Why You Have to Attempt to Sell Before You Attempt to Scale w/ Launchpeer.com Founder Jake Hare

Audio Transcription

The founder and CEO of launchpeer joins us to share why he believes your startup idea is terrible until you validated and actually sell something. He also explains how he went from being homeless to hitting business home runs the common traits of successful startup founders. White coachability is the key to success as an entrepreneur, why it’s important to track your company’s numbers early on and why focusing on the legal aspects of your business, pre-product or pre-business or presales really doesn’t matter at all.

All right. Thrive nation. Welcome back to another exciting edition of the thrive time show on your radio and podcasts downloaded. On today’s show, we’re interviewing the founder and CEO of a company called LaunchPeer LaunchPeer, which is a company designed to help founders out there to turn their ideas into reality. Mr Jake, welcome onto the show. How are you, sir?

Great, thanks guys. I really appreciate you having me on.

Jake, your last name. Some people are asking, is it hair, is it Harry? How do you pronounce that last name? Mr Jake.

You know, I always say hair like a rabbit because that’s the easiest way to say it. Some people, I always get people to spell my name. H A I r on coffee cups and stuff. It’s h a r e dot. That’s the easiest way to remember it. Like a rabbit.

Okay. Hair like a rabbit. I want to clear that up and all the sudden listeners like, how do I say name? So Jake with your company launchpeer. I want to spend some time talking about that, but before we get into that, I’d like to talk about your background growing up. What was life like for you growing up as a kid?

Yeah, so I come from a really a low income household. My mom and dad split up when I was really, really young, so I was about four or five years old. Don’t you remember when it happened? But you know, growing up we were pretty low income. We were actually homeless for awhile. When I was a really early on in high school. I remember having to, um, my dad had a warehouse, he was a truck driver and we used to wash ourselves up in the sink of his, uh, truck warehouse, so we, you know, after school he took us up, we drive around the neighborhood until he knew everyone was out of work and Nolan was at the warehouse and we pull the car in a, it was like a little 1990 something Ford Contour that me and my little sister and my dad would all sleep in, but you pulled the car in a, we’d park it there and we’d wash ourselves up in the sink.

I’m not, not a typical background that you hear from most entrepreneurs. Sure. We’ll get into that later in the episode. But um, but yeah, growing up I always thought to myself, this can’t be life after a and after. I mean defined after high school, after college, like after I do something for myself. I mean, you can’t really do anything about the circumstances you’re in when you’re a kid. And even in normal life. I know you guys talk about this on the show. Sometimes there’s some situation that you’re in that you don’t have control over, but you do have control over your actions and how you put some of that stuff into context. And so growing up, I mean, people ask me sometimes like, Whoa, is that hard for you? Like, you know, how do you think it impacted your life? And honestly I think, you know, it wasn’t the greatest childhood but it did impact my life I think in a positive way because it definitely puts things into a lot theory perspective today as I have, you know, I’m married and I have my own two kids and uh, it’s a lot easier to think through some of the successes and failures that you have as a business owner.

Putting it into context of, well, at least it’s not that as you get older,

Carter, you are a very successful attorney now and we all grew up a certain way to certain backgrounds. Um, how did your childhood impact your career? Do? Or did it impact your career?

I think it did for sure. I think, um, you know, my dad is a disabled veteran. I know if know this clay, so we grew up on a small fixed income. We were lucky to have that fixed income when you a checklist every month but not a whole lot of money and so, you know, having, neither one of my parents had a bachelor’s degrees in college and so I was kind of the first ones who go definitely for a doctorate, you know, getting my ged and then also with my finishing all four years of college and it, you know, it just kind of coming from those beginnings I think kinda like jake was alluding to. It puts a different perspective on things. It gives you something to aspire to, but you know, nothing’s gonna be handed to you, but you better go out and earn it.

Jake, um, there’s a lot of people out there that have battled poverty who bow battled the things you battled. But I understand it. Again, I find getting anything out of context or I’m it all off. I never want to, uh, you know, paint someone to the corner with the wrong conclusions here. But I, I believe you also dealt with drugs and alcohol, I mean it. Was that something you dealt with as well or am I off?

No, you’re right. Um, but it wasn’t me actually. So that was the reason that we were homeless. Man. My Dad was actually an alcoholic and that’s why he had a very hard time taking care of me and my sister growing up. And so he was pretty consistently between jobs, um, had a hard time keeping things afloat. The reason we were living with my dad and not my mom because my mom was actually a drug addict, so we would pass back and forth custody hearings between, oh well who this week is the best person to take care of the kids. It was like a back and forth battle. And so I saw the kind of things that they were dealing with growing up. And so even though I never really had to battle a drug addiction or alcoholism, it still has a really big impact on my life. And uh, growing up. And basically the way I raised my kids has a lot to do with what I saw happening back then when I was a kid.

So what happens is you, myself, west, anybody out to her grew up without a bunch of things. You decide, you know what, that was that reality and I can either become bitter or better. You decided to become better. I think west decided to become better. I think I decided to become better. Doesn’t mean we’re perfect, but we’ve built a life for ourselves that’s very different from maybe the life we grew up in or the life we experienced or whatever. And you’ve written about this before. Jake and I, you put a really good name on it. It’s called battling the imposture syndrome for entrepreneurs. I remember the first time I was invited to a very nice Christmas party, a west. Do you ever get invited to Christmas parties? I do. And I got invited to one where they served Wassel. Jake, are you familiar with what Wassup.

No,

Walsall is a hot apple cider, uh, that you would call it hot apple cider unless you were grew up without a lot of money. You call, you call Wassup. It’s a premium. Dr Zellner. I’m sure you’ve probably had a wassel during your lifetime. Have you? Hasn’t? So I went, I got invited to a Christmas party as a young guy because I was having a lot of success in business a while settling will go and. Well this is the person that buys me. Their house is over there by Holland Hall in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Holland Hall. By the way, Jake is a very, very nice, prestigious school. I get invited to this Christmas event. They’re serving Wassel and see what other kinds of accouterments. I mean West, what they did or passing entrees and hors d’oeuvres, whether they’re kind of stuff. Do you serve west at a high dollar Christmas party? A cart. Coutry board. I can’t even say it. A cheese tray. Cheese tray. What else? What else are high end accoutrements? They’re going to serve at a nice Christmas post. Some caviar. What else? There’s more

case. Yes. So they’re serving Wassel and occasion. These things. Everyone’s guys are missing the most important high end. Whew. Truman for a Christmas party. What does that fruit cake? No, this is what is what happens. I’m not kidding. I’m the only person because I was entrepreneur of the year as 27 for the small business administration. I get invited. I’m the only person there who’s not over 40 years old. I’m like 26. I met this gated community. You know this, Jake. I had never gone into a gated community ever previous to this Christmas party. I go in there and the guy says to me, and he, I’m sure he said it in a normal tone, but he says, this is what this is. Now I heard him say it. So do you want some? I don’t know what it is. I mean I think I’ll have some loss, but I didn’t know what it was.

I mean, is this bad? Is this, are we. What are we going to do here? I get the fossil and I didn’t know it was hot, so I take us quick gulp of it because I’m used to gulping apple juice. Right. You’d go open. I go for the gold. You don’t go. You Sip. Sip, right. I know this now. I go burned my lip and I dropped the cooks. It’s so hot. The Cup is like this, China. That’s like this handmade, whatever it is, and the owner of the home looks like there’s some fancy brand. It was like probably a few hundred dollars, so not kidding. This same man asks me out to lunch a few years later and we go out to a Thai restaurant where apparently you’re not supposed to eat the bamboo shoots in the soup. I did not know this, so I just devoured the bamboo shoots. Eight them, swallowed them and hurt coming out. The point is I had never grown up with that kind of wealth. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know these things. Can you talk to jake, to the listeners out there who are coming into money, they’re starting to have some success. What does it mean when you say the battle? The imposter syndrome

basically when you’re talking about entrepreneurship is we see a bright lights around entrepreneurship today, right? Like you see people on the cover of Forbes and tech crunch and he starts doing big great things. Well, one of the things you don’t really see very often is the bad time, like the Times that you couldn’t pay your rent or the Times that you missed a mortgage payment or for us during the first couple of years of launchpeer, my credit score dropped precipitously.

No.

Uh, we, we had our electricity shut [email protected] payments. Like, you know, it was tough, but you don’t go to parties like the one that you were describing and tell, tell people when they ask you like, hey, how are things going? You’re not going to say, yeah man, I’m just, you know, a couple days ago I missed my mortgage payment and I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to make payroll next week, but you know, everything’s, everything’s okay. Like you don’t, you know, I’m going to say stuff like that, right? What happens is it creates this fog around entrepreneurship where everyone thinks everyone’s doing better than they are, and so it makes you feel if things aren’t going well that well, there’s, there must be something wrong with me like I’m the problem and I’m an imposter I, I’m not the right person to be building this startup or I’m not the right person to be building this business and that’s just totally not true because you’re glossing over the surface of what everyone else is actually going through. Everyone at that party, it was probably dealing with stuff. Your worst problem that night was spilling a cider on yourself, but for everyone else, I’m sure there are people in there pretending that their business was going great and two months later their business shuts down, but nobody talks about that stuff.

Jacob was a of the name of Charlie rocket, three Charlie rocket.

That name sounds familiar.

Are you sitting there with two Chainz, the rapper, two chainz?

Oh yeah.

Charlie rocket was the Grammy Award winning manager of two chains and just through a series of, of events and things he’s gonna be, he’s become a friend of mine and he’s speaking at our conference in December and uh, Charlie rocket was talking about how to chains, got signed by ludicrous to a lifetime deal and he had been signed to ludicrous is rap label for over a decade and had never really taken off, but he still had it when he rapped, show up at concerts wearing like diamonds and least you know, diamonds and least because there’s a rapper you have to look successful. You can’t roll up. Like, you know, you can’t typically you can’t roll up and like a beat up Buick and then be talking about bling bling. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are playing that game too. So what advice would you have for somebody out there who is battling the imposter syndrome?

Well, there’s a couple pieces of advice that people normally given the situation. One is, oh, well, just be more open about how everything is going and that is totally the wrong advice. So the last thing I want to tell an entrepreneur is to go to a networking event and they meet an investor who can potentially give them a lifeline to scale their company and tell them like, yeah, things are going terribly right now and we’re about to not make payroll. You don’t want to do that. So that’s not the best advice. The best advice to do is just. It has to be internal. Like you have to just understand yourself that when you’re looking at these people, it’s like that. That advice when people are doing public speaking and they tell people will look around the room and just imagine everybody naked. Well, when you’re an entrepreneur, which you have to do, is when you go to these events and you start feeling that imposter syndrome, just look around the room and realize that these people are probably dealing with challenges that you just can’t see on the surface.

And although you’re not going to talk about it at dinner parties or you’re not going to talk about a networking event, you just have to internally know that whatever you’re doing, as long as you’re doing something, you’re doing better than other people. But taking action as an entrepreneur, as long as you’re doing something. I mean, we’ve probably all known people like this who complained about their jobs, complaining about their life, a complaint about how things are going, but they’re just not doing anything about it. As long as you’re taking action and doing something, you’re probably doing better than 99 percent of those other people.

I had a quick question for you. Just public speaking thing is kind hit just a little quick rabbit trail. Can we? May I? Yes. That time that you were having to speak at the nudist colony, you could really imagine them naked. So how did you have to do a reverse image? Did you have changed it up this story real quick, just so that you have some context here? Where have you heard the story? I have not, but I’m really interested in, in Bristol, Oklahoma, there is a camp out there that hired my company, Dj Connection Dot Com to entertain for their people. They’re having a picnic, so one of our sales reps, Sanchez answers the phone dj connection. How can I help you? They say, Hey, I’m looking to hire a Dj to perform in our picnic, and they didn’t. Then the salesperson says, okay, what date this date?

How many people? Okay, what time? Great. Well, let me check availability. It comes back. Okay. We have three different packages. Which one do you want? Great. Package B will get. Ross, you want to do debit card, credit card deposit, book the date. Now on the notes, the notes, Jake, I’m imagine you’re a disc jockey. It’s. This is your first show by the name of David Lowe’s up loads up. He’s been training for two weeks. I gave him the itinerary and I said, David, this is your first show. I you to go out there and dominate this door real quick. This Guy David had pretended he weighed about 450 pounds, 400 pounds, and he pretended to be. He told me in their final interaction, while Trent, he goes, clay speaking in front of large groups isn’t a problem for me because I’m part of a boy band were huge in Orlando right now.

We have a record deal. We’re massive. We’re going to be taken off. And I go, okay. So he made up that story I guess is a way to impress me to get his first show. And I knew his cousin who was like, he always talks about that, but he’s never been in a boy’s boy band, nor can he carry a tune. So I did not assign him to this gig based upon this information. But I did book him because he did a good job in training. So I hand them the show notes and on the show notes it says the date, the venue, the time, whatever the address. And on it it says Yada Yada adult picnic.

And I’m thinking, you know, nothing big. No. He drives up there to Bristol, Oklahoma, which is rural community. And he gets there to set up the DJ equipment, like a normal Gig, except everyone is naked. The guy walks up to the car and tells him where to park is naked. He’s like, that’s weird. Maybe everyone’s naked. So he comes back from the show at like two in the morning looking like his soul had been taken from him. Like he a victim of a, of a crime of some kind. And I go, David, what happened? He’s all wet. He goes, dude, you freaking sent me out to a nudist colony. You Dude, that’s not cool. Okay. I did make up the thing about the boy band, but I’m not, that’s not cool, man. And I’m like, I have no idea. I’m like, what do you mean? He goes, dude, everyone was naked. And I’m like, well what did you do? He goes, I couldn’t be the only one with clothes on. It was embarrassing. He got, he got naked and was in the hot tub. That’s why he came back. Wet. True Story. True Story. Craziest story ever. Right? So anyway, I don’t know if there’s a point we can get out on that. But the point is foreign. The point is public speaking is a tricky thing. So that’s okay. That’s okay. So, so jake, I’ve seen where you written your idea, your startup idea, your startup idea sucks until you validate. It sounds kind of harsh. What do you mean

definitely what most entrepreneurs need to hear. So we made a lot of entrepreneurs. We’ve worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world and there’s one thing I could tell you 100 percent is that an idea is a diamond doesn’t like to hear ideas all the time. So you guys hear here crazy ideas all the time too. Um, and some of the crazy ideas could actually be worth something if the founder did what they needed to do to make sure that it was going to be a legitimate business. And you guys also priestess on a lot of the episodes too, about how you need to make sure that you have a, an actual customer that you can actually make a sale, that you know what your Roi is going to be. All of that stuff. Well, a lot of founders, they just have an idea and don’t do anything with it.

They take the time and energy and all of these things to build it because that’s what’s comfortable for them and most entrepreneurs, we were builders and so we want to go build. The last thing we want to do is go talk to people and see if the idea is actually worth building. And so when I talk about how you know, your idea sucks until you go validate it, it’s because I don’t want entrepreneurs to waste their time and energy on a terrible idea that nobody wants when they could easily go change the idea or come up with a new one that actually has a valid business behind it.

There are so many terrible ideas I’ve seen over the years, but jake, I’m going to share the first one with you. It’s a bit far enough in the past that no one will build a guest who I’m talking about, okay, this guy comes in, this is the pitch, and I’ll kind of give a Bostonian accent to give it some flavor. So here we go. Z. This guy comes into the office. True Story. This is at 16 or nine South Boston. I had been in that building for about a year. 16 slash nine South Boston. He comes and he goes, I just do want to hear in. The lady says, yeah, this is for front desk. Lady says, yeah, let me go get him because you know it. A time where I had a gap in my schedule so this guys. So here’s the deal. Have you ever been out to dinner?

I’m like, yeah, so you have to dinner the table of a wobble. The tables. Well, so what I do is I put this, I put this up underneath it and it’s called a table, which and what it does is it prevents all tables from wobbling. I’m thinking, I feel like anybody could cut a piece of wood or any restaurant owners probably done that. You take a piece of wood. This is the move, right? You just shove in something, right? Because of foundation or Napkin. Napkin. Whenever I’ve worked on package I’ve ever worked at applebee’s, what we do is you just throw in anything you can find outside, right? Stick. And he’s like, it’s the future because every, how many tables all that in America. And I’m like, well you think about this, at least $350 million tables according to the whatever. If every one of them just wobbled a little bit.

Right? Right, right, right. And he’s like, I’m going to make a Donald Pool Wedge. That is. He had spent like an insane amount of money buying a first true story. Bodybuilding. It was creating these. They’re just like pieces of wood, like wedges, any had just tons of them. And I’m like, what kind of sales are we doing here? And there’s just not a lot of sales. And I felt horrible because I wish somebody would have pulled him aside early on and said, dude, this side, talk to me. If I’m out there and I’m the guy who’s making the table wedgies right? And uh, and I’m thinking about marketing this idea and I think about buying a building thing about buying a production facility. Well, how should I test my idea without spinning $4,000,000 first?

That’s a great example. So what that guy should have done is make one wedge, just one, just one little, one wedge, a walk to as many restaurants as you can and try to sell. That one was kind of like that, that sales technique where it’s like, oh, try try to sell me this pen. Just walk around, try to find a restaurant or who’s willing to buy that one website. It could just be a dollar, doesn’t have to be hardly anything. It doesn’t matter how much money it is, but you have to get someone to commit like. And the best way to get someone commit, especially in a situation like that, is what their wallet. If you’re not getting someone to commit with their wallets, then they’re not really committed because this is another thing that happens with startup ideas as we go and talk to our great uncle Joe and great uncle Joe when you pitched him the idea and he’s sitting in his rocking chair and he was drinking probably the sixth year he’s had.

And he’s like, yeah, you know what, that sounds like a really good idea. You should go build that thing and then, you know, you spend a year building it and then you go back to great uncle Joe and you say, Hey, the product done, you know, like, here it’ll be $10 or $15, whatever. And he’s like, yeah, no, I’m good. No thanks. Uh, and that happens all the time. So when you’re going out there and you’re trying to do something, you need to pound the pavement for, um, you know, make one wedge, go sell one wedge and then come back to me after that

abbreviated story. But back in the day I started the company photography and I didn’t have the ability to take photos. Nor did I know someone who could take photos, but we went to the bridal show, tremendous booth, and we attempted to sell photography and the brides would come into our booth and they’d say, so what do you guys do? And I would say, well, let me ask you this. We have really great prices, but if every photographer charged the same price, what are you looking for? And the bride says, well, we want unlimited time. Bride says, I’d like to have a two week turnaround time. Another bride says, well, I would like a money back guarantee, and other bride says, I’d like to have like engagements first try you out before I decided to commit, et Cetera, et cetera. Long story short, Jake, I had one lady, she’s like, I want to move forward.

You guys sound like the best. And I said, here’s the deal. We’re all booked out, but if I have, if we have an availability, I’m going to call you and take a deposit was yes, let me give you my credit card. And I’m like, that’s how I knew. So then we created epic photography to be all of the things that people wanted to see. Another super moved. I just think it’s a great story. So we’ve. We’ve done a couple of podcasts and shows on this concept and it was tim ferriss with the four hour workweek. Oh, this is true. What he did is he put he, he acted like he had all these different books written from the other, I don’t know, 20, 30, 40, how many were there? A lot of different titles and he worked with Mike maples junior on this. So he puts these titles up for sale, these books for sale and they just sat back and waited and guess what?

He waited for which book got the most orders and then he happened to be the four hour workweek. He and then he went and wrote the book. He did it with Google ad words and then you probably know the story, Jacob. He actually made false book covers and then wrapped actual books in bookstores with the book to see which one people would pick up. He had all the dirty movie hit all the dirty moves, but the thing he found out what they wanted and that’s what you’re saying, Jason, you got to find out that they wanted and he was like, Yo, I’m not even sure what title they want. I mean, I know, you know, I know what I’m thinking here. But so he just thrown all of them up there and you throw them all against the wall and the one that stuck was four hour workweek. So he went and wrote a book based on what people want. Jake, I have a question for you. If you could go back and educate a younger version of yourself, what advice would you give yourself? What’s, what’s the single piece of advice you’d look back and go younger self, this is what you need to be doing.

Yeah. The one big piece of advice I’d give myself is I have permission to live my own life. So this, and I’ll give you some context here. So when you’re growing up and you’re a poor kid, um, there’s a couple ways that you define success. For me that was three ways. One was being a celebrity for me that was like an athlete, so I played sports growing up as a kid. And so when you’re on, when you look at TV and you watch TV and you try to find a role models there, uh, you find that so athletes, you find doctors. So I used to watch er all the time, uh, when it was so on there, kind of a weird shadow watches a teenager. Uh, and uh, the last thing was I was a lawyer and so all growing up, all I had in, in mind of what success was with being one of those three things.

And I clung to that as a definition of success all through high school, all through college. I even graduated college and got accepted to law school but couldn’t pay for it. So I joined the army after law school, a search for four years because I wanted the army to help pay for law school. And I clung to that belief without realizing that there were so many other things I could have done to be successful. Unfortunately, I have tons of student loans still. Like, I’m sure most people listening to this show color do, um, and if I can go back, I would have given myself permission to take control of my life earlier on it. And for me that would’ve been been becoming an entrepreneur. I didn’t need a college degree to be an entrepreneur. I didn’t need to join the army to be an entrepreneur and start my own business. I needed to make one watch and go sell that one way somewhere. But I was just afraid to do that because I didn’t think that was what you were supposed to do. Uh, when I was younger.

Jake, do you like a movie or watch a movie or you’ll hear a song and all of a sudden it takes you back to a memory you had, you know, a certain line or some of the time when you were talking about lawyers being your heroes and reminded me that, that wes really is the embodiment of all things thatZ and I would be if we had any talent or skill. Am I correct z? Absolutely. Is this a time that we could sing our bet midler version of? Did you ever know you’re my hero to west Carter with the woodblock with Calvin? Are you okay? Here we go.

Did you ever know that your mind is everything I wish I could pay that. Let you go.

You make me a guy, Rome. I will tell you, Jake Jayco, when I graduated law school, after many of my peers had spent $100,000 in tuition to get that little piece of paper I can think of numerous people I graduated with that within six months to 18 months decided they hated being a lawyer and never practice law

are

I am a lawyer. Similar. I think a good lawyer worked out for me, but with Jacob as a. As a child, one of my dad’s best friends was an attorney in Muskogee. He was the city attorney and so I got to kind of see the law get exposed to it through him, but similar to what Jake was saying, I mean, when you’re a kid you don’t know any better. You’re thinking I want to be successful, and I had to made me think of, you know, I could, it resonated. Doctor, lawyer, doctor talked to her. I don’t really like blood so that one went out pretty quick, answer someone else’s blood. I’m not messing with that. So, um, came to lawyer and just, I was one of those lucky few that happened to really find a love for the law and really enjoy doing it. And so it worked out for me.

The West. Did you like Perry Mason as a kid? Did you like the Perry Mason show? Huge Perry Mason Fan. Why? I just acted. It was before your time, but why do you not like it? Well, I mean I never got into it. Did you ever watched the movie? Catch me if you can. Oh yeah. Did you? Yeah. You think there’s a coincidence that he went from a doctor to a lawyer? Is that the dude? Did you just get the little metal thing and do it a diploma? I mean, you really, every time you come into a room, I’m a very good faker. How does, that’s what I’m saying. How do we, how do we really, really know that’s true. That’s true. That’s true. Okay. So it’s pretty amazing. You get, you get two words, you know, Jake Heron. Next question for you sir. The first four hours of your typical day now, now that you’re having some success, you’re having some wins, one of the first four hours of your typical day. Look like

the way I start my day with my kids and my wife. I have two kids. They’re growing up really fast, but I have two kids are eight and six boys and then my wife. So really the first part of my day as soon as I wake up is I’m completely 100 percent focused on them. So I’m the one who gets the kids ready for school, you know, I make sure all their weird documents or sign in their backpacks that I, I hate doing, make sure their homework’s done. Um, you know, make them breakfast, getting ready for school. I walked them to the bus stop and you know what? I walked back. I greet my wife, uh, you know, help her out of the house.

We’re continuing to forget their keys it every day. So I’m usually digging for Keith for 30 minutes every morning check. Are you like a gourmet cook and you like, here’s a breakfast bar and get out. Get out of here. Are you guys pumped up? Pop tarts. Fill a little better now. We’re feeling a little better.

Making breakfast for my kids is definitely a, you know, like pouring the milk into the cereal.

Oh Man.

But once, once that’s done, uh, I spend, and this is probably the most important part is I don’t go into work. I only live 10 minutes away from the office, but I don’t into the office until I have my entire day planned out. And I’m not saying I have to plan like every minute I’m not, I’m not the kind of guy that’s like, oh, I have to book my whole calendar out. I need to make sure I know exactly what I’m doing every single day. Uh, you know, I’m not like that. But one of the books that I read that really helped me with this, it’s called the one thing by Gary Keller. And in that book, it really helped me realize, okay, every day when I start my day, I need to know what the one thing that’s most important for me to accomplish that day is because as a founder and as a business owner or someone working in the business, it’s very easy to lose sight of everything that you need to be the most important thing that you need to be doing.

Because as soon as you get into work, you’re going to be inundated with emails and calls and employees logging into your office and all of these things that aren’t really all that important in the whole scheme of thing. So what I do is I make sure that I know exactly what my one thing is before I go into work in the morning and then I go into it. Because if I don’t do that and I’ve tried to support this as an experiment, if I don’t do that before I go into work, then my entire day will be lost. And I’ll be looking back on the days at 5:00 and be like, where the heck did the day go? What did I accomplish today? Like did I even get anything done? Did I make any forward progress on anything I was trying to do and typically the answer is no. If I don’t do that to start my day,

I hear the deep thoughts here. For listeners out there, we’ve had this book, the one thing recommended by so many people and so at one point I decided I’m going to read this book. I’m going to Z. we’ve interviewed so many people who say, you know this book, I should read the one book you should read, so I read the book. Then we reached out to Jay Pavason, the Co author of the book. He sits down with Gary Keller to write each and every book that Gary does and we had them on the show and you have yet to hear that podcast. Go up there and look for it. It’s an unbelievable interview. Jay Papasan’s a great American. I want to ask you though, now I want. I want to ask you a question here. Jake, tell us about your company launchpeer and what you guys do. Do you launchpeer I mean, are you a, your foundation restoration company? What are you guys,

our design development and marketing studio for startups. So the only type of customer that we work with, and this is part of the focus thing that he teaches in the book, uh, the only startups that we work with our pre series a startups, typically these startups literally walk into our door with just an idea. Um, and we’ve had, we take pictures of every napkin sketch we get and we get a lot of Napkin sketches. What they’ll do is schedule a meeting with us, the slide, a napkin sketch across the table. They’ll say, hey, this is what I want you to build or this is what I want to build. Can you help me do it? And so we are working with these startups from the time that they come up with the idea, uh, helping them validate it, helping them do branding and design, helping them go sell that first wedge like we talked about earlier.

Uh, and then helping them actually build their product. So we typically focus on tech startups. So anyone who wants to build a web or mobile application, um, and help them out and get traction once our development team builds their product. And so far we’ve worked with, I think we’re up to almost 400 startups now that we’ve worked with around the world. Um, so although we’re located in Charleston, South Carolina, which is a beautiful city, we work with startups all over the place and I tell people all the time I have the best job in the world. I get to work with a kind of different startups, a ton of different ideas, but unlike the founders that we work with, I actually get paid to do it. So it’s an awesome job and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Jake, would you consider to be a piece of technology? I was curious if that idea,

if you could replace, if you can replace a piece of technology with a Napkin or. I don’t think it’s a piece of paper. That was a question I wanted to ask here. Now we’re going to go around the table with final questions for Jay care. Marshall Morris. I’m gonna go with you. You’re the a bit the coauthor of the Amazon bestselling book. Start here. You’re a fine business coach. You’re on the show quite a bit. What tough questions do you have for Mr Jake hair? Jake, I got it. I got a great question for you. You talk about working in the world, have a lot of Napkin sketches and so really you just have to be able to have an idea to slide napkins, catch across the table. I want to ask you, is there a particular quality or characteristic in the people that are sliding the napkin sketches across the table that you’ve seen consistently be able to take the idea to the full length to be able to take it the distance to become successful? Third question, is there a consistent quality or characteristic that you see immediately out of the people that are sliding these across the table to Cowbell on that? I mean, that’s a hard question. The question back to you,

it’s a really great question and I think this really falls in line with a lot of what you guys to and you wouldn’t think about this because when most people think of last year, they think of us as an agency, right? But we’re more than an agency. I say we’re like a hybrid between an agency and like a startup accelerator, but there is one common trait and we can always tell within the first five minutes of the first call with someone is whether or not they’re coachable.

If they’re not coachable or it means that their chances of success, whether they have an amazing idea or not, is it just not going to happen to them? Um, for the most part, the entrepreneurs that we work with, they have to be incredibly coachable because we’re not here to just build an APP or blow smoke up there, you know, telling them how great their idea is. A lot of the entrepreneurs that we were working with, we have to end up telling them, look, your idea, the way it sits right now is not great, but there are some things we can do to make it better. If they aren’t able to take that advice, then there is no way that they can work with us and and further after they’re done working with us, there’s no way they can build a successful business if they aren’t coachable. Working with people like you guys, working with other business coaches and mentors. If you’re not able to take their advice and actually implement that advice and you know, takes them constructions, constructive feedback in a good way. There’s no way that you’re going to build a successful business or successful startup. So yeah, I’d say that’s the one trade that’s common among all the successful founders that we’ve worked with.

West Carter cannot claim to be the number one attorney in the world in the history of the galaxy. You can’t legally once you can’t do that, right, or other planets, and I’m not going to go as far as to say some. Some have suggested that I should say West is the number one attorney in the world. Some have suggested some of my closest colleagues have told us, huge people behind the scenes, if you should mention that. West is the best in world, but we’ve said we can’t do that. We just say he’s just someone that we can strongly endorsed. So his question, what your question is, will be better than your question because he just asked a better question. Is did the trains a great attorney? West West is the best. So does that. You can ask whatever question you want. You can one up march. Let’s easy to one up West is not possible. I mean he’s tall. He’s very tall, very tall. Where’s this going to bat? Fourth. I went first. Marshall Second. You third west baton clean. Let’s go ahead and ask whatever question you want to be. Second best will have a two part question. Oh Wow. Here we go. Starting and forming your business and growing it to what it is today. Yes. Tell me the biggest mistake you made and the biggest home run you made in doing that.

Biggest mistake, great question. By the way,

exceptional care. Courtesy bail. Okay, go ahead.

Biggest mistake I made was getting a grasp on the company’s numbers faster. So early on the first couple of years at launchpeer, we weren’t tracking, uh, and this is totally completely my fault. I wasn’t tracking page views versus conversions. I wasn’t measuring what marketing tactics were working best for us. I wasn’t sticking to anything long enough to be able to track any numbers in the first place. I was kind of lost and just taking action. And there are, I said earlier, like taking action is something that you want to do and it puts you, it does put you ahead of 99 percent of people, but to get past that you need to actually measure the action that you’re taking. And so one of the things I wish I had done earlier on is actually measured the different things that we were doing, especially when it comes to sales and marketing.

I mean, the first two years of the company were terrible. As I talk about this all the time publicly that you know, the reason that we missed mortgage payments and the reason we had our electricity set off three times is because I wasn’t doing the things I needed to do to measure what was actually working in the business and what wasn’t working. Now this leads to the biggest success piece, which is once I started doing that, I realized that I needed to change a lot of things about the company and one of those was focused. When I. When I started launchpeer for the first two years. What I was doing was I was listening to a lot of what other people were telling me. So I had a lot of friends who are agency owners and they were telling me, well, you can’t work with startups.

Startups have no money. You’re going to have to go after healthcare companies or big enterprise companies or small businesses or you’re going to have to offer more services and the development. You should do marketing and you should do facebook ads and Google ads and you should do websites and shopify, all these thing because that’s how they were making money, but the problem was if you do and if you do everything for anyone, then it doesn’t separate you in the market at all. And so what I was, what was happening is when a customer would come to us at that point, they would ask me, well, what makes you different than, you know, this company over here. And I didn’t have an answer. Like, oh, we’re just better. Like that’s not a good answer when you’re talking to a prospect. So well, the biggest success that we had was two years ago.

We focused on who our ideal customer was and an entrepreneur with an idea and limited budget and decided, okay, what kind of services can be offered that person? And we did a lot of crazy things at that time because of who our customer was. We put our pricing on our website. We packaged up our services. So we said, hey, we’re going to do this, this and this, and it’s going to cost $5,000 to do it. You either take it or leave it like we’re not going to do whatever you want to do because we know what we’re doing and if you want to work with us then you’re going to follow our system and our processes. And that was about middle of 2016, between the middle of 2016 and the end of 2016. We went from me and my wife and a couple of other contractors working in the company, a to 12 employees and growing. Um, and so that would probably be the biggest success is really focusing on who my customer was and creating a product and service to actually fit the needs of that customer

z. I want to let you know, you did get one mega point typically even even even at lower tier west Carter question is 17 mega points. So you parked to here really has to just lay it on. You don’t want to over hype. But I mean, he’s perhaps the best question to answer or many would say in the history of the world and the history, not just currently, but the soccer to the spirit of socrates is inhabited this room and he’s going, I don’t know what it has, these kind of questions, but the great, great answers. And, and uh, now I, I hand the baton handed over because you were. This is a four man relay, right? It is. You started off because you’ve got your explosive out of the blocks and then you die quickly. Marshall, long stride. I haven’t worked out in this. I was great. Those first two or three stride Marshall’s consistent and he gave it to me. I took her around the turn now to Hussein bolt. I know now what

kind of, a little bit out of left field here a little bit, but I, I, it’s interesting to me and I think there’s probably some listeners out there that may be in similar situations start. So you have a lot of people come to you with new ideas. And one of the things that someone comes to you with an idea that let’s they can’t patent in protect. How do you, how do you get through that decision tree whether run with this great idea when you know one of the big boys might come in and rip you off and smoosh you as a little startup you are, or keep the dream alive and just go out, compete them.

Great question.

When it, when it started coming through, a lot of times that is one of the big things they’re worried about is stuff. Can I get a trademark and patent all of these things when I started coming to us, they’re so early on that we try to make sure they don’t worry about that stuff. I’m obviously we tell them to go try to talk to a lawyer, like what? But when they’re at that stage and they’re just starting out, the last thing I want them worried about is what trademarkable, what’s patentable. Um, you know, what intellectual property they have. Sure. For some startups that the consideration right out the gate. But when you’re early state startup, especially the ones that we’re working with, they haven’t even made a sale yet. The idea that they have might not even ever become anything at all, and so usually what they’re doing is they’re using that question as an excuse to not do anything the same way that someone with an idea, we’ll say, well we hear this a lot like, well I need to get my ducks in a row first before I move forward with this. Like what does that even mean?

Rough site

do what? Tim Ferris did a throw some Google ads to the landing page. Pretend to charge people for the product and see it anyway,

interested in doing it. Once you do that,

that then you can worry about

hiring a lawyer, having someone, trademarks and patents. This is how I picture this. It’s like it’s like a. I’ll tell you what, they’re going to start planting that corn there. I’m just trying to get my ducks in a row. I’m telling you what you eat. You can’t get corn planting, so you might want to think about what you do is you want to take the kid to keep them online because a lot of times I went, they weren’t a rope and that little duck over that, a little vomit. He started moving on over there and trying to tie them up and they will stay in the line. Stupid. Makes no sense. When in the world would you ever want to get your ducks in? What are you bowling? Bowling products. Okay, so. Okay, so west you obviously have one upped. You’ve won up jake and every conceivable way. So I’m going to. I’m going to give the floor here. If someone is looking for an attorney, let’s say that they are kind of post startup and they need to get some of these legal aspects together. How can they get ahold of you?

Well, you can check out our website, www.wintersking.com. W I n t e R S K I n g.com or you can call us nine. One, four nine four

six, eight, six, eight, nine. One, eight, four, nine, four, six, eight, six, eight. West makes a mockery of the show. He comes on the show and he’s dominates. Yeah. It’s like Michael Jordan seeing some third graders playing basketball. He’s in his prime. He’s like, you guys want to pass me the ball guys? You guys want me to. Oh, you guys. Can I play her pickup game believable? Yes. Carlos comes and steals the thunder. I know Jake. Everybody out there wants to get ahold of you. Maybe there’s somebody who’s started. They have an idea. They got the Napkin sketch there, pre-revenue their start in the morning. Maybe everything come by in the morning. How do they get ahold of you? What’s the process?

Yeah, the best way to do it is to go to launchpeer.com. That’s L A, U N C H P e r Dot com and you can actually chat with our team right there on the website so we have a nice little chat widget tool where you can chat with me or somebody on our sales team and we’ll tell you if your idea sucks or if it’s great and how we can help you if it’s. If it’s all right.

I can, I can, I, can I, can I chat with someone like late at night? It was at that be okay. Would that be kind of creepy? I mean, can I do two in the morning? What are you doing? Mood our sales teams. And how much did you receive a jake? The ernest goes to camp. Ah, yes. A long time ago there was a scene where he’s trying to keep people from taking the camp from him, so he developed what I call the launch peer where he shoots the, the urinals, the catapult. Have you seen that and you’ve seen these shooting? Yeah, I mean have you ever thought about getting the registered, the domain launch peer?

So we own launch beer, launch bruise basically launched anything. It doesn’t cost a whole lot of money. We probably already own it. So our team loves to go try to find nuance names. It’s a nice little thing that we have around the office. It’s a little running joke.

Very, very nice. It’s right out there. If you’re out there right now and you’re looking for an immature movie to watch, watch ernest goes to camp two or three times. He drinks for her. I bet they don’t have lots of launch. Boom. That would be a good one to pick up on the side. Oh Wow. I’m looking it up right now. I know you are. You’re going to be. If you’re out there and you’re looking for a movie that doesn’t have a plot, goes see ernest goes to camp. If you have three or four beers, maybe you can find a plot and pointed out to the writers of the movie. Jake, thank you so much for being on today’s show. We like to end every show with the boom. Of course, if that’s okay with we a lot of room. I’m ready for a boom UKC. I am so ready. Are you ready for. Absolutely. I’m ready for a boom from South Carolina, but do it. Here we go. Three, two, one. If you are like most humans that I know when you see two gas stations and one sells gas for a little bit less and they’re next to each other, you might go for the one that sells gas for less money. It, it, it makes sense. You know, every little bit can help, you know, I don’t really

agree with that. I like to spend as much money as I possibly can on fossil fuels. Just something I’m into your eyes. But here’s what’s weird though. Sometimes we save a few pennies here and there and ignore opportunities to save huge money. I’m talking about life changing money. If you switch today as an example to medicare for your healthcare, it could be a massive savings for you and your family. The typical savings for a family is about $500 a month. I repeat $500 a month. Ah, so. Okay. I have a quick question. So when you said you could save like $500 a month, I mean are you talking about actually being able to save $500 a month? Yes, that’s why I said the number. You can actually save $500 a month. Just think about that for a second. What would you do with all that extra money?

Thrivers you can be buying a flat screen every single month. That’s 12 flat screens a year, $6,000 per year or 12 flat screens per year where I have been trying to save up for 12 flat screens and this seems to be the most reasonable prudent way to do it. And yes, people love it. They love it because it works. It’s believers who share each other’s health care costs and now with over 400,000 people, a k, eight members of Medicare, again with over 400,000 members, there’s proof it works and it’s growing like crazy. It would be like having a seven foot tall third grader in your family. It’s like growing like a weed. It is taking off. Find out how much you can save and why Medicare is so popular. Go to medicare.com, forward slash clay. That’s Medicare med. I share.com forward slash clay, or call them at eight, four, four, two, five. Share for more info. That’s eight. Four, four to five shift.