Unlocking Potential and Cultivating Ideas: A masterclass with Entrepreneur Mr. Tats

And just before we have to pack up, there was a guy that came up and said I love entrepreneurs. And then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a crisp $20 bill and gave it to us, and at the time I just got a million dollars. You're rich, I can retire, but it always stuck in my head. The idea wasn't great, the execution was very poor, there was so many things wrong with it, but there's a benefit for those that try, because you're putting yourself in a better direction. I discovered something, and when I'm having a bad day with something, I just go back to that possibility, whether it's to start a company, whether it's to fail at a company, but know that a comeback is always in you.

Oh, baby, I got a good one for you. I get to have a conversation with my friend, tats, who I met in the omniverse and I've learned a ton from him, and in this conversation there are so many nuggets. I recommend you, like, take out your notepad and you're going to want to jot some of this stuff down, because it is powerful stuff, especially if you have that entrepreneurial mindset or spirit. If you don't know Tats, you need to follow him and connect with him. He is the host of the specified growth podcast. I'm going to leave some links down there, of course, so you can connect with him. He's amazing. He's also the CEO of Kostagra. This guy has been in the game for a long time and he is a gamer Like. He's somebody that I look up to and he freely shares his wisdom and advice throughout this conversation. One of the things that we talk about is taking risks in business and what that feels like and what you should be prepared for If you are considering starting your own business. We also talk about one of his major interests, which is discovering and nurturing potential, which you already know. If you're about leadership, it's all about discovering and nurturing the potential and others, and then you know, I got him a little uncomfortable. I managed to squeeze out of him the answer to what his world-class skills are, because he talked about, you know, world-class level skills and such. Let me know if you were able to tell that he got a little bit uncomfortable, because he's a super humble human being and of course he's going to be uncomfortable talking about himself. So before we get into the conversation, I want to give a shout out to my sister, miss Amy Campbell, lnm family member. Amy left this amazing message on the no BS with Jen and Jess livestream and it just filled my heart with joy. Amy says with the influence of this group, I made 2023 the year of me. I drew back from overly serving others and redirected that energy into myself. It's been transformative in a variety of areas, which has not always been comfortable or smooth, but vital to my overall well-being. Amy girl, you've done the same thing for me and I'm sure you've done the same thing for my system is Jennifer Lacey and folks. If you haven't connected with the no BS with Jen and Jess tribe, we live stream every other Saturday. Yes, more of me talking and flapping my gums, but the critical element there is that whole community is indeed a community. The conversations, the ideas, the experience, the hope, the thoughts, all come from the contributions of the community members, of people that are on and active in the live stream. So when you get a chance, check it out. Holidays are coming, baby, you know you got some time. And here we go to Mr Tats. We are here with my friend, hero, pseudo mentor, mr Tats. How are you doing, tats?

I don't know if I deserve that title, I just do what you say, jesse.

Man, I was reflecting in preparation for our conversation and they're like man, it's like we just connected. I felt like we connected on LinkedIn or TikTok or maybe both, and then boom, all of a sudden we were like in each other's space and for me it's been very fruitful. I've learned a lot and you've contributed a lot into some of the decisions that I've made. So, anyway, for me it happened super fast. I don't know about you, tats, what do you think? I think it's the same thing.

It happened naturally. And then you just realize that you are expanding in terms of your influence, your network, the community, and then there is the overlap that occurred, and I don't know who did what, but it just seemed very natural. So that was fun.

Yeah, and in terms of expanding my waistline is also expanding Tats, and that's another area that you have given me motivation, because you made a decision not too long ago to the round. What was the answer to a question? It was a question of what would you try if you knew you couldn't fail. You remember that? Yeah, not only did you answer the question, you also took steps in that direction. Can you paint a picture for the L&M family so they understand what we're talking about?

I like that what you're talking about, because entrepreneurship is all about that taking risks. Personal growth is all about taking risks. Now, I'm not saying jump off a cliff. I think we are all operating under our full potential, every single one of us. I think it's more fun and I think, beneficial if we can find ways to discover what that extra gear is. I think life is more fun and I'm not saying you should work all the time or something like that, but I think if there's something that makes you feel uncomfortable, go there. Yes and it's hard, it's not easy and it's easy to go back and stuff like that. I'm not professing that I'm Good at it. I'm just around people that are like you, instigators.

It's helpful and so going after that thing that, that scares you a little bit. What are those things right now Tatts, those things that are on the edge, that kind of intrigue you but also Push you back a little bit because there may be a little too far off the edge.

Yeah, I mean I can. I can go back to the difference between holding back and stepping over. Is it's small, like when I love studying people that are like really good at this because I want to get better at this, and they are fearful, they are uncomfortable, but they're just a little bit better on a day, like tiny sliver, better on a daily basis. And I always wonder what that is for people, right, if it a support system, a motto, a reminder, something like that. And if I were to say why I've been so persistent with entrepreneurship is, it goes back to when I was 10. I had a friend that had a pear tree in his backyard and and so there's a bunch of pears and I had this idea where let's take these pears and they were ugly pears and Sell them right. So we found a location which was near community convenience store that wasn't selling fruit and we set up a table and there's a bus stop there and two ten year old kids and we're selling fruit and we're doing horrible, right, because you know the fruit looks terrible. And just before we have to the pack up, there was a guy and I think as a Girl friend, our wife that came up and said I love entrepreneurs. And Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a crisp $20 bill and gave it to us and at that time that was a million dollars. That was a I just got a million dollars. You're rich, retire. But it always stuck in my head. The idea wasn't great, the execution was very poor, there's so many things wrong with it, but there's a benefit for those that try right, because you're putting yourself in a better direction. I discovered something, and when I'm having a bad day with something, I just go back to that Possibility. Maybe it's a natural temperament, but this, hey, you never know. Every day is a day to turn it around. Every action is a New experience, a new thing to learn, and although I had a few detours here and there, I always remember this whether it's to start a company, whether it's to fail at a company, whether it's to do well, not don't get too excited when things go well, but know that a comeback is always in you if you don't let yourself go down. Oh, man.

Okay, so you mentioned the failures and the comebacks and you're now your CEO and I did a little bit of research. Let's say I'm gonna see this question first. How many patents have you been a part of?

I Haven't personally. My what happened is when I was first starting out as an entrepreneur, I knew I needed help, right, and this was not the days where you could just Listen to a bunch of podcasts, read a bunch of books and and they'll have like business breakdowns. Like it's amazing how much information is available to people, yes, but back then there was a lot less stuff on the internet. This was like almost 25 years ago and and then the amount of disclosure on what people were doing wasn't there right. So I my path because I come from a sporting back was I need a mentor, I need a coach, and a friend of mine introduced me to a brilliant inventor named Peter Rosen, who's still my business partner. We still we have our venture together, but he invented the Windows media player and sold it to Bill Gates. He worked on some early 3d printing technology. He worked on a patent that was for steel measurement that later was cited in an MRI. So he's genius and I'm like I want to learn from this person. I don't need to get paid, I need to learn, and I did whatever I could to help and we built the relationship, so that was really important. I'm always big on mentorships. I had. I've had tons of people help me in different ways over the years, way before I I Felt I deserved it and stuff like that. So I'm always trying to get back in that because I just remember so many times where people help me and it's not like I have it all figured out, but I know that if people are early in their path I can remember to some extent what they're going through. So even if it's just listening and if there are looking for advice, happy to, I like to be there. If I do whatever I can, because people were there for me.

I yeah, and so you got this mentor early on. You've touched on the your athletic prowess, because I know a little bit of my, that for sure. But the patent thing. So did you co-ride, did you do research? What was that?

What's the problem? My, my interest is two things. One is I love discovering the Potential in people and helping to develop that, and the second thing is I like I don't know why, and I think I think you're like this too it is, if someone or there's a good idea or something good happening, I just have this Urge to want to promote it or light it on fire in a good way to spread it. I think Ray Dalio had that in his book on the different types. I like to fast forward it. So my, my goal because peter invents stuff, creates stuff is to make that go places, build support, get feedback, do that. So that is my skill set. So I'm not a creative inventor, I'm not patent. We wrote a book together. We analyze all of Edison's and whatever his patents. But my interest was how did he get his ideas to spread? And and Peter comes from or about hey, how do I invest my time, resources into the right next innovation? Because it's an art, is a big part of an art, and it's sometimes it's very hard to get a high success rate.

Yeah, so the book is that the overcoming and venture.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, and so that one was a study into some stuff and also learning how to. How do you keep things alive? Or because we you start, sometimes maybe you haven't, I have, I'll start something. It's like disaster Nobody cares, no value for anybody. But there was a nugget or two in there that connected to the next thing Is that a common experience?

Yeah, I we started the book out of frustration because I we had an agency that helped companies launch products so 70% consumer products, 30% industrial and technology and I was involved in helping launch like over 100 products and some of those were ours, but most of those were other peoples and we just came up with this same problem. Right, and I mentioned this sometimes. It's something called a 3m test, which I I got from a very brilliant marketer named Joel Sugarman. Have you heard of the 3m test?

I, I can't remember off the top of my head.

It's not talked about too much, but but here's how it goes. Um, uh, jesse, you have a brilliant idea, right? Oh, you're so excited, right, it's in the middle of the night, right, and you know, for, for those that don't know you, you can't wait till the morning. And then you go to a Prospects house, right, you bang on their door and they don't answer because it's 3m. You're a crazy person, you, but you, you have to get in and see this person. You kick the door down, you go upstairs, you open their door, you shake them and say, hey, I have a brilliant idea, and you go blah. And then one of two things is gonna happen, right. One, they're gonna be super excited and stay up with you. Or two, they're gonna say you're crazy. I'm gonna go back to sleep, or three actually, I mentioned this to someone. There's a third option. I never considered it they're gonna call the cops. That's a new one I learned from someone is I would call the cops yes. So two out of the three are bad, and the idea is that there's very few ideas that are genius out of the gate. It's more of an iteration process. Yeah, and why we wrote the book is that people Including myself, because even after writing this book I made these mistakes, so it's so easy to fall into is and Peter will say that too we both have right because we did this together is that we have to stress, test these things right and we have to have a trusted group of people that are credible Not your mom, right? There's a book the mom test right? Yeah, no, not your mom or your friends that tell you the things, but the people that understand enough about the business to be critical. So, and can it Um about how bad of an idea it is?

or or stress test at least so that's what the book was exploring is. What is that? How do we get into that?

We're just trying to communicate that better, right, because we we ran across this so Often and it breaks my heart because here's the problem, right, the success rate is so low. If you don't know what you're doing, it's one in a thousand. If you don't know what you're doing, it's like one in a thousand. If you know what you're doing, yeah, someone know what you're doing. And your big company with a lot of resources, it's one and four. And if your world class is one and two, but people go into it thinking that it's a sure thing. So here's someone that put up their house on a one in a thousand bet, okay, yeah. Yeah. It's heartbreaking, like I had people that would like here's an nda, sign the nda or whatever. And then they go to you go to a Coffee shop and they have a bag. And they had a bag, okay. And they're like looking around because they're paranoid because someone's going to steal their idea. And then they open it and it's like a puppet. And what just happened? I got a patent on it. It costs ten thousand dollars and I'm like I feel so bad for them. I just don't want that to happen. But it's, there's a big gap and I just wanted you know, we wanted to create an awareness around that and. But just shifting to the entrepreneurship stuff, with it, if you have a service business, you can change the service. Right. You go out there. Your service is bad. No one buys it. Awesome. Change the brochure, change the website. But if you order 10 000 from overseas Right, because some of these things, you need the volume to get the thing. Right, because you can't prototype it or something like that you can prototype it or get the orders up front. That's cool, but I think we wanted people to do their homework, so that's how I started.

So a couple of things. Say there's a wacky LNM family member out there that wants to start a business, yeah and just blank face AB option. What would you recommend Start? A service business or start a product business.

Yeah, it's hard for me to answer it, but I think if you're not sure what you're doing, I would say service. If you've never run a business before, service is a good way to learn it. The cost of starting most service businesses are very low and you learn the ropes of it. And I've made every mistake in the book. And essentially one of the early mistakes for entrepreneurs is I and the entrepreneur thinks that you're the center of the universe when it comes to that business. I know everything. If someone else does it, they're not going to do it better and of course this is all wrong. But that transition in mindset and also structure is like the first thing and there's a bunch of other things that come with that. But it took me an enormous amount of time to understand that. And just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. But the second part of that is you. Some people read that in a book and say I know what, I'm going to outsource everything and then try to outsource without knowing anything and that's a second mistake. That's if you know nothing. That's not good either. If you think you're the center of the universe and you're piecing it out, that's also a problem. But my mistake was more on. I was always like you to learn, so I learned something and then I wasn't good at it, I was OK at it and you get stuck because you run out of the hours of the day.

Yeah, yeah, hours and energy, right, both of those they waste all the time. Yeah, ok, I think that's helpful. That's. There were times where people used to talk to me about starting a plumbing company, because that's where my roots are. I came up as a plumber, my dad's a plumber, and I always said, hell, no, I ain't starting no business, that's nuts. But the only reference I had to a business was a plumbing business, which is a service-based business, but it's different, right, and no, I don't want those headaches. Fast forward to today. I'm running my own business. It's totally a service-based business, but it's not the same. It doesn't have all the same moving parts in terms of plumbing, repairs or construction and all of that, those contributing factors that can make it a damn nightmare. Yeah.

I guess the question is how much money is it going to consume to operate it Inventory credit terms and stuff like that. And the question is many people that are very good at something like, let's say, michael Gerber's email stuff, which is your plumber, and then natural progression to start a plumbing business, but are you a business person At that point, you're a business person. It helps the trade. But are you a business person? Do you want to be a business person? And I think I always wonder like entrepreneurship has been glorified currently. It's like what everyone wants Side hustle, that's entrepreneurship. Everything is called entrepreneurship. But I remember when I first started as an entrepreneur it was like when you tell people you're an entrepreneur, they look at you like, oh, you can't get a job. Yes, so you just got fired and you're looking for a job and you have a business card and it's the kind of look that people, whereas now it's what is it Society and stuff like that. And I think I feel like there's too much emphasis. I think a job is great. It's very well suited for certain people. If you had a bad experience in your boss and then you want to start a business, think about finding a good boss first, because there's a big gap between that right. I know like people joke with their early ons. Okay, so you're an entrepreneur, so you work twice as much and get paid half.

I think that's perfect advice, tats. If you're so, motivation to start a business is because your boss sucks, it's easier to find a better boss. Get clear on the type of leadership that you thrive under and start learning about starting a business. Tats, I'm sure I didn't do a lot of research when I decided to start my business. I quit my job. I had money, right, I had money in the bank to cover me for 18 months so I could learn it, and I've been. I'm sure hell, I'm learning stuff all the time, but it wasn't because of I was fussy about my boss. That is really not a good motivator and, man, there is so much to learn. If you have a service, that's great, but you got to market it and market it some more. And read just Copywriting, social media, like all of those things. There's a ton the bottom line. There's a ton of effort there.

Now there's the three buckets, right, like you talked about it demand generation, operations, which is keeping your internal team happy, the external customers happy, and the finance aspect. And at each stage of the business, your knowledge needs to be higher and higher on it, so you're never quite there with it. So if you like personal development, you're okay with a high level of uncertainty and it's in you like no one can convince you out of it, then that's what you do. Yes, yeah because it's.

It can be lonely and it's a long foggy road right. There's no straight, clear line like. You're making decisions based on all the information you have at the moment, all the knowledge you have at the moment he's I'm just making the best decision I possibly can. I don't know exactly how it's gonna work out, so you definitely got to have that. So, in terms of advice and you mentioned people coveting their ideas and the fear of having their ideas stolen how do you deal with that and what do you recommend people? Rather, how do you think about Guarding and sharing ideas?

Yeah, there's different ways to run businesses, but I always like to think about it as do you have a competitive advantage? If you were to take everything that you were doing and Post it on the internet, would someone be able to take you out of business? Hey, are you a brilliant marketer? Are you do? Are you great at developing relationships? Are you great at writing patents or building things? I Think everyone has a world-class skill in them somewhere. Some are more commercially viable than others, but I think everyone has something a. Do you know what that is? And if it's not quite world-class yet, what would you need For it to be the next level? Another question is could you add something to it to make it better? Yeah, because if you are a world-class marketer, it doesn't matter. You are, day in, day out, better than others. You will eventually find a way to succeed or you are committed to becoming a world-class Marketer. Right Bob Berg the go-giver. I love his yeah oh yeah, and I think I don't know if I talked to you about the three weaknesses. I love this one and the three weaknesses are one weakness is One, for instance, I'm very bad at cooking, very bad, and I've offered to improve my cooking skills to my wife and she wants nothing to do with it. Yeah, yeah, but luckily, because you know what's nothing to do with it, I do not need to improve that, nor it's will it be appreciated, so I can let that weakness sit. Now there are weaknesses Like, for instance, I had to become a lot better in finance and operations. You have to mitigate like. You have to take that weakness and make it okay, like it. You don't need to make your world-class because out of the three buckets demand generation, I think you need to be good in one and then you need to be at least average in the other two. So I had to at least get average in the other two and early in my that's called the first ten years I was you, you deal with it and whatever, and that wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough and I just had to dive head into it and and take it in the face. But so you have to. Those are the stress. Weakness number two, which is you have to mitigate the weakness. The weakness needs to become just not a weakness. It doesn't need to be a strength, but you got to mitigate it, yeah, and the last one that's the weakness is Depending on your vision and your goals. You have to take a weakness and turn it into a strength. And think about Elon and his Mars missions and all this stuff. Early in his career, he wasn't very good at communicating and gathering interests and stuff like that. He was reading books all the time, yeah, but at some point he realizes that if you wanted to convince people of his ideas, he had to create his own style, because he's not the perfect public speaker, but that would translate to Influence in large groups of communities and people, to to create a grand vision. If you have a vision that requires a current weakness to turn into strength, that's what you have to do. You're motivated. You put everything into taking that weakness and and making it strong right. So entrepreneurship has this crazy ability to find what you suck it. All these things are interconnected and eventually Entrepreneurship finds your next weakness, because that will become your bottleneck. And if you love personal development, it's great, but it's a relentless thing of it keeps finding things you're not good at and it challenges you to get better at it, and the day you stop doing that is the day you go down.

Mmm, mmm, mmm. Yeah, I think that's a beautiful summary. Entrepreneurship requires a relentless pursuit of personal development. Yeah, I'm feeling that right now. Tats, you mentioned that everybody has a world-class skill. What is your world-class skill, tats? And you? All you have to do is name the top top 10.

I don't have 10. Let's call it. I have an interest and a curiosity around finding people and their potential. So, I get a kick out of learning about people's super power and I get an extra kick out of it if I know what it is before they do and if I can help them, because I look at an individual, I try to listen and see what their potential could be in three years and I can sometimes visualize what that could look like. So that's one interest. And the second interest is if you look at Seth Godin's idea virus book way back in the day, I've always been fascinated on how ideas spread, like when we launched our company we're very lucky where we got on the show Dragons Den and we piggybacked, we lobbied, so there was some effort on our part, some tactical stuff, but at the end of the day we won the competition. Peter did a brilliant pitch which gave us 12 million views before YouTube was as dominant as it is now and also it gives $100,000. So basically that gave us a really big boost and I'm always fascinated why some ideas spread and others don't and why. How do you facilitate that Right, or how do you get better at it? It's called strategic luck, but how do you get better at it on average? And I'm always interested in people that are good at it and I'm always interested in the anatomy of why certain things take off and sometimes there's no reason, but I like to study it.

Yeah, so I heard two, two world-class skills.

World-class is big for me, but I think because I love it. Yeah, I've developed some skills around it.

Yeah, and it's both around and for me it's landing, nurturing potential and nurturing ideas or cultivating those things. It's so fun. Where did that come from? Tats? Wow, what did I tell you? Nuggets? Baby Tats was dropping bombs. Some of the things I'm like. Oh, as we were talking, I was like son of a God. I'm going to have to remember this and practice this going forward, because then three buckets idea and the three am idea. I'm guilty of thinking every one of my ideas is a brilliant genius. Three am idea. Come back next week for part two of our conversation. Promise. It is also going to be filled with tons of value, because I don't think Tats does it any other way. I want to give a shout out to our sponsor of the show becoming the promise you are intended to be. No, you know, the 20 stories I shared in the book were pretty revealing, and one of the reasons that I put so much out there was because my life is amazing right now. A large part of that is because of you guys. Y'all have been ultra supportive and I've done a lot of shameful things in my life and my life is still amazing, and so my hope is that you or someone you know that might be caught up in that self-destructive cycle can latch on to one of my stories and realize that they don't have to stay there. You don't have to stay stuck. I am living proof that we can get unstuck. One of the biggest things that helped me get unstuck and stay unstuck is serving others, and so you don't have to get the book to serve others. What you got to do is embrace your gifts and talents and start sharing them and, if you get a chance, check out the book, be cool and we'll talk at you next time.

Peace.