What would you do with $1 billion? How would you spend, invest, or share it?
Today’s guest, Brian Mac Mahon, shares with us how his company is helping 10,000 entrepreneurs around the world get a business investment of $100,000 and find a business mentor!
That’s $100,000 times 10,000 businesses equals $1 billion in investment!
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
You can visit his company at www.expertDOJO.com
You can email Brian directly at: brian@expertdojo.com.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:03):
You’ve worked hard to build your business, and now it’s time to grow. Welcome to the Multiply Your Success Podcast. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team, and a serial entrepreneur. Join me each week as I interview leading entrepreneurs, executives, and experts who share their misses, makes and multipliers. If you are a growth minded entrepreneur, investor, or franchise company, then this podcast is for you.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:31):
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in business and in life, it’s that you can always learn something new to make things better. Our purpose for this podcast is for you to glean some wisdom and practical ideas to implement on your expansion journey. We look forward to being your guide to multiply your success.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:50):
Welcome to the next great edition of the Multiply Your Success Podcast. And as we get started today, I wonder what would you do if you had $1 billion? What would you do? How would you spend that? Would you invest it? Would you share that? What would you do?
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:10):
Well, today’s guest, Brian Mahon, is in the process of spending $1 billion by investing $100,000 in 10,000 companies all over the world and helping people all over the world reach the dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Brian is an expert in business startups. He founded The Expert DOJO several years ago, which has this mission and vision of growing entrepreneurship around the world. He has literally lived in over 35 countries. He is absolutely fantastic, and we’re going to jump right into it today, folks, so stay tuned. And without further ado, here is my interview with Brian Mac Mahon.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (01:56):
My name is Brian Mac Mahon. I’m a owner of Expert DOJO. We are a startup accelerator, which means we invest in early stage startups. Right now we are the most prolific investor in startups in Southern California. I hail from Ireland, from Dublin, many, many, many years ago, 51 to be exact. And over that period I’ve traveled through, crikey, maybe 45, 50 countries, which I’ve lived in. Having a number of different businesses, I’ve had four different companies to get me to this place I am in Southern California. Everything from a property development company, a consultancy company, an aggregator technology company for workspace, which I ended up selling to my partner. And then that brought me to Expert DOJO where I made the decision that I wanted to invest in early stage startups with my partner and create an environment where we can change the world just a little bit.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (02:55):
Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Well, you packed a lot in a very condensed sentence or paragraph there, so there’s a lot that happens with that. So I guess as we’re taking a look at the business model you’re in now with the investment group and what you’re looking to do, maybe tell us where this idea came from and how did you get to that point? What prompted that idea to get into this?
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (03:28):
So I believe life is a serious of events that just nudges you in a direction. And sometimes it nudges you in a very hard way and sometimes it nudges you gently. And in my case, I was very fortunate and very blessed, and I got to live in places like Russia and China and Panama and Chile and Peru and Mexico and so many other places and enjoying all of those places I was an entrepreneur. So for me, I got to love the journey. I got to love entrepreneurship. And slowly by slowly I realized that the only true path from the slavery and of life is to become an entrepreneur. And the earlier you become an entrepreneur, the more of a chance you have of being successful in that chosen path.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (04:17):
So I got to a place where I realized, wow, entrepreneurship is great, and it’s been incredibly good to me over the years, and that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been hard. I believe I’ve probably worked harder than most other people, but it’s been incredibly good to me. So it’s been very fulfilling and my cup of happiness or contentness or fulfillment or whatever that cup equals is very high. And so I realized, wow, it would be amazing if everybody could be an entrepreneur. And then the more I looked into the stats and the more I got to know folks who were entrepreneurs, the more I realized that there was an extremely high failure rate within entrepreneurship. And my thought process was, wow, I wonder if we could just understand why so many companies are failing and maybe try and reverse engineer it so we can help create startups that have a better chance of success.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (05:07):
So we opened up this place in Santa Monica where I am now, which is a 10,000 square foot facility on top of the mall, and we just really opened it up as a laboratory for entrepreneurs. And that laboratory became a place where we brought entrepreneurs in and we studied them and we watched them and we tried to understand what was the difference between failure and success. We didn’t even want to fix anything at that stage. There was no intention of building anything, selling anything, we didn’t want to be coaches, we didn’t want to be trainers, we didn’t want to be anything. We just wanted to understand why entrepreneurs were failing at the level they were.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (05:41):
And then fast forward 12 months after that, we’d had about a hundred companies come through the space and we came up with these phenomenal conclusions about why entrepreneurs were failing. And then as I said, you don’t suddenly come up with a conclusion after a nine month period and say, I understand how to fix entrepreneurship again. It’s a journey. But our eyes were wide open and our ears were wide open and we were listening and watching everything that was happening. And we came up with about four or five really massive conclusions on why folks were failing. So I’ll run into those if you don’t mind and see if I can give your listeners a bit of a fail.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:20):
Sure. Yeah. And look, the format of our program, we like to talk about misses, makes and multipliers here for businesses. Leveraging your research and study and what you’ve been able to find, I mean, this falls right into our miss category, so we’d love to hear it and be able to gain some glean wisdom from it.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (06:39):
Big, big, big misses. And I think this is a problem within America in general because this is the greatest place for entrepreneurship on the planet. And in many ways, many of the things that have made our entrepreneurs great are areas that we’re now starting to fail in.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (06:56):
So the first one with a huge big flag in it was that almost every company that came in… I mean we have this beautiful space and we said to entrepreneurs, We’re going to give you the space for free. We’re not going to charge you anything for it, and we just really want to see you and watch you and listen to you and see what happens. But we’re not going to give you anything. We’re not going to help you. We’re not going to coach you. We’re not going to give you any assistance. Even if we think we have an answer to a question. And almost every entrepreneur came through and said the same thing first moment that they met us. Do you know anyone who can give us investment? Almost everybody.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (07:32):
I feel that when you have such an incredible endeavor like entrepreneurship and the very first thing you’re focused on, to the extent that it becomes 70% of that journey is trying to borrow money and go into debt, it’s a problem. Your first thing you should be focused on is building a great company. So many entrepreneurs that just seeing too many episodes of Shark Tanks, heard too many podcasts about how you go to a VC and you should get investment, that their first thing was investment. And that’s a huge problem because it takes you away from the pureness of the journey, which is to build something incredible.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (08:08):
And number two thing that we saw was within branding, and again, America is the center of the world and branding. There is no better country in the world storytelling that America, that is why our products are the envy of the world. But what’s happened is, and I don’t blame Lean Startup particularly, but a lot of folks seem to have read the book or learned the concept and moved from we will build a phenomenal product with an incredible story that make people feel, that make people have sensations like it tingling in your body when you think of a product because you have such tremendous excitement, and we are going to move that to a minimal viable product. Which is just to get something basic and insignificant out to the market to see how our audience react to it. And although there is logical sense to it, non-brand wise don’t spend too much money, get it to the market, see what people think. It is not American.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (09:07):
What is American is to build greatness and within that greatness your customer… And it doesn’t mean we’re not going to iterate and we’re not going to make it better and better and better, but you have to build the greatest product you can build right at that first moment because your customer has to love you. And if they love you, they will then become your greatest fan. And if they’re your greatest fan, nobody’s going to beat you no matter how much money that they have. So branding was a huge problem.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (09:32):
Number three was foundation. And that’s that entrepreneurs… It is weird, it’s actually very strange. Sometimes it’s early in their lives and sometimes it’s later in their lives. And I say their lives, my life as well. But we reach this moment where we say, dude, I’m going to be an entrepreneur. When? Tomorrow. I’m going to be an entrepreneur tomorrow. I’m going to build the greatest company the world is ever seen tomorrow. What do you think? You think a surgeon wakes up in the morning and they’re going, I used to sweep the streets yesterday but tomorrow I am going to do open heart surgery because, I don’t know, these hands are wasted sweeping the street? And entrepreneurship is not that simple. It’s something that needs to be learned.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (10:18):
Our schools get a massive fail for this. Our universities get a massive fail for this, and we get a massive fail for this because entrepreneurship is an extremely serious endeavor. Failing is not a good thing. Learning by failing is just awful. And then you ask any wife or husband whose spouse has lost their house and they’re everything because they fail and they will say, learning from failure is not all it’s made out to be. I would much rather if we got ready for the task ahead and we understood all of the potential things that could go wrong and we mitigate it as much as we possibly could by filling the skill gaps that we have.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (10:59):
Next point is skill gaping. And that’s teams and people who know what they’re doing within certain areas. Again, there’s certain, starting a company is harder than in many ways than running a public company because when you start a company, you have to be the marketing director or the chief of marketing. You have to be the chief of technology, you have to be the chief of innovation, you have to be chief of everything. And most of us only have a certain amount of skills. And so we don’t build the team around us with the abilities that they need.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (11:35):
And then the final point is just execution. We believe that just believe it and watch some Tony Robbins movies and we’re like, okay, I got this. All I got to do is think it and it will be and it won’t be, it’s not going to work that way. You can’t ask the universe to bring your start up to you. You need to be an executor. And an executor is not just about saying, well, of course I’m an executor Brian, everybody’s an executor. It’s about learning the skill of execution, which means doing things better, faster, more efficiently, and in a way that gets you to an objective, which you have already strategized way before that. And built goals and built very structured methodology to make yourself to get there. So I know there’s a lot there, but they were the five big, big, big takeaways that we had over that year of just watching 100 companies and saying, Shoot, there are some things we can do about failure just by not even being that good.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (12:38):
Well, that’s an amazing data set that you were able to pull there. To articulate it so clearly, I’ve been advising small business and mid-size businesses for goodness over 16 years now and I’ve advised thousands and thousands of them. Literally what you just walked through summarizes all of that time of the pain points that I’ve heard consistently. Those are the items that continue to come up over and over, especially for any of entrepreneur or small business that is launching or struggling to get over that initial startup hurdle as they’re kind of going through it. So that’s fantastic. And so I guess with Expert DOJO and the work that you’re doing now, so the first year you studied this, so now how did you change after that first year? What happened after that point?
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (13:38):
So that was five years ago and five years ago we actually took this space in Santa Monica on a three month lease. And we said to them, look, you haven’t got any restaurants on top of the mall. Malls are not the same as what they used to be. Let us come in here for a couple of months and then we’ll see what happens and we’ll learn. It was a hobby for me, it was not a business that we intended to start. And then three months turned into 12 months and at the end of 12 months, we had just a lot of folks that were saying to us, hey, it would be great, Brian, if we could actually surround ourselves with more people like the folks like ourselves and the folks that we had around the DOJO. So we said, Okay, great, we’re going to build a mentorship platform where you can get access to hundreds of people for whatever problem you have because we wanted to make sure that this message was amplified.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (14:26):
And then we put that out there for about six months and then people said, It would be great if you could put what you said into a training program and actually make sure that small business got access to the training program. And we thought, Okay, sure, no problem. We’ll do a training program. So we built a training program on top of the mentorship, and then more folks said to us, It would be great if you actually used all of your contacts who were investors. And not immediately, but when we’re ready that we actually had access to those investors so they could see our companies when they’re ready and we could see them when we need them. So we built hundreds upon hundreds, maybe thousands, of investors into the community.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (15:05):
So then suddenly a year and a half later, we found ourself with this huge mentorship platform, all of this training in place for entrepreneurs, all of these connections in place for investors that were able to actually assist entrepreneurs. And we thought, wow, that’s amazing. And then I saw one or two companies and I thought, ooh, I like those companies. I actually think they could become really good. So I made some personal investments into those companies myself. And then my partner came in and my partner said, why don’t we firstly put together a mission of what we want to do? What is all this leading to in the end? And then why don’t we find a methodology to get ourselves there?
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (15:46):
So we decided during a number of strategy sessions that our mission is actually very basic and very huge. So we want to make sure that every person on the planet has got equal access to success within entrepreneurship, whether it’s a man, whether it’s a woman, whether it’s a Black person, whether it’s a white person, whether it’s an Indian person, whether they’re poor, whether they’re rich. And that may sound, oh, that’s pretty basic, but it’s actually unbelievably impossible. So to actually want somebody who comes from a shack or a small hot with no money earning a dollar a week in Africa or India and wanting that person to have the same ability to be able to start a company with the same levels of success as someone who might live in California who’s incredibly privileged and has got access to all of those people is a beautiful impossible dream. But that’s what we want to do.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (16:43):
By the way, this is also the first time ever that something like this can be enabled because you can drop ship from China to the US no matter who you are. You just need to find a product that’s a product which is made by someone else, not by you, which is going to make a profit where you can manipulate the social media or manipulate the paid advertising to be able to do that. So it is possible, but it’s huge. So we decided, okay, well let’s make a ton of money first, let’s invest in early stage startups, let’s start with the end in mind and let’s make sure that our focus is on minorities and on female founders, and let’s find international companies all around the world. Let’s make sure that America becomes their new home and let’s bring the greatest entrepreneurs on the planet to America and invest in those companies and create this huge investment venture capital firm, which just makes a ton of money by partnering with startups and getting us to a place. And that took us to actually a year and a half ago when we made our first investment. And since that time, we’ve made I think 70 investments up to today.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (17:52):
Wow, amazing. And would you mind the next, we’d like to ask some about some makes that you had. Certainly you’ve had makes in your career. We’d love to hear about those I’m sure, the audience maybe curious like I am, about maybe one or two of the investments that you’ve invested in and how if you could highlight one or two or three of those and how they’ve grown through your program, what you’ve been able to do from where they started to where they are today.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (18:23):
So I’ll tell you a very immediate learn, which will then lead to the make. We’re an accelerator, it’s the technical term for what we do. And that means that we invest in early stage companies, we bring them to our location, or at least we used to, now we do it online. We train them, we educate them, we enable them, we put them through a bootcamp of eight weeks like they’ve never gone through before. And by the time they’re finished, they’re absolutely exhausted. And then we introduced them to hundreds of subsequent investors during that period. We teach them about brand, we teach them about strategy, we teach them about enablement, we teach them about outreach, everything all the way through.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (19:02):
So when we first started, there are four or five really big competitors to ours in the US There’s Y Combinator who are the big bad beast who have been doing this for a long time. I think they have around 2000 or 2,500 investments they’ve made over the last 10 years. You’ve got 500 Startups who are exactly the same. You’ve got Techstars who are exactly the same. These are the big boys and girls in their space. So us coming in with good intentions to try and work with startups in America was never going to win. Even if we hadn’t had good intent, even if we just wanted to be greedy and take the best startups, they were never going to choose us because why should they, they already have bigger, better, more established or more connected companies that they can start to work with.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (19:49):
And what I realized is that when you have power with greed, it’s extremely hard to win. It’s not that David and Goliath can never go the right way, but it’s extremely hard to win. However, greed has got geographical boundaries. There are only certain distances that people who are incredibly powerful are willing to go to. So within the US we knew that if we competed head to head, we would lose. And then we also knew that because I’d lived in so many countries around the world, and because I know Africa, I know Asia, I know Europe, I know Eastern Europe, I know Latin America, I know China, I know all of the places inside these areas, I realize that I, we, have an advantage that they don’t have. And also it ties beautifully into our message. In our current cohort, we have three companies from Africa we invested in, two companies from India we’ve just invested in, two companies from Korea that we’ve just invested into a company from Egypt actually we’ve invested into, and then other companies from other countries around the world. So I knew that was going to be a big catalyst.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (21:05):
So we started looking at local companies and we immediately said, no, let’s look at international companies and let’s make sure we get the biggest and the baddest and we will find them from the furthest place we possibly can where other people don’t even know they exist yet. So one of our huge wins is we have a company which is called StarNews. And StarNews is an African company. It started in the Ivory Coast and now they’ve expanded through seven or eight countries in Africa, they’ve just gone into Nigeria and South Africa recently. And what they do is they distribute influencer content through the cell phone to Africans.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (21:41):
Now why is this important? Because number one, African doesn’t really have apps. So what we are used to in our phones with smartphones doesn’t really exist in Africa. Most of what they consume is through text. So, whoever delivers the text, delivers them the most valuable platform in existence on the entire content to billions of people. So this particular company, StarNews made agreements with the operators of text, which were Orange in one of the countries and a few other countries as well. And they said, look, give us an exclusive, we’re going to distribute content and then we’re going to share the revenue with you after us. And the telecom provider said what they would never say in America, you couldn’t even have this conversation with T-Mobile or AT&T. They say, what is wrong with you? Why are you even calling me you idiot? But they made these agreements. Last month they did around $300,000, maybe more, in revenue. In four or five months time they’re expected to do around $800,000. And next year I expect them to do probably $2 million a month, which will make them $100 million company. That’s just the beginning. They’ll go further and further from there.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (23:00):
The beautiful thing about investing, and this is why I feel everybody should invest if they can in early stage startups, if they have people with knowledge around them, is that if we invest in the company at a couple of million dollar valuation and then that company becomes at 300 million, 4 or 5, 600 million company, we make 200 times the initial investment that we put into it. Just think of that for a second, 200 times. Now those companies don’t all make it, obviously, but the key to what we do is finding the very greatest companies so they have the absolute best chance of being able to break through. So StarNews was, is and is going to be a huge, huge win for us because we saw an African company and we saw all of the right fundamentals that I spoke about before. Great brands, phenomenal founder, great team, execution, which has already been proven in the market and just a phenomenal ability to be able to break through.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:05):
Wow, that’s incredible. Well, as I’m thinking about this, I mean I hope our audiences are listening to this, just the concept of thinking about finding a company in another continent, identifying some key drivers, and then making that investment and now watching it flourish is incredible. And so as I’m thinking about this idea of multipliers, I’d love for you to share maybe some multipliers that you’ve used in your career for growing companies and businesses that you’ve been involved with. And then I’d love for you to talk about Expert DOJO on how Expert DOJO is helping these businesses also grow and multiply and talk through some of that.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (24:49):
So our program, I say humbly not at all actually, is the best program in America. We have a phenomenal program. We pay the top trainers in the country to come to Santa Monica previously, again now it’s online so it’s even simpler, but it’s still so impactful. So if I just go back to the very beginning of what I said about the education, I truly the foundation for everything. If you haven’t thought through your vision, then you don’t really have a great opportunity to get there. And it’s no different than mapping a journey from California to New York. If you just drive randomly, yeah, you’ll probably get there at some stage, but you’ll be really old by the time you do.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (25:34):
If you use your maps in the olden days and you use your GPS and you plan it out and you track it out and you decide how long you’re going to drive every single day, where you’re going to stay, what you’re going to do, when you go there, where you should eat, and everything in between. It’s not that things won’t go wrong and things won’t need to be fixed, but you just make it much easier for yourself and you get there quicker no matter what goes wrong. So you have to allow for Murphy’s Law at every single step of the way.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (26:04):
So from our side, we try and do that within that eight week program. And that’s our ideal multiplier. We say to companies, look, yeah, we give you a $100,000 and you think a $100,000 is valuable to you. But in truth, like any fool can give you a $100,000. And a $100,000 to someone who doesn’t know how to spend a $100,000 is the same as giving zero or a million, you’re still going to waste the money, you’re still going to end up with nothing. So we bring them through week one strategy and make sure that you build that huge, hairy, audacious goal, but you really, really think through it like every single day, five hours and then afternoons, homework every single day.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (26:42):
Then the next week is all about brand. We bring some of the top general assembly trainers in the world to our place, and those guys then talk through what’s human-centric experience looks like, what’s user experience, what’s user interface. And this is tremendously important to me. I’ll digress for a second. So I’ve got 15 year old and I said to my little boy a week ago, I said to him, okay, let’s pretend I give you $5,000. And this is the worst thing about having an entrepreneur as a father is that most dads say to their kids, so who do you think is going to win the football game this week? I say to my kid, okay, let’s pretend you got $5,000 and you have a company. Which marketing channels are you going to spend your $5,000 on?
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (27:30):
[inaudible 00:27:30] because he’s used to me, he [inaudible 00:27:33] and so my kids said, well, I actually wouldn’t spend it on a single marketing channel. I’d spend it on an architect, which I didn’t expect and was not in my mind the correct answer. Although afterwards when he explained it, I thought, actually this ties in more to our thesis than everything else. And I said to him, why would you want an architect rather than Facebook ads or TikTok ads or LinkedIn or something else? And he said, Because I think that if you build something which is so beautiful that everybody wants to come there, in time you shouldn’t even need to advertise. And that for me, I’m like, okay, fine, you got me. Maybe that’s a really good answer. But that’s why branding is so important. You need to make your customers feel, they have to feel a sensation that they don’t feel with anyone else. And that feeling that you give them can be based on your messaging, it can be based on your colors, it can be based on the videos and the things that you do there. It can be based on your customer service, but you have to really, really think through what it is that makes you really, really special. So brand is massive for us in that second week.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (28:42):
That third week then we go through influence level. So we know the life is unfair and we believe even in the playing field whenever we can. We have some of our companies, we have Tony Robbins who’s on one of our companies, we’ve got Mariah Care on another company’s Halle Berry on another company, the Dog Whisperer on another company. So sometimes it’s about finding influencers and sometimes it’s about rising your own influence level. So Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example of rising your own influence level to way beyond what he should be because he understands the game. So we have one of the top influence trainers in California come up and again, train how do you build your influence level, your domain expertise within a space. And a lot of it is this kind of thing we’re doing right here, just podcasts with folks that you get to speak about what you’re doing and you make sure that you make that effort to go, again, to break that barrier of greed. If the greed of an entrepreneur in a really positive way is to build the greatest company on the planet, well you have to go beyond your local town to build that greed strategy.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (29:50):
So we do influence level, and then the next week we then introduce them to a bunch of investors. I think there’s over 150 during the whole period investors that they meet. And then the next week we go through their foundation and what they put together in building their companies, everything from legal to accounting and everything else. And then through all of the other weeks, we go through all of the other levels. I mean it’s like an MBA for entrepreneurship. And then after that’s finished, it’s just the beginning. After that’s finished, our team work with them for the following three years to make sure that every single thing that they could need to build the company of their dreams is right there in place for them.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (30:30):
Now, that’s probably going to get difficult I’m sure as we go from 80 to 180 companies, but so far it’s worked really well and that’s our value. People think our value is the money, but our real value is that we’re just beasts right in there in the ring with the entrepreneur when they’re right in the middle of the toughest part of the fight.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (30:50):
Well that’s incredible. I love what you’re doing, I really do. And I think maybe we’re cut from a similar cloth here because I have that same drive and passion and enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, fulfilling the American dream and really giving it your best effort to go out there. For our listeners here, I mean if you haven’t had a chance to take a look at their website, I mean front and center, talking about launching 10,000 businesses with a goal of investing over 1,000 companies in the next 10 years, that is a huge in massive goal. I mean, talk about multiplying there. So can you talk about how you intend to make that happen? You’re well on your way, you’re in the midst of it right now. So talk through what’s going on there.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (31:40):
So, we’ve been going a year and a half. And so in the first half a year end of 2019, I think we did maybe 30 companies or so. And then this year so far we’ve done 40, we’ve invested in 40 companies and we’ll invest in another 10 companies before the end of this year or 12 companies. And the idea is right now that we do 12 companies per cohort, we make the investments into those companies and then we bring them into a cohort, the cohort’s the eight weeks, and then we take a few weeks break and then we go into the next cohort and then we take a few weeks break and then we go into the next cohort. So it’s super intensive on our staffs. It’s hardcore. But we realize that if we want to go from 50 companies that we invest in this year to 100 companies next year and then to 200 companies the following year, and then 400 companies the following year and as many as 800 companies the following year, then we need to make sure that we evolve the model.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (32:40):
I don’t believe in pivoting. I don’t really believe that companies pivot. I believe what happens is at the beginning, whether we’re an accelerator or whether you’re a startup, you only really have 13, maybe 20% of the full picture. That’s just the reality of starting something brand new that has never existed before. And every day as you go forward, you learn new methodologies to be able to get to build a bigger picture. And sometimes the no’s from customers are actually helping you grow from 13% to 13.5%. And so people should actually say thank you at the beginning when the customer says no, they should say I really appreciate that you’ve told me that this sucks because now I know what I need to do to get from 13.5% to 14.5% completeness and I really appreciate you. And it’s the customers who all say yes all the time, that actually don’t help the companies evolve.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (33:28):
And we went through a very similar process. As we built, we got better. As we built our program, we got our program better. We started off making sure that we wanted to build the greatest most conclusive program in the world, and we wanted to make sure that our team evolved alongside that, and now next year we want to make sure that we can go even further around the world. And we’re going to build a scout program whereby we have 10 people per continent just looking for great companies. We might even invest a little bit more but then invest more later on.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (34:02):
So we also retain the ability to be able to do a million dollar investments in follow on rounds with these companies as well. So by having five scouts in all of the different continents by those scouts having 10 people working for them in each one of these places, by each of those people having one thing in mind and that’s the ability to be able to find a company that an investment can be made into. And they get what’s called carry, and carry means that they get a percentage of the upside if the company exits. Which could be a really, really big deal. I mean, you’re talking, if something turns into an Uber, the carry that one of those scouts could earn is hundreds of thousands of dollars. And all they have to do is walk into places and say, I am a scout for Expert DOJO and I want to find the greatest companies in the world and build a bridge for those companies to be able to come into America.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (34:57):
Wow, that’s incredible. Well, I guess as we’re going through this and hearing your story and everything that you’re doing, one question that we always like to ask before we wrap things up is we like to find out what does success mean to you as you’re looking through your career, you’ve clearly had a lot of success in your helping others accomplish and reach their dreams of achieving success. So what does that mean to you?
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (35:28):
So look, there are milestones and then there are success and our milestones involve our companies making it through. Our milestones involve us getting really good returns on those companies so that we don’t lose our money and we don’t lose shareholders’ money. But really success is the place I started at the beginning of the show. It’s the knowledge that we have enabled are being part of the journey for every entrepreneur everywhere in the world to have an equal opportunity to be able to start something and be successful no matter where they come from, what they look like or whether they’re a man or whether they’re a woman. That’s the ultimate success. And the beautiful thing about that is that I do believe that life is not about happiness necessarily. I don’t think it’s about trying to wake up in the morning and make sure that you’re a happier person than the next person. I believe fulfillment is a huge cup that when full, just feels great.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (36:30):
So going along that journey, and I say this because so many people go on believe they want to go on this journey because they want to make a ton of money and a ton of money does not make people rich. And they believe they want to go on this journey cause they want to work less hours. And in truth, it’s been proven that working less doesn’t even make you happy. But if you are fulfilled with what you have done in your time on this planet, then you are everything. That is every single cup fills to the brim. So being on this pursuit of every entrepreneur everywhere in the world, having an equal chance to be able to just do the righteous and awesome thing, it’s a beautiful fulfillment cup, which for me is filled while I’m on the journey, while I was thinking of the journey, while I’m on the journey and when we finish the journey.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (37:20):
Amazing, amazing. And look, if anyone tuning in here, we’ve got investors, we’ve got small businesses, we’ve got growing companies, how can people get involved to be a part of this? Are you actively seeking potential investors into your network? Are you actively seeking applications from people? How can they get involved in various capacities?
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (37:48):
Yeah, thank you. All of the above. We invest, but the objective of investing is to make sure that there are follow-on investors that are there, that actually also put investments into these companies. That’s how their valuation rises and how they become huge companies. And there is tremendous opportunity in. The nice thing about us is we’re not promoters, we put our own money in. So whatever we’re putting our own money into, then you get no better, I won’t say the word guarantee, but at least indication that something is got a good chance of making it. So investors we always love and they can all contact me at brian@expertdojo.com and we will make sure that we get them onto our demo days, they can be introduced to our startups and we can just generally get them involved in this entire system.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (38:31):
If you’re a startup, you can definitely apply because it’s on the show I won’t even say go to our application on Expert DOJO. They can also email me at brian@expertdojo.com and I’ll make sure that they get a conversation with somebody or at least they get direct access to one of our associates that looks at those companies. Just if you’re an incredibly skillful person that has worked in the area of any of the sectors that I’ve mentioned. So it could be you’re a great brander, that you’re a great marketer, you’re a great growth hacker, you’re a great something, and you want to be a mentor to our community, then we love mentor, so again, all those folks can contact me at brian@expertdojo.com.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (39:11):
Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, folks, I mean, Brian, this is amazing. I love what you’re doing and bringing the opportunity of entrepreneurship literally to anyone in the world anywhere. Thank you for what you’re doing, genuinely. It goes to my core and in I love what you’re doing and we will make sure we are broadcasting your message as much as we can. Well, thank you so much for being here. Is there anything else you’d like to maybe leave with the listeners that we didn’t have a chance to cover or you didn’t get a chance to say here?
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (39:48):
I will just finish by saying that entrepreneurship is a gift that most people do not get the opportunity to enjoy because they haven’t been educated that it’s so important. Folks that work in a job, and I’m talking specifically about fulfillment in life outside the family. So family and religion, let’s leave it way aside. If we’re talking about pure creativity. If you work in a job for your whole life, you’ve missed out on one of the most beautiful things that has been given to you by God or whoever else that you believe in. And so you should really look to see how can I stoke that creativity fire and how can I get started with something new that the world has never seen before? Because in 40 years I’ll be dust and I’ll be gone. What have I left in the world? Have I been at Thomas Edison or have I been somebody who was just glad to make it to the finish line? I’d prefer to be the former.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (40:51):
So everybody on the podcast find a way to start something new, find your creative self, build something beautiful. Whether you get investment or not get investment is a sidebar, it’s totally irrelevant. This is about what you build and what you leave the world and is it a better place for you being here or not.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (41:11):
Fantastic. Well Brian, thank you so much for being here. I greatly appreciate it and we look forward to hopefully having you back on in the future with some updates on things that have been going on here.
Brian Mac Mahon, Expert DOJO (41:24):
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (41:26):
Thank you. Wow, Brian, that was absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for being here. What you’re doing really is inspiring and something that we can all hopefully be inspired to contribute in our own unique way. Let’s go ahead and jump into our three key takeaways for today.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (41:46):
Number one, he said, map it out when you’re planning your business. Make sure you map and plan it out and allow for Murphy’s Law. That means you need to take into consideration that you’re going to fail along the way. You’re going to stumble. You’re going to trip. Things are not going to go as planned it is very seldom a straight line. There are lots of zigs and zags, and we try to keep those as condensed as possible. So make sure you plan as well as you can to be prepared for when those treacherous times come along that you are ready to overcome those difficulties.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (42:21):
Number two, you need to make your customers feel. Make your customers feel. And this is something that I talk about often, but it’s that experience that you’re getting and that experience you’re giving your customer. And Brian said it so well, do it with your product, with your service, with the quality of your service, with the overall maybe online experience. Whatever you’re doing, make sure you’re creating that feel to be connected to your customer or to that client.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (42:55):
Number three, sometimes a no is the greatest learning tool. Isn’t that true? Isn’t that true when you think about that out there? How many times has a customer or a prospect told you no or didn’t buy or said, I don’t like fill in the blank. And you were able to take that, learn from it and make adjustments. Because how many times have you not received that no or not been told that they don’t like it for whatever reason? Very often your customers don’t tell you no or don’t tell you they don’t like it, they just don’t buy. And so I think when we look at this, this is a great, great lesson. Now it’s time for today’s win-win.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (43:43):
So today’s win-win, we’re going to kind of fit two pieces in here because I thought both of these were fantastic from Brian’s interview. So number one, entrepreneurship is a gift. Entrepreneurship is a gift. It’s a gift for you to have fulfillment. And that’s the other piece that Brian talked about, being fulfilled. That’s the goal that you’re looking for. So entrepreneurship is the gift that allows you and helps create that pathway to fulfillment. It’s really, really amazing. And as we look at that, when you see entrepreneurship as a gift, it’s not just a gift for you, it’s also a gift for those that are close to you, your staff, your team members, all the people that are able to come along on this ride with you. It’s a wonderful joyous gift and journey to embark on.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (44:39):
So that’s today’s episode folks, thank you for tuning in. Please subscribe, please share this with your friends, and we’ll see you back here next week on the next great edition of the Multiply Your Success Podcast.
