TSP049 | Linda Galindo – Transcription

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John:

Hi and welcome to The Successful Pitch. Today’s guest is Linda Galindo. She is an accountability expert, and she talks about the 3 different kinds of flowers as an analogy for the kinds of people you have on your team. There’s the weed, which is very low maintenance, and all you have to do with them is mentor and lead them. There’s the daisy that all they need is some maintenance but not a lot, but you just have to coach those people. Then there’s the orchid that’s very high maintenance, and you basically become a babysitter for somebody like that. You want to avoid having all orchids on your team regardless of their skill set because it’ll drive you crazy. Linda says accountability is investability, which is also creativity, that when you are accountable and have a team that’s accountable, you have a competitive advantage because you don’t have meetings after the meeting. You talk to people, not about them. You don’t rescue, fix, or save anybody who’s an underperformer. Enjoy the episode.

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Hi and welcome to The Successful Pitch podcast. Today’s guest is Linda Galindo. She is an accountability expert and author and a keynote speaker. Linda helps executive leaders realize their definition of success by being accountable. She’s a former radio news personality, so she’s got to have a great voice we know. She’s the author of great books like Way to Grow, as opposed to way to go, The 85% Solution, so we’re going to dive in to what that’s all about. I love the concept of taking responsibility for yourself and your work. She also wrote Where Winners Live about selling more. If you’re listening to this podcast, you know the importance of being perceived as a winner by investors. Linda, welcome to the show.

Linda:

Thank you so much for having me. I love talking about accountability.

John:

That’s one of my favorite topics too. You have something that’s sort of your tag line. I’m always interested in where a tag line comes from with the clients I work with on how important branding is and what you stand for, so the people instantly get it. Yours is the straight truth. Can you tell us how you came up with that tag line?

Linda:

When I had my branding expert that I hired interview all of the CEO clients I had, he came back to me and he said, “I have an archetype that describes you from what they told me.” He said, “That archetype was the little boy that stands in the crowd and says, ‘Excuse me, he’s naked. He doesn’t have any clothes on.'” He said, “Not only do these CEOs say that you just call it out and tell the straight truth, you don’t care if they like it or not. You want them to be successful, so you don’t pull back on your message to say that isn’t clear or you’re the problem or I’m not even going to take you as a client, because the straight truth is you have no interest in being personally accountable yourself. You want everyone else to be accountable.” It’s this fearlessness around just saying, “Hey, this is the deal. Here’s what I see, and I like you just how you are. Take it or leave it. I don’t care if you change, but I’m not going to tell you something you want to hear so I keep the gig. Not going to happen.”

John:

I love it. I really want to dive into this concept of fearlessness, because it’s so crucial for startup funders to be fearless when they start their company and when they run their company, and even when they’re talking to investors. They cannot be coming from a place of fear. Can you take us back to how did you become an accountability expert and how did you learn to be so fearless?

Linda:

It came from being a newscaster, a broadcast journalist. That’s what I wanted to do from the time I was 7 years old. I did have this great voice and a wonderful name to be a newscaster. I followed that passion, and I was on air for 11 years at various stations, and rose very quickly to being an anchor on radio, loved the medium. One day, the sales manager came in to the studio and said that he wanted to see my story lineup. I said, “Who are you?” He said, “I’m the sales manager.” I said, “Okay, here’s my story lineup.” He said, “Well, you have to take this second story out of your lineup.” Why? “Because they are a sponsor.” So? “It’s negative. They’ll pull their advertising.”

I’m getting my first lesson on how the whole picture works. That is that now sales can dictate whether or not you do a story. That didn’t sit well with me, and I had to rethink what am I going to do. In that period of time, I started to notice something, that leaders on news stories who did something great and made money for their organizations or could claim an award had no trouble being personally accountable. I did this, my company, I’m the CEO, it was me. They changed their definition when something didn’t work. I didn’t know about it. I wasn’t told this. How can you expect me to know everything about everything?

They would still get the reward. They’d still leave with the stock, or they’d leave with their bonus, or they’d leave with their golden parachute. I’m thinking, “Huh, that’s interesting.” I think what’s happening in our society is we’re starting to reward not being accountable more than being accountable and quite visibly. That can’t be good. I think that’s what I’ll do. I think I’ll focus on this concept and see if it can be pushed out in the world in a way that’s way more serving than doing a newscast that is dictated by sponsors.

John:

Wow. I love it. It’s such a great example of, what is the problem, and what is the solution I am uniquely qualified to bring? When investors look for what startups they want to fund, and when they’re listening to pitches, that’s exactly the kind of clear, concise way to describe, “Here’s who I help and here’s the problem I solve.” I love it. Thank you so much. There’s so many things I want to talk about. Let’s dive into this personal accountability because it transitions from what you were talking about where you’re only taking responsibility if something’s great and not if it’s bad. The 85% Solution, the kind of person that is in the 85% and the kind that isn’t, can you tell us a little bit about that from your great blog?

Linda:

Yes, because one of the things that investors want to see is measures. Those are concrete. I became very interested in this whole idea that you could measure someone’s mindset about personal accountability. That’s really super-investable. If I said to you, “John, I’m going to bring you to this operating room where you need to get this operation that will save your life. In this operating room you get to ask every single person who’s about to touch you, on a scale of 0 to 100%, how much personal accountability are each of you taking for this being a good outcome? In this other operating room, you don’t get to ask that. You just have to go lie down and take your chances,” now in the one where you get to ask people on a scale of 0 to 100% how much personal accountability are you taking for this being a good outcome, what answer do you want from everyone who’s going to touch you in that surgery?

John:

Ideally 100%, but that’s probably impossible, so I’ll settle for 85.

Linda:

You might say that, yes, but the truth is that by measure, people have an ability to say 100%. The key especially when you’re a startup company and you’re forming your team is that the investor wants per individual. Would you say that would be correct? They want that.

John:

Yes, of course.

Linda:

What is that going to mean? It’s going to mean when something goes wrong, if something isn’t done, or people come unprepared, you don’t hear finger-pointing and blaming. You don’t hear the surgeon say, “Well, for my heart, I’m 100. These other people I can’t control.” You don’t want the circulating nurse saying, “Well, they changed the reward, and I got the surgery started on time but I didn’t get all the instruments cleaned.” This idea that there’s 100% available in total needs to be shifted to there’s 100% per individual available individually and collectively at the same time, which is the true meaning of a team. In this other operating room where you don’t get to ask, you’re taking your chances, and that’s what we do every single day.

John:

Yes.

Linda:

We do it when we make investments. We do it when we go to a provider, get on an airline, eat food. It’s this thing that we’re thinking is going on, and I can actually measure it. If you have a million dollars and there’s 2 companies, and I say, “Well, this one might have the more sexy technology cool thing, but this one has a higher level of accountability,” I can tell you which one you’re going to get your money back from.

John:

That’s right. All the investors I interview talk to me constantly about the importance of the team and their ability to get along and their ability to persevere and pivot when they need to. Accountability is such a huge part of that that there’s no finger-pointing. Once that happens, then the morale plummets, the productivity plummets, and nothing gets done.

Linda:

They’ll all claim that they’re not going to do that, so that’s where The 85% Solution came from. It was going to someone and saying, could we create a measure of mindset before we go in? Why isn’t it the 100% solution? Because what we found over 20 years of doing this, and 15 really focused on the validated assessment, is that, yeah, that stuff happens. There’s turns in the weather. There’s economic stuff. There’s all kinds of things outside of our control. Those things happen.

If your mindset measures on our 4 categories cumulatively at 85% or higher, we can predict with very good certainty that when things do go wrong, you will not even think about uttering an excuse, blame, or finger-point. You will start to talk to, not about the problem. You won’t start having meetings after the meeting. You won’t rescue, fix, and save underperformance. You’ll get very solution-oriented. We’re acknowledging 15% could land on your head, but we can also predict when it does, you will keep working toward the best value for the investor. They won’t start to get skittish because you’re making an excuse or blaming.

At the 85% mark, that’s where we know we’ve got something to work with. The next book, Where Winners Live, is the groups that are between 85 and 100%, a whole new ballgame. You got to dig pretty darn deep. It’s very rigorous. In either case, we don’t take every client that approaches us, because the assessment tells us, at a certain point, where it’s probably not where they need to be. They need to be in basic good management practice, not reaching for the stars and spending an investor’s few million dollars.

John:

You said something that I want to go back to, because I think there’s some gold in there, that when you find people who have this 85% mindset of accountability, and something goes wrong, I didn’t quite catch it all so I want to ask you about it. You said they talk to the problem, not about the problem. Do you remember what you said there?

Linda:

Yeah. There’s a set of very predictable behaviors that come with that 85% by measure. The top 3 of the 12 that we know we’re going to get or we can coach that individual or team to, the top 3, are that as an individual or group, I talk to, not about other people. We don’t engage in the who’s frustrating us, and that investor is really making me crazy, he’s micromanaging me. We talk to each other. There’s this huge trust that’s built on a very solid level in relationship up to and including, if you and I, John, got into a deal, and you started talking about someone who’s also involved and it was negative, I’d say, “John, I need to stop you and go get him, so he can hear this too.” We just don’t have that stuff going along. It’s just nasty and …

John:

Nip it in the bud.

Linda:

… it’s a bad investment all the way around.

John:

Got it.

Linda:

The second thing is no meeting after the meeting.

John:

That’s so great. We’re going to tweet that out. No meeting after the meeting.

Linda:

Now if the one where you’re going to implement, good for you. That’s awesome. Go do that. It’s the one where you start to say stuff you should have said in the meeting, and you’re starting to draw people off of whatever consensus was probably reached. It’s actually extraordinarily immature and ridiculous. Boards of directors do it. High level directorships do it. I’m often admonishing them to the point they start looking at their shoes, because they know they’re doing it. They’re asking me to come into their organization and build accountability when the workforce is doing what they’re doing. Unless you’re willing to give that up and have integrity and raise your own hand and clarify in the meeting, silence is agreement. If you go outside that room and you start up, then it’s again a very bad investment on a group of people that does something like that. You could say to your investor there’s 3 things you can totally count on us for. One is we talk to, not about each other. We don’t have meetings after the meeting. The third is we don’t rescue, fix, and save underperformance. We hold people accountable.

John:

We don’t rescue, fix, or save underperformance.

Linda:

Underperformance.

John:

That’s so great. I love that.

Linda:

People say they love that, but when it comes down to, “It’s just easier to do it myself,” and that’s the startup mentality, we’re all just stretched so thin, no, it isn’t. It’s because you don’t want to sit down with someone and say, “Look, you can be voted off this island. We’re not going to rescue, fix, and save.” It’s like doing a paper with a college group and you want the A. I’m dealing with this all the time right now. The professor puts the groups together or somehow they’re formed, and there’s 2 people in your group that you didn’t pick and they’re losers. You want the A to get into graduate school, so you guys go ahead and pick up the slack for the 2 losers to get the A. Is it ethical to put their name on the paper?

That’s a question that gets asked all the time. It’s like, no, of course it’s not ethical to put their name on something they didn’t do or earn. In order to put this in front of … You switch that to a startup and a company. I see it all the time. The excuse is we just have to be flexible and do it and make sure it happens, because we want to get our seed money or we want to get the next round of funding. You’re building incapacity, a lack of capacity, into what you’re selling your investor. That’s unacceptable. It’s guised under working hard and digging deep, instead of sitting down with people and saying, “Let’s get really clear on what the roles are and what happens if you do not take care of your role. We have to talk about that upfront.” Reassure the investor you’ve done that, that we all own our role. We have to interdepend. We hold each other accountable. We don’t rescue, fix, and save underperformance, so that you’re always being told the truth about what the capacity of our organization actually is.

John:

That’s great. Who doesn’t want that? That’s so great. I really love these 3 things so much, because it separates you from 90% of the pitches that you’re going to hear, because then you’ve got the investor sitting up, listening in, leaning in, going, “Wow, this is the team I want to invest in, because they’re not going to get bogged down in finger-pointing and blaming and rescuing,” and all these other things you’ve just talked about. Can you speak to the importance of creating a culture where it’s safe to raise your hand in a meeting for clarification?

Linda:

That’s done one-on-one. For some of us, we can totally deal with people who are direct and have really bad interpersonal skills. I might be in a meeting. I deal with very high level people, surgeons and elected officials and board members who are in the hundreds of millions of dollars in their companies. If I make a statement and I hear them say something back that is disrespectful or not funny, but instead of calling it out right then, I notice, “Well, that doesn’t make me want to be here and participate. What was that about?”

I just go to them later and say, “Yesterday when I made that statement in answer to the question, this was what I heard back. I’m not sure why I got a vibe that there’s something not great in the relationship between us, so I wanted to check it out. Is there something that I’m doing that I’m not aware of that brings that on? I’d love some feedback.” Now 9 times out of 10, they’ll say something like, “Well, you just got to grow a thicker skin and you’ve got to be a little tougher about these things.” I’ll say, “Okay, I was just checking it out. Thanks so much.” You better believe that when you bring it to them directly, the gig’s up.

John:

Yup. Love it. That goes right into what you term the PMA, the present moment accountability, right?

Linda:

Right.

John:

Yeah.

Linda:

It’s just like I’m accountable for the quality of the relationships I experience. If I’m getting some vibe that someone thinks I’m stupid or don’t know what I’m talking about or I’m too slow to understand their brilliant, marvelous idea, and I get that vibe, I’m going to say, “Help me understand why I’m being talked to this way. I don’t understand what the point is of creating a situation where I don’t really necessarily want to be here.” When you put that way, of course you’re noticing I don’t use the word you are talking to me like I am stupid, I’m curious. Really where it’s coming from at the end of the day is that I really want to be here and I really want a good relationship and I really want to understand if there’s something I’m doing that can create a better situation. I love Shark Tank, because when you watch some of those pitches, you see people get defensive when somebody says, “If you did your homework and the math …” It’s like why am I reacting to that defensively if it’s not true?

John:

Exactly. That’s so key because when you’re in the room with an investor, there’s so much on the line. Your nerves are up probably. You have to really be conscious to be present and accountable at the same time, and not be thinking about what you’re going to say when someone’s asking you a question, but really listening to the question so you answer the question properly, because that’s one of the biggest mistakes I see all the time is people don’t really even hear the question. They answer something, and then the investor feels like you’re avoiding the question. Sometimes they just didn’t listen because they’re not in the moment.

Linda:

I would say that when you replay some of the pitches that went sideways, you didn’t feel really good about them, and I tell this to executives all the time when they’re in that hot seat, getting defensive is a gift. If someone can put you on the defense, they’re a gift to you, because they’re pointing out a blind spot. If it’s not true, you just ask for more information. It’s like, “Oh, that’s interesting you’d say that I didn’t do the math. Tell me what makes you think that.” You go exploring without any energy around it. If it’s, “You know, well, I was winging it,” and you’re caught, boom, that’s where … I’m investing in someone who wings it and hopes they don’t get caught. No thanks.

John:

No, pass, right. That goes to this whole concept of if you don’t know the answer to something, whatever you do, don’t lie, because in due diligence, it will come out. This whole measure of accountability, you’re much better off saying, “I don’t know the answer to that. I know I should, but I don’t,” as opposed to trying to fake it.

Linda:

Yes, and the truth is just lying and hoping no one finds out is the standard of the day. It’s better to hope that you can somehow cover your track later. Okay, those deals are done every single day. They don’t last. You can predict the day and time it’s going to blow up or sink. Why are you doing that? Because I see it get rewarded over and over and over again. All right. How about if we don’t use someone else as your excuse not to be personally accountable for yourself? Don’t be someone who others can use as their excuse not to be personally accountable for themselves. Where winners live, that 85 to 100%, is they understand there’s zero wiggle room. They don’t get to use other people as their excuse. Everyone else is doing this, or it’s my turn at the trough and I’m going to do these things. It’s not illegal. It’s a little unethical, but it’s not illegal, whatever. That’s where we get into trouble. We reward not being accountable more than being accountable, and then it gets all mixed up. We don’t want to do that.

John:

Wow. You mentioned something about teaching companies, big and small, how to get out of the babysitter university. Can you expand on that?

Linda:

Yes, and this is actually … My face just breaks out in this gigantic smile. This is the book Way to Grow. The subtitle of it is Cultivating the Weeds, Daisies, and Orchids in Your Organization, or on your startup team or on your board. What I do is I say … It’s a kind of situational leadership. I kept telling this story over and over again. Somebody said, “You better write that down,” so I turned it into a book. It is okay, John, from now on, you’re going to be a gardener, and you’re going to garden these entrepreneurial opportunities and deals. You’re going to garden the management teams in your businesses. You’re going to only have 3 flowers to work with. The first flower is a weed. You want to grow weed. Weeds, you want to grow weeds. Weeds are … Sure.

John:

As opposed to the other kind of weed, yes.

Linda:

Listen, here’s why, because they’re low maintenance. Weeds, you don’t go out and water your weeds. They get in the cement. They jump the cement. Weed killer, they figure out how to be resistant to it. They’re very low maintenance. They’re the ones that come in and say, “Got dirt, I grow.” They won’t finger-point and blame. They’ll score 85 or higher on the assessment of mindset for personal responsibility and personal accountability. They’ll take ownership. They just want to grow and do these great things.

The second flower is a daisy. Daisies come in varieties. Some need some sun, and some need some shade, and some different things, but there’s degrees of that. I’m going to coach a daisy, whereas with a weed, I’m going to mentor and lead a weed, where they’re in a good position to be a mentor or a leader. The daisies though, they just need a little support and help. We sit down with them. Maybe they don’t shine at the spreadsheets or understanding the business as a whole. We’re going to give them coaching.

It’s the third flower that’s going to get you. The third flower is the orchid, because they’ll come in very high maintenance. I need steam. It’s too hot. It’s too cold. Where’s my special food? I need to be turned to the sun. They just suck you dry. Sometimes they’re the most technically competent. I have all of the knowledge and everything you need, but they just make you nuts, because they’re so high maintenance. They’ve equated their knowledge and skill with being able to be a good team player or accountable, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. A lot of times, people try to pass them around and get rid of them. They figure out that if you will rescue, fix, and save all the part that they don’t like to do, that they need to work for an orchid farmer, someone who is going to rescue, fix, and save in order to make it right, and they’re just very, very high maintenance.

You manage an orchid, you coach a daisy, and you lead a weed. In this opportunity, if you don’t handle those orchids, you’re going to be a babysitter. 9 times out of 10, when the manager or the lead in an entrepreneurial startup says, “I feel like a babysitter. I’m running after deadlines and getting people to do what they’re supposed to do,” I say, “That’s because you have all orchids. You’ve got to press the reset button here and stop feeding that and get clear with people on their role, and stop using the excuse that we’re all busy,” because some of these things have to get done. You need to have that conversation now. Otherwise, you’re just going to get sucked dry by the orchid.

John:

So good. Even something as simple as coming to work on time, and the orchids are always a little bit late with lots of excuses. They’ve got 101 things going on because they’re such a orchid that they can’t just walk out of the room and get to work on time because 6 other things take priority, right? It’s that …

Linda:

High maintenance.

John:

High …

Linda:

Very expensive.

John:

Yes. So many people feel like, “Ooh, if I have this tech skill, then I can be a diva,” or, “If I have this great sales track record, people will put up with this behavior.” It’s not necessarily the case. It reminds me of what you said at the beginning of the episode which is the difference between investing in a startup that may not have the sexy tech thing, but they have the accountability, versus the people who have a sexier tech thing, may not have the accountability. In this case, the orchid is prettier than a weed, but not worth the high maintenance, right?

Linda:

Very much so. I got interested in the whole investability equals accountability to me when I went to a merger and acquisition class with a nationally known seminar provider. I was very curious about the M&A world. I’m listening and I’m thinking, “This is ridiculous. There’s times when the people that are investing just fall in love with the deal, but they’re not paying any attention to whether the team they’re buying, the energy and folks that are going to make this happen, are they accountable or not?” I brought that up.

The guy closed the door and he said, “Let me tell you something. They could care less. They’ll just replace them with the team they want if they like the idea,” versus how about if you take a picture of whether you’ve got that accountability you want or not? He said, “It’ll never happen. They fall in love with the deal. They want that thing, and they’re not paying attention over here.” Then I saw this light go on. I said, “What an opportunity.” I fix lack of accountability in organizations. Why do you want to choose me to do that? You want to choose me because I turn down people. I don’t take everybody.

It’s like, do you really want to get there, because the level of rigor to do this is unusual. It’s absolutely, no question about it, a competitive advantage. You’re spending your time and money on the thing that will make it work, not this dumb stuff like, “Joe doesn’t come in on time,” or, “Finance isn’t getting the reports so that we can report to our invest,” all that kind of stuff, the babysitting stuff. You could predict it right up front, but it’s not for everybody. That is for sure. It absolutely is not for everybody.

John:

In my opinion, listening to you, if people want to live where the winners live, they will hire you to make them accountable so that they can have that competitive edge.

Linda:

You make such a good point. I love it, to make them accountable. See, I don’t do that. If I could do that, I’d charge more. I don’t do that. What I do is I educate people to what accountability really is so they can decide. My mantra is you cannot mandate accountability. You can only demonstrate it. With investors in particular, you only get 1 bite at that apple. 1 excuse, 1 finger-point, 1 blame, you’re done. Really, come on. What do you do … When Apollo 13 happened and they had a sock, a bag, and duct tape to fix it, or something like that, you didn’t hear them going, “Well, if you had put an extra bag on the thing, we would have had blah blah.” You didn’t hear any of that. You heard, “Failure’s not an option. Let’s go in this room. Let’s commit to making this work with very limited resource, high performance team.” Of course, you can’t operate like that every single day. You’ll burn out. When you’re very clear and you take ownership and you go forward that way, oh my gosh, sky’s the limit. Very, very investable.

John:

Without having your skill set in the team and the training, they don’t have that in their toolbox. As has said, if the only tool you have in your toolbox is a hammer, you go around with hitting nails. You’re giving people all the tools of accountability so that they can decide when to bring it out and how to use it. I love this. We’re going to tweet this. You can’t only mandate, you can only demonstrate, accountability.

Linda:

Yes. It’s personal. If you don’t make it personal, you’re wasting your time. What is the phone call I get all the time? Come in and make them more accountable. Now what the leader doesn’t understand, and that’s the only person I’ll talk to who hires me is, that what’s going to happen is I’m going to put up a mirror. When you look at yourself in the mirror and you see your hair is all because you were out in the wind, you don’t reach into the mirror to fix it. You take care of it on your side. 9 times out of 10, the leader will say, “Oh, I’m very accountable. That’s where I got where I am.” Then they take the assessment, and somebody’s crying by the end of that. It’s not me.

John:

Yeah, interesting. I love it. What a fascinating … I love all the weeds, daisies, and orchids, and just identifying what kind of people you have on your team, which kind of people to avoid, being in the present moment to stay accountable. It’s just fantastic, great, great stuff. Of course, no meeting after the meeting has got to be one of my all-time favorite lines ever. Linda, how can people … You have 3 great books. You have Where Winners Live, The 85% Solution, and Way to Grow. Are there any other books that you would recommend founders to read or are they covered with those 3?

Linda:

Wow. Of course, Judy Robinett’s book which is all about connecting. It’s fantastic. I have been in the business for over 20 years, and we’ve heard the networking, connecting thing, because once you understand where you are with your personal accountability, you want to connect with like mind. That is an aspect of power connecting. Be sure to pick that up, because once you take ownership fully of the power of connection, you have to have good tools, so hers.

John:

We’ll be sure to tag that in the show notes along with yours, How to Be a Power Connector. Yes.

Linda:

Yeah. Personally I get a lot out of Warren Bennis’s book, Why Leaders Can’t Lead: The Unconscious Conspiracy. It’s just so true, and it’s true today. He wrote it back in 1985, believe it or not. I just love it, because it says we get drawn into the minutia so easily it’s ridiculous. We need to be very aware that that’s the choice we make and to cut it out, because the minutia, just dumb stuff, that is like a little blinky instead of the Apollo 13. We have this and this is what we have to work with. The more accountability you have, the more creativity you’re going to demonstrate. Accountability equals investability, and accountability equals creativity, both of those things.

John:

Nice. Great. It’s so fascinating. That book was written so long ago, and it’s even more true today than it was, because the whole distractions of email and getting caught in the minutia of email versus the creativity stuff. It’s great. How can people follow you on social media, and how can people get your books? Obviously we’re going to put the link on Amazon to buy them, but as far as hiring you to be a speaker and all that good stuff.

Linda:

My name is my website, lindagalindo, G-A-L-I-N-D-O.com, and there is, right there when you go to lindagalindo.com, my blog. I write this fantastic blog. On Facebook, it’s linda.galindo.accountability. There we have yet more fabulous connections to all things accountability. My Twitter handle is @ru, the letters R-U, accountable. We tweet out as often as I find really great stuff to remind us that accountability is a competitive advantage for you, individually and collectively. Website’s probably your best bet for all things, lindagalindo.com.

John:

Nice. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much. It goes so fast with somebody like you with so many great ideas. Thanks for your energy and your insights.

Linda:

My pleasure. Go out there and pitch.

John:

Will do. Thanks Linda. Thanks for listening for listening to The Successful Pitch podcast. If you like the show, please go to iTunes and write a review, and encourage your friends to write reviews too. It really helps get the word out. People say that the longest distance is between someone’s mouth and their wallet. People can tell you they’re going to invest, but when it comes time to write the check, they don’t do it. How do you get people to say yes and then follow through? Visualize yourself on the left side of a river bank, and you have to cross the river. On the other side of the river is where the funding happens.

First, you make up your idea. Then you make it real. Then you make it reoccur. Once you start dipping your toe into the water to get to funding, that’s where I can help. I get you across that river faster than you would on your own with a lot less frustration than you will get when you hear a bunch of nos and you don’t know why. If you want some help getting funded faster with less frustration, go to my free funding webinar, sellingsecretsforfunding.com/webinar. Sign up and get in-depth information on how you can get funded fast. Thanks.

TSP048 | Daniel Maw – Transcription

Posted by John Livesay in Uncategorized | 0 comments

John Livesay:

Welcome to The Successful Pitch podcast. Today’s guest is Daniel Maw from the UK. Daniel says that A people hire A people but B-level people tend to hire C-level people, and what he means by that is people who are an A skillset, A quality are not intimidated by other people at that level and, in fact, get inspired by them and the competition, but B-level quality staff, they want to hire someone less impressive than they are, so they don’t have to worry about them outshining them. Really great stuff when you’re hiring a team. He said, “You know, the key to getting good clients is to have a real relationship, not a service relationship” Finally, he said, “It’s so easy to be busy being busy without taking your headsets off and looking up from your computer screen. You need to be focused on how you’re going to be profitable.” Enjoy the episode.

Are you a founder struggling with your investor pitch? Do you need warm introductions to the right investors to get your startup funded? Do you need a funding roadmap to get you there fast? All of this and more can be found in Crack the Funding Code. Judy Robinett, best-selling author of How to Be a Power Connector and on the board of Illuminate Ventures and I, invite you to our free Crack the Funding Code webinar. Simply go to judyrobinett.com and click on the webinar tab to see how to tap into our network of investors around the world. There’s a link in the show notes as well. You’re only one click away from getting funded fast.

Hi, and welcome to The Successful Pitch podcast. Today’s guest is Daniel Maw, all the way from the UK, calling in with a huge time zone from Los Angeles. Thank you for joining us today, Daniel. Daniel’s background is quite interesting. He is the owner and development director of an agency called DMSQD, but if I remember correctly from my earlier podcast with his partner, Mark Asquith, they are changing the name, so I’m going to ask them about that. We’re going to do a deep dive into what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and how do you find the right co-founder. Without any further adieu, Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel Maw:

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

John:

Our pleasure.

Daniel:

Very nice intro.

John:

Thank you. I am always fascinated to ask people to take us back a little bit and what made you decide that you wanted to have your own business? Did you always know that was what you wanted to do? Take us back to your days when you were at university, if you would, and give us your mindset there.

Daniel:

Well, university was the sort of starting point for it all.

John:

Nice.

Daniel:

My course was what’s called a sandwich course over here in the UK. The course length was four years in total. You spend the first two years continuously at university. Then the third year is what they call a sandwich year which you spend a year in your chosen industry, so you go work as an employee for a company as a normal employee would, so you get paid and you get to do the job that you’re intending to do. Then when you complete that year you go back to university and complete your final year. It was during my sandwich year that a few things came together with a friend and a few of the turning points that made me decide that, look we can do something here. It was really started from then and then it progressed. It was a very distinct turning point during my year out in the industry.

John:

I love that.

Daniel:

Going into my final year at university there was a few ideas thrown about almost in jest, and one thing lead to another and here we are, five years later.

John:

It’s fascinating. I love the concept. Do you know where the idea of a sandwich year came from? Is it something that everyone does in the UK or is it only certain universities?

Daniel:

No. It’s quite a common thing, and because how universities work over here it’s kind of the first year is almost just bedding in. It doesn’t really contribute that much to your final degree level. It’s the second and the final year where it counts. A lot of universities do it over here. I think it depends on the kind of course you’ve got. Obviously if you’re being a surgeon not just going to go out there your second year and do open heart surgery or anything like that. I think it just gives you a bit more rounding of what you want to do and get a bit of experience because in the final year you can do quite a bit of changing around. You can actually go back and not do the same course. You can go down a different path. I think it just sort of beds you in to what you’re hopefully going to be going into as a career.

John:

Well, it’s interesting. It’s very different than the concept of a summer intern here in the US where you work for basically free and you’re just doing filing. You don’t really get a sense of what the job is sometimes. Ideally you do. This sandwich year is you’re really being treated like an employee and what a great experience to see if this is really what I want to do, and it’s not just a quick fun summer thing. It’s a day-in-day-out, a whole year. You know with that year, I would think, whether that’s the culture you like, those are the people you like and if not you’re going to pivot. The ultimate entrepreneur thing, right?

Daniel:

Exactly. That’s it. That’s exactly the case. It was one of the reasons why I chose the course, actually. I looked at a few universities close to home, further away, and it was just the university I went to which was in Notes Field, and they just seemed to … There was just this extra bit of care that they have for the students, and that was obviously just an assumption I had, having only been there for the open days, but when you get there, there really is a tight-knit community. The lecturers really care. You do get that support network as well. I graduated in 2011, and I still speak to some of the lecturers that were there.

In fact, as recently as yesterday or the day before I got something as personal as a text message from one of the key lecturers asking if I would go back and be part of a series of lecturers for the next year, so between now and April, and just basically speak to his final years about what’s really out there post university, not in the sense of post-university life or what I’ve been up to, but what actually is out there, how can I inform that current student of what’s out there and what to do and advice and things like that because obviously it’s quite full-on, especially in the last year. There’s obviously quite a lot of information and experience I and other past students can give to the current ones about what they can do and what’s coming next.

John:

Right. Well, that’s a big honor. I want to ask you about this award you were given for best interactive project and how that helped you in your career, so can you tell us what that was and how you won it?

Daniel:

Oh, yeah. Definitely. How it was, there was this module on the course. It was just called group project, but that was the specific module’s name. Basically you worked with it in semester two. The first half it was just two people, myself and a really good friend of mine, and the second half we were put into big groups. I believe there were five, and it was actually the first half when I was with my friend Mark. We did something that we called synchronous and it actually featured in the interactive media event in the final couple of weeks of the university. They do a bit of a show to show off what the media students have been doing. What it was was an interactive but live feedback system.

We created a bit of a web app for people to use on their phones. It basically just required their name and an email and just some information about the event they were at. It was also on the database, every bit of feedback that each person gave. We also had it linked up to some projectors so that every time somebody posted some feedback about the event or something light it would flash onto it. We’d got about seven or eight projectors. We would slide in a bit of animation and say John Doe really loves this, and he has just taken a photo and he’s changed the color of his hair, for example. Everything was animated in. It was also on the database that we could get access to afterwards, print it out and it was used as part of a case study for the event for that year.

John:

Wow.

Daniel:

Yeah. What was quite funny is we’d got a TV show over here called The Gadget Show which has got all these crazy, wacky things on the show you can imagine. About 8 months to 12 months afterwards they do a live show and they actually had something that was pretty much exactly the same.

John:

Ah. Well, that whole concept of getting meetings interactive and getting audience participation at a whole new level and people really feeling like they’re part of something and now with Periscope and things like that you don’t even have to be there to feel like you’re part of it, which really is the future. Take us to what you went into with Pixel One, this leading creative studio. I’d love to know in terms of who do you help and what problem do you solve?

Daniel:

Well, the Pixel One days was the company that I started during my final year at university. I mentioned there was pivotal point where I’d be an entrepreneur, be self-employed. That’s my avenue that I want to go. Like I said, he in jest for a few ideas about, but a very dear friend of mine, obviously from when we were younger, Kyle Bulkinson. He’s also a co-founder of the company. He is immensely creative. The talent that he’s got across all media is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s quite frankly unbelievable. He won’t like me saying that. He doesn’t take praise very well. How we set out for that was because of Kyle’s immense creative flare we kind of got a bit of a niche in our area, so we were attracting numbers and we just opened the door. There was nobody there. We couldn’t even see anybody for miles. Nobody knew who we were. We just started doing these nothing projects really, just doing the odd bit of commercial work that we could pull in while I was at university and Kyle was at work.

We started building a bit of a reputation up for being this really really creative small agency that was pulling in certain types of work, not necessarily B-to-B or anything like that for the big companies. It was just something that people wanted that really have this flare. We actually only did that for about 12 months, 18 months. Before I skip forward to that I’ll just hold back. As I mentioned I was doing this while at university and Kyle was still working and we progressed through and as I came to my final weeks before graduation we had this stockpile of money so we got something to give ourselves as some sort of wage, some sort of income, but we’d also got outlet studio sale, so it was paid. We got all the machinery and the desks, everything. I graduated the Friday. Monday morning we were in the office.

John:

I love it.

Daniel:

Up and running.

John:

Got it. Talk about planning your future?

Daniel:

Just a bit.

John:

No grass growing under your feet as we say here in the states.

Daniel:

That’s when we started really to push on and get known a bit. Obviously we’d got a place and people could come see us. This is just us pouring our blood, sweat and tears into it. Like I said, there was nobody there. We had no client base. We’d just opened the doors. We got our bright yellow wall. It was just as people started picking up who we were that sort of Mark, in the company that he was working for then, started to find out who we were and one thing lead to another. We found that they were, Mark’s company at the time, were buying services for us for the creative things and then we ended up buying services for them for the things that we couldn’t provide at the time. It kept going like that for a few months, and then Christmas comes along and we get asked to go for a meeting. There were actually three of them. There was Mark, another chap called Marc, spelled with a C rather than a K, just to be different and then a chap called Don.

They drew the idea of maybe, we’re buying services from each other. At this time it was becoming quite a lot. There’s got to be something about joining forces here because they’d been going longer and got their business-to-business sort of client base and we were bringing in this creative stuff. Everything just seemed to fall into place, really, like dotting the I’s, crossing the T’s and it just came into one big mold. It was like, right, we’ve got a lot of the best covered here. We can really start making the groundwork.

John:

Let’s talk about that for just a second. You open your business the Monday after graduating. You’ve got the wall painted yellow so you a major statement about this is our brand, and you started on the side just letting people know what you do, that it’s a specific niche, took a lot of courage and a lot of chutzpah and focus to say, “We are determined to make this work,” and that’s what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and get some traction whether you’re going to attract another company to collaborate with you or find an investor. It’s that initial moxie or grit or whatever you want to call it. What would you call it in the UK? What do you guys like to describe that personality.

Daniel:

We probably have a couple. It’s called a bit of a gutsy move.

John:

Gutsy, yeah.

Daniel:

The guys in the office. We said we’ve got a go big or go home attitude.

John:

Yeah.

Daniel:

It’s just going the balls deep. Let’s just, if we’re going to do it, it’s only going to get there one way and that’s the best way possible.

John:

Balls deep. That’s the phrase I was looking for. I knew there would be some little niche there. I love it. You’re totally in. You’re committed, right?

Daniel:

That’s right.

John:

You believe it. You could see it. Did you have any doubts or fears that you had to overcome during that process?

Daniel:

I’d come from being a student. I’d lived off next to no money for the last four years, really, so I didn’t really have anything to lose at this period of time. I still lived with my parents back at home.

John:

Got it.

Daniel:

It was like, I didn’t have a plan B. I was going to do Pixel One and that was my sole focus. That’s just how I went.

John:

Nice.

Daniel:

Kyle had actually just flat out quit his job.

John:

Yeah.

Daniel:

It was a very safe job doing what he can do, but he found it incredibly boring. He just thought, right, we’re just going to go out as well. I mean, just flat out quit his job. He’d got bills to pay. Like, we’re going to do this. The same sort of attitude, exactly the same.

John:

Nice. You started to get some traction and that’s when you started collaborating and now you’ve merged with Mark Asquith, so that’s what became this other DMSQD agency. Is that right?

Daniel:

That’s right. Yeah. That’s what became DMSQD.

John:

Right. Tell us about, did you do any kind of due diligence on each other or did you already know each other pretty well from working together?

Daniel:

To be quite frank I didn’t particularly like Mark when I first met him.

John:

Okay.

Daniel:

We’re actually quite the same person, so at first we kind of clashed because we’ve both got the same attitude, but once we got around … We didn’t particularly dislike each other. We’re actually on the same page here and now we’re obviously, 3, 3-1/2 years later, great friends, and so on. We did start with some background research. Obviously we did it on them because we were very happy in what we were doing. Obviously we were young in age and young in experience, but it was just one of those positions where it just kind of made sense. We got both Marks and Don. I think Mark is about 5 years older than myself and Kyle. Another chap called Marc is about 50 and then we’ve got an older chap called Don in his 60’s.

They were all running their own businesses previously and then they joined together to make what was DMSQD at the time. They’d got all this wealth of experience and they built an open-eyes client base as well, so what the information they gave us and were kind enough to give us, it all looked great. Obviously us, as Pixel One, we’re open people, so they had access to everything they wanted to as well. Obviously we had a few meetings to get to know each other a bit better. The key thing from our side was what sort of company do we want? What are we striving to be? What’s all this blood, sweat and tears for? What are we in it for? What’s the end game?

John:

Also, what’s the culture, right?

Daniel:

Right. Yeah. It just matched up. It’s one of those stories where you think, really? It was just great. It was just a click, and we never looked back.

John:

Can you define now what your end game is? Is it to keep going? Is it to get sold? Is it to go public? What is your end game, big picture?

Daniel:

No. We’ve got a staff of … Well, there’s 9 of us altogether. We don’t particularly want to go too much bigger because what we want to do is we want to be picking and choosing the clients we’re working with. If we’re going to put all this effort in and strive to be the absolute best, not just the best locally, the best in the UK. We’re going for the whole hog, and that’s what we want. We want to keep working with the big grounds and the good people and the good clients. It’s great to get the dream clients, but we’ve had a few where you get those and it’s not as rosy as you might think. We want to work with the good people.

John:

I love the expression of who you say no to is just as important as who you say yes to when you’re taking on clients. Sometimes it’s so difficult to say no to a new client when you need the revenue, right?

Daniel:

Exactly. It’s such a hard thing to do. God, is it worth it.

John:

Yes.

Daniel:

You have the ones where it doesn’t work or they are troublesome, not because they’re wanting to be. It’s just that they are. Because in our industry it’s sad because some of the clients don’t really appreciate it. They just see, for example, it’s a website. Well, it’s not. It’s so many more different things. There’s been a lot of effort put in on it time wise, planning wise for UX and development and things like that, and they just see the aesthetics of it. They don’t see the hard work that’s gone behind that takes the real time.

John:

Right. Let’s talk about that for a minute because this is your area of expertise. Everyone has a website. Everyone knows they need a website and some people have what I call website shame. They’re like, “Oh, I’m still working on that. It’s not quite where I want it to be. I know I need to make it better. I need to update it. Blah, blah, blah.” Clearly it’s so important for branding to grow, to get new clients and if you’re looking to get investors obviously. When you pitch a new client, since this is The Successful Pitch podcast, I would love to have you share with us your tips on pitching because it’s all the same whether you’re getting a new client or getting an investor. One of the things investors look for is your ability to get clients. How do you pitch a client that shows that what you do is worth your premium price and what makes you different than everyone else?

Daniel:

That’s actually something that has been quite a talking point for quite a period of time of what we’re trying to get across to some other people, not just staff. It’s what I’m actually going to talk about at university when I go and speak there.

John:

Terrific.

Daniel:

It’s that fact that if we’ve got two companies, A and B, both web agencies, design agencies, whatever they are, whatever the project, they’ve obviously got great staff because they are pitching for this work and the client has allowed them to pitch for it.

John:

Right.

Daniel:

If both the designers are going to create great work, they’re going to build the website and it’s going to be great, I find the biggest separator, the difference between company A and B, are the people. You can have the same skills, but you’re not going to be the same person. What we find over here, I’m sure it’s the same in the states, is that people buy people.

John:

Yep.

Daniel:

I honestly, hands down, think that’s the biggest part of winning a pitch.

John:

It literally is. For an investor, they invest in the team more than the product.

Daniel:

Oh, definitely.

John:

It’s all about we both have the skillset to create your website. At the end of the day, it’s like the real deciding factor is, if I hear you right, who do we like? Who are we going to click with? Who’s going to have rapport? That’s so important when you’re putting your team together. You and Mark, we have to get on the same page so that we like each other and then we present a united front and then we’re going to attract the same kind of client that gets us and appreciates us. That’s what I heard you say earlier.

Daniel:

Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. I mean, it’s a relationship. It’s not service. I mean, it’s like a partner, a husband, a wife. You buy into it. It wouldn’t just be one thing, they can cook. Great. That’s not just it is it? It’s everything else. I think there’s a better end game, there’s a better end product if you get on well and you can collaborate well I think that you can be up front with people and I think you can just tighten things down or you can just get these little hints and suggestions. It’s the trust and the belief that you really want their product to do as well as they want it to. I think that’s where the real picture stuff is.

John:

I just hear a great quote from Judy Robinett which is how I know your partner Mark Asquith. She said, “You want to work with people that have your back and have your future.” I love that quote and I think it’s exactly what you’re talking about.

Daniel:

Yeah. Definitely. That’s a great quote.

John:

Yes. It’s right on that whole concept of, I’m going to tweak this out from your episode. “Have a real relationship, not a service relationship.”

Daniel:

Yeah. I’m going to write that quote down.

John:

Feel free. I just tweaked it a little bit because that’s what I do with pitches. If you’re in the room, you’ve obviously earned the right to pitch.

Daniel:

Yeah.

John:

The next step is, it’s not about razzle dazzling them with all your tech stuff. It’s people buy emotionally and back it up with logic. Wouldn’t you agree?

Daniel:

Entirely. At the end of the day, tech, anybody can do it. If you’re in that industry you can do that from your bedroom as a one-man band. You’re fighting against anybody.

John:

Yes.

Daniel:

Everybody. Certainly not anybody. Which is why I say you’re buying the individual because tech is tech. People can do it. What’s the deciding factor? That deciding factor is, as I’ve said, it’s you with the individual’s company.

John:

One of the things I’ve learned from listening to and talking with Mark Asquith, your partner, is he’s really keen on focusing on this is a business. Is it breaking even? Is it profitable? Can you speak to the kind of conversations that you guys have focused on that?

Daniel:

Would you mind just saying that again?

John:

Sure. One of the things that Mark likes to focus on is how profitable is the business and keeping your eye on that and not letting that, especially if you’re in a creative industry, get, oh, isn’t this beautiful? It’s like, are we putting too many hours in for what they’re paying us or making sure that what you’re doing is profitable.

Daniel:

Yeah. That’s quite a funny one there. It is quite easy to be busy being busy. I’m sure Mark will have mentioned these days, it’s so easy to, I say again, be busy being busy and take your eye off everything else. The business is a business and the business needs to survive and, yes, you need to do the work for that to happen, but aside from the day-to-day stuff that you’ve got to do that’s your service, a business requires so much else. You just can’t take your eye off that because that will stop moving forward. The business needs to grow and there needs to be other avenues of income and you need to look at those needs, see them on the horizon and you need to plan for them. You need to aim for them. You need to get those people in which you can’t do if you’ve got the headphones on and your head down. You need to look up.

John:

I love your expression that you need to look up to be profitable. You can’t keep your head down with your headsets on. Is there any piece of advice that you would give new entrepreneurs when it comes to finding the right co-founder or enticing the right people to join your team to grow?

Daniel:

I think there’s two things there. I think when it comes to the co-founder I think it’s very important to go in with the facts and from my experience I think knowing a handful of people who’ve dealt with them in the past also is a great factor. Don’t just go in with the facts that you’re given. It’s the facts that you’re not given necessarily that can be quite useful and almost be a deciding factor. When it comes to staff believe it or not we’re finding it hard to find good staff.

John:

I hear that all the time. It’s hard.

Daniel:

Have you heard the phrase, “A’s hire A’s and B’s hire C’s?”

John:

No. What does that mean? Tell me again. What is it, A?

Daniel:

A’s hire A’s.

John:

Yes.

Daniel:

B’s hire C’s.

John:

Oh. Nice.

Daniel:

Basically what that means is we’ve got the A level employee, extremely talented, very good at their job and the reason they hire A’s is because they’ve got no doubt in their abilities and will often thrive on the competition to make themselves better which in turn will make the other A better because they’re trying to beat them as well.

John:

Because they’re not intimidated, right?

Daniel:

Exactly that.

John:

Yep.

Daniel:

We’ve got the B’s who hire the C’s because they are obviously not as highly skilled or have not got the confidence or the output is not quite the same as an A, but they won’t want to be overshadowed by a fellow B because it will make them look bad, so they hire C’s so they can remain above.

John:

Oh, Daniel, that is gold. I’ve never heard anybody describe that. That’s really valuable. We’re going to tweet that out, really promote that. It’s really sophisticated insight into human behavior and also so important to know when building your team. It’s fantastic information. I’m sure you’re an avid reader and I would love to hear you give us a suggestion on a book that you like either around business or just life in general.

Daniel:

Actually, aside from the Jack Reacher novels I’ve got a couple that I’m just about to read. I go to a bimonthly event over here and it’s called UX Sheffield based in Sheffield, and it’s covering all things like user experience and interaction design and things like that. It’s a great event. It features guest speakers. One of the speakers, actually the owner of a company over here called. He did a talk about David Ogilvy, the master of advertising as they say.

John:

I know him well, yes.

Daniel:

After that talk I picked up the Ogilvy on Advertising. Now I’ve not got quickly too far into it, but you read reviews and if you know anything about David Ogilvy or, like you said, you do, you can’t not be interested in the guy. I mean, what he’s done and what he did, he’s just amazing.

John:

He was all about, tell them what they need to know. Get to the point.

Daniel:

Exactly. He’s just an interesting guy. The stuff that you can read about him. He’s obviously got Mad Men, the TV series, that’s loosely based on David Ogilvy and a book that I’m actually going to turn on to next is one recommended by Mark actually. It’s called The Art of Persuasion by Bob Berg. That’s all about your language, not only in speaking terms, but in emailing and things like that about how to entice people over towards yourself or the company or whatever you’re trying to sell. I’ve actually noticed a difference in how he writes email and how he speaks to people and it just works. He’s great. That’s at the side of the bed at the moment. I’m really looking forward to reading that.

John:

Yes. He’s quite the master. I watch his emails to his database and one of the subject lines he said is, “I’VE HAD A RELAPSE. DAMN.”

Daniel:

Yes. I recall that one.

John:

If that doesn’t get you to open up an email I don’t know what does. It’s very David Ogilvy. It’s very enticing. It’s a great great story there. I love it.

Daniel:

We say to Mark, we say that he’s got the gift of the gab. Now what we mean by that is he’s a talker and he can really really talk. It’s really strange. It just works whatever he does. Obviously he’s improving on that. When you notice a change in how somebody’s being or how they’re writing or how they’re speaking to people, when you see them every day, you’ve kind of got to take note because obviously when you see somebody or deal with somebody day to day, they’re pretty much the same, but when you notice a change that’s when something is happening.

John:

Right because it can be very subtle and you don’t even notice it, but that whole concept of the gift of gab, it might be an innate talent, but he’s obviously spent some time learning about it and developing it, and that’s what I really want our listeners to take away is you hear somebody who gives a great talk, gives a great speech, writes a great email and you think, oh they’ve just got the gift of gab. They may have some natural talent, but anybody who’s really good at it has spent some time developing it.

Daniel:

Yeah, he’s spent a lot of time over the last year or so going into that. His podcast is 12 months old a week or 2 ago and he’s really jumped into that with 2 feet.

John:

Daniel, how can people follow you on social media? What’s your twitter and all that good stuff?

Daniel:

My twitter handle is daniel_maw. Obviously I’ve got a strange spelling of the surname which is Maw and you can hit us up on our website which is www.hacksawstudio.com.

John:

Fantastic. Thank you so much for being on the show today. It’s been a pleasure.

Daniel:

Thank you very much. It’s been great.

John:

Thanks for listening to The Successful Pitch podcast. If you like the show please go to iTunes and write a review and encourage your friends to write reviews too. It really helps get the word out. You know, people say that the longest distance is between someone’s mouth and their wallet. People can tell you they’re going to invest, but when it comes time to write the check, they don’t do it. How do you get people to say yes and then follow through? Visualize yourself on the left side of a riverbank and you have to cross the river and on the other side of the river is where the funding happens. First you make up your idea and then you make it real and then you make it reoccur. Once you start dipping your toe into the water to get to funding that’s where I can help. I get you across that river faster than you would on your own with a lot less frustration then you will get when you hear a bunch of nos and you don’t know why. If you want some help getting funded faster with less frustration go to my free funding webinar, sellingsecretsforfunding.com/webinar. Sign up and get in depth information on how you can get funded fast. Thanks.