What You Need To Know To Become A Successful Founder

Hey it's mark podolski the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website www dot thelandgeek dot com and i'm really excited for today's guest we don't always get this kind of super intelligent startup helping vc accelerator like guest but before we talk to our guests i'd be remiss but i improperly introduced my co host six sigma you know him you love him scott todd from scott todd dot net landmodo dot com and most importantly you're not automating your craigslist and facebook postings postingdomination dot com thelangy scott todd are you excited i am very excited mark i feel like we're going to get a lot smarter in the next thirty to forty minutes what.

Do you think i think so too.

I know it i know it i just want to mind all the listeners today's podcast is sponsored by geekpay io it is the only automated financial crm in the country a set it and forget it system you're going to get paid either way ach credit card credit card ach if one fails it's going to charge the other one on file your customers are going to love it they're going to know the current balance going to save you time it's going to save you money geekpay io kevin siskar is our guest today kevin if you don't know who he is is a managing director of the founder institute in a little metropolitan called new york he has built a portfolio of over eighty early stage companies and in twenty sixteen he was named best startup ecosystem developer in the entire founder institute network which is a global network across over one hundred and fifty cities kevin is the host of the ambition today podcast where he explores the hardships and heroism of entrepreneurs creators investors and builders who ambitiously change the world you can find him on ciscar co talking startups products technology and services and the people who build them kevin is also a venture partner at outbound ventures the founder of of brinkway and a co founder of new york city innovative collection kevin siskar welcome to the podcast how are you.

Thank you guys hey marque scott wow tremendous tremendous introduction i hope i live up to the hype i'm excited to.

Be here you know kevin the whole rest of the podcast i'm going to put on my anchorman voice because you're.

A big deal i love it i love it awesome yeah i'm excited to be here i'm excited to share some lessons as you mentioned i am the managing director for the founder institute in new york city we're an early stage startup accelerator so we help companies at the earliest stages get incorporated set up built and really we help them launch and support them long term as they grow to be big big startup tech.

Companies so there's two questions first you know this is a very competitive space right we got y combinator who are you know paul graham all those guys right and everywhere in between the second question is you know it's sort of this chicken and egg you know number one i might have what i think is a good idea but you might think it sucks right so and then the other issue is why you know founder institute and not some other type of accelerator so it's like are you selling me am i selling you are we selling each other how does this.

Even happen kevin yeah definitely so we're a little different than other accelerators we operate a lot earlier right so if you think about the pipeline right you think about like you're maybe have an idea you think about quitting your job really kind of breaking out into the world then maybe you start the company you start to get some revenue you release a product you maybe fundraise your first round which is your seed round and you really start to like grow from there we help companies at the earliest stages so we'll help people as early as i had an idea we'll help them get incorporated built set up make that smart jump from being an employee to being an entrepreneur and make it in the right way possible in the best way possible and you know other accelerators are more like seed accelerators so they sit more by that seed round so you've already maybe got you know a few thousand dollars coming in you've already got a team you've already got a product in market so we help founders a lot sooner is really our differentiator and to your point around ideas right that is that is also something we kind of take pretty personal is we believe in founders right so we do a lot of things around finding the best founders and we really believe that if you have the best founders a great idea is important right but the best founders will build a great company regardless of the idea well.

Let'S talk about that what makes a great founder especially someone who majored in cognitive neuroscience i almost feel like you're inside my head get out of my.

Head kevin yeah basically and so you know it's interesting right because in some ways i never expected it but that degree is almost a little bit relevant we like to look at people's personality and we actually built a proprietary psych test to benchmark that so we have mentors like you know scott hefferman of meetup dot com and elon musk is actually a mentor out in the valley and so we've basically benchmarked these guys personality traits they've taken this test we've built we've benchmarked what makes a great entrepreneur and we give that test to people thinking about joining founder institute and we see where they fall in line right so some things we're looking for that make a great entrepreneur fluid intelligence is incredibly important and what i mean by fluid intelligence is it's a little different than iq iq is really just kind of how smart your fluid intelligence is your ability to when you come up against an obstacle or a new set of rules how quickly can you learn that new rule set adapt and overcome it right and that's really a lot of what entrepreneurship is about you solved a team problem and then a fundraising problem comes out and then a product problem comes out and so every time a new thing hits you how quickly can you learn adapt and overcome it is really one of the main main things we look for in our entrepreneurs and then there's a few other things as moderate agreeableness so you don't want to actually agree with everyone all the time if you're an entrepreneur you want to be able to be in the middle and hear people out and so high openness is another thing we look for and these are kind of these are like the big five personality traits that you know have been studied and go back quite a bit in.

Psychology scott todd what do you think.

Okay so so i come to you i've got an idea i take a test right you guys are looking to see if it's a good fit for you and assuming that it is what.

Happens next yeah sure so you take the test in a city like new york you would have an interview with me between the two of those we would make an admissions decision if we admit you you would join the accelerator we typically start with about thirty people in a cohort and we usually graduate around ten of that and so we're a little unique as well between these other because we run the program bootcamp style meaning that if you're not keeping pace with the program or maybe you decide you actually don't want to be an entrepreneur or you got a raise or you're having a kid or life happens right you're invited to come back at a later date and kind of give entrepreneurship another shot when it may be fitting your life a little bit better interesting yeah and then through those once you're in it's a fourteen week program right so we basically take those mentors that we built the test with right we bring them in for dinners every wednesday night once a week and you hear from them firsthand right so most of our mentors are ceo's operators founders people that have been through the trenches and felt the pains of starting a company and it can really give back from firsthand experience and what they've learned and so they do that every week with a different set of mentors they'll hear you pitch they'll give you feedback on your pitch they'll give you a one two four five no threes because threes are cop outs in our.

Opinion.

And then we'll do q and a and then usually we all kind of go hang out afterward and you get some one on one time with the mentors.

It'S a very cool model it's a very cool model if you were starting a business today kevin what's the first thing that you would do.

So the first thing i would do is cancel my netflix subscription okay why well just because so often you see founders kind of sitting around or waiting around or they need this one more thing or they just you know if i only had a technical co founder if i only had you know a developer i could i could my magical ideal just disappear and it's like there's so many things you could be doing meanwhile right and so you know you just need to be scrappy and get started and not sit around not sit around and wait you need to just go and you know most importantly like once you get going that's really what's going to start informing your decision making and really help you find you know product market fit with a great company launching a new space right so that's my number one piece of advice is just get going right and at the worst case even if it doesn't work out you're going to have learned a ton.

Yeah i mean okay so let's say i'm learning and going and doing it's such a noisy world today everybody distracted i mean i don't know about scott i have the attention span of a ferret on a double cappuccino right how do you break things through as the founder through all the noise and get traction in today's marketplace so that's.

A little tricky right i think and i by no means think it's impossible i actually think it's more realistic than people assume if you do the right things and i think one of the things that matters most is especially in the world of entrepreneurship is self awareness not enough people are being real with themselves not enough people are understanding what are the limitations of their own anxiety what are the limitations of their personal life and really optimizing all the hours they have to be working and so i think having a rigid self awareness really helps you that is your unfair advantage over other founders when you couple that with a strong work ethic you really start to see founders that quickly excel and blow by the rest of them and so having those real talks with yourself seeking outside advice because that's most often when you get that advice right like your family loves you they're not gonna always tell you that's stupid or this is what you really need to do or yeah like i hear you like you want to launch the startup but you also just watch three seasons of you know game of thrones like what are you doing right and so you know get going and have the self awareness to hold yourself accountable.

I love it i think mark i think that you know not i mean in a way i think that that's what we also do with like flight school right like so kevin we have a training program called flight school where it's it's like let's say it's a ten week program where you know people are executing in real time and i think what it does is it forces them to take action and then people decide you know man i got to do this or you know or i've got to give up i got to give up netflix or i got to get better at scheduling my time so that that's really the i think the value of it is that somebody is there in your face saying you have to execute let's do this now or there's another option the other option is you got to reprioritize your time and your decision making yeah and we have.

An entire curriculum that goes along with these mentoring sessions and so you get kind of conditioned across the fourteen weeks to adjust your schedule and learn how to structure your time and go after and prioritize the right things and so by the time you leave you're kind of in that right and that you've kind of kicked the flywheel and the engine is revving and running all right.

Kevin you're in new york city you're gonna go to dinner okay because let's face it new york's probably got the you know maybe maybe san francisco's one new york might be two some of the best restaurants in the world all right you're gonna take first of all i want to know what restaurant you're gonna take them but you're gonna take three mentors in business and you can pick any three that you want in the world okay so it's the four of you to dinner you get to ask each one of them one question so the first question is where are you going to dinner whom are you bringing and what are you asking okay.

All right let me see if i can i can remember all that so i'm gonna cop out on the restaurant because we're in startup world and we don't have money to eat at michelin star restaurants but i think everyone who's listening if you're in new york city you should order a company called kraft and savor which is one of our portfolio companies they make incredible at home delivery and that's kind of you know showcasing a little bit of the companies we kind of work with so i would order kraft and savor and i would have over for dinner chris sackett who's a famous investor of uber he's on shark tank they have to be they have to be alive or dead alive alive all right so steve jobs is out then i guess elon i find what elon musk is doing fascinating and lastly who would my last one be my last one we'll come back to my last one so i would ask chris sacca is is being was it hard to become a billionaire was it recently taunt him and mark cuban kind of yeah because i and i and i'm anticipating his answer to being saying being no that you know there really is you know there's not a perfect formula but there's a lifestyle that you can cultivate you can do the right things in the right order you can set yourself up for success and accomplish the goals if you play you know the long game right twenty thirty forty years and so i would i would ask chris that and get his feedback on that i would ask elon dude has like no chill i guess i just want to know like how why he just you know why not just do the space thing why tesla why the boring company why hyperloop you know guy just keeps going and i guess i would be curious to ask elon what he thinks of the rest of us that are you know everyone else that's launching social apps and you know you know maybe another dating app or something why aren't they just changing the world in a bigger way and and in many ways i'm excited because i think that is where investments and startups are going in the next few.

Years do you think he'd be judgy.

No i don't think so i don't think he would be i have friends that know him and i've heard he's i've heard he's pretty calm it's pretty.

Cool so what do you think he.

Would say i think i think he would say that people aren't you know he's an engineer he's with a physics degree right and not enough people are kind of exposed to the sciences to really kind of understand and pursue that stuff the guy taught himself how to build rockets right and like anybody else could teach themselves to build rockets i really don't think it's an information issue in twenty seventeen i think it's it's an applied effort issue right and so again you really just need great people who are scrappy and have fluid intelligence and really can just get after and fix these things do you do you.

Think that people don't think big enough like elon musk they don't have these sort of you know thousand x type.

Of goals yeah totally i think that not enough people think exponentially but i also don't think that's like their fault right i think we live in an education system where you know you were meant to learn how things work in an era when everyone went and got blue collar jobs and worked on assembly lines and manufacturing was big and and to succeed at that i think thinking outside the box really becoming like the titans of our time is like it's not a normal way of thinking it's a different mindset kind of altogether so i think he would say but he would say that but i think he there's also ways to become that right and i think you expose yourself to the right stuff you listen to great podcasts right i mean this is twenty seventeen literally anything you want to do you could go find that niche on the internet and just start absorbing that knowledge and plugging yourself into the culture and you know getting to meet people in the industry like like yourself or whatever industry that is you know scott.

I think the problem is is a is abundance i almost feel like when you can have anything and you can learn anything and you can do anything you end up doing nothing because it's so hard to choose and if you don't choose which is actually a choice you can't fail right you kind of protect that identity what do you think.

Well i agree i think that i think that at some point in time it's it's hard to draw the line in the sand and decide who you want to become and who you want to be right you know like you know i look at you and you know you you have set out on this mission the land gate right like you you've you've proclaimed yourself the land geek and that's what you go and you pursue and you you you take it to the to the end okay but then other people will look at and they're like well man i could do land and i could do this and i could do that there's too much to do and instead of just drawing a line in the sand saying this is what i'm going to do and this is where i'm going to put my time and this is the difference that i'm going to make it's like well let me let me leave.

It open yeah and what's interesting is that you know like you and i both agree with this scott i'm sure kevin agree you know we're not in the business of buying and selling raw land we're in the freedom business that's our business is how do we create more time for ourselves and it just so happens that we've analyzed a lot of different ways to do it and we like this one the best for various reasons right but that's really our business so kevin.

You guys took the time to take that step back and decide that right and make that make that dedicated decision and you know it shows right and you now have achieved that which not many people take the step back to do so definitely something that people need to be self aware.

About yeah what do kevin what do.

Most people do i think most people just most people kind of just hang out and wait for an opportunity to sort of hit them and maybe they'll take it and maybe they won't and i'm as guilty of that myself right i've had great opportunities fall in my lap and fear the fear can be paralyzing right and you have to kind of over time just get to know you have to build up that stomach and that gut which is what great entrepreneurs do to recognize opportunity when it hits you and be able to jump on it when you can is there.

Something that you believe about business that other people think are nuts something i.

Believe about business that other people think are nuts i really do believe that the body does follow the mind and the mind also follows the body right and i think that people too often feel like they're just swaying in the wind and don't realize that they can control their future and their life and their destiny and they just need to take the step back really focus and it's not going to be comfortable by any stretch of the imagination at first but it will become comfortable over time.

Scott todd what do you think i.

Mean like you know mark so here you know here you have like a guy like grant cardone right and grant cardone is constantly saying like hey the weekend what are you doing at the beach forget the beach forget you know forget the beer don't go out tonight you know don't go out on friday or saturday night stay at home work on your business and a lot of people look at that and they're like well man that's not gonna happen or i want to watch netflix or do whatever right and it just comes back to prioritizing you know kind of what's.

Important to you right because i will say this to follow up on that i agree with the hard work ethic not watching netflix all that stuff but i do think that if you're not doing it for family you're doing it for probably the wrong reasons i think that i don't know the answer yet to what the perfect match of that is but i think you need to put family first and work super fucking.

Hard yeah i mean like you know i do think like to me i think that i think that you've got you've got to take care of your financial being you've got to create the work that you want to do because if you don't want to do it and you go through life miserable and you know you can't take another day well then you're not doing your family justice because your family will feel the impact of that i hate my job you won't have the quality of the relationships that you want whether your family your kids whatever it is because you're miserable as opposed to okay now i'm gonna i'm gonna put my head down and for the next two three years whatever it is i'm gonna work super hard laser focused i'm gonna get really good at this one thing and then i can go back and rebuild those relationships and you know that's the priority.

Is i gotta do this and sometimes that's sometimes that's a victory too right like that's why we start a cohort of founder institute with thirty people and graduate ten sometimes is you realize entrepreneurship isn't for you and to be honest that's a win as well right if you don't train your child's college account or your own savings account and you realize like hey i actually really do like my current lifestyle and what i'm doing that is just as big a win as you know maybe starting a company and becoming a successful founder it really is finding the right lifestyle that.

Works for you so my son's sixteen years old and he wants to be an entrepreneur and you know of course i want to guide him the best way i know how but if i go to uncle kevin i say look you gotta go you gotta go talk to uncle kevin in new york what would uncle kevin what advice would you give my sixteen year old son right.

Now i would tell him to just get started maybe it's a lawn mowing business maybe it's you know it's whatever but you know there's simple ways right like go into ask ask you for maybe twenty five fifty dollars right go to a starbucks get a bunch of five dollars gift cards stand outside that starbucks right whether it's in the mall or wherever and be like hey i want to have this idea right like would you for dollar five gift card would you give me feedback on it right and you've already got the coffee's right behind you they just of course they're gonna yeah they're gonna help first of all he's got age on his side right so they're gonna love him they're gonna love the young hustle they're gonna you know want to help him they're gonna take the five dollars gift card go grab coffee and he's gonna start to get feedback right and talk to customers and start to figure out what works and yeah i guess like that would be probably be my like my quick my quick step yeah it's.

So funny how much we we admire and i don't think i don't know maybe because i'm in my garofis all day i don't see it enough where i live honestly i was talking to a buddy of mine on the airplane he told me that in college he'd go to his favorite restaurant and there's like lines out the door right think like soup nazi lines right and he's in austin texas and what he would do is he would get up at you know they would open at ten and start lining up i love the.

Seinfeld reference by the way yeah yeah.

So he'd get there at nine thirty and you know he would start hustling and say look i will order your meal for you you can have my spot i'll order your meal you just got to buy my lunch plus like whatever and he just have free lunch every day as a college kid at his favorite restaurant i love that hustle.

That'S amazing and it's only in doing you know weird things like that that you start to find where the value is in the world and how you can trade it up and down and.

How it works yeah yeah all right well kevin we're at that point in the podcast now where we're going to put you on the spot and your mentorship has been amazing by the way but now we're going to ask for one more little piece of value a website a resource a book something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go right now improve their businesses improve their lives what have you got.

So we've talked a lot about self awareness and you know personality and a lot of like how to be a great person really and how that translates into starting a great business and income passive income active income etcetera there's you know and you mentioned my degrees in neuroscience so i think understanding how people tick plays a big role into you know navigating this world so i would check out a book called sapiens it's a brief history of humankind and i.

It'S one of my favorite books i just i'm almost done with homo deus are you reading it not yet i'm.

Like three fourths the way through sapiens.

Oh you love homo deus okay go.

Ahead all right i will i will i'm gonna check that out next sapiens basically is like you know a brief history of humankind and when you start to just when you take people off the pedestal like like forget putting mark cuban trump anyone on a pedestal right we're all humans we all have brains put everyone on the same level and the world becomes much clearer when you start to think about what actually makes.

Them different yeah i actually i mean as much as i'm loving sapiens i love that book it's one of my favorite books of all time i'm really loving homo deus alright that's awesome i gotta check it out yeah yeah you know how like in every chapter in sapiens it's like just mind blowing expanding the way like it's things you kind of know but then like he writes about it in a different way yeah.

Super high level macro super high level.

Like every like other line in homo deus is like that it's crazy scott todd what's your tip of the week.

Mark autoresponders man like we we always need autoresponders right like we always need ideas for what to put in ours and how to get them to convert and how to how to onboard people right so check out email drips dot com drips calm email drips dot com kevin are you familiar with it i.

Am not but i love autoresponders i'm a big fan of tim ferriss's four hour workweek and that plays a big role in that yeah so basically what.

They'Ve done here is that they have gone through like all of these different trials and card abandonment sequences and everything they've recorded them and they're all on here email drips calm you know i love the site and basically you can search by okay do i want to look at a webinar well then i can go to the webinar do i want to look at cart abandonment let me go over there do i want to look at a tripwire let me look over there and then you can follow along or onboarding you can go over there and then you can get ideas for your own email autoresponder series.

Yeah and you know these are all big big marketers in here too right they're not these aren't small names these are sort of like the best of the best in autorespond auto response this is great what a great tip scott todd almost as good as my tip which is going to be learn more about kevin at ciscar co i have a link to it and if you are interested in you know sort of making that transition from your your cubicle into some amazing startup head out to new york ciscar co kevin ciscar are.

We good we're good yeah if you're interested check out the founder institute we're in cities all over the world and if you want to check out what some of the mentors from founder institute are like i interview them for my podcast ambition today so everywhere that podcast.

Exists i guess all right fantastic scott todd are we good we're good mark all right i want to just thank all the listeners and remind them the only way we're going to get the type in quality of guests like a kevin siskar is if you do us three little favors you got to subscribe you got a rate you got to review the podcast send us a screenshot of your review to support at thelandgeek dot com we're gonna send you for free the ninety seven dollars passive income launch kit again i would remind everybody to go to geekpay io as well and start automating your collections scott are we doing this or you know this is this guy's in new york founder institute are we really gonna embarrass ourselves.

We have to pass it i just.

Say it let freedom ring all right.

That was actually pretty good it's not.

Bad thank you for having me really really appreciate it thanks kevin all right.