Why Experience is the X Factor In Starting a New Business

All right, everybody. Today we've got my buddy over here, Steve Gutina. And Steve and I go way back. Actually, we were buddies. We were both in Entrepreneurs Organization, and he's now in YPO. I was about to join YPO, by the way, before the virus hit. And then, oh well.

We'll get you in. It is next year. Next year it is. We'll just roll you right in.

We'll see. But Steve, look, I've known for— God, it's got to be 6 or 7 years now because Right? Yeah, because of EO.

Yeah, probably. Yeah, 6 or 7.

But CEO of pray.com, amazing domain, pray.com.

A lot of times people ask me if they should start a business, and as an entrepreneur, it would be very easy for me to tell them to do that. And I think the reality is, is everybody's in a different place in their life, right? Different circumstances. Some people are incredibly young, but maybe they have to take care of their parents or siblings. Some people are later in their career and they feel like maybe they need the stability and they don't want to take a risk. And I think that if becoming an entrepreneur and starting a company is something that you're interested in doing, absolutely the best way to go about that is to get experience first. Get experience from doing projects, get experience from other entrepreneurs. And that can take the form of many flavors, right? It can look like an internship. It can look like being a consultant or a contractor. It can look like having a side hustle. But the experience and the act of doing whatever it is that you're passionate to do, I think is really just the first step. And once you end up putting energy and taking action on that first step of getting experience and you get to see those feedback loops. You know, you start posting on your social media every day and people start liking it, then you want to post more. Or you list products on your Etsy page and people buy and then they want to buy more. That is exciting. And I think that when people take that first step to get experience, no matter how they do it, it doesn't have to be full-blown start a company. No matter how they do it, I think when they do that and they get that positive feedback, It's just endless energy that can propel you into bigger and bigger things.

Okay. People are probably wondering, listening to this right now, okay, how in the world— I think there's a couple lessons. How do you go from service-based CEO to tech CEO? That's a larger question. The first one maybe we'll tackle is how do you get a domain like pray.com? It doesn't just fall into your laps. How does that happen?

Yeah. So, I mean, I think of— when I think of the kind of the business ladder first. Service, service business for me was, it was so incredible. It was such an incredible experience. Super low cost to start up, right? Doesn't matter if you're, you're making videos for somebody or you're running someone's social media or you're cleaning houses, right? You can start with almost no money. And I think that, you know, again, the way to become a great entrepreneur or what I believe is one of the ways to become a great entrepreneur is really just get out there and start doing stuff, right? And that service business, because there's almost no barrier to entry other than your hard work and ingenuity, that's a great place to start. When you start moving into products, things get a lot more complicated, right? And digital products are simpler, right? If you make an online course, it requires the same energy to do a service company, right? But then that you've productized that lesson and you don't have to really worry about managing inventory. You just gotta send traffic and promote it and get people to buy it, right? And then you can go into physical products and then it gets really complicated, right? There's costs on your product, there's shipping, there's—

Oh my God, all the logistics.

all the logistics, right?

Right.

So it requires a little bit more of a systematic approach and technical understanding of business fundamentals. And then when you move into software and you move into technology, it really starts to get complex, right? Because you're inventing things and you could be inventing physical products like a 6-axis gyro-stabilized gimbal, or you could be inventing a virtual product like Snapchat, right?

Yeah.

But the complexity is just so much greater than in just a traditional service business. And so, for me, the approach that I took either by choice or just by circumstance was I kind of leveled up more into the more complex business. last, right? And started with the, what was the simpler business first. And that was a great journey for me and it's been super enjoyable.

Yeah.

That was a surprise for sure. The next big surprise to me was the level of energy that I get from my co-founders. I lucked out. I mean, my co-founders have been a blessing and, you know, doing bootstrap companies and being a part of things like EO and YPO, you hear about founder drama, founder conflict, and I've gone through it myself actually. I've had founders, co-founder scenarios that didn't work out and I was very reluctant to have co-founders.

Mm-hmm.

Because I thought it might be a drain on me. It is not. It is like the ultimate, supercharger behind me. So that's been a pleasant surprise. And, you know, there's a ton of, ton of other little things along the way. But I think, you know, it's the thinking it's going to be easier because you have more money. That's not true. And really, I believe that constraints breed creativity.

Mm-hmm.

I think that that's, that's— and I really believe in starting small and starting simple so that you can go fast. And then also more people making it harder is not necessarily always true either. Sometimes if you have the right people, the right partners, you can.

So as an early tech CEO, there's going to be people that look up to you and they're like, okay, he's a CEO, he should know everything. And there's going to be moments where you just don't know because you're at that time you're really new. So they're like, oh shit, I actually know more than Steve. So how do you react to those scenarios where it's like, You know, you, you're new, you don't know. I guess people, again, people are looking up to you to be the guy, the know-it-all. So what do you do?

Yeah, I mean, so, you know, it's interesting when, when I pick people for the team and they have to make it through this group interview process, right, before I even talk to them. But when I pick people for the team, I usually will tell them 10 reasons why they don't want to work at Prey. And I will also tell them my weaknesses. And I will also tell them, you know, this is not a democracy, right? This is my vision.

Yeah.

This is, this is our company together, but it's my vision.

Yeah.

And, you know, I've had challenges with some people that I've chosen to be a part of the team where, you know, they've had incredible backgrounds, worked for very prestigious companies and we had disagreements and, and it was hard for them to disagree and commit. And so, you know, I've had to make changes on the team as a result of that.

Yeah.

But, you know, there's sometimes I think there's mistakes that, that I need to make to learn myself, even if you think that it's a mistake and it accurately said, hey, this, you're going down the wrong path.

Right.

Sometimes, you know, I want to make that mistake myself. And sometimes just because I don't have the experience doesn't mean the way that I might want to approach something is wrong.

Right. All right. Well, Steve, this has been really great. What is the best way for people to find you online?

LinkedIn. I do have a LinkedIn. Feel free to add me on LinkedIn. I will accept. And, uh, and also check out pray.com. It's the number one app for daily prayer and faith-based audio content.

Yeah, go get it, guys. $59 a year. It's a steal. All right, so that is it, and, uh, we'll see you all later.