Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today we have Michael Coates and Mark Grimes, creators of the Startup Radio Network, discuss their programs and how Civil Affairs members and veterans can start their ventures.
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Transcript:
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Open up to understanding that this is a very ambiguous thing that you're now working on. You better have a to -do list that's going to be 50 or 100 things. You're going to have a very hard time prioritizing it. And even if you do, something's going to come up 90 minutes from now, but they may take a whole new focus because it's a very unique opportunity.
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Hi, and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode. We're joined today by Michael Coates and Mark Grimes, serial entrepreneurs based in Portland and hosts of the Startup Radio Network. Gentlemen, welcome to the 1CA Podcast. Thank you very much for having us. Absolutely. Now, you guys are serial entrepreneurs. You've both created many companies. There are many current and former civil affairs soldiers and Marines who start small businesses. especially if they're reserve. The Marine Corps, certainly an Army majority of the civil affairs community is reserve. So they're working for someone or working for themselves. And there are a lot of people who retire out of civil affairs, retire out of the military, who have an idea that may have been percolating around for years, and they just decided to launch this new venture and privatize maybe something they were doing in the military or continuing possibly with the connection with the VA or the government somehow. Or just starting a new venture that's totally outside of their military background. So maybe later on, if you guys could offer some tips for those people on how to translate that idea into a new venture, that would be great. Do our best. Thank you very much. Well, Michael and Mark, I wanted to get into your background. So, Michael, maybe if you could start. How long have you been an entrepreneur? What are some of the companies that you've been working on? And how did you get connected to Mark?
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Couldn't hold a job, so I didn't work forever.
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What does that mean? You didn't like to work for other people?
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The very quick background probably is I worked for Ross Perot's EDS company a long, long time ago. And that put my wife and I in San Francisco, where we both got exposed to the corporations, her advertising, what we call data processing in those days. We moved back to our Portland area. original home, we start an advertising agency together. Just from an idea. She has tremendous graphic background. And we did that together for 15 years. She still runs the agency. And then I started just looking for other things to do, including business brokerage.
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And then I got involved in the startup community and put on the first startup weekend in Portland. And this Grimes, who headed up Netspace, gave us his space for free, which we desperately needed because we didn't have any money. And we actually got reconnected. We had met years before and then didn't see each other in between. Netspace is a co -working space. Mark is very, very startup friendly. And he is a true serial entrepreneur. He said some very big things globally.
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And then I just loved what he was doing. in this net space community is that I've got to be part of it. And we started helping out, and we had this idea to do a round -the -world startup -a -thon interviewing startup people in local, the area, different countries of the world, one country per hour, and have that hosted by an investor in that same country. It didn't quite come off that way. This was about three years ago, but we liked the whole. podcasting as it turned into media. And so January this year, we turned our podcast business into Startup Radio Network, which is a global discussion of entrepreneurs. That's about as succinct as I've ever been in my life. That's the shortest I've ever been. I'm really proud of myself.
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Congrats. Well, thank you. Your turn,
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Well, thank you. Your turn, Mark. So in 1989, I started my first company.
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1989, I started my first company. called Arts Marketing Association. It was a global network of marketing directors and performing arts groups. Nothing like it existed at the time. This was obviously way pre -real internet, so all this stuff was done via mail and phone calls and everything else. And found after doing that, we got it cash flow positive in under 90 days, and it ran it for about two, two and a half, three years, and then sold it, and I was hooked from...
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actually the bootstrap founders that are really getting into the grindstone and really making it happen and really building a solid, real business. Like Michael said, we connected a few years ago. Out of it, the Startup Radio Network has really flourished over the last year. We now have a network of four shows that we run every Friday back -to -back, four shows in a row. those, and then every week we have anywhere from 50 ,000 to 180 ,000 listeners to the show, and we'll be adding more shows to the network early next year.
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That's great. Are most of the listeners based in the U .S. or Western Hemisphere?
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The last time we looked at the numbers, I think it was like 30%, 25 % to 30 % were overseas. Wow. Which, to be candid, that's what we're looking for. US -centric -based network.
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Right. Well, I guess it's all in English, but English is sort of the language of business around the world, right?
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So you'd think it was all in English, but we actually have a show called Latino Founder Hour that's all in Spanish, talking to Spanish founders around the world.
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Oh, fantastic. Yeah, I wanted to go into some more detail about the four shows that you have. I wanted to ask you, though, first, what is it about the bootstrap startup that... really draws your attention to them? The people.
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That's what we love about the four shows we hopefully will be expanding by Q1 2019 to at least six, possibly eight, because we're looking for micro -slices of the startup community. I know this podcast is supposed to be evergreen. Hopefully this will be changing, but when you go to... digital guy in his 30s who sold his software company for a zillion dollars. And that's great to hear the first one. But after a while, how many people really can relate to a person like that? Whereas if you slice off who are Latinos who have started business, that appeals to it. That has a direct connection to a certain audience. LGBTQ, you know, with Dave Dolan. many ex -felons have started a business. Well, really quite a few and provides a lot of inspiration to mainly guys who are getting out of prison that they could do something like this. And then, of course, our veteran startups, which is near and dear to your heart. How about people who have had a military career get back into the public life and all of a sudden, what are they going to do? security background could be avionics could be you know all kinds of things you come out skills how can you turn that into making living entirely on your own and it's grasping you know taking control of the environment that you have out there looking for opportunity looking to serve others make a profit so that you can stay in business finding a pain or a need or something that people will
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know taking control of the environment that you have out there looking for opportunity looking to serve others make a profit so that you can stay in business finding a pain or a need or something that people will Trade their money for it because they do want it or they do need it. And that's what life is all about. That's leading a real meaningful life and leaving an impression behind you, too. And this is where wealth is built. Wealth is built by serving other people.
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Right.
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And that's okay. Now you see the rambling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So bring that back home. Bring that back home, John. So basically, while we do talk to it. founders that have raised a million or millions of dollars for their startups. The bootstrapped startup founders,
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you see
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founders, the ones that are just trying to grow real businesses and lean businesses, first of all, that's the majority of startups. That's 95 % or more of them. Those are real businesses and real people doing real things. The big companies, the people that are trying to build the Ubers of the world, Airbnbs, yeah, they need to have a full load of money. Those are also the unicorns. That's also...
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our customers. Let's find out what's going on. They're focused on what any real company needs to do anyway. That's a better answer.
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There are a lot of those. In the veteran space, there are a lot of veterans who will start up a coffee roaster or brewery or a service that provides training for disabled veterans or takes some hunting or fishing. You know, just have a clothes washing. I mean, it's all over the range. And most, you're right, most of those businesses are small and they stay small. And they may get sold or bought off by somebody else. Exactly. Well, they fold. And then they try again. Yeah,
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exactly. Well, a lot of times, a lot of first -time entrepreneurs, it's kind of like a first -time.
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Only after you started do you realize, oh my gosh, I need a company that's in the B2C space, not the B2D plate space, or I need a big staff, or I need very little staff. I mean, all those things you learn only after doing the first one, which gets into the whole, obviously, the serial entrepreneur thing.
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There's a great myth that all these startup companies that launched the unicorns, that they didn't have any problems, and that never happens.
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Let's go into more detail about the four shows that you have. You have the Veteran Founders Podcast. You have two hosts for that. What's the focus for the Veteran Founders Podcast and the other three shows that you have?
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on the side, but it happens occasionally. But, you know, they face a unique challenge, and of course, you know, especially the ones who come back from a combat situation, because they've got PTSD to deal with a lot of the times,
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deal with a lot of the times, and they come back with this mentality and an attitude that does sometimes translate to the society in which they decide to, you know, build a business, so they have to make some money. Real Real mental changes as well some personality changes too,
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changes as well some personality changes too, so they have difficult hurdles to jump Josh Carter and Carmen I have trouble that They are two veterans who start up businesses and Carmen's very very successful
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trouble that They are two veterans who start up businesses and Carmen's very very successful
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International. Josh has started Patriot Boot Camp. These are boot camps that are helping vets do that start because sometimes the toughest thing is to just start and do it because you're usually going to fail that first time and dealing with that is the hardest part. Let's see the other.
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either keep it in the closet if they want to keep their business going or keep their job. When they finally come out, they're just getting pasted and having to jump over that hurdle of finding a business, a place of pain that they can serve. Latino founder hour, I mean, we've got people who snuck in the border and had to wait X amount of years before they could say something out in public and say where they were really from and they had a business going. hardships in order to make that business work. No, didn't speak the language, no money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the usual immigrant story. And then ex -felons, excuse me, felony ink, but ex -felons, they've endured a lot of pressure pain, but what you find out is a lot of them are thankful for their time in prison because that's when they finally got a chance to look at themselves and to work on that. themselves. And it took being put in prison with nothing but time on their hands to figure it out. And they come out to do some fantastic businesses. That's the lineup for now.
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for now. That's the current lineup right now. And the film and ink is hosted by some people may know the hostess Dave Thal, who is the founder of Dave's Killer Bread.
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It's Tasty Bread. We have it in the local grocery stores near us.
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Yeah, it's so good. Where are you? In Maryland,
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Maryland, right by D .C.
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Okay, nice. Yeah, they've been expanding across the nation, so there's still some places they're not in yet, but doing a great job. Dave's no longer involved with the company, but we really find he pulls out really great stories from these guests of kind of turnaround, inspiration, and really the things that, like Michael said, that these guys are in there. And frankly, a lot of the things... that once they start selling a different product, which is part of their startup, that they actually have a lot of the skill sets that really work for a startup founder. They just need to sell something that's legal, not illegal.
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Right. Is that a photo of Dave on the brea