BIZ/DEV
David Baxter has over fifteen years of experience in designing, building, and advising startups and businesses, drawing crucial insights from interactions with leaders across the greater Raleigh area. His deep passion, knowledge, and uncompromising honesty have been instrumental in launching numerous companies. In the podcast BIZ/DEV, David, along with Gary Voigt, an award-winning Creative Director, explore current tech trends and their influence on startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture, integrating perspectives gained from local business leaders to enrich their discussions.
BIZ/DEV
How to Avoid Go-To-Market Failure w/ Chip Royce | Ep. 205
In this week’s episode of the Biz/Dev Podcast, we sit down with Chip Royce, founder and managing principal of Flywheel Advisors.
Chip tells us what most startups get wrong in their go-to-market strategy, common mistakes that derail new products before they find traction, and why a founder’s journey is rarely a straight line.
If you want actionable advice on setting up your next launch and want to avoid the pitfalls Chip has seen again and again this conversation is a must-listen.
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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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[00:00:03] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to Biz Dev, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, joined Per Usual, by Mr. Gary Voight. Hello, sir. Happy
New Year.
[00:00:14] Gary: Happy New Year. Welcome back. Been a little
[00:00:17] David: very exciting. Very exciting stuff. Did you do anything me memorable or awesome over the holidays that's worth talking about to all of our fans?
[00:00:26] Gary: I live in Florida and there was a lot of heat, believe it or not. So I sweat
[00:00:32] David: I was in Dallas and it was 80 degrees, so I feel you. it was,
[00:00:35] Gary: it was gross this year. It's 83 on Friday here.
[00:00:39] David: That's not okay. More importantly, we are joined today by Chip Royce, who is the founder and managing principal of Flywheel Advisors. Hello, Mr. Chip. How are you?
[00:00:52] Chip: Gentlemen, I am wonderful. Thank you so much and it's great to be with you today.
[00:00:56] David: Did
you.
have a great holiday break? Did you do anything fun?
[00:00:59] Chip: I had an awesome holiday break just with family and and very little driving, so it was wonderful. I have to say though, I would be jealous. I spent a year in Australia between high school and college and did Christmas in, 85, 90 degree heat. I really like that that cold salads and barbecue.
Next time let me know. I'll come join you guys.
[00:01:19] David: That's hilarious. The I was in, yeah, in Dallas. It was really hot. One of our team members is from Ghana and I was, she's also lives in Dallas now, and she was saying how she loved the heat, and I'm like, no. She was like, oh, it reminded me of home. No. It's Christmas. It must be cold anyway.
[00:01:35] Gary: The different hemisphere. That's not the same. It's not supposed to be like that here.
[00:01:40] Chip: It is, it's a culture shock and it's totally whacked, but it's fun.
[00:01:44] David: So we like to start out our podcast with some icebreakers, as it were, things to get to know you a little bit better and not necessarily related anything else we're gonna talk about today. So I got a few of them here for you, so it's fi a little quick. Fire IR Wes, or Android.
[00:02:03] Chip: Oh, Android all the way.
[00:02:04] David: Oh wow. Have you always been an Android guy?
[00:02:07] Chip: I was in the PC industry, so I don't wanna get into the business stuff too much, but I was in the PC industry and I have a tremendous appreciation for Apple products. But what most consumers don't realize is that they're luxury products is very much brand, it's very much experience, very much price, intentionally.
And I'm just a value guy. So Windows and Android are just the way I roll.
[00:02:28] David: Nice. All right. That's fair. I appreciate that. I do. Alright. When you need to talk to someone, is that email like quick fire off or are you
gonna zoom it up?
[00:02:38] Chip: I'm really into Zoom these days. If I need to talk, I wanna have the conversation. I'm a big fan of collaboration. I'm I hate the back and forth. Texting is like for emergencies only. So yeah, I'd rather do a Zoom call.
[00:02:50] David: Okay, fair enough. If you are going out, do you choose one of your favorite five restaurants or do you prefer something new and exciting?
[00:02:59] Chip: I like cooking
[00:03:01] David: Oh
[00:03:02] Chip: and the price of restaurants and the value and experiences have not in the past year or two, been up to snuff. My wife and I always joke, you could make a better steak at home, so my guess my answer will be, I'll probably go try new places. Or a classic, because I guess I'm just really particular these days.
[00:03:23] David: I'm noticing a trend here. We got a value trend going on here. Alright. Are you a audio book guy or a book? Book guy?
[00:03:33] Chip: I'm a book guy with an asterisk, and that is, I read everything on Kindle. So I'm an ebook guy
and I really worry, right? I've got bookcases behind me. I like paper books. And for that week, let's call it the week that we accidentally lose power and we all get to, to reconnect with nature. I really wish I had all these books in paper.
[00:03:54] David: That's
fair. That's fair.
Alrighty, so let's talk about some real serious stuff. Tell me about Flywheel. What is that?
[00:04:01] Chip: So it is a consulting firm that I started in 2014.
[00:04:08] David: Okay.
[00:04:09] Chip: Essentially I had left Lenovo the third time they asked me to move to Beijing. For an expat assignment. I said, look guys, I wanna support the company. I'm all in, but this just will not work with my family, et cetera. Great trajectory there. And they're like no, you don't understand.
This job is going to be in Beijing. And I'm like, okay. I get it. Let's talk Turkey. I basically was getting ready to figure out what I'd want to do with my next step in my career. And so as a sort of bridge, because sometimes with executive stuff, it could take six months, a year and a half to find the right thing. I started working with high potential technology, companie. Frankly I was able to lean into a pretty interesting background. I've got where I did startups first. Back in the mid nineties. I did corporate venture and spin outs into the public markets of cool technologies. And then worked for Dell and Lenovo as a gm, as a corporate strategy guy, and a strategic partnerships guy.
So I had this really interesting set of experience to figure out, no matter where a company's at, what are the kind of things you should be doing and what kind of things you shouldn't be doing. And, this has evolved today to where it's a bit more specialized. I work with B2B technology companies, usually SaaS or deep tech, and that could be materials or hardware, software solutions.
I'm working with one right now that is aspiring to be one of the top 25 home builders in the country through technology. And I either do two things, either I help them figure out what they should do at the start to properly commercialize what they want to do so they don't burn time and capital and. Loose hair or they're underway. And frankly the co investors call me to say, Hey, look, this is great technology, but we don't feel the business is living up to its potential. Could he help us try to figure out why?
[00:05:53] David: So one of the things you focus on, if I'm correct, is go to market.
[00:05:59] Chip: Yeah.
[00:06:00] David: If you are new to this, explain what that means.
[00:06:04] Chip: Yeah I personally hate the term, but you, sometimes you just gotta lean into how everybody's talking. Go to market is essentially, think of it as the journey your customer goes through. Everything from the strategy of why your business is. Is in place to, and in the B2B context is how are you gonna make them aware that you have some sort of solution to acquiring leads or figuring out who's gonna wanna buy your solution and then them take them through a sales process where they, and in my opinion it's not about selling to them it's taking through the process to go shop and kick the tires.
Understand if you can. Deliver value and ultimately, lead to a deal where that happens. And then also to ensure they're loving your experience and your product or service so that they're gonna wanna re-up, especially if it's in a recurring revenue model.
[00:06:52] David: So I'm gonna put you on the spot. If you hate that term, what is your preferred term?
[00:06:57] Chip: I think the simplified is your end-to-end sales and marketing.
[00:07:00] David: Okay. Fair enough. So let's just pretend that I have a software as a service company that's being built right
now. Let's pretend.
[00:07:09] Chip: I wonder who that could be.
[00:07:11] David: Let's
[00:07:11] Gary: David's been using this podcast as a selfish form of
[00:07:16] David: It's free
[00:07:16] Gary: Yeah.
[00:07:17] Chip: That's what he should be doing. I love it.
[00:07:18] David: So let's pretend, and let's just call it Tila. Let's just say that was
[00:07:22] Chip: Hypothetically,
[00:07:23] David: hypothetically, what would be, it's a B2B enterprise mid range kind of thing.
What would you say to that hypothetical founder?
[00:07:37] Chip: What would I say? I'd say you gotta go into it with an intentionality.
Leading with technology first is the worst thing you can do,
[00:07:43] David: Interesting. Okay.
[00:07:44] Chip: but essentially I built out a framework, and this isn't a plug, it's just more of how to approach it, but it's a holistic situation, right? We're not entitled to our customer's money just 'cause we built something neat. And so I think you have to craft, especially today in the world we live in, where we accidentally burned people. Spam emails and cold calls and pop-up ads and all sorts of things to where they've shut down so badly that you essentially have to come in with a really well baked, doesn't have to be perfect, but a really well baked end-to-end solution that solves their problems.
And I can tell you more why about problems are important, not just nice to have and be able to properly communicate how you do it. How they benefit. Make sure you're targeting the right people. Sell it to them in the way that they would buy based on the size of their company, and then ultimately have a sales and marketing process that can turn over.
It doesn't have to scale necessarily at the start, but it has to work, right? Because if you're losing money trying to get out of the gate, you're setting yourself up for failure.
[00:08:54] David: But if you're just getting started you don't have any processes in place, you don't have any collateral, hardly even, right? You're just you just got V one out there, you're a beta mode, whatever you wanna call that. How do you and you're targeting B two B2B slash enterprise.
Those are big swings is why I mentioned those
things.
Especially enterprise. How do you get the flywheel using your term there started, because to me that's like those you don't just walk into a big enterprise company and go look at my cool stuff. Even if you have a great, you're not leading with technology like you mentioned, or you're doing it right, but you don't even know who to talk to.
Like where does that first. Start. Is it just personal connections? Is it.
[00:09:41] Chip: So I, I think the first thing is you have to give yourself a little bit of credit. You already started. You had the vision, you imagined there was a problem, you saw a need for the technology. It could be driven by a bunch of things. Your vision might be an internal tool you've already developed that you wanna monetize with other people.
The point is, a lot of the fact trail, a lot of the breadcrumbs are already in place. The point being is I think people are a little afraid to lean in and start labeling themselves as something. Worried that they're gonna miss out on a lot of other opportunities. But what you don't realize in the B2B space, because people have been burned so badly, you've gotta, you've gotta build credibility quickly that you are providing a solution to their world and that they're not gonna get fired for buying it.
That there's gonna be return on an investment, that it's gonna work, it's not gonna distract them. And why do I say fomo? Is the fact is that you've gotta start somewhere. So build your thesis. My app, I think you said it was called Tela is here to do X for these kind of companies. And if they implement it, they're gonna see Y benefits. You go out and you start selling and marketing that and do it in perhaps a gorilla grassroots way, but you're always looking to get more data to refine and one validate, is this gonna work? And then two, okay, this is great. It is, it's starting to work, but I didn't realize that this isn't actually the problem. That's the problem. And that gives you more to lean in. And then lastly, and this is why starting technology companies is hard, is you'll sometimes get false signal. You'll get this group of people who sound like they're awesome for you and you realize there's only 10 of 'em and you need a thousand of them. And. And so that's, so lastly, it's an iterative process where you make that stand and you keep revisiting it and improving and honing and even understand occasionally when you're gonna fork and go this way with this message for this market. And it might solve a completely different problem in that market.
[00:11:44] David: Do you recommend having an AB testing mindset where I'm gonna approach this potential lead with this pitch, and now I'm gonna try this pitch, even if that one went well? You just wanna, like you're saying, don't pinch it and hold yourself necessarily right off the bat.
[00:12:00] Chip: So I love what you're saying and I agree with that experimentation ment mentality. But in B2B it's a little different. Now, if you're running a Google ad yesterday, be it.
[00:12:09] David: Sure.
[00:12:10] Chip: if you're having a conversation, this is where FOMO does kick in. You don't want to burn the opportunity. And the benefit of it is learning how to sell. I'm sure I'll get flamed by people with the feedback, but my view of the world is that selling is listening. It's asking a ton of questions, allowing people to self-qualify, allowing people to tell you what's important in their world, where their problems are at. And if you put the person on the other side of that conversation with both awareness to listen, not to rush, to say but I want to tell you my app can do this.
Really listen and then tailor it. That athleticism, if that person has it, they're gonna be able to say great, and would it solve this problem? And you get to two, two things. You get to engage a customer, take them down the path of buying for their problem, and two, you're taking notes to bring back to the home office. So your salesperson or your BD person goes, David, you wouldn't believe this. We thought for accountants it was this, but I've had three conversations and say it's that I think we need to dive in more into this area. Okay, now you're starting to get momentum and understand what's working.
[00:13:20] David: What about the, I imagine it's very, I have not experienced this. Yes. 'cause I'm me personally, too early in this process, but I could totally see the temptation to always say yes. Does it do this? Could it do that and it doesn't to do that. Now what is the right answer to that? Because if you say yes, obviously that's not great. 'cause the devs now are. Buried because you're adding features that don't exist, but you're like, I want to close this sale. So yeah, of course it does that. But what's the right answer to that?
[00:13:51] Chip: Oh you've gotta stay in your lane. In fact I was thinking of some things you're gonna want to ask me later, and I'm already using, I'm gonna hit two of them now. But, believe it or not, especially in the technology world especially with software, you want to think of oh, I've got all these features and I want features to, to make sure that I'm in the conversation. An example of this is like Excel, right? How many features are in that you never use,
but either to like scope creep or to some fringe user, that was created and it's still there 10 years later. I'm a big fan of simplicity. Do one or two things really well. Solve one or two problems really well. Especially early on, don't feel like you have to load it with every possible feature, every possible integration, et cetera. And I say that for two reasons. One is you're not really gonna get disqualified, but secondly, that comp complexity can actually disqualify you, right? If you put too much in because you say I chose Make over Zapier to do the integration.
I'm a Zapier house, so you're out. As opposed to saying, Hey look we bring data from disparate sources together and allow you to naturally natural language interact with it. That's pretty powerful in itself. Just do that core thing really well at the start and see if you can drive value.
And you'd be surprised that a lot of times companies are looking for and are willing to accept a relatively elegant, simple solution rather than something that is so much scope creep. It becomes difficult for them to even evaluate you on.
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[00:15:58] David: So what if you have a solution to a problem that they have, but they don't realize they have?
How does that work?
[00:16:09] Chip: that's juicy. You hit on something that's absolutely profound, right? Most people don't get this.
[00:16:14] David: What do
[00:16:15] Chip: think there's,
I think there are three it's not easy. And you might be barking up the wrong tree. So let me walk through the phases that I think are out there, right? You've got people who are solution aware. I need an online note taking tool to join me at Zoom and take a transcription and give me a summary. We have more than enough of those apps today. You're out shopping, you're just saying which one is the right price, the right features my company would sign off on, et cetera. Then you got problem aware, right?
The days before we had them. People are like, oh, I'm on all these calls, so much notes. I can't get it into my CRM. I wish I had a solution, right? You're gonna market to those people so differently than you would the folks who already have a solution to it, right? You can, you have to agitate the problem and say, Hey, finally, the first solution is here, or The better solution is here than what's than what you would normally jerry-rig to fix this. Problem unaware people. That's tough, right? Because you're having to do the work to convince 'em they have a problem. And human beings are, I love them. I'm surrounded by 'em, but they're not always the most rational actors.
[00:17:24] David: Fair.
[00:17:25] Chip: And so trying to convince, and what is one of, one of the biggest things that self-help world has going forward, or problems it has, is getting people to admit they got a problem. And often even in business, that's the case. And they don't wanna lose face or whatever. Yeah, I, the way I work with my clients is let's not go after a business until we identify. At least there is, and I, it's not just a problem. I believe businesses and B2B only have a fighting chance if they are addressing a regulatory question. If I don't do this, I could get sued, or I need to be in compliance or an existential problem, I risk losing money. I'm going to lose customers, I'm gonna miss my sales plan, right? I'm gonna, I'm gonna get fired 'cause my CFO, isn't getting the right information. I could make a big mistake. I think those are the reasons that, and the problems that people will buy an app.
[00:18:19] David: Tangentially, I'm switching gears a little bit, but it's a nice lead in ICP. That's ideal customer profile for those. And I will categorize myself. I am not joking. I would say two months ago, I did not know what that meant. And it's funny because I've been building apps for people for 20 plus years, but I've never sat on that side of the fence.
Never heard of that.
So
[00:18:43] Gary: thought it was insane. Clown Posse
[00:18:45] David: oh my gosh. Of course you would. That's.
[00:18:48] Gary: Chip was waiting for the joke. He heard it there too. He heard it.
[00:18:51] David: goodness gracious. Can't bring you anywhere. Anyway, so an ICP is, as the term says, ideal customer who you should be selling to, right? That's the ideal, but man, that's tricky. When you're getting started, how do you recommend people to find that ICP Or at least take a shot at it? And what do you do when they've found they've chosen wrong?
[00:19:17] Chip: So let's back up for one quick second.
[00:19:20] David: Okay,
[00:19:21] Chip: The ICP follows. It doesn't lead.
[00:19:25] David: expand on that.
[00:19:26] Chip: You've gotta you, if you're starting from a pure hypothetical scenario, you say, okay, this is the problem, and then the people who have the problem, and there could be multiple segments of that problem, are the then your ICP. you start, technically you could start a business and say, Hey, I wanna find mid-market accountants and go solve their problems. But ultimately, usually, so what normally let's walk through the normal technology process is, oh wow, this is cool. Through software or hardware or something. I figured out how to do something
And I wanna find a market for it. The problem is they, so to walk it through is they say it does something in the B2B context.
You have to take it a step further, which say it is a, it does this and it solves these problems. Okay. Then your ICP is for these people.
[00:20:26] David: Okay. What if you solve a problem and five different kinds of people could use it, but only one of them is gonna be ideal. Say it's an accountant could use it this way and a marketer could use it that way and a ops guy could use it this way, but the accountant
is, might be harder to sell to, or the ops guy I can never find on LinkedIn or whatever, right?
I'm just throwing things out there.
[00:20:52] David: What, how do you choose that? How do you narrow that down?
[00:20:55] Chip: It is a great question. I think first of all, it comes down to your risk tolerance,
[00:20:58] David: Okay.
[00:20:59] Chip: right? So if you're the type who goes to Vegas and says, I'm gonna play roulette, and I got a thousand dollars in my pocket. I got a thousand bucks, I'm gonna put it right now on red or on 32, and that's gonna be my one bet. There you go. Your risk tolerance. You're finding that you truly have bought into an ideal client profile. There's one. You could also say, Hey, look, do I have enough information or do I want to keep enough chips to run many different experiments until I start seeing where the patterns are emerging, you might say.
And so my preferred is three to five to start off with. You identify and say is number, by, after you've run enough tests, after you've spoken to enough people, hey, is number three worth keeping around or has somebody else shown up that should displace them at three? Then you might go to four or you might kick out number three and say, let's put it on a note card.
Let's put it on the whiteboard. But for now, we're gonna, we're gonna avoid that guy. Because we see a lot more business opportunity, a lot more effective use of our working capital to go after these three or four.
[00:22:10] David: Okay. It's all very interesting. 'cause these are all new questions and I started out jokingly talking about Tila, but I know that this is, these are the questions that no one really talks about, I don't think. I've been doing entrepreneurship things for 13 years
and. This is the kind of stuff, and maybe in the accelerators and stuff, 'cause I've never been through those.
Maybe that's a common thing, but at least in the vernacular when you go and see things, it's team building this and sales tactic that. But man, I think you gotta take a step back sometimes anyway,
i've joked for a long time that. When I was a kid, entrepreneur meant unemployed, and now it's, and it's, it, I think it's a little more mature now, but for a long time, I'd say the last decade or so, entrepreneur was this cool thing to be, and I've challenged startups and when I've mentored and whatever that their goal isn't to be a startup.
It's not to be an entrepreneur, it's to be a business owner. It's to get through that little sexy part where you're pitching this, that, and the other, and you're, you're going to events and all that. That's cool. But at the end of the day, you wanna make payroll because you've got people to pay first off.
And I think that gets lost sometimes. 'cause, and I find it so funny, like people are talking about open AI or clawed, or sorry, anthropic, excuse me, as startups, and I'm like no. If they have thousands of employees in billions in revenue, they're not startups. Those are companies that, those are real honest to God companies.
They're huge. And I just think it's like when you've romanticized this journey, you don't want to get out of it. And I think, man, that's not the point. I want revenue. I want a company that's gonna be around in a decade, not. One of the things I found really interesting is talking to people is how many people, when you say, Hey, I've got nothing bad in front of me.
What would I do with this company? And the answer is, sell it. That is fascinating to me.
Really?
[00:24:23] Chip: So a couple quick things on that. One is, yeah, that sliding set of standards, like if you had envisioned Tela a year ago and something, and you said, if I said to you, Hey. He said, David, let's say somebody this concept is so good and you got it underway, that someone would just offer you a seven figure check.
Let's say $1 million. Would you take it because you hadn't done that work yet and you're not close to that milestone? You probably would've said yes. And I see this milestone slippage all the time, and I really try to get people to write down those goals on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope. There are very few companies that it's easier to go to one from zero to one. Sorry that it's, there are very few companies that find the next stage easier than the previous stage they were in.
Going from one to five is actually e harder than zero to one. It's just different pain and different difficulty going to five to 20. Going from 20 to a hundred is a c change. and the odds are not good and yet, and so I think people need to be reminded is, when you started this thing, you had said if somebody walked up and gave you 5 million, you'd be happy for it. You gotta remember that because the opportunity, just 'cause you hit 10 million doesn't mean you're not gonna backslide to five someday.
[00:25:40] David: Sure.
[00:25:40] Chip: forget those aspects.
[00:25:41] David: So out of all the people you talk to, all of the
clients and non-clients, it doesn't have to be just clients. What are people doing wrong?
[00:25:50] Chip: That's a great question. I've talked a bit about simplicity. I think keeping things elegantly simple, you'd be surprised, is a lot easier to sell than very complex solutions. I think another thing people get wrong is they do it for themselves. and It's not customer driven. Now they'll say it is, don't get me wrong.
They're like, oh, why would I build this if I didn't have customers? But they didn't make the customer the locus of everything they're doing. And the funny thing is, if you do that, it's so much easier if you design an interface they want to use, if you design, let's say, a piece of software towards their outcomes, right?
You design a machine that is Easy to use and high repeat repeatability. Your customer's gonna love you, but I see so many times people go, yeah, but I really want to do this, or it should do that, and they end up just making things way more difficult for themselves and give customers way more reasons to say not it either no or not yet, not.
now
[00:26:56] David: Nice.
[00:26:57] Gary: So what if you get some client feedback or customer feedback when you're just starting off and you decide you're gonna solve everybody's problems and just add features and add features? Or would you take that information and then try to funnel it down into, what would be the more overall overarching approach to solving it all at once?
[00:27:21] Chip: I think there's sort of two techniques, but they come back to something I used to do, which was to say, how long are you willing to wait? Or, I can do this for you, but it would need to be a custom feature. Essentially we'd fork the platform or we'd literally create this for you, but you'd have to pay us to develop it and we'll make it exclusive to you.
We're not gonna make it available to anybody else. You'd have to pay for it. You'd be amazed how often that one feature was just something that somebody threw out during a meeting with, as part of a team. And again, that's where I came back to the simplicity aspect is that sometimes the app with less features has less places to have the committee say no to.
[00:28:06] Gary: Lately with everybody putting AI somewhere in their app. There's also like this weird competition of apps becoming the Everything app and thinking that is to solve. So while simplicity, I agree with you, I think something like an app or a product that does something that you needed to do simply and very well over, 10 things just okay. That's why everybody's offering these new a agentic features for, you can upgrade to pro or you can upgrade to Expert Pro or ultra mega expert Pro. There's always that one extra step to get you just a little bit closer to what everybody else is doing. Yeah.
[00:28:43] Chip: I agree. Growth they embrace this growth for growth's sake. And I guess if you're a venture investor, you again, you just, like we said David, with your example, it's like they, yeah, but we could be worth X tomorrow. And by the way the venture guys, which I love you all, you're all awesome. But you have certain rules and laws and, deal terms, which says, I get paid out first I have a lot less risk in this or a different type of risk in it. And maybe that company would've been better off to be. Insanely great and profitable at $50 million, let's say, and be the best project management tool for X vertical.
And that's the reason why David, when we were talking early, I said pick some lanes, test them and look to succeed. because that $2 billion outcome is improbable. Let's just all say that, right? That's, that is like winning the lottery. And no matter how good you are, you're not guaranteed it.
And even if you get there doesn't mean that you, yourself will get the payout. Your investors might but you won't necessarily see it yourself, right? When it, so do you like the idea of being a 50 million or even $10 million company that's insanely profitable and properly capitalized and maybe one you even have control over? Then trying to roll the dice and buy the lottery tickets and work for somebody else to get to a billion dollars. 'cause you, even though you're the CEO, founder, by a certain point, you are working for somebody else. Very few times people have been savvy, fortunate to have a billion dollar company and they were still the majority owners.
[00:30:08] David: I was listening to this podcast Lenny Lenny's newsletter has a great podcast where they inter interview great people and this woman he had on recently. And man, I'm so bad at that, the most recent episode. Anyway she says, and I just really liked this advice when she was offered all these crazy roles. Of see this, see that? Because she was very good at her job and she had this mantra, she kept repeating to herself, what does this give me that I don't already have? And man, that's a powerful question.
That's a powerful question because like you're saying is if I'm running that $50 million company and I'm the CEO, I make all the decisions.
I live this great life, what do I get by joining the other one? That I don't already have. And maybe there are good answers to that. I'm not saying there's not
it's at least worth asking the question of yourself.
[00:31:02] Chip: I completely agree.
[00:31:04] Gary: Chip, so you've given us the overarching views of what to do, what not to do. Good path, bad path. So in an attempt to summarize this like an AI agent would. Quickly and briefly, what would be your top three pieces of advice for a new entrepreneur startup?
[00:31:22] Chip: Yeah, I think the first one is simplicity. Beats being clever. Not to say there aren't good solutions and can be, full featured and super broad, but people actually buy simplicity. If you can solve one big existential problem or keep them out of jail, the regulatory, morass you've had a lot of value.
You just need to find out can you build it, sell it at a price that they can pay for, and that they'd come back and stay loyal to you and potentially have a defensible mode against somebody else.
The second I think is it's all about the customer, stupid. We do things, we build interesting technologies, we surface opportunities. But at the end of the day, we're not entitled to our customers revenue, right? We're here to provide them a service and find a fair exchange for it, and hopefully scale this and do big and wonderful things.
And I think if you just put that customer first. And be willing to suborn your vision to that. I think you're gonna have better outcomes because you're tying what you do to what the customer wants and what they're willing to pay for. And then the third, and this is a weird one especially in today's technology driven where we could think we can automate things, but I would say that how you do things both for your employees, for yourself, and for your customers, is just as important as what you're doing. The what? Meaning is, okay, the product works this way and it has this feature and we're charging X. And if you subscribe, we send an email. But the how. Keeping that sort of customer and the people in the lens, I think is just as vitally as important because I've seen too many folks try to automate their way to success and it falls flat.
'cause it doesn't handle the exceptions. It's when you built that culture of putting the customer first, the willingness to say. But customer, you didn't do this the right way. Why? Why do we have a problem? You created the problem. No. You created a system that had a gap that allowed the customer to go that route.
You gotta go fix that. And you gotta have that level of customer focus to, to embrace it and say, these are learning opportunities or ways to delight somebody and lean into that. And I think that's one of the things that helps companies be, much more successful and differentiated, to the Compe competition.
[00:33:34] Gary: Yeah, I like
that one. The little bit of what seems like it could be personal attention or just the company actually listening to you and saying, yeah, you know what, we'll. We'll try to fix that for you. It's way better than just the automated response, the canned answers, and then the find it on a tutorial site somewhere.
[00:33:50] Chip: Yeah, Yeah it's your problem, not mine.
[00:33:53] Gary: so Jim, if anybody wants to learn more about you or more about Flywheel, where's the best place to find it?
[00:33:59] Chip: Absolutely. I love having conversations with folks who are trying to do great things with technology in the B2B space. Please reach out to me on LinkedIn under, you'll find me under Chip Royce, R-O-Y-C-E, and I have a corporate website that hopefully tells you a little bit more about what I do at Flywheel Advisors, all one word.com.
[00:34:18] Gary: All right, we'll make sure those links are in the show notes as well.
[00:34:22] David: Thank you, chip. This is as always fun to talk to you. We talk several times outside of this podcast, but it was great to have you on.
[00:34:29] Chip: Well, thank you. I really appreciate you having me and so great to spend the time with you.
[00:34:34] David: All right, and on that note, we are out. We'll be back next week. Everybody have a good one.
[00:34:39] OUTRO: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Jen Baxter, co-owner of Big Pixel and David's Wife. Yep. I finally took the mic or rusted it away from David. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, a 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 find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.
