43. Sandra Shpilberg: Author of New Startup Mindset

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 43 of our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and to live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview the author Sandra Spielberg. Sandra is an entrepreneur and the author of the best-selling and award-winning book New Startup Mindset: 10 Mindset Shifts to Build the Company of Your Dreams. Her book is based on her experience starting, building, and then exiting her first startup. Since starting the company in 2015, Sandra developed a breakthrough software product, filed a US patent, and built a team which served 60+ pharmaceutical companies. This book, New Startup Mindset, was also the winner of the 2020 International Book Award for the category of entrepreneurship. Our conversation today touches on her book, and we spend a lot of time discussing and debunking some of the common myths of entrepreneurship. And you'll hear about the early days of BookThinkers during today's talk too. It was a fun conversation. And if you're someone looking to start a business, I hope this conversation helps to give you the confidence to get things started and to progress a little bit. So please enjoy this amazing conversation with author Sandra Spielberg. Well, Sandra, thank you so much for joining the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great, Nick. How are you?

I'm doing well. We've been connected for so long, so I'm happy to get on behind the camera and talk with you today. For those in the audience that don't know who you are, can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?

So I am an entrepreneur. I started a company in the year 2015. I had the opportunity to travel through the entire lifecycle of a startup, starting, building, and then exiting the company. And then I decided to write a book, New Startup Mindset. This is the book right here. And this book talks about some of the important mindset shifts that I had to make in order to be able to create this company and do so in a different way than the way that is portrayed in Silicon Valley. Right. I didn't raise venture funds. I didn't hire very expensive people. I didn't hire a ton of people. I developed software even though I wasn't a programmer. And so there were a lot of things that were different, and I wanted to share those with the next generation of entrepreneurs so hopefully they can get motivation and continue. I'm on to another company. I started a new company at Nexi. It's also a software company, so I'm doing it all over again.

That's exciting. Well, I'm excited for our conversation specifically today because we have a lot of young entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs in the audience. And I know that my DMs are flooded with questions about how to start a business. What are the first steps? What are some things that you need to think about? Are all of those entrepreneurial standardizations true or generalizations true that you see about Silicon Valley and unicorns and things like that? So let's dive into the early days and let's talk specifically to the audience that's thinking about starting a business. There are 7 myths that you dispel in the beginning of the book. And so I'd like to touch on a couple of those. The first one is unicorn or nothing. So what's that all about?

Yes. So unicorn or nothing is the first and honestly the most dangerous myth. And this is the myth that unless you've built a unicorn, a company that is valued at $1 billion in valuation or more, that you and your company are nothing. And really, nothing could be further from the truth, right? Because right under unicorns, you have gazelles and you have giraffes and you have lions and you have all sorts of real and well-fed animals. And these are real companies that are making revenue, they're making profit, and most importantly, they're making an impact on the markets that they're serving. They're producing a product or providing a service that is actually helping the other person on the other side solve a problem. And so it's very important not to align your goals to create a unicorn from the start, because a unicorn is an outlier result, right? It is not the normal result that would happen to most entrepreneurs who start a company. You might still build a unicorn, right? It might turn out that what you built had such demand, was such a great fit for the audience that you were going after, that it turns out to be a billion-dollar company. But that in general is an outlier result. And to set up that goal basically sets it up in a way that is very unmotivating. for many entrepreneurs, right? If I tell you, you have to go and build a billion-dollar company, otherwise nothing that you do is successful, it's really unmotivating. But if I tell you, you know what, for your first company, why don't we set this goal of creating a company that in 3 years can deliver $1.5 million in revenue and that you are able to keep at least 30% of that as profit, right? That is an achievable goal in most markets. And that is something that now you can do and it could be considered great success. Instead of setting up something that is just really, really far out of reach.

No, I agree with you 1,000%. I mean, I came out of college with a degree in marketing and I thought, okay, like, I'd like to start my own business someday, but it's very intimidating because even, even today in the US, when you just pitch an idea to a friend or family member, they talk about that billion-dollar valuation. And so where did that come from? Why is that the standard narrative now?

Yeah, it primarily comes from Silicon Valley. That's where it comes from. Here in Silicon Valley, primarily startups are fueled by venture funding and venture funds are going to want a unicorn. So that's what they're investing in. They're going to invest in a bunch of companies, hundreds of companies. But at the end of the day, really what they need is they need those outlier returns on a few companies to make the whole portfolio turn positive. And so that's really where it comes from. And one of the things that I was able to do with my startup is completely eliminate the need to even have venture capital. Instead, I got customers right away, right? I started my company, I got customers to pay for a service, and eventually I turned that service into a software platform. And so those customers were paying me money. That was revenue. It was enough money to go ahead and fund the operations of the company. That's how we turn it around. Then we become not reliant on venture capital, which is going to put the pressure to get this outlier result.

It definitely does. And I really love how you dispel that truth. And the other one about VC money is another one I wanted to talk about. A lot of people think that you need to take on VC money or investment in order to build a business. And so you've taken a stance against that. You didn't need it, you didn't want it, and you've been very successful. And so what's that all about? Why don't we need VC money and why is that sort of the standard?

Yeah. So the minute I said to anyone, oh, I started a new business, the first question I would get is, how much money did you raise? So I say zero. And who did you raise it from? No one. Right. I have customers that pay me for my service and then a product. And so I think where this comes from is that there's sort of like this knee-jerk reaction, especially here in Silicon Valley, that the minute you build a company, you're going to need venture capital. And that comes generally from the fact that most products or services are going to take capital to be built. And so you need that capital ahead of when the revenue might come in. But the reality is not quite that. once you start exploring what venture capital invests in, for first-time founders, they generally want to see traction anyway.

Mm-hmm.

So no matter what, whether you want to raise venture capital or whether you want to bootstrap your company, you are going to have to get paying customers. You're going to have to get users to use your product, and you're going to have to demonstrate that traction to those that want to invest in your company. So that's one of the things that I feel like really is Unknown. Most people think that they come to venture capital with a slide deck and venture capitalists are going to say, yes, I'm going to invest. That doesn't really happen for first-time founders in particular. Venture capital is going to want to see, well, you know, what have you done in the last year? Were you able to get any customers? Were you able to get any paid pilots? Is anyone paying for this product? Is anyone using it? How are they dropping off? So no matter what, you're going to have to build this minimum viable product or service first, show some traction, then you come to venture capital. Now, of course, there's like a whole angel investing that also takes place there. Angels are more willing to invest in things that are not showing traction. But as I was doing research for the book, and I do some angel investing myself, most of those angel funds, you know, syndicated funds, are also looking for traction. So no matter what, basically, as a first-time founder, you have to get the minimum viable product or service out. You have to prove that there is some traction in the form of revenue or users, and then you can make the decision of whether or not you want to continue to bootstrap or get some outside funding.

No, I think that's a very important thing to dispel. And, and there are 7 of those right in the front of the book. There's one more that I want to touch on before we move on to the next subject, and that is you are your startup. So what's that all about? I thought that was a very interesting take that you have.

This is really about the mindset of what we set up to create, because the myth is that you are your startup. And the reality is that you are not. The startup is a project that you're working on, an important, big, demanding, challenging project that you're working on for a period of time in your life. And the reason why it is important to distinguish between you and the startup is that the startup might fail. It is very likely, in fact, that the startup might fail.

Yeah.

And that does not mean that you do. So if your startup dies, you don't die. You continue on. You take the lessons that you learned in that time. You take the connections. the knowledge, the experiences that you built, and hopefully you put them into a new project that you work on. So I think that that's important as you come in to build the startup, because otherwise it all becomes very personal, right? The startup fails, I fail. The startup dies, I die. The startup is not doing very well, I'm not doing very well. So it's good to have a little bit of distance from this project that you're working on.

That's a really important perspective too, because when I was going through the process of starting BookThinkers, there was a lot of social pressure of what if it's going to fail? What if it's going to fail. Everybody's going to think this way of me. But think about it as a little bit of an experiment. If you're somebody in the audience who's thinking of starting a business, it doesn't need to be a unicorn. You don't need to take on outside money. Just try it out, because if it does fail, you don't die. And so that's a really cool perspective. And I'm happy that you mentioned that.

Yes, that's absolutely right.

Now, in your introduction, you mentioned there's this cycle of entrepreneurship. And so you broke down your book into 3 parts. The first is start. The second is build, and the third is exit. And so why did you build the book that way?

I built the book that way because I realized I had had this important opportunity to travel through the entire lifecycle of a startup. Right. So lots of people start companies. Some people get to build those companies to a significant degree, and then a lower percentage of those get to actually exit the business. Right. And an exit is generally when you get an opportunity to have your company be acquired by someone else. It could also be when the company goes IPO, right? But IPOs are generally more reserved for those companies that we've been calling unicorns in this area, right? And so I had this opportunity to travel through the entire lifecycle. I thought that was a really great way to organize the book, primarily to show aspiring entrepreneurs that there is an end, right? There is light at the end of the tunnel, and there is actually an end to a startup. Right? There is an end to your role in the startup, which is important for a lot of entrepreneurs because, you know, we all work very hard on building the things that we want to build. And it can get tiring at points. And so a lot of people that give me feedback on the book, they're really happy that I wrote about the exit in particular, because it did give them a way to think about how their role could end. And the role might not need to end in a startup. Many people build a business that they then want to transfer to their children, or they want to transfer it to someone else. So it is possible to never exit your business, but many entrepreneurs want to exit their business. They want to start something, build it for a period of time, whether that is 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, and then eventually exit the business and let it run on its own without needing the founder to still be there. So I got to go through all of that. I wanted to share a lot of what I had learned in those 3 lifecycle areas.

I think it's a great way to structure the book. It makes it very easy to read. And then when you want to go back and refresh something, you know exactly where to go based on the cycle that you're currently in as an entrepreneur. And so I know that we've talked a lot about kind of the beginner's mindset already, but I want to go a little bit deeper on that because I think that's primarily what the audience is going to be interested in today. And so what other items on the beginner's mindset do you want to address right when you're starting the business? Is there anything else that you want to make sure that we highlight today?

Beginner's mindset is one of the most important mindset shifts that a person can make in order to begin to create the things that you're meant to create or you want to create in your lifetime. And so beginner's mindset is the concept that as a beginner, you actually benefit from the fact that you don't know everything you need to know in order to create what you need to create. Of course, I brought to my company some things that I already knew. I had worked in the biopharmaceutical industry for 15 years. I had some connections. I understood what a clinical trial was, and my company was focused on bringing patients into clinical trials. That's what I brought to the business. And then there were a bunch of things that I had no idea how to do. In fact, I never started a company, but I never incorporated a company. I never hired every single person on my team. I never developed software, never filed a patent. These were the things that I didn't know how to do. And I realized as I was approaching those things and trying to do them, that my mindset was different as I was doing them. I was more curious. I was more patient with myself because I was like, well, you know what? I've never done this before. I was more willing to get help from other people because I was a beginner. And so that's the beginner's mindset. The beginner's mindset is saying, I'm a beginner at this, and that is actually a benefit to the task that is at hand today because I'm going to be more patient, more humble. I'm going to ask for help. And so if you can harness that beginner's mindset into this time when you're creating the startup, That is really powerful.

I went through that process too. I mean, there were so many things that I didn't know about the personal development book industry when we started Book Thinkers. I mean, but that definitely helped me to walk in with patience and curiosity. If I thought I knew it all, Book Thinkers wouldn't be where it is today. And even the podcast, when I look at the podcast as a business unit of Book Thinkers, I didn't know anything about podcasting. I knew some cool authors. I knew I knew how to read good books and talk about my biggest takeaways, but I didn't know how to interview anybody. And so I started to research and I watched YouTube videos and like that is part of the process. That is part of the beginner's mindset. And so I love the idea of don't go in thinking you know everything because that's never the case.

That's right. That's right. And it's not good to know everything because I think when you know everything, by default, your mind becomes a bit closed. And the whole point of creating something new is to be very open-minded and to be able to be receptive to what the market is telling you, what other people are sharing, and also your own intuition.

So for those in the audience that are looking to start a business, and I know we're spending a lot of time on this first part of the book, but I think it's important. What are some of the first steps? What are the first things that somebody should consider when starting a business?

Yes. The first thing is, what is the problem that your business is going to solve? That is the most important question. And in the beginning, you may not know exactly how your company is going to solve that problem completely, but it's very important to have closeness with what this problem is. So what's the problem that you're looking to solve? Who are you solving it for? That's the most important thing. If you don't have that, if you just say, oh, I just want to create a company and I want products in this area, you really have to be solving a problem for somebody, right, in order for the business to have a chance at surviving long term. So number one is like, what's the problem that I'm going to solve? Then we have to take care of some of the legal things, you know, so very important to incorporate your company. So some people choose to do an LLC. Some people choose to do a C corp. There are a lot of differences between those corporate types in terms of the responsibilities that are assigned and the taxation. So it's important to get a little bit of information on that. Should I do an LLC? Should I do a C corp? LLCs are usually much easier to run. C corps is more like a regular corporation that ends in an Inc., right? Inc. at the end. And those tend to be more difficult to run. They tend to be taxed differently, but they also have some benefits at the end of the day when it comes to selling the company after 5 years of holding that stock. So good to research that and see how you want to form the company. And then right after that, I think the most important thing is to begin to put out there what your product and service is going to be. And this needs to be flexible because at the beginning we don't know exactly whether the market is going to want what you have to offer. And so whether they want more or whether they want less. than you have to offer. And so in the beginning, we put something out, we start getting some feedback from potential customers. Super important to show a customer a minimum viable product, begin to get some feedback from them, and hopefully begin to see if you can get someone to pay for what you are putting together.

On entity classification specifically, that's something that I know a lot of people ask me questions about, and it seems to be one of those things that gets ballooned into a bigger barrier to entry than it really is. And so where do you recommend people start to research and make that decision?

Yes. So for my first company, I formed it as an LLC. I went to LegalZoom. Literally, I put the name of the company and in 10 minutes I had everything completed for an LLC. And maybe like a week later, I got something in the mail saying everything is done. Online is a pretty good place to research because you have things like Investopedia and, you know, other resources online that provide good information. At the end of the day, if you want more high-level information, you could always hire a lawyer for 1 or 2 hours to explain this to you. But basically, what it comes down to is there's difference in corporate protection and legal protection and in taxation that are important there to understand. But if you want to do it easy, then you do what you and I did, which is you go to LegalZoom, you get an LLC, you will be protected there in terms of the limited liability. of the corporation. And then in terms of the taxation, you have a choice with an LLC still to tax it either as a C-Corp, an S-Corp, or to flow directly into your tax return.

Yeah, we were talking about it before we jumped on. I mean, my story is very similar to yours. I jumped on LegalZoom, I filled everything out once I decided on a name, and then a week later you get everything in the mail and you're good to go. And so it makes it easier and you can always upgrade and update your corporate structure and change your articles of organization and things like that later on. So none of those decisions that you make initially are irreversible. And I think that's a really important thing when starting a business. Like, if you can walk your decision back or change your decision later, then it's really not that risky. And so that's one of those things that I tell people sometimes, as long as it's not irreversible, then go forward with it, try it out, see what happens, and you'll learn. And then something else will come later, like an adjacent possible.

So yeah, that's right, Nick. And what I recommend for people is not to spend a lot of time on these things that could be changed. So I sometimes see a lot of entrepreneurs spending like 3 months coming up with like a branding, a logo for the company. These things can be easily changed. Like in the beginning, do them as efficiently, as inexpensively as possible. And then if it ends up being in 2 years that you don't like your logo, you could always go get a better logo. You could always, you know, change some of these things later.

Hello, Book Thinkers family. A quick word from today's podcast sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks ranging from bestsellers to celebrity memoirs, business, and my favorite, personal development. And as part of Audible's partnership with us, we're actually offering listeners a free 30-day trial. This trial includes 1 credit good for any premium selection titles you'd like on the whole platform. So that's pretty much any book, including the one we're talking about today. That book is yours to keep even after the trial is over. Now, this trial also includes access to Audible's Plus catalog of podcasts, audiobooks, guided wellness programs, and Audible Originals. You can listen all you want, no credits needed. Now, everyone on the Book Thinkers Instagram knows that I love physical paper books. There's nothing better than having a book in your hand, scribbling notes everywhere in the margins. I kind of tear those things up. But I've been completing an additional 20 to 30 books every single year using Audible by listening when I'm in the car, doing chores around the house, or while I'm on my morning walks or runs. You could take advantage of this free trial by clicking the link in today's show notes or going to www.bookthinkers.com/audibletrial. You will not regret it. Now back to today's episode. Let's transition over to part 2 of the book, which is where a lot of the meat is, and that's on build. And so I really like chapter 4, Deep Pockets Are Never Deep Enough. And so what do you mean by that?

Yes. So deep pockets, generally those would be the people that provide money to your company. Those pockets are never deep enough. They're providing money, but at the end of the day, there's still a lot of things to get done. So The whole point of that chapter is that, yes, funding is important and you might need to go through the process of obtaining funding, but at the end of the day, the building of the company relies much more on your determination, on your ability to understand your market, on the ability to customize your product to fit the need of that market, and your ability to build a team, right? On your ability to keep going. When obstacles come your way, that's really so much more important than how big these pockets are. How much money your startup was able to get in funding? The funding is just the funding. It's the beginning of the story, and I always crack up when TechCrunch writes about this company raised six million dollars. This company raised three million dollars, and everybody throws like a big party. All they've done is get some money in exchange for equity, right? To continue to build for the future. What I'm more interested in is is the company getting customers? Is the company getting Is the company achieving profitability over time? Is the company able to retain its employees? Those are the things that really we should be writing about.

I know that you're— you mentioned that you're an angel as well. So when you're looking at new businesses, what is kind of a standard timeline from when the business is formed until when you look for profitability or when a normal small business is looking for profitability? Is that something that you're looking for right in the first couple of months, right when you get a couple of customers, or is that years down the road? What does that timeline look like?

In the world of investing, profitability is deferred for a very long time. But I don't think that that is actually the right thing to do. So when I look at businesses, I would like them to try to be profitable around year 3, right? Like, that's what I would like to see. My business actually was profitable from year 1. I had enough customers that they had no way of spending all that money, right? I mean, I could have, I could have, you know, gotten a very big fancy office, and I could have gotten very expensive people to hire, but I chose not to do So I think if you're building a business that will be sustainable over the long term, I would recommend to get used to try to be profitable from the beginning, from year one, right? Of course, in the first few months you have a lot of investment to do. You're building a product, you're building a service, right? The demand may not be there exactly at that time, but ideally we get used to this fact of we need to run a sustainable business. We need to be able to get more revenue than we have in expenses, right? That's just kind of like the basics of business, of a business that is meant to thrive and go on for a long time. And so while, you know, in general we tend to defer profitability to a very long time, I would encourage entrepreneurs to not do that and to get in the mindset of saying, I want to build a sustainable company. So as soon as possible, right, end of year 1, end of year 2, I want to try to clear some profit. So some profit, right? Some way that I am running this company in a responsible way and that I am taking in more money than I am spending.

When you're building a business and when you built your business, what role did competitors play? Did you base a lot of your decision on what the competition is doing? I know you actually talk in the book about talking to your customers intentionally. So how do you view that competitive landscape when starting a business?

All the businesses are going to have competition. So I think one of the first things that in the beginning I would get a bit thrown off. I had a friend that would generally send me information about competitors in the space. And so initially I would get a little thrown off, like, oh my God, there's like so much competition. And there was actually so much competition in the area that I had chosen. That competition in a way is validating that there is demand, right? And that there is a problem that is a good problem to be fixing. So the way to sort of turn around the competition and not let it debilitate you is one, to understand that there's competition because you're actually playing in a good market. If there was no competition, you probably need to start thinking, why is no one here? Right? Because generally the market is efficient at finding the areas in which problems should be solved. And then number 2 is to actually try to learn about your competitors. So don't turn away when, when you find a competitor, don't turn away. Try to learn from them, even try to communicate with them and try to understand where they are positioning their business. One of the most important lessons that I learned in this journey was that there were a lot of people that called themselves clinical trial enrollment platforms, which is what we did, but they didn't want to be serving the type of client that we were serving. So we were serving generally those that were small to medium-sized biopharmaceutical companies that were running clinical trials in rare diseases and in cancer. And it turns out that those 2 areas were areas that were a complete turnoff for most of our competitors. They didn't want to work there. They called it too hard, right? Too challenging, too difficult to find those patients. And so one of the things that you can do as you learn about a competitor is to say, well, where are they positioning the business? And am I positioning the business in a different part of the market to still be protected and unique and differentiated?

No, it's, it's brilliant advice, and I think that's all very important. You mentioned earlier too about you don't need to hire the best and the brightest people. And so there's a chapter in your book in this build section about kind of hiring capable blank slates. And so what do you mean by that?

Yeah, so a capable blank slate is a person who hasn't necessarily done the job before, but they can do it, right? With the right teaching, with the right sort of coaching, they will be able to do that job. They'll be able to actually do almost any job out there. And so in the beginning, I hired these capable blank slates. Because as I was trying to contain costs, I was aware of the fact that I wasn't going to be able to hire these people that, you know, had 20 years of experience and were expecting this really thick compensation package and stock options and, you know, like a very thick package. I wasn't able to provide that. But instead, what I was able to provide was a great work experience for somebody who needed to accumulate that work experience. So I found these capable blank slates, generally people who hadn't done specifically this job before but had a good interest in it and had the ability to learn it. And I think, you know, what's important about these blank slates is that for my company in particular, I wasn't necessarily going to find operational people that were doing exactly what we were doing because what we were doing was new, right? We were placing Facebook ads for clinical trials on Facebook. There weren't a lot of companies doing that in the year 2015, and so I couldn't put you know, a help wanted ad saying I want somebody who's done Facebook ads for clinical trials because it didn't really exist. There were probably only a handful of people doing that. So in general, I got people to whom I could teach, right, how to do their job and they could learn quickly and they can stay motivated and they would be very interested in delighting our clients. That was the most important thing that I looked for. Would this person be amazing in front of a client? Would they be understanding? Would they help the client achieve the goals?

It's funny, I was, uh, so right out of school, or sort of towards the end of my college experience, I took an internship. And then for the first couple years right out of school, I worked as a sales professional for a software company. And I was sort of that capable blank slate. I really didn't have any experience in software. I didn't have that much experience in sales, but I said, hey, I'm willing to learn anything. And so it's cool that, that you're looking for those people instead of seasoned professionals. And that's probably a mistake that a lot of startups make. They think they need to hire the best and the brightest and pay a lot of money, but it's not always the case.

That's right. That's right. And, you know, as the company grew, of course, I did have to move in that direction of now hiring people to manage those people because I was doing a lot of those roles of playing the manager for a lot of the different functions. So as the company grows, you know, that strategy changes. And, you know, that's why in the chapter I say, at first, hire capable blank slates. Eventually, you might need to build that leadership role for the company, but initially you don't need to hire those very expensive people.

Let's talk about one more chapter in this section, and then we'll move on to exit, because I know you said you get a lot of feedback about the exit section. So, your best effort is never burnout. A lot of entrepreneurs kind of They see this stereotypical entrepreneur who's standing against all odds and getting beat up and working 2 million hours a week. And I'd love to kind of hear your thoughts on that stereotype.

Yes. So here's the thing. A startup is a long-term commitment, right? So you have to show up every day, chop the wood, as I say, figure out how to continue to grow your business, move your product, learn your customer better. And so this requires stamina. Right? And so this stamina basically also requires that you have a way to regenerate yourself and your energy. And so if you don't have that piece in place, the place that regenerates your energy, and instead you're just burning yourself out, it's not going to work out long term. It might take you 6 months to burn out, and then it might take you a year to recover from that burnout, right? And burnout is really real. I talk a lot about burnout in the book. Burnout is sort of like— it tends to be more of like this emotional emotional place where you're working so hard that you really haven't taken care of yourself. You haven't taken care of your body, of your emotions, of your relationship, of like your sort of like your inner self. And it catches up to you. Basically, it will always catch up to you. So a better way to build is to build a company or work on your project in a way that is sustainable. Right. So you're a human being. I'm a human being. I need sleep. I need rest. I need contact with my friends. I need contact with my family. I need to sometimes work on things that don't lead to anything, that are like creative projects, they're just creative. I need to work out. I need to have fun. Everybody needs these things, right? And so while the startup is really important and is very demanding, there has to be some balance there where we bring in these areas. And the balance is never at the expense of the startup, because when you show back up to your startup after you had a fun night out, you're like, oh, I feel great. I feel like this other side of me was fed for a little bit. So now I can return to the side that wants to work really hard and do that work. So I really recommend that people don't burn out, that you really have that sort of like front and center as a very important and dangerous risk to this, and that instead you come up with a plan of the things that you want to do. Like, you want to be living a happy life during this period of time, not a miserable life that you then have to spend 2 years recovering from.

Well, social media seems to create this hustle culture sometimes where I think that people need to show and demonstrate that they're working all hours of the day and all hours of the night. And so what's your thought on that? I mean, do you think social media kind of pushes that narrative a little bit too hard and maybe there are some people in the industry that push it too hard, or is it just a personal checks and balance type of thing?

Yeah, I think it's interesting. You see the narrative of hustle, hustle. I personally believe hustle is good. It just needs to be balanced by rest. So I hustle, I hustle every day, but you know what? I also sleep 8 hours a day. I also exercise. I also spend time with my family. Hustle is good. It's just, it can't be 100% hustle. Like, your life cannot be 100% hustle, and you need to have something that allows you to recover from the hustle and regenerate. Like, the word that I really like is regenerate, because it's a matter of energy. Mm-hmm. Energy to produce something, and then we spend that energy in the hustle. So how does it come back to us? It somehow needs to come back to us. And some of the things that happen in the business can feed into that energy. You know, we get really excited, we get a new customer, we're so excited, it feeds into the energy. But some of the things that happen in the business are hard, they're difficult, they're obstacles, they're challenges, and they require a lot of energy that then we have to find a way to regenerate that energy. And oftentimes that regeneration will happen outside of the business. It will happen in social time. It will happen in time with our own selves. Social media in general doesn't do a good job portraying authentic selves. I think that's kind of the bottom line. Once in a while you do see somebody who's authentic out there, but in general, everybody is showing more of like what they're doing instead of how they're being.

Yeah, that's a really cool differentiation between the two. I always tell people that sleep is my superpower. I love sleeping. I love regenerative activity, rest and play and things like that. So that's really important. And then part 3 of your book, Exit. When somebody walks into a business for the first time, should they be thinking about the end in mind, in your opinion? Should they know when they want to exit and at what revenue numbers, or is that something that kind of just happens later on? What are your thoughts there?

Here's the thing. I didn't do that, right? I started my business and I had no idea if this thing was going to succeed. In fact, I gave myself 6 months and I didn't see any signs of light, I was going to go get a job. Because I could get a job in biopharmaceutical companies. That's what I had done for 15 years. And that was sort of like my fallback. I could always get a job in biopharmaceutical companies. But there were signs of light. And so I didn't get to think about the exit really until people, companies started approaching me about acquiring the business. Now I'm doing this all over again. And as I'm doing this for my second startup, I am thinking about exit from the beginning. I am setting things up so that they can be bought at some point in the most easy way. So as a second-time entrepreneur, yes, I would counsel first-time entrepreneurs to think about the exit, right? To think long-term, think strategically, think right away, like, who would be a great company to buy what you are building, right? Because then you can sort of build it in a way that it will fit really well for them. You can also set up the corporate structure. So that it will work for you from a tax perspective. And so I would do it my second time around, I am doing it with that end in mind.

What other advice do you have for people who are looking to sell their business now that they're already an entrepreneur? What kind of advice do you have for them?

Yes. So when, when a company approaches you to buy your company, they're looking for a few things. They're looking generally for a growing company that is profitable, because most companies don't want to have to spend more money on that acquisition. They want to be able to make that acquisition accretive, which means it's going to increase their income. Oftentimes though, there are some companies that are just going to want to buy your technology, and then in that case, if that's just a technology play, you might not need to be profitable. But in general, you want to be generating revenue, you want to be generating profit, you want to be growing the company. That's number one when it comes to the business. Number 2 is that when they propose to buy your company, the thing that's going to happen next is due diligence. And here they're going to need you to show them pretty much everything that's ever happened to the company. So all the financial statements, all the contracts you signed, all the employees you hired, how much you're paying them, anything that's ever happened to the company. And so it's very important from the start to set up an organizational system so that you have this information and you have it ready for them. By the time a company approaches you, it's too late to clean up 5 years of messy financials. So the financials have to always be clean right from the beginning, no matter how small or how big you are. In the beginning, you can probably do it yourself, but over time, it's a really— it's one of the first tasks that I would really outsource right away, to get an accounting firm. They don't have to cost a lot of money, but to come and close the books books every month for you in an accurate way so that when somebody shows up to buy your company, you have something that is professional, it's clean, it is foolproof. They're not going to find mistakes that you should be finding.

Kind of in my age bracket, right? Like early 20s, mid-20s, I see a lot of people start businesses and then they neglect the financial piece. And so from day one, I had read a lot of horror stories, I think in some startup books about Hey, we were positioned for investment or acquisition and then it got held up for years or never happened or fell through the cracks because our financials weren't in place. And so that's something that we did right off the bat is we needed to clean those things up and make sure that we had them in place, make sure that we, you know, we actually incorporated the business, which a lot of small businesses don't do right off the bat. They want to validate their ideas. So that's all excellent advice. And then as I mentioned a couple of times, our primary demographic for this audience is young professionals, Big goals, big ambitions. They want to start a business. What kind of final advice do you have for those people?

Yeah, my final advice is to write down one outcome that you want to happen within the next, let's say, 6 months and work diligently towards that. My advice would be to be focused because one of the things that I really realized in my startup is that it really benefited from me being focused on it. And so many times I think what I find is that people have lots of different things they want to do, right? They want to do this and they want to do that. And that is generally not a great way to create something that will survive. The best way to create something that will survive is to be quite focused on it. So my best advice is find that thing, find that problem you want to solve in the market, and then become uber-focused on that while regenerating your energy. Become uber-focused on that and commit to it for a period of time. Until you see it through. Is this really going to work or is it not going to work and I need to shift gears, pivot the company, close the company, move on? But give it a good 6 months to a year where you're really devoted to exploring every angle, every way that your product or service can fix this problem.

Well, Sandra, I really appreciated your time today. I think that this content is very useful for a lot of people and it's fresh. It's a new perspective. You're ripping down a lot of those stereotypes and dispelling those myths. So appreciate your time today. For those in the audience that want to learn a little bit more about you or find your book, where should they go? What should they do?

Yeah, so I have a website. It's my name, sandraspielberg.com. And then this is my book, New Startup Mindset, and it's available everywhere where books are sold in all formats.

I love it. Well, thank you again so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate it. And we'll continue to communicate back and forth on Instagram and everything.

Great. This is awesome, Nick. Thanks so much for the time.

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