Noah Rosenberg: Yeah.

John: All right. Noah is the cofounder of Oaker, a company development company. After a soul-draining career in advertising he traded the marketing brief for the business plan. Having struggled through multiple startups himself, he’s working to make it easier for entrepreneurs to focus on their own unique skills. Noah, say what’s up to Fire Nation and what’s going on in your world right now?

Noah Rosenberg: What’s up, Fire Nation? And John, thank you so much for having me on the show. And I’m really excited to get a chance to kinda talk to entrepreneurs. Because like you said, my whole thing is having done this a couple times, I started to realize that probably – you said this is Episode 922. I think 921 other people are starting companies and 80 percent of their day, they’re doing the same exact thing as the other 920 people, meaning that a lot of what goes into being an entrepreneur is the same from company to company to company.

And having done this a couple times I’m realizing that it’s the same thing. It’s little things like how to get your paperwork going, how to get your accounting going but also how to launch your product. And there’s so much knowledge involved in that background. And I’m just really excited to be able to kinda help all entrepreneurs around the world get over that same stuff that’s similar for every other entrepreneur, learn about how we can systematize that so that people can focus on what’s unique about their company.

John: Well, Noah, every entrepreneur on fire guest in my opinion is the ideal guest, but in this case you truly are the ideal guest because our listeners, Fire Nation, we are just ravished in so much desire for the type of information you’re going to be sharing today about what do you we do when we’re doing our startup? No matter what the industry, what the niche, what our focus is going to be because you’re so right, those first few steps – and even a ton of the steps down the road – are so similar despite the various industries that we might be getting into.

And before we get into a lot of that stuff, in your journey specifically as an entrepreneur, Noah, I like to start with the one-minute mindset to really kinda warm this up into a burning inferno, so to speak. So I’m going to ask you five questions, my friend. These are five insights into your mind. Take about a minute-ish to answer these questions. The first one, ideally, what do the first 80 minutes of your day look like?

Noah Rosenberg: My favorite day, of course, is Sunday morning. And on a Sunday morning, first thing I like to take a long shower. For me, that’s the philosopher’s walk. That’s the place that I’ve been over and over and over so it kinda disappears. And it gives me a time to think each day.

And I know a lot of people say this. They have their best ideas in the shower. It’s whatever that thing is that you do each day the same over and over. The reason it works is because the shower is not interesting to you. You’re trapped in this little box that gives you time to think. And early on in the day, I think that’s when your mind can move the most freely.

And then, I get really fussy about making coffee. I make it in a really specific way. It’s not magical. I just have like a routine and I like to weigh it out and I like to have the water the exact right temperature. And I make a really fussy omelet and then I’m ready to go.

John: Have you heard of aqua notes?

Noah Rosenberg: Yes. I just met somebody last week that was talking about it. It’s scuba diver notes that you can write on in the shower?

John: Exactly. I love their tagline, though. Never let a great idea go down the drain. It’s like brilliant marketing because it’s so true. Well, we have those ideas in the shower. We always hear about those shower ideas, and man, it’s just terrible when you’re like, okay, I got to rush through this shower so I can run over and write it down on a piece of paper. And you’re dripping on the paper and the pen’s getting wet and all this stuff.

And no, aqua notes is just right there. It’s nice little things you just stick on your actual wall of your shower and then you can just write on them. Like you said, scuba divers use them. It’s amazing. So Noah, what’s your biggest weakness as an entrepreneur?

Noah Rosenberg: I think that both a strength and weakness are the same, which are having lots of ideas. So coming out of – my background was I worked for 20 years in advertising. And in advertising when somebody comes to you and says, “Get somebody to buy an extra gallon of lactose free milk each week,” you don’t have any option to not solve that problem.

So any of these things could be insurmountable, but just sitting there working on it you’ll have 100, 200, 500 ideas on how to solve that. And you work that muscle. It’s kind of like Michael Jordan at the free throw or something. You know? You just work it and work it and work it and work it until you get really good at it.

And then applying that to business has been really powerful because I know no matter what we’re faced with, how are we going to get people to show up to our focus group? What’s our video going to be for our Kickstarter page? Any of those kind of questions – or even just what’s our go to market strategy?

I know I have that discipline to continue to come up with ideas. The downside, the weakness part, is I have that discipline to continue to come up with ideas. So I have 500 ideas for new businesses. I have 20 different ways that you can do something. And as an entrepreneur, you can get paralyzed by seeing too many good options. And you do have to have that ability to focus.

And I see people sometimes who have just a decent idea, but they just power through it. And they’re fantastic entrepreneurs because they aren’t blinded by possibility. They know what they’re doing and they just build.

John: Focus, Fire Nation. Follow one course until success. And Noah, what’s a habit that you wish you had?

Noah Rosenberg: You know, what I wish I was good at is paperwork. It sounds really silly but a lot of –

John: Whoa. Wait. No.

Noah Rosenberg: Right. No. Totally. Right? I mean, who wants to do it, and yet, there’s a lot – it’s really just exemplary of as an entrepreneur you go into it for the glamorous stuff. You go into it for those exciting moments, the breakthrough moments. But actually, the thing that keep your company afloat are the really boring stuff. And I would love to be better at that.

John: Yeah. Or could you be better at maybe siphoning some of that work off to people who do thrive at it and do actually enjoy it? Like I know that I’m not good at paperwork either, but I’ve put a team together that is great at paperwork. I have my accountant. I have my VA who work together to do those right things. What are your thoughts on that?

Noah Rosenberg: No. That’s a great point. I mean, I’m so bad about it, that I don’t even like to review their work.

John: Oh.

Noah Rosenberg: No, I mean, this is a what do I wish I had? Right? Like if I – that’s something that I’m working hard on to be better at.

John: Good man. Well, listen, you have a lot of things, rightfully so, that you’re fired up about. But what’s the one thing that has you most fired up?

Noah Rosenberg: You know, what I’m most fired up is I feel like we’re living in a magical time. There are so many ingredients coming together to enable people to create value from whole cloth, just manifest it right out of the universe. And what I mean by that is that the tooling now, the systemizing, whatever it requires to start a company is really starting to take shape. And it’s easier and easier and easier to start companies.

One example – one of the companies that we’re starting is based on a sort of a Smart phone platform. And if I wanted to – we have like a photo share component in there. Right? If I wanted to do photo share five years ago I would have had to have build that entire sort of background software infrastructure. Today I pull it off a shelf. If I had done it ten years ago and I was like Flickr, I would have had to build a data center. My company would have been renting out giant computers in the guise of it being photos. Today I just add that in one line of code.

So that’s just one example of how all these systems are piling on each other and building and building and building to the point where a two-person team now can build a product that can sit on a shelf next to an Apple product.

John: It’s insane. I love the quote that we are all standing upon the shoulders of giants. And it’s so true. And those people that are just trying to not realize that reality and say, “I need to be 100 percent unique. I need to build this from the ground up. I need to reinvent the wheel every single time,” I mean, you’re going to lose the race because there’s so much awesomeness that’s been done, that’s been created before that we can use to implement and absorb within our companies and make something bigger, better, faster, whatever that might be with our unique niche.

So Fire Nation, we are standing upon the shoulders of giants. Look around you. See what others have done. And jump up on their shoulders and then create something awesome where people can then jump up on yours. That’s how we’re taking each other up, that all ships rise in a high tide.

Noah, you’re our featured entrepreneur. We are going to talk about your journey right now as that entrepreneur, which has the ups but it also has the downs. So take us to the worst entrepreneurial moment that you can still remember, one that you haven’t just blacked out from your mind. Take us there real time, my friend, like real time. I want to feel like I’m there with you. And talk about it.

Noah Rosenberg: So we’re in New York. It’s their – we had just finished our second year of business. And from year one to year two, we had grown on ten X. And this was a – this was my first business. It was a client oriented business, and we had just started getting in some really exciting clients. So I had done the website for the biggest beer brand in the world. And now we were doing this really groundbreaking app for the hottest – the company was just named the most innovative company in the world.

And so, we just felt like wow, this is clicking. We’re really getting there. People are acknowledging us. We have that validation. So I live in Saint Louis. We took a trip to New York where one of our clients were. We met with a new client. It was a fashion designer. It was just really exciting. We went and we had lunch at the Iron Chef’s restaurant. We had the best sushi I’ve ever had in my entire life.

And my partner says, “Let’s go have a meeting. I want to talk to you about some stuff. Let’s go have a meeting at this lobby at the Standard Hotel,” which was just like everything was just escalating and escalating, just this success wave. And it was just blowing my mind.

And this weekend was just – it was just everything you imagine as an entrepreneur. And we get to the lobby and – and I mean, there’s celebrities walking around. There’s just, you know, money everywhere. It’s an insane environment.

And my partner leans into me and he says, “Well, we’re out of money.” And I’m first thinking, well, that must mean we – that was the budget for the trip, like hey, we had a good trip. We did – we really did it up and let’s get back to town and get to business. And I said, “Oh, really? What do you mean?”

And he says, “No. We’re out of money. As a company, we’re out of money.” And I said, “How could that be? We just had our biggest year ever. We just had this great weekend.” And I – at that time as an entrepreneur, I was just focused on product. I wasn’t looking at the books. And he says, “Well, these clients are done. We’ve got our last checks for them and we don’t have anything coming in. And it takes us two to three months to develop a lead.”

And I said, “How did we – what just happened? What are we doing here? Why are – what was the point of this weekend? Where have we been?” It just all came tumbling down that no matter where you go or how far you think you’ve gone or how much success you think you’ve gotten, that stuff’s all secondary. And in fact, you can fake it. I didn’t even realize how deeply you can fake it as an entrepreneur. We were faking it to ourselves.

I was so convinced that we had success I wasn’t even looking at the books. I just assumed that the company would grow and live on forever and that we were made. And in fact, we were over. And at that moment I realized that that – even that weekend, as great as it sounded as I was telling it up in the story, that weekend isn’t why I was doing this. Why I was doing this is because I love the building of it.

An example, if I gave you a finished crossword puzzle – if I took a crossword puzzle that was finished and passed it over the table, what would you pay me for that?

John: Zero. I’d be like, “That’s lame.”

Noah Rosenberg: It has no value. But to me as I’m working on it, as I’m crunching on it, as I’m going through it, it’s really exciting and valuable to me. When I’m working on a crossword puzzle, there’s nothing else I’d want to be doing in the world. I’m there. I’m in the moment. And I realized that’s the same with companies. Right? We had made these achievements but they were over. They were gone. And we didn’t even have the money to show for it.

It’s not about what you can accomplish. It’s about how much you can live in that moment while you’re building and how can you extend that building moment? And when you finish one piece that doesn’t mean you’re anywhere. That just means get out the bigger crossword puzzle. That means take your – what’s your next challenge? How do I quote, unquote fire myself from what I’m doing now, grow my business, hire somebody else to do what I’m doing now like paperwork? And take it to that next step?

So for me, that was like the doom moment where I said, “You know what? Fine. We have to sell this company,” And that’s – it was just a real struggle to realize that no matter what you think you’ve built, it’s all on sand. It’s really the building, what you’re creating, the process of working that that’s what we have as entrepreneurs. We’ll never have a thing to hold on that’s kick carved in stone.

John: All castles are built on sands. Couldn’t agree more. And Noah, just break it down in one sentence, like if you could just sum it up for Fire Nation with that one takeaway that you want to make sure that our listeners really absorb from that story, what is it?

Noah Rosenberg: I think to be an entrepreneur is not a thing and it’s not a frozen moment in time. Entrepreneuring is a process. Start upping, quote, unquote is a process. And it’s always moving. It’s something that you’re doing. It’s never something that you’ve done.

John: So Noah, we’re going to shift now and what I love is that, No. 1, that worst entrepreneurial moment that you experienced, it actually gave you an aha moment. You had that silver lining right at that low moment where you said, “Wow, like we were faking it and I didn't even know it. But at the same time now I’m realizing that this is something that I’m building. It’s not something that I’ve built. And it’s not one thing but it’s my journey as an entrepreneur.” And I think that’s such a huge realization.

So take us to another moment in time when you did just have one of those type aha moments. That lightbulb just clicked and you’re like, “Okay. This is the journey that I want to be on. This is what I want to be building.” Take us there.

Noah Rosenberg: Yeah. So and this is the story of how I ended up building what’s now Oaker. I had to – like I said before, I have a lot of startup ideas. And a lot of times some of them are too smart for their own good. I started looking for the ones that were too dumb for their own good. You know that feeling of like when you see somebody else’s thing, like that Yo app and you go, god dammit, that – you go that’s really dumb. How come I can’t think of that? It’s so beautiful and simple.

And I finally had one of those ideas. And I had never done a venture backed start up. And as an entrepreneur, you spend a lot of time reading articles, where it always says your start up name and in parentheses how much they’ve raised. It’s sort of like the score. And it’s also this anointment. You know, it’s an acknowledgement. Well, they must be good. They got funding. Somebody blessed them with funding.

And so, I thought, well, I better go and learn how to do that. And I want my blessing. And I had already done a couple startups. So I was at a place where I had had a pretty good Rolodex. I had some good connections. So I thought, well, maybe I can reach out to my network and learn how to do this fundraising thing. I was scared to do it. I didn't have any background in it. I didn’t really understand it.

As I’d said, I hadn’t been really on the finance side of the business. I’ve been more of a product guy. I ended up tapping into my network. I built this product, which again, that was sort of where my strength was. I thought, well, what could I build to get in front of these guys? So I actually built a product kind of in my spare time, worked with some friends and was able to get some really great meetings.

So – and at this point my mindset was if any of these investors will hit me with their magic wand, then I’ll have a company. And so, I was thinking, well, then if that’s the case what’s the biggest magic wand that I can get? Who is that investor that if I can tell anybody else that they’re on my thing I’m blessed? And everybody else will just fall in line. Right?

So I started working the Rolodex and I ended up getting a meeting with let’s just say, you know, the top three tech companies? One of them, their venture arm. So you can kinda guess which that is. And it was with a – basically, a celebrity investor that I’d been following for a long time, really interested in.

And so, for me this was this like huge validation moment. So he’s like, “Hey, I saw your stuff. I saw your deck. I’d really like to talk.” So when does he want to set it up? The day before my wife’s 40th birthday. So not only that, but we’re going to celebrate her 40th birthday in Milwaukee which is like seven hours away and we’re going to go on a road trip with my wife and my three kids all under the age of 7. And the call is immediately at the end of that road trip.

So I’m going to go and I’m like, oh my god, of course. All this stuff is piling on all at once. But I’m in my head like this is my moment. This is my dream. If this guy hits me with that magic wand I’m there. I’m made.

So completely stressed out about this, staying up 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, every night getting my deck ready, getting my product ready. Because that’s what I know. Those are the levers I know how to pull at this time. Right?

So I’m like completely nervous. We drive all the way. And I’m thinking it would be really cool if I did this at my brother-in-law’s house. He’s got this incredible sneaker collection. It’s going to be a video call. I’ll have that in the background.

So we get there. I don’t have a key to his house. He’s not home. I have half an hour before the call. So we’ve just driven across the whole country. Kids are screaming. We race to my in-laws house. They all – we get there. They all want to say, “Hi.” They want to see the kids and everything. I have to be rude. I’m like, “No, I’ve got something to do.” And I go storming in there. The only quiet room I can find is my mother-in-law’s crafting room. So I go from wanting to have this awesome sneaker collection and look like this hip guy to knitting.

John: Crafts.

Noah Rosenberg: Crafts. But I’m like whatever. You know? I’m just going to be in the moment. I’ve presented to people like this before. I can do this. But I’m just so in the zone. I’m just so out of it.

So anyway, I finally get it together. I get on my computer. Of course, Skype isn’t working. And it's just everything starts falling apart. The demo won’t work. I can’t get it to show up on my computer. I had this map, this beautiful plan, where I was going to broadcast it through. It was going to be so elegant. Couldn’t do it.

So just say, “All right. Whatever. I’m going to wing it.” Get on the call with the guy. He looks just like me but with hair and talks just like me and explains things just like – it was very weird. It was like I could have been talking to my brother.

That was the first weird thing about it was I thought, wait a minute, I built this guy up so much to be this superhero. And as we’re talking he’s just a regular guy. I liked him a lot. You know, he was just kind of like a guy that you’d just hang out with. There wasn’t anything. He didn’t have any heirs about him. There was no magic halo.

And as I talked him through the business, he didn't ask me any questions that anybody else hadn’t asked. And I thought I really over prepared for this. You know, my heart’s pounding as we go through it. And some of the questions were even kind of like basic questions that I would have thought I didn’t take the time to really put a lot of weight into answering because I just thought anybody will ask this stuff.

So here I am in my mind in the presence of a demi god from Olympus, right, who’s come down from – you know, from the mountains to like give me his blessing and make this a real company.

I’m so nervous. Everything’s wrong with the call, but he loves it. He goes, “This is great. I like this idea a lot.” And I – it was this crazy moment where I thought I wanted that to be harder.

John: Wow.

Noah Rosenberg: I wanted him to be different. I wanted this moment – like I wanted him to have this like magical effect, you know, and have these – just everything coming out of his mouth be sage wisdom. Smart guy. I’m not trying to be down on him, but what I realized in that moment was wait a second. What have I done to myself here?

And it started to hit me a little bit, but I go downstairs from the craft room and I still have that kind of halo of success because the call went really – way better than I thought and kinda easier than I thought. And so I sit down kind of in that buzzed feeling, congratulatory feeling, self-congratulatory feeling.

I sit down on the couch and I open my email and there’s an email from him already, not three minutes later. It says, “Forgot to ask how much money do you want?” And I’m like, oh my god. So this pitch went so well he’s already asking me what’s our race? He’s in. They’re in. It’s like we’re there. We made it.

So as I start typing this email I’m telling myself this is the most important email I have ever written because this guy’s blessing my company. And if he blesses my company everybody else will agree that I have an awesome company. I’m a great entrepreneur. And every wheel will be greased for me from here on out for the rest of my life.

So I’m starting to type this email, this response to this offer of him asking, “Hey, please, let’s do business together.” And my 2-year-old comes over. He says, “Daddy,” and he slaps my computer.

John: Send.

Noah Rosenberg: He hits send.

John: Oh.

Noah Rosenberg: On my half written email.

John: Oh. I treasure, by the way, my Gmail five second undo. Whenever anything’s sent, there’s an undo button I can click for five seconds. It’s priceless.

Noah Rosenberg: Oh, man, I wasn’t using that. Let’s just say that. So it all comes crashing down. And you know what hits me in that moment is this is the aha moment. Because I’m like what have I done to myself here? Why did I decide – why did I put my fate in the hands of this guy?

Why did I put my entire faith as a person, my value as a human being and my ability as an entrepreneur, my future and my career and all of the other people that I might work with and the growth of this company in the hands of this moment? Why would I give away that power and that control? And what is it about me that was building it up to think that I was lucky to get this blessing?

John: Right.

Noah Rosenberg: And from this person, right? And what I realized is these are all just humans. This guy’s just doing his job. He’s working. For him, he just sits there and listens to companies and I like it. I don’t like it.

You can create all of these constructs for yourself as an entrepreneur that my success is hinged on this external validation point. And in fact, there are a lot of people who are spending all of their days trying to convince you that that’s true. Right? A lot of their job title are VCs. When you realize it, though, just in that example, he was selling me. He was saying let me sell you some of my money in exchange for part of your company.

John: Oh, that’s a great reframe.

Noah Rosenberg: That’s the investor conversation. Right? Because even though I’m feeling very vulnerable as a early stage start up and I feel like I don’t have anything of value, they’re still – they're the ones who are buying part of my company. Right? That’s the impression, but really, it’s I’m selling them shares in exchange for their cash. I’m buying their cash.

So there were all these aha moments. And I thought, gosh, here I am third time whatever entrepreneur and fourth career, pretty good rolodex. What about everybody who doesn’t have that?

John: Yeah.

Noah Rosenberg: What is this journey like? And what about everybody who’s got an incredibly valuable idea for their startup but maybe they’re not great at one thing or the other? Maybe they’re great at paperwork but they weren’t able to build a product. Maybe they’re awesome at talking to investors but they’re not great at building a team. Everybody’s going to have that one little part, that one little dark spot that they don’t have.

And what really – as entrepreneurs, what they should be able to focus on is what’s unique about them? And what’s unique about their – basically, to be an entrepreneur is to want to test your worldview against the market as to say I have an idea about what this company could be. And I want the market to prove me right or wrong.

And that should be all entrepreneurs have to focus on. How do we take away all those things that maybe you don’t have that great rolodex? How do we support that? Maybe you don’t have the product thing. How do we pair you with a great CTO or developer or whatever it is that you need so that everybody can focus on just that one part of who am I as an entrepreneur? What am I bringing to the world? And how do I get the most out of that?

John: Noah, what I love that you’re bringing to the table here is the reality that we, the entrepreneur, hold the keys to the path that we’re going to embark upon, that we’re building this journey that the momentum that we do gain or don’t gain really is reliant on us, not on these external forces.

And the minute that we put them on the external forces we’re really risking growing something special because if that external force that we necessarily can’t control takes a turn left or right and we don’t expect it to, then we’re kind of left holding the bag. And it doesn’t have to be that way, enter Oaker. And that’s critical and that’s key.

And I want to jump back real quick to something that you were talking about and I just pictured in my mind when you got to your brother in laws house and you said, “I didn’t have a key.” And I will say the first thing that came to mind and why you’re a better brother in law than I am, and Justin, if you’re listening to this, plug your ears up real quick because my next thing would have been do I have a rock? Because I would have been getting into that house within the next five minutes by hook or by crook because I was not going to not get in there.

So congratulations on having a cooler head and getting over to your mother in law’s craft room. I’m sure that was just fine, as we’ve talked about. And Noah, we have a lot to still get to today, and we’re kind of running a little short on time. So I want to dive into what I call the lightning round. But before we even get to that, let’s take a minute, Fire Nation, to thank our sponsors.

Noah, welcome to the lightning round where you get to share incredible resources in mind-blowing answers. Sound like a plan?

Noah Rosenberg: Love it.

John: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Noah Rosenberg: I didn’t have the network yet when I was getting started. I didn’t know the people that I could rely on to make me better.

John: What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Noah Rosenberg: In partnerships and in working with other people, if the fit is good there is very little you can do you screw it up.

John: What’s a personal habit you do have that you believe contributes to your success?

Noah Rosenberg: I have the luck that I’ve been raised ever since a kid to be involved in meditation, thankfulness meditation.

John: Love that. Do you have an internet resource like Evernote that you can share with our listeners?

Noah Rosenberg: There’s a huge one that just came out and I really love it. It’s called Startup Stash. And we talk about all the things that you need to build a company. They’re listed there. Everything else is done for you. Just focus on what you need that’s unique to your company. Go to Startup Stash. There are dozens, hundreds of services to do everything else.

John: So cool. Noah, if you could recommend one book for our listeners, what would it be and why?

Noah Rosenberg: The book that has kind of kept coming back in my life over and over is Sid Hartha by Herman Hess. And I think it’s because it reminds us that as we’re on these crazy journeys let’s be paying attention to what we can get out of it and that bad experiences – or experiences we would label as bad are as valuable, if not more valuable, than the ones that we seek out.

John: Well, Fire Nation, I know you love audio, so I teamed up with Audible and if you haven’t already you can get an amazing audiobook for free at eofirebook.com. And Noah, this next question’s the last of the lightning round but it’s a doozey. Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world identical to earth but you knew no one. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have. Your food and shelter take care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500.00. What would you do in the next seven days?

Noah Rosenberg: The thing that was holding me back from being an entrepreneur was the network and the team. I would use that seven days – I would get on the Twitter. I would get on social networks and I would find people, build that network backup that could support me in the growth that I was interested in doing. No shortage of ideas or plan, that's never a problem. Get together with other people, find out what they’re excited about and how you can help.

John: Love that. So Noah, I want to end today how we started, which was on fire, with you sharing one parting piece of guidance. Share the best way that we can connect with you. Then we’ll say good-bye.

Noah Rosenberg: Oh, yeah, networking again. I love Twitter. I’m @nrose, N-R-O-S-E on Twitter.

John: And what’s a parting piece of guidance?

Noah Rosenberg: Just do what you’re best at and get help for everything else.

John: Do what you’re best at, Fire Nation. Rely on others, get help from others, learn from others, stand on those shoulders of giants. And Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And you’ve been hanging out with Noah and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And head over to eofire.com. Just type Noah in the search bar. His show notes page will pop right up.

And Noah, thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that, my friend, we salute you, and we’ll catch you on the flip side.