Brian MacMahon: Bold Growth in the Founder's Journey

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks to Brian MacMahon of Expert DOJO. Brian specializes in helping entrepreneurs become more successful in their business by using all the tools available as owner of the largest peer to peer peak performance academy in the world. Expert DOJO improves the success rate of early-stage entrepreneurs with investment, foundation, showcasing, influence, and community.

 

You can reach Brian at :

[email protected]

https://expertdojo.com/

 

Transcription: 

00:15
All right. Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe. I own and operate the consulting firm NextAct Advisors. I have a really simple mission.

00:44
I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. The Founders Sandbox, which you're visiting today, is an additional channel to feature founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers who, like me, want to use the power of private enterprises, be they...

01:13
small, medium, or large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with a guest on topics that will include resilience for purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide a really fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance.

01:42
Today, my guest is Brian McNeha, who has an alias of the head honcho of Expert Dojo. And I want to thank you for joining me today. My pleasure. Can't think of anywhere I'd rather be than hanging out with my buddy, Brenda. You know, we did some practice for this. I've known for you for about seven years now. Because I'm so passionate about sustainable growth and I've seen the work you've done.

02:09
with a couple of my clients that have gone through the Expert Dojo Accelerator Program. I think the topic that we're going to kind of kick around here in the sandbox is bold growth in the founder's journey. I've observed the Expert Dojo, and particularly Brian, at the Santa Monica-based Accelerator Program that is now celebrating its seventh anniversary. Congratulations, Brian. Did you ever think you'd make seven years?

02:39
Gosh, I didn't even know. Listen, you know me. What were the chances, right? What were the chances? Never good, but we're here. We're still alive. We're still going. Yeah. So in addition to my brief introduction, let me tell you a little bit about Expert Dojo. So Brian within Expert Dojo specializes unlike other accelerators in not only a four-week

03:09
become more successful in their business by using all the tools available as owner of the largest peer-to-peer peak performance academy in the world. Expert Dojo improves the success rate of early stage entrepreneurs with investment foundation showcasing, influencing, and community building. It truly is quite unique. And we're not going to...

03:38
um, hide that I've known you at first. I met you about the time you were founding expert dojo seven years ago. I was then in the angel community. I was more in orange County and you would often be a panelist Brian. And there was this undeniable Irish accent. So my last name, the cave is that all right. I like Irishman, but also your son Liam was always in tow. And I thought.

04:08
your insights as well in the panel panels in which you participated were very unconventional to what I had been exposed to. And I, um, I still think so today and wanted you to be a guest on the founder sandbox because of your unconventional approach to helping entrepreneurs in their bold

04:37
broader audience. So I want you to kick off with where did it all begin Brian seven years ago. Oh my gosh, you're asking an Irish man to tell a story. How long is your podcast? I think we need some extra time. We can always we can go forever and then I'll have cut it out. All right. Yeah, you can cut me down. That's fine. So so look, I'm a lover of life.

05:04
I just love life. Life is great and the world is great and there's so many fabulous places to go and live. And I've been really fortunate in that I have made sure that I did as much of that as I possibly could and spent many, many years traveling around with different businesses just enjoying the world. Right. And so my conclusion is everybody's awesome. We all pretty much have the same wants and needs and desires. And if we really search for good things, then amazing things can happen.

05:33
while most people never really go on that journey. And that's what's so nice about early stage startup. They go on that journey, like they grab that journey by the short and curlies and they just stay with it all the way through. So it's incredibly brave and it's a beautiful thing to watch. And if you're really lucky, you get to be like the Linda McCartney, right? You get to be around while the Rolling Stones are there and you gotta be around while you've got the Beatles and you got the whole thing and you get a photograph at all and be immersed in it all.

06:02
And I think that's the real joy that you and I have, is that we're in the most creative place in the world, in Southern California, with people who have the largest dreams and aspirations, being very, very close to what tomorrow is gonna look like every single day. So who else can get that, right? So I found myself here about eight years ago. I had been in New York beforehand. I love New York, it's just a fantastic place, and just very aligned with my personality. Got down here.

06:32
realized there was a ton of incredible, creative, phenomenal folk in the early stage space, but also noticed that there was a tremendous amount of failure. And that's okay, you know, from success, success should come from failure in some ways, if that needs to happen. But I noticed that the failure was all happening with a very specific group of people who are all the really good entrepreneurs who are not connected, and the success was all happening with a very specific group of people.

06:57
who are all generally young boys who went to high schools who mommy and daddy gave them a unicorn for their birthday. And I just, and so I'm fine with a bit of unfairness. I think it's okay. When you know, if I work harder than the guy or gal next door, then, you know, my kid and family and me and stuff we should be get a little bit more unfairness because we work hard, right? But it should just be a small amount. And if it's not, if it's a huge amount what happens is people just become useless. And so

07:24
I looked and sometimes these things are easier to see from the outside, but I looked at what was happening within venture capital in the United States. And I genuinely was worried. I felt that in many ways it's turning into a cancer, which is spreading. And the early stage startups, the really wonderful creators were not being given an opportunity to do so. So we took this wonderful location here in Santa Monica, which if anybody looked from the outside would say, why are they in a refurbished restaurant?

07:52
which hasn't even really been refurbished. It's still kind of the same restaurant it was eight years ago. And I can tell you because it was the only thing that was offered to us. And we set up our incubator stroke, accelerator stroke. We just want to get involved in the community. And then we just set about learning and, and, you know, that learning turned into learning and focusing on growth as the main thing that can compete with the bias and overcome it.

08:19
And because growth ties into greed and greed and aligned greed will always be out bias of which there's a tremendous amount. And then our learning and learning and then learning and growth turned into learning and growth and investment. And that took us to where we are today. Now we have like 220 investments in early stage companies. We invest in companies all over the world from Africa to India to South America to the US. We love the early stage space. And we use growth as our.

08:48
absolute weapon and all of the people around us who are experts at growth to be able to help those founders get to places they would genuinely find it difficult to get to themselves. You know, that was eloquent. It was also fun. I was accompanying you along that journey. I didn't realize you started out in New York. I also spent a lot of my time years ago in New York and when I found LA, I decided to settle here.

09:16
to your point, very creative economy. A lot of things are happening, particularly down in SoCal now. So why did you choose a four week program that's really turns into a three year program? I think that's truly unique among accelerators that I've been exposed to. Talk us through that. You know, one of the advantages, one of the advantages I think we have in venture is that we started out not having a clue what we were doing.

09:46
And we embrace that because the moment you feel you know what you're doing, you're doomed, right? That's the day you sit back, you send out manuals, you put processes out and you tell people that you got this and you don't because the world keeps on evolving and it keeps on changing. So we knew at the beginning, we knew there was something terribly wrong in venture and we knew that

10:11
We didn't have the answers, but there were thousands of entrepreneurs every single day in Santa Monica starting out on the journey. And within their journey would be the answers. So we spent all of our time studying, watching, learning, adapting, executing based on what we saw, learning from what we executed, and then just getting better and better and better. And I genuinely don't feel a single bit different today than I felt eight years ago. I still feel we haven't got a clue.

10:41
I feel that most other folks, I think it's a real pleasure and it's a gift to move from unconscious incompetent to conscious incompetent. It's a really beautiful place to be because then you can really strive to move forward to the conscious competent, right? Which is when you're on your bike and you're cycling, but you know you could fall off to unconsciously competent, right? But you have to make it through that journey. And most people never make it away from unconsciously incompetent. They just think they're awesome.

11:10
and everything is great and it's working. So we started off with the four week, we started off actually with a eight week program. We started off actually with a physical eight week program. And we would say to like some random person in Africa, hey, you should jump on a plane, take this money that we're gonna give you, invest in you, jump on a plane, travel over to Santa Monica, find the most expensive hotels on the planet, which is what we have in Santa Monica.

11:36
eat in the most expensive places. Like even ramen is going to take most of the investment that we're going to be given to you. And then you're going to come through a program and you're going to be so wowed by just the mesmerizing fact of being in the same room as us, that you're going to think this is a great idea, right? And so we thought that was awesome until the pandemic came. And then we're like, no, that was stupid. Like, why are we doing this? It makes no sense. And then we thought, oh, we should do something for a 12 week program until we realized

12:03
We're just wasting entrepreneurs times for 12 weeks and they have way better things to do than sitting classes with us. So then we started to bring it down to like five weeks, four weeks, and then we started to do longer demo days with investors. And then people would come through the programs and we have amazing trainers, like folks that you know really well, like John McDonald and Ryan Fowland. And we've got Ryan and Francis from Camino5 who train on branding. It's all focused on growth.

12:31
So people would come into the training and they would say, wow, that was incredible. I feel great. I feel fabulous. The world is gonna be different. And then it would be Monday and they would go back to what they were doing before. So we realized it wasn't good enough just to move away from the standard accelerator model of passing on mentors who are next to useless because they don't know enough about the company and investors who are no more than a commodity. So again, next to useless because

12:58
they're just looking at every deal that's out there anyway. It wasn't enough to just move to growth. We actually have to become the growth resource. And I would say in those early days, maybe our product market fit was 5% in that we knew that there needed to be one and that we started with the growth. And I'd say today it's probably 12%.

13:22
So you have some numbers on that. What I was struck by also is from get go, because there are Friday pitch events. So you pitch until you're blue in the face, right? As a founder. And that truly is unique. And it starts building from week one through the two or three years, right? And money comes along the way. So. Yeah.

13:50
You have to, Brenda. I'll just say on that. I think what's totally wrong with how venture is done is that the emphasis is 80% on being an incredible picture to investors. And look, having a great relationship with money is something that does need to be learned. And the better founders are the ones that have better relationships with money. And what I mean by better relationships are they're not afraid of money. Too many people are afraid of what money will do to them. And what we try and encourage is that you think of money as a tool. However.

14:20
It still shouldn't be 80% of the job of building a business. It should be 30%, right? And the other 70% should be, I am gonna build the biggest badass business the world has ever seen. I'm gonna kick the heck out of all of my competitors. And then as I'm doing that, then I get lots of investment, get more fuel, I get more people around me, then more people kick the Badoobies out of our competitors and so on and so on, the cycle goes on.

14:49
So really, I actually think when we look at kind of what we achieve most, it really is focusing the founders on that necessity to grow on a really strong foundation and then build this process that allows them to continue to execute, learn, optimize and scale. Yeah, and also one thing that I'd add again, two of my clients have gone through the Accelerator program. I was so impressed. I actually did hire.

15:18
one of your collaborators, Ryan Follin, to help me work on my podcast, quite frankly. But you work with a lot of, you have different cohorts. You also are invested in quite a few women-led companies, but you have a lot of technical founders. And I was struck, you know, you start out with, it's about the story, it's not about the features. And by week two, or by week...

15:45
three, those technical founders, I've seen them in med tech, I've seen them in enterprise SaaS, I've seen them across the board. They stopped talking about the features and they start talking about story. And again, that's thanks to you and the mentors that you bring to train and really go through those arduous weeks. And look, Brenda, on that point, look, all of us.

16:13
are led by stories. We love stories. We did stories by the campfire. Like before there was any, can you imagine a world before there was like HBO and CNN and Fox News and stuff? And that's why we have a sandbox. It existed back then. And back then there's little old fire going on. Even before they'd worked out the whole fire thing, which was a startup, by the way, before that they're like sitting around a cold something and they're like, hey, you know what? It's so damn cold.

16:41
And I'm sitting in this place and nobody's invented clothes yet. Nobody's invented a fire. Why don't we tell a story? Cause that's all we got. Right. So we, since the very beginning of time, the only thing that has stayed consistent is the greatest storytellers are the ones that always win. Always. So Nike killer storytellers, they don't sell sneakers. They sell the feeling of victory and participation. Right. Patagonia.

17:07
You want to compete with Patagonia if you're American Apparel? I don't think so. They don't sell t-shirts in Patagonia. They sell a better human being. Apple. Forget about it. They get to sell their computers for three times more. I have an Apple computer. You think I need an Apple computer? Seriously, I could work with a Dell computer, no problem. Save a thousand bucks, go to Cancun and have a very nice holiday. But why don't I do it?

17:32
Because genuinely I am convinced I'm not only more successful with an Apple computer, but I'm better looking. Right? I'm convinced of it. So they don't sell computers. They sell how these things make us feel. So we have to move people off features. We have to move them to a place where their consumers really understand what the enemy is that they're facing and they understand how to overcome that enemy and that this product

18:00
is seen as the enabler of doing that. Wow. If you haven't heard about Expert Dojo until my podcast, you've got to look it up. In the show notes, you'll get the URL. This is the last question before we get into some fun questions. Although these are fun questions up until now. So, you know, I sat in on an interview process that you kicked off with one of my clients who was considering an investment by Expert Dojo.

18:31
And something about how you discover talent, right? Your cohorts are relatively small, right? In size. Can you talk to me about what is it that you look for? Right? Spoiler alert. What is it that you look for in those founders in their intake interviews that really clinches the deal to make that investment? Ooh. So that's hard because

19:00
It's not really one thing. Now, if I take your clients, your founder, and by the way, I look at the companies we invest in as our clients, right? I don't look at them as investing companies. I look at what I'm bringing them in. We are a sales organization, right? And when we have them in there, we are a service organization, which means we're working for them. And I think that's also a very big difference with venture capitalists. Too many people get carried away with the fact that they think the money is valuable and it's not.

19:29
It's just a commodity to get into a place. But I do realize that to go on this journey that we go on, you have to be, it's not just crazy. Crazy is just too basic. You have to be selfish, right? You have to be so selfish. Like to the extent that you believe that what you're doing is so incredibly important, that there is literally nothing else in the world that compares to it.

19:53
that different people believe this to varying facts. I'm kind of far down on this scale, but like you don't need to be like as far as me, you can be in the middle, but you have to be at a place where you are going to be questioned and you are going to be tested. And when you are, then you are worthy, right? And most folks are not. Most folks, they look at a decent Netflix documentary and they're like, oh, you know, I had that idea. I had that idea like so long ago, I know that.

20:22
are somebody else like, oh, I've got this great idea. We're going to do it. It's not the idea. And it's not even the implementation. And it's not even the execution of the implementation. All those things are table stakes. Right. It is the character that remains when things go, go, go, go left field. And they will, everything will happen. You'll have your partner will suddenly do bad things to you.

20:48
The partner won't see it that way. Your partner will see it that you did bad things to that person, but it will go wrong. Your process, your perfect, wonderful process, whether you're an accelerator or whether you're selling something else will go wrong. It won't be as perfect as you thought it was. A competitor will come in. They'll hit you at lower prices, better service. People will steal your people. Unfair things will happen like the pandemic. Like seriously, can you imagine if you were a bar in Ireland and somebody said to you,

21:17
I predict the future. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to close down for a year and a half because nobody's going to be allowed into a bar. You'd be like, get out of here. You've had too much to drink. Like it's literally impossible, unfair. So who makes it through? It's not just that like the great people who own bars make it through. They dominate after that because 80% of the people cannot believe that God is that unfair to them, right? Because they got to blame someone.

21:45
right? So something terrible happens. So it's that character and you look into their eyes. Now, they need to have a product that the customer wants. So there needs to be a customer truth. So I call it customer truth meets character. That's it. Right? You either have the only truth in the world. It's not your mom. It's not your friends. It's not the people who like took it at the beginning because they owe you something. It is your customers and what are they telling you about what you have built? And it's not your customers on the first day. It's your customers over a period of time.

22:15
Now, we don't need the customers to be saying, you're the best entrepreneur in the world. You've got the best product in the world. But we need them to be saying something that we can have as a baseline. Then we layer in the character. So your company, I'll take the first company who's just like most awesome person in the world. And I remember when we first met and I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to have to sell this because this guy, I knew you, but you weren't going to be easy either.

22:42
Because both of you are like, I don't even know that we need an accelerator. We're doing pretty well. And the, my whole basis on that whole interaction was I am going to help you crash into the wall at a higher velocity than you're going to do on your own. That was the whole principle of what we were selling. That's all. And we're not saying that the crash is not going to hurt. We're not actually even saying you're going to survive the crash. What we're just saying is.

23:10
You gotta go faster and you gotta go harder and you gotta be braver because the objective is not for this business to last forever. The objective is for this business to go in either a ball of flames or for it to break through the wall and get there in like half or a quarter of the time and he is on fire right now. On fire together with his amazing advisor, the lady Brenda.

23:40
Thank you. Thank you. And it's always a pleasure to spend time with you, Brian. And before you, we close on this interview. I do want my listeners to know how to contact you. Can you give a brief, you know, how to contact you? Is it the website, your email? Anybody can contact me. Anybody can contact me on my email and I reply to everybody. It's

24:09
And the type of folks that we love contacting us are early stage entrepreneurs looking for investment. We like you if you're focused on growth, if you're not focused on growth, then we can refer you over to other accelerators who will like you just as much. And if you are a mentor, are you someone who likes and supports and helps the startup community? Wonderful. Come on in. We've got startups that could do with your help and would love to get any advice that you can provide to them.

24:35
And really any providers of growth services, just growth. Look, you can tell, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. Anybody in growth, we like you. Anybody else, just you can come to our events and parties. But if you're in growth, we like you very much. Thank you. So you know, the Founder Sandbox is a podcast. I also do publish quite a bit thought pieces on the work I do with, I will only work with growth.

25:04
companies as well. And it's around purpose driven enterprises, it's around resilience, and it's around sustainable growth. So I'd like you to tell me what the meaning, what meaning does sustainable growth have for you?

25:19
You're on. Right. I layer in purpose driven enterprises as well. Because I like that. Right. So, you know, look, anybody can get growth for a period of time. Anyone. Like you just throw enough money and you can get growth for a period of time. But you need your customers. You need your customers approval and validation to be able to get sustainable growth. And to get that approval and validation, you have to have a solid platform.

25:47
to be building that growth from. Like you gotta give value. If you're not giving value, your customers won't give you that approval and they won't give you that validation. And that platform has to be over a long period of time without ever losing focus on who you serve. We serve the people we invest in. We don't sit like they're a bank account waiting for it to come through. I fret if we're not providing a good enough service to people and want my people to fix it if we're not doing it well enough.

26:16
Your customer is your God and Godess, and you gotta make sure that you adore those people every single day, and you can only do that by finding out their problems and their enemies and dealing with them. Now, purpose builds is really awesome, because that's when you can take it to a new level. So I mentioned American Apparel earlier on. They just provided all those things that I said in there, R. Dell computers, right? They provided all those things I just said in there all the way through.

26:43
great customer service, really good equipment, the equipment works, it does what it's supposed to do. You wanna take it to the next level, you gotta make people feel. And there are wonderful people. Like I love Patagonia, my favorite brand in the whole world. I love him. I just think he's amazing, they're amazing. Every single thing they do is really say to their customers and non-customers, if you do not buy your stuff here, you are probably not as good a person as the folks who do.

27:12
And they would only say probably because they're trying to be polite because they're nice people. But pretty much in their heart of hearts, they know that you're a worse person. Right. Because everything that they do is about making the planet and humanity better. So if you were aligned with that, you're buying your stuff there. You're not buying it in America at Apparel, no matter how good a service you're giving to your customers. So for founders, for everyone, for us.

27:40
You've got to have your why built into your storytelling and your brand. And if you are awesome, like Patagonia, like Thomas Shoes, even like Nike, in many ways, or like Apple, you take that a level further whereby you build a purpose into what you're doing so people understand your vision of a better world. And they just want to be a part of it. Oh, no. You're not going to get off with yet another one. What about resilience? Is that a character?

28:09
Is that a character that you find? I have tremendous resilience and I find it very, very close to like stupidity. Cause I think, you know, sometimes I used to think I was really brave until somebody said to me, it's not brave if you don't realize how dangerous it is while you're doing it. Right. And it's totally true. I'm an idiot, but I'm very happy with my current status. So I think that entrepreneurs, we live in this world of

28:37
of denial of the absolute insanity of what we're doing on a daily basis in the very vivid search of something that is so much greater that could be created if we went down a logical path. Beautiful. One last question. Did you have fun, Brian, in the founder sandbox? Did you have fun? Always.

29:03
You're my buddy. We're building this community together. And by the way, let me finish with this one thing is nobody does anything alone. Like we may invest in companies, but it's we and like our partner, who's our financial partner who committed into this. Like we may be supporting companies, but it's we and you in helping make this community like an incredibly awesome place. Like...

29:26
There's a we in everything here. And for folks that are not aware of what's happening in Santa Monica and LA and so-called proper, then watch out because there's a force coming through. And it is different than anything that you're gonna see in a far more superficial San Francisco, or Valley or anywhere else, because you've got folks like Brenda and myself in homage to her and other folks out there who are just building an incredible community. So I'm proud and happy to be your friend and to be on these podcasts.

29:56
support you in the same way that you have done me all.

30:02
Thank you. Thank you. A toast to you, Brian. Seven years with Expert Dojo and helping over 200 founders build resilience and high growth companies. So thank you again. And I'm signing off from the sandbox.

30:23
Until next time, take care.