Preston Pysh 1:19
And we did! We turned it around quick. We’re recording on Halloween day here. I just saw a post on your Twitter feed that blew my mind when I saw it. It was you crossing the finish line at a race, and this is, I believe this is the Hennepin Hundred. Is that correct?

Jesse Itzler 1:35
Yes.

Preston Pysh 1:36
So this, you got to do a hundred miles by yourself within 30 hours. Is that the, is this how this played out?

Jesse Itzler 1:44
Yeah, it’s a hundred miler in pretty much flat, very little elevation in Illinois. And what happened was I ran a race called The Last Man Standing, which is a different format than that. It’s a 4.2 mile loop. You have an hour to complete the loop. And if you finish it in say 15 minutes, you have a 10 minute rest because they line you up at the top of every hour, and they keep repeating that until one person’s the last man standing, so the race could go on for days. And I did that race in Maine, and I was the oldest man standing. I came in fifth. I was the oldest man standing in fifth place. But I did about 80 something hours, and 80 something miles, and 20 something hours. But I really wanted to get to a hundred, but the, the course was really challenging, super hilly, and I timed out. I didn’t make it, one of the loop, the last loop within an hour. So when I got back, I googled, the first day I got back, I said, “When’s the next hundred mile race?” Twenty eight days later, I was at the starting line in Hennepin. Yeah, so that’s how I ended up in Illinois.

Preston Pysh 2:48
And you did the full 100?

Jesse Itzler 2:50
I did. Yeah.

Stig Brodersen 2:51
So for someone hearing that Jesse, and we’re not familiar with your brand, We Do Hard Things that you have with your wife, Sarah. They might be asking themselves, “Why?” You’re certainly in a position where you can just do what you want to do.

Jesse Itzler 3:06
Well, for me, I think in this particular case, I think it was threefold. I think one is like I try not to negotiate with my goals. I try not to be like, well, that’s okay. That was acceptable. That’s, you know, that’s not really what I wanted to get. And it would have been easy to say, “I did good enough.” And I felt like I left it all out there. But I also felt like that was not what I wanted on my resume. I wanted a hundred miler again. So, so that’s, that’s one. Two is, quite honestly, I felt like I had a lot of fitness built up from training. And I didn’t think I could invest that much time again in a year or two to try it again. So I said, “Let’s go.” You know? The quicker you put something on your, on your calendar, and you don’t start to talk yourself out of it, the better the chance you’re going to do it. So for me, it’s like ready, fire, aim. Let’s go! Sign up. Now I have accountability. I’m committed, but if I start negotiating with myself. Well, maybe I’m tired. Maybe I’m not healed. Same with business. Maybe I don’t know enough. Maybe I don’t have enough experience. Maybe it’s not the right time. Eight people will launch that product. Competitors will appear. Eight different people will try to sell that customer. So I’m always like get an idea, get momentum. If you get an idea, right? It comes into your head. You do a little research. You decide if you’re going to do it or not. You commit to it. You plan, you make a plan. You execute. You train or you execute that plan, start to execute the plan. You go through a period of self doubt. And that’s the weed-out period where I don’t know if I’m good enough. Maybe everyone’s better than me. I’m not ready for this. And, for me, I’m very familiar with that point. And that’s where I keep going where most people drop out. And then you get momentum. Something happens where you have a good run, you get a sale, whatever it is. You build off that momentum until you become a believer. And then you keep going till you hit the goal. It’s the same process for everything. And, you know, you always go through that period of doubt. And, and when you’re aware of it, and you’re like, “Oh, there you are! What took you so long to get here? I knew you were going to show up.” When you’re familiar with it, you can then go past it. But that’s the big weed-out-thing for me. But anyway, that, that’s how I found, I found myself at the starting line. And the difference between the hundred miler in Hennepin and The Last Man Standing in Maine, I really wholeheartedly believe that I belong there, and that it was done. So like for me, that was already, I already had the medal around my neck. I knew I could do it. Okay, I said to myself for 30 days to 28 days leading up, “You got this! I can do this!” And then I said to fill in the blanks, and that’s been a theme in my life. It’s like, you know, I’m a big person and believer in visualization, but I’m a bigger believer in saying it out loud. It’s one thing to believe something, but it’s another thing to actually say it and make it real. You know, my friend, Chad, right, who’s a navy seal always talks to me about the power of the spoken word. But I was saying it out loud the whole time. Like, you know, there’s no doubt in my mind, I can do this. And it reminded me when I was starting out in business, when I would walk into my office at 23 years old with my partner, we’d say to each other, “We’re millionaires! We’re millionaires, man! They just haven’t paid us yet.” You know? We would, we would say it all the time. And meanwhile, I was living on my friend’s couch. I was literally sleeping on a couch, and I would come in and be like, “We’re millionaires! They just haven’t paid us yet.” And that was like our mantra.

Preston Pysh 6:43
It’s fascinating that you bring this up because in a conversation that we had a couple years ago, you had just lightly touched on this idea. And what it reminds me of is this book: Think and Grow Rich. And in that book, they talk about how important mindset is, and how important it is to push. And Tony Robbins is big on this stuff, where you’re actually taking ideas, you’re saying them out verbally, and then you’re pushing them into your subconscious. When you start to say, you start to believe it, and then you just start to do things that I don’t even know that people can fully account for that are working towards the realization of what they keep telling themselves. So it’s fascinating for me to hear somebody like yourself who’s accomplished so much talk about this idea with respect to the race, but it sounds like you’ve been doing this for years.

Jesse Itzler 7:34
Well, it’s not a new theory. It’s, this has been proven century over century, over century. And for me, you know, “Think and grow rich,” absolutely! But I’m a much bigger believer in, “Say it and grow rich.” And you know, you can think it, but you always get negative thoughts in your head. And, and I like using something like a hundred mile run as an example of that correlates to everything because it’s hard; you’re going to go through periods of darkness; you’re going to go through doubt. It’s no different than the journey of an entrepreneur, in the sense of the emotions, and the doubt, and the struggle, and the chances of success, you know? And so many things can go wrong. All those things. And when you think, you’re always going to have thoughts of, “This stinks! This is really hard.” Again, I’m thinking back to my business. “This is really hard. There’s so much competition. I don’t know.” You’re always going to have those, those thoughts. When you counter punch them, and you reframe it into words like, “I got this,” “I’m strong,” etc. And you say it out loud, you give it power. So thinking, you know, you’re going to get bombarded with thought, but you control the power of the spoken word, and what you actually say. I’ll give you an example, when I got to mile 80 in the, in this last, in this hundred mile race, I was running with my friend Chad, right? And he turned, he could sense that I was slowing down significantly. And we were 80 miles in. We’re 20 something hours in. And he says to me, “Jesse stop.” He says, “I want you to say…I’ll tell you something about me that you’d never knew.” I’m like, “What’s that, Chad?” He goes, “I never get tired.” And like, you know, it’s raining, it’s dark. Where he, and I know he’s tired. I know he’s exhausted. He goes, “I want you to say it.” And I couldn’t say it because I was exhausted. “Now, Chad, Chad. That’s funny, man. I’m proud of you. I’m proud of you. No, no. Say it!” I said, “Alright, Chad. I never get tired.” He goes, “No, I want you to say it again.” I said, “Alright, I never get tired.” He said, “No, no. Stop and say it, so everybody can hear it.” So I said, “Chad, you know what’s amazing about you and I? We NEVER get tired! Let’s go!” And we took off.

Preston Pysh 9:45
I flippin’ love it.

Jesse Itzler 9:46
We took off and, and then, every six minutes, he would say to me, “Brother, I’m not tired.” Phenomenon! And it became this like running joke that every 10, 15 minutes we would say this, and I started to believe it! Started to be like, “I don’t know, man. I don’t get tired, Chad.” We were laughing, and it changed the whole complexion of where we are, where we were in the journey. And you know, you can say, “It’s corny!” Oh, that well, you know, but I’m telling you, man, time and time again, when this is a period in my life; when I was single, and I was looking for the girl; when I was, whatever. I would talk myself into this face, you know? Like people would ask me when I graduated, “What are you going to do, you know, when you graduate?” Whatever. I say, “Well, I’m gonna get a record deal. I quit.” “What do you mean you quit? Jesse, I thought you’re gonna go get a record deal?” “Oh, I was. But it was too hard. I quit.” Like I, it wasn’t just the psyching me up, and talk, and become, it was like part of reality.

Stig Brodersen 10:50
Fascinating. Hey, so the last time we talked to you, you were just about to turn 50. And your present to yourself was that you wanted to master 50 new skills, and spend one week learning from the best in that field throughout the year. How did that go?

Jesse Itzler 11:07
Yeah, so I’m still in the process of it because it’s taken a little…I made the list, and I started to check it off. I’ve done a bunch of them. I haven’t done all 50. I realized that to maximize it, I couldn’t with a family of four, I couldn’t do 50 things become good at them in just a year period, you know? So I’ve extended it, but I am doing it. I just had a memory coach. I had the four time USA memory coach at my house three days ago for a immersion class with me and my wife on memory. So I’m still chipping away at the list, which was fascinating by the way. But even bigger than that, I wanted to be able to apply it to the areas of my life that are most practical. So for me, that’s names, you know? Going into a room I speak a lot. People come up to me, conferences, etcetera; meetings, so I’ve always struggled with that. So that was something that we spent a lot of time on and I’ve definitely improved the ability to do that. Anything that I go into, you’re probably the same way. And I think most people should think this way. If, you know, you have to go into it with a high standard. If I’m writing a book, and I don’t mean to sound arrogant, I’m just want to give the listeners and yourself a little bit at 51 of what the process in my head is now versus maybe when I was 21. You get around, well, maybe you’re, you’re the best in the world at it. I always want to go into something with, with an Olympic type kind, kind of standard. If I’m writing a book, my approach is if like I want to write a book and publish a book, it’s like I want to write a masterpiece. If I’m giving a speech, on a scale of one to ten, score’s at 9.2 in the speech, and I’m a 9.1. What did I do wrong? The level has to be–the standard has to be high. So you know we kid about it. Oh, well, maybe you try to be the best in the world, but the reality is I want high standards. When I go, if I would have approached The Last Man Standing and said, “Well, I’m just going to enter this race and see what happens.” I would have never came in fifth. There were a 115 amazing runners. I was the oldest, you know? You got to go into it with a standard of I’m going to try to win this thing.

Preston Pysh 13:10
It’s all about mindset, and it’s all about telling yourself, “I am this.” And saying, like you were saying, saying it out loud, “I am this. I am good at memorizing people’s names when I meet them.” It’s just flippin’ powerful.

Jesse Itzler 13:24
It is, but it’s also about what’s your standard? What is acceptable to you? I mean do you want to have a podcast or do you want to dominate the charts? Do you want to get guests? You want to get rock star guests? Do you want your content to be fillers for 30 or 60 minutes or you want your content to be life-changing, earth-shattering material? What’s the standard that we approach our craft? What’s the standard that you’re going as a parent? What’s your standard as an author? And, you know, for a lot of people it’s okay to say like, “There’s a million books published a year.” It’s okay to be like, you know, that’s fine if that’s your standard. But for me, I have a short window on earth, man. Okay? I have from now until whenever I’m 51, so I’ve lived a tremendous, almost, you know, probably half if not more than my life. And the older years of my life are going to be different; my late 80s, 90s, or whatever. I can’t do this stuff I just–I’m not gonna be running the Hennepin 100, I don’t think when I’m 87 years old. Seeing the 85-year-old, 88-year-olds in the race, that window is so short. So all I really care about is maximizing from where I am today until the end of the ride, and part of that journey has to be about my standards because if they’re low, then that’s not going to be a super fruitful path. If they are high, you know, and then, that can be a really fruitful chapter of my life.

Stig Brodersen 14:53
Alright, Jesse. So let’s shift gears here. We know we have a lot of listeners who are also big sports fans. I know that once you bought ownership of the Atlanta Hawks, one of the things you were really looking forward to was having a relationship to the players. But I also know that while it has been great for you to have that, it has not been what you valued the most. Could you please talk to us about that?

Jesse Itzler 15:19
Yes! You know, what’s really interesting? And I just discovered it recently. You know, I thought it would be getting to know the players or learning about the nuances of professional sports. You know, ownership or being in the war room during the draft, and those things are all really exciting. But what I’ve found that I’ve enjoyed the most–outside of the time with my partners in the deal–is I’ve been taking strange…it’s gonna sound nuts! But I’ve been taking strangers that I’ve met at conferences, at speeches, through events to sit with me at the game, and people that would never have had the opportunity to sit courtside, and I love it! I love The impact that has had like, you know? The letters that I’ve been getting. Not all the time, not every game. But to be able to entertain friends, family, and strangers in that environment with the access that I have has been really fun, man. And like I never even thought of anything like that. I thought like the most fun part has been the people that I can take, again, friends, family and new friends, and to let them experience the game through the lens of almost an owner, you know, through the courtside seats and the other stuff. It’s been amazing!

Preston Pysh 16:32
So I was going to ask this question a little bit later. But I think it totally relates to what you just said, and I had the pleasure to hang out with you and your wife for a weekend when we did the 2029 event. And I would argue, you know, I’m not saying this to toot your horn or your wife’s horn, but I would argue that you and your wife’s superpowers are that you guys are the most authentic people I’ve ever met. And the reason I bring this up is because I think it’s just–it has such an influence on the way you do business, on the way you interact with people. So my question is: How does a person harness the power of being authentic? How do they become authentic? And why is this so important when you’re dealing in business or what however a person would want to apply it?

Jesse Itzler 17:18
Well, I don’t think it lasts long term; anything, without authenticity. I think, you know, you can get results quickly, but I think long term, people just–there’s a warmth people gravitate towards, you know, if you’re quirky, be quirky. There’s going to be people, a lot of people that gravitate towards that. If you’re an introvert, be, you know, don’t–it, it’s hard to like get out of that, you know? And just–it’s okay to be who you are. And so I’ve always kind of, you know, it’s always worked out for me, to just kind of be what I was, you know? I’m not, not mega smart. I was never the smartest in the room. I wasn’t the guys that started, you know, big massive companies and unbelievable with numbers, balance sheet. That was never my thing, and I never tried to play that position. I’m a big believer that you play the position cause not everyone can play shortstop. You play the position that you, that you play in best, and that’s that. So that’s always been important to me. I don’t know, first of all, it’s a really big compliment. So I really, I do really appreciate that. I think there’s a gratitude. I think, you know? I’m a giver, Preston! That’s what makes me feel the best. And I just feel like–I feel good in that role. So that’s always a lane that I’ve been in. And then, I think to answer your question specifically, it comes down to value. It’s like as entrepreneurs, and I know we have a lot of business folks listening, and this and that, you know? You wake up and the number one question you can ask yourself is, you know, how can I provide value today? Right? So how can I provide value to my customers? How can I provide value to my employees? To the culture here? To my family? And if you always have that in the back of your head, that’s always kind of your driver. It’s always going to work out for you usually, usually, nothing’s always. And you know, so you ask yourself like, “How do I provide value? And how can I be a better husband?” Listen, it’s a challenge. You don’t always get it right. There’s days where you…but in general, that’s what, if you’re coming from a place like that, that’s a really good start. Let me just say one last thing, you know, as I get older…how old are you, Preston?

Preston Pysh 19:21
I’m 38.

Jesse Itzler 19:22
As you turn older, and I’m talking like you cross the 50 mark, so all of a sudden in 29 years you’re going to be 80. That’s for me, that’s where I’m at. Twenty eight, almost 28 years I’m gonna be 80 years old. Super scary. You start to think, at least I do, start to think about like, well, what’s your mark? How do you take these traits? How do you take the energies that you put into being an entrepreneur? Thirty years of getting up early; working late; going to meetings; laughing at jokes that aren’t funny; coming up with ideas; packaging; going on sales calls; I mean, dealing with competition; lawsuits; everything you’ve been through. How do you take all that energy, which is exhausting? What if I channeled all that energy into something cause-related like if I took all the energy that I’ve used as an entrepreneur that I, and all the relationships, and skills, and network, and resources that I have now and I pushed that into something that would be a legacy; something that would be cause-related; something that could have a big impact on the world? Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing to probably change some, some real…make some real change? And you see, you get a fundamental shift as you get over. And when you talk about authenticity, and likeability, and warmth, and all these kind of qualities that you’re talking about–that’s where I am in my life. It’s like I’m a capitalist. I want to make money of course. I like, I’m a giver like I just said, but I want to channel those qualities that you just talked about and try to make a bigger impact. And it’s weird at 51 years old to pivot into that lane, you know? But I don’t think it’s ever too late to change the course of where you want to be; to follow what could be your purpose; or what you like to do; or what your calling is. What I’m really saying in a long winded way is, “I appreciate the compliment, and that gives me energy to try to do something even bigger, you know, than where I am up at today.”

Stig Brodersen 21:17
On the show we previously talked about how important it is to have role models and mentors in your life. Who has been mentoring you? And what do they teach you?

Jesse Itzler 21:28
My answer is going to be different than you think. I have a lot of mentors. Now, I have a lot of virtual mentors that don’t even know that, that they’re a mentor to me. I follow them on social media. But there was a guy named Harvey Diamond, I mentioned his name in the past, who wrote a book called, Fit for Life, and then, Fit for Life: A New Beginning. And I read that book when I was running my first marathon, looking for an edge in energy. And that really had a big impact on me. It’s about energy; living a vibrant life; everything we all want. And about eight years ago, I cold-call him, the author. I was like, “I wonder what Harvey Diamond’s doing now? The guy sold 15 million copies of the book.” And we became really close friends. He became my Tuesday-with-Morrie kind of. I started to speak to him, you know, almost weekly. And he, he had probably the biggest impact in my life because I would credit almost all of my success to my energy, my energy level. And when I say success, I’m not talking about financial; I’m talking about the run I just did; my family; being present; how I feel; being able to talk to you, you know, with clarity and incredible passion. And all of that comes from how Harvey taught me how to really maximize that energy level, you know? And you mentioned Tony Robbins. Tony has been a friend and a fan of Harvey’s for years as of many people that live that kind of life. So he’s probably had the biggest impact on me. Because if you have $50 billion, and own everything in the world, and have no care about anything; you got farms, and money, and planes, and this and that; but you wake up, and you got a sore throat; and every time you swallow, your throat hurts. None of that matters. All you care about is getting rid of the sore throat. And he’s allowed me to avoid that feeling for a very long time.

Preston Pysh 22:51
So Jesse talk to us about business. What is one of the biggest mistakes you think people make in general in business? What’s that common thing that when you’re…? Because you do a lot of mentoring with people, and you hear common themes, what’s the big mistake that people are making?

Jesse Itzler 23:35
I think in this younger generation, it’s being impatient and not recognizing that it takes a long time to build a brand in this country. I think there’s a big “in-stuff-get-it-done-quick,” you know, without that patience and understanding that the runway could be five to eight years. People get frustrated like, “Why aren’t I rich? Why hasn’t this happened yet?” And back away from it. I think people misunderstand passion. They think that they…”Well, I’m so passionate about my widget, or my pen, or whatever it is I’m selling.” And you have to be, but the passion has to be around the process. There has to be a passion for the obstacles that come, and that’s what you signed up for as an entrepreneur. I think people don’t obsess anymore on quality, you know? And I think without having a really high quality product, you can have all the marketing and sizzle in the world; but long term, the product has to be good; and people want to, want to share it with other people; and talk about it friend-to-friend. So I think, you know, people shortcut product and quality to get out there super fast. Or when you get to a point in the journey where you had your prototype of your product that’s the time to ask yourself, “How can I make this 20 times better?” When the book manuscript is done, that’s when you ask yourself, “How do I make it 5 to 10 times better?” Well, it’s done. They accepted it. No, no, no. How can I make it better? And that’s a big mistake, you know? So it’s almost like, again, we talked about it earlier. What’s your standard? You have an Olympic standard for your product and for your organization. So I think that’s something that I see a lot, you know, the standards are too low, you know, and just a combination of all those things. But there’s some fascinating entrepreneurs, Preston. I’ve seen some amazing, gifted people come out with ideas that I thought would never work and become uber successful. I’ve seen people going to supplement space where it’s so crowded and do $40 million a year. And I scratch my head like, “Wow, how did that happen?” I’m an old-school guy, man. I think if they zapped me onto the planet today with all the technology, I probably would have struggled. But back then when, when I had to be (*inaudible*) be really resourceful, and you still do. But there was no, you know, social media. And you couldn’t market like that, and there was no real ways; sophisticated way to get leads. It forced you to be like really resourceful, and that was a good year for me.

Preston Pysh 25:58
Jesse, I want to give you the opportunity to tell the audience some of the stuff that you have going on. I know you got another 29029 Everest events coming on. Tell people a little bit about that. Tell people where they can learn more about you.

Jesse Itzler 26:11
The best place to get me is @JesseItzler. It’s putting my name on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Or jesseitzler.com, but I do have a…yeah I mean, you participate in 29029 where we rent a mountain. You hike up the mountain, and take the gondola down, and you repeat that until you climb the equivalent of Everest. It’s grown since you’ve done it, Preston. We now bring in world-class speakers for a three-night event. And we have added another location, so we have one in Vermont; one in Sun Valley; and one in Utah. And all five of our events have sold out. So we just went on sale recently for 2020. It’s just a–what I love about that event is, you know, it’s first of all, it’s memorable. You only get 52 weekends a year, so it’s something special. It’s different, but it’s hard. And it’s–

Preston Pysh 26:59
It’s hard.

Jesse Itzler 26:59
All the lessons that, well, the last one took me 29 hours. It’s hard, but it’s doable. My wife did it. You know, it’s a hike. And it’s low impact. You know, you don’t have to be a world-class athlete to experience a world-class endurance event. So we opened it up to moms, dads, CEOs. Go out there and hike up a mountain. And, but it’s long, and it tests you. So that’s something that I spent a lot of time on now. And I hope that you can join us again for another one, Preston. We’ll go up…

Preston Pysh 27:10
I would love to.

Jesse Itzler 27:31
I don’t want to chase you up that mountain, you know? We can have some fun.

Preston Pysh 27:35
That event, what made it for me were the people that were there. A special breed of person comes out to that event and was just a great…awesome–some of the conversations I had climbing up that mountain, it was incredible.

Jesse Itzler 27:50
Well, the joys (*inaudible*) of that crowd because it’s not a race. There’s no winner. It’s one of the few things where no one is. We don’t even announce a winner. There’s nothing to do with it. It’s people that sign up for that want to learn about themselves, and make themselves proud, and feel like they left a badass; regardless of how many, even if they don’t get Everest, they want–they’re going to leave with a cape around their neck because they’re going to say, “I cannot believe how hard that was and how far I pushed myself. And for a lot of people on paper say, “That’s, this is such an easy challenge on paper: you walk up a mountain, you take the gondola down.” Okay. The average marathon like finishes like four hours, and there’s like a 99% finish rate. Our average finisher’s 30 hours with a 65% finish rate. It’s like seven times the time to complete a marathon; to complete this. It’s not easy. And it takes a lot of patience, and a lot of will. It strengthens that muscle that we talked about; that resilience muscle, you know? That like even though this is really long, and you can’t– there’s no shortcuts. You’re fully exposed on the mountain. If you finish it, you feel like “Wow, I could finish anything.” And that’s the kind of feeling that I think never goes away.

Preston Pysh 29:06
Well, Jesse! Thank you so much for making time. I know that you got a lot of things going on, and you always make time for us, and I cannot thank you enough. Thank you so much.

Stig Brodersen 29:17
And Jesse, you are truly a giver. Not only did you find time to speak to Preston and me today, but you also recently found time to speak to Robert Leonard on Episode 12 on Millennial Investing. And I highly encourage everyone to listen to that episode. And not surprisingly, we called it “Building Your Life Resume,” which is really what we think that you are all about Jesse. Of course, I’ll make sure to link to the episode in the show notes. But I think I speak for everyone when I say that we already are looking forward to inviting you back on our show. And thank you. Thank you so much, Jesse, for coming on the show today.

Jesse Itzler 29:56
It is absolutely my pleasure, man. Thanks for having me!

Stig Brodersen 30:00
Okay, guys. So before we let you go, Preston and I would like to play a short segment of our new show, Silicon Valley by The Investor’s Podcast Network. And in this episode, our host, Sean Flynn speaks to Patrick Lee, founder of Rotten Tomatoes.

Sean Flynn 30:16
While you’re mentoring these startups, what is some typical advice that you give them? Or that you find yourself most frequently giving them?

Patrick Lee 30:25
I would say the number one thing I, I tell startups is to focus. And this is based on my own experience. The ones, the companies where we were really focused–my design firm, which is a second company and Rotten Tomatoes–things just worked. And everything was just easier. And our design firm actually before we got focused, we’ve originally started we weren’t just web design. We were actually 3D design and print design, and we weren’t just an entertainment industry. We were like everything. And it was just a mess. And it was super hard. And you’re cold calling. And people just don’t know what you are; what you’re doing. And once we said, “You know what, we’re only web design. We’re only entertainment industry,” everything got easier. And actually, we never needed to cold-call again after that because people would just refer like new clients to us. The ones where we weren’t focused, which is actually all the companies post Rotten Tomatoes, it just didn’t work. Like when we were trying to do too many features; too many products, it’s just harder. And so one thing I tell people when they’re just starting out is one feature or product, or one category, or one market. Like Rotten Tomatoes was reviews or movies in English for the English market. A lot of times what happens with entrepreneurs that I’ve seen is entrepreneurs, by nature, believe they can do anything. But as a result of it, they try to do everything. In my opinion doing everything in the beginning is wrong. And examples I love to bring up are Amazon–yeah, they do everything now, but they were just selling books in the beginning–Facebook was just at Harvard; Google was just really simple search. And a lot of folks, they look at what companies are doing now, and they try to like match them. And one of the things you see so often in people’s PowerPoints, especially if they’re first time entrepreneurs is they’ll have that like little grid where on one side, it’s like here’s us, and here’s our competitors. And on the other side, its features. And be like, hey, this competitor has two features. This one has these three features. This one has these three features. And look at us, we have like all the way across dots; all the way across all ten features; we have everything. And I’m like, “Really?” You know, you’re two people with almost no funding, and you’re trying to out feature these huge companies; billions of dollars; you know, been around much longer; or raised tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. And you’re gonna out feature them?

Stig Brodersen 32:58
Alright, so if you like to listen to the rest of the interview with Rotten Tomatoes founder Patrick Lee, or listen to shows, other episodes with successful entrepreneurs, including founder, Melanie Perkins of the billion dollar company, Canva, make sure to check out the link in the show notes. Or even better search for The Investors Podcast Network on iTunes, Spotify, and subscribe to a new show, Silicon Valley. But guys, that was all the Preston and I had for this week’s episode of The Investor’s Podcast. We see each other again next week.

Unknown Speaker 33:33
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