Find Your Next Big Idea with Colin Campbell

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today, we'll be breaking down how to find your next big idea. And to drop these value bombs, I brought to Colin Campbell and to EO Fire Studios. Colin is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded over a dozen multi-million dollar companies. He's a number one best-selling award-winning author, speaker, and founder of Startup Club, helping entrepreneurs globally through his book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. And today, we're going to talk about scalable ideas, building a moat, first steps, repeatable success, and oh, so much more.

0:37And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Colin and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey. It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward.

1:19Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Colin, you are such a pro. You have now been on Entrepreneurs on Fire over six times. And I just want to dive in because we have so much to talk about. I mean, your book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, it is literally just the book that keeps on giving. I mean, one thing you do that I really love is you kick things off with the fact that ideas are everywhere. Are there really that many million-dollar ideas floating around? And if so, what's the best way to spot them? That's one of my favorite topics. I love it. You know, my son and I were walking through a field once and he found a$20 bill and said to me he was so lucky.

2:02And I came back and said, that wasn't luck. You were observant. The fact is, ideas are everywhere. We just have to pay attention to them. And let me tell you this, you're not going to see these ideas. You're not going to start your next big company by binging on Netflix. That's not going to happen. So the key here is to really create the right environment for yourself. I really encourage people to join an incubator, get into shared offices. Some of these incubators are free in most of the cities in the United States. It's amazing. And some of your listeners might not like what I'm going to say because there's a lot of entrepreneurial minds out there is get a job.

2:43Get a job in an industry you love and look for problems or bottlenecks in that industry. And if you solve a problem for a company you work for, you probably can solve it for other companies as well. The reality is when you're in the middle of it, you're in the thick of it, ideas are everywhere. Now, another light bulb generator are hobbies. And, you know, what do we love to do? And, you know, what do we want to spend our time on? I fell in love with three King Charles Spaniels that we got. My partners and I, yeah, my partners and I, we launched a company called paw.com and we designed products for the home.

3:21And I mean, they're really nice products and beds and blankets and car seats and that kind of stuff. But we designed them with orthopedic and memory foam. And we have so much fun doing it because one of the challenges of running a business is that there's going to be ups and downs and it's a roller coaster. And when you're in those sort of down periods, if you love what you're doing, you're going to keep on going. If you hate what you're doing, like I'm just doing this for money and you're not going to stick with it. So that's another important concept as well, as you can find it in hobbies. You know, another thing too, and this is a little bit of a myth is that you have to change the world.

3:57Everyone has to change the world. You don't have to change the world. Sometimes these ideas can be incremental. You know, one thing is I hate hotel rooms. I absolutely do. And I've traveled for 30 years. And so my wife and I, we often book in Airbnbs, but we had these horrible experiences. You know, like once we went to an Airbnb and there was meat in the freezer with a note, don't touch the meat, right? And another time we went into the, sorry about the background with the noise there. I love that song, by the way. Yeah, that's my wife calling me. So she's the only one who can call me during your podcast, right?

4:33So another time we went in and we had to leave early because the beds were so horrible. So that gave me an idea to create Airbnbs. We have 19 Airbnbs now in South Florida, all Western heavenly beds, pottery barn cookware, quality amenities. And by the way, if you stay in one place, it's exactly the same experience if you stay in another. So we simply combined the cleanliness of hotels with an experience of Airbnb. be. It wasn't revolutionary, but it's been a highly profitable and very successful venture. You don't have to change the world. Fire Nation, you know that you get fire coming out of Colin, whether it be from his phone when his wife's calling or out of his mouth when he's just dropping value bombs about what our focus is today, which is find your next big idea.

5:10Now, I want to talk about scalable ideas, Colin, because you also recommend picking an idea that can actually scale and you even rate it. So how does that process work and why? Why is scalability the non-negotiable factor? All right. So most entrepreneurs, they just jump into an idea. It's just ad hoc. It's like, oh, this sounds like a good idea. We should do this or invent this product or whatever. But they don't often think about the scalability or the defensibility of the idea. Now, talking about my wife, since she called, I'm going to throw her out there now. We own a school here in Fort Lauderdale and she loves running it.

5:45She has 18 employees and a hundred parents and it can be a little bit nerve wracking. Now, let me tell you this, JLD, I've run companies that are 10 times, maybe a hundred times as large and they're easier to run. It's easier to run a larger business than it is a small business. Now, here's what happened. When we hit capacity in the school, we sold out. We were like looking, okay, we got a floor. We're like getting quotes and adding a new floor, buying land around the thing. Whatever we did, it would cost millions of dollars and it's not a scalable business. So just go into that. If you're going to go into those type of businesses, just understand that's what you're getting into.

6:18And in this book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, we have a rateability of one to five on scalability. And I'm just suggesting when you sit down and do your idea, vetting your idea, just, okay, how scalable is this idea, right? Here's the opposite example. On the other hand, we won the rights to a top-level domain name,.club domain, which is like a.com, a.net or.org. and we were able to sell a million domain names in 10 years, recurring revenue, and we sold that to GoDaddy Registry. Now, I rate that one a five out of five. Like that kind of business, like that is highly scalable, highly defensible as well.

6:54Fire Nation, highly scalable, highly defensible. And I can just tell you, it is so true that it is easier to run a big company than it is a tiny company for the reasons that Colin laid out. I've experienced it myself. I mean, man, when Entrepreneurs on Fire was the biggest, I had multiple assistants. I had teams. I had this, I had that. Sometimes I was like, what am I doing today? I literally am trying to find things to do, yet my business was making more revenue than it ever had. But I also want to move into, Colin, building a moat because you dive into choosing ideas that have a moat. That's your choice.

7:28That's what you do. So what exactly does that mean? And how can entrepreneurs build or even at least identify a moat that truly protects their business? Well, it's better if you can do it right out of the gate, like when you're thinking of your idea, right? And we have the same rating system of one to five. And by the way, if you can't build a moat, you can't defend it, then you're going to struggle to scale it. Okay. So that's part of the component of scaling is be able to defend it. Dot Club had a great moat. I mentioned that. You know, it's interesting that Google and Amazon, they each registered Dot Team and Dot Group.

8:00And so we're technically competing with them. But if you still wanted a.club, you had to go through us. We're the only company in the world that could give you a.club. And it became irreplaceable when a customer used that domain name, used a website, you had that customer for life. And that was key. You had a strong moat. It was very defensible. Now, if you already have a business, and a lot of your listeners do, Don't panic. There are actions you can take to defend it. I mentioned PAW.com earlier. One of those actions is a brand. Like right now, you can buy only certain types of products on PAW.com.

8:41You can't buy them on Amazon and other channels. You can only buy our full catalog on PAW.com. And so that's defensible when you begin to build a brand. Probably one of the most exciting things about defensibility is distribution. because if you can get the most distribution for your product, then you lock out your other competitors. They don't need to bring in your competitors if you've already got that distribution channel locked up. If I've already got Wayfair, which we do at paw.com, locked up with all our products, then even copycats can't come in and take it. Now, I like trademarks. I like patents as well, and we do that for all of our products at paw.com, and we've been able to remove people from Costco, remove these copycats, these companies that come out and they duplicate your stuff, We've got them removed from Costco.

9:27We got them removed from Amazon based on trademarks and patents. So there are things you can do to protect your business. If you've already launched the business, but you need to spend some time thinking about how to create a moat for that business. Because if you don't, you're not going to be able to scale it. And Fire Nation, you know that scalable is key. You know that building a moat is key. So we're going to talk about first steps. We're going to talk about repeatable success when we get back from thinking our sponsors. Energy, focus, and recovery are critical for high performers like us, and finding the right supplements can make all the difference.

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11:56On top of it all, their support team is second to none and has your back every step of the way. Seriously, every question that pops up, they will have your answer waiting. And if you visit my special partnership link, you'll get a free trial. So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Colin, we're back and I mean, first steps, great. Like we've now locked into a winning idea. What are the very first steps at that point to actually getting it launched the right way?

12:36We have a lot of suggestions in chapter two of the book, Ideas to Action. And we actually came out with an official workbook, the Start Workbook, with the ultimate checklist. And this is probably the most comprehensive checklist for launching your business. And it just starts by taking small actions. And one of the first ones is vetting your idea. And when you vet your idea, I don't want you to go to your yaysayers like your mom. They're going to say it's a great idea, right? I don't want you to go to the naysayers because we all know who they are as well. We really need to try to connect ourselves in an environment.

13:10I love the incubator environment where you can vet your ideas with others. And also they can help you improve the ideas as well. But anyway, we put this checklist together. It's in the workbook and it's very comprehensive. Let me give you a short story. My wife and I, we talked about the Airbnbs earlier, right? And so we were bidding on a beach house on the west coast of Florida, which is our third time we bid on a house. We finally got the offer in. We went there. It came out the day it listed. We went there. We put the offer in the same day. And we're driving home from this place, and we loved it.

13:51And my wife and I were like, what are we going to call it? And the family's there, too. So it's probably one of the fun family things, events, or family businesses that I've ever done, right? And we came up with the name Sunset Escape because the sunsets were absolutely amazing. And I registered the domain name. This is while we're driving. You know, I own a Tesla self-driving. Okay, don't shoot me. I sent to my graphics guy the name. By the time we got home, we had a logo. The offer got accepted. We bought the house in Sunset Escape, and now it's launched. And it's just the idea is to, once you've got the idea is to start making small moves, right?

14:32And one of those is picking a name, picking a domain name, going to the trademark database. It's free. Don't make this mistake. So many companies, oh my gosh. So many people have made this mistake and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars having to rebrand companies because they don't go to the USPTO and just search for it on Google and just search for the domain name. It's really easy to do. Okay. And, you know, the other thing about our ultimate checklist is we've added AI. You know, use AI to do this. Use AI to do that. Use AI to do this. You know, to write a business plan, to help create a brand promise.

15:03And so this isn't a checklist that says go get a bank account. This is the ultimate checklist that says these are the practical steps you need to take one step at a time after you've got your idea. Fire Nation, every time I speak with Colin, I'm like, man, I need to start another business idea because then I can just go through this great book, Starscale, Exit, Repeat. and just make it happen. Actually, I do have an idea that I'm not going to talk about right now, Colin, but maybe I'll have some of your time in the future and I can kind of run it by you because it's burning in my mind and you're part of the inspiration for it.

15:33But I want to talk right now about repeatable success because ideas are everywhere. I mean, you talk about that in the book and you've lived it by starting, scaling, and exiting now over a dozen multi-million dollar companies. How the heck can entrepreneurs repeat that success and consistently discover their next big idea. Just like I'm talking about now. I mean, I've had a couple of really big ideas. Entrepreneurs on fire, of course, being the biggest, but there's been other big ideas that have spun out of this. So how? How can we repeat that success and consistently discover our next great idea?

16:09Yeah, we've all heard about those one-hit wonders, right? Totally. And then you heard the ones that can repeat, like the Beatles or U2. My favorite is actually the Killers. I love the Killers. I don't know. I just love that band. And, you know, they're truly serial entrepreneurs, these artists, and they keep producing work after work. And, you know, this is something that I've done over 12 successful multimillion dollar companies. okay i i you know i've been involved in some very large companies but but most of them have been relatively small from 10 million to 100 million dollars and um there really is a formula that works that you can repeat over and over again as long as you got the right the story the people the money and the systems and we we break all down we break it down for the serial entrepreneur here so this book isn't just for the startup entrepreneur but it's also for that serial entrepreneur who really wants to think how do i keep doing this over and over again let me give an example.

17:03In 1993, we started what was called a BBS, a bulletin board service. We launched it, and something called the internet came out. So we decided to launch a little internet module, and then eventually we launched a company called Internet Direct, became the largest internet service provider in Canada. While we were at Internet Direct, a company called SaskTel called us up, and they wanted to license our web hosting platform. And ding, ding, ding, we said, okay, well, if they want it, maybe other telecoms want it. So we launched Hostopia. We took that company public in S1 in the United States in 2006.

17:40And that was one of the largest companies in the world for hosting an email for all the telecoms around the world. And while I was there, we had an opportunity to study new domain extensions. And.club just sort of popped out at me. And after I left the company, I went back to them and said, hey, can I launch this? Can I register this TLD? And they said, yeah, we don't want it. It's too risky for us. So you go for it all, you know, and, but while at dot club, an app called clubhouse launches and we launched a club called startup club with almost a million members. We interviewed 200 people over two years.

18:15I remember that. Phenomenal people like Jeffrey Moore who wrote crossing the chasm and Joe Foster, who you had on your show here before. And, you know, we interviewed all these amazing people and that became the basis of the book. And we have over 50 of their stories in this book. and I wouldn't be here today talking to you if it wasn't for that BBS in 1993. Why is this so important? It's important because when you're in the thick of it, like I said earlier, when you're in the thick of it, ideas are everywhere. When you're in the business, I'm really encouraging entrepreneurs, it's gonna violate a few rules here, but I'm encouraging entrepreneurs to think about their next business while they're in that business.

18:52I've seen entrepreneurs, when they leave their company, they sit idle for years and it's so hard to get back on the horse. but when you're in the thick of it, you can begin to do spinoffs one after another. And I do have a warning though. You have to focus on your core. Never forget, core business is the most important thing. Entrepreneurs on fire is the most important thing before you start your next business, okay? And as long as that's being taken care of, then you're good to go. A couple of other things, like you need to begin to position yourself as a brand if you're a serial entrepreneur.

19:24You want to make certain you're on the front page of Google. Here's a funny story. when I first did a deal with Forbes Books for Start, Scale, X, Repeat. They said you had to change your name. I said, what? Change my name? There's too many Colin Campbells out there. So we had to change it to Colin C. Campbell. They used the example of David Miriam Scott. Well, that's why I'm John Lee Dumas, brother. That is exactly why. Yeah, exactly. And the other thing, too, is if you can get a Wikipedia page. I know it's hard, the notability requirements. But right now with the LLMs, the AIs, They're looking for Wikipedia as one of the top areas.

19:58Yeah, the credible sources. Yeah. Well, we detail in the repeat section of the book, again, that's my favorite section of the book, about how to hire the right type of people to run your companies. In the book, we start in the start section, we delegate tasks. In scale, we delegate responsibilities, not tasks. In repeat, we delegate companies, not responsibilities. and when you do that, when you fire the right people, the lady running paw.com, Michelle Van Tilburg, she is phenomenal. She is a pistol. And I should get her on your show one day, but she is a pistol and she really knows how to make, she was my former president at Dot Club.

20:38So that's the thing. At a certain point, you got to let go. You got to let go and let other entrepreneurs start to take, and then you're like, then you begin to really take off. It's almost like, I use the, I shouldn't do this, But I use the analogy of Star Wars, okay, if you have any Star Wars fans here. But, you know, there's the Peta One, and then there's the Jedi Knight, and then there's Jedi Spirit. And, you know, the reality is you are achieving success when you become a coach. And you're no longer the CEO. You're no longer the entrepreneur. You're truly a coach, and you're helping others succeed.

21:15And I just finished our strategic planning, annual strategic planning session with Paw.com at the Beach House, by the way. It's all connected at the Beach House. And we just finished it last week. And I go in there and I help facilitate it. I'm now the coach. I used to have a CEO coach. Now I'm the coach to the companies that are in my incubator. Colin, take us home because this is so inspiring. I heard a little bit of a rumor. A little birdie told me that start, scale, exit, repeat may have now been awarded 33 awards. Give us a little more detail on that. AI now is excited about you being the most awarded business book on the planet.

21:53Tell us more. No, not business book. Book on entrepreneurship. Just to clarify that. Yeah. And it's a bit of a shock, actually, because when we set out on this journey 10 years ago, writing this book, we never imagined it would have gotten so much recognition. 33 Global Awards, the most awarded book on entrepreneurship ever, including awards like the Axiom's Gold Medal for Entrepreneurship, the IPPY, which is Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal on Business. That one won the Gold Medal on Business in 2025. Nautilus Book Awards, Silver on Business and Leadership. It's number two position there in 2025.

22:32But Kirkus, Star, Kirkus Top 100 Indie Book of the Year. We've gotten a lot of key recognition for this book. We really did write this book for the ADHD entrepreneur. It's like 76 chapters. They're short, they're digestible, and they're meaningful. And it really is a guide to really help you get started. And the other thing we did is we came out, I mentioned earlier, an official workbook called the Start Workbook. And you're going to like this, JLD. We actually put in there, now it's a physical book, so it's only$10. And we're trying to get out there and help people, right? And get them to start a business, get the idea, and then give them the launch, the steps to launch, right?

23:16And what we also did in the book, so it's got, like you fill it out with a pen and it's like very simple, basic, but we also have 10 AI GPTs. So you scan a QR code, to access the GPT, and it will help you with each part of the book. Like, for instance, I want to identify my own personality profile, and I want to identify the personality profiles of individuals who would complement me to help me achieve my objectives, and we have GPTs for that. We also have 16 AI audio deep dives for each chapter. So when you read a chapter, you can listen to the deep dive afterwards and really learn that topic, really master it.

23:55Because Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat is more than just a book. It really is a methodology of how to build wealth for yourself in the long run. Fire Nation, I know a bunch of you are raising your hands figuratively and literally on that note. And Colin, what is your call to action for our listeners today? It's at Amazon. You can grab it on Amazon. And we did discount the Start Workbook for$9.99 because of your episode. And we wanted to make certain that people had a chance to get it. We normally sell it for$19.99 or$14.99, but we dropped it to$9.99 just to make it accessible and easy and a no-brainer.

24:35But you do need to actually get the book as well. We have the audio book on Amazon, and that one I had a fellow Canadian who does Budweiser commercials. He actually did it, and he's quite entertaining. He's actually quite good at keeping you – because I understand entrepreneurs. I like audible books. I like that too. and you can grab it at that or any bookstore you want to go to. Well, Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with CC and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Colin in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up.