Ethan Mayers
Today we are in South by Southwest, Austin’s international festival of media and tech. There we meet Ethan Mayers, CEO of TILT innovations and successful serial entrepreneur.
Ethan’s been a mentor to high-potential entrepreneurs for years, and in that time he’s learned a thing or two.
He talks with us about how he became a serial entrepreneur and how he helps other entrepreneurs in moving to the US. He’s very open about how the move isn’t for everyone, that there are risks involved, and that people need to look out for a few things.
We also talk about the worst mistakes entrepreneurs can make, the importance of being open to change, and how crucial it is to nail your storytelling when running a company.
”The single biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is to fall in love with their idea. Fall in love with your process and fall in love with your team.”
- Ethan Mayers
Time Stamps:
1:49 - How Ethan became the serial entrepreneur that he is today.
4:54 - Where Ethan gained confidence in his role as an entrepreneur.
8:10 - Different mentalities, how they affect you, and how they change from family to family and country to country.
10:37 - The entrepreneurial journey, it’s highs and lows, and whether it’s for you.
13:45 - The fashionability of entrepreneurship and how it’s not for everyone.
15:28 - Advice for entrepreneurs in Europe who are thinking of moving their business to America.
19:34 - The different markets and niches within America and how each needs to be treated differently.
24:09 - The characteristics that the best entrepreneurs share, and whether they need a certain personality to succeed.
29:04 - Ethan’s 3 pillar approach when working out what to do next.
31:01 - Advice for a European that’s looking at America as a lifestyle choice
Resources:
Connect with Kevin Turley: Website
Connect with Sebastian Sauerborn: LinkedIn
Episode Transcript
Episode 13: Ethan Mayers
Do you ever miss the rain standing on a crowded underground of London, looking at over building sites somewhere on the city of London?
I’ll be perfectly honest no [smiling] I love it here, it’s a fantastic place to be.
You’re listening to Move Your Business to the United States, with me, your host, Kevin Turley.
At South By South West, Austin’s variable international festival of media and tech, it can seem that entrepreneurs are two a penny. Believe me, many of the men and women have lots to say, but that said, few are more experienced than successful serial entrepreneur and New Yorker, Ethan Mayers, CEO of Tilt Innovations.
Ethan: Hi I’m Ethan Mayers from New York City, I’m a serial entrepreneur.
Sebastian: It’s great to have you on the podcast here with us, we talk a lot about entrepreneurship, we talk a lot about bringing clients from Europe and the United States and we appreciate very much to have someone like you as a very experienced entrepreneur and as also experienced in helping other entrepreneurs, because I found often with experts, it’s a totally different thing of being able to do yourself and have other people doing it, it’s a different mindset, not everybody can do it, right? Often times the best sales people can’t teach someone else how to do sales. So it’s very- so we appreciate very much having you on board and we look forward to this conversation.
Kevin: We’re seating in the lobby of the Hilton Downtown Austin, it’s a little bit a background noise people banging and crashing but don’t let that throw us. Ethan, I’m really interested in your journey to entrepreneurialism. So for our listeners can you give us some idea of how you’ve become this sort of serial entrepreneur you are today.
Ethan: So yeah, thank you and thank you for having me. My story is very typical I think of a typical career path, typical of an entrepreneur, which is the same. I think that an entrepreneur’s journey is like a snowflake, each story is very unique and innovative and only makes sense for them it’s about the narrative thread defines them. So I actually used to be a television producer for about six and a half years. And of course one of the things that I, of course bring to every entrepreneurial journey is the ability to tell stories to give information and back about twelve years ago I was working on a daily TV show and it got cancelled and caused me to reflect upon where I want to go in life and what I want to do.
And what I realized was that I became a TV producer because I was in it for the artistic side and that I don’t want to produce anybody else’s art, I wanted to do it for myself, and I’ve been coding since I was five years old, and I took stock on my skills and I realized that I was really more interested in tech in business and so I actually called the mentor of mine who had guided my TV career he ended up being in private equity and he funded media projects so he brought me as a research analyst, that was my first job, in the field of business and then for about a year and a half I actually worked in financial services of portfolio companies like Limen Brothers, right before the economic crisis and watch the company grow from a six people to a 120 in fourteen months. And they were very well funded, it was funded by Limen Brothers and I was this interested utility player, I was half office manager and half literate filling whatever was missing. So, I had to learn compliance, I had to learn marketing, I had to learn every aspect of the business to fill in, and when the economic crash happened, the economic portfolio failed and several of my friends said you seem like a business savant, can you help me I’m starting a business and then because of that I started a consulting firm.
And so I started that consulting firm and I run it for six and a half successful years and we had two parts of the practice where we go and we help people build their operations that’s how we learn how to scale businesses and the other half we actually working with startups and term executives; we are the CEOs and CFOs of several startups in the US I started going international with my first project in Canada in 2013 and in 2014, I went in-house at a private equity company, who is looking to build the block chain solution for their investments, they were investing in manufacturing facilities in Asia and then I took my work globally.
Kevin: Ethan I almost feel like I have to lie down after listening to all of that, that’s an amazing resume which you just breezily sort of threw out there, but I mean, just one of the things, you know when you’re transiting and you were talking that suddenly you were office manager and everything else besides, you just glided over that, but I’m wondering a little bit about your mindset at that point, a lot of people are thrown by challenges and thrown by newness right? Most people like safety, now even entrepreneurs they kind of have their own little groove and they go with it. Where it seems to me you were filled in everything and anything. What did you get sort of resources, inner resources to kind of do that, were you just in it what was going in your mind in that period?
Ethan: Thank you, so first of all, I’ve had an insatiable curiosity, so I probably spend two to three hours every single day reading, just about all sorts of different topics. I always had that, so I always had the ability to pick up things that just something that I had innate so if I go back to 2007 I remember a very fateful conversation I had in financial services where I was interviewing for a job before I became an entrepreneur and I looked at that career path and said, I don’t know if that’s interesting I watched a lot of my- well, two things happened, I watched a lot of my friends lose their jobs because of the economic crisis and I saw that the more specialized skills set you get the more vulnerable you were for what other people would do to you.
And I said, I wanted autonomy among everything else and of course there were barriers if you think about barrier, who am I, I mean, going some in the consulting firm the previous job I had was half office manager half utility worker what makes me qualified I had to make a decision and I just had to say well what doesn’t make me qualified and the answers for that were I have a title, well someone bestow that title upon me I didn’t give that title to myself, that was something that society gave to me, that’s where I’m thinking in that particular orchard at that particular time of history that was not a submission of my entire skill set that was not a summary of me as a person. That wasn’t a holistic view of my humanity, that was what I did.
Sebastian: You bring up a very interesting point there, so that makes me wonder, are you an artist, are you an entrepreneur? Are you an artist who is also in business?
Ethan: I think part of the problem is labels. I’m a father, I’m a husband, I’m a musician, I’m a writer, I’m an entrepreneur, I’m an artist. Entrepreneurship for me is the way that I can express my best skills set out to the world and be able to bring resources home for it. So it’s the job that I’ve created for myself and it’s expression of all the things, but to your point, when I start companies, there is an art and there is a science. I started school study engineering physics, there’s a science to it, there’s an art to it. I use it my whole self. So back in 2007, when I started on this journey I think the most critical part for me was the decision. That I just said, I’m going to do this, that all of the reasons why I wouldn’t were self-constructed there was no reason why I can’t so I just decided to do, I didn’t know where I was going to go I didn’t know what was going to happen but it was just that single decision.
Kevin: And Sebastian, do you recognize something of your own journey in that, because this idea of decision I mean there’s a lot of what you can say which I identify with, which is first of all, you put it much better than I’ve heard it a lot of times, which is the labels that you’re given, the titles that you’re given, as opposed to deciding who you are and what you going to do, can you recognize that in your own entrepreneurial journey?
Sebastian: Definitely, I think Ethan you said a number of things that are right true. I think that are very true among many entrepreneurs so first of all that, that notion of determining one’s own destiny, not being satisfied with labels, in particular roles I’m not saying the word compartmentalized way but more in a- you know, more like a renaissance man, being able like Da Vinci, being an artist, being an engineer, being a business person. Yeah, I share that mind, very much.
Kevin: I don’t know if you come across as mindset in North America but certainly in Europe, there is a mindset which is that unless you are- that you- you’re only allowed one title, you’re only allowed to do one thing in your life. And who are you to decide to do something else or change, or become something which you weren’t as you said giving the title, is that the same mentality in the United States or is slightly more freer in terms of entrepreneurialism?
Ethan: I think you bring up some god point so I’m going to expand that a little bit, if that’s okay. One of the things, so I’ve been to 60 countries and probably mentored in about 25 of them, and so, I’ve been able to see entrepreneurship from a lot of different angles and a lot of different companies and cultures. There are a couple of threads, and, I think the thread that you’re talking about bringing up, is actually the support that you get from family and friends and that to me often, more often than not determines the entrepreneur’s level of success.
I’ve seen it both ways, so I’ve seen family and friends completely turning on the entrepreneur and actually use that energy to become successful. That’s really hard, that’s super rare, doesn’t happen most often. Most often it’s the close family and friends willing to support someone’s journey to your point a lot of cultures don’t- US is much more supportive of entrepreneurial, risk taking behaviors, but even within US you have some families that are not supportive, more conservative families with their mom and dad and just like, go get a job. I’ve heard that, my own family has said that to me at times, my own father has asked me like I don’t understand what you do, because it doesn’t make sense to him.
So, what I would say to that, yes there are cultural elements and I think that, having worked in London, I do see that much more in instance, British society is a much more of an engineering society and engineers and builders and makers are fit or try to fit into a place. So, if you’re going to be a renaissance person, you’re going to be innovator, it’s a little odd, it’s becoming more accepted, but the difference is not the typical the city that you live in or the country it’s actually your close friends and family. If you have their support then you can overcome the odds.
Kevin: Would you go further Ethan and also tell us about, it’s about the mindset, you know that, anybody who’ve set aside on this journey, you’re going to have a very robust mindset than a real grit, a real belief in your own path, otherwise no matter how much support you get from other people, or how much brick batch you get from other people, it’s kind of an internal battle that has to be won, first before you take it, beyond the city walls?
Ethan: So, I’m only going to talk for a moment about my own perspective, jobs to me are a little bit about like dating, and finding where you fit in the world, and one of the things that happened for me personally, is that once I’ve found this thing called entrepreneurship, I made crystal clear that all the other things that I’ve done in my life weren’t quite a good fit and this was. And so, for me it’s- the decision that I made, that I referred to earlier, is actually about deciding that the title itself didn’t matter, I’m just going to call myself CEO and whatever happens, happens.
But once I fit in it’s like, I’m an entrepreneur, I guess that’s what I’ve been, and I guess I found my place. It was almost like an awakening, if that makes sense, I think it’s really hard, if you try to force yourself if you are square block and you trying to go through a round hole, I think that entrepreneurship is not for a lot of people. And I think that if it’s something you looking at, like a job or you really need to change your mindset, it may not be.
Entrepreneurial journey is about the most, one of the most unique things that you can do in life. It has the highest highs can’t even express how great they are, and some of the lowest lows, and you can only, to me reach in, to find your way through it, if you really believe that in your DNA this is what I’m supposed to be doing. And it’s not a decision even a mindset it’s just- for me it just clicked. I started doing my own thing and this is great, you know, I’m making less money that I’ve ever had before and I’m happy because I have the control and autonomy, and the direction that I want, and that I can actually make a viable path of myself. I never wanted, it became very clear that there are two paths, and the other path with your job is that you’re exchanging monetary stability in exchange with complete control.
And that the worst thing- the worst thing that I decided, I’m only speak from my perspective, the single worst that I realized it was, I did everything right and still lose, not because I did anything wrong. And that was when I realized I am an entrepreneur. Because, I will accept failure, if whatever- I build my own product the market doesn’t accept it, at least I know, that’s fine, it’s on me, I didn’t pivot faster, I can learn, I can adjust. But I saw some of my friends coming to work one day, sorry some bad trades, same in the world, nothing that you did, you did great, great work, here’s the amount for every year, thanks for your nine years, have a good day. That to me was a failure that I was not willing to take. I’ve been on this journey because I decided that that’s no longer a path that makes sense to me, and that entrepreneurship is just in my DNA.
Hi, you’re listening to Move Your Business to the United States. Just a quick word from our sponsors, Mount Bonnell Advisors. The people have been advising clients in moving states side for years. For all your needs, both business and practical, head over to mtbonnell.com to find out more. Thanks for listening.
Kevin: Sebastian you work with a lot of entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs in Europe, transiting in the United States. Do you recognize this kind of journey, this kind of liberation that Ethan is talking about with them?
Sebastian: So, yeah, I can totally agree with what Ethan just said and I want to expand on that a little bit, because, nowadays it has become somewhat fashionable to become an entrepreneur, you know, to start a business, and you’re absolutely right, it’s has also become fashionable, I mean like, fifteen, twenty years ago, everybody should do a university degree, although most people are not cut out for, right, and it’s the same with being an entrepreneur.
I mean, Ethan said very well entrepreneur experience, the full spectrum of emotions, that is possible, you know, feeling, the very highest and the very lowest. Most people never have these, unless you are on drugs you know, it’s better that you know [smiling] and you see that there, when is tough it can be really tough, and you know, and when you have a wife and a family, you need to put food on the table, it can be very difficult. And I mean I know entrepreneurs, where the wife has said, you know why do you do this, why don’t you get a proper job, you know [smiling] it happens all the time, I mean, you have to be cut out for it, you need to have a support, and you need to have the support of your family and that can be a very liberating experience.
Kevin: Ethan, you are particularly, I mean this is wonderful stuff, but you are particularly interesting to us, because you actually worked in both, in the United States and in Europe, European contact I know you worked in other countries as well, but just, focusing on Europe and the United States, what things would you be saying to entrepreneurs in Europe, eyeing up to the United States, as a possible new frontier, as a new horizon for them to enter into, what sort of things would you say, entrepreneurialism is similar in lots of ways in different countries but it’s maybe not similar in other ways. What sort of advice would you be giving to them?
Ethan: I mean, there is a lot of the entrepreneurial journey that’s the same, I’ve worked in London for a year and a half and, out of New York, the US has a lot more tolerance for future forward thinking and more innovating products that may not yield, you know immediate results from my experience, Europe was much more focused in the short term medium term the US is focused from medium to long term, that creates a very different mindset and pull of investment, so a lot of the companies I worked with and mentor are always trying to get themselves in an investable position, in my particular area, which I know is a little bit different, cause you work with companies of all kinds in my particular area, how to get attractive for investment and so, just to give an example, in Europe the evaluations are much more lower than in US, and the reason the evaluations are much lower, for a number of reasons, but also including, they are looking for much more short term, they want to see the viable.
They are looking at, sort of the nuts and bolts of the business, and in the US, what’s interesting the conversations you have are very different, because in the US, especially the festival that we were at, South By South West, you really talking forward thinking, how can we disrupt how can we change markets, so the appetite for the US, to really be a market mover, to really be disruptive, to really transform is much higher, I’ve found than there is in Europe, so the appetite to be a market disruptor. In terms of talent, I would say that, coding talent probably similar, and I found great coders all across Europe as I did in the US, designers and storytellers I think are worth the real big differences I think one of the US specialties in the world is designing and storytelling.
We do, I think, better than anyone else in the world, one of our biggest exports is culture, that manifests itself through Hollywood, I think we do that exceptionally well, it affects us, how many hours of TV movies have I consumed. And I think that businesses, at least with entrepreneurial world, it is a lot about storytelling it’s a lot about marketing and the US is really strong about that, and that’s how a lot of conversations are happening and that’s for I saw Europe for instance are market at least in my observations, it was much more about the benefits of the products and it was much more- where in the US be much more of a storytelling but I’ve been having conversations for the last year about experiential and what the future of that is, I mean this is, we saw a lot of brand activations here at South By, with friends you never normally interact with here I think that’s what the US is really good so I would say so if you are innovative and future forwarded and you’re really thinking about dominating the whole market and really creating a change and you really want to focus on marketing and storytelling and design I think that’s what the US is really strong at.
Kevin: That’s a lot in that, Ethan, I mean, Sebastian a lot of what you try to do with Mount Bonnell at the moment is along those lines, I would imagine?
Sebastian: Yes, it is along those lines, and I think one of the most important aspects, I think of our work is, often also to discourage people of moving business to the United States, because, some people you can’t be certain that they are bound for happiness, for every reason, I mean, it could be simply a family reason, it could also be, that their product or their service would never work, would never work in the US. And, it’s not easy, you know, to make it in the US, especially for European entrepreneurs, so, to understand that what are the strengths of the particular product and service and how to leverage that strength, you know. In the US is one of the very crucial processes that have to be facilitated to make this work.
Ethan: Can I just add one thing to that, so, I think that the US is great market for early adopters and then the US as a market, you know, there’s over 300 million of us, it’s a strong, robust, high income developed country, that’s willing to try a lot of things with a lot of ecosystem infrastructure here. One of the things that I’m interested and run into, that I found out, that I’d love to get your opinion on this, so an entrepreneur will do a market assessment, and try to open a market without being in the market, and I think that’s probably one of the worst things they can do, each market you go into, has a unique story to tell, and that has to be adapted to that market, and that’s what crucial, so I’d love to hear your opinion on that.
Sebastian: I agree with that, I think in a way, that, what typically happens is that, before somebody really, sort of start setting up shop here, and put the feet on the ground here, they typically start selling into the US from abroad. I mean, you can set an Amazon with a British company, you can set an Amazon with a German company. So, they use this base to test the water, and I think one of the benefits of social media and digital marketing, has been that already now you know, you can sort of target these very specific small niches, you know.
So basically, you can get used to the idea easily to amend the marketing and storytelling in a way that it fits a certain niche, and have a lot of different variations, you know, of the same advertising. But what many, I think European entrepreneurs, underestimate is how they think they should- you know, I mean, the US is the US, it’s one big block, they think it’s the same everywhere, which is not. I mean, they have this currency and the same language maybe, but there are many differences, you know, local markets are different, age groups, so it is really not, you know, one has to identify this, one has to identify this, one has to be aware of this.
Look to the land and look to the sea, wherever you may look at in this world you’re out to find something that got there because some American found a good way to put it together. A longer, higher bridge across a wider span of water. A slender missile, driven into space, reaching across the oceans, and reaching for other worlds.
Ethan: You know I just found this, article the other day and it was talking about, the United States is multiple country, it’s like eleven different countries, and each region has not only their different dialect, they have different values, they have everything. I’d say, even if you look at broader perspective of not just US, Europe, if you enter into a different market, you do have to do some base level of understanding of what trigger points to sell, I mean, at the end of the day, what makes a business? Business is fundamentally two things, one is you build your product and service that is needed and necessary by the community and it shows that willingness to purchase it, that’s half. But the other half is then communicating to that community that they are aware of that product. And that communication, I think is what often key and if you look at some of the biggest companies in the world, the one trait that all have in common, despite being different industries, is they nailed the storytelling. They nailed the ability to communicate their product and service and their value out to the broader audience.
Sebastian: So I totally agree and this, so one of the reasons why, at Mount Bonnell advisors we have a separate sort of media entity, called Mount Bonnell Media that helps to tell the story of the European entrepreneurs to American audience taking exactly that into consideration. So I totally agree with you that the storytelling, how to tell your story, whom to tell it to, and where to put the emphasis in the story, is incredibly important, not always but especially when you enter a new market.
Kevin: As well just following on from that, Ethan, there is an element, where, so much of America is about European immigration, and Europeans coming to America, with a dream, often leaving either persecution or famine or hardship for a new land and a new world, which then they built. Now I know that there’s all sorts of things about the people that have been living here before I know it that I get that but that germ of America being a fresh start, a new beginning where all things are possible, is still very much part of the European DNA and countries like Ireland, Britain, Sweden, Germany.
So, the storytelling is in some ways a continuation of a narrative which started many hundreds of years ago. But what I’m kind of interested as well from a Mount Bonnell perspective is that, do you think there is an entrepreneur who doesn’t have a story? I mean, is it possible to be an entrepreneur without a story? I mean you’ve told us your story, tonight, which is fascinating in a way that something was discovered. You know the classic idea the quest for something, I mean, I actually think entrepreneurs and storytelling are- you know, they go together like ham and eggs, horse and cart, you know, I mean, you can’t have an entrepreneur without a story, would you agree?
Ethan: Hmm, no, I think there are things that, at least from what I’ve seen, in other countries that I’ve visited, there are certain characteristics that every entrepreneur shares and that’s a desire for strong autonomy and desire to control their destiny. That’s the ability to envision a future that one does not exist, that is the ability to match a need and a service, match a need, find a need in the market, and deliver solutions, match a need and a solution.
And the fourth, I think the most important is the ability to, I call tacking as opposed to pivoting, so in selling tacking is the ability to adjust, to capture the best sales, while still having a right target to reach and the best entrepreneur is willing, somebody asked me at South By South West and I said- they asked me about the one thing that I- what’s the most important thing about being a CEO and I actually never had that question asked before. And my response was, I think the single biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is they fall in love with their idea.
My advice to him was to fall in love with your process and to fall in love with your team, and that is what an entrepreneurial success is about. I think if you fall in love with your process, you’ll learn and you’ll be able to tack properly and if you fall in love with your team at least as a CEO, you give them the tools and the capability to succeed. Bringing that back to the specific answer that you have, there are plenty of entrepreneurs that are having much more boring stories than me, in terms of, they’ve worked at corporate jobs for ten years, they saw a huge need in the marketplace, they had some savings, they started business and they did really well. I think, when I talk about storytelling, what I mean is the brand. Every product end to a certain extent, every service can be monetizing. But the one unique thing you can always control on entrepreneurship is the brand. So I thought it’s storytelling it isn’t about me as an entrepreneur, I don’t focus at self at all, I focus on the product and the brand.
Kevin: I get that totally, Ethan, on our website and we were talking about storytelling and we actually see that the brand is an extension of something of the entrepreneur. So I like to challenge on that, that actually the entrepreneurs and own conscious and if you like, is actually the product. What do you think about that?
Ethan: There is a way, I personally think a really good entrepreneur is creating businesses that can survive without them and in fact in doing so, they become better entrepreneurs, there are paths and businesses are run by a cultures and personalities, where entrepreneur is the product, I mean, Steve Jobs, we all think of him and that was Apple, and when you are changing ecosystems to some extent there is, you have to look at the startup ecosystem, there is- or the entrepreneurial ecosystem, there are all kinds of businesses that are considered that. There is the Apple that is creating an entire market and disrupting an entire market, but there are plenty of other, companies have made a better t-shirt, companies that provide an interesting video streaming service, all kinds of jobs, and that’s what- what I’ve seen, this DNA thread, is that entrepreneurial culture personality if I can- it’s okay to disagree- that entrepreneurial personality is not a requirement to be an entrepreneur. It can be a benefit if you have it, if you’re going after certain markets.
If you’re going after something really innovative, something just absolutely completely different, if you’re going to transform a market, having a strong personality, at least in the bit, I mean is good. But, I think a lot about resilience is sustainability. For most entrepreneurs, what they started doing is not what they end up doing. And that’s why I said it, go back to, fall in love with your process, fall in love with your team.
Kevin: Sebastian, that’s really food for thought, in terms of reflecting on your journey and your own company at this moment of time. What your take on that?
Sebastian: Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly my own experience, I started various companies and I think the most successful ones were the ones that I ended up to be totally different than what they were, you know. But the perception was, what the business idea actually was, you know. I mean there was some sort of commonality, I guess, as you go along you know, there needs to be willingness to change, because often opportunities and the real value, you only discover as you go along. Might be easy conversation with a customer, a client who says, what about this and this and this, can you do this for me, and then, you never thought about actually doing this and then thinking about it and “Christ, this is actually much better”, you know, than, the original idea. So yeah, I confirming this is absolutely true, you need to be open, you need to be open to change, because really your own idea is only at the starting point. Because you need something to start, if you have no idea, you can never start, right? That is basically to get the ball rolling. And then you’re basically taking from there.
Ethan: I couldn’t agree more so I’m in the process right now, I’m in my own journey to figure out what I’m going to do next and someone at South By asked me how I’m going to decide and I thought I share it with you and I- cause I kind of have a three pillars of approach of figuring out what my next idea is- and I love that by the way, the idea is the start, good entrepreneurs know that, they accept that, so my three ways of figuring out what I’m going to do next and I think it is a good evaluation for any idea, first I start with market opportunity, I know that while I know what the idea is, I want to know that in a big enough space that’s interesting enough, where the needs are high enough, where we’ll translate it to a real business, because, as nice as we can talk about storytelling, as nice as we can talk about that, there is a fundamental part of business, which is, you’ve created a service and you sell it for more than you make it, or you sell part of the service and you sell it for more than you make it and you need to make a profit, and that’s just bottom line.
And if you plan anything in the right market opportunity, that’s important, so I, my first pillar is market opportunity, the second pillar is, do I have the team to execute. Because ideas are completely worthless without the ability to execute. And then the third is then I ask myself is this what I’m on earth for is this like a good use and good use of talent, the way that I look at it is that every entrepreneurial journey is minimal three to five years, could be fifteen to twenty. But at least three to five years on a journey that you have to be prepared to commit and you can consider that as a typical career is as long as forty years you’re talking about, if you’re going to commit an idea that’s ten to fifteen percent of your career working life. You need to be able to just be okay with that and say, you know, this is a really good use of my skills set.
Kevin: So Ethan it’s been an amazing privilege to meet you at South By South West and what you’ve said is really, really thought provoking, if there’s an entrepreneur in Europe listening to this, who has been successful, what, just one little nugget piece of advice would you give them, eyeing up America as not a business opportunity, but as a life opportunity. What word of encouragement, if that’s the right phrase would you give them at this moment?
Ethan: First of all, I think it’s the most beautiful country on the Earth, with its deserts and its mountains, and its multiple oceans, and there is a huge community here building the future, if you’re innovative and you’re forward thinking, you’re going to be accepted with open arms.
Kevin: That’s a wonderful finish, Ethan thank you very much for your time, really appreciating that you’re having you in this show, thank you
Ethan: Thank you
Next time on Move Your Business to the United States, day three of the Mount Bonnell adventure, we are at South By South West, we’re walking down to the- right beside the conference center, you can hear the traffic, you can hear the people, everything is buzzing today, that’s the keyword round here, “buzz”
You’ve been listening to Move Your Business to the United States, with me, Kevin Turley. A huge thanks to my producer Emmett Glynn, who produces this podcast for Mount Bonnell Media. To find out more, go to, mtbonnell.com And remember, ‘Dream big, dream America’
