Patrick McGinnis: Venture Capitalist & Author The Business Blast Podcast #89

Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite makes the process of becoming a published bestselling author as simple as sipping your morning cup of coffee. You can learn more about Authors Unite at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.

Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner, and today I have Patrick McGinnis with us. He's a venture capitalist and author of The 10% Entrepreneur. So welcome to the show, Patrick.

Thanks for having me, Tyler.

Of course, thank you for coming on, and we'll dive right in. The first question that I have for you is, what's the best story from from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

[Speaker] So when I was a college student, I'd never left the United States, and I got a scholarship to go to Argentina and study for a year. And this was in the '90s, and I made this trip over the summertime. I stayed in Argentina, and I decided I wanted to backpack from Bogotá, Colombia down to Buenos Aires by bus. And so my roommate and I at the time, this Spanish guy, we got on a plane, we flew to Colombia, And the first part of our trip was taking a bus from Bogotá to the coast. And this was when Colombia was still in basically a civil war. It was very dangerous. And in fact, we didn't even tell our parents we were in Colombia because we knew they'd freak out and tell us to leave. And so we get on this bus and it was supposed to be this luxury bus, but 2 hours after we get on the bus, which is supposed to be about a 15-hour bus ride, the bathroom breaks, the TV breaks, there's dogs on the bus that start howling. Overnight we ended up pulling off the road because we almost get in an accident and basically we're stopped for several hours. Then the bus can't go faster than like 40 miles per hour. We are not gonna make it in 15 hours. In fact, by the time we get to about hour 26, we're still not there. It's very hot and the dogs are going to the bathroom on the floor. It was a disaster. And then there was a strike. The bus couldn't go past the strike line and they had to stop and we waited for several more hours. And so finally when the strike ended, they, you know, they said, okay, let's all get in and get going. But the bus wouldn't start. And so they told all the men to get back off the bus and push. And as I walked down the aisle of the bus, I said out loud to myself in Spanish, "No lo puedo creer," which is, "I can't believe this." And a woman looked at me, an older woman who was actually dressed very elegantly, like it was her Sunday best, looked at me and said, "Créelo y vívelo," which means, "Believe it and live it." And I remember thinking to myself, like, "She's absolutely right. What am I going to do here?" You have to just believe the situation you're in. You have to live it. You have to make the most of the situation. And so I've always kept that with me. It became my admissions essay for Harvard Business School, and it's something I think about a lot.

Thank you so much for sharing that. And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

Yes, fundraising for a new venture is something that is glorified and glamorized, like as if raising money were some sort of achievement. And in fact, it's hard work to raise money. But the fundamental thing to remember if you ever raise money for a business is that raising money is not about money. It's about power. It's about control. And so the minute you raise money from an outside investor, you lose some power and control in your business, and you ultimately kind of almost have a boss. And so you want to make sure before you do that, that you think carefully about the partner and how much money you actually want to raise.

And what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.

Yeah, so I, I just had— I'm just coming from a conversation over lunch that brought this up. And the advice I have is always get it in writing. And it sounds like incredibly obvious, but let me give you an example. I was talking to a friend of mine who has a partner in the business, and they had spoken in general terms about what each one was going to own in the business, but they never wrote it down, and they never dealt with all the specifics of what would happen under a bunch of scenarios. Well, now months later, they each have a different understanding of what they had agreed upon, and they have it written in no place at all. And I almost did the same thing with a friend of mine where we hadn't written things down, we had different understandings, and I almost lost a friendship and a really great, great business opportunity because I believe something different than he did. In the end, we came to an agreement, but I really wish we had written it down clearly in the first place.

And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

So I was very much— I came out of college and I went to work in banking and finance. I came out of business school and did the same. And I never considered doing things outside of work professionally, investing in things, starting things, getting involved with side projects. I would tell myself to do that because what I found out later on is when my company blew up in the 2008 financial crash is that diversification has incredible value. Also, investing in things that are totally non-correlated to what you do can have great upside. And that's why I wrote my book, The 10% Entrepreneur, which is exactly about how to do that.

And in your— so kind of going a little different route— in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?

If you can enjoy the little things in life, you will be a happy person every day. If it's everything from the cup of coffee you have in the morning through to the people that you meet and come across, if you can just enjoy those little moments in your day, the big things will take care of themselves.

And what's the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

So I'll say a business book. My favorite business book is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries because it taught me that really anybody can be an entrepreneur and that you can start small and do things with very little money. And I think that's such an important paradigm shift for anybody who ever thought about being an entrepreneur. It's an indispensable read.

And what's your favorite quote and why?

So my favorite quote is, I think it's from England. That's where I've heard it more, is, "It's good to have more than one string to your bow." The idea being that being multidimensional, doing lots of different things, having a rich set of experiences is valuable. I think so many times we are told you are best to just be good at one thing and focus on one thing. And for some people maybe that's enough, but for me, I like to have a diverse set of experiences, try all kinds of different things, and have a life that is much richer than it would be otherwise.

Thank you so much for coming on, Patrick. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where's the best place for people to find you online?

So you can find me at my website, patrickmcguinness.com, P-A-T-R-I-C-K-M-C-G-I-N-N-I-S. If you go there, you can find all about my book, obviously, and then there are links to my Facebook group, to Twitter, to LinkedIn. And if you go to patrickmcguinness.com/buildyour10, there is a free workbook that that will help you get started becoming a part-time entrepreneur today.

Awesome. Thank you again, Patrick. We really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

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