Ever wondered what it takes to leap from a secure job into the thrill of starting your own tech company? Andres Klaric, the co-founder and co-CEO of Fuse, joins us to narrate his bold transition from automotive sales to revolutionizing the loan origination system. In our candid conversation, Andres reveals the strategic pivots that propelled his business forward, imparting essential wisdom for navigating the dynamic small business landscape.
This episode is more than just a storyline of success; it's a blueprint for entrepreneurs ready to transform passion into action. We tackle the evolution from 'wantrepreneur' to entrepreneur, dissecting the necessity of conviction and the pragmatic steps crucial for laying down a solid business foundation. The discussion also ventures into the value of scalable automation and the often-overlooked importance of incorporating your venture for liability protection. Grasp the significance of balancing immediate needs with long-term vision, as Andres shares how to maneuver through the startup ecosystem with foresight and agility.
Dive into the art of business pivots and the mastery of communication that goes with it, from recognizing untapped market opportunities to pre-selling a product before it's fully developed. Gain insight into crafting successful business partnerships that combine mutual respect, aligned incentives, and a shared commitment to personal growth. Moreover, we unpack the role of AI in business development and how a founder's passion is irreplaceable in sales and building customer relationships. This episode is a must-listen for anyone facing stagnation or seeking to understand the interplay between passion and market awareness in achieving business success. Join us for a journey filled with actionable lessons and stories to inspire your entrepreneurial spirit.
Andres Klaric: Fuse Website - https://www.fusefinance.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andresklaric/
Ever wondered what it takes to leap from a secure job into the thrill of starting your own tech company? Andres Klaric, the co-founder and co-CEO of Fuse, joins us to narrate his bold transition from automotive sales to revolutionizing the loan origination system. In our candid conversation, Andres reveals the strategic pivots that propelled his business forward, imparting essential wisdom for navigating the dynamic small business landscape.
This episode is more than just a storyline of success; it's a blueprint for entrepreneurs ready to transform passion into action. We tackle the evolution from 'wantrepreneur' to entrepreneur, dissecting the necessity of conviction and the pragmatic steps crucial for laying down a solid business foundation. The discussion also ventures into the value of scalable automation and the often-overlooked importance of incorporating your venture for liability protection. Grasp the significance of balancing immediate needs with long-term vision, as Andres shares how to maneuver through the startup ecosystem with foresight and agility.
Dive into the art of business pivots and the mastery of communication that goes with it, from recognizing untapped market opportunities to pre-selling a product before it's fully developed. Gain insight into crafting successful business partnerships that combine mutual respect, aligned incentives, and a shared commitment to personal growth. Moreover, we unpack the role of AI in business development and how a founder's passion is irreplaceable in sales and building customer relationships. This episode is a must-listen for anyone facing stagnation or seeking to understand the interplay between passion and market awareness in achieving business success. Join us for a journey filled with actionable lessons and stories to inspire your entrepreneurial spirit.
Andres Klaric: Fuse Website - https://www.fusefinance.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andresklaric/
The amount of times that you see a business, that it's worth a hundred million, two hundred million, I don't know, ten million bucks even less, you say, oh, I could have thought of that. Well, you didn't right.
Speaker 2:
So yeah, exactly so. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast designed for small business owners. I'm your host, Michael Morrison, a small business coach and founder of Boss, where we help make business ownership simplified for success. We do that with business coaching, loans, events, networking and much, much more. To learn more, go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom and make sure to hang around to the end of this episode for my recap and coach's corner, where I share applicable action steps that will help you grow your business.
Speaker 2:
Our guest today is Andres Clarich. Andres is the co-founder and co-CEO of Fuse, a next-gen loan origination system that simplifies lending for financial institutions through self-serve customization, a low-code API builder and a personalized agent portal. Over the last decade, andres worked on Wall Street, investing in tech and business services. This gave him an acute awareness of the issue, slowing down lenders from achieving their highest potential, ultimately leading to starting Fuse with his co-founder. Today, he talks about his business pivots, a successful business, partnership, systems and processes, investors and many more strategies used to build his successful business. Let's get to our guest now. All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots podcast. Today we have a very special guest from around the world. Introduce yourself today.
Speaker 1:
Morning everyone. I'm Andres Clarich. I'm the co-founder of Fuse. Right now I'm calling from Norway, but generally I live in New York City. We're a business that's dedicated to providing tech solutions for banks, credit unions and finance companies. Our product itself is what it's called a loan origination system. It's an essence and orchestration layer, on top of which a bunch of applications API calls are built and allow lenders to originate loans.
Speaker 2:
Very cool, very cool. So if one were to visit Norway, anything particular one should go do or see.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I think this time of the year is the Northern Lights right. During the summer it's the complete opposite it's eternal days. So right now it's 4 pm here. It's almost nighttime, but in sunrise it's pretty late, but during the summer I would describe it as pretty magical, like you can play golf till midnight, wow.
Speaker 2:
I know some people that would love to do that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, exactly. So the countries that we summer in and went there are something they probably only comparable within the US, certainly the Alaska Wow.
Speaker 2:
So I ask that question just about every show because, as small business owners who that is our listening audience we don't get to take very many vacations, so I always want to point out some places around the world. I'm working from here.
Speaker 1:
I can assure you that not much vacation, not much sightseeing has happened.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Except in, I think, saturday last week. But if you have the opportunity to work remotely and it's a great place too, there's co-working places I think it's a very healthy startup scene not, of course, of the magnitude that the one we have in the US, but you wouldn't guess it but there's an entire ecosystem here. Obviously, I consider myself part of the US ecosystem, but it's nice to see that each country has its own incubators and promote entrepreneurship at distinct levels and in these very different industries that we favor in the US.
Speaker 2:
Wow. So our listeners, like I said, are small business owners, so let's just jump right in because we want to help them with information and history and some experiences. So what was kind of your childhood growing up like? I know a lot of small business owners. They had trials and tribulations or maybe some mindset blockage. Did you have anything like that? And then how did you get over that?
Speaker 1:
I was born in the US but I was raised my entire life in Bolivia, right? So I probably was wired from an early age to know the distinct kind of ecosystem that exists to pursue a certain career, right, if you want to pursue a career as a chef, or probably you want to go study in Peru or France or some of the great culinary places in the world, I did have from an early age a bias to come to the US for what I wanted to do. I confirmed family has been in the auto space forever. My grandfather was a race car driver. My dad has worked in auto for a while in my first job at a high school, selling cars. So there's a lot of trials and tribulations, of course, not putting perspective, but during my late teenage years, early 20s, I helped pay my parents for college by just selling cars at a dealership in Northern Virginia. That in itself, I think was highly formative in terms of building character. Because I mean, you're dealing with rejection every day, right? The fact to answer is no. So dealing with rejection from people from all walks of life really helped. I don't know if you fully appreciate it in the moment, being a teenager, no teenager likes rejection. So that being amplified to the end could be harsh, but I really enjoyed it and in a way, made me loosen up and I think it helped with a lot of faces and life that came afterwards. That in itself, I think, helped me with interview better right, for example, not only for hiring, but also like to get jobs right.
Speaker 1:
I spent 10 years at Wall Street investing in tech services. I was buying similar companies to the one I started today, and the founding on this business has not been hiccup free right. There's been trials and tribulations, like every business, and that analogy of startup life in terms of like, it's kind of like a plane that is without an engine and you're trying to perform neurosurgery. I think that that's something that you often feel, but sometimes you're also so in the weeds that you're effectively, if you used to be a fox, you kind of become a hedgehog by being a founder. So you need to think about both things at the short term and the long term in such a way that you don't lose track of things.
Speaker 2:
What moved you from Otto to being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1:
Thanks, I mean, I think, like early on, auto was just a means to an end. Right, I did not necessarily see that as a long-term career. If anything, it's a manual business. Right, it doesn't scale. Right, I cannot copy-paste myself and kind of do what we're doing today. Right, we're automated processes that humans cannot scale with.
Speaker 1:
So we are actually augmenting their job by reaching, like, hey, there are things that we're going to need people to do, but there are parts of your job that you should be doing. Let us help you do the same thing, same thing as a salesman. Right, I'm sure that there are parts of that human connection that enable my customers to kind of pick a car that cannot be replaced by a machine. But going inside, picking up the keys, like writing down the plate of their car, the bin number, all those things, If anything, just added friction to the process. So the same thing happens in most jobs that we have, right, Like there are parts that could be easily automated and we found a niche in this origination space. I imagine you could probably use the power of analogy to apply this to a bunch of other industries and, like, all of the other ships are probably not the exception to that role.
Speaker 2:
What. So we've worked so I'm a business coach and we've worked with a lot of what we call in the industry entrepreneurs. So they want to be an entrepreneur, but they quite haven't made that leap or that jump and they're afraid to pull the plug. What do you think? That was it. You just said I'm going in, I'm diving in and going forward.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think that there's a point in your career in which you realize, hey, like I built enough of a cushion of both experience and financial world and there's also alignment of the needs. Also meet the preparation, right. There are plenty of entrepreneurs that start in much more desperate circumstances and I pull off amazing business stories, right. I think I was not one of those. I was more along the lines of, like, I got to the point of which I felt that that was the right next step. I felt that, like it was from an even as an industry standpoint, I felt that like, hey, if not now, then when? Right. Like I do think that as you age, you become a little more pragmatic and as children come and like, well, other things get in the way, it becomes way more difficult to actually become a right.
Speaker 1:
So I felt that the late 20s, early 30s although this, that this, this is show that actually people in their 40s are like, like the lion share of entrepreneurs early 50s.
Speaker 1:
I would say that from my, the way that I kind of wanted to this, this structure, this process, I thought, hey, like I know what is a comfortable enough level of income or financial question that I want to build.
Speaker 1:
I I still have full of, I'm full of energy, I can work on similar hours than when I had in my 20s and I, most importantly, I have an idea in which I have conviction right, and that's completely regardless of it's independent of financial means or all the other things that I mentioned. If you have conviction and idea, that's the most important thing to do to get to a point where you've validated that you want to spend the time on that and that hopefully you have enough runway to prove it with your resources or that you could. You can put together an interesting case, improve points that you can actually go show investors right. You do not have to go the venture route. We went the venture route, but I mean people bootstrap businesses all the time and are able to build not only lifestyle businesses but businesses that are effectively like world class out of their grashes.
Speaker 2:
So, in other words, just do it If you want to, you know you got to get started. That's kind of what you're saying.
Speaker 1:
You got to get started for me. For me, like, the key, if I had to describe to you my process was a I looked into it. Like the first thing you do is like set the C Corp right, like to be very basic in terms of like very, very tactical, and it's set the C Corp so you can actually get that liability insurance and things like that to cover you right. Because, for, knock on wood, you make some mistakes and all of a sudden you're like personally liable for like you put together a website I forgot to mention like certain privacy policies. Just give me a very basic example. So first put the liability at the C Corp LLC level and it doesn't have to be the final idea. They just set that. Call it corporation Inc right, doesn't need to be called anything specific and start working on the idea.
Speaker 1:
Try to set timelines right, like the worst thing you could be doing is also like, hey, I'm going to be doing like purposely looking at a billion ideas but not really commit to anything for years. That is kind of like the entrepreneur right. Like, at the end of the day, optionality in my perspective, it's a nice to have, but not it's not the end. Be all right. The nice thing about optionality is actually using your options. Otherwise, what's the purpose of it? Right, like, that's getting to actually make those choices is where you actually get excited. So, validate, set timelines in which you actually plan to validate ideas and seek the truth.
Speaker 1:
Right Like, do not fall in love with any idea just for the because it sounds cute or sexy. Really see, let the best idea win. And once you get to that point in which you say, hey, I want to spend the rest of my life for the next 10, 20 years doing this and you have really battle tested as much as you can with the resources you have, then try to see if you can hire people. Try to if you can hire a co-founder. Try to see if you hire investors. Try to see if you can hire customers. In essence, like, you first sell it to yourself and they sell it to others, and if you get the, they are bought in. That's a good signal that, like, you're actually getting into, into a good spot.
Speaker 2:
So the freedom of getting to make those choices is probably one of the top reasons of most entrepreneurs that they get into is is I can make those decisions. And so the purpose of our show is to talk about pivots that business owners have made along the way, because we know when we start a business and how we envision that business looking in five to 10 years. More times than not, that business looks nothing like we thought it would because we've had to pivot and do some things. So what were some challenges in the early stages and tell us a little bit about your journey.
Speaker 1:
I mean we pivoted yeah, we pivoted as a business ourselves, right? Like I love that quote that is attributed to John Maynard Keynes, right, when the facts change, I change my mind. Or what do you do? Right, you need to be that pragmatic, right? So that's kind of what happened with us.
Speaker 1:
We started a few years, originally as a loan broker. We were selling consumer loans to banks, credit unions or finance companies, and at some point, London's approach, as in there, were like guys, it's kind of cute that you're selling us loans, but would you be interested in actually selling us the technology that is powering the process of your originating those loans? And at first you're taking it back, right, Because as an entrepreneur, the first reaction is not even like an entrepreneur's human reaction. But I wanted to get in the go in this direction and you're pulling with this abstraction and this is like the right thing to do. And then all of a sudden you realize, hey, like this is actually a very interesting market that we are on earth. That, like, how do we not take in this original path we would have not discovered? And we're lucky to have customers that have already vetted us as partners and they're actually wanting to increase the depth of that relationship, from, like, just providing them loans to actually selling them technology and something that is far more instrumental to the process, right, and look at a much from a much bigger tech involvement, what we can do for them. But that moment of kind of realizing, hey, like, let's see if this is space, let's see how many contracts we can sign, and then I say, how big is this space? If we actually get into the space, that same level of granularity that you kind of went through to pick the prior market, you need to be, like I would say, significantly more convinced because you're going to pivot right.
Speaker 1:
And on top of that, at that point you probably have investors, you probably have employees, you probably have a host of other constituents that need to be informed, they need to be sold on the new path you want to take.
Speaker 1:
So you need to manage all of those folks and effectively inform, communicate and keep them on the loop of what is going to happen, how it's going to happen and why it's going to happen right and like, answer all those questions for them and remind yourself that you need to bring that up to speed right, and, particularly in the case of employees, some of them might not necessarily fit the new or not fit or not be interested in going in that new direction. So, as founders, you need to kind of like reset what are the new functions? Who can actually come to the new journey? And that in itself is a huge undertaking, right, Like it's not an easy thing to do but like, at the end of the day, what you're trying to maximize for is the enterprise value of the business, right, and in combination with the market size and the expected value of you actually executing on that as new strategy better than whatever you were doing before.
Speaker 2:
So you're kind of saying that open communication is key to making a pivot like that, because you got to get people on your team correct 100%. Yeah, what was the? I know for a lot of businesses. You know we get going in one direction and then we have to shift. I know some people call it an iteration, we call it a pivot. What was kind of the process of? How did you deal with that in your mind? The process of am I doing the right thing? We got to slow down, to go fast, because now we got to stop what we were doing and go this direction. What was that like and how did you overcome that?
Speaker 1:
I think that the first thing is like having a great co-founder and or or being a great founder. I am more of the camp that I like having this journey with someone else, so really like pressure, testing assumptions and the two of us being fully aligned and coming to, hopefully, to the different conclusions from different angles. Right so, because that's kind of what a founding team does like hopefully bringing your perspectives and definitely make the decision stronger, because you're helping the other person on Earth to make the decision that they are going to make in the future. And I think that's one of the ways to disagree or agree over an idea and bring perspective you wouldn't have otherwise In my head, like the most important thing, which is making sure that we follow, if we already had a pretty high standard of bad ideas, even under the most kind of, it's one of those things that, like you need to properly communicate. So getting a sense that like hey, like this is where we are today, this is where the business will go if we stay our course, this is where we think the business is going to be if you change our course, and this is how we derisk it and this is why we think we have the right team to do what needs to get done. In order to get to that point.
Speaker 1:
We also were fortunate enough that we were able to sign a number of contracts prior to the full product being finalized. So that does help, right. Like having that trust the customers instilling you saying like, hey, this is what you see, most of it is done, the rest will be released as we go and we're going to put everything in the contract and all of that right. It also like, if you ask venture capitalists, like that's kind of the dream of like a product that gets sold before it's built. It's kind of the same thing in real estate, right that you can actually sell the apartments before the construction begins, right. So it just goes to show the demand for a solution of that scope. So it's just a matter of time and if you have the team to execute it, you're effectively just a matter of contracting and putting the right legal protections for those partners to kind of get the product that they signed up for.
Speaker 2:
You're listening to Small Business Pivots, a podcast created exclusively for small business owners. This podcast is sponsored by Boss, where business ownership is simplified for success. Boss helps make business owners create a business that runs without them, with business coaching, business loans, courses, events, additional resources and much, much more. Go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom to learn why small business success starts with Boss. If you're enjoying the podcast and want to stay up to date with all our latest episodes, make sure to hit that subscribe button, and if you're loving what you hear, give us a thumbs up or leave a positive review. Your support means the world to us and it helps others discover the show too. Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to hit subscribe and like.
Speaker 2:
Now let's get back to our guests. I want to step back just a second, because we haven't had very many guests that have had a successful partnership. In fact, I don't remember who said it, but it was the only ship that doesn't sell as a partnership, and so what that quote is referencing is most business partnerships fail. What you say is contributes to the success of your business partnership Anything, any keys there that you mean with Michael founder or?
Speaker 2:
like your co-founder. Yes.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean, it's it. I would tell you that one of the biggest elements is, like the, the fact that we we have a very cordial and respectful relationship. I Wouldn't describe the way like having dinner every night together or Something I can't do, that I would respectfully disagree with people that start businesses with their family members or their best friends, and I do, although, like there's probably a number of examples that prove me wrong. I Would recommend against it for the most people to do that. It's it's it's putting unnecessary strain on relationships there. They're going to be solid no matter what, so just don't don't put business in between. Whereas in the case of microphone and I, like, the most important that we built together is this business. So we know that the two of us complement each other and building the opportunity and that we put the that enterprise value, respected value of that business, as the number one goal that we have. As far as like the relationship that we have and that in itself allows us to to be very transparent with each other, kind of like, call each other out when everyone is doing something right or wrong, but also celebrate things right, like it's not only about like accountability, it's also about to like Learn from the other right, I've, frankly speaking, I Worked with, I have worked with pretty smart people. I've met a lot of pretty smart people.
Speaker 1:
I, every time I have the opportunity to say it, I celebrate my co-founder and I also, where to where ask me, it's a joy. He, the way I described it to him the other day hey, sometimes the best analogy I have or famous that he's kind of a personal trainer. No one ever likes their personal trainer while they're doing the abs, either all that painful training, but once you're headed to home and you're about to go to shower, you're like well, that was awesome. Like I, I really discover a new limit of From physical standpoint and I think that's that's kind of how we see each other. I think we we feed each other quite well and I and I'm sure that each co-founder relationship is different, but of course there's present your lasers, right, it's not, it's not honeymoon, but as long as communication and the respect is there, I think that you're bound to have a very cordial relationship with your co-founders.
Speaker 2:
That's an important topic because so many people do like what you said. They partner with a friend or a family member, and you mentioned a honeymoon. So I want to kind of tie this together because those that are listening may not have ever heard this, but most marriages half of them fell. Well More than that Business partnerships. Less than 30% are successful in business partnerships and that's one of the key reasons that you mentioned was because they hooked up with a friend or a family and they never really Thought outside of that relationship as a business relationship. And so you sharing that I I appreciate that because that'll probably help and and also, you know, for those business partnerships that are out there that are struggling there, there are Some things that need to shift that right. There could probably use a pivot. You know, if it's not working, that's obviously not gonna work five years from now. So kind of looking at it that way, and business partnerships are hard to keep going. So I appreciate you sharing that information. So I mean the Beatles, even the Beatles were cordial.
Speaker 1:
I am sure that, like if 10, 20 years pass, there's a level of fatigue that, at every level, right it just I would say if For us has been a pretty healthy couple years since we started, it's the utmost respect that I have for him. You can ask me in 10, 20 years, hopefully, like I tell you, like I have that benefit of hindsight, but I think that where we are today, I'm super grateful to have a partner with mark to this organization.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it takes more than one and I know there's a lot of people out there now that are trying to build these Multi-million-dollar solopreneur companies. You know to only be with themself and, yeah, although it can be done, you still have to have some. You have to have a team, whether that or a partner founder, yeah.
Speaker 1:
What would resonates a lot with me is this notion that anything that allows me to increase the odds of success, I rather be own a smaller percentage of something Mm-hmm that it that it has value, that 100% of zero right, so that that is something that like it's not lost on me that that notion is Very, no, it is very important. I think it's especially when An idea is at a very nascent stage. I'm also a big believer in kind of life equal Split of equity. I mean there's a lot of Cadets to that statement, but like if you read what a white combinator and some of the most respected in kind of startup incubators in the world say, they would probably encourage to like create a line incentives as much as possible and if you align incentives, then Then you really returns in play making business decisions rather than like all but this person owns more and like just they have a different X, y, z and on facility, you create reasons for like Unnecessary friction from the from the onset so in your business it.
Speaker 2:
What does it do today? Is it in the software more than it is the loans. It just software.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it is a software business, right? Like it says, self-serve Tool that allows folks to, first and foremost, integrate to any like API out there that allows them to process loans faster. It also allows non-technical folks to do changes via local no code, so kind of feels much more like an Excel, like a very clean Excel formula, versus like zeros and ones. And that helps people that are not. Not everyone can hire an MIT engineer, right? So how about we allow the non MIT engineers like myself to actually add values from day one?
Speaker 1:
And? And in essence, you use the best tools that already exist, right? And the third is Portals, or dashboards. May I say that they help folks that are actually still the humans in the loop to Really do their job and do it in a way that I reflect your day-to-day operations, versus having to be trained on Dashboard that has everything been really nothing, because there's just so much in there that they cannot really become more efficient. What you want is, if your job is to press ten buttons, then I, those are the only buttons that should be in that screen, right? Like so that kind of philosophy.
Speaker 2:
What would you say? Or some key milestones that you've hit that were Successful and catapulting your business, because software is completely different than a brick-and-mortar or a product-based company.
Speaker 1:
I think, like you live up your customers right, like customers really believing you, like we are in a market in which there's very they're very large incumbents, so people betting on us at an early stage both investors, both customers and employees and taking the plunge with us and as delivering as be as to be some of the highest satisfaction moments in my career, if not the highest, from a professional standpoint that it's you wake up every day with a sense of purpose is like Wow, like someone champion in me at this bank, at this great union, at this finance company, and financing are really Bet, place a bet on this group of folks that, like all those, seem pretty prepared and honest and they seem to have a cute Business. We still have no name compared to the government's right like having so, having that recognition and and that was huge right like and even today we have way more customers. I still, I still feel very honored every time we get it, we get a yes, right and I hope we never lose that. I Imagine, like some of the ones that have built empires, I Probably still enjoy seeing someone either going to their store or buying software or whatever type of business they run.
Speaker 1:
It's if you really live off. That excitement is just thrilling. It's exciting. I.
Speaker 2:
I want to kind of hit on some different seasons of your business. When you first started, what is one thing you would have done differently, that you think would have impacted your business differently?
Speaker 1:
I mean we pivoted right. But the reality is we don't have a time machine right. So, like the biggest, if anything, I'm glad that we kind of well, I want to call it failure, but like I'm glad that we kind of stumble into that went that route. First, because the software that we used today was originally used in-house. So we have a unique customer empathy for what we sold. But we sell to their customers it's something that has been productized and, like, of course, built with enterprise. It was used by us, right.
Speaker 1:
So whenever someone describes the issues of the incumbents, it's because that's exactly why we decided to build what we built right. Because those products did not satisfy us, so we built it in-house. We got lucky right. I mean, I am 100% sure that, like, a lot of luck plays in everything in life, right. But the fact that we figured that we built something that, like others wanted, that that was super lucky, right, like it's not lost on me at all. So having that then is, of course, like being that lucky and then like, of course, executing on the luck right, because after the luck comes and before the luck comes, you need to help it with a lot of effort. So that's how I think about it.
Speaker 2:
How do you foresee the future, how do you plan for the future, in other words, how do you strategize?
Speaker 1:
I mean, you can do sprints, you can do strategic quarter stuff, I think about weeks, months and years, quarters and years too.
Speaker 1:
There are goals that you can actually work on and like. Some of the other ones are more like vision-wise right, like if you kind of like split those in terms of the ones that you can have advanced hours and the vision kind of like allows you to get that sense of direction of what needs to get built, to kind of go in that direction right, because otherwise the vision is this behemoth that you don't really know If you don't put like kind of a sense of like okay, to get to that vision, these are the things there, this is the path that we will follow, these are the things that need to be built, this is who is going to build that, and this is kind of like the predetermination of timelines in which we will build whatever needs to get built. To get to that right and you split it, you start from like a broad kind of multi-year vision to like something that can be atomized, to like weeks of work and not only days of work.
Speaker 2:
With being in the software space and technology changing so fast, is that a challenge? I mean, I would think it is.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, but it's a challenge anywhere else, right, like if you're in a hardware space, so like you will have patents, there will be other things that come into play. But, like what you think about it, like we will operate in a space and like somewhere competitors have built the empire, some software that is 30 years old and so it goes to show the like. Even it shows like the challenge for us too, right, some people are pretty happy with 30 year old technology, so it kind of flipped the question right. Like the technology, although it's getting cooler and everything, you need to show more value than just like this is going to be faster, right, it's like this is going to be faster and going to help your efficiencies here. And it needs to be a not only a technological case.
Speaker 1:
And sometimes, like technologists get lost on that, like otherwise everyone will have an iPhone versus I don't know other phones. Like realities that people make choices, so you need to make a business case for them too and kind of like have that level of empathy. Why is otherwise? You just have this cookie cutter approach that, in essence, you've never gotten the time to actually get to know your, your potential customers. So it's not always just the technology, it's most likely not only the technology. Most of the time, it's particularly for the size of engagements that we work in. It's a common trust is very important too. It's like this. This kind of party, a reliable source of not only technology but advice, can actually do business with these people, and that's something that that's the biggest thing for us to overcome.
Speaker 2:
That's wisdom right there, because it's so important and I'm glad you shared that that you got to know what your customer wants and then always be evolving, always be, you know, building on top of what you have. And I know for a lot of business owners we get so exhausted that we're just checking off boxes and we're like, oh, I can breathe, and it's like, no, you can't. You got to. You know, you, you were successful today. Tomorrow's a new day. You need to be. You know, every day you need to be thinking about how am I going to be successful today, this week, this month, because what I have today, someone is going to leapfrog you, right, I mean, if you don't do anything different, and so always staying in tune with your clients and that's all good stuff. So the software space, I know, with AI and everything, does that affect you as much as it would?
Speaker 1:
It affects us all. It affects us all. I think we we made a case to actually adopt it and use it in cases without compromising kind of like security and all that. I think that we're also keeping an eye on it, really seeing the how good applications for it like kind of evolve. It's it's our duty as founders and kind of an allocators of capital to right, because we raised money to make sure that we go into the best our way opportunities right.
Speaker 1:
Like for us right now we see AI as like there are a lot of opportunities, but we're going to kind of wait and see and be tactical around where we use it with unnecessarily like kind of just following just the shiny object, right. I think for me like an obvious application. Of course, I cannot say everything we're doing Right, because I know that my competition by listening to this, yeah, but for us it's like documentive preparation it's I can tell you like for that it's just plenty of that that the AI can do and do already, right. So I can hint you with that that that is something that we see a lot of potential on.
Speaker 2:
As a co-founder, I know a lot of business owners always wonder if they're doing it wrong or they're working on the wrong thing or the right thing and all that good stuff. What would you say if you broke down your responsibilities as a co-founder? What would you say? That you work. What's your biggest responsibility? That you spend the most time on?
Speaker 1:
For me business development by far right Like making sure that build the relationships with our partners, that we continue to provide the best product, the best customer service, and that's that core for me. Of course I oversee also the finance legal side of the house for the business, but I would say on a day-to-day basis the BDE is a huge component of my day.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and I did not encourage you to say that, but I was hoping you would go that direction because I hear so many business owners they want to hire salespeople because they don't want to do the business development. And I often say over and over that that's your number one role is to be business development. So if you don't like sales, you probably may not want to be an entrepreneur, because that's sales. Nobody can sell a business like the founder or the co-founder. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1:
No, no, I agree 100%. I mean of course, as you scale you need to bring in new talent and help kind of guide that initial part of the sell. But as a founder I mean you can see it in multi-billion dollar businesses. So you never ultra 100% remove the process and I mean, come on, it's fun, so it's not only important, I think I derive joy from it. Of course, as the business scales I cannot be doing the stuff that you would do at a one-man shop, right, and what you're everything. But I do think. But you'll be surprised at how involved we still are on everything on the business development side. It's still. It's found that the land sells is imperative for a company or for a size or like the type of clients that we serve.
Speaker 2:
I'm going to ask you two last questions, and it all has to do with how you would address a business owner. If I had someone standing in this room or this conversation with us, if someone was considering being an entrepreneur, what's the one thing you would tell them?
Speaker 1:
Make sure that you have conviction on the idea. It's, all ideas seem very pretty, like those first 15 minutes. All ideas are tense, right, or everything feels like. I don't know the amount of times that you see a business that it's worth 100 million, 200 million, I don't know, 10 million bucks, even less. You say, oh, I could have thought of that. Well, you didn't right. So get actually thinking and really battle, test those ideas and build conviction on that. That's, it could be reduced to what you say, just doing it. But do not live under the lie that you actually could have come up with that idea because you didn't right. So you clearly did not. So actually just go. The ideas are cheap, right, like, execution is everything.
Speaker 2:
So go for it. That's an important piece of being successful is you got to have passion. You got to have a little bit of skill set and what you're doing. You know I'm not a big sushi eater, so I would be very I would be poor if I started a sushi business, because I don't like the smell, I don't like the taste. But I know a lot of young people that we work with. They just want to be this next sensation, you know this next influencer, this building this empire, and they don't care what the business is. And I'm like you got to slow down. It's got to be something you're passionate about, because there's going to be days where you don't want to get out of bed, you don't want to crawl out of that hole because everything's going wrong, and the only way to do that is to have conviction, like what you're saying. So that's powerful, yeah.
Speaker 1:
What I would say is that the counterfactual to the level of conviction and just to be like super, like pragmatic right. I do also heavily believe that you could be an Albert Einstein and if you're in the wrong market and the wrong idea, doesn't matter how nice, hardworking, smart you are, the idea is not going to work right. So you need to find that perfect balance of I love what I'm doing and I'm in the right market, and that's easier said than done.
Speaker 2:
Yes, it is, yes, it is. So I'm going to flip to the opposite side. Let's say that we have an entrepreneur here and their business is stuck. They're working in the business, as they say, 12, 14, 16 hours a day. Their business is stuck. What would you offer them for guidance?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, there are the pivot opportunities right, like, really look at the business and turn their business, see it from the outside and see what are the parts of their business. If they will have to start from scratch, they will actually leverage to do it right. And our analysis was like the technology we had built right. But I can tell you the same way I've seen once this analysis of what Craigslist used to be right, like how, like, if you split all the other businesses that we used to reside within Craigslist, airbnb was there. There's like Amazon, you could go on a bunch of lists. Just do the same analysis with your business. Right To see who's as a key supplier to you that you hate or that you admire. Right, like the one you hate might be an opportunity because maybe someone else also hates dealing with them and you can actually attack them. But once you love, like see why you love them, can you actually copy that business? Things like that are actually really help you bring priority to when you built and what learnings you can leverage from the business you had.
Speaker 1:
You currently have, if you want to do like a hard 180 pivot, you can always read what that business is a racing capital, right? But like I think that that's kind of like a champagne problem to have, because that assume you have capital and all those things right and most people are just put strapping their business. I think that those, finally, there's a more kind of less on the hope side and more in the pragmatic side. There's nothing wrong with calling quits right Because, at the end of the day, the biggest resource you have in your life and it's finite, it's time, right. So if the thing is going nowhere and, like you already have accumulated a wealth of wisdom, someone is going to appreciate that you can go build as a product owner somewhere and go back and have a normal job.
Speaker 1:
Or maybe you've been so lonely you just need to be a founder, right, but want to caution anywhere out there that, like you also need to set the same time, you set timelines to like get to the point of conviction. If the business is really die, you should set a time when you should. You want to see some level of light at the end of the tunnel. It's a little bit of a pragmatic and I have some investors that have told me right, like that sometimes they were, they called the quits after three, five years and the co-founders. That stayed like in year seven. The thing just took off, so there's always a counterfactual to all them. I just wanted to kind of like sprinkle it with perspective, the knowledge I've shared with me with a lot of, with a lot of patients.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, that's that's great points. Because, you know, if I'm a struggling business owner, all you keep hearing people say is don't quit, persevere, go through. You know you've got to get through this. Well, there's also a time to call it quits, you know. So it's. Sometimes. Things just don't work out and as entrepreneurs, we often talk amongst ourselves and we say, kind of, one of our words of wisdom is fail and fail fast, so that you, you know. So, if you need to do that, go ahead and fail and you'll learn. Pick up the pieces. I know that from a bad business partnership that I was in, I had to file bankruptcy. The business filed bankruptcy, but you know it wasn't fun. But I learned a lot and now I'm stronger than I was before. That you know. So it's. You know you learn. You learn from our failures and that's key. So how can someone get ahold of you? Do you have a podcast, blog, website, linkedin?
Speaker 1:
LinkedIn Andres Kajcha LinkedIn. That will be the best way. I will do my best to get back to anyone that reaches out within the couple of days. I met super generous people through LinkedIn or through my career, so I'm happy to return and pay for it.
Speaker 2:
Fantastic Final words of wisdom. Is there a book or a YouTube or podcast that you listen to? That's really helped you and your business.
Speaker 1:
I love reading the financial time. I just like kind of semi-neutral business perspectives. Yeah, and and and, from just random. I just love the color of the paper and just you know, I just love reading the financial time. I just love the color of the paper and just that pink. I would say from a business perspective standpoint. People tell you to read, I would say to watch your journal, the economist, the financial times have to be some of the most enjoyable pieces of business news. This is the in the context of business news. I do a bunch of other things that I like. Yeah, I just want to be very business specific.
Speaker 2:
Well, you have been fantastic and you have helped a lot of small business owners Any last words you want to share.
Speaker 1:
I hope that 2024 brings a lot of opportunity. I I'm hopeful what the year brings and in that everyone is in good company with the loved ones. That's all I kind of wish for for everyone.
Speaker 2:
That's awesome. So I appreciate your time today and we'll catch up soon. Thank you, welcome to the recap and coaches corner section of small business pivots. We hope you found valuable insights on knowing when and how to pivot in your business for success, as well as the importance of cultivating strong business partnerships. As Dave Framsy wisely said, the only ship that does not sell is a partnership. This underscores the critical nature of fostering healthy and productive relationships in the business world. Before we wrap up, here's your actionable tip from the coaches corner Prioritize open and honest communication with your business partners.
Speaker 2:
Set aside 30 minutes to meet with your business partner and discuss one thing each of you feel the other could improve on to make the business better. Clear communication lays the foundation for trust, alignment and effective decision making, all crucial elements for a successful partnership. If you're seeking further guidance on business partnerships, consider exploring our online course designed to help business owners assess if a partnership is right for them and equip them with the tools to navigate and thrive in such relationships. If you already have a partnership, this course could be for you as well. Go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom and find this course under the courses section in online courses. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. Don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast. If your business is stuck or you need help growing your business, go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom and schedule a free consultation to learn why business success starts with Boss. If you have a guest or topic suggestion for our podcast or just want to talk anything small business related, email me personally at michaelatmichaeldmorsencom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.