No Money Down: Chris Joyce's Secret to Starting Businesses featuring Chris Joyce with Gusher

00:00:02 Origin Stories and Small Businesses

[00:00:02] Intro: Thanks for listening to another episode of Small Business Origins.

[00:00:06] John Kelley: I love an origin story.

[00:00:08] Outro: what you just heard, leave us a review.

[00:00:10] Outro: Subscribe

00:00:12 Exploring Grandparent Nicknames

[00:00:12] Chris Joyce: Guys, check this out.

[00:00:13] 5: They're gonna love it.

[00:00:14] 5: You're gonna love it.

[00:00:17] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:00:17] Chris Joyce: What's up, everybody?

[00:00:19] Chris Joyce: Welcome back to another episode of small business origins.

[00:00:22] Chris Joyce: I'm your host as always John Kelley, AKA John the marketer on Instagram and TikTok, John the podcaster on Twitter.

[00:00:29] Chris Joyce: You're tuned in.

[00:00:29] Chris Joyce: It's our nationwide search.

[00:00:31] Chris Joyce: We're looking for entrepreneurs that have a story to tell.

[00:00:34] Chris Joyce: And joining us virtually in the studio, I've got an entrepreneur with one heck of a story.

[00:00:38] Chris Joyce: We've already gotten into it before the show started.

[00:00:40] Chris Joyce: I can't wait to hop into it.

[00:00:41] Chris Joyce: But from Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania, I've got Chris Joyce with Gusher.

[00:00:45] Chris Joyce: Chris, welcome to the show.

[00:00:47] 6: Hey, John.

[00:00:47] 6: Thanks for having me.

[00:00:49] Chris Joyce: Man, it is our pleasure as always.

[00:00:51] Chris Joyce: This is an exciting episode.

[00:00:53] Chris Joyce: Just I can tell from our quick chat before we got started.

[00:00:56] Chris Joyce: But before we hop into all of that stuff, we always start out with an icebreaker question.

[00:01:00] Chris Joyce: And today's icebreaker question is what do you call your grandparents?

[00:01:03] 6: Well, I don't really call them anything because they're dead.

[00:01:06] 6: That's number 1.

[00:01:07] 6: I don't know if that counts as an icebreaker,

[00:01:09] 6: used to call my my grandma grandma.

[00:01:11] 6: I mean, my grandfathers, I never met.

[00:01:13] 6: Never and they were never in my world.

[00:01:16] 6: Only one grandmother.

[00:01:18] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:01:19] Chris Joyce: So, I mean, this is such an interesting question because people around the country are so different.

[00:01:22] Chris Joyce: Right?

[00:01:23] Chris Joyce: You know?

[00:01:23] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:01:23] Chris Joyce: All the names and nicknames we have.

[00:01:25] Chris Joyce: And I mean, unfortunately, I share the same thing with you.

[00:01:29] Chris Joyce: I have my, maternal grandmother is still here.

[00:01:33] Chris Joyce: My maternal grandfather has passed away, and then both of my grandparents on my father's side have passed away.

[00:01:40] Chris Joyce: I was with you on most of it.

[00:01:41] Chris Joyce: You know, I had, my grandma Arlene, my grandpa Kelly, my grandma Jean, but we also call my grandma Jean Nana.

[00:01:48] Chris Joyce: Right.

[00:01:49] Chris Joyce: You know, and then my kids would call, like, my aunt Rhonda.

[00:01:52] Chris Joyce: They would call her Nana.

[00:01:54] Chris Joyce: My mother was called by all of her grandchildren, Momo.

[00:01:58] Chris Joyce: So I'm down here from Texas, man.

[00:02:00] Chris Joyce: We got these southern draws.

[00:02:01] Chris Joyce: You know, there's some some southern names we come up with for grandparents.

[00:02:04] Chris Joyce: That's for sure.

[00:02:05] 6: My my kids up here, I I married into an Irish family, more like an Irish clan, where they have their ways, and they don't say grandma or grandfather or anything.

[00:02:15] 6: They say mum mum, and they say da.

[00:02:18] 6: And I'm like, what the heck is that about?

[00:02:21] 6: So they refer as mum mum and da.

[00:02:23] 6: That's what they go by.

[00:02:25] Chris Joyce: It's so interesting how you can find out about other cultures just by what they call the people related to them.

[00:02:32] Chris Joyce: And, I mean, we have our nicknames for almost everybody.

[00:02:35] Chris Joyce: My sister, is called John by all of my kids, and, you know, it's it's great, man.

[00:02:40] Chris Joyce: I like having those little nicknames.

[00:02:42] Chris Joyce: It feels special.

00:02:44 Entrepreneurship Journey from Selling Seeds to Global Businesses

[00:02:44] Chris Joyce: everyone could say grandma, but when you say nana or, mama or something else like that, it just it sounds a little different.

[00:02:51] Chris Joyce: So I wanted to hop into that, but we're here to talk about you, Chris.

[00:02:54] Chris Joyce: Sure.

[00:02:54] Chris Joyce: So where did you come from?

[00:02:56] Chris Joyce: How'd you get into entrepreneurship?

[00:02:57] Chris Joyce: What I ask everyone is, what's your origin story?

[00:03:00] 6: Yeah.

[00:03:01] 6: Sure.

[00:03:01] 6: I I mean, I personally I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, Fairborn, Ohio.

[00:03:05] 6: I always say that I in the middle of farm fields and, factories basically near an air force base.

[00:03:10] 6: And I got into entrepreneurship Kelley at an at an early age.

[00:03:14] 6: I started, literally selling I don't know if if anybody knows about it, but, like, burpee seeds, the seeds to, like, grow watermelons and corn and and sunflowers and all that.

[00:03:24] 6: I used to sell those door to door.

[00:03:26] 6: That was literally my first, quote, unquote, business, back from being a kid.

[00:03:30] 6: And I started that at a very early age and just really caught the bug.

[00:03:33] 6: I mean, I've done my own businesses, my own deals, pretty much ever since, And that was taking me in

[00:03:40] Chris Joyce: the beginning stage.

[00:03:41] Chris Joyce: So So so you started there.

[00:03:44] Chris Joyce: Did you go through anything like traditional college, that kind of stuff, job hop at other jobs, or had you kind of always been an entrepreneur?

[00:03:50] 6: Well, it's funny because you were actually talking about your friend, with me in the beginning when, when we were off the air.

[00:03:56] 6: And I have a kind of a similar story.

[00:03:59] 6: I have a friend named Brent, in Ohio also, and and we still do business to this day.

[00:04:04] 6: But he and I used to skip school, when we were 15, 16 years old because you could drive back then when you were 15.

[00:04:11] 6: And we didn't go ahead and skip school to party or drink or do whatever else.

[00:04:16] 6: We used to skip school to attend in Columbus, Ohio, what are called score meetings, s c o r e.

[00:04:23] 6: So we did, go into these senior core of retired executives and quite literally write business plans.

[00:04:30] 6: That's what we skipped school to do is to write business plans.

[00:04:33] 6: So we started writing business plans at an early age.

[00:04:36] 6: And to this day, I still follow, the same format, the same old school format on it because it works.

[00:04:42] 6: And from there, I basically you know, I had some businesses as a teenager, you know, the standard type of stuff.

[00:04:47] 6: Ended up going to New York and becoming the youngest stock broker ever, for a period of time.

[00:04:52] 6: But from then on out, I just started my own deals.

[00:04:55] 6: Literally, my own businesses 100%.

[00:04:57] 6: Everything from business brokerage to technical audio text companies, to manufacturing, to SaaS, Fintech, ARVR.

[00:05:06] 6: I started more than 24 companies.

[00:05:08] 6: My products have been sold all across the globe in more than 11,000 stores, and I've got a couple patents out there.

[00:05:15] 6: And my tech products have been sold in, have been, users in more than a 150 countries across the globe.

[00:05:20] 6: So I've done an extensive amount of businesses or a wide variety of businesses.

00:05:27 Exploring the Dynamics of Dreaming and Doing in Entrepreneurship

[00:05:27] Chris Joyce: Man, it's such a a a cool thing to find yourself in because serial entrepreneurs, it's something that has always spoken to me because it's like I get bored quickly and I get bored easily with, you know, doing the same thing over and over again.

[00:05:42] Chris Joyce: I like the challenge.

[00:05:43] Chris Joyce: And I don't know why I do because it seems so punishing of yourself to wanna put yourself in that position because it's always a struggle when you're trying to get those companies off the ground.

[00:05:52] 6: Yeah.

[00:05:52] 6: But see, I view I view Chris same thing, but yet differently.

[00:05:55] 6: So I'll view it as alright.

[00:05:57] 6: You you're going ahead and you you don't like doing the same thing over and over.

[00:06:01] 6: I hate it also.

[00:06:01] 6: I get bored, crazy bored.

[00:06:03] 6: I don't even like doing the same industry twice.

[00:06:05] 6: I like to do something fundamentally different that hasn't been done before.

[00:06:09] 6: But I almost view it as, you trying these different things or wanting to do different things.

[00:06:14] 6: It's almost in a way like an artist trying to find their own style, or like an explorer trying to go into their their their new territory, a new geography, or whatever it is.

[00:06:24] 6: Well, these days, you can't it's very hard to do that.

[00:06:27] 6: So business itself lends itself to that because no matter what you start, you're bringing your own DNA to the table.

[00:06:34] 6: So fundamentally, whatever you create is going to be different.

[00:06:37] 6: Even if you're duplicating a model that's out there in some way, shape, or fashion, you yourself may be that different catalyst or that different ingredient that ends up making a change in some way.

[00:06:48] Chris Joyce: We've talked about this on several podcasts where, you know, like partnerships often work out pretty well because I say often work out Kelley.

[00:06:56] Chris Joyce: I mean, obviously you have to have the right partner, but usually in an entrepreneurship setting, you do have those people who are so different.

[00:07:02] Chris Joyce: One, that's a dreamer.

[00:07:03] Chris Joyce: They've got the idea.

[00:07:04] Chris Joyce: They wanna do it.

[00:07:06] Chris Joyce: They don't necessarily have the business acumen to get it done.

[00:07:09] Chris Joyce: And then on the other side, you have that very logical thinker who's analytical, who knows how to establish a business, who knows how to do certain parts of the business.

[00:07:17] Chris Joyce: And, you know, that's kinda what works in OMG Event Co.

[00:07:20] Chris Joyce: Andrew and I's company is I'm the guy that has the operational experience.

[00:07:24] Chris Joyce: I'm the guy that has the dream of where we can take it.

[00:07:26] Chris Joyce: He's the guy that knows how to do the marketing.

[00:07:28] Chris Joyce: He's the guy that you know, of course, I I know how to do marketing now, but back then I didn't.

[00:07:32] Chris Joyce: And he's the guy that has that business acumen.

[00:07:34] Chris Joyce: So it just we work really well as a a partnership.

[00:07:38] Chris Joyce: And I think it kinda plays into Gusher because with Gusher, I know you were telling me that this is kind of a thing where you can have that dream and not necessarily the idea to execute it.

[00:07:48] Chris Joyce: And maybe I'm wrong here, but it seems like Gusher can kind of come in to be that partner, that adviser that's going to help you to really scale the dream that you have and turn it into a reality.

[00:07:59] Chris Joyce: So let's just start with what is Gusher and why should we, you know, be talking to you as a potential, I dare to say, partner to kinda help us to bring this into reality?

00:08:11 Empowering Startups Through Performance-Based Equity

[00:08:11] 6: Yeah.

[00:08:11] 6: Definitely.

[00:08:11] 6: Well, gusher itself was born out of the frustration of seeing entrepreneurs unable to get funding.

[00:08:20] 6: I I was literally at a an event in Washington DC at a venture capital meeting, And there were certain entrepreneurs that, well, they didn't look like everyone else.

[00:08:29] 6: They didn't sound like everyone else.

[00:08:31] 6: They didn't attend Stanford University and wear hoodies.

[00:08:34] 6: And because they didn't live in New York, Israel, or Silicon Valley, their chances of getting venture capital funding were basically nonexistent, but their ideas were effing brilliant.

[00:08:44] 6: So, you know, what is Gusher?

[00:08:46] 6: What did I set out to do?

[00:08:47] 6: Well, when I met these guys, there was a and women actually, Kelley across the spectrum.

[00:08:54] 6: What I ran into or what I really saw was this huge need to help in a different way.

[00:09:00] 6: Now I've always started my businesses fundamentally different.

[00:09:03] 6: So my businesses have been funded in many different times and cycles and everything else, but I never needed a Kelley, not even not a dime to get a business off the ground or to really about the $10,000,000 in sales volume level.

[00:09:17] 6: I'd never needed anything.

[00:09:19] 6: So what I decided to do is, alright, I talked to a couple partners.

[00:09:22] 6: I said, hey.

[00:09:23] 6: I wonder if there's a way to teach our methodology, our process to people out there and to see if it really works.

[00:09:30] 6: And so our process is using something called performance based equity.

[00:09:36] 6: So what I say to a founder is, you know, especially founders that don't have a penny, you don't need a penny at all, not one dime, is what would you do if you had a 1,000,000 or 2,000,000 sit in the bank account right this second?

[00:09:47] 6: And then how would you build your company?

[00:09:50] 6: How would you build your team out?

[00:09:52] 6: Because what happens is that's done on Gusher all day every day.

[00:09:56] 6: People apply to join their company in exchange for performance based equity.

[00:10:02] 6: So instead of needing all that all that cost there to go ahead and start up, to go ahead and cover the expertise to solve that problem or to build the company, You're bringing in people as partners to help build that company from the very beginning, and that's extremely important.

[00:10:16] 6: You don't need money.

[00:10:17] 6: You don't need anything.

[00:10:18] 6: You just really need the right people to help bring the idea to life.

[00:10:22] 6: And so, you know, I never ask anybody for a cent.

[00:10:24] 6: We're not here, and we don't say, hey.

[00:10:26] 6: Yes.

[00:10:26] 6: It's x y z, dollars to join Gusher.

[00:10:30] 6: Gusher itself is a performance based equity player.

[00:10:32] 6: The only time that we succeed is when the founder succeeds.

[00:10:36] 6: That's it.

[00:10:38] Chris Joyce: So are you looking for only people that are a complete startup, maybe haven't even began yet, or are you looking for companies that are in the startup phase, maybe have a little bit of revenue, they have some performance metrics there?

[00:10:50] Chris Joyce: Yep.

[00:10:50] Chris Joyce: But they're looking to really grow and scale.

[00:10:53] 6: Our numbers work out to about the following.

[00:10:55] 6: About 80, 85% of start ups that come on to Gusher are at the ideation stage.

[00:11:01] 6: So they don't necessarily even have a solution.

[00:11:04] 6: They have a problem.

[00:11:06] 6: And the point of going ahead and putting that team together is to solve that problem.

[00:11:10] 6: It's not for the founder to solve that problem.

[00:11:12] 6: It's for the founder to really get the right people to solve that problem and get it out the door in terms of a productive way to be self sustaining.

[00:11:20] 6: About 10, 15% of our companies, it varies, are what are called legacy companies.

[00:11:25] 6: So typically what happens is they may have actually raised around a venture capital, or they may have raised a round of seed funding or a friends and family around.

[00:11:34] 6: They may have a 100, 500,000, a 1,000,000 plus worth of revenue.

00:11:40 Building a Successful Company: The Importance of Marketing and Sales

[00:11:39] 6: But the problem usually fundamentally is they can't grow beyond a certain point because, usually, it comes back to that they built their company incorrectly.

[00:11:49] 6: And so what I say to all technical companies, you'll like this because it serves your purpose.

[00:11:54] 6: Almost every company, technical company, consumer goods company, manufacturing, I don't care what it is, is that you're not a product company, 1st and foremost.

[00:12:03] 6: You're not there sitting there solving this problem.

[00:12:05] 6: 1st and foremost, you are a marketing and sales company, and that's gotta be put in the process from the very beginning, from the ideation of the company in order to have a company that's self sustaining and profitable and doesn't need funding.

[00:12:19] 6: And that's really what people do ask backwards.

[00:12:23] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:12:24] Chris Joyce: I mean, say it again for the people in the back.

[00:12:26] Chris Joyce: I mean, that's every single person has to deal with marketing sales.

[00:12:30] Chris Joyce: I mean, without it, where's your company John to go?

[00:12:32] Chris Joyce: Honestly, but more specifically John the types of companies you're looking for, is there something that you don't necessarily delve Intro?

[00:12:41] Chris Joyce: You know, talking about, for instance, companies that sell products like retailers.

[00:12:46] Chris Joyce: Sure.

[00:12:46] Chris Joyce: Are you not looking for agencies that provide services?

[00:12:50] Chris Joyce: Are you not looking for a certain thing?

[00:12:53] 6: No.

[00:12:53] 6: Actually, this is what we do.

[00:12:54] 6: We we're really market agnostic.

[00:12:56] 6: We let the market decide.

[00:12:58] 6: So we have everything from dog food companies to textiles, to SaaS, Fintech, AR, VR, AI, gaming, PropTech.

[00:13:06] 6: You name it.

[00:13:06] 6: We've got it.

[00:13:07] 6: It runs across the spectrum.

[00:13:10] 6: The real main thing is the following.

[00:13:13] 6: A a founder has to be able to communicate their idea in a very, very simplistic way.

[00:13:19] 6: The the main point about Gusher is and we have a saying about it.

[00:13:23] 6: 1 plus one doesn't equal 2.

[00:13:25] 6: 1 plus one equals done.

[00:13:26] 6: What do we mean by that?

[00:13:27] 6: That when you're recruiting your team, when you're putting your team together, bringing on one person for performance based equity, that's the key metric.

00:13:29 The Importance of Performance-Based Equity in Building a Successful Team

[00:13:19] 6: The the main point about Gusher is and we have a saying about it.

[00:13:23] 6: 1 plus one doesn't equal 2.

[00:13:25] 6: 1 plus one equals done.

[00:13:26] 6: What do we mean by that?

[00:13:27] 6: That when you're recruiting your team, when you're putting your team together, bringing on one person for performance based equity, that's the key metric.

[00:13:35] 6: If a founder is able to do that, those are the companies, those are the 80% that go on to succeed, that become self sustaining, that are able to grow.

[00:13:44] 6: But if you can't do that, you can't bring somebody on into your company for performance based equity equity, well, anyone would take a check to join your company, but not many people work on an idea on a company that they don't fundamentally believe in in exchange for equity.

[00:14:00] 6: So it's basically a form of market validation.

[00:14:02] 6: You're able to bring somebody John, those are the companies that are able to go.

[00:14:05] 6: If not, it dies there right in the beginning as it should.

[00:14:10] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:14:10] Chris Joyce: That's a hard pill to swallow, I think, for some people.

[00:14:13] Chris Joyce: I mean, even myself, I've I've had some great ideas and I bounce them off of Andrew and we're like, man, this seems like something that would be a really cool solution to x, y, z problem.

[00:14:22] Chris Joyce: And then you're like, alright, so how would we actually do this?

[00:14:24] Chris Joyce: And you start thinking about the logistics of it and you're like, alright, cool.

[00:14:27] Chris Joyce: Next idea.

[00:14:28] Chris Joyce: Let's

[00:14:28] Outro: go on to somebody else.

[00:14:29] Chris Joyce: And it's like, son of a bitch, I worked hard on this.

[00:14:31] Chris Joyce: What are you talking about?

[00:14:33] 6: Yeah.

[00:14:33] 6: But here, you know, I look at it somewhat maybe differently.

[00:14:37] 6: Alright?

[00:14:38] 6: So if I get pushed back on an idea, that's not necessarily a red flag.

[00:14:43] 6: So let me give you a quick example.

[00:14:45] 6: I I had a company that grew very, very large.

[00:14:47] 6: It it was one of the it was actually the largest in its category.

[00:14:51] 6: It was a low carb manufacturing company.

[00:14:53] 6: So we made low carb breads, low carb muffins, that type

[00:14:56] Outro: of thing.

[00:14:57] Outro: And when I

[00:14:57] 6: first started that company, I was basically penniless at the time.

[00:15:00] 6: I mean, down to my last $1200, I was almost flat broke about to be evicted, everything else.

[00:15:06] 6: And I had to contact more than 500 food chemists that told me it couldn't be done.

[00:15:12] 6: It shouldn't be done.

[00:15:13] 6: It wouldn't be done.

[00:15:14] 6: I had PhDs telling me to go f myself.

[00:15:17] 6: And each time I heard that, I was like, no.

[00:15:20] 6: They're wrong.

[00:15:20] 6: They're wrong.

[00:15:22] 6: And so I knew internally that if I could take that type of rejection from people that it's their business, they're science.

[00:15:29] 6: I'm not the science.

[00:15:30] 6: I'm not the food chemist.

[00:15:31] 6: I I don't know that.

[00:15:33] 6: That literally, that that idea should should basically be born.

[00:15:37] 6: So it's the resilience of the individuals to go ahead and take it many times, the negative that really decides whether an idea will go ahead and fly.

[00:15:46] 6: Because usually that first idea that you go down that road isn't the idea that it ends up being.

[00:15:52] 6: It morphs into something else.

[00:15:54] 6: Bad ideas become good ideas if you start going down that road.

00:16:01 Problem Solving in Entrepreneurship

[00:16:00] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:16:00] Chris Joyce: Problem solving is the key to entrepreneurship.

[00:16:03] Chris Joyce: I mean, it's something you have to be able to do because everything that you face in your entrepreneurial journey is going to bring you to problems.

[00:16:12] Chris Joyce: I mean, just the idea alone that you came up with as a company should have some problem, as you said, that it's solving.

[00:16:18] Chris Joyce: So, absolutely, that's what we should do.

[00:16:20] Chris Joyce: And and you're right.

[00:16:21] Chris Joyce: There's just sometimes there's ideas that just aren't that great, you know, and the things are insurmountable.

[00:16:26] Chris Joyce: But I love the fact that most of the people that we have on the show absolutely come from that where they were told no by so many people.

[00:16:34] Chris Joyce: And because they don't have in the market because so many people were willing to shut it down, that's why they succeed so well.

[00:16:40] Chris Joyce: So if I have one of these ideas and I'm like, you know what?

[00:16:43] Chris Joyce: This guy, Chris, this company, Gusher, this sounds great.

[00:16:46] Chris Joyce: What does the application process look like to speak with you?

[00:16:49] Chris Joyce: Because I'm assuming that not everybody gets in, not everyone gets a yes, and not everyone moves forward with you.

[00:16:54] 6: Well, here's the thing.

[00:16:55] 6: I mean, we we always go ahead and set talk to anybody.

[00:16:58] 6: So that's number 1.

[00:16:59] 6: Number 2, to get John to Gusher doesn't cost a thing.

[00:17:01] 6: A person just joins Gosher, you're in Gosher.

[00:17:04] 6: So in Gosher, you have the ability to start building a start up draft.

[00:17:08] 6: And so our system automatically walks a founder through or a potential founder through.

[00:17:13] 6: And then what we usually do is we just jump in.

[00:17:15] 6: So we jump in and say, hey.

[00:17:17] 6: Talk to them about their idea.

[00:17:18] 6: Figure out the best ways to present it.

[00:17:20] 6: The best way to go about recruiting a team, we take them through the steps.

[00:17:24] 6: Usually, it takes an hour, 2, 3 hours depending upon the founder, and then they're up and running.

[00:17:29] 6: I mean, that's all it takes.

[00:17:30] 6: And then based upon what happens in the marketplace, which is the way it should be, either they start getting applicants, they start getting people where their idea is resonating with somebody or it doesn't.

[00:17:41] 6: And we're not gonna sit here as gusher and pretend that we know everything about every market and everything about every damn deal.

[00:17:48] 6: There have been companies that I said, and I've got a j score rating, an internal rating of these 10 things, that we track companies on.

[00:17:56] 6: They don't know that.

[00:17:57] 6: But we go ahead and track them, and there have been so many instances of stuff that I thought, this is dead on arrival.

[00:18:03] 6: It's never going to work.

[00:18:05] 6: Nothing.

[00:18:05] 6: Zippo.

[00:18:06] 6: And then sure enough, I'm like, holy Chris, they got a team.

[00:18:09] 6: Holy crap, they got a product.

[00:18:11] 6: Holy crap, they got sales.

[00:18:13] 6: And where the hell did that come from?

[00:18:15] 6: And I don't know if you can see it.

[00:18:16] 6: I'm getting goosebumps right there because that's a daily event.

[00:18:20] 6: You know?

[00:18:20] 6: Let the market decide.

00:18:22 Innovative Business Model for Startups

[00:18:21] 6: We give the structure in the process, and we help get them going.

[00:18:25] Chris Joyce: So is this kind of like a, a crowdfunding of people willing to buy into your idea?

[00:18:32] 6: No.

[00:18:32] 6: Okay.

[00:18:33] 6: It's not crowdfunding.

[00:18:34] 6: What it is is, like let me give an example.

[00:18:36] 6: Let's say and this is one of our companies right here.

[00:18:39] 6: So this is, pharmacological smooch.

[00:18:42] 6: They make a a nutraceutical oat water product.

[00:18:44] 6: It's kind of a really neat neat thing.

[00:18:46] 6: And so he was a grad student in college, you know, came up with this great idea, but he needed to go ahead and bring this product to market.

[00:18:55] 6: He needed to have a chief marketing officer to go ahead and identify the target markets and personas.

[00:19:00] 6: He needed to have a creative director to go ahead and create the voice to be able to penetrate into those marketplace.

[00:19:07] 6: He needed to have a food scientist, a food Chris, to make sure as the formulation scaled up, they wouldn't run into any problems, which they did.

[00:19:15] 6: He needed to have packaging designer.

[00:19:17] 6: He needed to have, you know, sales validation and the ability to penetrate, these other things there with biz dev.

[00:19:23] 6: And, he did have a CFO, a chief financial officer to make investor contacts as they grew to hopefully establish, those relationships.

[00:19:31] 6: So what he did was put together this complete team from the very beginning, and then the product leapfrogged generations.

[00:19:39] 6: So instead of him having to go through it linear linearly, by bringing on these experts at what they do, they're able to leapfrog generational development and be at a different place much quicker.

[00:19:50] Chris Joyce: I realized I I posed that question completely wrong.

[00:19:54] Chris Joyce: Okay.

[00:19:54] Chris Joyce: I meant to say not from an not from an equity or financial standpoint, but from a buy in of, you know, I'm good at marketing.

[00:20:01] Chris Joyce: I'm on your site.

[00:20:02] Chris Joyce: Someone comes up with this idea, and I'm like, I know how to market this product.

[00:20:06] Chris Joyce: I can bring this product to the market and get that story out there.

[00:20:09] Chris Joyce: So you're kind of crowdsourcing people to work in your business, basically.

[00:20:14] Chris Joyce: And once Gusher sees this big buy in, they say, cool.

[00:20:17] Chris Joyce: We'll come in and be the financial partner for that, performance based equity.

00:20:22 Building a Successful Company with Market Understanding

[00:20:22] 6: Right.

[00:20:22] 6: Well, what we do is just provide the structure.

[00:20:24] 6: So so literally so think of it this way.

[00:20:26] 6: We we had a company on we have a company, a very success story.

[00:20:29] 6: A company on our, platform called Happy Howell.

[00:20:32] 6: So I'll I'll save you the long story, because of time, but Happy Howell went ahead.

[00:20:37] 6: It's a dog food company.

[00:20:38] 6: And he had a really sick dog, and, you know, he took it to the veterinarian.

[00:20:42] 6: And the the veterinarian said put it on this dog food, that dog food, another dog food.

[00:20:46] 6: Dog kept dying.

[00:20:47] 6: So he hacked his own dog food together over 2, 3, 4 months.

[00:20:51] 6: He went ahead and put his dog on it.

[00:20:52] 6: And over a period of 3, 4 month 5 months, the dog magically came to life, and he wanted to start a dog food company.

[00:20:58] 6: When he first came into Gusher, he didn't listen to our process and how to do it.

[00:21:04] 6: So he puts Chris team together of awesome people.

[00:21:06] 6: They have managed 50,000,000, 100,000,000, 200,000,000 budgets.

[00:21:10] 6: I could mention companies here.

[00:21:11] 6: You have their products on your shelf.

[00:21:14] 6: Okay?

[00:21:15] 6: 6 weeks later, 7 weeks later, the whole company imploded.

[00:21:19] 6: Then he listened, built up a second team of people, that really made sense, and a year and a half, 2 years later, they're worth more than 10,000,000, growing 35% month over month.

[00:21:30] 6: They just got all these big chain contracts and everything else.

[00:21:33] 6: His second team all had something in common.

[00:21:36] 6: The first team did not.

[00:21:38] 6: This is not a trick question, John.

[00:21:40] 6: It's a dog food company.

[00:21:43] 6: His second team all had what in common, John?

[00:21:48] Chris Joyce: They know things about dog food?

[00:21:50] 6: They own dogs.

[00:21:51] 6: They Okay?

[00:21:52] 6: They they don't have cats.

[00:21:53] 6: Okay.

[00:21:53] 6: Yeah.

[00:21:54] 6: They don't have cats.

[00:21:55] 6: They don't have kids.

[00:21:56] 6: Okay.

[00:21:56] 6: They're not they're not child parents.

[00:21:58] 6: They're dog parents.

[00:22:00] 6: They got the market.

[00:22:01] 6: They've been freed, lived, and pooped out the market.

[00:22:03] 6: They so it resonated with them.

[00:22:06] 6: Though every last member, if you take a look at his pitch deck, of his team has a dog.

[00:22:11] 6: And so they get the market.

00:22:14 Performance-Based Equity in Building Successful Companies

[00:22:13] 6: They know how to what the product was about and what they were trying to create, and so that company took off like a rocket.

[00:22:19] 6: Same type of thing.

[00:22:20] 6: I would tell it to anybody.

[00:22:21] 6: That's called the vested interest market, the VIM.

[00:22:24] 6: The people who have the most to gain from the success or failure of your company, that's how you build up your team.

[00:22:31] 6: And that's what we go ahead and take the founders through how to do.

[00:22:35] Chris Joyce: That makes sense.

[00:22:36] Chris Joyce: Look.

[00:22:36] Chris Joyce: When you tell me it's not a trick question, I'm automatically going to overthink everything.

[00:22:40] Chris Joyce: Okay?

[00:22:41] Chris Joyce: So, I love it.

[00:22:42] Chris Joyce: I I love when I get these questions on the show, but 100%.

[00:22:46] Chris Joyce: I mean, I think I was half right.

[00:22:47] Chris Joyce: I mean, I said they understand dog food.

[00:22:48] Chris Joyce: Who understands dog food better than dog owners?

[00:22:51] Chris Joyce: You know?

[00:22:51] Chris Joyce: Absolutely.

[00:22:52] Chris Joyce: No.

[00:22:52] Chris Joyce: I I love this.

[00:22:53] Chris Joyce: I think that there's at least a good chunk of listeners who are either business owners currently or they are someone who would like to own a business.

[00:23:02] Chris Joyce: You know, I have had listeners reach out to me, and they're like, man, this is great for people who want to own a company to be able to listen to these entrepreneurs, hear their successes, hear their failures, and kind of understand things ahead of time before I decide to make that leap.

[00:23:17] Chris Joyce: So I'm just trying to think for the person that's sitting there listening right now saying, okay.

[00:23:22] Chris Joyce: This seems like a no brainer that I need to be a part this.

[00:23:24] Chris Joyce: And I hope that they go to our show notes, click your link, and find out more about you.

[00:23:30] Chris Joyce: But my question kind of as that listener who's wanting to be an entrepreneur would be, so you're telling me about the performance based equity and all that stuff, but what does it mean exactly?

[00:23:40] Chris Joyce: How much am I going to have to pay you?

[00:23:42] Chris Joyce: Now I know obviously that it's going to depend on the performance.

[00:23:45] 6: But Yeah.

[00:23:46] Chris Joyce: In their mind, what's the best way to explain you're going to pay based on a scale or whatever it may be.

[00:23:53] Chris Joyce: You know, how do I kind of get that across to that listener?

[00:23:56] 6: Okay.

[00:23:56] 6: Think of it this way.

[00:23:57] 6: We're we're not a scale.

[00:23:58] 6: It's a straight equity position.

[00:23:59] 6: So we get equity in your company so long as you're able to launch successfully into the marketplace, and then you're able to make money.

[00:24:07] 6: If you're not, we get nothing.

[00:24:09] 6: We're actually in that boat with you, side by side, rowing it to be able to make that happen.

[00:24:15] 6: Same thing with your teammates.

[00:24:16] 6: So our position is very objective.

[00:24:19] 6: It's a 5% equity position, but it's not granted immediately, and it's only granted if the company succeeds on Gusher.

[00:24:27] 6: If it doesn't, we get nothing.

[00:24:28] 6: Zippo nada.

[00:24:29] 6: But I don't sit there and ask founders, hey.

[00:24:31] 6: You've gotta pay x amount per hour or x amount per month or, hey.

[00:24:35] 6: There's money exchange in hand.

[00:24:36] 6: Scusher doesn't even have, like, a merchant account.

[00:24:39] 6: We don't accept funding at all.

[00:24:42] 6: We accept equity.

[00:24:43] 6: So stock equity transactions, it's all we do.

[00:24:45] 6: That's all we have in ownership in.

00:24:48 Funding for Startups: Shark Tank vs Alternative Models

[00:24:48] 6: So we're sitting there

[00:24:49] Chris Joyce: with I think it's a great it's a great way to kind of do business because, you know, it does free up.

[00:24:55] Chris Joyce: I mean, I don't know if you like to watch Shark Tank.

[00:24:57] Chris Joyce: I love it.

[00:24:57] Chris Joyce: I'm sure listeners like to hear it too.

[00:24:59] Chris Joyce: If they like business stories, surely they like Shark Tank.

[00:25:01] Chris Joyce: And you hear those things that Kevin O'Leary says all the time about wanting, to take some type of royalty on top, and it's like that's bleeding the company dry as it's making money.

[00:25:11] Chris Joyce: You know?

[00:25:11] Chris Joyce: And then these equity offers are usually very large amounts of equity for a very small cash influx.

[00:25:18] Chris Joyce: And I know that sounds strange to some people where they're like, how's $200,000 a small chunk of change?

[00:25:22] Chris Joyce: And it's like, well, when it comes to the business world, especially businesses of the scale you're discussing Yeah.

[00:25:27] Chris Joyce: $200,000 should be nothing for them after year 1 or year 2.

[00:25:32] Chris Joyce: So I I know that asking for 20, 30 percent is a huge deal.

[00:25:36] 6: Well, our our go well, Shark Tank is one thing.

[00:25:39] 6: First of all, I'm gonna say this real quickly.

[00:25:41] 6: Shark Tank, it's great entertainment.

[00:25:42] 6: It's not reality.

[00:25:44] 6: So meaning that most of the time, we we would call that, basically parasitic fishing, or what were the birds that that go ahead?

[00:25:51] 6: Vultures, and sucker deals.

[00:25:54] 6: Those types of deals, usually tank a company and leave the founder upside down the way they're structured on TV.

[00:26:00] 6: It's and by the way, it's very rare to see those deals, that happen on TV actually go through, after the show.

[00:26:07] 6: I one of my attorney friends is a representation on that show, so I know the numbers that actually do go through.

[00:26:14] 6: Alright?

[00:26:14] 6: So they're very, very low.

[00:26:16] 6: You know?

[00:26:16] 6: On the other side, you have to think of it this way.

[00:26:19] 6: And I won't go into the details of it, but there's something called your your pre money and post money valuation.

[00:26:25] 6: Our goal Kelley and we don't make in our own eyes a damn penny on a deal until that company is able to really reach the 10,000,000 in valuation.

[00:26:34] 6: Alright?

[00:26:34] 6: So if a company goes ahead and and they're doing a quarter million revenue or half a 1000000 or a 1000000, that's a great lifestyle business.

[00:26:41] 6: You know, the chance of that selling, yeah, you could maybe sell that and get, you know, 3, 4, 5 months worth of gross for that type of deal.

[00:26:48] 6: But in order for it to really have impact, you have to have something that's generating at least 10,000,000 after a couple years and really growing rapidly after that, in order to move the needle on us.

[00:26:59] 6: So we're just trying to go ahead and help founders get started and get past that barrier of, oh my god.

[00:27:05] 6: I need money to get a business started.

[00:27:07] 6: You don't at all.

[00:27:09] 6: 0.

[00:27:09] 6: Nada.

[00:27:10] 6: You know, I get that there's a desperation there and that you may not see that, but you only don't see that because you haven't been shown that.

[00:27:17] 6: And that's literally what we do.

[00:27:19] 6: We show them step by step how to do it.

[00:27:21] 6: It's it's not rocket science.

[00:27:23] 6: It just takes time.

[00:27:24] 6: It's the it's the easiest hard work there is.

00:27:28 Discussion on Starting a Business Without Needing Initial Capital

[00:27:27] 6: It's the easiest hard work there is.

[00:27:31] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:27:31] Chris Joyce: I had a guest on my show one time, and I immediately think of her story because it's kinda similar even though it's a totally different subject, but it's Sure.

[00:27:41] Chris Joyce: You know, they were digital nomads.

[00:27:43] Chris Joyce: And for me, I was like, I don't I would love to be a digital nomad, but I can't.

[00:27:47] Chris Joyce: Right?

[00:27:47] Chris Joyce: I'm married.

[00:27:47] Chris Joyce: I've got kids, all these things.

[00:27:49] Chris Joyce: And she said, why can't you?

[00:27:51] Chris Joyce: I said, well, because I'm married.

[00:27:52] Chris Joyce: I have kids, all these things.

[00:27:53] Chris Joyce: And she was like, you've been trained to think this way since you were born that a home is security.

[00:27:59] Chris Joyce: Yep.

[00:27:59] Chris Joyce: But what better way to teach your children besides homeschooling them going across the country, viewing these historical places that they're learning about and actually taking part in it versus being at home all the time and learning about it from a textbook or online.

[00:28:14] Chris Joyce: And I was like, man, that really sticks out to me.

[00:28:17] Chris Joyce: That's the way we've been trained.

[00:28:18] Chris Joyce: And I I don't know about you and how you came up as far as you know, I'm still in business school.

[00:28:23] Chris Joyce: I'm 34 years old, almost 30 5.

[00:28:26] Chris Joyce: So my education is taking a long time, and I am not as smart as a lot of these venture capitalist people that are out there.

[00:28:32] Chris Joyce: I'm an everyday man, and I've got things that I've understood from being in certain industries.

[00:28:37] Chris Joyce: But I was always taught from the beginning, if you have an idea, you build a business plan, you come up with funding for it, and then you open your company based off of that funding.

[00:28:49] Chris Joyce: And it sounds like to me, what you're doing is turning that upside down and saying, screw that.

[00:28:54] Chris Joyce: 100%.

[00:28:54] Chris Joyce: You don't need to have money first.

[00:28:56] Chris Joyce: You need to have the idea of solid business plan and people who can work it with you and then figure out how to build that company and make it happen.

[00:29:04] Chris Joyce: You need you don't have to worry about the money side of it.

[00:29:06] Chris Joyce: But at the same time, my follow-up question because I know you're itching to answer that Sure.

[00:29:10] Chris Joyce: And talk about it.

[00:29:11] Chris Joyce: But my follow-up question would be, then where is the money coming from?

[00:29:15] Chris Joyce: Because it does take money to start a business.

[00:29:16] Chris Joyce: So No.

[00:29:17] 6: that sound doesn't.

[00:29:19] 6: It does not.

[00:29:20] Chris Joyce: See, maybe I'm wrong.

[00:29:21] Chris Joyce: But

[00:29:22] 6: Listen.

[00:29:22] 6: What it needs is buy in on the idea so long that it has light at the end of the tunnel and what the understanding of what you're trying to accomplish is.

[00:29:33] 6: Okay?

[00:29:34] 6: So let me give an example.

[00:29:35] 6: When it when it's pharmacological, that started this company, you know, he doesn't have a pot to piss in.

[00:29:41] 6: I mean, little and and I I don't mean that as an insult to Matt, but Matt was at the time Yeah.

[00:29:48] 6: A graduate student, you know, struggling to pay rent in Philadelphia, and he wanted to do this idea.

[00:29:53] 6: You know?

[00:29:54] 6: Well, in order to do that idea, Matt would have either been had the have gotten capital from a VC, which the odds are 1 in 700 to 1 in 5000, very, very low.

[00:30:05] 6: He would have had to have rich Kelley parents that basically gave him the money, which Matt doesn't, or he'd have to go out there and basically pray and figure something else out.

[00:30:15] 6: You know?

[00:30:16] 6: But with Gusher, you don't need the money.

[00:30:19] 6: What what does what is the major cost?

[00:30:22] 6: Alright?

[00:30:22] 6: Let's say you had a 1,000,000, $2,000,000.

[00:30:24] 6: Well, just like I said earlier, sitting in the bank, what do you think that money would be used for?

[00:30:30] 6: And I don't care what the industry is.

[00:30:32] 6: Other than real estate, what's the major league one cost that that's used for?

[00:30:37] Chris Joyce: Building I mean, for me, personally, what I think of first is establishing the company LLCs, the documents formation, and then going into the marketing side website, you know, that kind of stuff.

00:30:50 Bootstrapping a Startup with Performance Based Equity

[00:30:49] 6: Right.

[00:30:49] 6: But that's because you're starting off as a solopreneur that's gonna do everything.

[00:30:53] 6: Okay?

[00:30:54] 6: If I'm starting a business, my number one cost is literally labor.

[00:31:00] 6: Labor.

[00:31:01] 6: It's Oh,

[00:31:02] 6: Labor takes up the bulk of cost.

[00:31:05] 6: So by bringing people on for performance based equity, the labor cost is basically eliminated, but it's exchanged for equity.

[00:31:15] 6: So think of it this way.

[00:31:16] 6: If you got $2,000,000 from a venture capitalist, and he owns 20% of your company with a 10,000,000 valuation of it, post money valuation afterwards, What are you gonna use that 2,000,000 on?

[00:31:28] 6: Well, if you don't have a product, you're gonna be using it on developers to develop the product.

[00:31:33] 6: You're gonna be using it on the CMO to go ahead and figure out the marketing plan.

[00:31:37] 6: You're gonna use it for the creative director, social media, whatever the hell it may be.

[00:31:42] 6: Well, guess what?

[00:31:43] 6: You can do the same thing with nothing and get the company off the ground, get traction, have it where it's self sustaining and generating revenue, and you don't have to kiss any venture capitalist's ass or play those stupid odds.

[00:31:55] 6: That's 1 in 5,000.

[00:31:56] 6: So the only issue that you have with Gusher is the problem of wrapping your head around that you can start now without nothing.

[00:32:03] 6: And so usually there comes a time Kelley quickly, once they can bring that first person on into their team, they're like, oh my god.

[00:32:11] 6: I don't need money.

[00:32:12] 6: So they may think it's BS to begin with, but the second they get that first person, oh, then Chris is god and Gusher is god.

[00:32:20] 6: So

[00:32:21] Chris Joyce: I don't I don't think it's BS, but you can absolutely see where the things that are beat into our heads, man.

[00:32:27] Chris Joyce: It's hard for me to wrap my head around this and understand that.

[00:32:31] Chris Joyce: So it's not even that Gusher's providing any type of money or financial Right.

[00:32:36] Chris Joyce: I mean, of course, you are.

[00:32:37] Chris Joyce: Right?

[00:32:37] Chris Joyce: Because I'm not having to pay for your software, your service, your, your network,

[00:32:42] 6: or or the, applicant's phones or Right.

[00:32:44] 6: Exactly.

[00:32:46] Chris Joyce: But the goal the thing here is is that you're not saying, we love the idea.

[00:32:50] Chris Joyce: You've got great people.

[00:32:51] Chris Joyce: Here's $2,000,000 make it happen.

[00:32:52] Chris Joyce: The point is, is that I'm, and I'm thinking product based here Yep.

[00:32:56] Chris Joyce: For me.

[00:32:56] Chris Joyce: And that was gonna be, my answer was developing that product.

[00:32:59] Chris Joyce: You know, like Outro Flask, I had Travis on the show.

[00:33:01] Chris Joyce: We talked about having to go to China to source these manufacturing plants that can make the product for you, have to actually source the material you're gonna make it from, how you're gonna do it.

[00:33:11] Chris Joyce: And your point is is that if I've got a really good new tumbler I wanna create and this person buys into it, their sweat equity is going to be, I can develop that product for you, and I have a source that can build it for us.

[00:33:26] Chris Joyce: And then that's where I save all of that money from that initial investment.

[00:33:29] 6: Listen.

[00:33:29] 6: We we bring manufacturers into deals.

[00:33:32] 6: Okay?

[00:33:33] 6: So whether it's plastic injection molding, whether it's metal, manufacturing, whether it's wood, type of systems and wood manufacturing or any components and materials and assemblers and everything else, especially with consumer goods type of products, those are easy to do.

[00:33:48] 6: Alright?

[00:33:49] 6: And you don't go to China to do it, believe it or not.

[00:33:52] 6: There's plenty of manufacturing in the US.

[00:33:54] 6: There's more than 50, 60000 manufacturers.

[00:33:57] 6: Contrary to belief, we've got an eff load of manufacturing here.

[00:34:00] 6: Even textiles, you name it, everything's still here.

00:34:04 Empowering Entrepreneurs with Gusher

[00:34:03] 6: Okay?

[00:34:03] 6: So electronics, high end electronics companies, we've created from the ground up using nothing.

[00:34:08] 6: I mean, literally nothing.

[00:34:10] 6: Where do you get that first order from?

[00:34:12] 6: Well, I tell you what.

[00:34:13] 6: If you go ahead and join Gusher, we sit down and actually go over that with you and how to do it.

[00:34:18] 6: And if you need one of us on a plane in Milwaukee, during winter to help close a manufacturer, we've done that.

[00:34:26] 6: You need us in, CES, to go ahead and close, the ex chairman of well, I can't say the bank anymore because they had issues recently, to invest in your, in your company.

[00:34:36] 6: Well, we're there to help close them.

[00:34:38] 6: So, you know, we help you every step of the way, but you don't need money.

[00:34:42] 6: You don't need money at all.

[00:34:44] 6: 0.

[00:34:44] 6: Nada.

[00:34:46] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:34:46] Chris Joyce: This could be a 3 hour podcast because this is just a mind blowing amount of information that I've absorbed in the 30 5 minutes we've been talking already.

[00:34:56] Chris Joyce: So

[00:34:57] 6: I mean, this way this way is great.

[00:34:59] 6: It's so every somebody out there controls every resource or every service or whatever it is that you need.

[00:35:07] 6: Alright?

[00:35:08] 6: Now imagine that person is your best friend.

[00:35:10] 6: Now imagine that person, you're solving a fundamental problem that they understand and get.

[00:35:18] 6: Well, guess what?

[00:35:19] 6: They're gonna go out of their way for you and work with you and not ask their friend for money.

[00:35:24] 6: Alright?

[00:35:24] 6: There's ways to do it and structure it.

[00:35:27] 6: So we just simply teach founders how to do that, how to go about it.

[00:35:30] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:35:31] Chris Joyce: This is amazing.

[00:35:32] Chris Joyce: So are y'all putting out information on social media?

[00:35:35] Chris Joyce: Like, where do I need to go to find out more and learn from you?

[00:35:38] 6: Yeah.

[00:35:38] 6: You just go to Gusher.

[00:35:39] 6: I mean, we literally that's pretty much where we operate.

[00:35:41] 6: We operate in our own world.

[00:35:43] 6: So gusher dot co, gusher.co, is where we are.

[00:35:48] 6: And, again, it doesn't cost anything.

[00:35:50] 6: You just join there.

[00:35:51] 6: And if you, need to schedule an appointment with me, I'll find you.

[00:35:54] 6: Alright?

[00:35:54] 6: But I'm very, very reachable, and all our people are very, very helpful.

[00:35:58] 6: Our only point is to help you get from Kelley point a to launch, whatever regardless of the product or service.

[00:36:04] Chris Joyce: Is it a good idea for me to join up if I don't necessarily have a company I wanna start or a product I wanna start, but I think that I could be a good addition to someone's team?

[00:36:13] 6: Yeah.

[00:36:13] 6: Absolutely.

[00:36:14] 6: I mean, you could take a look at our companies and everything that's sitting there.

[00:36:16] 6: It it just depends on what you do and what you're looking, to go ahead and be a part of.

[00:36:21] 6: The one thing is you should only go ahead and join a company, and and I mean this, if the idea fundamentally resonates with you.

[00:36:30] 6: If you look at that idea and you say, you know what?

[00:36:32] 6: I really wanna be a part of that.

[00:36:34] 6: I wanna make an impact in a big way, then you join it.

[00:36:38] 6: Don't join it if it's a transaction.

[00:36:41] 6: Transactional teams don't typically work.

[00:36:43] 6: It's something where they're all vested interest, in terms of the actual company, the product, the service, the ones that get it that have had that problem.

[00:36:51] 6: Those are the teams that and companies that work.

[00:36:54] Chris Joyce: Look.

[00:36:54] Chris Joyce: Can we all agree that any type of transactional business should just be eradicated from the world?

00:37:01 Building Strong Business Relationships

[00:37:01] Chris Joyce: I mean, I Absolutely.

[00:37:02] Chris Joyce: And I'm saying that from an honest perspective of I don't do sales transactionally.

[00:37:08] Chris Joyce: I do sales relationally.

[00:37:10] Chris Joyce: I wanna know who you are.

[00:37:11] Chris Joyce: Right.

[00:37:12] Chris Joyce: And I wanna know if you can be a benefit to me and if I can be a benefit to you.

[00:37:16] Chris Joyce: And if we can, great.

[00:37:17] Chris Joyce: And now don't get me wrong, it is very transactional.

[00:37:20] Chris Joyce: If you're gonna be a benefit to me, it means you could pay for my product.

[00:37:22] Chris Joyce: You could pay for my service.

[00:37:23] Chris Joyce: Sure.

[00:37:24] Chris Joyce: Whatever the case may be.

[00:37:25] Chris Joyce: But the point is, I don't want to start taking your money unless I know for a fact I can make a difference in what you're doing.

[00:37:32] Chris Joyce: So, yeah, let's get rid of transactional based business all the way around, man.

[00:37:35] 6: I Yeah.

[00:37:36] 6: But but that comes from a very old phrase in a way that, you know, don't take it personal.

[00:37:40] 6: It's just business.

[00:37:41] 6: You know?

[00:37:42] 6: I I get that on one level, but for me, business is extremely personal.

[00:37:48] 6: I take it personally.

[00:37:49] 6: I think that the people that I do with, that I deal with on a day to day basis, they're more than customers.

[00:37:54] 6: To me, they're family.

[00:37:56] 6: I had it recently with one of our founders.

[00:37:59] 6: His family member, his brother was actually dying in the hospital.

[00:38:02] 6: And who's the person that he calls up?

[00:38:03] 6: He calls me, because literally, we talk and we discuss everything.

[00:38:08] 6: So, you know, to us, our our companies, our portfolio companies, the people that we do business with, they are family.

[00:38:14] 6: And sometimes you have dysfunction, just like any other family, but it's definitely not transactional.

[00:38:20] 6: If it was transactional, I'd slit my throat because I can't stand doing commoditized transactional businesses anymore.

[00:38:26] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:38:27] Chris Joyce: Here at beefy marketing, man.

[00:38:28] Chris Joyce: I, I was just joking yesterday about because, you know, I made some comment or did something to Andrew and I was like, oh, I'm a be, oh, I was gonna be written up for eating his cookie at lunch yesterday.

[00:38:37] Chris Joyce: Right?

[00:38:37] Chris Joyce: And, I don't eat very many cookies.

[00:38:39] Chris Joyce: I'm actually losing a lot of weight, and I'm eating low carb and drinking, you know, water and stuff that doesn't have sugar in it.

[00:38:45] Chris Joyce: But, so I made that Joyce, and I was like, yeah.

[00:38:48] Chris Joyce: So now I'm gonna get written up.

[00:38:50] Chris Joyce: Excuse me.

[00:38:50] Chris Joyce: And the the thing is here, we don't have write ups because we are all connected.

[00:38:55] Chris Joyce: We don't have to have that corporate structure of, yes, there's a handbook.

[00:38:59] Chris Joyce: There's expectations.

[00:39:00] Chris Joyce: And, absolutely, if he needed to do something, he could do that to put it Intro writing to terminate me or whatever he needed to do, but we'll never get to that point.

[00:39:08] Chris Joyce: Because we're gonna have a real conversation.

[00:39:10] Chris Joyce: If he doesn't like something I do, we're gonna talk about it as friends, as, you know, basically brothers at this point.

[00:39:16] Chris Joyce: Yep.

[00:39:17] Chris Joyce: And if I'm wrong and I I can't get over it, then I'm going to leave and say, hey.

[00:39:22] Chris Joyce: We have irreconcilable differences here.

[00:39:24] Chris Joyce: Like, I'm gone.

[00:39:24] Chris Joyce: It's fine.

[00:39:25] Chris Joyce: I get it.

[00:39:26] Chris Joyce: You know?

[00:39:26] Chris Joyce: There we don't need that transaction of you're my employee.

[00:39:30] Chris Joyce: I am your boss.

[00:39:31] Chris Joyce: Do as I say.

[00:39:32] Chris Joyce: Treat me with respect.

[00:39:32] Chris Joyce: Do all this.

[00:39:33] Chris Joyce: It's like, no, bro.

[00:39:34] Chris Joyce: We're in this together.

[00:39:35] Chris Joyce: I want this company to succeed just as much as the CEO and owner wants it to succeed.

[00:39:39] 6: And and that goes with the size of company.

[00:39:41] 6: And that's why I love startups.

[00:39:43] 6: That's why I like entrepreneurial companies.

[00:39:44] 6: That's why I like fast growing companies.

[00:39:47] 6: The second they become a bureaucracy and have to have that in place for certain legal reasons, yeah, I lose all interest.

[00:39:53] 6: So I like that kind of $50,000,000 sweet spot.

[00:39:56] 6: You know?

[00:39:57] Chris Joyce: Yeah.

[00:39:58] Chris Joyce: Dude, what a hell of a conversation, man.

[00:40:00] Chris Joyce: I can't thank you enough for being on.

[00:40:01] Chris Joyce: Sure.

[00:40:02] Chris Joyce: is something we're gonna have to revisit and talk about again because this is just a great opportunity, I think, for a lot of people.

[00:40:07] Chris Joyce: So hopefully, we'll drive some of our listeners over to check out Gusher.

[00:40:11] Chris Joyce: And of course, we're gonna put all of your links down in the show notes as well, but thank you for being here and sharing this information with us today.

00:40:04 Interview with Gusher: A Platform for User-Generated Podcasts

[00:40:02] Chris Joyce: is something we're gonna have to revisit and talk about again because this is just a great opportunity, I think, for a lot of people.

[00:40:07] Chris Joyce: So hopefully, we'll drive some of our listeners over to check out Gusher.

[00:40:11] Chris Joyce: And of course, we're gonna put all of your links down in the show notes as well, but thank you for being here and sharing this information with us today.

[00:40:17] 6: Thanks for having me, John.

[00:40:18] 6: It's been a pleasure.

[00:40:20] Chris Joyce: Absolutely listeners.

[00:40:21] Chris Joyce: Thank you for tuning Intro another episode of small business origins, man.

[00:40:25] Chris Joyce: What a great episode, a lot of stuff to unpack there.

[00:40:28] Chris Joyce: I hope that this one can spark some conversations among listeners on all of our channels.

[00:40:32] Chris Joyce: All you have to do is go to www.smallbusinessorigin .com to check out everything you want about the show.

[00:40:39] Chris Joyce: We can talk about this.

[00:40:40] Chris Joyce: I'll create a blog post for it.

[00:40:42] Chris Joyce: You can go check that out and see all the things Gusher has going on and how this could make a difference for you as a budding entrepreneur.

[00:40:49] Chris Joyce: But that's it for us.

[00:40:50] Chris Joyce: It's been another great interview with an awesome guest and an awesome company.

[00:40:54] Chris Joyce: I hope you check us out on the next one next Thursday as we release every single episode every Thursday, we've got another great company and entrepreneur for you on those shows.

[00:41:03] Chris Joyce: But that's all.

[00:41:04] Chris Joyce: Stay beefy, my friends.

[00:41:08] Intro: Thanks for listening to another episode of Small Business Origins.

[00:41:12] John Kelley: I love an origin story.

[00:41:13] John Kelley: If you like

[00:41:14] Outro: what you just heard, leave us a review, subscribe,

[00:41:17] 4: and share with a friend.

[00:41:18] Chris Joyce: Guys, check this out.

[00:41:19] 5: They're gonna love it.

[00:41:20] 5: You're gonna love it.