Innovate and Inspire: How to Break Through in Business with Victor Green

[00:00:02] Welcome to the En Factor Podcast. Welcome to The InFactor, conversations with entrepreneurs who started, stumbled and succeeded. Today I'm excited to welcome Victor Green to the show. Victor is a serial entrepreneur born in the UK and at age 30 started his own publishing company.

[00:00:53] Today his latest endeavor, new streaming show called Newpreneurs. So I'm really excited to dig in today and learn more about your background, how you became an entrepreneur, some of the things that you've learned along the way and about this new show that you're producing.

[00:01:12] So Victor, thank you for joining me on The InFactor today. Thank you for your invite. Yeah so I'm really excited to hear a little bit more about your background. A lot of our listeners are either entrepreneurs themselves or they're hoping to be someday

[00:01:29] and I think everybody's story is a lot of fun to hear. So you are a self-described serial entrepreneur, so let's back up. How did you get started and tell us about what your journey has been about?

[00:01:47] Okay well somehow I feel I must have been about 40 when I was born because I had so many interesting things in the world which I wanted to do particularly with regard to business. I started work actually when I was almost 13.

[00:02:03] When I left school at 4 30 I would go to a menswear store and I used to work in there for an hour and a half till they closed and then I started working there on a Saturday

[00:02:14] and I was already getting involved in learning a bit about commerce and things. By the time I was 15 I just couldn't wait to run away from school because I'd had enough and I went full-time into the menswear business and after a year or

[00:02:27] two I became a manager and I eventually became a general manager doing the buying and we had six stores at the time so that was my first interest. I then got a little bit frustrated because if you're in a retail business you have this

[00:02:44] plate of glass which is between you and your customer and you have to wait for him to come to you and open the door. You can't physically go out and drag him in so it became a bit

[00:02:54] frustrating on certain days that I could do nothing to improve the business. I then had an opportunity where somebody said to me you know would you be interested in changing your career to join a publishing company and become one of the salesmen selling

[00:03:09] advertising space. So I said well I'll give it a go and have a look so I went up there a few times and thought well it's a massive change for me having had a permanent job for

[00:03:19] so long. Anyway I took this new job and it became very successful. I ended up becoming the general manager of the company we had 12 periodical magazines and then about that time there was an opportunity for a new magazine in a new industry and the chairman of my company

[00:03:39] wasn't particularly interested in pursuing it. Well I pursued it and I felt this has got a great opportunity he's missing out on. I said if you're not going to do it I'm going to do

[00:03:49] it myself. So I started my magazine it was to do with security, burglar alarms, safe locks and that sort of thing and the magazine went extremely well from the first issue and it was just all guns blazing and then a year or so later I started another magazine

[00:04:10] in the fire protection industry that I did were in the health and safety industry and then I realized that the communication I was creating was absolutely superb. I had this audience but how could I actually offer them more to expand my business? So I thought oh it'd be

[00:04:27] a good idea if I could start an international convention and start on big exhibits with a conference and that's what I actually did. I then started an exhibition which was very mediocre, typical downstairs of a hotel you know the foyer area type of thing. Did that for two

[00:04:45] years and then decided I'm really going to go for this. I'm going to make it an annual exhibition moving to the largest exhibition hall in London and make it an international event which I did. Fortunately it worked out. I created this incredible show. It became the

[00:05:03] largest security exhibition in the world and it's still actually running. I sold it many years ago but it's still in existence so from that I looked at the audience which I had and I've

[00:05:17] always realized that if you have a captive audience you've got to find what else you can sell them. You know if you go to a sports stadium they're selling your peanuts, they're selling your beer, they're selling your hot dogs because they have a captive

[00:05:29] audience and I realized I had thousands of customers and each one of them needed other services such as marketing and PR, they needed printing, they needed photography so I opened businesses in all those categories and I could go to my customers who I knew to say well we

[00:05:48] can now do your printing for you, we can now do your photography for you, we can now provide marketing and PR. So that's how I started to expand my businesses. I sold my publishing company

[00:06:01] and then shortly after I sold my exhibition company and then I went into other businesses. Main business I went into was a finance company but the finance company I created was very specialized, it was only for lawyers which everyone said to me but

[00:06:18] why would lawyers want to borrow money, they make so much money. I said yes they do but they're not good at running a business, they're good at fighting your calls but they don't run business as well and I provided funding for their insurance premiums for their liability insurance

[00:06:36] which is a very very big part of course they have to spend enormous amounts of money if they're a large lawyer they may need cover for a billion dollars or more.

[00:06:46] So that became a very very big very very successful business which I sold eventually to a banking finance company but in between that I've gone into real estate, I've gone into website design technology, I created an app which was for clearing snow. It was called the

[00:07:09] snow clearing app like an uber so a person would have snow they would go onto my app, click on it and you would see the truck coming along so that was a very successful business. I manufactured men's shoes in Portugal, I manufactured a baby's chair harness which

[00:07:27] was a harness for children to sit comfortably in the seat if they went to a restaurant, I managed a rock band for a period of time so I had quite a diverse thing and I did a lot

[00:07:39] of business consultancy, lecturing, mentoring and that sort of thing so I covered quite a lot of areas and gained a lot of experience. Yeah well so you absolutely deserve the title serial entrepreneur so no question there and quite a fascinating background and there are

[00:07:58] many things that I'd love to dig into about this conversation. Of course I want to know which businesses you started that failed because I'm guessing somewhere along the line if you did but before we get to that I'd like to know how you think about opportunity because when

[00:08:19] we look at successful entrepreneurs one of the key competencies they have is the ability to recognize opportunity and that seems like something you learned early on so what do you say to somebody who says what do you look for in an opportunity? Sorry, dear I hope I haven't

[00:08:41] lost you my bracket fell off the wall so I'm going to start again. That's okay we can we can fix that. What I look for in opportunity it's I think I look at it in some ways slightly different

[00:08:53] to others I look at what opportunity I can create which will help other people and I look at the needs of other people. If you're creating a business you have to realize that you're not as important as you think you are because you're not going to

[00:09:10] be the customer so what you have to do is you have to actually say to yourself if I'm going to sell this idea you've got to put yourself in the position of the person you're

[00:09:23] going to sell it to and you've got to think to yourself how will it improve his business? That's the most important thing that you're selling him a product or service which is going to make his business better. That's the important part don't be sort of selfish

[00:09:39] saying well I like this business oh sorry hang on I'm just doing bad so I do apologize but we can edit this I hope and I say to them don't think because you like the idea

[00:09:51] it's great because you're not the customer you've got to actually look at the perspective of the other person and realize that you can go to somebody and say oh do you know Rebecca you know you're wearing those headphones they're good but I've got another idea

[00:10:06] why don't we put it in with a little bud and it's going to make your life a lot easier it's less expensive so you have to put yourself in the recipient as to what they're going to do

[00:10:16] to benefit from your idea that's the first thing and that requires people to be not complacent that's important never be complacent and do lots of research and when you think you've done enough research do it again the double check and triple check

[00:10:33] because that that's the thing because you mentioned before about businesses that I made mistakes in and I think the biggest mistake I made was complacency to a large extent and going into a business which I didn't really know enough about in the days gone by photography was

[00:10:53] a different business it had to go into water there were negatives not a camera today you know different thing and I decided you know I'm going to open a photography business along something else but what I hadn't allowed for was the amount of water that was needed

[00:11:11] to flush through with all of the negatives I just just and we needed an astronomic amount of water and I found that in my building which I owned in the basement I had

[00:11:23] to put in five tanks these tanks were like 12 foot by 12 foot by 12 foot they were enormous and so the amount of water then I had to have pumps to pump it but not only that I had

[00:11:39] to have standby pumps because if one failed the business so I got involved and I spent about a half a million well you could half a million dollars more than I should have done on the business and it ended up being an absolute disaster because the capital expenditure

[00:11:56] was not relevant to the return so that was one of my businesses so the lesson I learned from that you've got to do more research you've really got to go into it deeper and I didn't

[00:12:06] do it enough so I paid the price so that's the thing I always say to people don't worry how many times you've researched it keep doing it again in case you miss that little item which could be

[00:12:18] failure for you right right so great advice I think when you think about it because you your your first piece of advice in there was you know you've got to figure out what the

[00:12:29] customer wants and how to make it better for them and then secondarily the way you find that out and the way you find out more about the business is by doing your research and

[00:12:39] so entrepreneurship really is a learning process right I mean you're with every one of these new ventures you had a lot to learn well if you don't learn something new every day you're not listening that's my word there's something to be taught learn every single day you just

[00:12:55] got to have your eyes and ears open you must look 360 degrees look exactly what's happening I find it fascinating even to the day I will walk around and look at things not intentionally but

[00:13:07] I may see something I think why on earth are they doing it like that it seems so silly and it happened the other day I got off an aeroplane and the luggage the way they took

[00:13:17] the luggage off the plane and got it over I thought was absolutely nuts crazy they could do a much easier system of a conveyor belt directly onto it you know but people are

[00:13:26] handling it and it had to be picked up three times I thought well that's silly if you had a conveyor system from the airplane you could only pick it up once and it becomes food yeah

[00:13:38] paying attention to every little detail right that's what I'm hearing there and finding ways to do things better and more efficiently and the other thing I heard in there is that

[00:13:51] entrepreneurship is a lot of work a lot of hard work and so you wanted to work at an early age you enjoy work yes I did I enjoy I just had an insatiable appetite and I was able to work as

[00:14:07] many hours as it needed but I didn't get tired and I think the reason for that is I enjoyed it and I always think if you enjoy something it doesn't become a hardship I didn't

[00:14:18] regard going to work I regarded I was going to do my favorite hobby and that's how I looked it wasn't an arduous fact that I had oh I'm going to work today no I was excited I'm going to get

[00:14:30] involved in my hobby which I enjoy which happened to be the business right right well so let's talk a little bit about just a little bit about role models you know was this was being an entrepreneur something that you saw from your family that you always know you

[00:14:48] wanted to do this or was it just really that you you loved working and you enjoyed business and this is where your path took you yeah well it wasn't for my family that's for sure because

[00:14:58] my parents were not business-orientated and I have two brothers and neither were they so I was I was the odd one out um I just happened to be that sort of a nature of a person

[00:15:08] but I just found it very exciting to look at business and to look at ideas and of course I like the challenge it's the same when you take up a sport you want to be good at it so you

[00:15:20] have to dedicate yourself to that sport if you want to be an Olympic champion you're going to be 24 7 involved and if you want to be a successful business person you've got to be 24

[00:15:29] 7 involved that's right but you have to enjoy it that's the important thing is to find it it's fun it's exciting if it becomes hard work then you're not going to enjoy it you won't be successful so always keeping the customer creating value for the customer in mind and

[00:15:50] knowing your product and knowing your space and the production process has always been key now I noted that when you mentioned your early business your early step into publishing you went into safety I think it was and then that that took you into several other areas

[00:16:13] do you also look at trends in the marketplace has that been an important part of and is that what led you down that path or was it um no it wasn't so much trend what happened is

[00:16:26] that it was unusual the majority of people have a business and the people that they want to influence are the customer are the end user right that's the person who's going to spend the money when I looked at this particular industry I realized there was another way

[00:16:45] of doing it because the people I was going to attract as my readers were people who were referring people to have a job for example and if you have an insurance company they would come to

[00:16:59] you and say I want my house covered for insurance they would come to your house and say oh yes but you've got a risk factor here I won't insure you unless you put locks on your windows

[00:17:09] different locks on the doors and an alarm system when I realized these people are very influential they're doing this all day long and they must be very powerful people because they can make or break a company and then I found all the alarm companies and say

[00:17:24] wanted to get to these people so I decided that's my market I'm going to go back to front I'm going to go to the specifier as opposed to the end customer and that proved to be

[00:17:36] extremely correct and that's how I got going I looked at what you have to look at what is best for the business and best for the customer which is the quickest way from A to Z

[00:17:48] right but a lot of people I see and I've meant to so many people they naturally they're in a hurry everybody wants to be an overnight success and I always tell them it normally takes 20 years

[00:18:00] to become an overnight success so be patient it doesn't happen overnight it doesn't happen overnight and it's hard for them when you get very enthusiastic you want to run faster than

[00:18:12] you can walk like a child but you're going to fall over right and that's what I say to them please please take your time and this is why with the new show which I'm creating

[00:18:23] with newpreneurs the difference is to any other show is that we're going to provide mentorship and guidance not just going to give them money to say oh here's money walk away

[00:18:32] and do it no we're going to stay with them we're going to help them to make sure they into the traps that new people do because I've fallen in them before and I can tell them how

[00:18:43] to avoid certain things so that's a big part of the show is mentorship and guidance yeah that's so important so let uh let's talk a little bit about your your experience you've

[00:18:55] been um in in tv and and uh and and uh producing tv shows I think you also produced a tv show called hatch that's right yes and and now this one's newpreneurs so you've been a

[00:19:09] consultant and uh as a consultant I think you you transitioned into this and you're also an investor so let's talk a little bit about um if you don't mind before we get into the tv

[00:19:22] shows how did you think about money as an entrepreneur in those early years how did you finance your businesses and now that you're an investor um what do you look for

[00:19:35] well well finance my business I financed it out of my own revenue stream I didn't have any money I just had to make it work um I didn't have any investors I owned everything myself but I

[00:19:46] just had to work hard you have to utilize the money that comes in and make sure you don't take it out so I lived very frugally in early years but I had to self-generate

[00:19:56] my own money all the time and that's what I did so I never had an investment company or an investment partnership as I got much bigger in business I did have bank facilities obviously

[00:20:06] the banking facilities would have an overdraft or facility with the bank but I didn't actually have any um outside income putting into the business it was all self-generated do you recommend that for startups if you can oh yeah the thing is is people think money

[00:20:23] is the be all and end all but I have a saying which I want everyone to remember no amount of money will make a bad idea good that's what I want people to understand just

[00:20:35] because you've got money doesn't mean you're going to succeed I can list out companies that have had billions invested into them and they failed I think you know I think the other issue

[00:20:47] is that if you get if you have too much money you don't know where to spend it and especially early and not having money forces you to be more creative I think and innovative well then

[00:21:00] you have to watch every penny and you make sure that every penny is is working for you when you get these you look I look at the companies that have these gigantic investments going into them you know billions of dollars here then everywhere

[00:21:13] my personal view is I'm surprised that the investment companies put that amount of money into them I would want more control because it's like letting a kid loose in a candy store right he's gonna never gonna stop eating you put a billion dollars into a company

[00:21:29] the guys are gonna go out start buying cars extra staff travel that's not what it's for the money has to go into the business to develop the business not to make the partners

[00:21:41] or the investors rich on day one that comes later so I have it that's the reason why when I am creating newpreneurs is to teach people the value of the money and the value of a business

[00:21:53] and how a business should be run and make sure that you get a hundred cents out of every dollar that you spend so let's let's talk about newpreneurs now this uh yeah and maybe

[00:22:06] tell us a little bit about how you got into this area of production um you're in LA now yes yeah so uh is that what took you to LA or did LA uh sort of lead you down the path

[00:22:20] of TV production or is there no relationship there oh LA's simple I had a beautiful woman so I got married and that's that's the reason why no better reason to be there but of course

[00:22:31] it's a beautiful place to be I love living in LA absolutely wonderful that's wonderful that's wonderful so how did you get into uh you were the uh you're you continue to produce

[00:22:43] the tv show hatched so tell us what that one's all about well hatch was a program similar to a shark's tank type of thing it was an investment program which we had people would

[00:22:55] come on the show in the usual format and what have you um it ran for a couple of years and I think it ran out of steam because it didn't get the number of audience that we'd hoped

[00:23:06] that but the good thing that came out of it I met there uh who of course we all loved there and she was so wonderful on the show and we became very good friends from that

[00:23:17] out of all the mentoring which I've done over the years the thing which I noticed that the people who were coming to see me were getting younger and younger and younger right whereas people are averaging between 35 and 40 suddenly they're in their 20s

[00:23:32] and they're getting younger than that and I realized this is a very big marketplace and if you look at all the schools the colleges all of them have entrepreneurial courses and entrepreneurial classes there's I think 63 million gen z in the United States

[00:23:50] and I think something like 60 percent of them would love to go into business on their own and I thought well they have no opportunity what do they do the schools do it they have

[00:23:59] people coming in lecture to them they give them a thousand dollars two thousand dollars to help but that's not enough and I wanted them to have a proper opportunity to actually get into business science said right if they're good and they can convince us they can get

[00:24:15] $250,000 investment in their business and the important thing is the ongoing mentorship and that's the most important part I think the money is obviously important but it's more important that we teach them to be good at what they're going to do

[00:24:31] I love it I love it so what is the stage now of Newpreneurs is it is it up and running is it ready to launch we've just launched the website and now we're inviting people

[00:24:41] to sign up they have a choice to sign up to watch the show and get free mentorship or if they want to pitch they have to produce a 90 second video telling us all about their idea

[00:24:54] and then we will select from the videos we have and they will come on the show the show will be two people will pitch on each show and each one will have its own mentor

[00:25:05] helping them along on the to help them with the next stage we're going to do the actual um pitch part when they pitch to the angels we're going to do it on an avatar format which we think

[00:25:17] is great it's great fun and you've got the horizon workshops which is absolutely fabulous so they'll go into the horizon workshops and the judges will be initially avatars walk talking doing all the stuff and then eventually as the show goes on the following day

[00:25:33] the judges will reveal themselves as their actual self and then talk to the people whether they're going to get an investment or not you know so that's the basis of it

[00:25:44] wow that that builds in some of the there's a number of those shows i don't watch them but the ones where they reveal themselves and yeah and people have to guess who they are so

[00:25:54] that's really interesting so um what so tell us a little bit more about what you're looking for for somebody if somebody's listening out there and they think well this is so so you

[00:26:05] have to be that that 20 something you've got to be under 20 got to be under 25 it got to be under 25 yeah okay and you've got to have an idea which you understand and which you think is

[00:26:19] ready to go to market and if they think they've got something which is good they then pitch their their 90 second then they will go through a process of us speaking to them so that we can find out whether they're advanced enough with it whether they've done

[00:26:33] research whether they've considered manufacturing if it's appropriate what their market place is how they intend to market to that area so once they convince us they know they've got a good idea

[00:26:45] then they can come on the show and then we'll show them and teach them how to pitch the idea to the investors to the main investors okay so what's in it for the for the investors

[00:26:58] and the the show to do does the show take a percentage do the investors negotiate that like they do on shark oh no no we're taking away all the that that's not fair for children we

[00:27:10] wouldn't do that there's a set amount of money set set figure right so in other words if they're going to get 250 000 they give up 35 percent of their business okay that's the shareholding so it's all worked out pro-alternative they get a hundred thousand a hundred and fifty

[00:27:25] thousand we don't want to put them through a rigorous debate that's based showmanship but it's not right in my view it's a fixed amount they know that beforehand so if they get 250 they know they've got 35 shareholding with someone outside they've got the majority

[00:27:41] shareholding and we can get going so if i'm if i'm interested in this not as a participant but just i want to watch where am i going to be able to see this we're going to actually

[00:27:53] be two ways that we streamed on youtube and off our website so they have two choices majority of the kids we've done a lot of research obviously 99 percent of the kids all watch youtube they've

[00:28:04] all got accounts in youtube and they all say put it on youtube it's easy for us so we said okay we're launching on youtube and the others who want to watch it on the website can do so

[00:28:14] yeah are you looking to partner with universities yes at the moment that's exactly what we're doing because we found we've had so much interest from universities and we've offered to come to them to speak to them i'm going to i think the university of tamper later this year

[00:28:30] and we're talking to everybody and that's our big program at the moment is to get into the entrepreneurial classes so the kids are fully aware of what we're doing yeah well it's really

[00:28:42] really interesting so what was hat tell us about hatched is that for that's a similar kind of show but anybody can be on that show and is yeah hatch hatched well hatch no longer is in

[00:28:52] existence it comes down a few years ago but as i say it was a similar thing to shark's tank where people came in that's right yes um but so that that doesn't come in around about

[00:29:03] um but as i say and now what i'm introducing is the thing we had to consider was a couple of things that the kids today don't watch television right the thing they live off is

[00:29:15] their cell phone so there's no point in saying to them if you're going to watch um newpreneurs it has to be eight o'clock on channel so-and-so that's not their style we want them to have the freedom to watch it when they want so the way we're launching it

[00:29:29] they can pick it up anytime they can binge watch four or five episodes of it or they can watch one but at any time they want to they can do it so that's what we provide is the

[00:29:39] freedom for them to watch it on an easy platform at a time that suits them you know this conversation this last line of questioning makes me think about exiting businesses so there are times

[00:29:52] when we have to know when to move on so how did you make those decisions when somebody gave me an offer i couldn't refuse to do something different right well if invariably if you've got a successful business somebody who's a competitor or an investable come along and say

[00:30:11] hey you've got a strong business there i might be interested in buying your business i had offers for my exhibition company over five or six year period but i just didn't think

[00:30:23] it was right and eventually i thought the time was right to accept the offer and i did same with the other businesses which i sold that you're knowing the time is right and if you've

[00:30:36] got good advice which i want my newpreneurs to have which will be me and how our team of people will be advising we would hope that they would be talking to us and saying look we've had this

[00:30:48] offer what do you think so we're saying i think you can do better or let's structure it a different way because we have all the experience all the people that we have who are our mentors

[00:30:59] of all extensive business experience the same as our angels and we can give them first-hand experience and we can be great guides to their future so you you we've talked about your um you know you've got a multi-sided uh audience that you've got to bring together

[00:31:17] which a lot of people do if they launch something a platform or um so in this case you've got to also find good mentors so could you talk about that um is that part of your

[00:31:29] networking uh that has allowed you to build that or do you have another strategy for how you're building up that side well we haven't really got a half a dozen mentors at the

[00:31:39] moment um we've got some the lady with the bugs she was on shark tank and she created a bug spray and she's a great entrepreneur um we have carmine um these these guys run the

[00:31:53] shark tank investment group in the natural fact they are involved in the people who come off of sharks tank and some going into it so we've got some bob costoff he's good so we have a

[00:32:04] good selection of mentors at the moment and we're adding to it all the time because there'd be certain mentors who are far more experienced in particular industries than others so we can actually change the mentor to suit the guy who's pitching okay so they're all listed on

[00:32:21] the website all our mentors and angel investors are shown on the website so i'm curious about the avatars are you using ai with that or well we will be using a section of ai as i mentioned

[00:32:33] there's the work rooms um is very very good and it you can create and the avatars that we create are very similar to the actual person and you can interact on it it's a very very

[00:32:44] intelligent uh platform and ai is part of it all they will need is the headphone so that you can get into the vr the virtual reality side of it but we just thought it was a novel idea

[00:32:56] and we discussed this with our working group of kids about 50 of them and they said oh yeah we love that we've got a thumbs up okay we'll pursue the the work room idea so

[00:33:06] that's what we do yeah it's it's a lot of fun we've actually used a platform that that uses avatars that students can practice in front of and the avatars with ai give them feedback when they're rambling on too much or they're not on subject and yeah um so

[00:33:26] so there's so much we can do with ai now it's it's really fast and we've only just started yes we have we have six months in the year's time it will be quite phenomenal yes so um let's

[00:33:39] talk a little bit about you've been a book author as well yes um so i'm really curious about that i i published a couple of books a few years back and with the publisher and now

[00:33:51] i'm doing indie author work so i'm really curious some of our listeners might be interested in your experience as a book author and i see i see your book feel free to hold it up

[00:34:02] it's how to succeed in business if i really try quite a simple title but that's what it is what happened the reason i actually published the book was i used to give maybe three or

[00:34:15] four talks a week and you have experience of that and when you came to the end people said can i buy your book i said i don't have one so after maybe i should write a book but i wrote

[00:34:28] the book slightly differently to a lot of other books what i put in there was my experiences of do's and don'ts of what you should do in business and if you're faced with certain issues

[00:34:38] you should do this i try to make it a very basic down-to-earth guidance and advice on how you should get involved in business and things that you should do you know i've got about 100 chapters of all different things buying a company selling a company talking about the

[00:34:53] profitability of a company the importance of having a profit and loss account why you should have an accountant why you should use a lawyer so it's trying to be a very basic book with them good solid information which they can refer to and so anybody listening can

[00:35:10] find that oh we could amazon or just search or they can buy it or or buy it off my website howtosucceedinbusiness.com. Do you publish are you self-published? Yes yes i am yes yes that's a

[00:35:24] whole other conversation we could have right about self-publishing there are so many tools now for self-publishers and the interesting thing about publishing your book really is that it's up regardless of who's publishing it it's pretty much up to the author to

[00:35:41] to build the brand right of course of course it is yes absolutely yeah you know if you're if you're a well-known person and someone's going to pay you half a million dollars up front

[00:35:49] to publish a book you know that they're going to do it for you but self-publishing is fascinating it's pretty easy to do you can have choices of publishing companies you can go to the print on

[00:36:01] demand where they print one book at a time if you sell it or you can print a couple of thousand ten thousand and sell them yourself you know there's lots of ways to do it

[00:36:10] it so as you think about your consulting work and you know how is that so obviously somebody with your experience you've spent a lot of time consulting and and and you continue

[00:36:27] to do that investing companies and you're doing it now in a really novel way so how do you make a decision personally about the people to work with we talked about you know creating

[00:36:38] value for customers but you and i both know a lot of it is about the person right so so what do you look for in a founder well i look for in the founders one that they have a solid idea

[00:36:52] which they researched in fact i would sit down with them and i'll ask them to tell me what your business is about what it does and if they haven't explained it to me in about

[00:37:03] three minutes then i think oh this ain't good because they should be able to it's a widget which will do this that and the other will create something better than this that give

[00:37:13] me the basis of it you know i used to do um some with the small business administration the sba i used to do this at some of their places and i'd have two three hundred people

[00:37:25] in the audience and they would be pitching ideas to me and what i used to do is i used to you're on chicken time what i had i had a little timer which was a chicken and you turned it up

[00:37:35] second time for three minutes so i said if that goes off before you told me about it i'm not going to let you talk anymore i want you to tell i don't want to hear i was speaking

[00:37:44] to my mother and my parents said it's a great idea and all my friends thinks it's terrific and so on i don't want to hear that tell me you've got a widget which will do this that and the

[00:37:53] other this is how it will benefit the customers this is why it'd be better than what's on the market so we need to teach them to get to the crux of the matter and not go and make unnecessary

[00:38:05] you know presentation which is boring at the end of the day you know it's the bottom line that counts so get to the bottom line let me hear what you've got yeah you know we do that in

[00:38:16] in the classroom with students we we push them to get concise and i always think about that think it was winston churchill who said i didn't have time to write a short letter so i wrote a

[00:38:28] long one yes yeah the reality is it it's it's very challenging and takes a lot of time to get that pitch developed but that matters that matters it does because the first thing you know if you're sitting in front of somebody in the first 10-20 seconds they've

[00:38:48] already got an opinion of you they've already looked at you do they like you do you look honest do you look trustworthy do you look confident are you going to be informative you do this

[00:38:58] automatically it's you have to sell yourself because at the end of the day the thing that you buy is the person you don't buy the product is the fact is do i believe what they're

[00:39:10] saying and is it a person i can trust it's not a question whether the product's good so it's yourself so in those first opening 10-20 seconds you want to smile you want to be relaxed

[00:39:22] you don't want to be overconfident but you want to speak clearly and informative that's what you have to be and then you just oh nice nice presentation speaking well and i'm listening to the guy oh he seems to know what he's talking about so the first thing they're

[00:39:36] saying the same first impressions count they actually do otherwise yeah we're building brand every time we open our mouth right of course you are exactly and they don't realize that you don't want all the unnecessary just nicely go into what you want to say and what you have

[00:39:53] to say and at the same time it's respecting the time of the person you're with nobody wants to sit there and listen to boring 10-minute presentation which is going nowhere all right

[00:40:04] yes yes so so we talked a little bit earlier about failure and how you've had your share of failure and you've used that as a learning opportunity among the 20-somethings the the gen z the the people that you're hoping to reach with newpreneurs what are your thoughts

[00:40:25] about resilience because i've been an educator teaching that age group for many many years and i've been concerned about the lack of resilience among a lot of our young young students that i've seen do what do you see there and what do you think

[00:40:44] how might we help them be ready for the the inevitable challenges and failures they're going to face well if you're dealing to a large extent with the personality of the individual you can't make a person change their personality no matter how hard you try

[00:41:02] what we have to teach them is to be confident in what they have to offer and this is where it comes into the research if they continually research their product and understand every

[00:41:13] aspect of what they have they were presented in a far better way they were presented in a confident way but if they come out and they're not presenting it with sufficient confidence it's telling me they don't really know enough about their product they're sort of waffling a

[00:41:30] little bit they're hedging around and being trying to be nice to convince me but that's all hot air so we have to teach them to say this is the product look at it every day pick it up

[00:41:41] the upside down turn it sideways bring it this way test it this way so that you can come to me and say i want to show you this widget which i have here this widget is connected

[00:41:51] to an xyz if it's connected to this xyz it will create a da da da which will create something else and it will perform in a way that will save them 19 percent on the efforts they're

[00:42:02] putting in it costs 36 less money in other words trying to get them to get to the facts right not to waffle around with the superfluous stuff because what they have to realize the person they're sitting in front of has heard it a thousand times right you

[00:42:20] don't want to they've heard all the waffling stuff of how lovely and great is if you go to them and respect them and respect their time that's what you have to teach them is that you have a

[00:42:31] limited period of time to engage them and that limited time is the first 20 30 seconds that's when you're going to engage they sit there and they're saying good morning to i would like to tell you about my product which is the product you get into it

[00:42:46] get into the idea but do it with efficiency don't be arrogant be confident and presented in a way where he sits back and goes oh this guy knows what he's talking about and i'm going to sit

[00:43:00] up and say really i can't wait to ask him questions because he's he's infusing me with his confidence and his know-how so that's what you have to try and get in it's very very

[00:43:12] hard because all kids have different personalities and i speak to enough of them and some of them talk to me with their heads down you know they look at the floor because it's not their

[00:43:21] personality so you have to try and find ways to boost them in personality and i teach them to talk to themselves in a mirror say talk to yourself in the mirror that's the person

[00:43:34] they're looking at look at see how you look in the mirror and say to yourself you know that's it you're actually talking to somebody and you're looking at how you look when you present this and i try to get them with motivation for them to realize that they

[00:43:49] doesn't matter how tall they are how short they are how what race they are what religion they are what color their skin is it makes no difference at all right just be a confident

[00:44:01] person in yourself believe in yourself and i mentioned but be careful there's a very very fine line between confidence and arrogance it's it's paper thin make sure you keep on the confidence side you don't go onto the arrogant side just you know it it's interesting because

[00:44:20] i think you hit on something really important when you first started to answer this question well all the way through but in the initial comment about being prepared and that i think arrogance often comes when we're trying to cover up a lack of confidence in preparation

[00:44:40] and preparation i think it was stephen covey who called it the law of the farm probably others before him but you know it takes time to gain knowledge it takes work and that's the missing

[00:44:54] piece i think we live in a world where everybody wants a what we call a hack right what's the hack for this and um you know that that just doesn't work with confidence building

[00:45:07] that's right that's what i said originally it's the continual research they have to keep doing that research will give them confidence when you have an idea of a product you should be able to answer any question that they put you but you should be able to answer instantly

[00:45:23] if somebody asked you a question um well and you've lost it you should be able to answer any question and they should be practicing that so if a person comes and asks them

[00:45:35] why would you choose to go to people who be between the age of 30 and 40 why did you choose that marketplace because this is and you answer it right what why did you decide

[00:45:46] only to launch it on the east coast of the united states what made you go near to that territory answering so low controls them out yeah so let me ask you another question because i think that you mentioned arrogance and i've also seen students and young people well

[00:46:05] entrepreneurs of all ages get very defensive when uh someone didn't agree with their research or what they believed um how do you how do you coach someone about that well the reason they get defensive because somebody's pierced the shield in other words

[00:46:25] they haven't learned enough nobody would be able to pierce the shield if you know what you're talking about they get that it's this defensive thing because they don't want to be seen to be wrong so if they think they carry on arguing with them that's straight away they

[00:46:39] lost if they argue with the guy asking the questions you may as well walk out of the room it won't happen if they do the research they can be intelligent enough to sit down and ask

[00:46:51] themselves questions about every aspect of it and then keep doing it they can do trial runs with themselves beforehand if you can't answer every question that's put you instantly you don't know enough about it and you're making me scared to invest my money in you

[00:47:10] yeah yeah that's yeah it's great advice and i think that you know actually sometimes those first pitches are great learning opportunities too because oh yeah you're not ready for an investment but you you learn that pretty quickly yeah and you learn that you don't know

[00:47:29] enough so i'm excited to to look for newpreneurs and to share that with my students please thank you yes and this has been a really great conversation i always um i know we could talk

[00:47:43] a lot longer you've got such a wealth of experience and and so much to offer but i always ask my guests if they had one piece of advice for an entrepreneur who's or a nascent entrepreneur an entrepreneur who's out there practicing what would that one piece of

[00:48:01] advice you've already given us a ton but could you well one thing i have i'll try what i there's um there's sanity and there's vanity in business okay vanity is when people boast about this enormous sales figure the percentage of this marketplace they've got that's vanity showing off

[00:48:27] sanity is you don't care a damn about that as long as you're making a lot of money so in other words the bottom line is doesn't matter what the share of the market you've got doesn't

[00:48:36] matter how much your revenue is but if you're making a lot of money then you're being sane so vanity versus sanity i always tell them to look at the side of sanity don't be bothered

[00:48:47] because if after somebody can have a hundred million dollar business quite easy and lose money but i know people who've got a 10 million dollar business who make a million dollars that's the difference so they're the ones who've got the sanity the others got the vanity

[00:49:02] that he boasts all his friends that oh i've got a hundred million dollar business doesn't tell him he's losing money but the other guys you know who's who's flying first class he's got a 10 million dollar business so make sure you get your priorities right

[00:49:17] do our research and get our egos out of the way and get the best right you can't bank ego that's right that's right well victor this has been fantastic can you tell our listeners where they can find out more about newpreneurs and and reach out and

[00:49:35] connect with you yes well we invite everybody to go on to newpreneurs.com and they can find everything on the website that we have it tells you all the judges the mentors what

[00:49:47] happens we have a q and a on there an faq so they can see all the answers to the questions we think they're going to ask and i think we've covered most of them there it's free to sign up

[00:49:58] and if they want to pitch um they just create a 90 second video download it and um hope that they're going to be chosen to be on the show that's fantastic victor good luck with that i look forward to following it and thank you

[00:50:13] again for joining me today thank you for the invitation brekho i really enjoyed it thank you so much all right speak to you again bye bye if you enjoyed this episode and would like to learn more about entrepreneurship we would love it if you hit that subscribe button

[00:50:28] thank you so much for listening to this episode of in factor