Navigating the Startup Journey: Lessons in Resilience, Growth, and Innovation

Speaker A: From an investor point of view, um, founders that have failed and been through that are ah, often more.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Startup Fail Wisdom podcast where we help early stage founders without a business background avoid burnout and build their startups with confidence by learning from real failures. Today I'm joined by Landon Khan, uh, an entrepreneur, uh, with 17 years of experience in growing and scaling businesses. In this episode you'll learn how to strategically build and grow your startup, the importance of continual innovation to stay ahead in competitive markets, and why focusing on long term planning is essential for sustainable growth. Landon Khan, welcome to the Fail Wisdom podcast.

Speaker A: Thank you for having me.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's great to have you here in the studio. Um, and yeah, I'm really keen on um, picking your brains so to speak. So you got a bit of a background in strategy and sales and all those really important areas that startup founders need. So why don't you just give us a quick um, brief overview of who you are and what you're doing.

Speaker A: Sure. Thanks. So firstly, thank you for having me here. Uh, so My background is 17 years in building and growing businesses, primarily in the climate space. Um, that's uh, being a startup founder as well as joining startups early on and building and growing those um, took one to over $50 million revenue, 100 staff that did actually fail. So maybe we'll get into that one as well. Um, and then over the last couple years uh, uh, started my own consultancy which is in growth and strategy called Sol Sombra and that's primarily helping startups and SMEs with growth. Um, and then also quite involved in the startup ecosystem as a mentor, entrepreneur in residence advisor and angel investor.

Speaker B: Okay, awesome. So you've got uh, your uh, wouldn't say tentacles but you got your fingers in lots of pipes.

Speaker A: Exactly. I'm a baker of sorts.

Speaker B: Yeah, awesome, awesome. Well, um, yeah, so talking about failures, first question, I mean this is the Fail Wisdom podcast, so the failure of the week, ah, story. So um, well maybe you can talk about that failure that you were just saying then. So go through it, what happened step by step, what you were feeling at the time and then um, what key lesson did you take away?

Speaker A: Yeah, certainly. So I think the first thing I'd say is failure in startup world and business is actually really important.

Speaker B: It is good. Failure is good.

Speaker A: It is good. And there's this glorification of, you know, exited founder.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, but from a investor point of view, um, founders that have failed and been through that are ah, often more investable than successful founders.

Speaker B: Yeah, but Would you say that in Australia? Because I know, uh, I interviewed one of the founders of Twitter and he said that, that uh, one of his investors, when he failed, he sent an email saying he failed. He said, what do you send that to me for? You don't even need to tell me anything and I'll invest in your next one. But that's not the Australian mentality.

Speaker A: Uh, look, Australia is behind the US kind of in the like the investment startup ecosystem in a lot of ways.

Speaker B: Different mentality.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah, we are much more conservative. Um, but I think that's starting to change. Like I'm definitely seeing that in the space. Um, but to come uh, back to your question on you know, what failure I had, so I joined uh, this startup. I was in sustainability as the third employee. Um, this was almost 20 years ago. Yeah, early days it was doing about 300k revenue, um, and wore many hats there. But for the majority of the time I was chief growth officer sitting in the executive team and really helping propel that. As I mentioned, we took that to over $50 million in revenue, about 100 staff.

Speaker B: After what sort of period?

Speaker A: That was about 13ish years. Um, and it was in the uh, primarily sustainability and then moved into solar.

Speaker B: Um, were you with the company the whole time?

Speaker A: Whole time, yeah.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: And so we call the industry the solar coaster. So there were many times that the business, you know, it had lots of ups and downs and you know, government subsidies being taken away, all that sort of stuff. Um, but we rode the wave and we were actually the largest commercial solar installer at the time. And this was in Ah, 2020 kind of peak Covid time the business actually went into administration, um, and kind of the key learning and that was a very painful experience.

Speaker B: Um, so went into administration. But tell us a bit like why did that happen? Yeah, tell us the story behind that story.

Speaker A: Behind the story, the inside story. Uh, so effectively the business grew quite rapidly. It was the leader in the space. Um, and what happened was there was a lot of competition. The barriers to entry were very small. A uh, lot of competition. And as kind of normally is the case as businesses scale, become larger, larger overheads, uh, and we were competing with businesses that had much m smaller overheads and had a greater risk appetite as well. And so as the market became more and more competitive, it became more challenging to win when deals and it wasn't a, as a project based business. So you know it wasn't recurring revenue effectively. Um, and we had a large order book but it was a large business as well, um, and it was effectively construction. So long project timelines, cash flows weren't great. We were working with tier one contractors and you often have to work on their terms. Uh, and in kind of peak covert time when there was so much uncertainty. There were kind of three things that happened is one, we had a financing facility and the financier wanted to exit the Australian market. So they're all for some Azure events, so events you effectively can't plan for. Um, although in hindsight, we definitely could have planned for them. So that was the first thing. The second thing was canceling of, uh, a lot of contracts that we had, again based on force majeure. So we'd booked this revenue, but we weren't going to get it. And then the third thing was a whole heap of committed projects that weren't contracted but they were paused or indefinitely kind of halted. And because of COVID Because of COVID And then we also had, uh, we were raising capital at that time and larger shareholder had committed to that round to lead the round. Uh, but they kind of, um, based on raising their own capital, had challenges and they pulled out. And so those three things or four things on top of each other meant that the business just wasn't able to trade through.

Speaker B: And you're saying the first one to do with finance, you said, uh, you could, couldn't have, but you could have actually planned for that. So how could have you planned for that?

Speaker A: I was more referring to kind of in everything. But ultimately, um, it was around the type of projects that we were doing, um, and making sure there was the right mix for cash flow and so that we weren't having to use such significant financing facilities to cash flow number of projects on top of each other. And that's where the kind of pain generally comes in, is when you're cash flowing a number of things on top of each other. Um, finance is really, really important. And it just so happened that because of kind of COVID that was fully drawn down at that point, um, there were a lot of sort of payment challenges from clients. And based on that, um, it was difficult. But in hindsight it would have been around just making sure that we had the right mix of projects, that some had good cash flow, some had okay cash flow, and some were larger projects which, you know, they were cash flow negative. Um, but having that mix meant it wouldn't be so exposed.

Speaker B: Yeah. Ah, also, uh, some traps can be if you have like one or two really big clients and then they pull out and everything collapses.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so we did Have a lot of large clients.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: And you know, the 8020 rule. 20% of our clients made up 80% of the revenue. And so when they did pull out, that had a significant flow on impact.

Speaker B: And you weren't the only ones affected by Covid. Even mine was severely affected by Covid. We started getting traction, started to have some sales about to happen. And you know, it's just like the rug is pulled, um, from you.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker B: And I was thinking as well, like with, uh, solar. So it was like manufacturing the panels and installing them?

Speaker A: No, it was service based. So we would take the design, uh, and installation. We would take the components, put them together and install them for clients.

Speaker B: And do you think there could have been something else you could do to have reoccurring revenue in that space?

Speaker A: Yeah, it was something that we looked at. Um, but I guess going back to kind of one of the key learnings, the business became a leader in the space because of, uh, not necessarily first mover advantage, but one of the first movers. Uh, and then we were quite innovative as well. We focused a lot on differentiation and new, um, sort of products or services. And we did that for a large part of our life. Um, and then as we kind of grew and got bigger and it became more competitive, more challenging, we stopped or we focused less on that innovation and trying to do things differently, um, than just kind of being on the sales hamster wheel. And that's probably one of the biggest learnings for me is, is as a business you can never stop innovating, never stop growing, um, and challenging yourself, uh, to make sure that you are planning for the, you know, the horizon two or the horizon three, not just focus on what's in front of you. And, and that can often be challenging, um, but super important. That kind of quadrant two work.

Speaker B: M. Yeah, no, it's interesting. Um, yeah, that hamster wheel sort of thing. And I, uh, have to say, um, the last few years I get calls all the time. Hey, you know, solar panels, I've got them already, right? Oh, we got this ski now. I'm on that already. Or, you know, it's like you get those calls all the time. But I can see the competition really. You know, there's a lot of competition out there now. I guess prices go right down as well as does quality. But, um, just talking about solar panels, like, I was, you know, I did get solar panels and I had some quotes. One was actually, you know, um, like three times more than the other one. But I said, oh, they're higher quality this and the other. And a friend of mine said, look, go with the cheap one because in three years the technology will have changed so much anyway. It'll still be out of tight, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, look, uh, there's definitely development in the, in the technology but for the most part the panels that are being installed now, the base technology is the same as what was happening 15 years ago. It's just greater efficiency and they're much cheaper now as well as you said. Um, but because it's an industry where there's subsidies, often people see that and go, okay, well I can take advantage of that. Um, and you have a lot of, you know, business people that come in just to try make a quick buckle. Um, another reason is because I said those barriers to entry are so low you can have man and his, his van effectively competing with uh, a multinational company. Uh, it's very difficult and very fragmented.

Speaker B: So in a way, um, so you started as a startup, you grew really big and then you had other small sort of startups coming in and they could be much more sort of flexible, uh, you know, than you guys.

Speaker A: So yeah, and it's almost a bit of a vicious cycle. So it was kind of 2016ish. Um, we were regularly being beaten on price by a new entrant into the market. Um, and they were much smaller and nimble and so they were able to do that fast forward about six years later and I was sitting in the office of that company, um, and they had grown, they had overheads and they were complaining of the same thing where new entrants were coming in and being cheaper than them. And it's a bit of a vicious cycle. As you're small and nimble, you can be cheap. Um, but as you grow there are those costs that you have to take into account and you're more risk averse because you've got greater costs. And so it is a challenging, that particular industry because of those lack of barriers to entry is challenging to actually grow and scale.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I could see that. And so, um, the whole thing around sales, sales is I think really important in startups. If you can't sell what you've got, doesn't matter how good it is. And we like in our startup we won multiple awards and we couldn't sell it right. So the awards and all of that doesn't mean anything really. And so, um, what are your thoughts on that? Like, uh, both my, my co founder and I were from a, you know, the training background and she was hospitality and uh, you know, they Said, oh, this startup founder should be the salesperson. I'm like, okay, I'll try. And I did a, a few little trainings here and there and I got really close to some big deals, just couldn't close them. Um, so you know, when you're, and also when it comes to investment, I always thought, okay, uh, you know, a lot of investors, they want to see sales and growth before they invest. I think, well, if I get sales and growth, what do I need investors for? Right. So yeah. So what are your thoughts on that, on you know, sales? Uh, do you think it's really an advantage for a founder to be a salesperson or marketer? And if you're not, what's the best strategy, especially if you haven't got a lot of um, investment money or Runway? Um, what would you advise an early stage founder when it comes to sales without that business or sales background?

Speaker A: Good question. So sales is the lifeblood of every single business. Uh, kind of. Most startups will be founder led sales, uh, and they have to be. And in my view they, they should be. A founder is going to drive so much harder at closing a deal than any salesperson would, at least initially. Um, and if you have that innate ability, ability to sell, then that is a very good starting place. But a lot of people don't and a lot of people don't enjoy sales. Uh, unfortunately, unfortunately. Um, and so it's taking yourself out of the comfort zone. But you have to sell for your startup to succeed. And if you're able to get that growth and investment and then you can bring in a sales team. My view is a lot of startups, that is the inflection point to, you know, fail because you know, just saying, okay, I'm just going to employ salespeople and they're going to sell and it's going to be fine. You know, they're going to help push the company and grow things. Founders still need to be really in touch with that, um, and make sure that they're across everything that's, that's happening, ah, to a certain point as they scale. Um, and in, in regards to, you know, if a founder doesn't come from a sales or business background, there's so much content on online now. So you know, going back 20ish years when I joined that, that startup, I think it would be so much more difficult back then, um, to now. So so much content online you can consume podcasts around sales. Um, so that's what I'd say. The first thing is just consume as much content as you can about sales. Second, uh, thing is make sure you've got a CRM. Ah, and you're fastidious and put everything in there that's really going to help you as you grow, being able to market and just understand where things are. Um, then the third thing I'd say is just be, um, a bit boisterous. Uh, and if you think of things like LinkedIn now, it is so much easier to be able to see who your target customers are and access them. And so I would say spend as much time doing outreach as possible, um, but making sure that you're providing value. We all get lots and lots of, uh, LinkedIn messages that don't provide us value. They haven't even looked at our profile. Uh, sometimes hello, company in brackets. Shocking stuff. Um, but you can actually develop genuine connections through providing value to people. So I'd say those are the things to start out with and then just test, learn and grow.

Speaker B: Uh, so I guess really, instead of going really broad, just really, um, find out who your real target audience is and then see those key people and really personalize that contact with them. And no, I had another fellow on the podcast and um, he was saying on LinkedIn, I don't know if you can still do that, but he wouldn't text, he'd leave voice messages. Yeah, he said that works so much better. You know, it's like, um, a lot of people scared to pick up the phone, but usually when you do, you actually get quite good results. Yeah, because we always used to text, text, text, text. You know, sometimes you just got to pick up the phone or what's your thoughts on phone? I don't know. I wouldn't say cold calling, but I mean I've done a course on, uh, sales and this person was all about cold calling, but getting the right target audience. And we did a workshop and in two hours I actually got three leads doing that. Then another sales course. This is like a one day, half day sort of thing. He was all about building up your profile on LinkedIn, connecting with people there, offering value and all of that. Um, what are your thoughts on those different strategies or do you know any others?

Speaker A: Um, so overall outreach. So whether it's cold calling, emailing, LinkedIn, um, and there are a few other ones. They generally are good strategies if you've got the right strategy, but behind them. Um, and my suggestion, and this is kind of one of my key learnings, uh, in kind of my entire career, is test, learn, refine. Um, and for some businesses, cold calling might work Better for other businesses it could be emails but again it's around making sure that it's, it's targeted, it's customized and you're not just generally being spam. Um, and so an example is again going back many years we um, uh, started to do a reasonable bit of business in the poultry farming industry. And so we then targeted other businesses in that industry uh, and created really specific emails to key decision makers in that industry uh, and would actually use competitors names in the subject line. And so if you're, as an example, if you're Woolworths, uh, an executive at Woolworths and you get an email that says Coles, you're most likely going to open that email. So what is this email?

Speaker B: That's interesting.

Speaker A: Um, and that worked really well but the messaging was really tailored to each business. Um, and it generated a lot of meetings, appointments and we did quite successful uh, from that campaign. But prior to that we tested a whole heap of subject lines um, and we would see the responses and would continually refine it. And so that's coming back to test, learn and refine and see actually what works for the some industries that might not work. You don't have dominant players or whatever it is. Um, so it's about testing um, and saying okay, we're going to do X many cold calls, see the response we get. It was great. It wasn't great. We're going to send emails, et cetera and having a mix and not relying on one sort of strategy.

Speaker B: I think a lot of founders when they start, myself included, try this and try that and you're not really testing it, you're not measuring it. And that's key isn't it? Because you need to know what's actually working and what isn't. And when the things that start working then you do more and more of that unless of the ones or stop the ones that aren't working. And even in like for example social media, you know, where's your audience? Like a lot is on LinkedIn but you never know. Might be um, on Instagram or Facebook.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. So you know in this day and age you can do a lot of MVPs, uh, and you can really just test things and understand the demand, impact, etc. And so I would encourage founders to do as m as much of that as possible but making sure they are understanding the results, the metrics, measuring it and then refining from, from there. And many years ago as well I was running an E commerce store and E commerce is brilliant because you can test things to like the nth degree. And we would do AB testing, multivariate testing and even testing as an example, adding an arrow in the add to cart button. What impact that had on conversion rates or you know, add to cart. And it was significant. Something as small as that, you can actually really go down to a granular level depending on the business type. Yeah, um, but it's all these kind of. They're not even 1 percenters. Yeah, that's 0.1 of a percent. But it, it really adds up and if you can compound that then you know, you're optimizing your funnel which, which it is hard to get sales or people into your funnel. So that's really important.

Speaker B: That's interesting before you mentioned, like there's lots of courses now out there on Google or YouTube or whatever, but there's lots of different types of sales. And I forget one that I had a look at. Somebody recommended was it challenger sales or something like that, and it looked interesting. But there's all different types. Like which ones do you think would uh, be good for someone just starting without sales background, like trying to get their startup going? Any, any that you might. Because there's so many out, there's like, um, you know, what do I choose from? Yeah, so many.

Speaker A: Look, there are a myriad of sort of sales techniques as spin selling challengers as you said. Um, and really the thing I'd say is to identify what's going to work best for the client or the ICP is certain.

Speaker B: What's icp?

Speaker A: Ideal, uh, customer profile.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Yeah, profile, yeah. Um, so you know, if it's CEO of a, ah, medium enterprise, what type of sales is going to work for them versus A, you know, a B, two C, mom and pop. Um, and really understand that customer Persona.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, and then from there say, okay, well is it consultative selling that's going to work best for them or um, is it value based or more kind of, uh, process based? Uh, so it just depends on what the business and what the client is. I wouldn't say there's one kind of silver bullet way from my point of view.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Um, so I was interviewing another uh, guest, um, from the space and he was saying if you can actually, um, because we're talking about like building an mvp. Right. And some people like us build a huge platform, spend a million dollars and then you know, like, oh no, but we could do this and change this and make this better. And now we got to do the learning management system. It just can get ridiculous. Right. Without even before you're even selling it, right? It's like, and when we do all this, we'll sell it, right. So he was saying sell the idea before you even do it. Um, what are your thoughts on that and how do you do that? It's got to be hard, right? But he said, but if you can do that, you know, you've got something really valid.

Speaker A: Well yes and no, it is hard. I mean there's, there's quite a lot of people out there now that are kind of spruking online businesses or you know, startups over the weekend. Like just from the top of my head, there's Noah Kagan. He's come out with his million dollar weekend, um, as Justin Welsh who's got his kind of uh, creator mba. Um, there's uh, Tim Ferriss four day, kind of um, four day work week or four sorry for our work week. So uh, there's a lot of people there that have kind of strategies on what to do. Um, the simplest thing is whatever your idea is, if you could build a very simple landing page, uh, and even if it's a, it's a wait list, this is going to launch. Sign up here to the wait list drives. You know you can build a app through a Squarespace or a wix or

Speaker B: Daniel Priestley, he talks about that. Yeah, he's really good actually.

Speaker A: You can do it super simply. Um, and then drive some traffic through it. Whether it's LinkedIn ads, Instagram ads, outreach to people. Spend uh, a bit of time trying to drive some traffic and then see what response you get. And that you could do really simply spending minimal money. But it gives you some market feedback on whether it is a potential idea to invest more time into or, or not.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it saves so much time and money if you do that. You know, that's one of the biggest mistakes because if startup founders, we all fall in love with our ideas, like amazing, everyone's going to love it. But you'll do that. Customer validation, market validation.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's a great way to do it, you know, um, going back to like you know, founder doing the sales. Um, I'll just challenge you a little bit on that. Um, so with my startup, uh, we're in the 360vr um, space training people in hospitality, for example responsible service, alcohol. Got a few service, you know, dangerous situ or, or difficult stressful situation. So you put them in the space, you know and um, we're, we were too early, you know. You know you're talking about yours like it's, it's Usually not good to be the very first. Yeah, maybe second, third or whatever. We're uh, too early because VR wasn't that well known and the, the headsets were phones falling out of it and all that sort of stuff. But then um, talking about uh, uh, so there's another, there's a couple of other startups who are doing almost identical to what we're doing. So we started in 217. These guys came along like 221 and in two years they went global. And the only difference I can see is they had 12 business development guys or sales guys and selling it everywhere, you know, um, and so that's why like I always think, well we should have just put a lot more money that we had into a really good sales guy.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But um, yeah. So what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker A: So if you have capital to invest, investing that in growth generally is uh, a, ah, worthwhile strategy. But for me it's, you can't, you're not guaranteed to say, okay, well let's just invest into a salesperson sales team and they're just going to deliver results for us. So that's why I was mentioning like for the founder to still be really connected to sales, uh, because you A, can't rely on it, it's not guaranteed. Uh, and B, things happen, you have staff leave, et cetera. And it's almost that spiritual leader as well is quite motivational for a sales team to have that. And generally the founder is going to be the most knowledgeable. Um, they've built the product, the service, the business. So they have to be connected to it in some way shape or not definitely connected. But if you've got capital to spend then certainly that's a worthwhile um, approach. Uh, but for me, yeah, it's not just throwing money and it's going to work.

Speaker B: Now um, obviously you talk a lot about growth and scaling up and all this sort of stuff. So um, here I want to debunk some myths right. That um, found us here. Uh, so what's one common piece of growth advice you found doesn't work in practice and why?

Speaker A: Um, well, I mean I don't, again I don't think it's a silver bullet that there is one piece of advice. It's always going to work or something

Speaker B: that advice that you've taken on and hasn't worked.

Speaker A: Um, so I probably would say around the, like build a sales team and it will work. And I've already spoken about this, but if I had to choose something else, yeah, um, I would Say around putting your, your faith or dependency in an external agency that they're going to deliver, whether it's marketing growth, um, there's lots of agencies out there. Um, and by no means just because that's what they do, they're going to deliver success. Uh, so I would be very cautious and strategic in choosing if you're going to use an external agency, um, choosing the right agency to work with, or even employing an agency as a strategy.

Speaker B: Well, it's interesting you say that because, um, we had some salespeople, as in one, uh, student was doing an mba and he came on. He started just before COVID right. He was very good actually. And he went face to face and was selling. And we had a couple of people ready to sign up. And then Covid hit, so that all fell apart, Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Then later, um, we had a. We went to another sales agency. Uh, I named them, um, but they said, look, we will find the best salespeople for you. So we got this guy. Let's just call him Jack, right? Jack is amazing. He's been doing it for 30 years. Like, you're so lucky to have him. All this sort of stuff, right? So Jack starts and he's like, yeah, yeah, guys, yeah, I'm talking to the, um, you know, the CEO of Bunnings. I'm talking to the head of this big organization. And oh, yeah, we're getting really close. And this went on for months and months and months. And then, you know, like his grandmother died, his, his sister, whatever, and you know, all these stories and his wife left him and all this stuff, right? So, so he was only there, like he didn't even come in. And uh, then it just got like, this is ridiculous, something going on. And then we asked him to put everything in the CRM and he's like, no, mate, I'm old school. I'm all paper. You know, that's the way I do it. Then I put it in later. Ah, you know, and so anyway, after about, I don't, ah, know, four or five months, I said, uh, you know, we've got Jack. We got, you know, it's not working. Just hand over, you know, all your information and clients and all that. Um, and so he sent a, uh, spreadsheet with 130 names and just the name, the company and the contact and in progress or whatever, right. I called 10. The top ones are supposed to be, you know, said, Jack. Who's Jack? We never heard of him. So that, that proves your, your point there. Yeah, you have to be really Careful. And another salesman later, uh, was actually a mentor or program manager, Macquarie Uni incubator, where I was. He said, paul, he was a sales guy. He said, I once had a sales manager. And he said, if it's not in your CRM or HubSpot, it didn't happen.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: All right, so that was a big lesson. Like the first week, if he didn't, you know, he wasn't showing what he was doing then that was obviously something. The thing is like this agency was saying, no, he is great, you're so lucky to have him, blah, blah, blah. And we're like, we didn't know, like salespeople can be really good selling themselves, right?

Speaker A: 100%. So, um, um, many years ago I was uh, interviewing for a sales position, um, and two salespeople. And these, uh, salespeople were put in front of me by a recruiter and I vetted them, etc. The, ah, CVs look great. Um, and both of them had that they had closed this particular project on their cvs. Um, and when I asked them, both said, yeah, that's my sale. I didn't mention that, you know, they both had on their cv. But salespeople, you know, they're designed to persuade and sometimes, uh, they often extend the truth. Um, and so you do have to be really careful. Um, and it is. Salespeople are one of the hardest, you know, people to hire for because generally good salespeople don't want to leave where they are because they've got commissions due. And that's, that's probably another strategy I would kind of talk to is, um, to build relationships with good salespeople, whether it's within your industry, outside of your industry. And the best salespeople I've ever hired were not people that we put an ad out and they replied. It was people that were built relationship relationships with for many years. And sometimes it took two, three years of, uh, regularly catching up with them and chatting to them to educate them about the business for them and to find the right time for them to come on board. Um, and a number of those ended up being some of the best salespeople I've ever hired. Um, but generally you're not going to find those people replying to a seek ad.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. And it just takes time to develop your network, you know, um, and it can be hard. Like if you're starting and you haven't got a big network, you might be a young person or not in that industry or whatever. You know, it takes time and Then you've only got a certain Runway and you know, it's, it's, it's not easy. Startup world is not easy.

Speaker A: I mean business in ah, general is not easy. If it was easy, more people would be running businesses.

Speaker B: Exactly. And at the end of the day, you know, I'm a startup founder. You know, at the end of the day it's a business. That's what it is. Right. So that's why having a business background can be a huge advantage, I think. Yeah.

Speaker A: And look, I actually um, did a LinkedIn post about this a little while ago. Is uh, as a startup founder, um, or business owner, people who are not their employees or people that are wanting to move to running their own things, there's a bit of a glorification and uh, sort of said it's, you're a duck on water. People look at ducks and go, they're just gliding by effortlessly. How fantastic to be a duck. But you don't realize how it's padding like hell underneath the water to stay afloat and keep moving.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that is the kind of life of a founder, business owner is. It seems glamorous to people on the, on the outside, but there's a lot of challenges and things that you have to deal with. Um, and so it is, it's more than just it's challenging. It can be all consuming and impact personal relationships.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: It is one of the most difficult things to run a successful business is really, really hard.

Speaker B: It is really, really hard. So you have to, you know, like your motivation has to be something that it's something you really want to do and it's your why and it's your purpose. Um, if you're just doing it for money, it's no, it's not going to work in most cases. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And there's often a lot of things people don't think of, um, that they end up having to do and it's the less sexy things.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, um, but as a startup founder, business owner, you have to do so much. Um, and most people aren't aware of the kind of nitty gritty that you end up doing. And some of that's, it's not fun but you just have to do it.

Speaker B: It ain't glamorous at all. You know, that's a myth but you know, it's, it's a good journey if you got a good purpose and you're going towards something that you believe in. Um, so talking about, you know, it's a difficult ah, journey. Um, for example, like in your life, how do you maintain your mental health? Uh, do you, you know, uh, exercise or what do you do and what do you recommend?

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, super important. Um, so, uh, I have a four month old, almost four month old now, so definitely not exercising as much as I previously have. But yes, exercising is, um, is really important. Um, I'd say a few minor things that I do is try to have walking meetings rather than sit down. Um, it's just much more creative. Yeah, less, less formal. Um, as well.

Speaker B: I should try some walking podcasts. Yeah, I don't know if it'll work.

Speaker A: It could start a new format. Um, then as well, if it's thinking time or kind of strategy time to walk as well. Doing, doing that rather than sitting at a desk and just keeping myself moving. Um, the other little thing is running a business. Uh, even if you're working in a business where in the age of the glorification of business, we're all so busy. Um, and it's sometimes hard to see the forest from the trees. And there'd be days where I, you know, tick off a lot. But at the end of the day I just, I miss doing all of this stuff. And I almost having the to do list, um, has the negative impact in making me feel like I didn't do a lot.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so what I implemented is what I called, uh, WhatsApp wins. Uh, and so each day at the end of the day, I sit down for a minute, close my eyes, just do some, some breathing, and then think of what things today did I win? Uh, and it could be even as small as going for a walk or, you know, this nice email from a client or whatever it is.

Speaker B: It's a gratitude thing really, isn't it?

Speaker A: It is. And so I'd put in, in WhatsApp, I'd send a message to myself saying win of the day. And I'd put whatever that was and then I'd say learning of the day or improvement of the day and something that I thought I could have done better. Send that to myself just before I kind of log off. Um, and it becomes a little record and you can kind of see what you've done every day. And it's just a way to show your progress to yourself when sometimes it's hard to kind of. Okay, what did I do today? That was great. And even on tough days, it's good to. You can still find something.

Speaker B: Yeah. There's always something, isn't there? Yeah, yeah. Uh, it changes your mindset.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: I love that. All right, awesome. Well, it's been, um, great having you on the show. But before you go, like, how, um, can people get in touch with you or if you got a website and how can you help them?

Speaker A: Yeah, appreciate that. So our, uh, website, Soulsombra Co. Uh, I'm on LinkedIn. Landon Khan. Ah, there's not a lot of Landon Khans on LinkedIn.

Speaker B: How do you spell the Khan?

Speaker A: Yeah, great question. So, uh, first name is L, A, N, D, O, N. And surname? Uh, K A, H, N. Yeah.

Speaker B: Which I spelled wrong. Yeah, yeah. Not K, H A, N. K A, H, N. Yeah, yeah. Ah, awesome. All right, well, look, it's been great having you in, and I'm sure a lot of what you've talked about today will resonate with early stage founders without a business background and be very helpful to them. It's been great chatting with you.

Speaker A: Thanks. Thanks for having me on today,

Speaker B: Sam.