Transcript
John Rowa: Yeah? We’re good? We’re good to go? I think we are. Is it live?
Shiloh Wilmoth: I think the air is kind of …
John Rowa: The air’s running? That’s okay. It’s still. It’s alright.
Greg Trimble: He must have some videographer in his blood-
John Rowa: Dude he does, I can feel it.
Shiloh Wilmoth: Me?
Greg Trimble: ‘Cause he’s worried about the air.
John Rowa: I know. You’re wanting a job here aren’t you?
Shiloh Wilmoth: It’s just kind of annoying.
Greg Trimble: [crosstalk 00:00:26] that noise out we’re going to have to bring it into Audacity and-
John Rowa: That’s smart man, very smart. Cool. Awesome. Well, welcome to the Lemonade Stand Live Stream Lunch & Learn. Today I have a very cool … Yeah clap that’s awesome Shiloh you can clap. That’s … Shiloh, yay. Today I have a really awesome special guest in studio, office, what is this … A lounge room. And we’ll be talking to Shiloh here in just a minute-
Shiloh Wilmoth: It’s a very cool one.
John Rowa: It’s a very cool one, you like it here? Well that’s cool I’m glad you like it. We built it just for you. Last week it looked nothing like this. And-
Shiloh Wilmoth: Okay thank you.
John Rowa: Yeah, you’re welcome. That was easy. But, just wanted to let you guys know out there. If you haven’t yet, check out our website lemonadestand.org/university. It is a really cool tool that we post awesome advice, tips for starting a business, and it’s basically our journey and how we built a seven figure business using internet marketing and general business practices. So, we hope you like it, check it out, lemonadestand.org/university.
But for today, I am joined by a very cool special guest Shiloh Wilmoth. Shiloh say hello to everybody.
Shiloh Wilmoth: Hello.
John Rowa: That was … Yeah we can clap for Shiloh. Shiloh is an eight-year-old entrepreneur. He started his own lemonade stand. How do you like our lemonade stand, Shiloh?
Shiloh Wilmoth: Well I’ve never really experienced it.
John Rowa: You’re in it right now. Is it bigger than your lemonade stand?
Shiloh Wilmoth: Yeah, way bigger.
John Rowa: Way bigger. It’s alright. You probably have better lemonade than we do.
Shiloh Wilmoth: Well you don’t really sell lemonade.
John Rowa: Shhh don’t tell people.
Shiloh Wilmoth: I didn’t know.
John Rowa: I’m kidding. But also if you’re not aware, November is Diabetes Awareness Month and Shiloh actually is not only an amazing eight-year-old entrepreneur, but he lives with type 1 diabetes. So we just wanted to bring Shiloh in, talk a little bit about his journey, about starting a lemonade stand and also living with type 1 diabetes and just being the awesome, cool dude he is. Well, he’s humble as well folks. He’s very humble and it’s awesome.
Shiloh, so, how did you find out that you had type 1 diabetes?
Shiloh Wilmoth: When I was four … I didn’t have to do shots or prick my finger and then my life changed and I just had to do it for four years or three years. I don’t know. But-
John Rowa: We’ll get to the math later … That’s okay.
But now you’ve gotta do all the shots, prick your finger, all that kind of stuff. How often a day?
Shiloh Wilmoth: I probably have to do six shots a day-
John Rowa: You did one right before we started actually, I saw that.
Shiloh Wilmoth: Yeah.
John Rowa: But you’ve gotten used to it now, or no?
Shiloh Wilmoth: I’m used to it.
John Rowa: Used to it now. Well that’s ’cause you’re so strong. You’re awesome man.
Greg Trimble: Does it hurt?
John Rowa: Yeah, does it hurt? [crosstalk 00:03:47]
Greg Trimble: Yeah, ’cause if I had to do them, I would pass out.
Shiloh Wilmoth: Well most people it hurts. It doesn’t for me.
John Rowa: He’s strong. Greg would pass out-
Greg Trimble: I would pass out.
John Rowa: Because he’s a weakling. [crosstalk 00:03:55] But Shiloh is a strong man, and he is a good man.
Shiloh Wilmoth: Well, I’m not really a man. I’m just a kid.
Greg Trimble: I love [inaudible 00:04:05]
John Rowa: That is really besides the point Shiloh, don’t make me look bad.
Shiloh Wilmoth: I’m not going to make you look bad-
John Rowa: I’m just kidding with you. What would you tell other kids who are dealing with diabetes?
Shiloh Wilmoth: If you guys have diabetes, I know you guys could probably … I’m kind of a scaredy cat, a little bit, by something. And it’s not good, but I know you guys could do it and you might have probably a long journey or maybe you’re just starting, but I know you guys could do it.
John Rowa: That’s awesome. That’s good advice man. So Shiloh, not only dealing with the disease, which is enough. It’s a very life-changing type of thing for you and your family obviously. But Shiloh … The heart of Lemonade Stand and here in our agency, our business, is to help others build their own Lemonade Stand, their own business, which is something you’re doing. Your mom actually posted this cool picture of you running your lemonade stand, taking care of your … You were doing your shots at the … You were about to prick your finger. So, it’s pretty cool man. You’re doing the work while also dealing with your disease. Don’t worry, I won’t post the video of you dancing. We won’t post that one. But that’s in-
Shiloh Wilmoth: I don’t care. Do it.
John Rowa: You want to do it? I’ll ask [inaudible 00:05:40], cool. So, what’s your favorite part about running your own lemonade stand.
Shiloh Wilmoth: It’s not really that traditional.
John Rowa: Really?
Shiloh Wilmoth: I dance, I make money, I give people lemonade if they pay for me.
John Rowa: But if they pay? So not everybody’s paying? You’re just trying to help people out, spread the word, get awareness out … That’s smart man, that’s really good. [crosstalk 00:06:11] That’s in our advice today, so that’s good. So, when you get older, do you want to own your own business?
Shiloh Wilmoth: Yes.
John Rowa: Yes? What type of business?
Shiloh Wilmoth: I don’t know, just anything that comes from my heart … Or maybe this place cause this place is amazing.
John Rowa: You wanna own this place? He wants to own this place. Look out, everybody. You all better get ready, we have a new boss. His name is Shiloh, he’s at least three or four years from taking over, but it’s gonna happen. That’s good man, this is cool, you like what we do here so far?
Shiloh Wilmoth: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
John Rowa: You know how to build websites? Do any of that marketing?
Shiloh Wilmoth: No.
John Rowa: No? Not yet? We’ll get him hooked up. He can go to lemonadestand.org/university and find out more, right?
Shiloh Wilmoth: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
John Rowa: That’s what he’s [inaudible 00:06:59] So if you had any advice for a young person your age, or any young person, what would it be about starting a lemonade stand? What would you tell people about getting started in their own business.
Shiloh Wilmoth: If you have a speaker or anything, dance. Dance or do whatever you want, but my most successful tip is … Mostly dancing.
John Rowa: Dancing.
Shiloh Wilmoth: Yes.
John Rowa: Well-
Shiloh Wilmoth: Just ’cause people actually give me money and don’t buy the lemonade.
John Rowa: That’s good man. That’s actually a good point. You’ve found a very good … We call it a position. A good marketing position where you’ve really established your own messaging. Which is, “Just dance, lemonade-”
Shiloh Wilmoth: A position like soccer.
John Rowa: Well, a little different but yeah, essentially.
Shiloh Wilmoth: [crosstalk 00:07:56] … Defense
John Rowa: Yeah, there’s different positions. Basically, you’re establishing a market for yourself and what you do differently and unique is, dance. So folks, if you’re out there and wondering what you can do for your own business, just dance. And that will-
Shiloh Wilmoth: There’s actually a game called Just Dance.
John Rowa: Just Dance that is actually very true. Awesome Shiloh. Well, Shiloh, thank you so much for coming today and sharing your story. It’s really awesome that you are not only starting your own business but you’re going through what you’re going through, and you’re just pushing ahead. To everybody out there, if you’re dealing with diabetes as well, we just want to encourage you. Shiloh here, he’s only eight years old and he’s running his own business. He’s already doing so much, he’s active in soccer, and he’s just a really cool kid. And we’re so thankful we had him here. Shiloh. Come on everybody give Shiloh a really cool hand. And, before you go down Shiloh, we just wanted to thank you for coming, and we wanted to give you a little gift. An investment into your lemonade stand. So Shiloh, thank you for coming. Have a good one. Thank you for … Anything else you’d like to share? Say with anybody?
Shiloh Wilmoth: No I’m good.
John Rowa: You’re good. We’re good too. Thanks.
Shiloh Wilmoth: Hopefully I’ll come back here.
John Rowa: You wanna come back here? And take over right?
Greg Trimble: That’s your first venture capital deal right there.
John Rowa: Yep, you’ve already got funding.
Greg Trimble: So send the stock certificate [crosstalk 00:09:16]
Shiloh Wilmoth: Okay.
John Rowa: Got it. Everybody give Shiloh a big hand, you can go ahead and sit down with your mom Shiloh. Awesome.
So Shiloh is just really cool, we’re just so thankful to have him here. But beyond just the awesomeness that Shiloh is, we wanted to share a couple quick tips to you as well if you’re starting your own business. And that’s, “10 Dos and Don’ts,” when launching a business. And there are a lot of dos and don’ts. We could have gone over so many of them for the next year, but some of the things we learned and … When we say, “Do’s and Don’ts,” these are the thing’s we’ve found out because of, basically, what we’ve gone through. We’ve made a lot of great choices, a lot of mistakes, and have just learned along the way. So our whole goal is just to fail forward when we do fail. So I wanted to share 10 of them with you. 10 dos and don’ts when launching a new business.
First one: Do narrow your focus. So, I know when you are launching a new business, you want to start doing a whole bunch of things. You have all these great ideas. You know when we started we had seven different businesses running at the same time, and trying to figure out which one is best. And you really got to narrow your focus. You can’t serve anyone and everyone. We can’t serve everyone but you’ve gotta find a specific market to target and market to, and ultimately serve.
So we’ve definitely found our niche, but at the same time the don’t is: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. When you’re starting a new business a lot of people, they’ll just sit on one idea only and, “This is the best idea ever,” and they’ll just throw all their eggs in one basket, and if it fails they’re just stuck. So you’ve kind of gotta find the good balance of starting a business, focusing on what you’re good at, but also finding out all the things … Test … Finding out which things work best throughout your business launch. So, for example, if you’re starting a new business with a few different products, focus on the best ones that work, and then just test and see which ones bring the most revenue. Start narrowing down your focus and then eventually when you’ve found the one that is the one, really fine-tune it and really focus on that even more. Just don’t put your eggs in one basket, especially when it comes to clients.
So if you serve, for example, multiple clients, if you have big clients you’re gonna be stuck serving only big clients, and only those guys. If one of them or two of them leave, you’re going to be absolutely stuck … And basically held to whatever they have you do. And if one of them leaves, you’re gonna be in trouble. So, do focus and narrow your business, but don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
Greg Trimble: So John what would be a good example of, “Narrow your focus,” a good business.
John Rowa: A good business? Narrow your focus?
Greg Trimble: Yeah, like I’ve got a lot in mind but I’m curious.
John Rowa: You can come up and share it if you want.
Greg Trimble: No-
John Rowa: What is … Narrow your focus, as far as ours?
Greg Trimble: Yeah, like what do you think the best company that does that out there?
John Rowa: Best company that narrows their focus-
Greg Trimble: I just ate one yesterday on the way home.
John Rowa: What are you going to say, In-N-Out?
Greg Trimble: In-N-Out.
John Rowa: So, I knew Greg was gonna say this-
Greg Trimble: [crosstalk 00:12:38] They never have to innovate, they just-
John Rowa: Yeah, it’s true. So, In-N-Out is the best restaurant example. In-N-Out does three things, right? Hamburger, cheeseburger, or double hamburger, essentially. They’ve found what works, they’ve narrowed their focus, and they’ve really driven that home. And I tell Greg this all the time, I get scared when I go to a small place that has just launched and they have a billion things on their menu. I’m like, “There’s no way that that chef back there can make all this stuff. There’s no way. It’s impossible.” In-N-Out is a perfect example. They’ve found their focus, narrowed it down, and really hit it hard. And it’s obviously working well for them.
Greg Trimble: So make really good lemonade.
John Rowa: Make really good lemonade. Second Do: Create a unique position and identity. So Shiloh actually totally touched upon this. People don’t pay him just because he sells lemonade, they pay him ’cause he’s dancing for them. His unique position and identity is that he’s got a fun stinkin’ lemonade stand, right? And he’s dancing, having a lot of fun out there, drawing people in. So it’s pretty cool right? Everybody likes paying you because you’re just doing cool stuff out there. It’s different than every other lemonade stand. So create a unique position and identity.
However, don’t trademark every idea you have. A lot of times we see people, they’ll come in, they’ll create a logo and they’ll create an idea, or product, or service. And they’ll start trademarking everything because they think they have the best idea in the world. They’ll trademark their name, they’ll trademark their logo graphic, they’ll trademark the logo itself as a whole entity. And they’ll pay thousands of dollars to trademark their ideas, their assets, just because they don’t want anybody else to steal it. But don’t worry about anyone else stealing what nobody else has heard about it. You want to build something? Wait till it’s actually established a market, and wait till you know it’s working before investing in it further and trademarking it. So find a unique idea, establish a unique position and identity, but don’t just trademark every single idea you have and waste all your money.
Dos: Create checklists. The third Do. Create a checklist, and here at Lemonade Stand, we’ve created very specific onboarding checklists, web design checklists that help guide us through servicing our clients and our customers every day. We don’t want to let anything slip through the cracks. We want to be able to say, “Yes. We’re going to do this, this, this, this and this. We’re gonna run through all of our processes and make sure all of our clients are taken care of in the best way possible.” But the Don’t is: Don’t rely completely on checklists. A lot of times employees and team members, they’ll put their heads down and not focus on the big picture, which is serving the client, and doing what’s best for them.
If you’ve ever called a big company like AT&T or Charter Communications or anything like that, and you have to call and they run you through their troubleshooting checklists, right? Have you ever gone through that? It’s like the most annoying customer service experience ever. Good companies do well to look past the checklist at some point and really help you, and find your need, and really service you. So you wanna be very careful to not just focus completely on checklists, but to also really serve your clients in a meaningful way.
Do Number Four: Give away as much as you can. So, when we started Lemonade Stand, we initially had a business that gave away free websites. It was called Free Custom Website, and the business’s whole goal was to just give away websites, do free work for people, just for the opportunity to get to know them, to have relationships with them, and to hopefully engage them to work with us further. It was great way for us to build our portfolio. It was a great way for us to train and do more work, but when we were growing, nobody was gonna just pay us thousands of dollars just because we said we were good at something. We had to show them. And this was a good way to do it. So when it’s possible, give away what you can to help establish relationships. To help build a portfolio.
At the same time though, the Don’t is: Don’t work without a detailed scope of work. So, don’t do all the websites, don’t do all the projects, all the work.
Greg Trimble: [crosstalk 00:17:06] about that art?
John Rowa: You do it without building a very specific scope of work, so that way people know exactly what you will do for them, what you won’t do for them, and that way you won’t get caught doing too much and be hurt by it in the future.
Finally, number five. Five. Number Five Do is, “Hire good people,” So, our experience here at Lemonade Stand is we have, probably the best, coolest team in the world. Everybody here we love, and we love working with every day. And we’re so committed to working with those … Aww come here. That was so sweet Greg. Thank you.
Greg Trimble: You were talking about all that love.
John Rowa: That was the first time he’s hugged me ever. So, we have really cool people here, and we are completely and totally sold on hiring the right people. Good people. And when I say, “Good people,” I don’t mean just good workers, but I mean good, honest people. You’re going to spend the majority of your week with the people that you work with. And you wanna enjoy them, and enjoy being with them. So hire good people that you get along with.
The Don’t: Hire good interviews. We’ve experienced this quite a bit. People who come in and they are really great interviews. They say the right things, look the right way, they tell the right joke or they show their flashy resume. But when they get here, they are not the perfect fit. So don’t just hire somebody because of their interview. That doesn’t mean don’t do good interviews or don’t hire people because they are good interviewers. A good interviewer can also be a good worker, but don’t just focus solely on that. Don’t just focus on that’s their only best asset. Look at their previous work, look at their history, do multiple interviews especially outside of the work realm. Like one thing we do, is if possible, is get to know them outside of the office, like with a dinner or a lunch, or just building up a relationship with them some way. So try to find good people rather than just good interviewers, and it will be a huge benefit to your business.
Awesome? Cool. So, if you haven’t yet already, like I said, lemonadestand.org/university. Check it out, check out our journey, there’s a whole bunch more advice on here. Tips for how to launch your business, how to run it, and how to lead and … Just good advice for your business. So check it out, lemonadestand.org/university. And I just want to thank everybody, coming for our, what is it? Our third Live Stream Lunch & Learn? We’ll have another one, not next week. Next week is Thanksgiving, so have a happy Thanksgiving. But the following week, December 1, will be our next Live Stream Lunch & Learn.
Thank you guys so much for joining us, thank you to Shiloh and his family for coming out and sharing his story. That was pretty awesome man, and we’re just so thankful you came. So thank you guys so much for joining us online if you’re watching live on Facebook. We’ll see you again in two weeks, December 1. Have a great day.
Greg Trimble: Bye.