01:14] Oh, it's been my pleasure. It's a blast. Thank you. Thanks, Jen.