Transcription

@0:01 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Hello everyone and welcome to the Shades of Entrepreneurship. This is your host, Mr.

Flores. Today I'm here with Dr. Standbridge, calling in from central Arkansas, if I recall correctly.

@0:23 - Jeff Standridge

Jeff, how are we doing? Hey, I'm great.

@0:25 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

How are you doing? I'm excited about this one because you were wearing a lot of different hats. You have multiple hats, different things you're into.

Also an educator teaching at the College of Business and University of Central Arkansas. we're going to get into all that.

first, Jeff, go ahead and introduce yourself.

@0:46 - Jeff Standridge

Who is Jeff? Sure. Who is Jeff? So I'm a Texan by birth and an Arkansan by choice. Pretty much have grown up in Arkansas my entire life.

It's been about nine years. actually more about 10 11 years in healthcare was a professor at the University of Arkansas for medical sciences was a paramedic respiratory therapist on the helicopter team at Arkansas Children's Hospital decided while I was a professor I didn't want to do another clinical degree so I got a degree in an organizational behavior and that led me into the corporate world spent about 20 years with a publicly traded technology company did mergers and acquisitions and global operations pretty much all over the world and about eight years ago I started an entrepreneurial support organization called the conductor well I'm sure we'll dig into that so I work the team of folks the conductor startup junkie is the the organization that focuses on driving entrepreneurship and innovation in the state of Arkansas and then in 2020 we started a company called Innovation Junkie to focus on companies that didn't really qualify for the sponsored or funded services and it's more of a billable consulting firm and get to do some investment

thing as well through our venture fund called cadrin capital partners.

@2:03 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So you're right, a lot of a lot of hats, but indeed my goodness, you've been doing quite a bit of work.

And I love it because a lot of the work that you're doing is actually to support their community growth and right economic development there locally.

And you know me and Jeff are talking about this earlier about the creation of this podcast. And you know, at the end of the day, you know, they're constantly saying the economy is built on the back of small businesses.

it's true. And making sure they have the support that Jeff is able to provide is very cool.

@2:34 - Jeff Standridge

Now let's get into this current venture of yours. You mentioned that the conductor tell us a little bit about it.

What is it? How did you start it? Yes. So 2013, I was chair of our local chamber of commerce.

So I live in a town called Conway Arkansas. It's outside of Little Rock, our capital city by about 30 miles, about 70,000 population, three institutions of higher education, a state university, liberal arts college and a and a Bible.

school, and a very educated workforce, young educated workforce. At that time we had two very large technology employers, one with about 2,500 employees in the community and one with about 1,500.

so I, as chair of the chamber, put together a working group to explore, why don't we have more startup activity going on and what do we need to do to try to startup junkie consulting up in Northwest Arkansas.

They had been doing my business partner up there, Jeff Amerine, another Jeff, had been doing this work about seven or eight years at that time.

By now we're in 2016 and through a partnership with startup junkie and the University Central Arkansas and ultimately the U.S.

Business Administration and the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. We now have, conductor startup junkie is basically the statewide technology commercialization center for the for the state of Arkansas.

And we have a couple of regional innovation clusters that were funded through the U.S. Business Administration for. And that's what we do.

So we do free coaching, consulting, mentoring, training, access to capital, culture building, entrepreneurial culture building around the state and all of those services in the state of Arkansas are are what we call sponsored or they're funded by third-party funding sources.

@4:32 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

That is that is really cool. That is that is very interesting the way you've kind of integrated you know a lot of the community with what you're trying to do and really kind of focusing on you know what what is actually going to continue to thrive and scale which is really awesome.

then I like the way you created additional program off of that to really focus on individuals that might not be at that that business scalable level but they're still interested in you know if they're here some education and some consulting.

@5:00 - Jeff Standridge

You know, we don't turn anybody away. So we everyone who comes to us that our calendars are open. They book time on our calendars and and once we have that initial intake meeting, we follow them through a CRM so to speak and and we refer them within the network.

We have a vast network of subject matter experts that just donate their time. And we meet them where they are.

It could be they just have an idea. It could be that they have a piece of software spoke with a lady today who has moved her from another geography where she had a fairly successful bakery and lunch business.

so I met with her and got her plugged into the right people in the community to figure out where she could rent space.

She has all the equipment. She just needs to set up shop again. But, you know, ultimately we want to increase the proportion of activity that is around scalable tech or tech enabled businesses.

that ultimately will create high wage jobs in our in our state, but we don't start we don't turn anybody away.

About two years ago, our local in Conway, our local public utility called Conway Corporation, so they provide water sewer, garbage, cable, TV, electric internet, etc.

They acquired the old city hall about a hundred yards up the street here, almost a 12,000 square foot building renovated the building to our specification and said, we want to provide this to you.

We'll still own the building, but we want to gift the use of it to you guys to basically run your innovation center out of there.

So we have about 150 members in a co-working space, about another dozen or so that lease space, a small pods of offices upstairs.

We run all of our programming out of there and but you don't have to be a member of the Arnold Innovation Center to to take advantage of the services of the conductor or startup junkie.

@6:58 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Oh, that's great. That's great. And you know, one of the things you mentioned. to was partnerships, connecting individuals with, you know, like-minded people.

Let's talk a little bit about the importance of mentorship in being successful on an entrepreneur endeavor.

@7:11 - Jeff Standridge

You know, I said before, and I think that's a great question, Gabriel. I, you know, I've said before that organizations that try to force feed mentorship into their organization by by pairing people or, you know, very inorganically with other people.

And, and it just doesn't work. It doesn't work. We would be money ahead as a country, as an education system, and as an entrepreneurial system to spend more time teaching people how to seek, find, and utilize mentors versus teaching someone how to be a mentor and how to, how to, uh, inorganically pair them up with somebody else.

You know, the moment we say, you know, I've had hundreds of mentors in my life, and I don't think any of them ever

Involved a conversation where I asked will you be my mentor, you know Because the moment I asked that question it takes the responsibility off of me and it puts it on you as the as the Sherpa the guy the guru or whatever and so I think the the best way and by the way it is vitally important The best way is to teach people how to use mentors find out the areas where they know that they're weak Find people who appear to be strong in those areas and say hey, can I buy you cup of coffee?

I just love to pick your brain for 30 minutes. Can I buy you lunch? I can I just drop by your office?

Would you drop by Bob at whatever and and let's just have a conversation? That's the best way and and you know when we when we first started doing the research to find out What is it that entrepreneurs need to be successful what to start up founders need to be successful?

In order they need access to expertise in the form of Mentors coaches consultants subject matter experts, etc They need access to each other, so that they can share ideas, share resources, and they need a culture that makes that natural and organic, the creative collisions of meeting entrepreneurs and finding out what we have in common and then organically growing a relationship where we can share ideas and resources.

then third, need access to capital at all stages of venture development and growth. And so we tackle all three of those.

@9:27 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know, I really like that because, again, your growth and scalability within an entrepreneurship program is very difficult because you're wearing so many hats as the founder.

And there's so many different, either operational or financial or strategic. There's so many different things that could go wrong during that piece.

And so having someone that has gone down that path that understands operations that understands marketing that under whatever that subject matter expert is, know, as Jeff was alluding to, whatever, whoever that is, it's really important.

to kind of connect with them. know, Jeff, one of the things because of this podcast was able to start a nonprofit Latino founders.

@10:06 - Jeff Standridge

It's a 501c3 business accelerator program similar to what you're doing out there.

@10:11 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

But we're basic agnostic in our accelerator program. And the reason for that is because we do want that organic conversation between our entrepreneurs to say, Hey, everybody has operational issues.

are mine. yours, you know, same same thing with marketing. Hey, is my marketing. This is my staffing issues. Hey, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up.

How do you, how do you do that? How do you market it? How do you sell it? How do you make sure what our customer acquisition costs, you know, all these little things that go into building and scaling a business.

And one of things if you're not doing this yet, pitch competitions, you know, leverage competitions, you know, those, those also, it's so cool because it provides an opportunity for these entrepreneurs to get out and try to sell their business.

That's what you're going to have to do, whether you're going to trade shows, whether you're going to a venture capitalist or a bank, right, you're going to have to sell.

that story.

@11:01 - Jeff Standridge

And those things is really important. Yeah, we do an idea, what we call an idea fame live. And it's a 60 second pitch competition, no notes, no slides, no props.

We give away, we do it a couple of three times a year. And, you know, you can sign up to pitch, or at the end, can have people come from the floor and decide to pitch if they build up the courage to sign up, but they build up the courage during the pitch competition.

We have three judges and we we give a thousand dollars away to the judges choice. And then we give a thousand dollars away to the people's choice, the young, the people that are in the audience.

We had a young lady who was 11. Actually, I think she was 10 when she actually pitched at our competition.

And she had gone around to the, to five different pitch competitions. had one either the judges choice or the people's choice at everyone.

so she, she had, she creating a product that she was sourcing out of China and it was a set of leggings that had a pocket on the inside of the like leggings that get worn with knee boots and they had pockets inside the knee boots so that they could put their driver's license, lipstick, their money, or whatever.

And she she designed them herself. Her company was called Wise Pocket Products and she won $5,000 from five different pitch competitions, made her first order.

When she was 14, she went on Shark Tank and actually got a deal with Damon Johns and actually negotiated a better deal than what he originally offered at 14.

And so that was kind of highlight, one of the highlights. But yeah, we don't turn anyone away, even though we want to ultimately have a higher proportion of scalable tech, tech-enabled, knowledge-based, high-wage industries.

We don't turn anyone away. I will tell you some of the greatest aha's I have seen have been when a main-

street business owner sitting in a peer group discussion, asked a software CEO, why are you doing that? And the software CEO went, great question.

I don't know. And so you have those kinds of things. Everyone can help everyone, no matter what your business is when you're coming together and you have the culture where you can ask tough questions, give guidance and feedback and build relationships.

@13:26 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, yeah, very true. And you know, there's, yeah, I tell this to people all the time, there's a lot of things I know, I know there's things I know, I don't know.

What is the things that I don't know that I don't know is where you really need help. that's kind of exactly what you mentioned.

Now, Jeff, I got to take a step back because one of the things you mentioned, you're doing all this business, but you said you've been in healthcare for 12 years previously today.

You did a stint as a emergency medical pharma or was that I think it was respiratory therapist, paramedic therapy, so let's try to remember what it was.

Take me back. How did how did the transition from health care to what you're doing now?

@14:05 - Jeff Standridge

Talk about that kind of what you're doing previous to entrepreneurship and how that transition occurred. You know, when you look at it or read it in a bio or see it on a resume, it looks like it was a revolution, but it was really more of an evolution.

So I've always been entrepreneurial. I started mowing yards when I was in the third grade. By the time I was in the sixth grade, I was literally running a gas station on Saturdays and making extra money fixing flats and detailing automobiles.

by the time I was a ninth grader, could, I worked at a muffler shop or I could cut the exhaust system off of an automobile and welded all the way back.

I actually worked my way through college as an EMT. So I crammed the four year degree into six years because I had to work full time, first generation college student.

then went on to the rest of toy therapy school. Helicopter team at Arkansas Children's Hospital. But the day, the week after I graduated, I actually bought the gas station and muffler shop that I had worked at all through high school.

And I hired a guy to run it for me thinking that I was going to you know have a passive income business there and ended up losing it.

And so at the age of 24, lost my first business newly married and got some of my very first critical business lessons.

While I was teaching at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in the program, I decided I wanted a degree, a doctorate in something other than clinical science.

So I chose more organizational behavior, organizational psychology. And I was studying the differences of top performers versus average performers.

@15:43 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

That was kind of my dissertation research.

@15:45 - Jeff Standridge

Oh, interesting. What is it that differentiates top 1% of performers from the middle 50%? Because the middle 50% aren't unsuccessful.

They're still successful. In fact, the world runs on the middle 50%. But I wanted to see what the difference was.

It was researching that a publicly traded company through a conversation with a guy at church, found out about that research, wanted to replicate that research inside their company with database administrators, software engineers, and so went to work for them and then we acquired a large, two large companies with locations in seven countries in Europe and they sent me over the air to do the acquisition, due diligence and integration.

so I got my business education as an entrepreneur, doing entrepreneurial things within the safety net of a corporate salary.

And so I started a company in Poland for that publicly traded company and scaled it to 350 people, same thing in China, acquired and managed one in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, then in Brazil, and the last four or five years I was there, ran a North American sales team, basically taking their fortune 1000 level products and services down to the mid market.

so just to have always been in love with on entrepreneurship, small, medium business, and that's, that's kind of how it evolved over the years.

@17:05 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know, I love that you said that the entrepreneurship piece because I think there's a big misconception that individuals that work in a corporate setting or working some type of, you know, even a nonprofit setting don't have that entrepreneurial experience.

But truly, those organizations do give you, you know, I'm in business development. So I'm definitely exposed to a lot of different, you know, strategy, marketing tactics, you know, and then again, scale in the nonprofit.

So that's another piece, you know, just hired an executive director, figured out taxes, figured out employment things. These are all things you continue to learn.

And you know, you mentioned your gas station, you know, failing when you're at a young age. But at the same time, the cost that you probably would have spent on an education to learn what you learned here in that time probably supersedes the amount that you may have lost because, you know, at the end of the day, guys, sometimes failing is

actually a good thing because it teaches you a lot. know, like I always say, I've never failed day in my life.

I either succeed or I learn. Those are the two options, right? Because failure to me means I'm done. I'm never going to try it again.

I'm done, right? But you learn something and you continue to move forward. How did you move forward from the gas station?

How did you transition from being an entrepreneur to an actual entrepreneur to an Well, so first of all, one of my sayings is failure is only failure if you quit.

@18:32 - Jeff Standridge

Otherwise, it's just feedback. And if you take that feedback and adapt your style, adapt your approach, adapt your direction, then you may have another temporary setback and then you adapt and you get better and you refine, etc.

So I mean, at 24 years of age, married, my wife and I were probably making some total of $50,000 a year.

And I had to walk into the bank of a local community bank of A gentleman who was actually a distant family member of mine and say, Charles, I've liquidated all the assets of the company and I can't pay you the full balance of what I owe you.

And he said, well, how much can you pay a month? And I said, well, I think I could, I just got married and, you know, we're going to start a family before long.

I hope, you know, I think I could probably pay $150 a month. And he said, I'll tell you what, I'll go get you a payment book.

So he got me a payment book that I've spent the next 10 or 12 years paying that note off, right?

so I called it my tuition to character school. And so I stayed out of the entrepreneurial realm for a few years.

then got into some real estate investing. So I had read every book on the market out there about the no money down real estate.

And, and actually started applying some of those techniques. And I had a first cousin who was my, my age were five

weeks apart, moved to the same area that I was in. He was actually in the construction industry. so we started together buying rental properties and with very little to no money down and financing those and fixing them up and renting them.

And then we got into building a few homes and he started a high end cabinet shop. then I started maximum there with the the entrepreneurial work.

And finally on my 50th birthday, eight years ago, almost eight years ago, I actually made the decision a few months before and orchestrated my exit to retire from my corporate employment to start my own consulting firm.

And that's what ultimately led to the conductor start a junkie relationship and now innovation junkie and what have you.

so it like I said, it It's much more of an evolution over time than it was a revolution, but I've never expected to be 58 years old and working as hard as I'm working right now, but I'm having an absolute blast.

@21:11 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, you know, I love that story because one of the things that I was interested in piece that you're kind of talking about your research, I would love to take it back to your research.

Sure. What were your findings?

@21:22 - Jeff Standridge

You mentioned, you know, trying to identify the difference between a high performer, So my findings were similar to some other findings that have been out there in the past and the way I boiled it down and the way I boiled it down for years.

Number one, academic credentials, academic attainment, professional credentials, letters behind one's name have absolutely nothing to do with someone's success in the real world.

Just like the ACT and the SAT scores do not predict college success. College success doesn't not predict real world success.

And it really boils down to how people behave and the degree to which they cultivate a set of knowledge, skills and abilities and habits that they can transform into habits and behaviors.

And those behaviors really fall into two realms. And I think about a set of scales, kind of like the balance of scales.

And on one side of results and on the other side of relationships. So the behaviors and habits, the knowledge, skills and abilities that lead me and enable me to develop behaviors and habits around the delivery of results and the knowledge, skills and abilities that enable me to develop the behaviors and habits around the creation and the maintenance of long term relationships.

If I focus on results at the expense of relationships, I will get wild, I'll get wild success very, very quickly, usually, until I alienate.

everyone around me who's responsible for helping me maintain those results, and then I ultimately lose them both. But by the same token, if I focus on relationships at the expense of results, people will love me.

They will enjoy working with me and hanging around me until they can no longer respect me because I can't deliver results or I can't do what I say I'm going to do when I say I'm going to do it.

And so it really takes this tightrope of behaviors and habits that enable me to deliver results and that able me to build and maintain strong relationships.

@23:31 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know, I think that's a great point. One of the things, you know, behaviors and habits is very, very important, folks.

You know, one of the things I talked about in a former episode was making my bed every day. This is something I recently started doing a couple of years ago, but I heard that I read recently, you know, to your point, you know, lot of successful people, what they do is they have a very stringent kind of habit or schedule.

And one of those things is you know, waking up and making their bed every day because then they feel like, okay, that's one thing I've accomplished.

And it's something you do first thing in the morning, and so I've been doing that and that has now translated to okay now I'm eating eggs in a banana every morning.

Okay now. I'm getting on the peloton pretty consistently Okay, now I'm like all of these things are starting to become, you know habits because of Just filling this like accomplishment first thing on this morning, right doing the bad.

Okay now now We can kind of move forward now with those habits. are what are ways have like for listeners out of listening?

What are things they can begin to do to start thinking or you know start progressing and creating these habits so to become more successful?

@24:36 - Jeff Standridge

Yep. Well, you know, I'm a big proponent of Stepping back and developing self-awareness and and I often start by Or as suggest people start by listing the things that they know that they're naturally strong at I am good at And I am not so good at right?

And creating that curating that list so to speak, but then going and asking for feedback from spouses or significant others, from adult children, colleagues, friends, you know, using that to validate or invalidate their own assumptions in that regard.

And then I like to have them actually separate those strengths and weaknesses, so to speak, into results oriented strengths and weaknesses and relationship oriented strengths and weaknesses.

For instance, you know, one of my weaknesses is I'm just not very empathetic. And when I was working on my doctorate, I told my wife that I was only going to be about nine hours away from from being qualified to sit for the licensed professional counselor exam.

And I thought I was going to go ahead and just take those hours.

@25:53 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

And she said, No, you're not.

@25:55 - Jeff Standridge

And I was like, well, what are you talking about? I think I would be a good cat for it.

She said, you would be horrible counselor.

@26:01 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You would be in the third meeting with someone repeating the same issue that they're having and saying, when are you going to do something different?

@26:10 - Jeff Standridge

so sometimes it takes you know asking for that feedback or having someone close to you who doesn't wait for you to ask for that feedback to give you that feedback and look at the themes in your life and really begin to look at where you're strong, where you're weak.

You know, I do believe in the basis of the strength finder movement. But what I don't believe in and what I don't agree with is the degree to which a lot of people went and read the book and or got certified and and became strength finder gurus and then all of a sudden started running around telling everyone to not focus on their weaknesses.

Well, the fact of the matter is we have to focus on both. Yeah, maybe we need to put more of a focus on our strengths and leverage ourselves where we're

we are best at it. But there can be some very career and success limiting blind spots that if we don't work on those as well, we will not be as successful as we could have been.

@27:12 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, it kind of goes back to your whole point results versus relationships, right? Having it on that pendulum and making sure that it's a good balance of, you know, focusing on your strengths and your weaknesses because at the end of the day, if you're not getting comparatively better, getting competitively worse, right?

So making sure you're focusing on those weaknesses. Now, Jeff, one of the things that was interesting is, you know, you mentioned you're kind of in the healthcare space and then you kind of go into a bit of a research kind of space, you know, and then you start coaching, consulting business.

How did you build that brand into what it is today?

@27:48 - Jeff Standridge

Yeah. Well, so I first of all started doing quite a lot of speaking and consulting when I was still employed on leadership and

I mean, leadership was kind of my research interest and my professional interest. so I was doing quite a bit of that around the state and doing some strategic planning for nonprofits and what have you.

So I started building a little bit of a brand identity around it, doing some writing in the local business publications and what have you.

And then when we launched the conductor, I fortunately was able to piggyback a little bit on the brand of startup junkie who had been at it for about six or seven years.

And because we were doing something that was really unexpected here in Conway, a town of 70,000 people, that got some attention as well.

And so then just I told people when I retired from my employment at 50 years of age that I'd spent the first half of my life making a living, I wanted to spend the second half making a difference.

And so I hired great people around me, and we've got to go. great team of folks and we hire for our core values and our core values are around making a difference, doing the right thing, going the extra mile, never trading results for excuses, having fun, taking care of each other.

And so that also includes not turning anyone away who needs help. So we will sit down with anyone who comes to the table and says, I need to pick your brain about something.

so we give, we give and we give, we give a lot. And I think that's probably contributed to as much of the brand as anything, to be honest.

You know one of the things you've done too is you know you mentioned your coaching bunch entrepreneurs You're working with different businesses.

What would you say you've noticed is one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make? The biggest mistake and and this is not original to my finding it's been reported by other thought leaders is they create a product or a service that no one wants or Or better probably define they create a product or a service that not enough people will buy at the price point required for it to be a profitable Ongoing concern.

That's kind of number one very close to that is Thinking even for a moment that anyone and everyone is their potential customer And so you know understanding, you know, we need to fall in love with the problem.

We're solving and We need to solve that problem in the way that can be profitable, and we need to figure out who are the niche of people that experience that problem to the greatest degree that would benefit the most from the solution and then target everything we do and say toward those people or will run out of money trying to market to everyone.

@32:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Everyone before enough people will buy our product or service to be to be profitable. so those two things together are are kind of the teeter taught or the the the sea stall.

@32:10 - Jeff Standridge

So to speak of a failure in in businesses.

@32:13 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I completely agree, folks. The one one really good way to kind of understand.

@33:00 - Jeff Standridge

the first piece that Jeff was alluding to is like a feasibility analysis. Really kind of I'm doing that now with an educational conference, trying to determine okay if we have

@34:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

have it, let me look at all the different locations we can possibly have it and then what are those, what is the cost of those locations and then.

@35:00 - Jeff Standridge

What is the average cost of individuals be willing to pay for?

@36:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

or ACME credit to attend a conference.

@36:03 - Jeff Standridge

And then there's it's even feasible. Will I be able to make money? so How many people can I have a 10, but then I also have to understand what's the capacity of their room that we're going to be renting.

So there's a lot of different things that kind of go into the feasibility analysis, but it's really good to understand that piece.

And then getting out and just asking customers, truly making sure you get outside of your inner circle is so important.

Mom is always going to love whatever you do, right? so getting out to people that know your product because that will help you on that second piece that Jeff was talking about.

@38:28 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

And that is really kind of creating your ideal customer profile, right? Understanding who really is your customer and then really create from there.

Once you've found a problem and you found your ideal customer profile, okay, now create a minimal viable product and MVP and then take that to them and see what's good and what's not.

Then you can kind of pivot and create some adjustments from there, but it's much, much easier to fail that way than it is to go out and buy a product and like have 1,500 units and then you go out to a trade so and nobody buys it, right?

And I have seen sitting on bricks. I've seen multiple people more practically and sometimes literally mortgage their homes to get their business off the ground and they just didn't do the work.

They just didn't do the work. So couldn't agree with you more. You know, we use the Venn diagram of technical feasibility, which virtually anything is technically feasible, desirability in terms of how big is the problem?

@39:29 - Jeff Standridge

And is it a big enough problem to enough people and then business viability? Can we create the product or solution and get it to the market in a profitable way and deliver it in a profitable way?

And you know, going back to the beginning of this conversation, folks, there are other individuals that are willing to be your mentor to help solution them here.

I take it out of here.

@39:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I'm trying to do a good job. It's actually a good job. People don't that issue. I hope you said something.

We're missing a team lead up more time than it actually might be.

@39:10 - Jeff Standridge

know, you've got your attention to the public.

@39:13 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, I'm going to get the conclusion to be for the viewers. I let's take the lead on your fundraising pitches.

And they did, and we invested.

@39:22 - Jeff Standridge

And, you know, and so, you know, it's very difficult for some founders to give up a little bit of equity in exchange for the right talent around them.

And that's a big mistake in my opinion. Yeah, I completely agree. I think when you're small, you know, smaller business, you know, just kind of starting out, it makes sense to be the jack-of-all trade master of none.

You do wear multiple hats. But as you, as Jeff mentioned, once you begin to scale and you have those conversations where you're starting to kind of go into that next echelon of business, you're going to have to bring in, you know, individuals that can help support your core competencies.

They're just areas we're not good at. Trust me, my wife tells me there's a lot of things I'm not good at on a daily basis, you know.

making sure that we just have someone that can be, to again, going back to that, the results versus relationships, you know, that pendulum, making sure that everything's getting supported on both sides so it's an even balance is really important.

really like, I think that's, it's very true. Now, you know, what has, you've been doing this, obviously, quite some time.

What have you said has been one of the most enjoyable pieces of entrepreneur up to? You know, I just, I love someone walking into my office and they're a bit perplexed.

And I love them walking out with a little bit of a kick in their step and a twinkle in their eye because they've gotten something of value.

So our brand promise here at the Conductor Startup Junkie is results driven insights, tools and connections. So that's what we want our clients to expect and experience from us when they come into contact with us is number one, when we sit down and have the conversation, we're going to be results driven.

And we're going to connect them with either new insights, new tools or new connections to help them move their business forward.

And so by just keeping that brand promise on the forefront of our mind, you know, most of my coaching meetings are 30 minutes in length.

And I used to do an hour and we would spend 30 minutes just kind of shooting the breeze. And I found out that I could do twice as many coaching meetings if I did them in 30-minute increments.

And we spent three minutes kind of breaking the ice and then we spent 27 minutes getting down to business and it works beautifully.

so that's one of the most fun things that I've seen. Seeing, know, I say that I'm on the local economic development board, which traditional economic development is very competitive.

It's about recruiting employers into your geography. And when they choose your geography, they choose to forgo someone else's geography.

So it's a very competitive process. Entrepreneurship is not competitive at all. It's, it's. What I call economic empowerment. It's creating a dollar where a dollar didn't exist.

Someone has an idea and you help them bring that idea to fruition and then in the first year they hire five people, by the way, the average new startup creates 4.74 jobs in their first year in business.

They invest 67 cents of every dollar they take in back into the local economy. And so helping someone take an idea and turn that into a viable business for them that transforms their life and the lives of their children.

@41:47 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

that's really important. And also, you know, it's okay to, like you mentioned.

@42:00 - Jeff Standridge

tune is okay to fail. Now, what what advice would you have for an aspiring entrepreneur that might be listening right now?

So what I see a lot of times as an aspiring entrepreneur will have an idea, but they don't want to tell anybody about it because they're afraid that somebody's going to steal it.

Oh, man, all the time. So they want me to sign an India. And I say, look, if I signed in the A for

every coaching meeting I had, I would never do any coaching and I would always, and I'd be broke because I'd be paying lawyers to review the NDAs, you know.

But the advice that I have is to understand that 15% of anybody's success is about the idea. 85% is about the execution of the idea.

So go find the local entrepreneurial support organization in your community. It might be an SBDC, which is a small business development center, usually at a college.

In Arkansas, they're called a small business and technology development center and SBDC. It could be a score chapter.

@45:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

It's basically, how do you create your brand? How do you market it? How do you really create a customer relationship?

So those individuals feel not just as a customer being aware of your product, but being a loyal consumer where they're now sharing your product or designs or information on social media, because that's really how you begin to grow.

Now, Jeff, for folks that are interested, you have a lot of advice, you're doing a lot, folks that might want to learn more about you might want to connect with you.

How do they do that?

@45:27 - Jeff Standridge

Where do they find you online? So can find me in a couple places. One is I'm very active on LinkedIn and it's basically LinkedIn and it's Jeff Standridge.

Jeff asks at innovationjunkie.com is a great way to connect with me or Jeff Standridge.com.

@45:46 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Perfect. again, folks, if you forget all of that information, you can subscribe to the Shades of Entrepreneurship newsletter by visiting theshadesofe.com.

You can also subscribe to all of the social channels. We are at the Shades of E and you can also, if you feel

So when we become a Patreon member for $5 a month, you can actually help support the podcast and that can bring continue to bring on phenomenal guests like Jeff to share their inspirational stories and really provide some insight and education to hopefully help you succeed in your entrepreneurial endeavor.

@46:17 - Jeff Standridge

Now Jeff, is there any last words you have before we leave? You know, I would be pleased and honored to speak with any of your listeners if they have any questions or want to connect.

Be glad to see them on LinkedIn and encourage them to reach out.

@46:31 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You hear that folks? Jeff on LinkedIn, I'll have that information on the LinkedIn newsletter as well as the blog post.

So please visit theshadesofe.com. Thank you and have a great night.