Episode #534 - Staying Centered on Your First Business with Colin McIntosh

Welcome to this edition of the million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

We're Talking with Colin McIntosh and having a lot of fun hearing about how he started his company, which is one of the fastest growing in the country. Amazingly, you know, you get up, you just don't know. You know, when you started, you just don't know, but you got up. You know, you really have to. Colin, if you've got a brain, since it's your thing, approach it like this can be the biggest in the industry, the fastest grower. You got to approach it like that because it sure makes it a whole lot easier to recruit high caliber people and keep them interested if they feel like, you know, these people are serious, they want to do something big, this is just not a job and they can get caught up in that.

You know, it's interesting you say that because I agree with you in some level, but there's also an appeal. There's also an appeal to sort of do the opposite a little bit and to keep it and to keep your perspective modest on it. I think that there's, you know, there's so many companies with. And it really is. What I've always done with sheets and giggles is I've always zigged where other people zag. And so even in the culture that we build and what I tell my team and what the team tells others, we're not trying to be the next Bed, Bath and Beyond. We're not trying to be, you know, the number one company in this space. We're trying to build a company that we feel like we can be proud of and that pays us enough money for us to live well and to live the lives that we want to live. And the culture that I provide them is one of what I like to call CEO privileges for everyone. You know, there's no, there's no notice that you have to give for time off. You just, you let people know you cover your work, you make sure things are done and you put it on slack and there's no permissions needed or anything like that. You can take a Wednesday off if you're not feeling it, if you're, if you're, you know, if you have something that's on your mind or you're not, your head's not right. Don't sit down at the computer when your head's not right. Go clear your head. You Know, like go, go do what you need to do. And I think that that culture we've built and that I think that like that promise that I've given the people of, like, we're going to treat you well, we're going to pay you fairly and you're going to enjoy your life instead of have work detract from your life. It's going to be additive. Has actually been a really nice pitch and you know, and we do have a bit of a tiger by the tail and, and, but it's not something that I ever, I ever planned on when we, when we started.

Yeah. And the point that I was making for you is you want to do things so that it could turn into that kind of thing where you're not, you're not self sabotaging by selling yourself short by really what that leads to is cutting corners. You know, it is like you don't. Because like when you start this thing, Colin, you do not know, you don't, you don't have the right and you do not know how big it's going to be. You know what I'm saying? This may turn into the next. Because they're, you know, you can't just do it, Colin. Off. I'm, again, you're going to have to tolerate me because I coach million dollar earners.

All right?

But, but you're going to have to give yourself the, you know, just the awareness that it could hit probably, you know, you know, the odds are against you and all that and you know, you live in a realistic world. But on the other hand, you don't want to cut corners, you don't want to sell yourself short. You want to put yourself in a position where you'd have to go back and redo things in the past.

Right, Right.

Which you could have easily set up, you know, for uninterrupted success. And you know, and that, that triggers all kind of positive decisions where you don't take too much work on yourself. You don't fail to delegate, you know, that would allow you to totally.

Yeah, you got to build the scale.

Yeah. I'm looking around yourself, you know, you think in terms of, I'm not just going to bring this person in and get them to do a job, but I'm going to train them to understand what they're doing where they could train someone else, you know, and then they could, you know, be a, you know, move into management. You know, because people that are training other people wind up being more serious themselves. You know, it's like the parenting Right. It's like the parenting. Activating the parenting instinct in an employee. You know, if they're, you know, they're involved in. I've always felt like you should in school, take the second graders and have them go in sometime during the week and teach the first graders something. You know, go in and teach them something, because that will make them feel, you know, realize I'm not a first grader. You know, I have learned. And then as you move up the ladder. But it's a way of creating that responsibility and all. But now.

Totally agree. Totally agree. Yeah. And I don't mean to be flipping about it. It's more of. I think the. The modesty is like a feature, not a bug. You know what I mean? Like, where I try to. I try to remind. And I've seen. I guess it's because I've been through techstars a couple times, and I've seen. I've seen a lot of founders fail. And, you know, failure is something that is always in the realm of possibility, and it's. And it can sneak up on you, and it can. You know, I've seen companies do meteoric rises and just as fast falls and like, you know, I guess I'm always trying to make sure that I stay centered on. This is my first business, and I. And I want to make sure I don't take it for granted. And I don't. I don't try to do something with it that doesn't serve the company. You know what I mean? And so I'm always trying to. But I agree with you. You got to set things up to scale and your reps. I don't micromanage anyone on the team. My team is fully autonomous. People who are. Are all total aces.

Well. And the thing that none of us know is who's going to show up tomorrow. Number one, this is an idea that popped in your head where your head is still operating. You know what I'm saying? It's much more educated than it was when that idea came in.

Totally. Totally.

You know, and so the thing that I try and wake people up to is be aware. Every time you accomplish something, you move to another level and things open up. You know, in the process of accomplishing like, what you've done, you've gotten contacts, you've gotten experience, you've gotten developed. You've been forced to develop skills. You know, you've got, you know, a staff. You've assembled a working staff around you, which, you know, probably has.

We've navigated a pandemic like, you know what I mean? Like, it's. Yeah, it's weird. We had a year and a half before the pandemic and now two and a half after. And so, you know, that's. That there's. We've learned, I've learned a lot about, you know, scaling a company from, you know, $30,000 a month to, you know, a million dollars a month in a short time span in a crazy, crazy environment. And so, yeah, you're right. I actually am curious as to like, how some of your guests deal with the constant flow of ideas that they, they deal with. That's something that's difficult for me is I have to really stay centered on S and G. But, you know, it's not my, it won't be my last business, that's for sure.

Right. And what would you say? The one thing that was really, really interesting and probably encompassing is a ton of, of knowledge is how to scale from a few thousand to a million a month or so. What were you saying? What were those numbers?

Well, I mean, I think, I think, you know, within two years we went from, I think September 2018, we did like 30 grand in sales. And then November 2020, we did our first. I think it was like 1.03 million or something like that. It's like, holy crap, you know, like, how do you, how do you. And then, you know, in the mean, oh, there was some yada, yada, yada in the meantime of a global pandemic and like worldwide crisis and, you know, like all this stuff and we went through an accelerator and we raised, you know, a million dollars and like, you know, there's all this crazy stuff of like, how you get there that, you know, now, now that I know and I, and I got it in my head, it's like, okay, the next business, what would I do differently? What would I, what would I change? How would I set things up differently from the get go? Like, that's. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. And this is what. And the way you get there on those things is exactly that. Constantly improving. Because the, you know, this is what I challenge people is like when you go through the finish line, you got to focus on the finish line definitely, you know, to get it done. But keep your eyes up for opportunities that you might not even have known you exist. It's kind of like being out here in Colorado, getting to the top of a 14,000 foot mountain. You don't know the view you're going to get once you're standing on that thing until you get up there, you know, and so, you know, and you.

You know, it is a lot like backpacking or camping. Like, you know, like, the first time I ever went backpacking, I was terrified. I, Like, I didn't. I didn't know what to bring. I'm from Florida. I'm a flatlander. You know, I didn't. I was like, Googling. Googling how to deal with bears. Like, you know, like. Or, you know, whatever. Whatever needed to be done. And I had to figure out portable cooking and, like, all these different things. And, you know, now I love it. I go. I go all the time because it just gets easier. And then you. And then you start planning harder ones and more, you know, more aggressive ones. And that's really fun, too. And I think the business is the same way where it's like, all right, like, we've. We've. We have well over 100,000 customers now, and they want a bunch of new things from us. So let's give them pajamas. Let's give them, you know, mattresses and pillows and all sorts of different. So we're. We just launched our mattress, and that shipped next week.

So really, congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you. It's a eucalyptus mattress. It's got three main ingredients. Eucalyptus Lyocell rubber tree SAP for the latex layers and recycled U.S. steel. And it's made in Phoenix and really, really excited to bring it to market. And then our pillows are going to be eucalyptus as well, with kapak and latex from tree. Tree SAP as well as the interior. And those start shipping in October, and those are made right here in Denver. So. Really? Yeah. Really excited to bring these two new products to market in the next couple of months.

Yeah. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Yeah. The. Well, what I, you know, the way you're. You're going to handle all the ideas and everything, saying you're going to be handling things the way you handle everything to get to this point. Okay. You know, you know, you're going to. You're going to just. It's going to be following your instinct, following the things that, you know, perk your attention up the most. And, you know, if this time it comes around, it doesn't really sparkle, next time it. When it comes time to do it, it will sparkle. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, totally. I think about this all the time is like, I started this company as, like, I just turned 27 when I started this company, and it's like, it's like, man, like, what? It's almost. It's. And I know a Lot of founders are younger than that and a lot of founders are, are older than that too. It's just really interesting to think about, like, you know, what the hell was I thinking? A 27 year old dude, you know, founding a betting company. Like, how is, how is it possible that I got here? It's weird. It's weird. It's weird.

Yeah.

Very surreal. It's very surreal.

And so you started, you know, when did you get the idea of going to business school?

Well, so I think my, when I was in high school, I was in my econ class and I really had a knack for econ. It just was very, very simple for me in a lot of ways. And I was a math guy and I, you know, Cal KB and BC and numbers guy and you know, they used to tutor the sat, got a perfect score on the SAT and used to tutor it for folks. And my high school economics teacher was just really, he said, you should go to business school. And you know, when people say stuff like that to you can really have an inordinate effect on what you do and the path that you take. And I respected this guy and he was a smart guy and he taught me my favorite subject. And so I said, well, you know, like, how do I find out what's a good business school? And he showed me some rankings. And Emory, I think at the time was number seven in the country for the undergraduate program. And I had a old friend who had gone there a few years prior that I grew up with and reached out to him and we chatted and it was, you know, with a perfect score on the sat, I kind of felt like I could go anywhere. And I, I visited Emory's campus and really loved it and, and loved that I, it was close to Fort Lauderdale. I could fly home pretty easily. And it was, my family had a house in North Carolina that my father had built in the early 2000s that was only a three hour drive from campus so I could, you know, meet my family up there and I got a scholarship so I didn't have to go into debt to go. And if I hadn't gotten that scholarship, I don't think, I don't think I would have gone, but I ended up going. So. And it was that, that's how it came about. I just, the, the things when you're 17, like these decisions, they're, they're so undervalued, I guess in terms of like how, you know, I, I didn't apply to mit, I didn't apply to Harvard, I didn't apply to any of these places. I just, you know, I, I saw school, I liked it. Business school looked good. I liked the campus and I was like, great, I'll go here. You know, so not the smartest way to do it, honestly.

Yeah, and you know, that's a whole nother subject right there. You know, you don't know when, you know, freshmen are coming through high school, they're not thinking about most of them. You'd have been.

I wasn't thinking about anything. Surviving. Surviving lunch.

No, it's, it's like their junior year before they're, oh, I need some good grades. You know, it's like, yeah, and screwed off the first two years. Now you got to overcome all that.

You know, I was, I was a total nerd. I was a, you know, straight A guy. Never. I studied like crazy, like, and, but you know, it's just funny, like the advice I'm going to give them. So my dad went to Boston College. My mom didn't go to college. She got it or she got, she got her associates. So she goes associates. But my parents didn't really put a big emphasis on, on college. There was, there was, you know, go where you want to go. We'll make it happen. We'll figure it out. Like, you know, it's your life. I kind of wish, you know, they'd been a little more hands on, but they, you know, my parents were busy. My dad was an attorney and my mom, my mom was an acupuncturist and they both owned their own business, they're both entrepreneurs. So you know, they were busy with their, you know, they let me and my sister be pretty, pretty autonomous with this stuff.

And it's interesting how that you wound up. But you know, you can see that there probably was a plan behind all this anyway. You know, it was a random decision for you, but you, you seem to have wound up in the right place. Colin.

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