Ignore the Hype - Startup Different with David Sinkinson

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like DTC Pod. Today, we'll be breaking down how to ignore the hype and startup difference. To drop these value bombs, I brought David Singensen into EO Fire Studios. Dave is a proven SaaS entrepreneur and chief podcast officer of Startup Difference. In today's information, we'll talk about what the heck it means to startup difference. We'll talk about real world case studies, myths will break myths, and so much more.

0:35And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Dave and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.

1:09Are you looking to start or grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated and most reviewed business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and football great Tim Tebow at Thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Dave, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, Fire Nation. Excited to see you guys. And JLD, how's it going? Yeah, this is Dave Singinson here. I'm just going to say, I love this question. um i you know i'm so long time listener first time caller yes i am very very excited to talk about you know some startup myths and some startup sort of pop fiction today and yeah i think i'm gonna go with that nice guys finish last okay and i think that's something that a lot of people when they perceive you know attacking the market and getting out there and being successful they have to be like super ruthless and we're going to talk about that a little bit today but i think it's one of the most pervasive sort of myths in the business world and particularly for startups.

2:20You know, there's a mountain of data and support that frankly, being a jerk makes your staff less engaged and loyal. Your customers are less loyal and your company is frankly less profitable. It's just like objectively wrong. But at the same time, being nice, it doesn't mean you're a over. And I'm sure people can hear my Canadian accent. Typical Canadian nice guy, right? But anyway, when I think about the journey of my company, you know, starting a business with my brother, building, scaling, selling for tens of millions of dollars, and then merging my company into the acquirers, you know, definitely not being a jerk was a big deal.

3:00But I do think that when we met our competitors in the market, for example, we were pretty intense. You know, we weren't doing anything sketchy, but remember your competitor's best day is when you're out of business. So we kind of called it this sort of moral ruthlessness. You know, we went after our competitors as intensely as we could, but we still had a moral compass, you know, no shady business BS or anything like that. Sort of like the old saying, you know, you get more bees with honey than vinegar kind of thing. It's sort of spot on. Moral ruthlessness. I love that phrase. And Fire Nation, I've now interviewed 4 ,412 entrepreneurs.

3:38And I can tell you those that are running companies that have employees that are bought in to the vision, those are the winners. People that actually have a piece of the outcome, even more so. I mean, I was just listening to this great podcast episode about Starbucks and it was fascinating is that when the founder of Starbucks actually started giving some equity to people that were even just part-time baristas. Guess what? Everybody in the company started being nicer to each person that was showing up for coffee because why? Now they knew that when people came back and bought more coffee, Starbucks shares went up, their dollars and cents went up because they owned part of that company and everybody was winning.

4:22So how can you, instead of being that Steve Jobs jerk, how can you say, I want my customers, my clients, and even more importantly, my employees to be bought into my vision and to have some of the upside as well. That's what's really exciting. Now, I want to talk about starting up different because we are going to ignore the hype. We are going to start up different. Tell us more. Yeah, absolutely. So Start Up Different is actually my podcast that I co-host with my brother because basically what we're trying to do is just pay it forward. You know, we're trying to put some of these lessons out there for other entrepreneurs, too.

5:00And but I do think that when when we think about startup different and by the way, it took us a million years to get to this name. But when we got to this name, we realized it was kind of like a mindset. You know, it's sort of it's a couple of things for some of the folks listening today. You know, sort of recognizing that maybe something is wrong with the way we do sort of do startups now. And to some extent, you know, business in general, you know, just doesn't really feel right to you. all this pressure to get funding or move to California to have a ton of staff, to pressure the hell out of them.

5:31It really means taking a fresh approach at what being a startup is and evaluating as a group of entrepreneurs, as everybody listening here today, the Fire Nation, how can we do it better? And GLD, I know you love myth busting. We're all about that too. And there's so many myths that are so pervasive. We've already covered, I feel like, two here already. But I think the first thing that I want everybody to understand here is we can do better. So Startup Different is really about taking a really critical lens at a lot of these sort of, you know, the pop fiction around startups and trying to understand what is real and what is noise.

6:04Fire Nation, what is real? What is noise? These are some incredibly important distinguishers you're going to have to navigate throughout your journey. And you are right, Dave. I love busting myths. I also love real-world case studies. So give us some real examples of common startup myths that you just see over and over again. So there's so many, again, as we've been alluded to. But I guess I have a couple that, even if I just think chronologically about a business, because I know we have entrepreneurs at different stages of their business listening today, and I want to make sure I get a little bit for everyone.

6:40So I'm going to just take a second here and think about some of my favorites in these different categories. And my first one is basically in the early days. It's a myth that you're suddenly going to have like a eureka moment sitting around thinking about business ideas. You know, it's a process. You have to go out there. You've got to come up with those ideas. You've got to try them. You've got to execute them. You've got to know something about them. Like there's a we like to say that coming up with ideas and executing a startup early on, it's 1 % ideation, 99 % perspiration. You know, get out there and do it.

7:13And that's one of these things where I think one of the biggest things that holds people back, I was listening to Seth Godin the other day, and he said, too, it's really just about going out and doing it. So I think that's the first thing I want to get. Second myth that I love is that new companies just sort of appear one day, and they're worth millions of dollars. And this is so funny, right? Because to consumers, right? We're just there, and then all of a sudden it enters our life. It's in the mainstream, and we're like, wow, where did they come from? And I'm old enough to remember when Facebook was coming around.

7:41And I was like, wow, where did this thing go from? And the crazy thing is that for most businesses, actually, on average, it takes 11 years for a company to get a million dollars in top line revenue. And that varies. It's across the entire market. But when you think about it, it's going to take a while. It's going to take many years to do it. So persistence, dedication, they don't just appear. These are people working really hard. We've already covered another favorite myth. As you get more successful, acting like a dick in the market is going to make you more successful. It's just not true. We just know that's objectively not true.

8:14You know, it's a, I'm just thinking of some other quick ones here. Your company's too small to have like existential culture crises. You know, one of the things that happened to us early is we had a huge culture crisis and maybe we can get into that later, but you know, that, that's a big one too. And you're, you're just alluding to as well, like the importance of culture, you know? And I think lastly, and this might be an interesting one for, for anybody later on, or maybe just for curiosity's sake, it's a big myth for me that you need to shop your company to sell it. We actually had buyers come to us, like a lot of buyers.

8:44There was so much interest because we had created a principled, extremely profitable, sort of well-put-together, systematized business. And we had people throwing money at us. And eventually, we did it. But it was really interesting because all the advice I'd gotten to that point was like, well, you got to go find bankers and do this and that and the next thing. And honestly, we didn't need to do that at all. Fire Nation, I really hope you're understanding what these myths are, the damage that they can do. Hopefully you're identifying a few that maybe you used to believe in. You can say, yeah, I was there at one point in my life or maybe some of you still do believe in a couple of these that are just frankly myths.

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10:37Visit hubspot.com to learn more. Are you looking to start or grow a successful business this year? Are you looking to learn the proven success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories? See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month, and it costs less than hiring a minimum wage employee, yes, it's month to month and costs less than hiring a minimum wage employee, schedule your free personal 13-point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire.

11:19Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference, you will interact with Clay directly, see thousands of real success stories and learn about attending the Thrive Time Show two-day in-person workshop featuring football great and entrepreneur Tim Tebow today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire. Become the next success story. Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join Tim Tebow and Clay Clark at the next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire. Dave, we're back and let's be honest. At one time in your life, you believed a myth.

11:56So I want to talk with Fire Nation. I want to make you real and human. Share which myth you believed that was bad for your company? Yeah. So I guess actually the first thing I want to say here is that it's so tough to not buy into these myths. Okay. So if you have at some point, if you've heard something I've said so far and you go, man, I've totally done that. Or, you know, maybe it went wrong. Maybe, maybe it actually worked out for you. That's possible. You know, it's not impossible, but you know, it definitely happened to us. And actually we were just talking about it before the break. And I think maybe it's a good time to tell that story, which is we had this crazy culture failure.

12:32Okay. So early on in our, in our business, we, we kind of had this expectation that, you know, uh, culture at all these, at all different startups was basically the same that you, you know, you, you basically, you put a slide in, you got a foosball table and maybe he's got some free beer or something and it works out. And, uh, it just didn't work out for us. We actually tried to copy another culture. We tried to copy, uh, um, I don't know if you've heard about this little known company, uh, Netflix. Um, and we, we tried to copy them and we just couldn't do it. They actually came out with this amazing guide to what is I actually think is mostly table stakes now for company cultures where you know people could come in whenever they wanted they could wear whatever they wanted to work this back in like 2009 um and uh so we tried to do that and we tried to work that way and you know we just we couldn't do it it was just wasn't the way that me and my co-founder operated our staff didn't really understand what we were trying to do because we didn't really understand what we were trying to do and actually we lost all of our staff you know they they either quit or it just wasn't working.

13:29They couldn't handle some of the principles of that culture and it fell apart. So we had to actually reset. And I want to tell you, that is a dark startup moment. For anybody here who's experienced this, it's probably somebody who's got some serious PTSD for this sort of thing. They're feeling it right now. I got to be honest with you, it was a scary moment. It was where I said, are we still going to do this or not? And we reset, we got reorganized on what we were about. We basically wrote down our principles and how we words and how we wanted to run our business. And we started from scratch with our staff.

14:00And thankfully, we learned that painful lesson the first time and built a culture that we really enjoyed, that we understood, and that our employees thrived in. Fire Nation, myths come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. I can tell you that for sure. I mean, you know, a myth that I experienced way early back in the day, and this came from a mentor who I hired, who was a successful business podcast host. It came from the leader of a mastermind that I invested in, who was an incredibly successful business podcaster. Guess what? They both told me, John, you can't do a daily podcast. Podcasts are meant to be once a week.

14:37You've got to give your listeners time to consume the content and then relax and then come back to it. You'll never find enough guests for your show, John, if you try to do daily. You'll get burned out, John. Your listeners will get burned out, John. Everybody will get burned out, John. And I was like, wow, like these are experienced individuals and they think they're speaking the truth. But here's the interesting thing, Fire Nation, about myths is you can kind of step back and say to yourself, you know what? If the best people in my industry are saying that it can't be done and I figure out how to do it, what an opportunity that is.

15:11That's where you step into unique opportunity, opportunity greatness. So that was my experience with a couple of myths. and I've had to bus others along the way. I fell victim because I didn't listen to actual truths. And that's what I want to talk to you next because we have talked a lot about myths and there are some truths that I listened to, ignored and paid the price on. So what are the biggest real challenges that all entrepreneurs face in your opinion, Dave? Let me just say, first off, I super empathize with that story. I don't have a daily podcast. And by the way, you're crushing it. So congratulations.

15:48Thank you. Um, I, you know, we had people come up to us and say, well, this will never work. This is a, maybe you'll make a million bucks tops if you're lucky. Uh, we had, we had one person tell us we weren't even a startup, you know? So like there are haters out there. And actually I think that kind of feeds into one of the like most real challenges that entrepreneurs face. It's psychological. It's really psychological and it changes over time. Okay. So I think at all times, though, and especially when I think about that story, it's an obsession over credibility. We want to be taken seriously.

16:23We want to be respected. We want to be important. And I think what you did, too, JLD, is you actually scaled something that was thought to be unscalable, which is an amazing thing to do. If anybody here listening today can do that, that is the key to success. I'll tell you. That's a great thing to do. But I do think that the challenge there that you face, that adversity, is really material. You had somebody tell you it just can't be done. And you went through and did it. And I think that's really a huge part of this. Like the psychological, I don't want to call it torment, but it's real. It's very, very stressful, very difficult to start a business.

16:57And then I actually think that as time goes on, the challenge changes. And I know that this is really challenging for me personally. and you might think this is kind of crazy, but it was really about not losing my mind. And you'll think, what are you talking about? Because success is kind of sneaky. When you start doing really well, when you start getting on top of your business, you start making some decent bucks, it can make you into a different person, which ironically could make your business less successful. So it's one of those things that staying grounded and centered and humble, having a lot of humility is really, really important.

17:33I had many, many entrepreneur friends where their business was going so well, huge profits. And over time, they changed as a person that turned off their staff, that turned off the customers they worked with, that really changed and hurt their business. So the reality is your business needs you to be you. But that is a huge psychological challenge. So ultimately, it's an introspective challenge as much as it is retrospective. And sometimes Fire Nation, you just need to sit down and say, what do I need to do to make this work? For me, it was, I sat down and said, if I do four episodes per month, that is a maximum of like eight sponsorships that I can bring on to my show.

18:15Because let's say I have two per show. That's kind of the max. Yeah, I can maybe push to three, but two per show, four shows per month, that's eight spots. I can only charge so much per episode or per sponsorship because there's just a cap on that, you know, based off of listens and other things. And there was a cap on the revenue that I can make. But that's when I had to shift and said, well, if I do 30 shows a month, that's 60 potential sponsorship spots. I mean, that's inventory. I just expanded my universe. And that's why now for over 11 years straight, we've been averaging somewhere around$100 ,000 to$150 ,000 in revenue a month from sponsorships alone.

18:59Now that's not possible if we had stayed at just one per week. So we expanded our universe, we busted some myths because we said, hey, this is how the business model is going to work. And if it doesn't work, at least we died trying a business model that a chance of working if we, if we had success, if we succeeded in that process. So I wanted to just know if I can do this, is this possible? And if it's not, then it's just not even worth doing. And so, you know, That's why sometimes when you hear that fail faster thing, that's what people are talking about. It's like, get to the answer as quick as possible.

19:32Now, we've talked about a lot, Dave, today, a lot of things. What would you say of everything we chatted about you would really want to make sure our listeners got from our conversation today? I think for sure that you can do this. I know that we mentioned it's a psychological challenge. We mentioned that there are going to be those haters along the way. But if you can go out there and find a problem that people will say is impossible and make it possible, you'll be successful. The second thing is that the startup universe is laden with so many different myths and red herrings that it's really important that you and if you have a co-founder, you take on those issues together and you try to figure out, is this really going to work for our business?

20:21And is this something that we believe we can do? And I think that once you have your head on straight when it comes to this sort of stuff, you're much more likely to be successful. You'll be more grounded and you'll be doing the things to truly start up different. Dave, if Fire Nation wants to learn more from you, wants to connect with you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Yeah, absolutely. So, well, it actually just so happens that on October 1st of this year, we'll be launching our book. So it's a paperback, audiobook, ebook called Startup Different, the myth-busting blueprint for your multi-million dollar business.

20:57Pre-orders actually start on Labor Day. It's everything we've talked about here today and more. We actually dispel 33 different startup myths throughout the book, all while providing detailed insights and telling our company's story. Of course, we also have our podcast, too, Startup Different. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts where Chris and I take on these issues. And you can find us on social. We're biggest on YouTube. And you can also check out our website at startupdifferent.com. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with DS and JLD today, so keep up that heat.

21:29And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Dave in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Dave, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute your brother and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, sir. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Dave for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs and created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment.

21:58I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams, visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I will catch you there or on the flippity-flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier.

22:33AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Are you looking to start or grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated and most reviewed business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and football great Tim Tebow at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Thank you.