Giving Back to the Entrepreneurial Community with Dave Taylor

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we'll be breaking down giving back to the entrepreneurial community. To drop these value bombs, I brought Dave Taylor into EO Fire Studios. Dave is a longtime entrepreneur, has a popular YouTube channel, writes for the local newspaper, and mentors early stage startups when he's not pursuing one of his hobbies. And today, we'll talk about his first startup, the Internet Mall. We'll talk about how incubators and accelerators can be beneficial to entrepreneurs at all stages, how a rising tide raises all ships and how your network is your net worth and oh, so much more.

0:41And the big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Dave and our sponsors. Want to learn how to get booked and paid to speak? Great news. I've arranged direct access to my good friend, Graham Baldwin's proven speaking business system from the Speaker Lab. Go to eofire.com slash speaker to grab your spot for our live training on May 28th and learn how to get booked and paid to speak. Do you have the right mentor in your life right now? For the first time in seven years, I'm opening up a few mentorship slots for individuals who know they need the guidance and accountability to take their business and life to the next level.

1:20Email me at john at eofire.com with the subject line mentor and we'll schedule a 15 minute chat to go over the program and see if it's the right fit for you. Dave, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Hey, everyone. And ooh, that most people disagree with. Well, let me just come at that obliquely and instead say that I think that the most important factor for any entrepreneur is optimism. You've got to be resilient. You've got to be persistent. But mostly, you've got to just be optimistic that you're going to trip over things.

2:04Things are going to fail. contracts are going to cancel, but you can still make it and you can still get to the other side and be the success that you want to be. I love that. And a lot of the founders that I actually look up to and respect the most, when they talk about hiring, they always say, John, I don't hire for skills. I hire for optimism because I can train people anything, but I can't train natural optimism. So try to encourage that not only in yourself, Fire Nation, but of course in your team. And today we'll be talking about giving back to the entrepreneurial community. But first, I want to talk, Dave, about your first startup, the Internet Mall.

2:43Tell us that story. We're going back now because people are thinking of things like Amazon.com and thinking Internet Mall. But the fact is that when all this started and everyone started to come online, there really wasn't much there in terms of shopping. There was a website that you could like go and do a text interface and buy books or CDs, but there wasn't much more. And I was approached by a magazine to write an article about shopping online, which was this extremely novel concept. And that grew over a couple of different years and a couple of different iterations. And I actually ended up in, where was it?

3:29in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and I went to the Mall of America to walk around. And I was obviously, as everyone is, pretty blown away by how big it is. But I was also thinking about how do you organize stores in a logical way to make it most efficient to be shopping? Because malls don't do that. They want you to walk around. But that really was the inspiration for me thinking about a sort of physical concept of a shopping site. And I was one of the very first aggregators of online shopping stores. And that started out, honestly, just as a text email that I would send out every week. And one day someone reached out and said, hey, could I make a web page out of this?

4:17And I said, yeah, no, I'll do that myself. And so I learned how to program for the web and it became very successful. I love those early stories. I mean, they're so fascinating because there's just so much opportunity at all times, Fire Nation, if you're willing to step into it. Now, I want to chat about incubators and accelerators because you believe that they're beneficial to entrepreneurs at all stages. Tell us more. So let me actually refine that slightly and say they can be beneficial. And I work with a number of mentorship programs and I've worked with and for incubators and such. And if you go in with the right mindset and the right level of commitment, they can be powerful ways for you to bootstrap and accelerate the growth of your company.

5:06because I think everyone listening can be candid and say, there are some things I know well, and there are some things I don't know. And so you might be a great inventor or a great software developer or really great at cooking, but that doesn't mean you know how to do accounting or file documents with the government or have the first clue about how to do online marketing. So instead of struggling through all of those things, how helpful would it be to suddenly have a team around you that's teaching you all of these things and gives you, if nothing else, the ability to recognize, ah, that is something I really dislike.

5:45I need to hire someone to do that, either a contractor or an employee or maybe a co-founder, depending on how important that area is. So that's the idea of things like incubators, is that you go in, perhaps with a little humility and a little bit of your hat in hand, and say, I have this dream, I have this vision, I think I can make a go of it, but I might need some help to have that road be as smooth as possible. Let's talk about rising tides that raise all ships. How have you seen this to be true in the real world? Well, sometimes, yeah, sometimes no. So in as much as I think that communities can grow by having each member of the community promote each other.

6:32But obviously with direct competition, it's really hard to have two restaurants adjacent and have each one promoting the other's menu. But on the other hand, if you think about maybe a coffee shop and a dessert place, then they could be very good hand in hand. So I think that the idea that I'm sort of promoting here overall is of giving back. And that's really what we're talking about with this rising tide metaphor, which is ask how you can help your fellow businesses be successful and then just kind of hope and expect that they'll do the same. So when someone goes into their business or someone goes to their website and they don't offer a service, they could smoothly and easily redirect them to you.

7:22And now you just got customer acquisition for zero. Talk to us about how this worked in your life, in your journey as an entrepreneur. Like, give us an example where you were doing something where a rising tide actually helped you. Like, give us that real world example. That has been throughout my entire career. I'm the sort of person that endlessly looks at things and says, oh, that could be done better or that could be designed better. Or why is this like this? It doesn't really make sense. So I'm constantly looking at solutions and I will constantly suggest to other people that they might have a better, smarter, more nimble or more interesting offering.

8:07And often that produces a really positive outcome where it's just like, oh, that's a really great idea. I hadn't really thought about that at all. So in terms of specifics, I will say that every startup I've ever done, any entrepreneurial venture I've been involved with, we have absolutely benefited from being part of communities and having other people in the community promote us, even sometimes as a surprise to us where it's just like, oh, I didn't even know you knew we existed and you're sending business our way. How wonderful is that? Fire Nation, a lot of powerful things. And we're going to really be diving more into giving back to the entrepreneurial community when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

8:52Speaking from stage is one of the most impactful ways I found to share my message and grow my business. But if you've never done it before, it can seem intimidating. How do you get booked and paid to speak if you've never done it before? Great question. And to answer it, I've arranged direct access to my good friend, Grant Baldwin's proven speaking business system from the Speaker Lab. This is a live training where you'll learn the proven five-step process that led Grant to over 500 paid gigs, current paid speaking opportunities you can pursue right now, plus the number one marketing tool that's working for his students in 2025.

9:27The Speaker Lab is committed to helping 1 ,000 new speakers land paid gigs this year, and I'd love for you to be one of them. This live training is going down May 28th, and there are limited spots available, So head over to eofire.com slash speaker to grab your spot on this live training where you can ask questions and get them answered, plus learn how to get booked and paid to speak. That's eofire.com slash speaker. Question for you, Fire Nation. Do you have the right mentor in your life right now? For me, mentorship was everything. From when I was just getting started in podcasting, webinars, course creation, book writing, you name it.

10:06I hired a mentor to guide me every step of the way. For the first time in seven years, I'm opening up a few mentorship slots for individuals who know they need the guidance and accountability to take their business and life to the next level. It's a three-month program and together we will achieve massive results. If you're interested in learning more, email me at john at eofire.com with the subject line mentor and we'll schedule a 15-minute chat to go over the program to see if it's the right fit for you. That's john, J-O-H-N, at eofire.com, but only if you're prepared to ignite. Dave, one thing that you've seen throughout your career is how your network becomes your net worth.

10:53Is it really about who you know in this space? Absolutely. I think that the sort of funny metaphor of build a better mousetrap is so true, is you can build the best mousetrap in the world, but if no one knows you built it, you're not catching any mice. So your success in business is so much a factor of being out there, going to networking events, going to educational events, going to chamber of commerce events, going to conferences and expos, and in every single event, putting yourself out there. And this is hard because a lot of entrepreneurs that I know are fairly introverted. So one of the ways you can do that is you can just sort of pretend that you're in a documentary or a movie about entrepreneurship.

11:44And so you're going to pretend to be an extrovert. And it's hard. I mean, I've been doing this for a long time, and it's still hard to walk up to someone cold and say, hi, I'm Dave. What brings you to this event? but that's a skill very worth learning because you're exactly right, John, is that who you know opens up so many doors than what you know or what you've built. All right, we're diving into giving back now because a lot of entrepreneurs, I would actually probably say most entrepreneurs, set out to make the world a better place. Let's talk about you specifically. How are you making things better?

12:22When I looked back on the various different jobs I've had starting in undergraduate in college, actually probably going back to high school, the factor that they all have in common is trying to help people understand what's going on with their technology or their devices or their world. and I continue to do that by being an educator, by being on this show, by working with entrepreneurs, by being a mentor. So if you were to ask me, as you just did, what am I doing to make the world a better place? I think my answer will continue to be, I'm trying to make it easier for people to understand. And this then can come back to very early.

13:09I've been around in tech for long enough that I remember that, you know, you would sign up to have an hour of access to a mainframe computer. And there were these like priests who tended to the computer and you were acolytes, hoping you would be able to get your job done in time. And that always struck me as a really horrible model, because I want everyone to understand things. So I continue to look at things like car interfaces. How, when you get in a car, does it make sense how all the controls work? And I continue to push for that being easier and simpler. It shouldn't involve you knowing cryptic icons.

13:51It shouldn't involve you necessarily being able to read well or being literate. So how do we create a world where we all have access to all of the wonders and amazing things that technology can deliver to us. Dave, we're all standing upon the shoulders of giants. I mean, I'm always giving credit to the great mentors that I've had along my journey from all the way back in 2012, to start my podcast, to start doing webinars, to start learning how to write a book. I mean, I got mentors at every step along the way. So in your own words, how can we be a great mentor to others? I do a lot of mentorship.

14:30And the thing I always try to keep in mind is to never tell someone what to do. And I think this is really critical and particularly like with entrepreneurial mentors is that you're not their board of directors. This isn't some sort of drama on Netflix or something. You're trying to help them not just be successful, but understand how to be successful. So I would say the number one rule for any mentor is just ask them lots of questions and remember that it's ultimately their business. So, you know, if John, if you came to me and said, so I think I'm going to cancel my podcast and just press LPs and sell those, then I might say, well, have you thought about all the different ramifications?

15:23Have you thought about the market size? You know, tell me a little more about your thinking in terms of distribution? Do you see any challenges? So I'm not telling you not to do that. You obviously have a very successful business here, but I'm suggesting that there might be things that you haven't really factored in. And you might be exactly right. That might be the next step for this podcast, but I want to hear your thinking and you might convert me. You might say, holy cow, you know, and this is exactly the right thing to do. But as a mentor, your goal is to say, I can see a bigger picture than you can.

16:01And this goes back to entrepreneurship, which generally is a very heads down experience. This is why we were talking about things like getting out there and being, you know, networking and being social, because it's really easy to sit at the kitchen table and code for 14 hours a day, or to have two other people and you sit in the corner at the coffee shop and do who the heck knows what on your computers and never look up and never interact with anyone. So that gets you in a rut and that doesn't help you see the big picture of your market. So the theme of this interview is giving back to the entrepreneurial community.

16:38That being said, Dave, take us home. What's the one thing you really want to make sure our listeners understand from our conversation today? That the rewards of helping your fellow entrepreneurs are greater than the cost of spending the time to do that. And what I mean by that is that, again, I think entrepreneurs have a tendency to be very sort of singularly focused on their job and their tasks and what they wanna get done for their great product. And that's fantastic. I mean, that's an essential skill, but taking time off and helping others be successful or helping them understand how their product or service might fit into your ecosystem is a win-win.

17:28So don't look at it as time lost. Look at it as time invested. David, Fire Nation wanted to connect with you, wanted to learn more about what you have going on. What is your call to action for our listeners today? So many ways you can find me in the online world. I'll start with I have a YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Ask Dave Taylor, where I just look at consumer electronics. But if you actually think about what I'm talking about, then you'll see that, again, I'm looking at the experience. And is this easy to use? Does it fulfill its promise? greater than that I also have askdavetaylor.com where I do tech and business Q &A and you can find me on most all social networks fire nation you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with you've been hanging out with DT and JLD today so keep up the heat and for links to everything we talked about visit eofire.com type Dave in the search bar the show notes page will pop right up and by the way you can check out an episode we did back on January 15th, 2015, over 10 years ago.

18:38Dave, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Dave for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, what can 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about. This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs, and you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com.

19:20I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Want to learn how to get booked and paid to speak? Great news. I've arranged direct access to my good friend, Graham Baldwin's proven speaking business system from the Speaker Lab. Go to eofire.com slash speaker to grab your spot for our live training on May 28th and learn how to get booked and paid to speak. Do you have the right mentor in your life right now? For the first time in seven years, I'm opening up a few mentorship slots for individuals who know they need the guidance and accountability to take their business and life to the next level. email me at john at eofire.com with the subject line mentor, and we'll schedule a 15-minute chat to go over the program and see if it's the right fit for you.