Noob School - Episode 79: The NEXT Big Thing for Entrepreneurs with Peter Micali

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

Today on Noob School, John is joined by Peter Micali of NEXT Greenville. They discuss the state of startup businesses in the upstate, giving key advice for new entrepreneurs, including the incredible things that NEXT does to help with the process. Check out what Noob School has to offer here: https://www.schoolfornoobs.com/ I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

New School. All right, welcome back to Noob School. Today we've got Peter McCauley. Peter's a good friend of mine here in Greenville, and Peter is with the next organization, which kind of conglomerates all the tech entrepreneurs in Greenville, over 120 or so, he'll correct me. He's in charge of all the startups,

so he helps the startups kind of get launched here and Greenville and I thought it would be interesting to have him on to get his perspective on sales in general he has been in sales but when this perch what does he see with these small companies who's doing well what are they doing right what could startups do differently so welcome aboard Peter thank you so much John I appreciate it and thank you for the warm introduction of course course to add on to that I would just say that you know next is a support organization for entrepreneurs in Greenville in the larger Greenville area.

Okay. And it is our job to help high-growth entrepreneurs and their companies to succeed to create jobs in our region. So we're kind of an economic development organization, but also a support organization that supports the chamber in the city of Greenville. That's great. That's great. Well, also just backing up a little bit, Peter, Peter went to Northwestern and got, did you get a

marketing degree? I did not. What was it? So I was a, I did have a communications degree. So there was some connection there. But I was originally a film, just film major. So I had aspirations of maybe going to Ant's Hollywood, maybe doing something with that, graduated right during the middle of the financial crisis, and decided to kind of combine creativity with business. And that's what led me to to an advertising career. Good, good, good, good, good, okay. And then, so you worked in Chicago in advertising for what three or four years? Three or four years and that was primarily twofold within the pharmaceutical advertising realm so that was very much we were developing sales materials for pharmaceutical sales reps and then also I had a

stint at Havas where the it was a telecommunications focus on the Sprint account so kind of both sides of the island so you had you went from there to South Carolina International Business School? Yes, sir. So I did the MBA program at the University of South Carolina. And that was a direct product of really liked advertising, but I often felt, you know, we were kind of the execution alarm, with the tactical arm of the problem and the strategy

had already been decided. And we were kind of, you know, tasked of go make this print item or go make this advertisement. And I really wanted to learn. I felt like I had a huge gap there. Because I didn't study business. I didn't, you know, study sales. or anything of that nature in college.

So the MBA program was great for me. It was hard because a film, Polly Sye, major, doesn't really have a whole lot of business doing quantitative classes, but it was very helpful. And that led me to switch to client-side marketing. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Who's your favorite filmmaker? That's a good question.

You know, I think the Cohen brothers, and that's kind of cheating because there's two of them, but that might be up there, Big Lobowski. That's one of my favorite movies of all time But it really depends on the day Everyone would ask me in school Because I would study political science and film If I wanted to make political movies

And I just saw I didn't have any idea what I was doing So that was more product of that But I would say Cote brothers That's good I'd go Tarantino myself That's like that's you know On a given day Some days it's you know Robicop's my favorite movie

And then some days something a little bit more artsy-fartsy But it kind of depends on the mood But Conan Tarantino is fantastic. All right. So business school. And then to Boston and you work in marketing again? Yeah. So I would usually, especially when I'm speaking with entrepreneurs and my role at Next,

you know, my background is, I usually just say traditional. It's marketing and strategy in that realm. And so it's kind of split down in the middle of about half that time working for an advertising agency. Yeah. In different roles and different types of agencies. And then the other half of that time working. client-side marketing. So part of that was at a huge company, Yellow Pages, which was rebranded to YP as part of my team's efforts. And then that experience was a huge company, led me to kind

of work for smaller companies. So I spent some time in Boston working for some startups and some startup support organizations. And then how did we get you back to Greenville? So I grew up here. My family moved here when I was just a baby, so I often joke. I'm the only member of my family that, you know, grew up in Greenville calls Greenville home. And when I left in 2003 for undergrad, it was kind of right when Greenville was starting the, you know, the, I wouldn't call it a revitalization. It's a growth of downtown. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, you know, I didn't, I loved here. I just didn't know what I would do if I stayed. And so when my wife and I were considering moving back to the southeast, it was kind of one of those, like, why fight this, this decision?

It seems like an easy decision now at this point because there's so much more opportunity. And I would also say, you know, I was very fortunate. A lot of my friends that I grew up with, they're all still very active here. And we knew that we would have a good, you know, social group. So move back here in 2018. Nice. We're glad to have you back. I appreciate that.

Thank you. You're doing a lot of good. If you were talking to a new, like, let's say a founder and a co-founder of a new tech product, and neither of them really had a bunch of sales experience. How would you tell them to kind of start the process of learning sales? That's a great question. You know, I think one thing that I encourage a lot of the entrepreneurs that we work with, particularly first-time founders,

and obviously I'm biased because I'm coming at things maybe a little bit more from the marketing side, but in understanding the audience and understanding the actual value proposition that you have, is kind of, you know, you have to do that before anything else. Yeah. And a lot of times I think that early stage is difficult for folks. I mean, I think it's difficult throughout the entire life of a company, but determining, you know, who your core audience is and then also testing that, I think is vital.

And I think a lot of people can kind of spend all their time in a vacuum or a silo. If you build something that you think everybody wants, but you can't determine that, you can't figure out how to say it in 25 words or less. you're not basing it on what your audience's pain point is. And that for me, I think, is kind of the first step is understanding your audience, understanding the emotional component of how you might naturally slot in and then kind of convince them that this is the right solution for them. It's a long-wind answer, but I think understanding your audience

and understanding the value proposition first is kind of necessary. The total addressable market and those kind of things. Yeah, I think, you know, it's, you know, the typical pitch we see from a lot of startups or what I would love to see is you're identifying a problem, you're identifying why it has not been solved yet, and how your solution will be a solution for that, but also how you will specifically be the person to fix that. And, you know, there's the business side of that of what's the total addressable market that you might be able to achieve.

And if it's a billion dollar industry and I can just get one percent, I'm not going to do the math and embarrass myself on the podcast, but you know what I mean. But then beyond that, if there are competitors, how are you different? Or if you're selling a service that a lot of other people sell, like, what's the main pain point that is causing somebody to either make that decision to switch? Or if it's a new solution, how it might alleviate a problem that no one else has. And I think those things, maybe sometimes people will push those off as we'll figure that out later when we're selling.

And you and I joked earlier before about you can kind of put things off that seem difficult. But I think even before you are selling, when you're developing a prototype, when you're getting to an MVP, just determining what works, you know, like doing whatever you can amongst friends and family or online research to kind of determine, is this resonating with people? Is this beneficial? Now, I've heard and normally tell people to try to find 10 customers on your own that are close enough where you can drop in and see them and kind of see how they use the product. Are you telling that to folks around here and try to find local customers? Yeah, I mean, I think, and local can be, that can mean a number of different things, right? I mean, I think with the way things are online, the ability to, you know, there are tools for getting, you know, mass amounts of research. You can do that locally. I think it depends on what you're selling.

But any way that you can get direct access to the customer's mind, I think, is very helpful. Whether that's iterating on the product you're selling, you know, relaying that information back to your team, that the engineers that they're working on that, or determining how those marketing materials and the messages are resonating. Because if you think you're solving one problem, but it turns out that you're mostly saving someone time as opposed to money, then maybe the message moving forward is time. And you can learn that early on. But I do think it's, you know, those first 10 customers, that's important, but I would imagine,

and you can probably speak much more to this. That probably lasts, you know, for your next 10,000 customers, your next 100,000 customers. you're kind of constantly tweaking. Absolutely, absolutely. But I think those first 10, if you can find 10 that aren't like your brother-in-law that live close enough, where you can keep stopping by

and figuring out, are they using it, why aren't they using it, what's going on, you can lever up that knowledge for the rest of them. Yeah, 100%. Now, what kind of training would someone at next get, if an entrepreneur was to join? What do they get from your organization? Sure. So next is a nonprofit organization. We have been around for about 15 years. I know it's a long

Leonard answered your question, but we essentially do two core things. On the one end of the equation, we do direct services to startups, and that takes the form primarily of we have a mentorship program. We have an educational series that we do once a month, which thank you again for doing the sales focused topic. And then we have to a certain extent some one-on-one consulting. I myself, I kind of describe myself as a concierge for startups because it's mostly, I can do some one-on-one consulting, but that's usually marketing. But then it's about putting them in touch with what is the actual support that you need right now? What are the other organizations in town that do that?

So usually it's some form of mentorship, some form of, you know, connections, education around, you know, things that maybe we're a little bit behind on in the southeast in general, and in particular, South Carolina of how do you go raise money? how do you set your company up for future success for being acquired down the line. So kind of, I would say, education network and focus on growth is really what my organization does. And again, on my individual level, I joke that not only am I not an expert in everything, I might not be an expert in anything. It's more about let's learn what you need to learn, and then we'll go from there.

Yeah. Yeah. So putting them in charge with other people in the community that are willing to help. Yeah, that's a big piece of it. And I think we, and I actually didn't finish before, we do two things. So in one side, it's services to startups. On the other side, it's, I would say, ecosystem development, which is actual field of work that people study to become ecosystem builders.

Really, that's a fancy way of saying if we have a number of different groups and people trying to support kind of the same cause, how are we all organizing, how are we all helping each other? So a big part of the job and my organization in general is, you know, we're not competing with other organizations that do similar things. We're making sure that if there are 100 entrepreneurs in town and, you know, 10, what happens to the other 90? Who gives them support?

Not all 90 of those need the same support. They're all at different stages. So a big part of that is the work that we do is kind of making sure we're aware of everything that's going on so that we can help people the most. And how are you working with this new group that's doing the other? the founders fund, how does that weave into what you're doing? Yeah, so thank you for asking. So we actually just announced that, I want to say, about a week and a half ago.

And it's, I would say, hyper-connected with Next. It's a little bit of a separate entity, but Next essentially kind of builds towards that as a final train stop, potentially, for some startups. And the fund was raised in part by the chair of our board, Scott Millwood, his associates It's Shea Hauser. Between the two of them, I think they've started between seven and ten companies or something in that realm. And their whole kind of stated intent was let's identify why we don't have more companies that are really, you know, crushing it in town that are growing, that are from here, growing and creating high quality jobs. And their thesis was essentially there's a missing, there's a missing amount of kind of seed capital.

There's a point where you've gotten past friends and family and you can't quite get to that next step. Where is the funding going to come from, but where's the support going to come from? And so it operates as a separate entity. They are making decisions and investment amongst all the investors in that fund, but they are sharing a lot of the services and support from Next. So a lot of the companies that we support either through our educational programming, our mentorship program, or some of the kind of marquee events we do on the year, it's all kind of part of the same ecosystem. And some of them will benefit from the fund, and it kind of leads down that way. But they've raised about $6 million and they want to deploy it for Greenville companies from Greenville investors. So it's kind of an exciting opportunity.

I think it's great. Are they going to put their office where you are in one building? Yeah. So that's a decision that's probably way above my pay grade. But there are, I'll put it this way. You know, we work, there's the Next Innovation Center, which is where Next started about 15 years ago. And over time, I would say we've grown. We've always been a support organization.

but whereas at one point in time that was maybe more tied closely to being a physical location. Yeah. We are more location agnostic now, but I think there's a desire to have a kind of an epicenter for all support in downtown Greenville, and we are trying to work towards that. So to work with a lot of our partners to have one space where entrepreneurs can go to, you know, if they're just going to do work for the day, if they're going to receive support from one of those organizations, you know, it's something that I got to, I was lucky enough to see a number of entities that do something similar in Boston. And my executive director, my boss, Eric, he ran a center similar to that in Cincinnati.

So there's a lot of positive momentum and a lot of exciting growth towards how do we help local entrepreneurs. Yeah. Well, if I get a vote, which I don't, I'd say put them all together because we used to be in the Bank of America, the canal building, neck center, and then plus the Church Street. So there's three or four, you know, that are all doing well. but imagine if they're all together. Exactly. It would just be more of a buzz.

I often feel that entrepreneurs learn the most from each other. Yes. In the sense, you know, there's programming and, you know, academic stuff they can come up with, but I think a lot of times entrepreneurs just want to learn from each other. And, you know, I know from my own experience of working as a co-founder for a two, three-person company, and spoiler alert, I didn't retire. So it's not too, you're still here. I'm still alive.

So I'll take that as a win. But, you know, I think there's a certain amount of imposter syndrome. There's a certain amount of, like, what am I doing? Yeah. So to be able to have the chance to kind of see both people who are at your current stage that are well ahead of you or behind you and to kind of bounce ideas off each other, yeah. That's the goal.

And there are a number of great entities and organizations that already do that. And a lot of our partners that have wonderful co-working spaces and wonderful facilities that are even in the works. But even just kind of centralizing support and where you might network. Have you been down to the Atlanta Czech Village? Yeah, very similar in concept. That's a great example. That's pretty cool. That's, you know, Atlanta punches a little bit above our weight. Well, they got a lot more, you know, population. But I mean, they had this one big building in Buckhead, and it's just completely vertically full of teams. And they're one of our board members actually, who currently works in the same space downtown that we do comes from the, I think it's like the T-Rex build, something similar in St. Louis.

Okay. Where, you know, the philosophy is let's mix a lot of resources, a lot of entities. but have it be kind of populated and be the critical mass of kind of that movement that's going on so that you know if you want to work for a startup, if you want to work with a startup, if you need to help as a startup, there's kind of one place in town to go, you know, to get the majority of the... Well, you couldn't have a better person to work with than the building owner, Bob Hughes, because he wants that to happen. So I'm sure you all will figure it all happen. Yeah, well, smarter people than I am are figuring out now.

Me too. Well, let me ask you this from your sales experience and what you've seen from other people. I hear all the time, you know, sales reps will say to a prospect says, well, Mr. Prospect, we want to be your trusted business partner. You know, when I hear that, I'm running because it sounds so kind of sales cheesy. But that is the goal. You can't really say it that way. So how have you seen people go from being a transactional salesperson to an actual trusted partner?

For me and my own somewhat limited experience, it was being authentic to yourself. Because I think, you know, at the end of the day, we're all people. And we talk about things like B to C in a business to consumer, B to B. And I think we lose sight of the fact that there's a person on the other end who's hearing all those things. And I think you become a trusted partner if you demonstrate to the person that you're authentically you. And that might be if you're a funny, you know, charismatic person, acting on that if you're not, not trying to force that. But I think people are looking for authenticity and honesty.

I could be totally wrong, but that's part of it for me. And I think the other, you know, again, going back to that question of value, really understanding, you know, how your company fits with amongst, you know, all the other companies that you're competing with, all the other solutions, not just the companies that you're competing with for that business, but the mind share of the potential client, like what else are they deal? dealing with. So I think that's how you can kind of arrive at. I'll be your partner because I'm showing you that I'm honest and I'm also I'm empathetic to whatever you're dealing with. So honesty and empathy for me are pretty big. I think those are huge and I would add just, I tell reps all the time just to go slow.

Don't tell them you're going to be their trusted. It's like saying to a girl you just met, I want to be the love of your life or I want to get married or I want to go steady or whatever you would, you know, just want to play it cool And just keep learning about them. Take your time and say, well, I don't have enough information yet. Let me come back next week and we'll talk again. I could not agree more. I think that the stage, like staging the information and when you will deliver it, I think is very important.

Because to your point, if that first date is, you know, let's have, you know, grandkids together. You might, you might scare away a few first days. The bells are going off. Yeah. Run, run. And I, you know, and I think another thing you said there, too, is I don't have enough information. I think learning and listening. Going back to the dating analogy,

people always say, you know, a good first date or good interview, you're not saying anything. You're letting the other person do all the talking. And I do think that that's maybe a mistake that a lot of sales reps, you know, they have a script maybe, they have what they want to accomplish as opposed to, can I learn from you what's causing you issues? So then I can present to you a solution

that clearly I listen to you. That's it. Because then you can, you know, you'll achieve a lot more respect and a lot more interest, I would think, if you've demonstrated the capacity to listen and learn. Yeah, that's it. That's exactly what I tell people's sales is, just trying to find out what their problems are,

and then when you know them, to see if you can help solve it. And I wish I had learned that earlier in my career, maybe. I think, you know, there's some things that, you know, you might have personality traits that someone might tell you, oh, you might be good at sales. I was always afraid of sales.

I always viewed it as being high pressure and numbers driven, you know, and I'm sure, you know, parts of it are, but there's a lot of nuance there and there's a lot of fun elements as well of if you like people, if you like learning people, if you like treating it almost as a puzzle of, you know, I'm going to find something

I can relate with you on or empathize with you on. Approaching it that way as opposed to I have to hit my quota. I think I would have maybe even dabbled in sales earlier. I don't know. Well, it's interesting you say that because you can definitely look at it that way. Like, let's say I've got to sell

$100,000 this month. It's like, oh, Oh, man, this is pressure, pressure, pressure. What if you could do it in a week? You get your hundred in a week, and then there's no pressure at all. You're working on the next month, you know? And so in sales, unlike, you know, if you were digging a dish or something that's really hard, you can get ahead.

And you can be behind, but, I mean, it doesn't have to be pressure filled. And to that, and I might actually ask you a question. Sure. How do you alleviate that kind of pressure? How would you approach that? I mean, it sounds great to achieve that in a week, but... You have to get ahead of the game. You have to get ahead.

I mean, salespeople, and I'm not saying I'm not guilty of this or haven't been guilty of this, are historically, you know, lazy, right? I mean, if they were really, really proactively smart and not lazy, they might have majored in, like, architecture or engineering or something and get a job in one of those fields. But, you know, most of us salespeople just said, well, you know, I'll just major in whatever, polysy. you know, film or something like that, you know.

And anyway, but once you're in it, you know, if you're supposed to, if the math says you're supposed to make 15 calls a day, and if you do that and you're going to close, you know, one deal a week, so you're going to close four deals a month, if you say, well, I'm going to make 22 calls a day and I'm going to get myself in a position where I'm, my call rate's going to be, my close rate is a little bit higher because I've practiced so much. So I'm constantly going to be a little bit ahead. Yeah. And I'm always going to get my proposals done at the end of the day.

I'm not going to get behind of my paperwork. I've just seen salespeople. They're just constantly ahead of the curve. Most of them are procrastinators and lazy, and they stay behind, and they're always scrambling, and they are under stress. Yeah. It's a structure and discipline. Yeah, discipline.

Discipline is the main word is, are they disciplined enough to do what they're supposed to do? to make those numbers. And occasionally, you know, luck comes into play on either side. But for the most part, the discipline sales people just stay ahead of the game and they aren't stressed. Yeah, that's a good point. So let me switch gears a little bit and talk about interviewing. One of the most popular things on the Noob School when the Noob Schoolers are watching videos is about interviewing because many of them are interviewing for jobs and getting ready to interview for jobs. So you've obviously interviewed for jobs and you've interviewed people for jobs.

What are some of the things that you've seen that people do particularly well when they're interviewing for a job? It's a great question. You know, and I have both the fortune and maybe misfortune. I've interviewed a lot. You know, the advertising is a volatile industry. Startups, you know, working for startups also can be volatile. So I've hopped around a decent amount during my career. I think similar to sales, you know, there's the job description that's listed.

There's the questions they're going to ask as an interviewer, but going back to what we were talking about before of empathizing and trying to understand the value proposition of what you bring as an interview candidate, but also what you might perceive to be the actual issues they're dealing with. And so I've seen a lot of great candidates. You know, it's beyond just asking questions. it's, you know, trying to put reverse engineer, like, well, why do you need this position, fill it?

I'm assuming maybe there's, you know, issues of, not critiquing the company, but you're trying to show that you understand why they might be making this investment in a hire. So I think that goes back to that discipline approach of being organized, of doing your homework and doing research ahead of time, and being honest and authentically you. I think those things all come across because on the other side of that equation, somebody who's trying to hire, they clearly have a need, and it's usually pressing. And sometimes they can't fully articulate what that need is because they can't describe it. Or sometimes it's, you know, it's sensitive information they can't share.

But that interview process, I think, can be informative where you can try to pull out a little bit more information out of the interviewer where you can learn how you might be able to demonstrate. I recognize that problem. I actually worked on that before. So I think just being, again, in tune with listening, being empathetic and thinking a little bit deeper about, you know, the strategy, the reasoning behind why you might be hired. I think it can be very helpful. To switch gears a bit to sound a little bit like maybe my father and his father and others, I mean, I've been surprised also by the lack of kind of baseline professionalism. I've done a lot of interviewing of candidates and them not having resumes,

them not quote-unquote dressing for the job they want. I think just doing the baseline stuff, I think, can really put you ahead of bring printed resumes, you know, dress. If it's a casual company, dress casual. if it's formal, dress formal. Just doing a little bit of homework and preparation, I think, can go a long way. Yeah. Beyond time.

Yeah. And I feel like now I'm the generations have shift or where I'm the person being like, you know, I didn't see any printed resumes. I don't like that person. But, you know, I do think the world is changing. And obviously, you know, even what feels like a short time to me, but it was not. When I graduated, things were a little bit, you know, they're pretty different than they are now. But some of that baseline stuff, I think, has remained consistent, which is,

You know, prompt follow-ups, thank you emails, bringing resumes, just showing and demonstrating that you're going to be able to help early on, I think is pretty huge. And that would make you stand out in today's. Surprisingly so. Yeah. Just the basics. Yeah. Because, you know, there's been obviously a huge shift in labor markets recently. There's been a lot of people laid off, a lot of people hired.

So there's lots of jobs going around. And I think that there's lots of people who could fill those jobs. I had a guy one time who I saw him like, I knew him. He was younger than me, obviously, but I saw him like at a party or something. And he said, hey, and he was at Alabama. He was a senior. And he goes, hey, I hear your company's doing real well, thank you. Thank you.

We're doing things. I hear you hiring a bunch of salespeople. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're fast as we can. He says, what kind of people are you looking for? And I'm like, well, we like them to be kind of from around here. We want kind of this is the culture we're looking for. We like them to be involved in school in some way. like in their fraternity or something that they're not just in the fraternity,

but maybe they're an officer or something, some leadership, and we like them to be athletes and stuff like that. So a week later I get a letter from him, and he said, I want to go over some of my attributes. And he listed those three things and asked if he could interview with me. And I'm like, no need to interview. You're hired. I mean, you absolutely did exactly what a good salesperson should do.

He listened to you. He got those points to kind of, You know, reference later on. I told him what I wanted. He gave it back to me. Done. And he was a great salesperson. Yeah.

He works for Motorola now. That's awesome. And I think that kind of perfectly encapsulates the things that we're talking about, which is, you know, just learn. Go out there and learn a little bit. How can you set yourself apart a little bit? How can you, you know, have a kind of a really great question lined up to ask that interviewer? I think there's never a scenario that if you're interviewing for a position, you have no questions afterwards.

Unless you don't want the job at all. But in that case, and it's like, oh, thank you for your time. But I think that's another area that, you know, preparing what you perceive to be, you know, reverse engineer. If they're hiring a salesperson, think about maybe they're trying to reach new targets. Maybe they're trying to achieve some kind of strategic initiative as a business. Just demonstrate, you know, that you're going to bring value in the area in which you're providing support. Yeah. We love the question.

When it's their turn to ask a question. question, you know, if you were to hire me a year from now, what would a great year look like? What would I have done? Because not only did they tell you the answer, but they're also starting to think about you as an employee a year from now. You know, so it kind of imprints it in their brain. That's another thing I've noticed a trend with as people I've interviewed and I've asked, you know, where do you, you know, where do you see yourself in a year or three years, don't mention an entirely different state or industry because I've had that happen a couple times. Yeah. And that, uh, somebody probably doesn't want to hire you as a salesperson if you want to be a musician in Tennessee.

Right. Right. And don't you, I mean, it's happened to me too. Don't you normally say, what are you waiting on? Yeah. I've got no problem with it. Well, I usually say like, well, we're not a music studio. So I don't know how we can help.

Yeah. Something to that effect. I encourage people, if they have some dream out there, if they, dumb enough to tell me about, I say, you ought to go do that now. Yeah. Yeah, or yeah, I mean, or I mean, and I'm, you know, that's tough. I mean, if you have, if you have a dream that you want to do, I fully agree with that. And there's also times where you need to support it, but being honest about what you really want, I think is important.

Well, tell me a little bit about the future of next. What do you see happening there over the next three to five years? Thank you. That's a great question. You know, I think we as an organization want to be, we want to focus on metrics, on being accountable. on being purposeful with the type of support we're providing so that we can have an easy kind of through line to understanding, okay, we've created this many jobs. Yeah.

And I think to do that, we're getting much more focused on our approach to data and kind of doubling down on HubSpot and figuring out how do we segment our audiences and how do we track them and how do we make sure that startups are actually, you know, moving from one step to the next. So that's one big component. As I mentioned before, we're trying to examine what our physical footprint looks like. And as it stands right now, there's the next innovation center on church, which is a huge development corporation property. And we work out of their downtown location, but we kind of want to be in one centralized place. But the main thing I would say is that, you know, the city as a whole is very focused strategically on entrepreneurial support.

If we're now in phase 3.0 or every you want to call it, of kind of, you know, growing, and we are growing, you know, I think by conservative estimates, they're, you know, expecting 240,000 new people by 2040. How are we creating the companies that people want to work for and the jobs that they want to have? And so, you know, partnering with the city, with the, you know, local, for an ecosystem to work, I think it's, you know, working with government, universities, private enterprise and entrepreneurs, obviously. I think Next wants to continue to grow and scale the impact that we're having on startup. So long-winner answered your question, but more.

Where did the USC business school go? He used to be right in my building downtown. Do you know where they moved to? I don't. I know that they are obviously focused on expanding their footprint in the upstate, or I don't know that, I mean, I would assume. But I'm not sure where they want. Okay.

I'll let you know if I find them. Please. I should probably know that as being an alumni. That's right. They should have checked with you first. Okay. A couple more favorites. You have a favorite book?

Favorite book? You know, I recently, it's a really depressing book, but The Road by Cormac McCarthy, it's bleak, but at the same time, I found it to be very powerful and very drive to kind of continue to do the right thing. Is one positive way of maybe looking at it. From a standpoint of business and going, you know, that route, A lot of books that we recommend to our startups, I practice what I preach. Venture Capital, I forget the name of the author is, it's kind of like the Bible for raising money for startups. Lean startup is another good one for us.

And then I spend a lot of time, actually on Reddit, not a book, but a lot of the subreddits that I subscribe to is a direct focus on how can I help entrepreneurs. So R slash entrepreneurship, R slash fundraising, kind of just seeing what else is going on out there. Do you type in and talk to people there? I usually what they call a lurker. You're a lurker. Yeah. I'm a passive agent. But it's more, I kind of like to keep my finger on the pulse of, you know, what's happening and how are people changing or learning or growing?

Because that's the only way that I can really provide the support that I need to for, you know, NX's, I don't want to call them customers, but startups will be support. I feel like it's my job. If you had to pick one metric for Next to judge next, next results. assaults by, what would it be? I would say jobs created. Job created. In particular, you know, skilled, not necessarily white collar jobs, but, you know, how do we act as a Monday to Monday town and not a Friday to Monday town?

So if we had like end of last year, if we had 150 next member companies and altogether that was 5,000 employees, you would judge it next year, this year. You'd say, well, we went up to 7,000. Would that be kind of how you judge it as that total number of employees? Yeah, but I, you know, there's nuance there, right? I mean, it gets a little bit tricky because, you know, obviously we want to see full-time employees and not contractors and there are certain, you know, other metrics to hit. I think one thing I would say just to add on to that is when I mentioned before

that we want to double down on data and being accountable, I think we might, we might say, you know, we only helped really 100 companies last year or 10. to the level that we're describing. But we want to be purposeful in that and saying, you know, there's not really a next membership per se right now. There is a mentorship program that about 25 companies are in. We have our educational content that's open to everybody. So in that measure, and sure, we help thousands,

but we want to be much more, you know, honest about, okay, well, we really are working very closely with about 50 companies. And a lot of them are actually not as further along as some might think. So even that company getting one full-time hire, It would be a huge win because that's in a space that, you know, that's a nuclear, you know, that we have startups kind of all across the spectrum. One job in this startup might be very different than creating 10 in this one. Right. But I think that kind of generalized homegrown growth is what we're really focused on because we want to make sure that the companies that people are excited to work by that some of them are from here.

And it's not international. I mean, we've benefited greatly as a community from international business coming here. But we need more data streams. We need more stuff like you guys did. And that's our main goal is creating companies like that, or helping companies like that grow. Awesome. And then can you share your favorite word with us?

My favorite word. This is going to make me sound so cheesy. But I like the word tenacity. Oh, that's good. And I like that word for a lot of our entrepreneurs, because especially in my experience in Boston and seeing a lot of the, you know, some of the best of the best startups competing with each other,

you have to be tenacious and the fact that you're going to the events that you need to go to. You're doing the networking that you need to do. That tenacious doesn't mean being aggressive. It means, you know, if you believe in yourself, putting yourself out there. And I think it can be very hard. It could be very lonely being an entrepreneur.

And so I just encourage everybody to stick with it, but it also still like pivot when you need to get input from people, but being tenacious means getting out there and showing up to the competition even when you don't win, because you might meet somebody who will help you win even bigger down the road. Yeah, I mean, I probably wouldn't have had any success if it wasn't for my partner, Larry Blackwell. We were five years of working a startup with like five or six people with nothing. Yeah. I mean, nothing.

I mean, just barely, you know, barely breaking even and just kept up. doing it and kept doing it. And then one day it was like, hey, we made some, you know, we made a bunch of sales last month. What's going on? And you know, the world was changing a little bit, right? The adoption rate for our software went up and technology got better and all of a sudden we're doing the same things with better results. So tenacity is great. But you probably set yourself up for success by following some good practices. We did. But it was completely just Larry's, you know, just determination to keep going. We didn't know what was coming, you know, but I do think your entrepreneurs should know that time changes

things, right? If you just keep hammered away at something that's working to any degree, time's usually going to be on your side. Yeah, and like, and, you know, a numbers game aspect too. Yeah. You know, and I am, you know, to be clear, I'm not, you know, sometimes things are not working and you don't want to hit yourself, you know, hit your head against the wall and pivots are important, but if you believe that you're doing things the right way, if you're doing it in a way It's different than others. You have this opportunity. Then go to the right events.

Go to the right, you know, put yourself out there. Try to get. And also ask for help, I would say. And that's another form of tenacity is that I think people can be embarrassed. Yeah. Around, you know, reaching out for support. But, you know, by any, by even by some conservative estimates that we've made, we have about 50 plus support organizations in town.

Yeah. That are all trying to help, you know, various types of companies. Yeah. So there's probably somebody who can help, you know, your startup or you as an entrepreneur. Yeah. put yourself out there. And the worst that can happen is, you know, they say no or they give you advice that's not helpful, but the other stuff's going to be great.

Yeah, I mean, usually for us, the worst case scenario is having to talk to me, so that's not, you know, that is what it is, but. Well, okay, so this is last question. Do you have anything you want to promote? You can promote next or you can promote any other nonprofit or anything you're working on? I will stick with next. What I would say is we have kind of two large events on the year. We have an early stage event in the spring called Launchpad and a growth stage event called Venture Summit in the fall.

So to anyone who's watching or listening, launch pad applications will open next month in February. And that is an event that we partner with local service providers who donate packages to startups that they would normally never be able to afford. So, you know, Weish last year provided a legal package, Brains on Fire, a branding package. And startups, we had about 80 applications last year. applying for what they thought would be the best solution for them. So that's going to happen again this year. And I highly encourage anyone who's got an innovative, you know, scalable startup to apply. Okay.

Great. Well, we thank you not only for being here, but thanks for taking all this stuff you've learned in Boston and Chicago and other places and bringing it back to Greenville and helping all these entrepreneurs. So thank you. I humbly appreciate it. And, you know, anything I've learned, I hope to carry you. here because I love Greenville and I think we got a promising future ahead of us.

All right. Thank you, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. All right.