Lunch & Learn - Session 9

Good day wherever you are in the world. I just actually got off the call with someone in Saudi Arabia. So it depends upon if it's evening, it's morning, it's lunchtime. But this is lunch and learn with the founder's office. Yay. Right before Thanksgiving. We're so happy to be here. Joining me, I'm Tom Powell. Jacqueline Kuyper is our general counsel and part of our Women Talk Finance. And her co conspirator in that area is Candace Powell, who runs her family office and our back office team. We hope to have a guest today, but she may not be able to make it. So we're holding tight. So if she pops in, I'll give you the introduction and of course it'll be a fanfare scenario. But until then, what's cool and happening out in the world?

We got snow yesterday. I don't mean to make you jealous, but Minnesota got its first snow last night.

We do not have much snow.

You can come here. Ours is what they call dusty, crusty. It's crunchy. It started as ice and then moved into snow.

No, we, we, we have some of that. You, you have one slight, slight, itsy bitsy challenge. Even though you have created one of the greatest skiers in the history of the world out of that area. You don't have mountains.

No, we barely have hills.

You barely have hills, and most of those are because of landfill. So.

Is that true? I am very trusted. I'm pretty gullible. Okay. Thank you.

He's being a snow snob.

He's being a ski snob right now.

Ignore this man, everyone.

I'm being, I'm being a mountain snob.

He's a mountain snob. I know. For those who don't know, we live in the Sierras, so we, we love the mountain life and love our snow.

And. Yeah. So we're big skiers if you, if you aren't aware.

Yeah. And Candace, how many, how many people come into Thanksgiving dinner?

Auntie said 26. Family member. It's just getting ridiculous. It's just getting a little outlandish, to be honest. And when I tell people, and like when we see the list of the group, the family text, it makes total sense, but when you put a number number to it, it's excessive.

Yeah.

You're not, you're not going to cut anybody out. You're like, well, there might be a couple, but, you know, I'll probably.

We cap our events.

Yeah.

At fewer attendees than are coming to Thanksgiving dinner. I had that realization yesterday that we cap Our events because it starts to lose value when you get too big.

Yeah, that is true. Well, fortunately. Fortunately, my sister is hosting us this year and I think we're bringing potatoes or something like that. But Jackie, any big Thanksgiving plans?

Nope.

Gonna help host. And I'm making my cranberry sauce later.

Nice. Nice. Well, let's get started. I don't think Jen's gonna join us, so we'll have her on at another time. We knew that we were pushing it because it is Thanksgiving week here, but nonetheless, we had two calls today that were about capital raising. Actually, three calls today. So one was in Saudi, one was on the east coast this morning, which was great. And one was in Austin, Texas. So people are still out there raising capital, getting ready for what they're going to do for the launch next year. Business is going and you guys had questions set up. So I guess I'm on the firing line.

Well, I think I want to highlight it shows it's a holiday week and.

Capital doesn't sleep. It doesn't take a rest. Founders, as much as.

As much as we get to have the freedom and all the wonderful things that come with it. What are all of our founder friends doing right now during this week?

It depends upon where they are in the cycle. A handful of them are trying to figure out, damn it, how are we going to get the turkey paid for? Right. Because they're trying to keep the lights on at the same time.

Fancy. Hi, Jen.

Hi, Jen. Hi, Jen.

Okay, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do the first intro now that you're coming on there. But we were talking about what founders are doing right now, so you're gonna be able to do this. But let me do. Let me. Let me introduce you to my. Imagine having someone in your corner who can see exactly what is holding you back before you can articulate it. Consider a coach who understands founders at the level where pressure, performance and personal well being intersect. That is where Jen Godot does her best work.

The unique combination of letters in your French name. Jen. It's tricky as a kuiper.

They were even telling me how to do this.

I. I understand.

To be fair, if I can give Tom a little credit here, he only calls her Wonder Woman.

That is true.

So it's. And if he's going formal, he calls her Jen Wonder Woman.

True. That is true.

That's her full government name as far as we are concerned. Yeah.

Well, nonetheless, I am pleased to introduce everyone to Wonder Woman. My friend, our friend, Jen Godet. Yeah, I got it got it.

Nailed it.

There we go. It takes three, four, five times before we get there. Jen, thank you for coming.

It's my pleasure. Apologies for being late. I had a zoom update randomly when I opened up.

Zoom.

Like, everyone's off today right before the holiday. We'll just sneak this in at noon Pacific on a Wednesday before a holiday.

So.

So you. You work with decades of sports medicine people and collegiate professionals, Olympic athletes. Tell us a little bit about that. You got to give us some background.

Yeah, so I, by trade, I'm a physical therapist. I had a dual degree in X biz and psychology, went to physical therapy after that, and I started in sports medicine on the rehab side and quickly realized that peak human performance is where it's at. You can only make so much money in physical therapy and rehabilitation, however, if you build a clinic that also focuses on how do I get the good to be great, the great to be elite, to go to maybe the. The Olympics and then perhaps the podium, that is really where the money is. Because elite athletes, much like entrepreneurs and founders who are successful, we're always looking for that 0.1% competitive edge. And if you can provide that edge in any way, shape or form, whether it's in the training and the recovery, in the mindset, in technology, then you are always have a solid business plan in a way to keep moving forward. So that kind of is how I transitioned from treatment and to peak performance. And then I started mentoring in business because I was very successful in practice. It was everybody's life goals. But it got boring, and I wanted to move into business because it was the next challenge.

It does get boring at times. Right? I mean, you're just like, okay, what's the next challenge? How do I. Oh, I have so much success. I just. Yeah, I love that. I love it. So you've been investing in businesses for how long?

So, I mean, are you. Are we. Are we counting my bootstraps clinics or.

Yes.

So since 2001.

Wow. Okay, so we've got. We've got. I hate to say it this way. Candace gets mad at me when I do this stuff, but a quarter of a century of practical experience, this isn't. AI generated LinkedIn bullshit of taking somebody else's ideas out there. Right. This is actually your boots on the ground, working with founders, founders, entrepreneurs, and all the stuff that goes there. And by the way, I love AI. I just. Am. I. I'm finding all these people out there that are regurgitating things from the people that have been out there actually doing It. And they're saying it like they're a master. And you've actually are a master. You're. You're one of the people that. That gets us done.

Thank you for saying that. I feel like everything I learned. There's a million things more to learn every step of the way.

Well, you know, I'm going to. I know the. I know Candace and Jackie, the WTF of the world here have the tough questions for you. But I want to know. Tell me some bloody stories. Some things that didn't go well. Doesn't have to be you take.

Open up your wounds for us.

Come on, let's see.

Let's see. When it's all the things.

You just spent time with us up at Tahoe, so, you know, mean it's all the. It's all the gories because you can see around the corner when you and I are up there, it's just sharks and we're talking about. Oh, don't do that.

No.

Ah.

And if I can add context to why this question is critical for everybody listening or watching the recordings, the best thing you can do as a founder, just even as a human, is learn from other people's experiences. We call it ope. This is a great opportunity. There's so many people who are like, I learned a lot there wouldn't do that the same way. And so when we ask for bloody stories, we want to know because it lets everyone else learn from the experience and not have to go through it themselves.

So, yeah, well, being open with it.

Yeah, it's wisdom. So I can tell tons of these. I have so many bloody stories.

Come on, woman thing.

I. For starters, I am a go big or go home individual. I am all or nothing. And so I throw everything. So when I fail, I fail epically. So I think one of the best things to talk about is actually my transition to investor from founder, because this is something that I have seen played out. Even though I've given my clientele the warnings, it seems to be something that everybody makes this mistake as well. You know, after. After the clinic exit, I had a lot of money to deploy. And back then, I may be aging myself. There weren't amazing people like the founder's office who can walk you through the process. It was sort of like the Wild West. And I believed because I was a high performer who would achieve the goals and do all the things that all founders who were looking to have an impact in the world operated under the same sort of operating system. Boy, was I wrong. You want to talk about Lose everything that you had just made very quickly. That was me because I looked at it from the opportunity and I looked at it from the. This is what I would do. And of course they're gonna do that too. Yeah, of course.

Of course.

You know, I. I was somebody, and I still am. I love people, and that's why I stay in consulting and coaching is because I really see the potential. Potential in people and love to get them to that next level or be a part of that journey. And so I had that innate belief and I just trusted the people and did not do people due diligence enough. Okay. Every failure that I have had to date has a first and a last name. Every one of them in investing. Every one of them. And even. Even along the way, I mean, like, it was to the tune of almost $10 million of a loss. So it was a pretty big fail when. Oh, that's. You're in the pumpkin. It was my first one. Right? It was my first one. And it's the. It's the one that you want to just throw up because you worked so hard to get your first exit and you just, like, gave it all back.

Here you go. Here you go.

Those first ones feel way bigger than your big losses because you've been seasoned like you've already. Once you've already gone through a big a failure that's sizable and size doesn't equate to dollar for a lot of times it's. It's the time of your life. It's where you took the missteps and then you get better at losing.

You get better at making mistakes and accepting and taking the lesson and moving forward and applying what you need to know, like what you learn and take it forward and knowing that you can earn it back, knowing that you can make it back, knowing that you can. You've got the skills, you've done it once, you can do it bigger and better the next time.

So it doesn't fix the I want to just throw up and hide all at the same time feeling in your gut. And it takes a lot. I'm going to be honest, like, when you take it in the. In the gut like that, it takes a lot to get up the courage to do it again. Because I basically worked for several years, got. Got this amazing position where I moved from, you know, founder and entrepreneur to investor. I still was. I still was working. I still was consulting and doing things in sports medicine, but it was more laissez faire because I'm like, I've got all this it's going to be great. Like, it's that thing that you go through on the first. And then it was like, oh, goodness, I'm going to have to like, buckle down and figure this out again because, you know, it's, it's, it's real and I have to redeem myself. And so, like, I will tell you, I fail big and I fail often, but that drives me forward because what happens when we fail is that's what's the taste in our mouth. And I'm not one. And most of the people I work with, we don't like to have that be our, our last statement. We're going to try harder the next time. We're going to learn more. We're going to do what we need to do and learn from that mistake so we don't repeat that same mistake. So anybody who's out there failing is okay. And if you're not feeling, not showing up big enough, but it's what you take from those failures, those lessons. If you repeat that failure, that's when it's not okay.

You want to learn from that mistake that you know you will never make.

In.

Well, this one is actually in business. It's really embarrassing. So I. Because it was later on, it was 2018 when I made this mistake and I should have known better. But for those of you who know the speaking circuits, what used to happen before QR codes? Because technology wasn't really there yet, Maybe it was 2017 when this happened, probably. So I was speaking all over the world. I had, you know, I was using that to fill my coaching and consulting practices. And, and back then we had like, what we called speaker cards that we like, had all the participants do, and they would just like. It would be the key takeaways from our talk. And then they could give you your information like on the other side, it was perforated. It was perfect. Well, that was working really well for me. And I asked my amazing husband to help me to get the next order done because, I mean, I was going through thousands and thousands of these every month, right. So he did and he thought he'd get clever and he'd make some changes. Well, truth be told, he changed one digit in my phone number. One digit. And my mistake. I'm not blaming this on him at all. I did not check the work. I didn't look at it after. So whether it's a team member, whether it's your printing house, whatever, I didn't check it. I had thousands upon thousands of these. Talk, comment, card, contact Cards made. And I had them also make thousands of business cards because back then we were still using business cards, like the physical kind. And so I was talking. I was still in speaker circuit, but I was not closing anything. I went from closing like 30% of every room.

Ouch.

Nothing. So I'm like months into this. I think close to six months into this, and I talked on my home turf. I was living in Houston at the time, still do, but about to move, and someone came up to me and said, I just want you to know that the phone number on your card is wrong.

Oh, man.

And of course, that was the top contact above my email, because back in the day, it was still very much. You made phone calls. Right. And so I was like, thank you for telling me. I looked. I was mortified. And she goes, by the way, the guy whose phone number that is is really ticked off at you. He said, you tell me who the heck this gen person is. So, of course I'm like, mortified. I've lost six months worth of pipeline business. I was about ready to not speak anymore, thinking that that was the problem, that it was no longer landing. That wasn't it at all. It was. I was bringing trust because I had the wrong number, the wrong contact.

That's just amazing, though. Nobody. Nobody reached out and told you that till that person.

No, because what. What I learned, and this is really important, is whatever the first contact you have, if it's your website and your website link is broken, they're not going to go to the next one.

Yeah, that's true. They don't. They. You know what that goes to? That goes partly to our. As you were up on stage and we're talking about, you know, credibility. Every time you do anything that loses credibility, it's so hard to get that back.

Yep.

And so when they're like, well, why would I want to do business with this person? Because they can't even get their phone number Right.

Yeah, right, Right.

I mean, come on, really? I'm going to hire them as a coach. Come on. They can't even get their phone number right.

You still married.

It was. It was mortifying for me. Like, I. Like, I couldn't believe it. But imagine what would have happened. I was ready to stop speaking. That would have been a horrible decision.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Of course.

The history could have changed.

Questioning everything you're doing, like, no one cares. Like, my message isn't landing with anyone. Do I even have the competency to be doing? Like, it makes you. It would make me question everything.

Absolutely. And as an athlete, mindset, same. I was questioning everything. And so, you know, I was super grateful to the person who came up to me and shared that I gave her a free coaching package. So I was like, how can I help your business? How can I do this? You know, it was like a. It was like a $10,000 package. So, like, I just gifted that to her because I was so grateful for the feedback of. Of that and the opportunity to improve what I was doing. So. What?

So, because we tend to move these down. That's just. That is an amazing story. You obviously recovered from that. You are an amazing speaker, by the way, for anybody that ever gets up there. We had so much fun in Lake Tahoe. Just like instant, instant friendship, instant ability to be sitting out there. And it just like the side glances when people are making pitches up there, you can. They show up on the film, by the way. It's really. It's like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, we got that. We had this, like, telepathic ability to be there, but for context.

They were Sharks during our last event, Shark panel, actually, all three of them, and another shark, Kevin. And for a good day and a half, people were practicing their pitches, going back to the drawing board, coming back to pitch in front of the Sharks. And this panel was unreal. I mean, it was. You guys did such a great job, and the.

The feedback that you guys were able to give, and we could see the transformation over those days of somebody from the start of their pitch to what they were ending with at the end of the event. And it was amazing.

Well, thank you, Candace. I appreciate that. And. And the film does actually tell the truth. I mean, it really. It did turn out great, and we get a lot of positive feedback about that. But as we've said in the past, the only thing the pitch can do is actually lose you the next date, primarily. Right? So, I mean, so it's not like, again, this is going out to the pundits that are out on the. On the LinkedIn channels, like, I will give you the perfect deck that you will get a hundred million dollars raised. And it's like, no, you won't. At the very best, your deck loses you the date. It's the credibility. It's all the things that go into this to get. Get in there. So all of it comes into there, like your phone number not being right on the calling card. Right. You got to be able to get there. So with that, Jackie, you've got the participants difficult questions, and if. By the way, thank you for showing up because if you didn't show up, they were going to ask me these questions. And I'm like, I don't know.

I always show when I say I'm going to do something. I am a woman of my words.

I'm not. I'm not going to be able to handle these tough questions. So I'm turning it over to you guys quickly, too.

I want to highlight that. If you have questions for Jen, go ahead and pop them in the, in the Q and A. We may have time to get to some. We may not.

So I know we probably have quite a few fans on here. I had two people fangirl you the other day on a meeting I was on. They were like, you know Jen.

You know Jen.

I do know Jen.

It's so cool. So how, how do people find you, Jen? Jen, how do people find you other than looking up Wonder Woman?

Well, you're not going to find me if you look up Wonder Woman. But the best way to get me is on LinkedIn. My name is Jen Gode. It's spelled exactly as it is on the, on the Zoom and LinkedIn. I actually respond to everyone who, who reaches out to me. I used to have that managed, and I learned very quickly that it's a lot more powerful if. If I see that and manage that, because things can slip through the cracks when it's either team or a bot.

So they don't. They don't know who. They don't know who. They don't know the relationships.

Yeah.

Angela, who's. Who's been our engineer on this today, is really super interesting. There you are with Dr. Phil. We just saw Dr. Phil about two weeks ago. The. It was interesting because I said, you know, the great thing about this point in life is if I remember somebody and I want to reach out to them, I said, the good thing is they still pick up the phone in most cases. And so I needed to reach out to a gentleman because we're looking at a deal in Saudi. I said, oh, I haven't talked to. I haven't talked to Mossad in quite a while. Like a decade. And I text him on WhatsApp, like within four minutes, we're on a phone call together. Right? That's because it's not AI relationship sending out all those different things out there that's still important. That helps us with all these different pieces. We see it as a servant, but not as the replacement for us. Right?

That's right. And I'm a big fan of a personalized first contact when people Reach out to me with bots, I can smell it a mile away. And that tells me that you don't respect me enough to at least know who I am and have the conversation. Don't waste my time.

So if I connect with you on LinkedIn, you're actually going to accept my connection?

Yeah, I absolutely will.

Okay, well, because you have like Jacqueline Kuiper and you have Brian Levinson and you have Candace on there, so I don't know, I want to get in that group, so. All right, Jackie, sorry, take it offside. You know, you can't keep me in the scenario there.

We can't trust these two. I know it's going to be. Everybody buckle in because it's going to.

Be a. I'm going to put it in mute.

Thanks, Angela. Angela, just put Jen's LinkedIn link in the chat. Thank you, Angela. Well, okay. We started with a messy story and so glad you recovered and thank you for sharing that. Like, it's hard to share the icky things. Why don't you share one of the best pitches that you've ever had the pleasure of listening. If you need a minute to like gather your thoughts. But think about a time when a pitch really landed for you.

So I have a couple of them and I invest in different asset classes. So this is really a recent. And I literally just saw the gentleman who I gave the money to a couple days ago in Los Angeles. So it's really top of mind. This is one of the first pitches that when I got the, within the first two minutes of meeting with this, with this individual, I said, I'm going to invest with you. I'll go through the due diligence process. But I already knew that it was a win of a product. It was a pre seed. So for if, if you don't know, it means that this is pre revenue. They were, he was in beta. He had self funded the beta of his product. But.

I can't, I don't know if I can say the name of the company or not at this point in time. They just went live. They're actually revenue generating. Long story short, he came to the pitch and the first thing, the first thing that he started with opening line, here's the problem keeping our customers in the automotive industry up at night. And he listed it and it was, we hate car salesmen. We hate the car buying process. Basically in a nutshell, he said, it's so much better than I. And literally every person in the room like sat up and leaned in. I watched this because I Sit in the back of the room so I could watch body language. Everyone was nodding because we've all experienced that horrible experience when we have to buy a car and they, you know, we research it online and they want to sell it for something more, whatever. So he went through and he said this is the problem, it's not okay. And then he further went into imagine even more the challenges we have when we need a repair. So he moved from one major problem and linked it to an even bigger pain point. And he went in, he goes, this is the solution that I have. It's AI generated. It tells you, the consumer exactly what's wrong. Just by scanning with your phone, you'll have an idea of what the problem in your car is or the car that you're buying, if you're buying a used car and how much it's going to cost and what you can expect sold. I'm a female, I don't know anything about fixing cars. And in today's world and as a female we tend to get the like the plus plus plus because we, it's expected we don't know cars. So I immediately understood the problem. He was very clear. And then he said, I, I know this because he did AutoNation, he did Cars.com and he listed True Car. He had like five companies that he had already brought to IPO, like Very Large exits, instant credibility. So not only did he nail me with the problem, very clear, very concise, but then he had the credibility to boot. I'm, I'm researching him while he's giving his pitch and everything he said is backed up. There's tons of evidence so I'm able to do my due diligence. And then, and then he just showed proof. He showed the receipts. I know it was pre revenue, but he already had almost a thousand contracts lined up with fleet vehicles to utilize this. He had partnerships with automotive already. He didn't give me ridiculous projections in a spreadsheet that said he was going to be at 20 million in year one, which is completely unrealistic for a startup that hasn't even finished or launched. But he had the concrete data and he showed this is how much I'm raising and this is exactly how I'm going to use every dollar and exactly what that's going to do for the revenue top line, for the profitability and for you, the investor. He spoke to the investor. What were we going to get every step of the way? And as precede, that's real important because your first investors are kind of key because we're the ones who bring in the next and talk about the experience. Right? And so like he had full faith, but he was humble. And then like it just, it was like the perfect pitch. In less than two minutes, I knew exactly what I would get for the money I was putting in, exactly what timeline to expect the bigger money that was following that once he raised X dollars, he was going to get the next very large contribution. So it was kind of like, you know, they're waiting to see you. You do initial success. This is very common. Once you have initial success, you can get some of the bigger investors in. But he knew his numbers, he knew what he needed, he knew how it was going to be used and he knew what was most important to each and every investor in the room. And the best part about his pitch was at the end, he did not try to convince anyone. He said, there he goes, listen, I know some of you, this is not for you, but if this is a pain point for you and you invest in this industry and you're willing to take this journey with me, he was inviting those like minded people to join the mission. He goes, and even better, if you're strategic and you have relationships in this space, no ego, 100% execution. Best pitch I've seen in a very long time. Yes. He got my money.

Wow.

It's delivered on everything. The communication and transparency has been brilliant. So I say that's the one that's the most recent that stuck with me.

So, you know, we see and as you do, we see tons of pictures. Sorry, Jackie, I know I told you I was going to be quiet, but I can't. So I just can't sit on the sidelines.

We see a lot of pitches and we, it is unbelievable how many times we say tell us the problem you solve and they immediately go into what they do. And I think it's us American centric, but it's really not because it happens over in Asia and the Middle east and wherever I go. We're so caught up in what do you do that they can't say what problem they solve. But when they do find that problem they solve, they immediately get to the Me too. So they cut out all the noise. And I love that, that self awareness. This is clearly a founder who was well coached and it wasn't their first rodeo.

Yeah, that's awesome. Cool. All right, Jackie, I'm back, I'm back on mute.

Candace might have some questions.

I mean, I always have a lot of questions for Jen.

Okay, I'm gonna take, I I loved that. And that pitch was resonating with me because that's a. That is a flow flow, as you know, and we've talked about that. We really look for starting off with the challenge, super important credibility. You would be shocked by how often people leave out their credibility in their pitch. It's. We sat in a handful of pitches up in Tahoe where in conversation or because one of us knew something, we're like, could you share that? You have this background by like the third pitch and they're like, oh, oh, yeah, I'm.

And.

And they don't want to come off as braggadocious, but we need to know that they have the experience to do that. They're the person to take this to the finish line. So I love that. So thank you.

Well, I want to say something about that. It's not bragging if you're allowing us to understand why you're qualified to have the conversation. Yeah, it's essential, actually. And. And I think there's. There's a misnomer. Like, we don't want to see hyper ego because we're not going to invest in somebody who's got the ego because they're not coachable and they know everything. It's about understanding what your credibility is. And if we can't draw that connection, we tune out. Yes. This person trying to tell me about medicine, I know medicine backwards and forwards. They're obviously quoting wrong numbers. Right. Like, they haven't said, oh, I'm a doctor, I'm a physician, I did this, I did that. So, so incredibly important that we know where you're coming from. Because the assumption I think founders make, and this is a mistaken assumption, Founders assume that because we may have had access to the deck in before we've done our diligence. Guess what? That's not the case. Sometimes we get 200, 400 pitches per week. We're not looking at every one of those. And we were not going past two or three slides in. If you've got a 60 slide deck, I don't even open it. Just. Just.

Frank, I think this goes to making sure not only do we see lack of credit, not. Not lack of credibility, but they don't include credibility, but they also don't include their call to action. At least, you know, they'll wait till, like, slide 36 and then put their call to action in. We've had a lot of great pitches where they sell us easily on the product. And like, in this case, it sounds like he did in a hot second sold on the product. But then there's something more here because what he's actually pitching you on is, is an investment and they are different. We've spoken with great groups where it's like all day, all night. I'm here for the product, I get your credibility. But now why are we here having this conversation? You're not selling me on the widget, you're selling me on something else. And that's my participation, my money in your growth. Right. You're not just asking me to buy the product. So this gentleman had a great call to action and told you right away, here's what you're going to get as an investor. Here's on what timeline he made it seamless that you're not sitting there being like what, what, what's he asking for? And when do, when do I get repaid?

So we've got a question in the chat and I want to but I want to take us back even a couple lunch and learns ago we had a great pitch live which we're going to do more of those and those are really fun and we similar experience and I'm saying it because it's recorded. Anybody could go back and watch it. She left out a credibility piece. She was really quick to tell us she didn't have the experience in what she was doing and that left me going oh no. But she left out that she's got a whole team of people who do like that. She didn't include a whole team slide on there about how much credibility they had. So, so I'm going to lead into this question and kind of quasi answered my version of it. But I'd love your for for you to answer. This is from an attendee today. For someone who's a first time founder and doesn't have a huge list of achievements like taking companies to IPO et cetera, how does displaying credibility work?

That's a really good question. And so when I'm are we talking about at the pitch phase or at due diligence phase? Because it's a little bit, it's a little bit different.

Maybe chat through both.

Okay.

What does it look like at both?

So I pitch phase. I'm going to tell you when you walk into pitch me I'm looking at your body language. Are you confident? Do you have your shoulders rolled back? Are you excited about this or are you fidgeting in in your boots? Because if you're nervous before you even open your mouth that does not portray I can take this to market. I've got legs, I can Bring this out. It tells me that you're fearful, that you're nervous, that you really haven't prepared enough. And I understand first time pitching can be challenging. However, preparation builds confidence. I know that you haven't practiced enough, I know that you haven't sought coaching to get that confidence to give you some things that will help ground you before you speak. And so I now immediately question, can you inspire a team? Can the team get behind you? Will you be able to actually grow this thing? So it happens. And, and you know, a lot of people say you shouldn't judge a book by the COVID but the honest, the honest truth is we're in the room and if you walk in and you're hunched over and you don't project your voice, I'm not investing in you because I'm, I'm immediately making a decision that you're not confident in what you're bringing. So then I immediately question everything that you bring there forth. Are your numbers going to be right? Are they too rounded? Do you know what you're talking about? Before you even get to credibility, then what is your experience been and how does it translate to what you're doing now if you're a first time founder. But maybe, maybe attorneys do this all the time, right? They've been really great at trial law and now they're going to like be practice and they're looking now that you can do roll ups in legal. They're pitching for money because they're going to do a buy in build. They've never done this before but they've got decades in the courtroom and they've been very successful from their own, by their own right growing to the business that they currently have. What I'm listening for is first the confidence but then the reason that I'm doing this or I'm asking for this money is because I've, I've done this successfully for myself and now I'm looking to escalate that and to leave a legacy. And I'm going to need your money to do this. What qualifies me is I've built my business from scratch or I've had this experience in the courtroom. I'm an expert negotiator because I do, you know, m and a law. Whatever is, whatever that experience is, they're now relaying it to how it's going to help them as I maybe invest in their business. That's an excellent way. And another thing that's really, really good for credibility and I like to see this actually I leverage this if you go to my LinkedIn, it's me interviewing Dr. Phil. Everybody knows who Dr. Phil is. Branding by association. If I'm interviewing Dr. Phil, I must be somebody, I must have some, some accolades or something because he is somebody who everybody knows. So if you have that in your background, where you've interacted with somebody or they've brought you in on a consulting basis or something along those lines, love when people leverage that because that tells me, hey, they've got other ways of building relationships, other relationships that can bring this forward. So that's kind of branding by association. We see the picture. You don't have to talk about it, even just having that picture. When people go to my LinkedIn, they immediately take, takes me more seriously because they see this, you know, figure who's done very successfully with what he does in business and in his celebrity space. So utilize what you have and make sure you articulate it clearly and concisely. So we immediately see this is going to translate to you taking this to the next level or you are in legal and you've hired an amazing team who has run your office. So we want to see that. And in due diligence, it just goes deeper.

I, I love that. And by the way, on the opposite side, Jen, you, you're not old enough to have this happen yet, but this morning Candice and I were on this great call and for, you know, a while it's been my age lending credibility to everybody else. But Candace and Jackie lend credibility to me now because in the age group that is in the founder range, they're like, oh, we can listen to this old guy because, you know, he's actually pretty good. And the guy even said, well, you know, you work with your dad, he must be okay type scenario. So it works all ways, right? It really is about lending the credibility and borrowing the credibility from where it is. And I oftentimes say my team makes me look good and that gives me credibility because my team is so good. People must be like, well, they can overlook my, my downfalls. I, I will say on one, one piece on there, you, you mentioned about walking into the room, I have so many founders.

That don't want to learn the art of capital raising. And I was on a founder call earlier today also where he's now a coo, not a founder of this new company. And he talks about, you know, one of the things that he didn't like being the founder and the CEO was that investor relationships was a full time job, full time. He's like, I'm not even building the company. I'm not even doing these things. And that is one of those things that we see. And they think they can delegate it, but whoever they delegate it to ends up being the one who runs the company and owns the company. Right. That founder, investor side. If you're going to be the inventor, that's a role. But if you're going to be the founder and you're going to be taking that forward, you've got to be able to understand that raising and managing that relationship is a huge part of the business.

Well, I would, I would, I would highlight that, Tom, and say that relational capital is everything. It will, it will build your business and it will also sink your ship. Yep. And it's so incredibly important. I, I, I, I couldn't concur. I, I concur completely with what you said. It's absolutely spot on. So if you're a founder watching this, like, listen up, your role as a founder is to manage your relationships with your capital, but it's really relationship management. That's what you're in the business of as a founder. Your relationships with every stakeholder in the company that you're growing. And if you fail at that, you're not going to achieve your goal, your exit, or whatever it is that you're trying to get to now.

You don't have, you don't have to be the best at all the other pieces you recruit, retain. That is one of our pieces is we look at, have they been able to attract and retain talent? Because they don't have. Back to that credibility piece Candace was talking about. They don't have. You cannot, no one, no human has all of the skills that you need for growing that company to any scale. Right. If they're the smartest person in the room, that's usually one of our big turnoffs. It's like, oh, you know, it's like, we're out now.

The best founders hire the smartest people around them and rely on their team. Because one of the biggest, like, no nos for me is, and I'll walk away is if I hear in the pitch, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, what that tells me is that this is not scalable, that you are the hero, if you will, and if you're the hero in your business and have to do all the things, this isn't going to be a successful exit. And I've coached thousands, tens of thousands at this point in time, founders and entrepreneurs, and the biggest challenge is letting go. So if I hear that in the Pitch, I immediately know, well, this is going to be a nightmare because there's going to be huge letting go issues and they believe that it can't work without them. And that, quite frankly, is a limited mindset. If you're going to scale a company, I'd agree.

Shows me they're not coachable.

And I think, you know, we've talked about this before, having kind of like an answer or an objection for every possible piece that you're trying to. I'm like, okay, you're not coachable. If we're throwing out an idea or asking a question and you are holding on so tight to your answer that you're not even willing to explain, explore an option, or think through a different scenario. It's. That's, that's a quick no for us. I mean, I'm like. And it might be the right answer, but you kind of lost me with your inability to maybe look at it differently or from a different angle.

Getting combative is another one. Like, if you're in a pitch and you ask a question and it's normal, folks, let me tell you, if I don't ask you questions, I'm, I'm full stop not interested.

If there's no question coming from me, I'm not interested. I don't care enough to listen. I don't care enough to ask a question. So. And I asked hard questions, deep questions are the people that I'm most interested in. And if they don't know the answer and they're not willing to say, you know what, that's really a question for my cto. Let me get back to you. And they immediately throw the dukes and are like, you don't need to ask that or whatever.

Like you're done monumentally different way to respond that. Or they fluff, they make shit up. That's the worst. Their credibility is gone. Right. But on the same side, I just want to say that because all of us seem to have ADHD in this world, you know, which wasn't named before, the name for that was being an entrepreneur. Now it's actually got this clinical term called adhd. But just because we're looking at our phones doesn't mean we're not interested. Because there's some of us that can actually think better when we're not looking at the person necessarily, we're hearing everything and it's like mom ears or something in there. Don't think, think that that's not interest. But the not asking questions is non interest.

Yeah.

Jen, you're such a fantastic speaker and coach without even trying. You actually answered pretty much all of the questions that we had prepared for you just in your delivery. Like when you answer 1, you end up answering 10. The one thing I want to convey. And then we'll start to wrap up with one final question. But I want to make sure that everyone here on the call is, knows how to get to Jen, knows how to connect with her. You may be one of these people that's like, oh, I, I'm pretty coachable and I think I may benefit from at least having a conversation about coaching what that looks like. Please find Jen. You will not regret it. Go to her.

LinkedIn.

It's in the chat. And then here's my last question. Do you remember these little bracelets that said WWJD on them? Do you remember those bracelets? Okay, we're gonna say today that they stand for what would Jen Do? Okay, so we've got our WWJD bracelets and you, Jen, you're going to launch a brand new startup. Okay? You've got the product, you've got the credibility. You know your stuff, but you need other people's money to grow and scale. Walk us through what Jen Godey does to launch this, to pitch this, to raise capital.

Well, so first off, I bootstrap and then like I bootstrap to begin to get the product and the proof of concept. That's how I do things. And I've done, I'm on my fifth AI startup now for three successfully exited one, I walked away from $12 million because the partners were not right. So that's a big fat L in that, in that category. But it was sucking my soul. So the, the time and the energy was not worth the money. So when I start, I always sell. I tend to self fund proof of concept to know that I have something that works because that's about credibility. Once again, right? If I don't have something that I've already proven has an mvp, then I don't want other people's money. Because my philosophy on capital is I treat other people's money much more reverently than I do my own. And that's, that's just a fact. I feel a lot more responsibility and accountability. And to, to back up a minute, here's a teaching moment like if you're not thinking about other people's capital as accountability and as I need to treat this better than I would treat my own cash, you're doing it wrong. So it's very important to get that across. I start with Clarity. What is the exact problem that is keeping my people up at 3 o' clock in the morning that they are sick to their stomach over? That my product solves and I start with that. What is the one liner if I can't get it to like 10 words or less and solve that problem and lead with that and get them to feel something when I pitch then, then I haven't got it positioned well enough yet. And I iterate and iterate this folks, and I don't wait till it's perfect either. I go and I try it with people that I know like and trust. I usually go to the people who have invested with me in the past or I've invested in their stuff in the past because those are relationships and I know they'll give me feedback. So I nail the problem first, it's so important. And then the next thing I do is I lead with metrics. I want them to know what my CAC is going to be. You know, my customer acquisition costs. Sorry, don't mean that. Do this. What it's going to look like to retain clients. Have I already gotten 100 people to say yes and give me their credit card? Because the biggest credibility when you're a startup is you've already got paying clients. If I've got 100 paying clients that I've already passed that first sniff test for most investors. So I wait until I've got that. I, I sell before I perfect, I get the MVP done, then I sell and then I go pitch. So what I usually do is I from the beginning set up an investor ready data room. What does that mean? That means that I don't have stuff randomly like in a Google Drive that I send where people have to dig and figure it out. I have it very clear so that investors who want to do business with me, it's a one click, right? Anybody on the team can send it, I can send it, but they, they don't need to be handheld to find information like that is a major turn off for as an investor. And so, and I think that we talked about this in Tahoe too.

We did.

It is a major turn off. It tells me you're not organized, it tells me you're not data ready, it tells me you're not AI ready and that you're not future proof, which means my money is at risk. So I take everything from an investor standpoint and look at it and then put together what I'm going to do. And then the other thing that I do and I don't know if this is for everybody who's doing this for the first time, I pre qualify my investors like I do always. Who do I want? Why them? Why now? What is the strategic value that they bring? Because as an investor myself, my money is the least that I'm giving. Like, you want my network, you want my expertise, I want to be partnering. And so I flip the strip and I go, okay. I want investors like me because they're aligned, we share values, we see the impact, and of course we're going to make a lot of money together because, you know, I'm goal driven and I've got a track record, but that's what I'm, I'm doing. I'm positioning exactly as I would want to be pitched because I want to do business with people who I'm going to have fun with and I don't want to have any hassle. So I try to make it as frictionless.

A situation for them as possible so they can make a decision on whether they want to do due diligence. Because the other thing that I find very disrespectful is due diligence is a process and we're going to go through it whether you like it or not, as a founder and they're going to, they're going to do due diligence on me and whatever industry I'm moving into. And so I think it's tremendously disrespectful to waste people's time.

There's a great question in the, in the chat that's I'm curious how you, if you would change your answer at all. This woman asks, as an immigrant woman founder with visible differences.

Like long term medical braces, an accent, what's the best way to establish immediate credibility in a pitch environment where bias may be present is anything that are outlined change first things first.

Every woman has bias against them. Even in 2025, I will tell you, I have had presidents of banks tell me that if it's me and I even have a superior business plan to a man and like it or not, it's the world that we live in almost 100 of the time they're going to give the money to the gentleman over me if it's in a one to one relationship.

So do you find that from women as well as from men.

Meaning bias like women.

So women, women bias against women as well, even when they're sitting on the committees at times, unless it's a specifically women focused fund.

Well, in the, in the funds that I participate in, the answer to that is no. But, yes, that is definitely the case in some other rooms.

Yeah.

I just don't choose to invest in those because I believe that my money makes a difference and I want to vote with my dollars what I believe to be true, which is every single human should start with an equitable opportunity.

Agreed.

If all else is so, I choose not to invest in those funds.

So how does she overcome it? It's a great question because, you know, I've got such relativity to it because I'm the rich white guy. I have no space to even be talking about. I can mute it now, right? Yeah. I have no. I have no space to say it other than being a champion for others out there, for all.

And I'm teasing because.

No, no, that's true.

She is an important component to. To this conversation.

Massively. Massively. Yeah. So I'm not the person to answer it.

Right. So I would say that I have. I have experienced that there are some biases in some rooms. However, if you know that there is an objection, go in and call it out immediately. When I go and pitch, and I'm the only woman pitching, and it's a room of men and male investors, I go out and I walk out and I said, yes, I know I am the token woman in the room, and this is why you want to pay attention. I call out the objection. So if you have an accent, hi, I know that I have an accent. If there's anything that is unclear, please let me know. If I need to slow down, if I need to speed up, I am here. I'm aware that this is. This. This may impact the communication. You call out every objection and solve for it right off the bat. And that now there's going to be some rooms that we can't win. There's always some rooms that we can't win. But if we call out the things that make us different or might be an objection further down, right off the bat, when they come and they make a comment about my gender or, like, my experience, if I'm newer or whatever, I'm going to say, well, you know what? It's really funny because I stated from the beginning that this is my experience, that this is what it is and that I recognize that this can be a challenge for some people. And I only want people who are serious about moving forward and learning more about. About what we can do together.

You know, I love. You've talked so many things, and we could go on, and we're already about 15 minutes longer than we normally do. So just as an FYI. And we've got more questions. I know. No, no, no. Because we're great, right? We're great.

You're great.

They're still coming in. It's been, it's amazing. I am telling everyone, please message Jen directly too, on LinkedIn.

As we've said, I'm going to take this as the. As just what you just said was another brilliant piece. And of course it's brilliant because it also fits into the framework and I think this is why we align so well. You get into the rooms where it's a me too. So when they already are recognizing that you're solving the problem that they've already recognized, you've already got credibility when you're trying to get in that room and they are just there to hear you pitch, you don't have any credibility and you've got such a long line to get there. So when you start with that problem and you really articulate the problem that you're solving and then you articulate how you solve it and you articulate what it means to solve it, and then you have some credibility, such as you've had sale one or whatever that is. Along that line, you have the Wall Street Journal saying this is the biggest market since XYZ and here's the person that's leading the market. However that goes, then you've got the call to action. As Jackie talked about that. Me too. Filters all the way through. And what I have found is that investors are looking way past. They're not seeing the who, they're seeing the what. What problem are you solving? And this is the person to do it. And. And money really is generally agnostic. It doesn't care. It's green. Right. And it likes to work 365 days a year. That doesn't mean you're not going to be in the rooms where there is bias, because it happens. Those are assholes. Get out of that room. Get in the right room. Get around the people that do help you and are champions for you relative. So with that power CEOs, you're like this, like star, right?

Massive, great way for people to follow me.

Massive TV star, power CEOs, podcast and stuff. People need to go out and see this, tell us what last thing is. You have thousands of followers and everything out there. We're like just so impressed. But like people can come on that show as well, right?

Yeah, they can. I interview founders, I interview people who've had success. And in full disclosure, Tom, I'm going to have you on I'm going to ask about your biggest failure because that's how people learn. You can catch it by going to Now Media TV. Click on shows, go to Power CEOs and you'll get, get that on demand. It's also on Apple Pods and Roku and a lot of different places.

You're everywhere.

Yeah.

Angela, put the link in the chat for all of the guests. Navigate there and grab that, that browser link.

And for those who are into medical, I do a lot of featuring medical innovation on Vital Signs, which is on the same network. It's just a different television show in the same network. I had Kessler foundation on just the other day.

Oh, that's awesome.

Real cool Robotics that they're working on. They're. They're excellent power CEOs. I bring the most successful in to talk and teach and I think it's very important that we have equitable access to information.

I agree. Oh, that's so awesome.

Yeah.

Well, we, as always, we can just chat forever and ever and ever because there's just so many intersections and you're just brilliant. Which I love having that on and the three of you, I'm always just lucky to be in the room, so I appreciate it.

Jackie, you're not going to be on the show for December, huh? I think. Is that right?

No, I just am gone next week.

You're just gone next week.

After that I'll be on.

And we are so. I'm sorry, totally misunderstood that. But we're not going to be here for the Christmas Eve and New Year's eve. Right. The 24th big. Because it is my granddaughter's birthday and, and so we'll be taking that those two weeks off. We're actually shutting down the office more than anything.

It's because he wants to ski.

That's. I like that he threw the five year old under the bus, but it's. He wants to ski, she wants to.

Ski with me, so that's okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Two weeks at the end of December to honor the holidays back in January. We're doing three shows in December.

We have a great lineup for the rest of December. We're really excited. If you had a question. I know we had more questions in the, in the chat. I'm gonna totally offer Jen up here because she's a friend and she put it out there. Find her on LinkedIn and she, she does, she does answer her LinkedIn questions. So be sure to get her perspective via LinkedIn. Follow her show because you might. It's a great show and it's yeah.

Were you guys guess Were you guys guess on the show?

Millions of followers.

It's amazing.

You guys were guests on the show. Oh, that's right.

We were guests on the show.

There you go.

We beat you to the punch.

Awesome. Awesome.

We love you, Jen.

We do love you.

Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow. We love, love you.

Yeah.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Angela is throwing up a couple QR codes. Last thing. If you want to go to founders office, find out more about what we're about. The QR code is there for our website and then if you have a pitch deck and would like some complimentary feedback on the deck itself, we also offer that and you can do that through our website as well. There's a special button there that says enhance my pitch deck. So QR codes are up on the screen. Grab those, go find Jen online and we'll see you next Wednesday for our lunch and learn December 3rd.

Sorry, we had so many questions. Sorry we couldn't get to all the questions today, but there's a number that didn't get answered. But we'll try and get back out to them. Thank you, Jen. Thank you for joining us. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Thank you. Bye.