How Ideas Become Companies w/ Tara Heptinstall | Ep. 195

David and Gary sit down with Tara Heptinstall—founder of Enviveo and champion of true innovators—to talk about the messy, inspiring journey from idea to entrepreneur. Tara shares how she’s built a platform that doesn’t just spark new ventures but empowers people with the tools, guidance, and confidence to launch them.

This episode digs into what it really takes to nurture innovation, why the right kind of support matters, and how fostering real entrepreneurs can transform entire industries. If you’ve ever wondered how raw ideas grow into impactful companies, Tara’s story will give you both insight and inspiration.

LINKS:

Enviveo Website

enviveo.com/bizdevpod

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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] Tara: That's okay. We won't talk about you if you're not there in person.

[00:00:03] David: I will totally talk about him if he's not there. Oh my 

goodness. he does it in person too. 

That's the best thing

[00:00:13] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host joined Perus by Gary Voight. What's up, man?

How you doing?

I cannot complain. My daughter had her wisdom teeth pulled out today, and if.

[00:00:30] Gary: tell me you did some video

[00:00:31] David: Oh my gosh, I have so many videos. It's so good. If you are a parent and you have not gone through that pure joy moment of your child drugged outta their mind in the back of your car. It is just, it's why you have kids. It's so lovely. Most of them we will run all the videos by her before we show anybody. We made one of 'em, we asked her if she had anything to say to her boyfriend. Oh my gosh. It was the cutest thing on the planet because she just lit up. It's a new relationship or whatever. And it was just really cute. 'cause you get such an honest thing when they. Are totally drugged out. It's the best. Anyway, that's what's been going on in my world today. More importantly, we have a guest today. Her name is Tara Hep Stall. She is the founder and president of In Vivio. Hello, Tara. Welcome. Thank you so much.

[00:01:24] Tara: Hi. Glad to be here. How old's your daughter?

[00:01:27] David: My daughter is 17. I have a 19-year-old son and a 17-year-old daughter.

[00:01:31] Tara: Okay. Yeah, the drive home from the Wisdom teeth pool is pretty fun.

[00:01:35] David: It's the best. It's like you put up with a lot grazing children and that is one of those moments where you, a lot of it gets paid 

[00:01:42] Gary: it's a reward, a little bit 

[00:01:43] David: a reward. She started, I'm not, I mean I'm not making this up. My daughter is a choir girl. That's just who she is. And so we were wondering what she would be like.

'cause I think those drugs just kinda get you down to your essence. And she was singing the whole way home, but it was so random. She would sing the Star Spangled Banner. I don't know why. And so she's see, and it was funny. Then she'd start singing something else, but then it would transition and back into the Star Spangled Banner for no apparent reason whatsoever.

It was just the best Anyway.

[00:02:11] Tara: And she's not gonna mind at all that you're talking about this on your podcast, 

[00:02:15] David: she she'll never listen to it. She would never listen to my podcast in a million years, so she won't have any idea. My wife listens, so maybe she'll tell, but 

[00:02:23] Gary: My daughter and her friends listen to a few just so they would've ammo to make fun of me about,

[00:02:29] David: That's fair. That's fair.

So tell me about En Vivio. Sounds like a cool company.

[00:02:35] Tara: Yeah, so I, I took the leap last year after 20 some odd years in corporate and I'd say scaling and even a few startups roles. Just have been en envisioning doing this for a long time and decided to finally leap out on my own and start building. And in the meantime, I, done a lot of consulting type work with founders and I think you'll, you've seen too, I'm a Techstars mentor and have other, I'll say immersive roles with folks trying to start businesses, but I just really wanted to build something to help.

Innovators do what they probably sit in their full-time jobs thinking about a lot, get 'em out of those seats and get it started. Because there are a lot of people in the world who want to do this and have the talent to do it, but don't always necessarily know the steps to take. And I think, David, I even saw that in some of your history as well, like the.

Motivation for what you guys are doing. I felt like there was a little bit of common ground there in trying to help people navigate this thing called, starting your own business. And I was just really inspired to do it, so I finally did it.

[00:03:52] David: That's very exciting. Yeah I can relate to that on a very deep level. Big Pixel has been. Startup focus is the wrong word. 'cause the funny part about startups is they don't pay the bills. Like they just can't by their very nature. So we have a lot of other clients that are not startups, but that's a passion of ours and I think that's bled into even our bigger client work. They hire us because. We have that passion. 'cause there's, that's a crucible that's very different. It means you think different, it means you do things differently because you're dealing with new ideas and new strategies and new technologies all the time by the very nature of startup. But yeah I'm mentor all over the place as well.

Just that's a passion of mine. And I would love to pick your brain off offline sometime about how to get involved with Techstars. 'cause that sounds fascinating. But, so let's pretend that I have a new startup that I might, may or may not be starting right now, that I haven't, men that I've mentioned on this podcast, I'm, what would

[00:04:47] Gary: you may or may not.

[00:04:48] David: I'm just kidding.

I'm just, I'm trying to be, I'm trying to be funny. It's failing miserably. I'm elusive. That's the, that's a better word. I come to you. I have this idea for an AI data app just called tlo. Just say, just saying. But I. Why would I come to you? What would you bring to the table for me?

[00:05:07] Tara: the first thing I would bring is a sort of step-by-step process, somewhat mirroring the kinds of things you would learn in an accelerator.

So I've taken what would be a curriculum for a typical accelerator and organized it in such a way that you can do it at your own pace. So let you know I have this kind of, I wouldn't say opposing view to the norm of.

Take, go sign up for an accelerator, go get investors. But I'd say an alternative approach where folks like me I am actually my target audience because I thought for years about doing this, and I would work in the evenings and on the weekends I was even, without really recognizing it until later interviewing and listening and learning.

With this long-term goal in mind to build my own business. So I would say to you, get clear first. So you started your question very focused on the app, and a lot of people do that. And this is not a new thing I'm about to say necessarily, except I would say go spend as much time as you have in your free time that you can spare talking to the people.

That you think have the problem that you're trying to solve, and I don't just mean superficial talking. I mean immerse. You cannot talk to too many people. That might be your target audience, and I'll use myself as an example. When I started this, I was actually targeting. The same founder persona, if you will, that might be the Techstars founder, target audience, more like further along in their journey of building.

And what I learned is there's a whole population of people who haven't done anything formal yet. And if they started earlier and built the foundation and their thinking and got really clear early, they might be able to self-fund. Their business before they would really need to go the investor route. So my North Star is really to help more people build on a good foundation, enough that they could generate early revenue and start to create profit without necessarily having to go do a lot of pitches, meet with a lot of investors, and give away equity in their business.

[00:07:26] David: Man, you're a kindred spirit. I have been on the lifestyle and that's just the only, that's just the word for it. That's people think of lifestyle, like it means small, and that's not what I mean. I just simply mean non-investment business for years. 'cause most startups come to us with that same mentality that, okay, I need you to build my V one or my MVP or whatever you wanna call it, so that I can go get investment. And I always challenge them. To go bootstrap as long as you possibly can because you can always get money. You can never go back to bootstrap once you get money. So start there. Start there. 'cause there's no harm in it. There's, at some point maybe you do need money and there is exceptions. If you're a hardware company, you're gonna need money because hardware is just really hard to do and

takes money.

But that's, most people aren't doing hardware. But if you are doing. Software and you're coming to me, that's one of the things we're gonna push back by. So it's we're, it sounds like we're very aligned in that regard. 'cause I do think, and even as me, so with Tila, what's really interesting to me, and I've been poking this bear a little bit locally is if you don't want money, 'cause we're not trying to raise money, we can build it ourselves.

So I don't need money yet finding mentorship and community and stuff without the need for money. Is surprisingly tricky. Most people give you all of those wonderful things in return for that investment. Hey, we're gonna give you money. And in addition 

[00:08:55] Gary: seems like the,

[00:08:57] David: yeah, do it. Gary, 

[00:08:59] Gary: yeah, it seems like the networks are built around like a benefit of getting the money.

[00:09:04] David: Wait, and that makes

[00:09:05] Tara: Yeah, and you made a good point, David, once you go down, but once you go down that route, once you spend your energy on pitch pitches and investor meetings, and you get your first investor you're in, like the next step is more investment. And and then your long play, whatever you imagined in your mind you're not reinventing it, but to some degree you're giving that.

Away they're gonna have opinions, 

[00:09:28] David: have opinions, 

[00:09:29] Tara: how to run your business. Yeah. So as long as you can do it on your own. And I would say, the MVP concept for me a lot of people have such big ideas and I'll say myself included. That they don't think about them necessarily in stages of revenue generation.

You might be able to do something super small and simple that generates money that might not actually be what you wanna do for the long term, but you're starting to build a customer base. You're starting to have conversations with people. They're starting to pay small amounts to get in, and you're learning and you're generating that initial revenue to start paying for the more robust development work.

That's really your long term plan. So call it like a micro startup model. You're doing it in small increments, but not necessarily this idea. I love the book, but how to build a million dollar idea in a weekend or something like that. I think those are very rare cases

[00:10:27] David: Sure. 

[00:10:27] Tara: where you're gonna stand up a landing page, send it out to the world and start generating.

Your unicorn in a weekend. It's really, for me, more of having a long term view of what you're doing and gating that long-term plan with revenue generation opportunities are gonna get you to the big idea. And so maybe you never have to go get the private equity investor or certainly could bypass VCs.

[00:10:55] David: I am gonna go on a tangent here for a second. Have you ever heard of the company? Meko, I think is how you say it. You ever heard of them? I had never. It's

not a, okay. I heard an interview with her founder the other day on Lenny's podcast. If you're Lenny, the newsletter. Anyway, this is this company's crazy, this company. In 18 months went from zero to $400 million a RR 18 months. They're the fastest growing company in history, and they're run by a 20-year-old, mind blowing. And what they totally fell into it. They basically help AI companies. Find way the like holes in their model, they find experts to fill those holes and they can charge whatever they want because there's only one way to get an AI to read a x-ray for instance.

That's to get a top end radiologist to help them fill that. Anyway, totally random,

but you just mentioned, Hey, there's not a weekend idea, and I'm like there's one. But anyway, just

[00:11:55] Tara: But I'm gonna use, I'm gonna use my pen to make a point

[00:11:59] David: Oh, I like it.

[00:11:59] Tara: that, so he fell into it, but he was focused on a pro. The problem thing, if you find a problem where there's pain and people willing to pay and it, you ask me the question at the beginning what would be the first thing I'd say, don't get wrapped up in the tech idea because your tech idea is based on what you know right now.

And if you spent the next three weeks, two hours a day, or one hour a day in your free time, let's, I'm still assuming I'm talking to people potentially working full-time.

If you start to learn where the pain really is, you're still smart about the tech. You're just gonna have to kinda reframe the tech.

To solve the actual problem that these people are telling you they have. And I'll say for my own research, I've learned so many things about the target audience that I never, I made so many assumptions, lemme just put it that way. And so the platform I'm building has a completely different set of features than what I imagined when I first started.

[00:13:04] David: I think yeah. It's so funny how aligned we are in that. One of the things that I challenge startups to when I talk to them, whether they're coming to me as a, as big pixel or I'm mentoring, I always, most startups, tech startups are two-sided markets. Just how that works. Airbnb being the classic one, and I always ask them to solve their problem with a spreadsheet and a cell phone before you ever call me.

And I think both of those, if you do that, if you do that step, would I have found is that weeds out the unserious really quickly. 'cause that's really not fun. That's not a fun. Thing to call people and put 'em in a spreadsheet and connect people manually. It's not fun. It's not sexy, it's not, a cool logo.

It's not a cool piece of tech. It's nothing. But if you're willing to do that, you might actually succeed in this game. And that's what's really interesting because everybody said, oh yeah, I'll go do that. They don't, one out of 10 maybe actually go, oh, I could do this with a spreadsheet. And that's when you're like, oh, you might actually make this.

[00:14:11] Tara: and so let me talk to the non-tech founders out there because now with all of the AI tools, and I know in some of your more recent episodes you've talked about some of these, but. It has been an amazing thing for me. Even though I have a decent tech skillset, I'm not a coder. I would not sit down and actually code my solution, but I've worked with dev teams throughout my career building and launching product.

But what it's done for me now is to take what's in my head and get it out in a form factor that I can have a really clear conversation with the development team. Like you guys have to say, this is more directly what I'm what I want to wanna want it to do. Or even to your point, maybe instead of, paperclips and bubble gum or spreadsheets and cell phones, you actually can develop using some of the vibe code tools.

A more complete picture of what you wanna test. It could be semi-functional or even what is it, the Wizard of Oz model where you're still doing some stuff behind the scenes. But your users can have an experience beyond a spreadsheet and a cell phone where they're reacting to functionality.

And that's one, one great way to get insight. But now you can actually show them screens that are, that look more like what you imagine. Even when you're not a tech skill, technically skilled person. And I just think the insights get more and more robust when you're able to put that kind of visual experience in front of people as early as possible.

[00:15:49] David: Oh, a hundred percent agree. I'm a big fan. I hate the term vibe coating, but I understand it and I like the idea of, Hey, I have this idea. I'm gonna ask this bot to build me an ugly, crappy version of it. But even that ugly, crappy version. Puts a face to it, right? Because otherwise it's just in your head. And now you say now that I'm using this, it's a crappy idea. Or more, hopefully it's not a crappy idea. It's an amazing idea and I'm really digging this, and now I want to take the next step. But I think these new tools allow founders to actually get to that point. 'cause a lot of times in the, I mean we've been doing this for 12 years, but I've been doing this for 25 years. And the first time they ever saw their idea was when someone like Gary made them a wire frame or a pretty picture or whatever, a design. And they're like, oh man. And they're fawning. They drool because they finally get to see it.

You can do that so much 

[00:16:51] Tara: what yeah, what his perspective is on that because, I have more of a visual and kind of art based background in the marketing space and have worked on digital products, but loved working with ux, UI designers, et cetera, and. What do you think about these new tools, Gary?

Gary?

[00:17:11] Gary: the part that you guys are talking about, like just a kind of confirmation of your idea and just seeing if what you're planning on building is going to work, instead of having the spreadsheet and the phone call having a more developed prototype. That again, is not like your final design prototype, but at least you have something. That feels like an app. It's

very helpful in that it it goes far beyond just like a Figma prototype or something like that. You can actually start getting some input and, holding some data. But when it comes to the actual like polished UI and ux, they're still pretty far away. So it is a

great tool using these AI applications. Builder applications to, to get your prototype in a good spot to where you can

actually test it out with some beta users or whatever. But I still highly recommend at this point for a finished product, you still need a professional, I

guess you can say, touch up to

[00:18:07] Tara: Yeah, I would agree with that. I haven't found anything yet that can take it all the way through to the deployment in a fully usable,

[00:18:17] Gary: it's

getting better, but yeah, again, it does, it gets it to a point where if you have like alpha testers just to proof of concept, your, app or whatever it's great. You can get a lot further now than you ever could before.

[00:18:35] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:19:03] Tara: A lot of times, founders are so short term focused that they don't think about the fact that they're building a business. They're not just building a product.

So one of the fundamental things I do when I work with founders is helping them think through what can they do now? What's your tolerance for scalable, a scalable infrastructure versus everything's gotta be. To use the term again, paperclips and bubblegum. How much can you put in place now process wise or tools and technology wise that are gonna get you to that long-term plan?

And how are you gonna keep teaching yourself what your customer needs are as you go through each iteration? If I go back to that kind of micro startup concept, I think a lot of founders do get. Corporations do this too, for goodness sakes, very shortsighted. And then they find themselves in a place where they haven't thought about things like cu how are they gonna support customers with the product?

How are they gonna blend AI into the experience or some of the things that might happen in maybe phase three or phase four of their business? Because, a couple founders I'm thinking of right now, super smart, technically could code in their sleep. They don't really have the business fundamentals and so they run into these, like I had one founder recently have a kind of an entanglement with his co-founder, so it ended up being an HR type scenario and he'd never gone through anything remotely similar in his roles.

People issues, leadership. Decisions and trying to make sure he was bringing people on board that were gonna help him get not just two weeks from now in a sprint, but maybe 18 months from now. So I work with founders a lot through that kind of trap to make sure they're, taking as long a term view as possible.

[00:21:03] David: Let me take a contrarian point of view for a second. How much process and time should I spend? Lemme say that a different way. How much time should I build? Processes and business and stuff like that. Like you were talking about the fun fundamentals of the business when, I don't know if the idea is worth a damn or not.

[00:21:26] Tara: Yeah. So yeah, fair question. I guess maybe to be a little bit more accurate in terms of where they are in their journey. It might still be things like market validation, some of the terms you would hear in an accelerator type scenario, product market fit, how different are you? So differentiation with all the AI tools now it's getting harder and harder.

To spell that out and be able to distinguish yourself what your app can do from somebody else's app. They stood up over the weekend. It's like you, you really have to spend some time thinking about how you're going to be different when you launch this great thing. Because there're gonna be so many other options for people in the tech space.

So I think that's more what I mean, David, than building agile process or stuff like that, that might come from a super more, more mature business, but just how to make sure you are insulating yourself from the competition and that you can do the kind of work you're gonna need to do for branding and positioning when you launch.

[00:22:32] David: What I find, I wish there was a magic pill for this, and here's something that AI is can't touch yet. Is figuring out that product market fit thing because you, there's two reasons the vast majority of startups fail. There's a million, but two big ones. Product, market fit and money. Often those are very similar, but product market fit or not knowing your customer, however you wanna call, say that. That's the reason most startups die. Probably, I would say of all of that fail, it's probably on the 60 something percent or more is just some, something like that. And I wish there was some way to 'cause you, sometimes it takes years to get that product just right. Getting that puzzle piece just right and getting through that that is a superpower of being able to dodge a stay in business while you really don't know who your customer is. Man, that's tough and I don't know of

any secret sauce there.

[00:23:30] Tara: the only thing I would offer to that is start sooner. Don't leave a job if you have one. Start running some financials to know I'll, this is a very ironic learn lesson that I learned. Bootstrapping, I put a lot of investment in building, testing, talking to customers. When I started launching the products, I had not set aside enough really, for good marketing.

So I think beginning earlier and actually doing some of the planning work. Talking to customers as much as you have time for before you're in that situation. You said, David, startups really can't pay the bills. If you're still, if you're side hustling your idea and you're talking to customers and you're tinkering and testing and learning, and you're still, I'm not saying compete with your day job.

That's not my point. But it does give you some freedom to take a slightly longer period of time to get to where you're talking about, so you're not, stressed out and trying to pay bills and trying to buy development work and all those things you're gonna pay for because you've left a job and you didn't really think about six months after you left the job.

It's like you don't wanna pivot, have to pivot after you've left your job because you didn't. Do all the learning you could have done while you're still getting paid.

[00:24:56] David: But the, I'm trying to think of the right way to say this. There is a lot of pressure that accelerators and anybody to take you seriously, quote unquote, you have to quit your job. I've seen people put that pressure on and that's where it's really tricky. I know at least some of the accelerators here, whether.

Some of 'em aren't here anymore, but that was like a requirement. Hey, if we're gonna give you $50,000, which in the ultimate scheme of things is nothing you have to quit your job.

Wow. 

[00:25:27] Tara: why I started, that's why I started what I'm doing. 'cause I don't think people need to quit a job yet. To start building. And I certainly don't think they have to be given away equity necessarily early. And now investors don't really even wanna talk to you unless you have, traction.

So all of that added up to me. It's, I just want people, if they have the inspiration to do something, to start sooner. And start doing the work that we're talking about here today, so that their only path is not necessarily an accelerator, which by the way, they only take what 3% of the applicants, so the potential of even getting into one is very low.

[00:26:14] David: But even if you get into one, Y Combinator used to do 10 a year and now it's 250 or 300 a year. It's is that clout even really? I'm not saying they don't provide value, but it used to be, in Airbnb days if you had Y Combinator badge, you were golden because those were. The hardest. That was the hardest thing to get into now. There's a lot of 'em. You've got thousands in just a couple, few years. It's crazy. But yeah, it's just, I find that tension to be really hard. 'cause when you're a young person, which is where a lot of these startups come from, at least the. Accelerator path. Like our clients, when startups come often are older, 40 plus, and they have a very different view of all this, right?

They usually are coming from this, they're self-funding, et cetera, et cetera. Rather than, I'm gonna live on Ramen and go 90 to nothing, work 500 hours a week and go, right?

The Alex Hermo of the world, but it is. That tension of, oh, you're not serious until you quit your job. Or unless you've dedicated your entire life to this and you don't have a family. You tell your family goodbye for two years and go, I, that's a weird thing. 'cause those young guys are like, okay, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do. And I'm not sure that's one healthy, but two, if that's really even the best path because I don't know thoughts, s

[00:27:32] Tara: No, it's what I think that's exactly where I've landed in all the immersion I've done for the last 12 months is that there, there really aren't that many alternative paths. If you start searching for help to start a startup, probably 60% chance you're gonna get funneled into. Accelerator path, you're, it's gonna be about pitch decks and investor presentations and applying to accelerators.

And, I love Techstars. I love mentoring the founders and I also see opportunity for all the people that didn't get into Techstars or why Combinator or any of the other ones, founders Institute to still have. A road and a path to do the same steps they would do in Accelerator, but on their own terms they're still paying their bills and taking their kid to soccer and having a little bit more of a balance.

And maybe it takes them longer than the eight 12 month accelerator time period. But for a lot of people, that's okay, and again, you're not having to necessarily sign away any equity in your business and you're in charge for as long as possible.

[00:28:42] David: So do you, when you hear the accelerators and those people talk. They make it sound like that's really the only path, not in terms of money, but that level of concentrated effort. Hey, if you really wanna make it in startup land, you need to work 90 hours a week and you need to throw everything off to the side. You're saying you don't, but and you haven't been doing it long enough that you, maybe you don't have the data and that's fine, but are you finding that I can find success if I take two, four years to do something rather than 12, 18 months,

like you said. Does the market 

[00:29:17] Tara: clearly it clearly depends on if you're trying to launch a very niche AI app, maybe not. If your goal is to be a unicorn, maybe not. But if you wanna create a nice tech-based business that. a customer base well and gives you a nice business to run. And you're not trying to go, there are only a few unicorns, right?

They're not gonna be other open ais very often,

[00:29:48] David: No.

[00:29:48] Tara: but a lot of, but a lot of people want the autonomy and a lot of people have the talent, and I think that group has more flexibility if they're not necessarily trying to go gangbusters towards the next. Gin tech launch, but they wanna have a nice, successful, profitable, tech-based business.

[00:30:11] David: One of the things I've told the story before, but I've always, I tell the kids I shouldn't say that, but they're young people. If you make a million dollars in revenue and you are a lifestyle business, you're living a very lovely life, most likely, where you probably have a really nice salary, you probably have a nice home, you've got a great life that you've built for yourself. If you took investment and made a million dollars, someone's mad at you and you're still on ramen, like those are, that's a real big difference. And. When you put it in those stark terms, a lot of people, it's like a light bulb goes off. 'cause again, they are just beat down. That investment is the only path. And I think that's a shame because, and I'd also, they also think that unicorn is the only measure of success and that is silly. Talk to me. Again, if you have a $10 million business, that's a very large business by most standards. That's what's it but Google's eight gazillion dollars.

Sure. There's lightning in a bottle and there's probably 20 of those in this world right now, and they're not the North Star. And I think it's nice to hear that there's someone else who's beating that drum.

[00:31:22] Tara: Yeah, and I think once, if you're smart and you're motivated and you pay attention and you're curious about the world, let's say you build something small to begin with and it gives you the freedom you want, and you start seeing other opportunities, maybe then it's time to go talk to investors. Because now you have a foundation and traction and customers and more opportunity to grow and you've matured a bit, a base business.

N now going to talk to investors gets a lot more interesting than I have this flare of an idea that I know is gonna solve world peace and. I just need my first a hundred customers, but I know it's gonna be a, gangbuster business they're not listening to as many of those pitches as they used to, even with all the AI stuff.

And you mentioned hardware at the beginning of the call, and I've seen some recent research that investors are getting interested again in the physical product that's more like. Digitally enabled, so more investment is going there as well. So I would just put that nugget out there for folks who are, thinking about physical products with some kind of digital capability, there seems to be some growing interest there as well.

[00:32:37] David: Very good.

[00:32:38] Gary: So Tara, in your experience what would you say the top three pieces of advice would be for someone who wants to. Start a business and still keep their day job until they have a proof of concept to move forward with.

[00:32:51] Tara: Clar, clarity, get clear. So clarity comes from talking to your prospective customers and not five. Maybe not even ten as many as possible, but to take that base idea and to get clear on what you're really trying to build. I think the second thing is don't do it alone. So one of the first things I did is put an advisory board of people around me that I trusted.

They're not a paid advisory board. They're just smart people that I've worked with over my career that. I trust and I know I can bounce ideas off, off of. And I've established a community of other like-minded folks. So even though I don't have a huge team, I'm building a team in a more sort of organic, informal way so I can keep making sure that my ideas are feasible, realistic, marketable, and money making.

So that's the second thing. And then I think just. Balancing your motivation and your energy level with some structure. And it goes back to David's question about how much time do I wanna spend building process? And I'm not talking about building process, but I am saying be somewhat intentional about the steps you're gonna follow and have a plan, be idea oriented and creative like a lot of startup founders are.

But also recognize that having some kind of structure to what you're doing and being able to focus using that structure is really important, especially if you are still working and you're doing this on your off, off hours, like making the most of that time available to you and putting it to productive use is really important.

So I guess those would be, did I give you three? I think I gave you three.

[00:34:42] Gary: those

are 

[00:34:43] Tara: could probably give you more, but I won't do, I won't keep going on.

[00:34:46] Gary: speaking of more, if anybody does wanna learn more about you or in Vivio, where's the best place to find you?

[00:34:52] Tara: Yeah. Then go to vivio.com. And I thought I could share maybe a URL for you guys to put in your show notes, just for your viewers and listeners. It might have some added benefit to them, but vivio.com is the main website. They can branch off from there and learn more about us.

[00:35:09] Gary: Yeah, definitely give us that link and we'll put it in our.

[00:35:13] David: very good. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Tara, for taking the time to chat with us.

[00:35:17] Tara: Yeah, this is great. I'm glad to know about you guys and you're not too far away from me, so maybe we could actually connect in person and have coffee. That would be fun.

[00:35:25] David: Love it.

[00:35:26] Tara: a real in person meeting,

I imagine. Imagine. 

[00:35:29] Gary: I'll send my AI avatar 'cause I'm not in the same state, 

[00:35:33] Tara: oh, okay. Okay.

[00:35:35] David: you get. We put Gary just on a little cart and he just wheels around.

[00:35:38] Gary: Just make me tape an iPad to like a little rolly cart.

[00:35:43] Tara: That's okay. We won't talk about you if you're not there in person.

[00:35:47] David: I will totally talk about him if he's not there. Oh my 

goodness. he does it in person too. It's 

that's the best thing My, my rule is I will totally talk behind your back, but I will also say the same thing to your face. That is the rule. 

Anyway. 

[00:36:01] Tara: That's good. That's a good rule.

[00:36:03] David: Alright. On that note, we are out. Thank you everybody for taking the time. We will see you next week.

Have a good one.

[00:36:10] Speaker: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Scott Bailey. I'm the lead dev over here at Big Pixel, and I know what you're thinking. I thought David did all the work. Well, not exactly. We have an awesome team of people to back in both. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, the US based provider of UX design strategy, and custom software.

This podcast is edited by Audio Wiz Matt McCracken and Christie Pronto marketing guru for Big Pixel. Want to connect? Shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net. Or you can find out some Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.