Jillian Manus advises entrepreneurs to pick two vertical markets and own them before scaling. Claiming your product is the only one of its kind is a "kiss of death" with investors. When you don't know an answer, pause and say so, then follow up strong. That builds more credibility than rushing a half-baked response.
Chapters
Okay, okay. Like, welcome to me. I have a question about that. Yeah. Do you think it's helpful to mention you have those verticals in mind, like 5 years ahead? Yeah, I mean, well, so that's a good question. Do you think you should mention 5 years ahead, right, or those verticals? What I should do, what you should do is think of the first 2. This is how we're gonna crack this nut. We're gonna focus on these 2 verticals, we're gonna stake a flag in the ground on these 2. We're looking, if you think about how we could scale these next 3, okay? And that's fine because you're thinking, well, I'm thinking, how is this going to be a billion-dollar product, right? But then you also don't want to say this is the best, this is the— oh, by the way, never say this is the only. Never say to someone there's nothing like this because the fact is that's not true. And even if it is true, you have no idea because you haven't gone all over the world and talked to every entrepreneur and you have no idea. So never say this has never been done before. 'Cause that's a kiss of death with a VC. Do you have any other questions? Because you can ask questions while I'm going. Okay. Like, what is she doing here? Okay, that's a good question. All right. Yeah, good. So with the previous slide on the don't answer questions you don't know, how do you go about telling them you don't know about sound? Oh, I didn't even get to that. Okay. Years ago, I was walking in the forest. Don't worry, this is really honest. I'm walking in the forest. I'm walking in the forest with a guy named Linus Pauling. And Linus Pauling is a scientist, a well-known scientist, and he was passing away at the time. He had cancer. And I said to him, Linus, give me one pearl of wisdom to pass on to people. And he said, Gillian, I'm going to give you one, but I only want you to tell it to people who are going to pass it forward and who are going to really take it To heart, students, people who want to learn, people who are places to learn. And I said, "Okay." So I'm thinking this is a good idea. This goes back to this. We're getting there. Hold on. Hold your pants for a second. Okay. So I said, he said, "Here's the thing: We all have a thought in our head, and our thoughts pop up really fast. The problem is, is that we all force these thoughts out of our mouth before the arc." The arc of thought is complete. Every thought has an arc. Think of it this way. This is an arc, like a rainbow. It has an arc. What happens, he says, is that the thoughts pop into our mind and we're so ready in ourselves and we feel that we have to respond automatically, very, very fast, especially your generation, by the way, because you feel that if you don't answer something fast, And you don't answer something at all, somehow that's going to reflect badly on you. Well, quite the contrary. Actually, if in fact we were all to finish our arcs of thought, then whatever we were to then communicate would be a fully matured thought. So I said to him, he said, Gillian, it's important for you to teach this, and it's important for you also to practice what you preach. When people ask me questions and I don't know, I'll take a beat, and even if I do know, I think and I finish my arc of thought. And if people see that you're really thinking, you're thinking this through, and you don't want to deliver a half-baked thought, then they give you more— they believe in you. They give you more credit. And if you happen not to know the question, you should say, I don't know this right now, but I'm going to get back to you on that. Okay? You should never say to someone, I don't know, period. It's, I don't know, let me get back to you on that. And by the way, get back to them and get back to them strong. And that is such a huge benefit for you, and I do this all the time. And people ask me questions, All the time, and I actually like saying I don't know. But first, I think for a second. Think, think, think, think, think. Who's that? Dun dun dun dun dun dun. It's a song. Jack Day. Jack Day. You know that? No. You have no idea. Okay, never mind. All right, next slide.
