Innovating at Scale w/ Nick Jordan | Ep. 148

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast Davide and Gary talk to NC legend Nick Jordan, Founder of the long running dev shop Smashing Boxes and newly minted Unboxed Venture Studio. From the granular details of what it takes to move venture capital forward, to the big picture outlook that creates long term success- this podcast has it all- from a pro.

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Nick: A lot of things were forced to change. So we're already kind of trying to undergo this process of what's the future of the business? What's scalable, what's sustainable from like a business practice, but also work life stress balance.

[00:00:14] David: Hi, everyone. Welcome to BizDev, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and I am joined, per usual, by Gary Voigt. Are you wearing a name tag, dude? No, that's just your shirt.

[00:00:25] Gary: No, it's just part of my shirt. It's exactly in the spot where a name

[00:00:28] David: Thought you were forgot your own name and that was going to be bad for this episode.

More importantly, I have the honor of interviewing Mr. Nick Jordan, the founder of the relatively newly created unboxed venture studio. It's been around, but you guys are doing a big push. So I want to talk about that, but welcome Nick. Thanks for joining us.

[00:00:48] Nick: All right. Excited to be here. Thanks, David.

[00:00:51] David: I think I might've told you this story. So I should say I've met Nick several times. He's kind of a big name around my little neck of the woods. But I have always, I've told the story a thousand times, probably even on this podcast, and I don't know if I've ever told you specifically. If I have, I apologize for repeating myself, but I have always told people that you were one of those people early on.

So my company might've been three months old. You were giving a speech at hub Raleigh. It was called, we were in Brooks Bell headquarters back then. And you were giving an AFT, an evening speech about entrepreneurship and chatting. And it was just me. By myself, my company was three months old and I was floundering spectacularly.

And you stayed after your speech and you spoke to me and a couple other people for two hours telling me and others about starting a business and entrepreneurship. And you encouraged me to keep going. And we talked a lot about how you guys started with three people and I was alone. And you were, you said at the time, you didn't know how that works because that's a lot of, Pressure for one guy anyway.

So that always hit me because you had no need to do that. Smashing boxes at the time, which was one of the big dev shops and was a big to do, and everybody knew you guys, the fact that you were willing to stand and talk to an absolute nobody for a couple of hours always hit me. So I've always, I've told a million people that, but so it's very cool to talk to you on my little podcaster.

[00:02:20] Nick: Awesome. All right. That's awesome. Let me educate me a little tingles and then look at you now, you know,

[00:02:25] David: Oh, and I don't know about

[00:02:26] Nick: the host with the most,

[00:02:28] David: We're still here. How about that? Almost 12 years later. So as I mentioned, so you founded smashing boxes, which is was a is, was, I'm not sure what their status is now, but was big development shop. One of the most successful ones in this area and built all sorts of cool stuff.

We've been competing against you forever. And then my, in my little world, we would always find out what you were doing. In terms of marketing and stuff. And we've tried to emulate that. We've done that for a decade. I'm not shy in saying that, but you are now chain. What's that? Yes. Thanks for all

[00:02:58] Gary: Thanks, Nick.

[00:02:58] David: But you are now shifting gears. So smashing boxes is officially being rolled into unboxed venture studio. So that's been a pretty recent announcement. You just, was that a couple of weeks ago?

[00:03:08] Nick: Yeah.

[00:03:09] David: So tell me about that. Tell me what what a venture studio is. I know the gist, but tell me what a venture studio is versus a development company that you've been running and why you decided to go this direction.

[00:03:21] Nick: Awesome. Yeah, we'll do. And thanks again for that little preamble that's very meaningful. And that's why we all do this. Yeah, venture studio is, you know, It has many meanings to many different people. There's a lot of sort of iterations and different ways to slice that.

In essence, it's investing, but it's not just capital. So you're investing your time, your expertise, your resources, and then some capital from time to time. Especially in our case, that's almost always the very last thing because what companies and what ideas need the most for my experience over the last 15, 20 years is all the things they need.

All of these things, all these ingredients, all these people rowing in the same direction with alignment and that alignment, if that's not like the outcome of the company, then you're not actually aligned. So when you're an agency, your alignment is. Hit the timeline and budget, but it was someone else's project.

And when you're an attorney, it's to protect you from this out of the other. When you're an advisor, it's to do this. When you're an investor, it's to make a return for your investors, not necessarily what's best for this company. So there's like a lot of ways where a company, there's a lot of things. And a lot of, you know, thorns or things that will snag a company and they'll fail even when they maybe shouldn't.

So it's to kind of remove as many of those barriers, as many of those risk factors to give more ideas, a better chance at making an impact and being successful. You know, that kind of was born from, yeah, the history of smashing boxes, being a dev shop or building software. We're building digital products.

We love to kind of being, you know, just in the mix with innovation, with entrepreneurship, technology. And the journey to a venture studio kind of feels natural. Oh, we're already building products for others where we get paid. Why don't we build them for ourselves where we have IP and we can build assets and build a portfolio.

But it wasn't that obvious cause it didn't really always have a name. We were just trying a bunch of different stuff. And yeah, today's smashing boxes is still around to serve clients, but we were trying to serve equally serve our own portfolio of projects. And so the business obviously looks different as we've kind of worked to undergo this evolution.

This will be a timeless piece of content. So I hate referring to COVID because, you know, when our grandkids are listening to this episode, they'll be like what's that? You know, grandpa, I'm like, I just don't worry about it. But, you know, in terms of time and space, as of today, That also had an impact, right?

Because. 

A lot of things were forced to change. So we're already kind of trying to undergo this process of what's the future of the business? What's scalable, what's sustainable from like a business practice, but also work life stress balance. 

You know, like how do we have less stress in our sort of business lives and then what also has the biggest chance to.

Make a splash, I guess the other ingredient was, you know, we always talk about the ecosystem. So ecosystem Oh yeah, let's just grow the ecosystem. Let's go to these talks and let's go to the coworking space and let's do office hours, you know, but ultimately these ecosystem thoughts are really just to create a fertile ground for something to scale and be very successful.

And that's the ultimate goal of the ecosystem is some companies and eventually more and more companies become very successful because then their success. Recycles back into the ecosystem and you have more resources and more, you know, nutrient rich grounds from which to grow the next set of companies.

So I kind of was like, all right, all these things just in my head, like I see a lot of reasons where things fail. I see a lot of like dots on the map that I could connect and the aha was like the best thing I could do for the ecosystem isn't necessarily one more set of office hours. It's probably to do the thing that we're.

It's let's not do five other points around a circle just to go to the straight line. Let's just actually build something that is high impact, high scale, and can like potentially return a lot of, you know, value to the various stakeholders involved. Kind of that's how that all came about and yeah, it took probably the last four or so years to kind of, yeah, put some words to it, name it okay, it's a venture studio, that's a class there's thought leadership out there, we're not the only ones, either in this market, there's only a few in our market, but, you know, bigger cities have a bunch, just like kind of always and there's, yeah, there's thought leadership trying to say it's, you know, Venture capital returns, but private equity risk, you know, they're trying to show that it's a nice little lane.

And it's really about, you know, rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty and working on companies. And so it's kind of, not to go even further, but, you know, when we were all kind of in this, you know, pandemic y area, like an era what do we do? What should we do? Is money going to have any value?

Or is it going to be like to fires in our woods while we live off the land? You know, it's what would I do if I just didn't, if I push reset, like if I didn't have to do anything what would I do? It's yeah, I love helping others. So I love kind of consulting, you know, no, I also love scaling businesses.

I actually want to give a, I want my rewards to be commensurate with the value I create. So it's it's kind of like the venture studio idea that I had before. So let's just go ahead and do that. So just double down, let's do it. Let's build some companies. And let's just kind of see what this next phase of the business and life looks like for the next 10 years.

[00:07:59] David: So practically speaking, what I want to drill down a little bit more into the venture studio concept. So let's say I have an idea. It's a tech idea, right? I'm assuming you're only tech. Pretty safe bet. Or are you, if I had soap, would you invest in a soap company? You know what I'm saying? Or does it have to be something you can build a smashing boxes or that skillset?

[00:08:18] Nick: Sure. The answer to that is right now it's opportunistic. So it's, I can go down many little rabbit holes. One of which is I do have a company that's in sort of the, you know, hospitality space because the office that we had just bought and moved into for smashing boxes became quickly vacant with COVID.

So we repackaged it, repositioned it as coworking flex. We're adding a food and Bev concept. We're adding sort of coffee shop concepts. So we're sort of like. In the retail hospitality and real estate kind of world, is that a third leg for everything we're doing, you know, tech and investment, I don't really know, if someone has a great cash flowing business idea or they are cash flowing or there's just an opportunity, like I'm sort of pursuing it the, you know, with smashing boxes, their trends will emerge, right?

So we've, our area has a lot of healthcare areas, a lot of universities, there's a lot of research. We've had longstanding relationships with a lot of these. So as I've socialized this and said, Hey, if there's an investment opportunity where there's IP laying around, let me know. So I'm thinking we're going to kind of see a decent amount of healthcare, IP, tech commercialization, because it's, that, that wouldn't be an accident either.

And so one of my partners, Eric, he's kind of big into the blockchain space around, you know, legislation, regulation very knowledgeable about kind of the ups and downs. One of his, one of our companies has ICO and was trading on Coinbase. And so he's got a lot of various experiences.

So it's not unlikely that we might see several blockchain type opportunities stacked upon themselves. So the lens right now is opportunistic. But that's because we're sort of the allocators or the deal makers. And that's kind of not dissimilar from many investment kind of firms and models where it's really just the principles, finding deals.

And if they can drive a good return, then maybe they expand upon their thesis and scale up and how many, you know, how much, how many deals they do, or they just stay small and just try to make the biggest, you know, swing for the fences and make the biggest the biggest impact per kind of deal.

[00:10:08] David: So if you, do you go with people who are just at the idea stage, or do you have to be further along? I got to already have customers, revenue. I do. I need to be cash positive or all of the above. How do you guys see that?

[00:10:21] Nick: Yeah, that's a great question. It's all of the above. And again, some of this might evolve and take shape differently over time. I've always kind of considered the one entity here is it's the idea. It's not, doesn't have to be a founder. It doesn't have to be a founder plus a company, a founder, plus a company, plus revenue.

It could be all of them. It could be a founder plus company, plus revenue, plus investors, but be in a special situation where maybe, you know, their investors are pulling out or that your capital markets get tied or. You know, their cost of doing business is too much. And you can sort of come in and help do different things in a special situation.

So that's, I'd say that's the. Most mature, and it goes all the way down to the idea. I think the one thing we're not doing is just saying we're going to come up with all of our own inventions, be our own solopreneurs, be our own team, and just build a bunch of companies. It's like just doing all of the bleeding, right?

So we need some place to start, right? So when it's just IP, that's probably the earliest, and that might look like a commercialization opportunity out of a university. That's takes the most amount of work because we've got to kind of do a lot of the lifting, but we're recruiting and we want to find EIRs and people that might want to, you know, take those and make them their own.

But it's always great when we've got, you know, partners and particularly partners and SMEs. So it's we've got the idea, we've got the expertise and someone who wants to. Run the company so that once we leave our art, once they leave the nest and leave the venture studio, they're in good hands. And we now don't, they don't work for us, right?

It's their company, their employees. And you know, we can just kind of sit back on the board.

[00:11:46] David: So I've read a little bit about venture studios and tell me if I'm misunderstanding this from what I understand If I'm just, you know, a guy with money, I might take 10 or 15 percent for a pile of money. Obviously that go higher, but it's a lower percentage because my job in this is to give you money.

Venture studios, and again, correct me wherever I'm wrong. Is we're going to take a larger chunk because we're doing a lot more of it. So I might take 40%, but I'm doing all your development. I'm going to help you with your marketing. I'm going to scale you up with my connections, right? Your connection, obviously.

And cause I got a buddy here who's in this and the buddy that didn't do than that, and I can blow this up like a shark on shark tank kind of thing and is that a, at a very high level, is that generally right? You take a larger percentage cause you're doing more.

[00:12:31] Nick: Yes. And that ranges from, in general, we try to think of it as co founder status, but in the case of IP, that just it's, we own all of it, we get the IP as a contribution and they get some equity commensurate to the value of the IP. But in general, I think, and again we're going to kind of see how this goes, but I think, you know, as a co founder, you have decision making power or decision making influence, right?

It doesn't mean we have to have the final say. But in general, if we're going to do all, we want to be accountable for that outcome, right? So if we're just the check and it's Oh, good luck. And that's called just being an investor, being an angel. And oftentimes if you're an angel and you write a check and you still get 15 to 20%, the entrepreneur off.

Because unless you wrote him a 1 million check, right? The 25 K is worth, you know, a single digit or should be that or less. You know, kind of really coming into where it's, and that's where it's kind of the venture capital private equity hybrid where private equity usually buys either the majority or enough to have just decision making rights and they want decision making, you know, influence and power just, and they know what it is, right?

It's not like a final say, but they need enough to say, it's going to be worth it to put all of our time, energy resources into making this successful. And to do that, a lot of times you've got to be in control. We're totally open to a world, you know, kind of down the road where like we don't have to because we've done enough cool things with enough cool people.

We're like, just, we'll just contribute some stuff and like whatever we can get for that, we're happy. But right now, you know, our time and our resources are limited. So we want to focus them on the things that have the most promise. And a lot of times they're earlier stage where they need just like literally everything.

That a co founder or even a founder you know, the founding team and we're like the majority of that founding team, even so it's fun because it's every little opportunity is its own startup, but we aren't doing it alone. We're doing it with other people.

[00:14:16] David: So do you, and as of now, I know it could change later, but as of now, if you say, this is a great idea, we're going to make this happen, we're going to take a big chunk. Are you acting as the co founder or do you, is there someone in your company, you know, in Unboxed that is acting like the co founder, like in this stage that you're at currently?

[00:14:37] Nick: I've got one business partner, Eric Porpor. So right this second, it would, you know, it's, we would just see, right? Maybe it's something that he should be the person, but it would probably be we, like the studio, right? Because I'll bring stuff, he'll bring stuff. It's not each principal owns their own deal and the other person doesn't help out, right?

We want our studio to be successful collectively. How some of the companies have come together. Some of the ones with Duke really came from my kind of smashing boxes days and kind of got that going. He has a company that's in the kind of blockchain and crypto space that he was a co founder of and their advisor first and became co founder and then, you know, investor and bringing in the studio.

So like he kind of oversees that I oversee this. So like we do have a little bit of a division of labor, but it's really like a, one plus one equals three. So like together, we're going to be able to help these companies more than just one of us kind of taking it. 

[00:15:26] David: So you brought up an interesting point. So let's say you need legal as just an example, would that be

[00:15:33] Nick: Yeah, I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night. So that's what I'm saying.

[00:15:37] David: but if, would you use an in house lawyer that you guys have on staff or would you partner with a guy and just pay him money?

Does that make sense? Is your supposed to be all in one shop or are you borrowing out when you need to?

[00:15:48] Nick: Yeah. Right now it's absolutely, we will find a resource and hire them and we've worked with a ton of different firms. And so usually when I'm saying legal, it's because we know you need that and we've maybe seen that challenge and it's going to be kind of common. Like you're in contract this year.

Do you have an IP issue or is it co founders or cap table or is it? You haven't even done any formation or you've got to convert from LLC to C Corp or just things that like would cost you the company money and you just are like, I'm strapped and I'm raising money so that I can do legal and then hire a salesperson and build out some products.

Okay we're not writing the check, but we'll just do all those services. And a lot of times, yeah, we do have to pay for those. So we'll write it, you know, we'll pay and have an

[00:16:20] David: You're writing those

[00:16:21] Nick: and CPA. Yeah. Maybe there's a day and time when it's like, we want it all in house, but. You know, in today's world, and we can talk about smashing boxes too we aren't even like that, the more we can not have in house and just have a lean and agile and nimble team to assemble, the easier business is to do. So I can see there being, we have a little website that we haven't launched, but it's going to be unboxed to platform services, you know, and cause I can see there is, will be a platform of things that we can provide and still feel like it's under one umbrella because we're.

directing the traffic, you know, but I don't see those as all being somehow like W 2 legal counsel on staff, right? And that's going to be a ways down the road. But yeah, so most likely it'll always be things that we pull in various expertise as needed.

[00:17:05] David: So when you mentioned earlier that venture studio is a concept that you didn't invent, it's been around, it's relatively new to this area. I can't name any other ones. I'm sure they exist, but there are not a lot of them if there are, but what, when you guys, when you were deciding you and your partner were deciding to make a venture studio, I'm a hundred percent positive.

You researched other ones around the country, New York and LA and all those, you know, San Francisco and stuff like that. Did you want to do something different than they're doing? Or did you just say, man, they're doing a great job. I just want part of that.

[00:17:35] Nick: Kind of all of the above. I think, like I said, there's different flavors of it. Some, some people start with say, hey, if you raise 10 million, staff up a specific area of expertise, and then you just funnel those exact opportunities through your machine and spit it out. And there's been other ones where it's like, Hey, we sold a company to the Salesforce and now we've don't know what to do.

So let's just start to incubate our own ideas. And let's have like little off sites. Every quarter we come up with three ideas and we just build them. So it's all just kind of eat your own dog food over and over. Others are one or two people that are sort of. You know, kind of tinkering around with the idea that if they find something, they go all in on it.

So they actually exit the studio just with one cool thing and that's it. So I think you know, some of the models are actually like, like Y Combinator and how they, you know, innovated on the VC space. So it really, you know, the VC space. VC kind of then turned into like Incubator. So instead of four checks a year, like I just said they're like 50, actually now they're like 100 checks a quarter.

So it's like just 400 checks a year. And I don't even know if they've ever, I think they've intentionally never gone on follow ons and maybe they'll kind of have some pro rata, but it's they want those first ones, first one, first ones. That's created this whole new way of thinking about it.

Their alumni. I know personally, various YC alumni who made so much more money going to a demo day and investing into something that turned into openSea versus like their own company because they built that network and it's just go to the demo days, write some checks. So I've seen it as a thing to I think this could build a lot of momentum and be successful.

And the general premise is the same. I've got a lot to give in terms of skills and expertise and experience and like drive and perseverance and all the things you learn as an entrepreneur that I think have more value than straight up writing a check with money. And I'm not sure how much you're doing around here locally, but There's great investors, there's great angel groups, there's great entrepreneurs.

But it just like the ROI, it just doesn't like, I don't know if I've gotten any money back and that's not the kind of, you know, it's more like you put it out there and it kind of happens or even through development, you know, sometimes it'll kind of take some equity just to kind of create some alignment and you know, sometimes it's covering a pricing gap and we just the deal done.

But like very few of those have ever sort of come back as cash. It's just I think the best thing I can do for the area is not write more checks when I've got no checks back for all the checks I've written to date. It's to actually do the thing and bring in capital and see some businesses really scale so that it adds credibility to our entrepreneurial ecosystem and hopefully it adds a lot of like wealth creation.

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[00:20:33] Gary: As far as you're reached locally, is it something that you guys are trying to still kind of keep within that triangle area for now and grow? And have you noticed like an increase in activity or energy in startups kind of coming back in that area?

[00:20:49] Nick: Sure. You know, I could probably think about the best way, I probably need a better way to articulate this, but we're local and committed to growing the triangle ecosystem that period. That doesn't mean that businesses have to be local or the entrepreneurs or they don't have to stay local or the investors.

I think some of the ingredients we do want to bring in money from out of town, find other strategic partners, family offices, things that can like that are already serving it. Sniffing around the triangle or have gotten good like fives, but haven't really gotten active yet. So the more we can bring it outside resources, the better if a company spins out and they've got some lead investor in Chicago, that's like move here, I'm not going to be like, no, don't do it.

It might be best for your company. But the venture studio will be here. And I think, you know, that's going to create a lot of, you know, ecosystem development for our area, because there's going to be staff and entrepreneurs and residents and hopefully funnels of entrepreneurs sort of coming in and out of the program.

As you know, with how people can work so remotely, if a great opportunity arrives and she lives in Atlanta and I'm thinking about a specific person I'm not going to move here because that's your business is there, your family's there. And we'll come to you and we'll do this. We'll be on screen working together and, you know, putting this thing together and scaling it.

[00:21:57] Gary: Have you noticed more interest from investors or just companies like from outside the area looking to kind of assist or help grow some of the companies that might be starting in the triangle area?

[00:22:09] Nick: Yeah, honestly, we launched because we need to put a name to it and put a flag in the sand to say, hey, this is what we're doing. And also, this is what it is. Some people kind of get it right away and they're like, Oh, that's cool. I'm interested. And that has been I don't know if opportunistic is the right word, but it has really been geo agnostic.

I met somebody in Durham, but they live in San Antonio, but they're here for a PhD, but their investment arm is over here. So it's Oh, okay. Like we happened to cross paths on a Durham based kind of activity. But where they were with somewhere else got one group that's in Florida, you know, it's kind of, I don't, and also, like I said, the reason we launched it so that we can be more intentional about trying to attract that attention.

I think there's a lot of people locally who have said, Oh, that's cool. I've seen like one or two other people kind of do it and I'm interested in that model. Let me know how it goes. And some of them said, I'd love to support and invest. And we're like, let me know how we work together because some investors want to write checks into single companies, not seeing this as more like a portfolio play.

But there's also kind of multi plane or you know, multi planes of of like synergies, right? Like before they're ready for their investment, maybe they come to the venture studio after they leave their investment, maybe they need the venture studio because they're hitting some things and they need someone to kind of come in as an additional resource provider and additional investment, so to speak.

Sometimes there's ones that come to us that then should be a pipeline into their investment thesis. So we can feed them deals. They can feed us deals going down when they're too early, or they can feed us deals later in life for companies that might. Be hitting some struggles and they're, them as investors can't don't have the bandwidth to jump in and actually fix it.

So there's been a lot of those combos in terms of, Hey, here's we're just one more, you know, one more tool in the tool belt of what what value you can get created in the entrepreneurial ecosystem here in the triangle.

[00:23:48] David: So I'm going to change gears tangentially. I am curious how I'm very practical in that. I want to know how you're doing. I run a very small dev firm. I don't know how big smashing boxes is these days, but I'm guessing you're quite a bit bigger than us still. And. I don't know how you're personally able to manage something like my business again, bigger and this, and I know your other food and beverage and how are you able to do all of this?

[00:24:18] Nick: How much time do we have? I'm just kidding. A lot of pain, right? So it's not, it. It's been an evolution and like anyone starting any business, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think I'd be like way freaking farther, like two and a half years ago. And that's even including COVID. It's like post that, like that was over.

Whenever that was like, it's okay, that's behind us. And most of that, like, there's conversation. I find, I don't know how you guys, I use notes in the notes app and sometimes I'm guilty of keeping like one long ass running note. And I'll be like, man, this thing was from a year ago.

I'm saying the same thing. Get that thing out to that guy. Get this deal. Do this. I'm like, that was a year ago. And I was like, wait. Eric and I had, that was we were having drinks at this bar. That was Christmas of, two Christmases ago. Or, you know, holidays, and wait, and that was a year after that thing happened.

And you're like, man, it just takes a while. So it's been a lot of spinning plates, and it's been it's not one step back to go two steps forward or slow down to speed up. There's a lot of like dumb metaphors I don't really apply, but it's like life has gotten a lot more difficult in order for it to ultimately get better because kind of doing the venture building, I think is where I, that's where like my passion is meaning it's I love entrepreneurship.

I love starting things. I love getting them someplace, but I also want to make a living out of it. And. Retire and create wealth out of it. And so like just doing the agency was not enough. It wasn't filling my cup enough because it is a giant, as you know, it's like a giant hamster wheel, right? You get more projects, you need more staff.

You get more staff, you need more projects. You get loose in projects, you lose some staff. Then you lose some stuff, you might lose some projects. And I can't keep doing that just to hopefully then do something else one day. So it's I've had to keep that bit. So logistically I had to keep that business going to pay for the investments into some of the companies we were making.

and to pay my buildings mortgage while I started that operating business to get co working. That is still being subsidized a little bit. It's almost left the nest. The thing has almost turned the corner. Especially with some of the food and bev, those are like spaces that were just non performant and not revenue generating.

Getting that stabilized has been a goal for two and a half years. You know, getting it to where the companies could maybe start to generate revenue and raise capital is the next step. Because Smashing Boxes on its own is probably smaller than it has been historically. Because we want to stay lean so we can do discreet investments into these companies.

And so it's been, yeah, it's been if I manage a zero based budget, meaning I just don't lose money at the end of the month. I'm happy. And that's not a way to live. And it also hasn't been that way in many of the months over the last three or four years, right? Many months. I'm like, man, I'm dipping, I'm going in the hole for this, we're creating a lot of value and I think we're almost to the other side.

And there's, yeah, there's a number of components, but yeah, on it's, it is I'm just, I guess you could say I'm just reinvesting into myself. That'd be maybe a, Positive self help way to say it. Like I'm taking every dollar I make and I'm investing it in myself and my next, you know, evolution along this journey.

And I think it's, I'm confident it's going to pay off. It is paying off. We're having fun and started to really see some of the fruits of our labor. I don't know that fruits be born, whatever, man.

[00:27:09] David: that's exciting. It's what

[00:27:10] Nick: Yeah.

[00:27:11] David: people who run agencies like us, they're off ramp is to start an app themselves, build that up. A good example is locally there's a company Lithios and I'm huge fan of Deshaun and all that. He started Coworks. Classic thing that has taken off and now he's running both, but his time is now all the app because, you know, apps are exciting because there's revenue and you have ARRs and stuff rather than the, what you described from the agency model, which is, you know, very different feast or famine kind of stuff.

Why didn't you go that route? Why the venture studio? Why the bet food and Bev? Why didn't you start your own app? Like most agency. Seem to go

[00:27:53] Nick: Three thoughts. One is. The co working in Flex is almost born out of necessity, not necessarily being intentional. It's more who am I going to, I don't want to keep paying this lease. I need more flexibility and how I'm going to invest in, you know, evolve these companies. It's just been a lot harder.

Like we had no brand and we decided to launch in COVID, which means we didn't really have a base of members or customers. And so it's just been sort of a slog, but it's getting there. And I'd also say to be fair, that does feel like up as well. I love small business. It's not just as enough to be all tech.

I love main street businesses. I love being a part of the Durham and greater triangle, specifically Durham's main street. Talking to politicians. It's just it's like a different audience, but it's one that I deeply care about. And I did, even in my smashing boxes days at first, it was like, Entrepreneurship, like entrepreneur ecosystem.

OK, it's kind of getting going. The tech ecosystem. Yeah, it's great. We're all a bunch of tech bros you know, helping each other, and patting each other on the back while paying these guys 150 K a year are we really helping anyone? They don't need more help, like, how can we actually make an impact on our community?

So I think, you know, the Hospitality and real estate stuff is great. It's almost like separate though. I think would say I try to perform that to just buy my own office. Because I was like I'm going to do my agency and at the very least I'm going to pay myself rent. So it was an attempt to do one thing and like kind of build up something else.

And it just sort of has

[00:29:08] Gary: it seems like it was just more of a common sense, real estate investment.

[00:29:11] Nick: Yeah, it was. And then, you know, COVID and yeah, so like we moved in and then very, not too long later, we're moving right out. But so that was all good, I did, I'm sure David, I probably did build my own app several times. But it was kind of, it was tough because you've got a large machine that you've got to feed.

And when you're taking away resources, that one little, Dip and utilization on paid stuff and Oh damn, I'm in the hole. Like I shouldn't have been investing that I need to maximize that business. Also that staff is not incentivized to be, you know, this great startup. They're incentivized to do projects at high quality on time on budget and be done.

And then third, it's hard to be your boss and your client, or it's hard to be a boss or manager and a client, because those are actually two different things. I need to be supporting the team as the manager. I need to be like, where's my deliverable as a client, you know? And you know, and then I realized that's what also led me to the realization of I guess I need to be sort of the entrepreneur.

I can't just outsource that. So I'm like, all right, what would I start? And I finally kind of got to okay, it would be fully separate from this business. It's not just about the same. I can't just put it through the agency. And then I realized I don't want to just start my own thing on my own every single time.

Cause that's a grind. I don't want, cause then I'm still the leader and I still have to have the employees. So I'm like, my goal is to have no employees. I want to be just an investor. I don't even want to be a business owner. I want to just be like the I quadrant or whatever, which is you know, things go up, they go out, they exit.

The reason a lot of agencies try to exit out by going into an app or a rollup is Because there's a, there's an exit possibility. Agencies are like very illiquid companies.

[00:30:40] David: very hard to

[00:30:40] Nick: trade your dollars, trade your hours for dollars. Like forever. And there's a lot of, it's enjoyable work. I've never minded the work, I just don't like the business of the agency.

But yeah, all the same thinkings, right? Like how do I exit path? What am I good at? Do I want to do it all myself or partner with others? And, you know, I like having a lot of irons in the fire. It kind of made sense. I didn't know, it wasn't, I didn't, it wasn't like, Hey, I'm going to do a venture studio and then I spent time designing it and then I launched it.

It was like, I'm going to do office hours. I'm going to do some investment. Oh, I'm going to co found this with somebody. I'm going to found my own company. I'm going to, again, just searching and searching, you know, and it kind of has finally come together. But it's taken a while. Even before all of that, I was like, how do I sell the agency?

Do I, or do I hire management? At least I get my time back and then I bring in a consultant. We started, we implemented EOS, traction, you know, entrepreneur operating system. Like it's going to run itself. That never freaking happens, you know? So it's I'm going to spend all this time putting everyone else in place only to probably have to come back in here in six or nine months.

And a lot of times it wasn't because no, not a lot of times. It was never because of the people or because of the systems, because it's kind of, it just is a tough business. You know, a lot of trial and error to finally get to where we are now, which is still a work in progress, right? So it's not, I'm going to be back on the show a year being like, Oh dude, we're killing it.

Yes I can relax. That is not this year. So I'm like, we got to keep hustling and you know, let's just make this year better than last.

[00:31:57] Gary: you might enjoy the slog more than you think you do. Cause you seem to keep throwing yourself into it.

[00:32:02] Nick: Oh yeah. I do. I like the pain. You know, I had a golf membership, an expensive golf course. I bought an old vintage car. There's not all at the same time. It wasn't like a midlife crisis. Bought a nice watch. I'd be like, what are my hobbies? So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna try to get into golf.

I'm gonna get into collecting. I just didn't like it. And I kind of was like, actually, I don't like just I'm going to work really hard over here. And then completely separate from that. I'm going to buy a bunch of leisure. To offset the pain of all the work. And I was like, this is, that's like a weird, vicious cycle.

Like I make more money, I buy more leisure. I, you know, need to spend more money on leisure. So I need to go make more money. This is dumb Like, how do we just actually find balance to find sustainability and find like what you actually like to do? If it was the prop, not the problem, some of the agency business, like you said, here, it's always kind of.

You're just running around this hamster wheel. There's never really a clean time to be like, I'm going to sell this or actually I'll just stop it, you know, because then people, you know, clients are impacted, employees are impacted. Like you just, it's you can't stop. It's an inertia. It's it's a, has a life of its own.

You know, the path, this evolution was kind of in a way, like the, not quite the path of least resistance, but it was instead of making, it was a, it's a slow evolution versus a hard pivot. And so I think where I want to be is. Companies have leadership, they run themselves, they're in my portfolio.

I can kind of have a blend of cross, you know, pollination between tech and entrepreneurship and interesting ideas and kind of, yeah this main street small business supporting your community and I'll be, but checks just show up to me and I don't actually have to do shit to get them. So then I can just be like time for myself and mental health and, you know, like workout and hit the gym.

And you know, I think we're on the way there to be fair to what you said, Garrett, like the other option there, this was like push new bond. Let's just sell everything. So our businesses, our house, sell it, sell the building because we don't need any of it. And I don't, I'm like, not even the tech, there's no sacred cows.

I'm my legacy or whatever I do to Leave the world better than when I found it is the legacy that my kids will be a part of, not like a brand name or not anything. And you know, we're, what are we, what are our limiting beliefs that we've we can't move because we love our like little kiddie soccer team or like we must get picked up by this bus to go to this school.

It's that's bullshit. So what then, once we've cleared our mind of everything we might do, or like every, we're getting rid of everything, now what will we add back? It was it was this, and we knew, and by we I mean my family and I, but this is me talking as you can probably imagine while my partner listens.

Because they're like, holy shit, what? But it took a couple years to get on the same page. But, it was like, all right this is the plan. Let's work through it and just evolve more slowly over time versus rip the bandaid off and then just be like, now what? You know, cause that could have been a good parachute.

There's a lot of equity in different things and it wouldn't look bad. But then I was like all right, but I would just be bored. I don't think I actually want to move to Costa Rica for a year. And or Europe or Portugal or whatever like I think I like the community we're building and I actually like the work so yeah This was probably last year.

And so I probably thought it'd be a little bit farther. It's like almost q4 By the end of Q1, we're there, you know, we're gonna be rolling. Everything's going to be great. The new life starts. I think it's Q1 25, maybe Q1 26. I don't know, but we're on the right path, but I do like it. And then the whole point about the leisure was I actually like business and I like working and I like the feeling and the fulfillment you get from creating something, from having an impact.

Again, the Mainstreet and the Tech, they both have a lot of different, they kind of serve different purposes, and they have different outcomes, but both have equal amount of reward and fulfillment and possibilities.

[00:35:25] David: Awesome.

[00:35:26] Gary: Yeah. Then to bring it all together based on everything that you kind of just went over here, it seems like you didn't just fall into this as something that's definitely been crafted or whittled away. From your experiences. So with those experiences, what would you say are your top three pieces of advice for a new business or a new entrepreneur or a startup?

[00:35:46] Nick: Sure I had some written down, but, you know, usually for me it's always go sell something, right? Sell something to somebody. Because everyone has ideas and like something that's going to happen down the road is there's no friction there. So once you say I've got to sell something it could just be like, here's my idea.

What do you think? So I'm more philosophical. It's I would say get started, you know, like whatever you think you're doing, just get started and then get feedback. And then also like reevaluate or evaluate, you know, it doesn't, I gotta do, I, in many parts believe in the whole burn the ships concept, So if you know, burn the ships, like you kind of can't go back, so you've got to go forward.

If you give yourself a plan B, you're already like one step out. I don't mean that. Like you don't have to take anything for granted or have limiting beliefs. You're like, I must keep doing this. Zoom out. And even if it's in your own company that's going well, your own product, like it's okay to rethink is this the right customer profile?

Is this the right go to market strategy? It doesn't mean you're going to be wavering or flaky or a bad entrepreneur. It's just always okay to analyze. I think that's. To your point, like this didn't just happen, land in my lap, a lot of trial and error, a lot of just getting out there doing it, calling it something, failing sometimes failing very fast, sometimes very slowly and painfully you know, calling it something else, trying another experiment and sort of just getting always being, always thinking about the, even the, Hey, I'll sell everything, right?

That's kind of an example of, you know, I was willing to like really zoom out and reevaluate things at the highest of high levels.

Yeah, so I, you know, I think we can kind of sum those up, but it's, yeah, get started, get feedback and be willing to, you know, reevaluate and zoom out from time to time and not be, you know, scared of maybe making some changes.

[00:37:16] David: Very cool. Very cool. Then I know those are some hard fought lessons. So I appreciate that very much. It's a lot of times we talk to guys who are newer in the, in their journey and. Their advice is almost aspirational. So it's nice when it's coming from the other side, this is from the trenches, right?

This is, you've been there, you've done that. And so your advice is, yeah, is battle tested, battle hardened. And I appreciate that very much.

[00:37:41] OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net. The BizDev Podcast is produced and presented by BigPixel. See you next week. Until then, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and LinkedIn.