and fill the gaps there.
Out of all of the past ventures,
what are your three favorites?
Oh, my three favorite past ventures, all that stuff.
You know, I think my number one favorite probably is Keon.
And the reason, run by a great CEO.
And so I just really love,
I've learned so much working with him
and the company's done very well.
And been very successful at just good steady growth.
And so it's been really fun to be part of a team
that's just well led and well run company.
So that's number one.
Now a couple other ones I got, I can't tell that story.
Let's just say that I got contacted by some people
that worked with Edward Snowden
around the time that he got caught.
Interesting.
Audience, when we both disappear, you know why.
And I have another company that,
I helped write the business plan in my garage,
a solar company and now it's doing so.
You wrote the business plan for power in your garage?
We worked on it together, yes.
I was the president of a solar company.
And so I was doing a ton of market, a tiny one,
not one I'm willing to mention.
They took some, there was no Edward Snowden involved,
but there was some leverage involved
that makes me very sick to my stomach.
But while I was there and doing market research on stuff,
I will say that power really was making waves
in our market and I was like, dang,
they have got some killer offers.
So man, well done on that.
How did that come about?
The founder is-
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up and welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm your host, Jackson Calame,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I've got Tyler Jensen of the Startup Garage
and founder RX on the show today.
I'm excited to have him.
He's got some feathers in his cap
that are pretty giant.
Makes the masks cap, if you remember that movie,
look tiny.
Anyway, Tyler has a great background as a CFO.
We had some really fun times in the pre-show
talking about his experience.
He's got more personality than most CFOs I've met.
So that's also fun.
And I can't wait to bring him on stage.
But before we do, I do wanna make sure
to give you guys some insight into some of the systems
that we use and endorse.
So we got ColdClick.
ColdClick is the system of choice for us
for our LinkedIn automation.
To give you some background,
other companies you can research,
we did use Buzz at one point.
And it's a very pretty system
and they've got a good sales team.
They've also got a pretty good support team,
but highly driven with sales, so we'll say that.
And we preferred U-Link over that.
Now, with this system, we still use U-Link
and a combination of Octopus.
And you should know a little bit about behind the scenes.
But Art Hoffman and ColdClick
has become a good friend of mine as well.
And he's also very good in the sales realm.
So I like to sometimes reach out to their team
and get some tips on optimizations.
We constantly refine what type of messaging can we use
to be most effective in attracting an audience of strangers
to engage with us in a way
that creates healthy new relationships.
And that's really what distribution is all about.
Top of funnel marketing.
You wanna get in front of more people
and you also wanna do some purpose
that drives a positive relationship forward.
Then there's this link for Simply Fast websites.
This is something that came across my radar fairly recently.
And when I saw that Shane was offering websites in 179 bucks,
I was like, I gotta support that man.
Because if I had had the opportunity to start
with $179 website, I would have in a heartbeat.
If I had to start over, that's exactly what I would do
is I would find somebody like that who's willing to do it
because you don't want to lose tons of hours and time
trying to build a website that is in essence
going to represent your past.
The moment you publish your website
is the moment that it's live,
but now it's a representation of your past.
Whatever you do for this day moving forward
is a kind of a new feat.
You've got new benefits that you're coming up with.
You've got new product knowledge.
You've got new people helping you understand.
So if you're on a shoestring budget
and you're trying to launch a business concept,
in my past I would have told you like, good luck.
You better have $100,000 or more in investment.
Otherwise you're very unlikely to succeed.
Well, I mean, I started my business without money
and I've done it a couple of times
and I've had some successful businesses grow out of that.
It's a hard process.
So if you're bullheaded like I am
and you're gonna go for it anyway,
then you might as well have resources like that
that can help you simplify some of the processes
that distract and destroy businesses along the way.
So anyway, rootin' for Shane to do great things
at Simply Fast and of course do your research.
Interview several different options and best wishes to you.
Let's move on to the Water Project.
The Water Project is a cause that I support
and absolutely love.
I hope that you have the opportunity
to at least share this link.
Meaning share the link for the Water Project
because there's millions of people in the world
who do not have access to clean drinking water,
something that you and I likely take for granted
every single day.
And this is disrupting their societies.
Well, we can make a positive disruption
by helping them have access
to what's called a borehole well or a sand dam.
And you get to see the community that you impact.
It doesn't matter if you contribute $20
or contribute $20,000,
you get to see the difference
that occurs for this community
and then you yourself can meditate
and imagine the reality of what that resource
is going to provide to that community
over the next five, 10, 15, 20 years.
And I think it's something very special to be involved in.
If you know of a cause
that needs to be contributed to right now,
there's so much going on in the world,
don't hesitate to drop that link in the comments.
We'd love to see it
and we'd love to do what we can to support it.
So thanks for giving back my friends.
Now, without further ado,
let me dive into Tyler's background a little bit
before I bring him on stage.
I wanna dive into his,
let me pull this up here, here we go.
His LinkedIn,
and dive into some of these companies
that he used to work with.
He already talked about some of the companies
that are some of his favorites in the past,
but I wanted to cue in on a few of these important ones.
Vavi, I'm not sure if that's how you say it,
but Vavi Sport and Social Club.
If I switch over here,
you'll see that Tyler sold that company
after growing at 25,000 members in six years
and sold it for 25X, the capital investment.
That's pretty awesome to have that quantified.
I will see if I can get him to talk to us
about how much the capital investment was.
Then you got Go Green Yoga Mats.
And so he went for his Zen phase here.
And then he started working with a number of,
we see he worked with Power.
We talked about that a little bit earlier too,
a solar company that I did a lot of research on
when I was a president of a solar company.
And then there's Fit for Mom,
Barbell Shrugged and Keyon.
I don't know if he was a CFO for health companies for a while,
but it's kind of looking like a trend there.
And so what's cool to me is Tyler's got this background
that's extremely well-balanced.
There's a lot of different types of depth to what he does,
which gives him a paradigm that gets me excited
because I just love talking to people
who have a depth of purpose in many different fields.
Nothing against the doctors out there by any means,
but there's just something about somebody
who's explored so many different industries
that gets me jazzed to find out,
all right, what do you know about each industry
and what crossovers do you see?
So without further ado, Tyler Jensen,
thanks for joining us in Vision Pros Live.
Hey, great to be here.
Good to see you.
Yeah, man, absolutely.
Well, we're gonna be talking by the way
about entrepreneurs and how they have the power
to change the world.
Those are your words from your form submission.
So as we get into this, is there a subsector
of an audience that should be listening in particular
or is it entrepreneurs in general?
And why should people be listening to you?
Well, yeah, so I think entrepreneurs in general
and what I call entrepreneurs
who are thinking about being entrepreneurs, right?
They've got it in their hearts.
They're doing something else.
Maybe they don't love their job or they have an idea
that they've really gotten passionate about,
but haven't had the heart to start it yet.
And I have a real passion for helping those people
overcome whatever obstacles they might have, right?
So a lot of times it might just be self-confidence.
It might be confidence in their idea.
It might be just knowing what to do.
And so for all those people out there
that are thinking about starting a business
or have started a business,
I would love to have you guys listen
and hear what I had to say about entrepreneurship
because I think it's a beautiful part of the world
that really does have the power to change the world.
We look at a lot of nonprofit organizations.
We look at the governments.
We look at a lot of different things
in the world that can be used to leverage change.
But I think entrepreneurs have a unique ability to do that.
And it's beautiful.
And I think I am committed to more of people
using entrepreneurship as a tool.
Absolutely.
So let's dive in.
I don't normally do this,
but let's dive into what is a startup garage
because you just, you named the company
in a way that just draws so much intrigue.
And so I got to know about that first.
What's the startup garage?
How does it work?
Yeah, so the startup garage is a company
where I come into companies
that are between a half a million and 20 million in revenue
as their fractional chief financial officer
or part-time chief financial officer
and really help scale their business.
So I've done this many, many times for my own business
and many other over 250 other companies.
And so I come in, take over their accounting function
and help them with strategic planning,
capital raising if they need to raise capital
and really just leverage my experience
with a bunch of different companies
and seeing what works and what doesn't work.
Bringing that to the leadership teams
of these startup companies.
That's awesome.
Thank you for sharing that.
So with your vision, what's your vision then beyond those?
Go into the details.
What's your vision for those that you serve
beyond the initial growth phase
and the raising of the capital?
What do you hope to see them accomplish?
Well, one of the things that I love to do
is hear their vision.
So your, I guess it's called Vision Pro.
So shout out to Vision Pro.
And I love finding leaders who have vision
and supporting that vision of whatever that looks like.
And usually those are companies
that make some positive impact on the world
and really can change people's lives.
And so it not only changes their lives,
as the founder of the company,
but their family, if they're successful,
that can change, financially can change their lives personally,
but also the people, their customers they serve,
the vendors they work with,
it really can create an ecosystem around them
to change those people's lives.
And so my vision is to support their vision,
to help them get clarity on their vision
and then help them come up with an execution plan
and make sure that they're staying on task
and the team is staying on task
and focused to achieve that vision.
I love that.
We were talking about a company earlier that I won't name,
but at the same time, I would agree.
I think that one of the unique things
about the way you built the businesses you built
and the businesses that I've contributed to as well
as they're still standing to this day,
and a lot of them are thriving,
and moving to new heights.
And that is a very fun feeling.
And it's a fun vision to know that even though I'm not there
and are not involved in what they're doing today,
it's cool to look back and see that,
oh, the reviews just went from 200 reviews to 700 reviews,
et cetera.
And so I share the vision of,
yeah, let's get these entrepreneurs well established.
And then you just, you know too,
all of the new employees that have jobs
because of the stability of said company.
And so it's just always fun to look back
and see past clients winning
no matter what happened in the relationship.
So what's your vision for you?
Well, that's a great question.
So I love what I do at the Startup Garage
and the Fractional CFO work.
I do.
So I do have a vision to continue to do that.
I do that about 20 hours a week.
The other part of my time, I work on other projects.
And the vision is a hundred acres with a boutique hotel,
organic farm, organic restaurant,
maybe some glamping, some other things along those lines.
And so I've been working on the business plan.
I've been working on putting together
all the different pieces for that for a number of years.
And looking to get that under, you know,
the ground broken on that over the next two years.
And I really see that as a 20 year project for me,
that I can create a space where people can come
from all over the world and, you know, just get grounded
and get maybe detached from all the stuff
that's going on in the world
and have a way to, you know, heal
and just be with family and friends and connect with others.
And so I wanna commit myself to that,
build my own family on this property
while others come visit that property.
That's one of the coolest personal visions I've ever heard.
And certainly most unique out of the a hundred plus episodes.
No offense, any other, you win the trophy.
For that, so that's really cool.
Are we going to get grounded on eco-friendly yoga mats?
Maybe, maybe.
That was a long time ago.
That was another, another past life.
Okay, that's fair.
And it's so funny, one of my team members and I,
last night we were talking about my, oh man,
one of my goals of eventually opening a boutique hotel
either in Mexico, Peru, Columbia or Costa Rica
and the different plans associated with that.
Where are you gonna open the hotel?
I'm curious though.
I don't know yet.
I've been traveling the world.
I've been looking at all different places
and I trust that as soon as I find no in my heart
where that location is gonna be,
that it'll be time to do it.
I just have not, I don't know.
I don't know what the future is gonna be.
It'll be time to do it, I just have not become clear yet.
Well, you've heard my hopeful tunes
and I would love to experience
or see what you got going on with that.
Now, a little off topic.
This might, this part of the conversation
might end abruptly, but are you familiar with Joy De Voie?
Chip Conley?
No, I'm not.
Oh, cool.
Well, a little homework for you maybe.
Great book called Peak.
I don't have it up here, I have it in the other room.
Joy De Voie has a, they had like seven boutique hotels
he almost went under, had to take the year of a dollar,
CEO, talks about that in the book,
but he built his and anybody listening,
like this book is the book Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard
is the, you gotta read that first.
That book's easy, fast read, amazing.
This book takes that and puts it in detail on steroids.
Fantastic book on leveraging Maslow's hierarchy of needs
to understand the needs of your customers,
your investors and your employees or your team members.
So he became the board of directors for Airbnb later on
and now lives in Austin and runs like a retiring men's,
like let's do life awesome type thing.
But anyway, he's a beautiful mind
when it comes to boutique hotels.
So best wishes on our man, that's gonna be awesome.
I definitely read that book.
I'll say I'll read that book.
It'll be in my audible account later today.
Makes sense.
All right, let's dive into a darker subject, Tyler.
You've been around the block.
So what's your worst leadership experience ever?
Well, let's see.
So when I first started, you mentioned this already.
When I read out of college,
I worked in politics for about a year,
but then I launched Vavi Sport and Social Media.
Vavi Sport and Social Club,
which was intramural sports for adults.
And I was in my early 20s launching this company
and had a big belief in myself slash ego,
yet lacked really many skills.
I didn't really have the skills I needed to do
or what was required of me to lead the company.
And we got some early success
and the company started growing
and the team started growing,
but I really just didn't know how to lead.
That was just a really tough area for me.
And I look back at those times
and there was a moment in which
I had taken my first vacation
after about five and a half years.
At that point I was burnt out.
I was tired.
I was grumpy all the time in the office.
I just, I was being more of a dictator than a leader.
And I went on vacation and I came back.
And number one, first thing that happened
was that we had our biggest week ever
at the company in terms of revenue.
It was like double or triple their biggest week
or previous week.
It was like crazy.
I was like, that's interesting.
I thought I was so important.
And that was it.
But I hope the person doesn't see this,
but there was also a big drawing.
Someone had done a caricature of everyone in the company
and there was about 50 or 60 people at that time
working for the company full and part time.
And they drew characters and they're great artists
up on the white, one of the whiteboards.
And I came back and I saw this
and I eventually saw myself and it was me up there
and I had a frown on my face and I was just like angry.
They drew me angrily and I was like, wow.
And I had this moment where I was like,
this is how my team sees me.
I was like, this is real.
And it was just this epiphany that I needed to grow.
I needed to grow up.
I could not continue to lead how I was leading.
And I never talked to the person that drew it.
I never, it just, but it impacted me significantly.
And I've spent, I ended up selling the company
not too long after that.
And I've spent the last 15 years working
for different leaders and learning from them.
And that was one of the reasons I love doing what I do
is I love working for leaders.
I love, some of them are good, some of them are not,
and learning from what works and what doesn't
from all these different leaders over the last 15 years
since I sold that company.
Wow.
I'm not gonna force the issue,
but I do hope that they see this episode
because you just gave them credit
for being the absolute catalyst
to you becoming your best self as a leader.
That's pretty awesome, man.
Wow.
And the power of a caricature, right?
The power of art, the power of something so simple,
can have, it's amazing the profound effect
the little things in life can have on us.
That's super cool.
It took me a divorce.
That was a much harder way to figure out
that I was a crappy leader.
And so we all have different opportunities
to look at that and say, all right,
what am I gonna do about this?
How am I going to change and adjust
so that I become a better leader myself?
What's your best leadership experience ever?
My best leadership experience?
Well, I don't know if you mean my leadership experience,
but I'll just speak to-
Your vision, so it can be yours or somebody you learn from?
Yeah, I mean, I'll speak to that
because there's a particular leader
that I've been working for for a number of years.
That's just, I just really respect his leadership style,
his ability to just strategic in his thinking.
He thinks ahead of things.
He's really cares about not only the business strategy,
but the people strategy.
And he's taught me so much over the years of working for him.
I've learned how he respects people
and he how he allows people to make mistakes.
And I've watched him totally aware
that people were making mistakes
and watch them just move through it
and hold that space so that they can learn
and become better at whatever they're doing.
And so I think that's someone that I've really looked up to
and model a lot of the leadership
that I take on these days.
That's awesome.
That's great, man.
Speaking of the great lessons from great leaders and so on,
if this was your last opportunity to share,
sorry, I just did something
I wasn't supposed to do on the show.
If this was your last opportunity to share a powerful lesson
and you weren't gonna be able to share anything else,
what would the lesson be for visionaries?
Let's see, well, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind
is believe in yourself.
And then the second thing to come in mind is that,
I think visionaries can be very powerful,
but there needs to be a respect
and an understanding of visionary strengths and weaknesses.
Visionaries are really good at setting vision
at casting that vision,
at enrolling others in that vision.
Many of them also have weaknesses
that are along the lines of execution, of organization,
not all, but a lot of them that I've worked with and seen.
And so the mature visionaries,
the ones that I've actually seen being able to build
and keep long-term sustainable businesses,
have matured in their visionary where they understand
both their strengths and weaknesses
and are able to find a really good second in command,
operator, integrator, whatever you wanna call them,
to really balance out that vision,
to execute on that vision and to stay organized.
And that I think is probably one of the biggest keys
between success and failure that I've seen in my career.
Between success and failure that I've seen working
with so many different visionaries over the years,
is find that there's a book called Rocket Fuel.
Rocket Fuel is pretty good.
Yeah, and I recommend it to every visionary I talk to,
right away, right out of the gates,
well, usually on day one.
Really?
So you gotta read this book
because it really allows them to understand their role
and which roles they should not be playing.
And the mature visionaries that are able to be successful
understand those distinctions and aren't trying to do it all.
My hope is that they created 2.0 for Rocket Fuel.
I like the book too.
Did you read the original,
one of the book they founded the concept on, the E-Myth?
Yes, that was one of the first books I read
when I started my first company and I loved it.
So you have the unique advantage
of that's why you build such awesome companies.
You also have the unique weakness, I'll say,
of maybe forgetting the profound impact
or not understand the profound impact.
Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but I will never,
I will do the same thing.
Same way you feel about Rocket Fuel,
I feel about the E-Myth.
But I learned about it and then I shelved it for eight years.
And it's the one book I regret
not reading the moment it came across my desk
because of the impact.
And so, I don't know,
I'm not here to like create some drama of like better
and worse and all this hyperbole,
but there's some unique,
so if you haven't, if you're listening right now
and you haven't read either of those books,
they're both incredible reads for your legacy.
And I wanna tie this back to what you said, Tyler.
So you said, respect your strengths and weaknesses.
In other words, respect your weaknesses as well.
It means you gotta acknowledge them.
You gotta become self-aware of what your weaknesses are.
And you've gotta be willing to respect your weakness.
That's a big statement.
How do you go about,
what does that mean to you to respect your weakness?
Let me start there.
We'll come back to the book, Ken.
Yeah, I mean, I think it starts with self-awareness
like you just mentioned, right?
Like, and that's a maturing process.
And visionaries a lot of times get a lot of attention
and a lot of people wanna be part of what they're doing.
And so that can cause a lack of need for self-awareness.
But I think as you mature,
you see the challenges that really become
more self-aware so that,
and I think once you have self-awareness,
then it's much easier to kind of understand
what your strengths and weaknesses are.
If you understand your weaknesses,
then you can respect those
and respect the people who have counter-strengths to you
and can partner with you and really see their value.
When I was a young leader, I don't think I did that.
I don't think I saw other people's value
as much as they really could provide.
And I became very limited in my leadership
and my ability to implement my vision
because I did not, yeah, I just didn't see the value in others.
I'm sure, I haven't read the book yet,
but I have it right here, Leadership and Self-Deception.
I've read like 15 pages and I need it.
There's a lot of books on my darn plate.
But that you said, you said something interesting
and it reminds me of that self-deception concept
that once you're already finding that success,
you then feel lack of need for self-awareness
when in reality, the opposite's true, right?
You need more self-awareness in order to become the strength
that carries the mantle of such a load, but we don't.
We end up, if we have ego, our ego gets in the way
and we start to sacrifice the need for that
rather than empowering leaders around us to help us
protect ourselves from our weaknesses and grow.
You also talked about the visionaries attracting team members
who wanna help contribute.
I mean, you're soft about it, I'm not.
96% of businesses fail within 10 years.
4% survive, not thrive, 4% survive.
Out of those, there's a small percentage that actually thrive
and then there's an even smaller percentage
that thrive and maintain balance in life at the same time.
Like that's a bleak reality and we need to,
I think we need to hit it head on
in order to really help people wake up
and see that, okay, there's a whole lot of things
that I need to be doing differently
than the average market is doing
if I wanna have above average results.
So digressing a little bit, and you sparked this,
if you're not respecting your strengths and your weaknesses
and you're attracting people to your vision,
but then trying to control the vision of your team,
that's what I see happening,
that's what I used to do as well.
And when I see entrepreneurs controlling their team's visions
rather than inspiring the team members
to gain their own visions of how they coexist
with what we're building,
that selfishness destroys companies over and over and over.
So what are your thoughts on that?
No, I totally agree.
I mean, I think there's no doubt about that.
That's true, I mean, on a slightly, mostly related note,
I think that I've worked with hundreds and hundreds
of entrepreneurs and had conversations with thousands of them
over the years.
And their self-development and self-awareness
of the leader of the company is directly related
to the growth of the company.
If you're stuck and you can't get unstuck,
it's probably you.
And the business side of it, I have learned,
especially with smaller companies,
unless you're like, you know,
you're in Tesla or doing something crazy, right?
You know, something new when you're one of those
one in a billion, right, entrepreneurs,
that's probably not you, then you just need to,
what you need to do in business is already been done, right?
It's already been done by a lot of people.
And so if you can just know who to ask,
that the business solution to it is very clear and evident.
It's not that hard.
And so usually it's the founder, the visionary,
the leader of the company that's too afraid to ask,
won't listen, wants to do it their own way.
They're in their own way of solving the issue,
even though the solution's already there.
And so.
I love that.
That honors my podcast because for me,
that's listening to Tyler Jensen
and pulling people that are amazing on this stage
and asking for leadership advice.
For Tyler Jensen, that's Chip Conley probably.
So we'll see.
The other thing, okay, we're gonna go back to Rocket Fuel
and again, this is a plea and a call for again,
the next edition, the next opportunity,
because there is a major flaw towards the end of that book
that drives me crazy.
And I don't think they meant to manipulate the market,
but in large sense, without the edits that are needed,
they ultimately do.
And here's what happens.
So it talks about the wonders that are the visionary.
It does a great job of honoring the visionary
and teaching them with great compassion and great nurturing
why they're important and why they need an integrator.
Then they go into talking about the power of an integrator
and why the integrator is important.
Yet then they share these stories of entrepreneurs
and how as visionaries,
we struggle to appreciate our integrators.
And there's this big fight in chasm that exists
because integrators do not think or do things
like the entrepreneur or the visionary.
So visionaries often fire integrators
because of this problem, okay?
All fine and dandy, that's fine.
But then they get into the stories
and there's this entrepreneur who they said,
could not even, even though he knew his integrator
was the key to his success
and was helping drive the business forward
unlike anything he's ever seen before,
he could not provide any sense of gratitude
to the individual after an entire year
of that person working with them.
And they justify it and they make it sound.
And why?
Because they don't wanna offend the visionaries out there.
They don't want to say that that's not the right approach.
They ultimately endorse the reality
with the way they continue to share other stories similar
and really push the fact that, you know what?
The integrator is lesser than.
It's kind of the ultimate sentiment.
Granted, I've been the integrator many times
and not just the visionary.
So it kind of hit personally deep when I was like,
wow, this really sucks.
I mean, like for those who are the integrator,
no, we don't need to be teaching the visionaries
to keep the integrator under their thumbs.
We need to help the visionaries recognize
that there's a harmonious value to the integrator
and not demean the integrator in the process
of teaching the entrepreneur or rather the visionary
that they need one by their side.
So anyway, you don't have to respond to that.
I don't wanna get you,
you're the great loyal fan of what they've done.
And my hope is again, to call them up
to refine their approach to stabilize the two relationships
because what they've built is damn near perfect.
I'll say that.
So I hope they see the honor in that.
Tyler, what else would you like to share?
We've got the FounderRx that we can talk about.
We've also got the Startup Garage.
What's gonna be most beneficial to the audience?
It's gonna be most beneficial to the audience.
Well, FounderRx is in, it's not launched yet.
So I'm looking for a marketing partner on that one
to get that one off of, out of the gate.
So someone who's really good with paid ads
and things to drive traffic.
But so that is something that I'm really passionate about.
And we've talked a lot about visionaries
and bigger companies, but this is focused on
the technical person, the person with a job,
the hairstylist, the plumber that has bigger dreams
that wants to start their own business.
And so it's three different courses and group coaching.
Takes them through a couple of years.
It takes them from idea to launch,
from launch to 10,000 a month
and 10,000 a month to a million a year.
And I'm really excited about this.
I think it's a much needed thing.
I think it's a huge part.
That's 99% of the entrepreneurial world
are people that, they don't have visions
of being the next Tesla.
They have visions of stopping,
working for someone as a plumber
and having a plumbing business
and going from making 60, $70,000 a year
to three, four, $500,000 a year
and changing their entire family dynamics
and generationally.
And so that's what I'm doing here.
Looking for a good market.
This is awesome.
I'm gonna throw my name in the hat for that.
So it's not to press you.
By the way, vision pros who are listening in,
never ever pressure somebody,
especially publicly in life to work with you.
I will throw my name in the hat.
And if you don't hire us, I respect that too.
There's a due diligence process.
I'm gonna talk about two different things that I saw though.
Two visions I saw were looking at your website
and one to protect those of you
who are the JK Rowlings of the world
and who write a book on a napkin and make a billion dollars.
That is not a strategy I would follow.
But if you know in your heart and your mind,
that's your vision, that's what you need to do, do it.
Go after it.
Like if I had told,
what if I had convinced her not to do that?
Right, where would her life be
had I tried to control her vision and see that?
So at the same time,
I do wanna highlight the principles of virtue
that I see right in front of me.
Tyler just said, this has not even launched yet.
Yet this website is far more defined
than 99% of businesses that I see operating after 10 years.
The amount of due diligence that was put into
creating this UX and UI and getting the messaging,
getting the testimonials included in this as well,
getting the clarity of what it is that you're launching,
Tyler, it is a phenomenal blueprint
for people who are in launch phases.
So yeah, man, like, geez.
I wanna ask you like, how did you do it?
But I know how you did it.
You did it through a decade or two
of putting your eyes and your heart and your mind
on respecting the process of business growth.
But I mean, anything else you wanna add there?
Well, yeah, exactly what you said about being
in the industry, I've had thousands of conversations
with entrepreneurs and my current business model
works really well for companies that I've already doing
a half a million to 20 million in revenue
in terms of being able to afford my services.
But there's so many people I talk to
that couldn't afford it.
And I just wanted to come up with a solution
that was affordable for all the smaller entrepreneurs
that are just getting started
and that couldn't afford the CFO rates.
And so that's where it was born out of.
And I've spent years thinking about it
and trying to come up with a solution,
having conversations and working on the business plan.
So I think that's where the clarity came from.
It's just that genuine desire to help a much larger group
of entrepreneurs than the four or five clients
that I love helping on the CFO side.
Awesome.
Okay, so we're gonna do something completely different
for the rest of the show.
Something I haven't done before.
Not since Sean Malone of FlowChat came on
and I bought FlowChat from him right there
on the spot in the show.
Why?
Because it was an awesome tool.
So Tyler, I would love to, I'm going to,
if you're open to it, I'd love to book an appointment
with you to see how you can help first class business
as we seek to also raise some funding
and move things to the next level.
My ultimate goal and vision, I don't know,
most of you probably don't know this.
My ultimate vision is to bridge the economic gap
between South America and North America.
And first class business is my greatest vehicle to do that.
So we've got some major plans with what we need to do.
Well, what I want to do, what I feel called to do
to move that business forward.
And we plan on raising $10.6 million, $10.4 million.
So I love to talk to you about that afterwards.
In addition, we, like I said, I want to put my name
in the hat for the paid partnership,
the paid ads traffic partner.
One of the things that Tyler and I will need to explore
as we look at that though is what do we both believe
is important about a paid traffic individual or a team?
How does the strategy work?
How are the campaigns supposed to work?
So many entrepreneurs whitewash that conversation
and they say, oh, you're kind of cool and I'm kind of cool.
So let's just try to make it work.
That's not a strategy.
That ends, that makes good friendships end badly.
Then there's the aspect of most paid traffic people
are highly addicted to conversions.
You obviously know where I stand when I say that,
but they're big into conversion campaigns
that drive instant ROI.
Then you have the branding side and people who understand
the importance of awareness and branding,
but they have no idea because they're kind of artsy fartsy
people that like things to feel good.
They often don't understand the power and importance
of conversion or how to explain it or even how to correlate
with they don't like KPIs because they don't understand
the math behind it.
There's a harmonious middle ground too.
That's frustrating for any entrepreneur to understand
because it's a long winded game.
You have to be in it for the long haul in order to
to really build that way.
And there's these brands that I see out there.
Like if you turn on the TV and you see commercials
in between football games or NBA games,
the same brands pop up year after year after year after year.
Yet I see very few startups modeling the advertising models
that are allowing Allstate and Geico and other brands
to continue to dominate.
So anyway, there's a much more extensive conversation
that has to take place.
I'm really curious from your side,
what are some of the things that you're looking for
in a paid ads traffic partner?
Well, I think I could actually add a little bit more clarity.
I think it's, I'm looking for a business partner
in a sense for this company that is going to be in charge
of marketing and all marketing.
I think paid is just happens, I mentioned paid
because I think it happens to be a big part of the strategy
for this particular one, but I'm open it to it not being one.
I'm looking for the right partner.
I think this could help a lot of people.
And I really have understood my strengths and weaknesses
as we talked about earlier.
And I'm happy to run the business, deliver the product,
handle the finance and accounting and operations
and all that stuff.
I'm looking for someone that's really strong at marketing
that wants to take over that part of this business.
I think that the economics,
I can make a strong economic case that this business
could make both of us a lot of money
while helping a ton of people
through the entrepreneurial process in a way
that's affordable, but also very educational.
So does that make sense?
Oh, it does make sense.
So Rocket Fuel eliminates titles.
That sounds like you may be doing the same.
I'm not sure on that, but it sounds like you're talking
about a chief marketing officer for layman's terms.
Is that somebody with that skillset
that can also of course have
other business partnership skills?
Absolutely.
But, and I guess I talk about a business partner
just because I'm looking for not someone
that just works for the company.
I'm looking for someone that's going to take some risk
with me and invest in this company as well.
And be an actual partner and share in the upside
of that business as well.
I think it's a better partnership than just,
I could go hire a CMO and it's fine.
I mean, I could do that.
I've thought about that, but that's not really,
I think there's something bigger here at play.
And that if I find the right partner
that's really passionate about it as well,
that some big things could happen with this.
And I think hiring a CMO might not be the right play
for what's possible in this company.
And so I'm looking for something bigger
than that business partnership.
Well, and I guess what I mean by that Tyler
is so even your business partners that you have,
they have past role experiences, right?
So if you're taking the rocket fuel concept,
you're taking both business partners and you're laying out
which roles are you going to be in.
That way somebody's accountable for the role, right?
And then they can be fired from it accordingly
or shifted accordingly,
but you've got that role nailed down.
So you're looking for a business partner
that has paid traffic skills, that has CMO skills,
that also is willing and able to take on
many more responsibilities to help grow the asset,
grow the brand, is that correct?
100%, yeah.
Sorry, you did it.
If anybody's heard it, well, I'm trying to advocate for it
because I caught the vision.
I'm like, man, run with this, this is cool.
And it's very in line and synergistic
with what first-class business is building to.
So it makes me excited to see you win.
We have 8 billion people in this world to help and support
and we can't do it alone.
There's a lot of needs and a lot of resources
and we could probably use a few thousand companies
like what you're building
in order to stabilize global economy.
So thank you for being on Vision Pros, man, this was awesome.
Anybody who's listening in,
feel free to of course reach out to Tyler on LinkedIn.
We'll also have other links in the show notes
on the landing page so that you can connect with him
and see what's going on at the Startup Garage, FounderRx.
If you wanna be on the show,
don't hesitate to of course apply.
There's also a button on there to apply,
to be a guest on my show.
I'd love to hear your vision and support you any way I can.
Of course, like, subscribe, comment,
all those things certainly help us with growth
if you've received any benefit out of this.
And Tyler, man, thank you for being here today,
this was awesome.
Thank you for, this was a quite enjoyable conversation
and I'll definitely take you up on your offer
for another call to discuss all the things
that you brought up, so.
Looking forward to it, man.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.