00:00:00 moving the needle and founder failure one conversation at a time I'm your host Justin Gordon and welcome to startup 2.0 by spark XYZ join us each week as we give you access to some of the top investors and entrepreneurs in the country to help you think through and overcome the top challenges that startups face [Music] today's guest is Sean cheek who is a co-founder and managing partner of pivot CMO Sean is a growth hacking expert and the one that startups turn to for help he's also been through Y Combinator and

00:00:37 his company saw was an airport concierge and luxury travel company that grew to 500 plus locations Sean welcome to the show thanks for having me yeah so with pivot CMO I'm just curious to start with here what type of businesses you guys typically work with yeah it's pretty mixed I mean we have you know startups that are just starting out or just raising their first you know million or two million dollars all the way to you know companies that are that are doing high single digit even double-digit

00:01:04 millions of dollars we really run the spectrum I think we're kind of rare in the sense that we do a lot of verticals I think a lot of agencies specialize in like e-commerce just specialize only and you know SAS or something like that but I think given you know my background and the guys are with me they've done a really good job of just diversifying and having the right person for each kind of vertical and you know that's worked out pretty well just from a learning perspective as well so was that the plan

00:01:29 originally like that's what you knew you wanted working on all those different ones or just kind of evolved that way no the agency was actually an accident yeah we never intended to start it after I sold my last company I was just doing a lot of advising and things like that and a lot of companies would come and just the broad spectrum ask for advice and then it turned into hey can you just do the marketing for us okay why not and then when we had to do our first hires we decided okay we have enough clients

00:01:56 where we have to hire people now so hence like becoming a real business we were like oh okay we need someone in this vertical and that vertical and so it was 100% by accident yeah that happens sometimes with businesses I guess and then with that so where are some of the things you're typically doing to actually help please grow yes I mean I think aside from any of the formal service a lot of strategy a lot of advising so just by nature of like the mentorship that I'll do you know through you know guys like

00:02:21 Lucas fair running spark or just have a lot of VC funds I'm always willing to take founder calls it's really good exercise for me because we learn how to run lean and we got some really good ideas from the founders and it's also you know good for them because we're giving them some advice based on experience so it starts with that I'm always willing to take a call we don't charge for that anything like that and I think that's an important thing that I'll do for the rest of my life but then it's it's the traditional stuff so

00:02:44 Facebook ads Instagram ads Google Ads really any paid advertising Amazon as well it's one thing we do and we do it really well the second thing that were doing is some of them are growth hacking stuffs we built like a proprietary length and reach out system so for b2b companies that don't want to spend on ads Ben will manage their prospecting for them and that's that's worked pretty well I mean this month I booked like 50 or 60 calls for our own agency just sales calls so things like that and then

00:03:11 just general like strategy and advice anything we can do to help companies grow yeah and I'm just curious too with that like how'd you build the team around that in terms of who's gonna handle what responsibilities of that with you guys helping these different companies yeah it's kind of like higher higher when it hurts I think between myself and my business partner we have such a good broad spectrum of you know what we've done in the past and then we also have a lot of advisors that we can bring in so if we're not the right fit

00:03:33 I'll always refer out and say hey look like this agency or this person is better at this thing especially for your vertical so like don't use us it's totally okay but when we get enough inquiries we're like okay now we have to get somebody and asked to do this or or something like that so yeah but I just like saying yes it seems like to work if you can handle it if you're the right fit and then if not you're just like okay well we don't have the capabilities or it's just not what we do you're willing to kind of refer well marketing

00:03:57 is like really important right you're like the lifeblood of a company at the end of the day so it's important that we don't it up for companies so and that's all that's all a lot of agencies whose clients they take clients that really just are in a good fit and they just really don't know what they're doing they're learning along the way so that's how you train clients that's how you get a bad reputation and that's the exact thing we don't want so it's better to refer them yeah yeah and then digging

00:04:22 into just like the marketing strategy or like how you guys actually work with companies like what is process look like from kind of beginning to them working with them iterating with that I'm just curious on how that works yeah so I mean number one it's a fit so we'll typically do a full audit or most of my conversations don't start as sales conversations it's more like yeah just tell me about what you're up to like let me give you some advice do something like that will typically figure out what

00:04:44 platforms make the most sense a lot of companies will have done testing before so we'll audit it because just because if you you spent money on an added platform or done something you might have the wrong person so maybe there's like some hidden gems so we'll start with an audit and start with advice first and if you know we uncover like okay look this is there's something interesting here then we'll then we'll go kind of down that road the other thing that I always tell founders to do is you know the first thing you should

00:05:08 do is think of every single thing you can do in marketing so get a like a Google spreadsheet out do one do one column that's like every single channel one column that's how much time one column is how much money and then prioritize that way right so sometimes we're not the best place to start like you should be doing all the easy low-hanging fruits that'll take you like a week and no money instead of like bringing in an agency so that's that's also the typical advice on like an initial call yeah and then with that too

00:05:32 I mean what are some of those like low-hanging fruit type of things that would even conclude you know yeah a lot of email nowadays it's harder to be growth hacky in general nowadays just with like anti-spam and things like that but clients will come to us with a five ten thousand you know email subscriber lists and only 1% of the list or two or ten percent Alyssa's bought it's you know hitting that list really aggressively so built on some automated flows regularly sent newsletters out one other thing that we've done recently

00:06:00 that's such a pain in the ass but just go and reach out to some of your clients like make it a rule that every day you'll reach out to two of your customers and just ask for some feedback you'll learn a lot so those are two things I think just participating in like a lot of like the group forums and things like that that's been really good you know just just just anything that's really really easy like going to events is really easy and you can always meet somebody so also any any times there are

00:06:25 like two causes meaning like yeah it's for marketing but it's also good for personal development that typically works pretty well as well so what are the most common kind of mistakes are people that companies are actually making in terms of marketing and growing their companies where sometimes mistakes you see at least with these founders yeah just the main thing is analytics and tracking they're not tracking their full funnel they have no idea what their customer LTV is they're worried about the wrong metric for

00:06:47 example so I think it's really easy to be like I need to acquire a customer for this much it's like okay well why is that the case well because that's how I make this much and I'm currently acquiring for this much it's like okay well what's your conversion rate you know what's your what's your bounce rate like how many people are going from sign up to purchase you know are you looking at these metrics and a lot of people are saying no and the biggest lesson I got on this was the last company I started

00:07:09 we were doing you know we were one month in the Y Combinator and our metrics were absolutely terrible we were doing maybe like 30 km month in revenue and in order to raise any sort of money we were told that we needed to double that so we sit down with with one of the with our group partner and he says okay well tell me this metric and tell me this metric we had no idea so he's like all right come back you know in a couple days and have all this ready to go so we come back and what's this metric okay but was

00:07:38 and then what's your bounce rate on your site we said it's 99 percent he goes okay this is very simple get the bounce rate from 99 percent to 98 percent this shouldn't be that hard and your revenue should go from 30 K to 60 K like okay that's pretty smart you know that makes a lot of sense if we did exactly that we optimized our landing but we didn't really optimize that landing page we just changed a couple of like words and our landing page bounce rate from 1 from 1 to 1 from 99 to 97.5 and we're at 70 K

00:08:07 and we're at 78 and in revenue right so so it's one of the things we're like if you're not looking at it the simplest thing could be really destroying you right so so that's that's a really big thing I also think it's important to understand what your business model is and what how customer acquisition codes and do that so for example if you're a company that has like 49.99 dollar a month subscription subscriptions or 50 bucks $50 month subscription at scale you might lose money on your first month

00:08:33 but if you understand that you know your customers on average stick around for five months so your LTV is 250 dollars you can really grow the company fast you know by acquiring a customer for 100 or $150 but then you need to know how to manage your cash flow but the thing is when you know those things you can go to a investor and tell them like hey look I know I can acquire a customer for $100 at scale I know they stick around for five five months or whatever the case is this is where the capital is gonna go to

00:09:01 that's a really an easy investment for investor because they see a clear path to to real revenue just off to deficit finance or growth a little bit so just knowing that your your metrics and your analytics are set up and they need your full customer journey and what the LT views is super important yeah and with that - obviously that sire you for the people you're working with the businesses you're working with for your company itself then it's the same it's in our company yeah so how are you managing that for your company there

00:09:24 yeah I mean we've been really lucky that we get a lot of referral I think you do a good job and people come in so our customer acquisition cost has been pretty much zero to date but I think we've done a really good job and modeling out what our customer growth can and will be so that way we can get like good talented and trained them so for example we model out everything we modeled out our trajectory for the whole year and in the revenue model we've included you know how many accounts that's going to be and how many people

00:09:47 are gonna be on it because we'd never want quality to suffer right so that's really important we model in churn and then we we basically increase everything for the worst by ten or fifteen percent so that way we're you know we always have a buffer so we modeled that out we model out you know everything done the last you tell healthcare snacks in the office we model out right what rent will be when we're at a certain scale so everything is in like this really aggressive model and that way there are

00:10:11 no surprises at the end of the day and if we don't hit a month then it's okay let's adjust the model and like let's move it forward this is kind of the idea and then with it with like growth and marketing what types of strategies are things you're seeing that you're most excited about right now I'm just new channels I think everyone's rushing in to Facebook Ads right now which is not a bad thing very scalable but we're having a lot of success on LinkedIn which will probably come saturated soon snapchat is

00:10:33 doing some really interesting things I think email is really good again like I think that that's been really in order so I think just number one people's willingness to try different channels and people's willingness to come to an expert and like just ask for advice but also people's willingness to switch to digital I think when I was in college and we're starting a first business though we were like okay let's go buy ten thousand stickers and print a thousand flyers and like let's just hand them out everywhere and you quickly

00:11:00 realize like not scalable you know we'll get a couple of customers here and there but you know when you're in college if we can make a thousand dollars let's look amazing right well these digital channels people are becoming more open and aware about them and it's a really good way to scale the business really fast but I also think it's important that you have like an expert you know doing it for you yeah and how is that changing is that in terms of how businesses are started now in terms of knowing all these different

00:11:24 channels and the accessibility of them how does that change how someone like starting a business now can approach growth in a company you're just starting well I think it's two things number one you have a better Avenue to figure out if you have a business or not right so the way I approach starting everything now because we have some side businesses and some investments and things like that is we start with how much is it gonna cost to acquire a customer at scale then what are the cost of goods in

00:11:47 the product and then which we price the product and then does the market want the product to that price so we so what most people do is they say I have this great idea for this great idea I'm gonna build it I'm spending a year-and-a-half building it no one wants to buy it and if I wanted to buy it's too expensive for me to acquire the customer right so we do everything the other way around and you can go out nowadays and build something really quickly and then go spend you know one thousand two thousand

00:12:10 dollars in ads and you'll know really quick whether it's gonna work or not like can you even acquire a customer so I think that that it's it's helped decrease the amount of failure time and just go you move on to the next thing is nothing wrong with that and I think that that's probably one of the most important things yeah and then what with growing companies too obviously you've grown your own companies as well like what are you looking for when you were taking out investors in a company then

00:12:31 um a couple of things number one number one the goal should always be to get the money okay so nowadays you hear founders go I'm looking for strategic investments like no you're looking for money okay the strategic but those two giovani is all green right at the end of the day so I think number one get the first check right in the first check is the hardest thing like if you're raising five hundred thousand million dollars just get the first fifty or hundred K or even 25k worry about that and stop like it's

00:13:00 doing like I don't know if this coasters you cannot know get the money so you can run your business okay so I think that's thing number one the next thing is just there is like what they call smart money and dumb money and dumb money doesn't mean like a dumb person it just means someone that will write your check and they're gonna be pretty it's often again there's something wrong with that guy's many of those as you can especially the early days but later on down the road if we have our optionality

00:13:23 of investors it's is this can this person make intros for me not just in our industry I think strictest on strategic investment in the industry that they're in like and running a hair care brand I want somebody from a beauty company or something like that to invest like something SEC where I've found a lot of help and my career is let me go find somebody that is really good at growth or they're really good at hiring people or they're really good at sales or you know they're really good at you know just making employees happy let me

00:13:50 get that cut up advice from them because there's a lot more of that going on nowadays that then not like for example for own business it we were having a hard time hiring like it's hard to find good people and we're not the best at hiring so I'll be all just up on the phone with people I know that are really good at hiring and I hope that those people are my investors and a lot of the companies that I'll advise or talk to you'll hear like oh this survivor was really good at just Facebook ads and not necessarily

00:14:13 Facebook ads for this vertical but just they're just gonna Facebook ads or they're just really good at sells sales in general so I look more towards like the skill set and not towards like vertical or industry anything like that yes and you're actually looking for an investor in and now we'll take a quick break and hear from our sponsor Breck's a big heartfelt thank you to Breck's who without their support this show would not be possible we've seen firsthand the difficulties accessing basic corporate

00:14:39 credit without providing a security deposit or personal guarantee early on as companies grow managing expenses has become more difficult and time-consuming which is why we've partnered with Breck's to offer a corporate credit card that is not personally guaranteed offers higher credit limit provides Auto reconciliation and integrates with ERPs using receipt capture Breck's is the credit card of the start ecosystem and we highly encourage you to check them out and back to the show and then you one thing we kind of lost over but you

00:15:10 mentioned being at YC and then going from 0 30,000 like monthly recurring that eventually double that to 6 like 6 69 70 but what helps you get that initial growth even yeah so just hustling honestly like it was ridiculous we you know same thing I was saying earlier we have sheet of ideas like one of them was to email everybody in this critical email everybody in this pretty cool email everybody this vertical and when I see him le like yes we did do the mass email like we were sending at one point like a

00:15:36 hundred thousand emails a day like it was ridiculous right no hundreds we're sending fifty thousand emails a day but it was also like hey like let's go after people and it was a travel company so people luxury travel so what are the 20 biggest larger travel companies we need to talk to somebody a VP level person or higher at all of them right and so we're gonna go out and do whatever it takes to do that but a lot of the initial growth came from those partnerships and really take care of your first couple of

00:16:01 customers that come in and really incentivize people to do it because they truly already biggest advocate so for example we were offering like these luxury concierge services and airports we we had this VP that was interested she was like I don't know if won't offer to my client we said okay look what are you traveling next we'll comp everything and it was really expensive for us to comp it like we gave her like the top tier for a company with no money it cost us like a thousand dollars for one our

00:16:24 servers right so we just gave it to her we bit the bullet and then we told her like on every booking that you do will give you twenty percent for the first you know however many months and so basically we were losing our entire margin on it but after she tried it she was ago this is really good and after she was getting you know she was very incentivized to actually you know give the service to her clients cause she's taking a risk to she's like this is amazing everybody needs this and she became her biggest advocate of the

00:16:48 company right so just taking a risk on people and understanding what motivates people has been like a really big thing for us and then just doing that like across different usually the same philosophy across different verticals so you know it wasn't expensive yes but in the grand scheme of things we maybe spent like three thousand dollars to get this person for a channel that you know unlocked fifteen thousand dollars in revenue every month right so that's a not a crazy expensive test yeah and gain those people on board that

00:17:13 are actually customers is helpful because you can use them to get more customers that's exactly like but I even in the agency world like I get the advice from people that always always always take care of your first couple of customers the best you can take them to dinner hold their hand do whatever you have to do to make them happy because they're really important yeah and with that too then so you I seen any website I think you have a few different like testimonials or not case studies you have on there like how

00:17:40 much thoughts put into like using more of those then is that very helpful for getting more business like how does that kind of go I used to think that people didn't care about it but people really read the case studies right and I think the thing with the case studies is to be really honest and the feedback that we've gotten on our current case studies is they're very methodical being in our cases were not we're not afraid to say really up on our initial strategy and then we tried something else and

00:18:03 that up too and then now we're at the strategy that's really working because it seems really honest I think where people go wrong as they're like we have 100x growth and blah blah blah it's like yeah now you do but like tell me about the journey and when you're really genuine about the journey people want to work with you because they understand that like you know all the other companies are pitching a certain way and you're the outlier right so it's important to be just genuine and be the outlier I think is really important did

00:18:26 you just picked it up on your on your own or did someone tell you about the being authentic with all these things or how did that evolve to that point my mom hates the way I talk to people she's like you are the most condescending person I've ever liked the things that you tell people you're too honest the people's my mom says and I'm like well I mean like people like I've had a lot of people like Lauren - I was on if he's not already on this podcast you know he will be on this podcast he's one guy that I met that he also

00:18:55 taught me that like was I like Who am I excuse me like what'd you say to me on the phone but then I was like oh my god phone I was like wow everything this guy said it was 100 cent right he was the first VC that's willing to be honest with me and I want to be that guy like I want to be the first guy on the panel to be really honest with people right I don't want to be the guy that's like oh yeah go spend money on Facebook Ads go do this go do that and then come back to me it's like no like these are all the

00:19:17 hardships these are the bumps that you're gonna hit in the road like please don't make those mistakes because I made them and usually a lot of the talks that I'll give nowadays are a synopsis of all the things that I wish people told me so I would have not wasted all my money and time doing them so I think it's just like having gone through this so many times you realize that just telling the truth and being genuine is really important yeah and one thing I want to go back to a little bit with why seiza a

00:19:41 cup of young company trying to grow different strategies obviously for that and go to next hour that type of program like what was the value added for you going through why seed think other people should approach those types of things as well understood while your perspective on that yeah so originally we thought the value-add was you go in and sure the equity they take seems expensive but they'll help you raise money that was the idea okay that's what everybody thinks to be clear my first week of YC I was like everyone

00:20:09 here's a like oh my god the partners here they're so mean and blah blah blah and all my founders went home we all went home we were like talking we had a couple drinks were like oh man we hate it we hate these guys like they're like who are they to say and then by week two or three you're like oh my god they're just telling us everything that we need to hear and we're actually improving and it's because they care right there like that parent that like the tough love parent that's like hey look I know

00:20:33 everyone's telling you what you need to hear and VC's will tell you what you want to hear because they don't want to miss the opportunity to invest in you later on down the road YC doesn't do that they'll tell you like hey there's no way you're gonna raise money on this or hey that valuation is told but yes like or hey yeah this is a pipe dream like you need to change your entire business and that was a really big wake-up call and I think afterwards just that advice has really just changed my life and then it's allowed me to like

00:20:56 help other people as well and then the community is just really really good at the end of the day a lot of like my closest friends are from YC and a lot of good connections a lot of good business relationships and things like that so I'm glad I did it I think we went in for the wrong reasons I'll admit that right away but honestly I changed my life I would have paid to be there yeah worthwhile invest at a time ticket to get into their hair exactly and one things to like with with entrepreneurs obvious there's so many ways they can

00:21:21 learn and grow and different methods for growing their business but also making sure that them personally can help grow so they're better founder or a better CEO or whatever it might be like what are some of the resources you would suggest that founders like look into or networks to tap into or anything at all relate to that yeah I mean I think number one like having a good rule of like talking to people and being open so you know one thing that I was doing for a while is I would try to get coffee or

00:21:46 drinks with like two random people a week like just someone that I'm it could be someone haven't talked to in like four or five months or whatever the case is but that was Rob's gonna be John somebody I was gonna do coffee drinks and I'm footing the bill and I think that's important right like hey I'm gonna buy you drinks let's go there are a couple books that I've read that I really like that are traditional to like tech and Silicon Valley one is can't hurt me by David Goggins it's a really good way to like

00:22:07 understand that sometimes you're just being a and you need to suck it up right take a one the second ones extreme ownership I think Jacko will like that one's really good it's all about like having humility I think when I start in the valley I was like no I'm right you're wrong well blah and all like I would tell customers off now like I'm I have the mentality of like no like I'm sorry like the buck stops on me no matter what even if one of my employees is messing up I'm the one that's gonna apologize I'm gonna be genuine about it

00:22:32 and just having the humility he's been really good so those are the two things that two books that I've really liked I think yeah I mean and then also post YC obviously don't have a say you know some of people still from that which is great I mean like networks or anything you're part of her like how do you approach kind of like meeting and talking to people like you know Lucas for instance like how did you do that now yeah so I think I will always offer to insure people to other people I think when

00:22:55 you're willing to do that people are willing to do that for you so it goes both ways the second thing is yeah I mean just getting more involved with some of the communities down here but also understanding where using your time so always well I'm always willing to give my time like hey I'll comment or hey I'll hold office hours or hey I'm like look I'm serious about this like having to talk to any companies you want so as you continue like a lend your time people will bring you into these groups

00:23:17 and you'll understand what scripts are really good so I think it's more about what you can do for other people and then from there you'll you'll end up networking and you'll end up getting a lot more intros and things like that so I think that's thing number one think number two is just don't be afraid to send a cold email you miss 100% of the shots you don't take one thing I did love about YC is you can email any one of their partners and they'll email you back that's awesome yeah they're a lot better than I am

00:23:39 about that even if they don't know you like they will email you back even if it's like Michael site moldy CEO he'll just email you back in he'll be like yeah let's talk whatever and that was the most impressive thing no you know you go there honestly so geez looking back on like your career so far like why did you become an entrepreneur um it's a good question I think my mom my mom was like a refugee from Cambodia she was like involved in that genocide I I'm not gonna lie like I had a I had a decent childhood like I

00:24:09 never worried worried about money but I did see a lot of like things when I was a and I remember the youngest memory half of this was I always wanted to make money so none of my family ever had to work and healthcare bills would get not that we had any crazy anything but I just didn't want anyone to have to worry so that was a motivation number one and the number two I like realized really early in life that I can't have a boss like I just it's not for me it's not my personality so if my dad always told me

00:24:34 if you're not gonna have a boss you better make enough money so you don't have to have a boss right so I think it's those things and then then you just I just fell in love with it honestly like the struggle you know once you've like hit some success you kind of miss like struggling like eating pizza like 2:00 in the morning and like hanging out with the guys and girls I'm like just coding and sending emails and like worrying but yeah it's just been a really good journey and I also think you meet some of the best people you'll ever

00:25:00 meet in your entire life you'll meet people that are gonna do big things you meet people that like really see life differently than everybody else I think that's really important yeah and there's so many obviously benefits to being entrepreneur but it's not for everyone clearly but some people you know if you are not like you kind of have a feeling and then you test it out - yeah yeah that's that's true that's true with your company now one of the last things I'm just kind of curious about is how are you spending your day now like

00:25:25 day-to-day every entrepreneur is different I'm just curious on your day-to-day week-to-week how are you spend your time with your company to grow up if it's um oh yeah so lots of calls among I'm on the phone pretty much all day whether it be current clients whether it be like just advising companies whether it be with people like Lucas just chopping it up seeing how we can like help each other out so that's that's lots of phone calls is one thing we also do a lot I also still do client work I think it's important that I do do

00:25:54 do client work you know keeps my brain sharp when I understand what's going on and again going back to the whole like staying genuine thing and then yeah just a lot of like research and things like that I think in the evenings you know after the dog and the girlfriend go to sleep it becomes a whirlwind oh what's new out there testing new ideas I'm also I also am investing now so we're investing some stuff we have some small businesses so that'll kind of happen at night or looking at proposals and things like

00:26:21 that so so with that you mentioned briefly that said that's a night time typically the separation especially for trying to juggle multiple things can be so difficult how do you separate do you just know that during the day that you are gonna work on pivot and then it's like oh whatever time I've left or like how does that no I mean the pivot stuff happens at night too I think what I've recently been doing is just blocking blocks for certain things and naming that on my calendar so that way people

00:26:44 can't book times in my County League and then because my calendar tells me that I have to do this one thing for an hour I'll do it so I think being consistent about that was really good I also think like baking work into like monotonous tasks like I I got I have like a desk next to my stationary bike now so like I can actually get a workout in and you know do emails or whatever the case is so that's that's the way I've been able to do it not a whole lot of good system yet but I think like using the calendars is

00:27:11 probably the best way to do it yeah I figure I've asked that question like other entrepreneurs and different interviews I've done and it's always like the calendar has to be like number one 100 percent it's the only way you do it otherwise that you there's no possible way it's not real and this isn't a calendar it seems like switching cost is real so it's important that you block and you're like really disciplined about it yeah it's the only way I kind of manage that and then with that too so you have that kind of your day to day

00:27:33 schedule and tasks and everything you're managing multiple things now with angel investing how when do you take him to conduct the big picture what you're trying to do moving forward big goals that's something you just you set and you know we're trying to get to like how do you approach that process - so my business partner is really good about this he'll we'll do dinner like once or twice look we see each other all day but we'll still do dinner like just us once or twice a week and he always asked me

00:27:56 so what are we doing like what's the goal what's the goal with the company what's the goal with you know what the investments like and has that gold changed since we talked about this last and we have these like real conversations about it and I think that's really important the fact that we do consistently every single week is really important look the goal at the end of it is always to make money right but it but along the way it's like how do we reach more people how do we you know foster more entrepreneurship but

00:28:22 first more entrepreneurship and and more good founders out there more investment opportunities uh-huh you know there is like you know good things there yeah but those are the main things that were always looking at and I think just keeping your eye on the ball is really important and having that like self reflection pretty often it's good it consistently seems to be a better thing if you can consistently schedule it and whether it be to calendar whatever I think weekly is helpful I always tell people with a

00:28:44 fitness stuff it's like if you can do something daily whatever how low it is like some it's the habit of doing it then you don't have to think about what I'm gonna it's just like you just know you're doing something exactly like even for 10 minutes I will do that too nowadays like him and I like his commute short mind's long so I'll call him on the way home and we'll you know just kind of hey how do they go how does everyone doing are the employees happy great if not like how do we make them happy you know let's just you know do

00:29:10 let's just go down the list type of a thing yeah that's helpful and kind of wrap things up here so is there anything else you'd say or advice or comments on entrepreneurs try and grow their businesses anything else yeah I mean I think start small is the biggest thing like make $100 before you make a thousand make a thousand before you make 10,000 make 10,000 before making hundred thousand I used to be one those founders where you know we made or we went and raised some money and then we had maybe

00:29:33 like two thousand dollars in what the revenue I'm like yeah you know my company's worth you know whatever the valuation was and it's like no that's not true that's a bit of a stretch so I think and also get founders on the film that are like I have a hundred million dollar business opportunity for you it's like okay we'll have you made any money yet no okay well look like go make a hundred dollars like just go sign one customer haven't come onboard and I think that's like really really important just crawl before you walk is

00:30:01 the main thing and the number two like talk to as many people as you can like just learn as much as you can become like this really big sponge is really important so and where can people go to get in touch with you reach out you know get work with your business sure you can reach out to me directly Shauna pivots email calm that's sha WN at pivot PIV OTC mo calm I'm pretty good by email I try to keep it keep it up under under ten unread a day which is really hard but I will I will respond for the most part if you email me pivots

00:30:30 mo comm you can reach out to anyone in our company as well and they were pretty good culture of responding and we'll get back to you awesome Sean thanks so much for coming on the show cool thanks for having me thanks for checking out stirrup 2.0 from spark XYZ if you want to learn more about startups and invest and check us out join the ecosystem at spark XYZ dot IO