"Once you get into early stage companies, it’s hard to imagine doing anything else.”

“It’s a hard road, there’s a lot of days when I wake up and think, "Man I wish I could just go work for a big company and cash a check and I’d be fine," but it’s just not the way I’m wired.” - Andrew Dumont

About: Andrew Dumont- Entrepreneur in Residence at Betaworks

Overview: Andrew is a determined and intelligent young man who has a passion for building businesses. He shares his experiences with starting the company Stride, and what he is doing now at Betaworks to prepare for future entrepreneurial work.

Highlights:

Background: Andrew is originally from Seattle, but now living in New York working at Betaworks. He came to NY to elevate his entrepreneurial game and be surrounded by people who are always on the go.

Betaworks: It's essentially like a startup studio and is structured by 2 sides. The first side is an investment side. They are currently involved in about 15-20 seed investments with about $100-$250k  per investment. Some of the companies Betaworks has invested in are: Kickstarter, Tumblr, and many others. Right now, they are investing in ProductTime. The other side of the company is the studio portion. Betaworks hires entrepreneurs to help with the media business and with what new media will look like. They build new products that will be compelling in that space. Some of those products include: Chart B, Dots (iPhone game), and Dig. It’s not a traditional type of company- they like to start their employees from scratch. They go out and find talent within the community they’ve built. They’re going to start a new program called “Hacker” where they work with a creator that builds a new thing within 3 months. This new program is very much like the film studios in Hollywood.

Daily Workload: Andrew went out to New York because a good friend was an investor with Betaworks. Andrew was very interested in the business model. He was ready to do his own thing, and by coming to Betaworks, was given a good opportunity to do his own thing at a great company. When he started there, Andrew spent a lot of time on helping platforms like Insta Paper, Dig, and Pancho. His role was to solve some of the problems that those applications were experiencing.

Andrew’s Goal: His next step is to determine if Betaworks will be the right fit for helping him start his own company.

Previous Startup (Stride): Stride was a company/app that Andrew co-founded. It was built it in about 3 weeks. Andrew and his team built Stride as a light weight CRM application. The idea behind Stride is that salesforce was a really complicated tool,  so they wanted an app that focused more on the simple- more about the stages of where the sales were at. Stride was a completely bootstrapped company. It made about $20k in revenue in about year and a half (side project). Once it started getting bigger, they were trying to determine if it was something they wanted to pursue, but Andrew felt like the market was completely capped, so they decided to sell the growing company to Neil Patel and Heaton Shaw. Andrew is good friends with Neil Patel, and he really trusted in their ability to scale and build products. It was a very smooth process selling it to them, which Andrew was grateful for,  because they already had customers using their application. He wanted to make sure that those customers were taken care of and knew that Neil and Heaton would be the right fit.

Andrew’s Passion: Out of all the things there is to do in the entrepreneurial world, Andrew really enjoys businesses over consumer products. He states, "They aren’t as sexy but they capture my interest." In the future he'd like to do something similar to Stride but a little more aggressive.

Work-Life Balance: Andrew says that you have to understand that you’re sacrificing a lot of the work-life balance in the early stages. It takes more than 40 hours a week. You have to do certain things each week that make it so you don’t burn out. To keep a balance, Andrew tried to shut off and be unplugged on the weekends. Every year, he makes sure to do at least a week or two of being completely unplugged from the world. He says, "There’s no doubting the fact that it’s [being an entrepreneur] hard work, but it’s just part of the deal."

Common Mistakes: Andrew has made plenty of mistakes through his own journey, but says that’s how you learn. "You need to fail to really understand things." Every single company he’s been apart of started small. Many of them failed, but some of them did grow into large, successful companies. Seismic was a great example of company that had too much cash, and pivoted too often. There’s a right time to pivot and a wrong time to pivot. When things aren’t working, a companies' natural inclination is to pivot, which can ultimately destroy what is trying to be built. Andrew shares that it's important to have a hunch as an entrepreneur. You have to believe in something that others may not. There’s a lot of reasons why a company can fail, and it’s usually more than just one element that causes the fall.

Advice for Entrepreneurs After They Fail: It’s hard not to get down on yourself when things don’t work, but you have to understand that it’s part of the anomaly. You have to reclassify your definition of success. It’s a constant battle to readjust. Depression in startups is a real thing. So, a lot of it is making your mind stronger. For Andrew, preparing his mind means putting things in perspective and setting very clear goals. Don’t get distracted by what’s going on in other companies around you.

Take Away: In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be willing to put in overtime. 40 hours a week isn't going to cut it. Like Andrew, you may even have to start something on the side while working a mainstream job until you can launch. Even though it's not going to be easy, it's worth it.

Connect With Andrew:

Website | @AndrewDumont | AboutMe | Blog

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“If you don’t believe in all your heart and soul, that the thing you are offering, is the right thing, then it’s going to be hard for you to ever ask for the sale.”

“Don’t fake it ‘til you make it, believe until the world catches up to where you are.” - Chris Brogan

About: Chris Brogan- CEO of Owner Media Group

Overview: Chris Brogan is a successful and approachable entrepreneur. He has consulted for large firms all over the world, including Disney, Google, Microsoft, etc. Chris provides education and tools to help you make your life and your business thrive, by teaching you how to own the game you most want to win. Throughout this interview, we learn some great tips on how to be a powerful salesman, and how Chris has become successful.

Highlights:

Why Meet with Outliers: We asked Chris why he was so willing to meet with us, and he responds by saying that he is always willing to help others, no matter what stage of work they are in and was excited to help you, Outliers. He states that everyone has started at some point and he was at the starting point at a stage in his life too. Chris wants to connect with others and see how he can help them.

Newsletter Strategy: The easiest way that Chris explains it, is he’s always made it a point to talk to people the way he’d want someone to talk to him, and/or even to his mother. Chris is always trying to sell something- it’s business. But what he considers a sale is a transaction of value. 90% of the stuff he does is free, and the other 10% is where he creates his revenue.

Sales: “If you don’t believe in all your heart and soul, that the thing you are offering, is the right thing, then it’s going to be hard for you to ever ask for the sale.” If you’re selling something that doesn’t work, then you’re not going to do so well. You have to believe that what you’re selling is truly going to help that person. When you are worried about making rent, or paying the bills, then you are selling with the wrong perspective and those that you are selling to will feel it as well.. Sell from love. It’s easier to sell value than anything else.

Mistakes Outliers May Be Making: You cannot share, or sell something that you have not experienced. The secret sauce is that people want to know that you’re just like them. Chris hates the phrase “fake it ‘til you make it.” He says, “Don’t fake it ‘til you make it, believe until the world catches up to where you are.” Sometimes people don’t see it the way you do because they can’t see the vision that you do. Entrepreneurship and a lot of our journey can be tough, sometimes you have money and sometimes you have no money. The trick is to just be really good about where you are.

What is Success: Chris believes that success is being able to say no to the things that he wants to say no to. He feels that he’s “made it,” according to the world, but he still has new goals and new heights he wants to reach. The people who fail the most in life are the people who let up on the gas petal once they reach a certain goal. Chris really admires people like Warren Buffet who work until the very end. Richard Branson is also a great example of continuing success. Richard has over 400 companies and still runs at full speed. He works hard and he plays hard.

Biggest Challenge: Getting people to understand the story that he’s trying to tell. With all sales and marketing, Chris believes that he has something to offer to those around him and he truly wants to help them.

Revenue: Since 2008, his company revenue has always fluctuated. In 2010, he lost $400,000 in investments. His goal for revenue this year is to beat the $1Million mark. Chris shares that when someone is thinking about their revenue goal, they need to think about what it’s going to take to achieve that and if it’s really worth it. Each goal depends on who you are and what works for you.

End Game for Chris Brogan: He's not sure what it is, but he hopes that he’ll get that one idea that will allow him to create a company that will live on past him. He eventually wants to build a product he can sell that he won’t be the face of.

About Chris’s latest book - The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth: Chris considers himself a “freak.” He defines freak as someone who has almost a tattoo like obsession of doing the kind of business they want to do with the people they want to do it with, and doing it the way they most want to do it. Tony Hawk, Mark Echo, and Kate White are great examples of being “freaks” of their business. A freak is the people who are tired of trying to fit in, and are just trying to find out where they belong. You can definitely have a day job and be a freak. The whole concept doesn’t require that you set off on your own and do your own thing; it’s simply owning what you do.

Take Away: Chris has an authentic approach to sales that teaches any of us entrepreneurs to be true believers in what we’re selling. Like his most recent book, Chris shares that we need to become “freaks” in whatever business we are doing and we will be successful.

Connect With Hasan:

OwnerMag.com | ChrisBrogan.com | @ChrisBrogan | Facebook

If you enjoy Outlier On Air, please Subscribe & Review on iTunes or Stitcher

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