#444 From MIT to IPOs: John Cousins on Mastering Money, Startups, AI, and the Future of Learning

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me, John Cousins. John, thank you very much for joining me here today. The way I love to do it, I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves. Tell us a little bit more about [00:01:00] you, your journey, and what you're currently up to, and then we're going to take the discussion from there.

Mehmet: So the floor is yours, John.

John: That sounds great, Mehmet. And thanks. A pleasure to be here. Um, and, uh, hi, everybody watching. I, uh, well, let's see. Let me start with basically my, my, the arc of my career. I started out as a electrical engineer, and, uh, I went to MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, And studied electrical engineering and I went to Boston University and studied, I ended up with an independent major in electronic music and media production and my original career, you know, they say nowadays, you know, everybody has on average nine careers and I've probably had a little bit more.

John: I'm on the long tail on the upside of that. But, uh, I started, I was very interested in, in music and pop music and rock and roll. And so I started. I wanted to work in recording studios and things. I started out working for an electronic [00:02:00] music firm that made synthesizers. And from there, uh, I got involved with, uh, the guy, one of the original makers of synthesizers, Bob Moog, the Moog synthesizer and, uh, into recording studios, I weaseled my way into those and started making records and, uh.

John: From there I went to, I was in Boston at the time, went to New York and worked, uh, uh, for an equipment manufacturer at one of the early Silicon Valley companies. I got introduced to Silicon Valley called Ampex. They invented basically magnetic tape and made audio and video. Uh, uh, machines for the professional market for television networks, for recording studios, for broadcast, for radio.

John: Um, and work for them as a, as a marketing person and technical marketing person and troubleshooting and fixing the machines in the field. And that was great experience. So from there, I went to ABC. Which was the broadcast network back when there were just three networks in the United States and worked as a audio video [00:03:00] systems engineer, designing and building facilities for the network and putting on big broadcasts, you know, the uh, um, super Bowls and, uh, Monday night football and, uh, Olympics and uh, political conventions, space shuttle launches and, and landings, all kinds of fun stuff.

John: And that was in my twenties. And then I decided, I really needed to understand, I was at the top of my. My technical career, basically, and everyone ahead of me was, you know, 20 years older in there. I was in my mid twenties. They were in the mid forties, you know, 50. They weren't going anywhere for for 10, 20 years.

John: So I could see that there wasn't a lot of room for advancement. And I was starting to chafe at working for companies for big companies. So I decided to go back to business school. You know, I bailed out and went back to B school and went to Wharton, the business school at Penn University, Pennsylvania.

John: And that school was just great. I mean, that was what they could, that was a place where they call quant jocks, you know, quantitative people and [00:04:00] engineers are considered quant jocks. You know, we, you know, the numbers folks, because it's. Wharton, you know, uh, specializes in finance, so that's what I went and instead of going to a business school and studying the case study method where you get a case and then you write it out, it's more narrative and, and language based and, you know, thinking in those ways like Harvard, Stanford, Wharton is sort of, uh, the place where quantitative folks go to, you know, flex.

John: And so I went there and really liked that. I decided I really wanted to be, I went there because I wanted to become an entrepreneur. And, uh, I chafed at working at companies. I wanted to be my own person. I have been pushing the state of the art in technology for broadcasting and recording and watching these companies that I'd work with, you know, uh, production.

John: The producers would say they wanted to have this or that type of new technical innovation. I would try to build it in house or take it to companies and have companies build it and then they would end up selling a whole bunch of those things. And I thought, wow, I'd like to capture those ideas and sell [00:05:00] them and capture that value more than just being a worker.

John: Um, so those are my ideas. I also. Really what happened to I was at ABC and I picked up the annual report, you know, and glossy annual report talking about the company's financial position, what was going on and looked at the financial statements, you know, balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement and realized I don't know what these things mean.

John: They're just all these rows of numbers, but I really don't understand them. I better go and learn how to how to understand these things because I could sense that it was an important part, important piece of the puzzle as far as understanding. How to work in business and how business works. And, uh, so I, that was another reason I went back to business school and, uh, and I sure learned those things.

John: And, uh, from there, I became an entrepreneur. I started. After, uh, Wharton, I started about a dozen, maybe 15 companies now, um, took two of them public and ran those public companies. Those are my [00:06:00] big exits. You know, I had sort of a, when you think of a portfolio of companies and, uh, you know, some of them are abject failures, some of them kind of chug along and some of them, you know, took off and the, the public companies was a big exit for me, you know, that was where I could.

John: a liquidity event where I could, uh, um, have my, uh, you know, uh, get, get my, convert my, uh, equity into cash money. And so, and I ran those companies for about 15 years as CFO, chief financial officer and CEO. Chief executive officer learned a lot. Believe me, a lot of, uh, uh, learning along the way, a lot of bruises and scars to show for it, but a lot of, you know, uh, successes and triumphs too, which is part of the entrepreneurial experience.

John: Right. And, uh, and from there, uh, my sister was teaching, uh, Uh, finance in the evening. She was in a financial person and teaching finance in a university. And I thought that's so cool. You know, I'd love to interact with students and [00:07:00] and, you know, tell them about what I and brush up on my knowledge from an academic standpoint.

John: So I started looking around and got a couple of appointments teaching in the evenings and things to uh, Universities and colleges and realize that, you know, the textbooks are this thick and they're filled with information, you know, 800 pages on finance or accounting or marketing and the marketing book might be 15 years old, you know, going through additions and really not up to date on the technical aspects of digital marketing.

John: And as I was teaching, I realized that the students really didn't have a context. They didn't, they couldn't see the forest through the trees. They had all this information, those giant books, but they didn't know what was fundamental and important and what was sort of maybe intellectually interesting from an academic standpoint, but not something you'd encounter every day in your career.

John: And so from there, I started teaching in a, what was a novel way of, here's the fundamentals. Here's the stuff I use every day from my experience. You know, going for an MBA and then, [00:08:00] you know, actually in the real world and applying those things and could boil it down to 20 pages and maybe a PowerPoint, you know, with 20 slides and, uh, and my students were like, I could see the light bulbs go off.

John: I could see them understand. They said, I've had five courses in accounting, and I never understood really what a balance sheet was, in essence. You know, I'd ask them at the beginning, what's a balance sheet? And they'd panic like deer in the headlights, you know, and say, uh, you know, debits, credits, you know, they just start throwing out words, you know, and I realized, oh, you really don't have a clear idea what these things are.

John: So from there, I started to, uh, uh, create books. And, uh, then the technology caught up with me, too, where I could disseminate information just like this. The internet, you know, all over the world and started to record my lectures and uploading into platforms where I could create courses out of those, uh, creating books that I publish on Amazon through Kindle Direct Publishing, where they publish the books just off of a, of a Word file, you know, and they [00:09:00] have a cover creator and suddenly I could be selling books.

John: And from there I started my. My new my business now because I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I'm always thinking about what kind of problem I see and problem that I've encountered and then trying to solve that problem in some way. And so my, my thing I'm doing now is called MBA ASAP, you know, Master of Business Administration.

John: Course material ASAP as soon as possible. So just distilled down to the essences of all the different disciplines, you know, from, from marketing to strategy, to negotiations, to entrepreneurship, to corporate finance, accounting, all those kinds of things. put together so that people can understand the information quickly and apply it right away in their lives and all all delivered digitally.

John: So, uh, I have no, my business model, I don't have any money tied up in inventory or working capital. Um, so it's just basically the doing, making, creating these [00:10:00] products and then. My variable costs and fixed costs of, of, uh, of marketing and realizing too, that, you know, actually creating, I've, I've published 63 books and people like, wow, 63 books.

John: How could you do that? Writing the books is the easy part. Marketing is the hard part is what I've discovered. It's really challenging to do. So, uh, it's like, uh, the, uh, John Wanamaker was one of the famous first in Philadelphia. He had one of the first department stores. And he said, Famously, uh, half of my marketing budget is wasted.

John: The problem is I don't know which half, you know, that's really the kind of thing it's even with digital metrics and things, it's still difficult to figure out what's really working and what's actually beautiful, attributable to what ad or something like that and, and what's not so, uh, I found that, uh, quite challenging, but also quite fun, the creative part of marketing and marketing is, uh, is super fun and it's kind of gamified these days.

John: You can actually, cause you can look at the metrics and say, Oh, [00:11:00] yeah, This had this amount of impact that had that amount of impact. And it's kind of like a game where you try to get to the next level in Mario brothers or something.

Mehmet: John, like what a fantastic journey. What a fantastic experience. Um, a lot of the things you mentioned resonated even with me also as well.

Mehmet: And what you just mentioned about, you know, financial literacy, like, uh, understanding money, understanding management. And coming from a engineer background myself, you know, now I said, Oh my God, like why I didn't learn what I know now much younger age. Right. And the question that comes on this, I want to ask you, John, Almost now everyone knows that these things should be basics, but till now we don't see these things in our educational systems.

Mehmet: I have a lot of friends in the US. They tell me the same. I live in Dubai. I know it's the same. I have friends in Japan, in New Zealand, in Australia, all over the globe, in Europe. We have the same problem. [00:12:00] And the thing that happens once, you know, these young people who just graduate from college, they go out and they live their shock of their lives that, Oh, I don't understand anything of what's happening around me.

Mehmet: I think finance is hard. I think accounting is hard. And now funny enough. I mentor a couple of young entrepreneurs and I see them like scared from finance. And when I explained to them in simple terms, I said, Oh, this is simple. But the question, John, why education system still failing us?

John: Mehmet, that is absolutely you're spot on.

John: I'm totally in agreement with you and very eloquently put. Yeah. You know, um, we should teach these things early on because. There's so many, uh, predatory practices out there, too, that young people then aren't aware of. One is predatory lending, like credit cards, you know. Immediately somebody gets a credit card and it's like, whoopee, I can start spending.

John: And, you know, and they [00:13:00] don't realize that all of a sudden they're $10,000 in debt and the interest rate on that credit card is 24% and suddenly they have this, you know, dinosaur to feed each month and it really puts you behind the eight ball. And, and people don't understand the basics of, of lending and borrowing and when it's a great tool to use and when it's actually.

John: not, you know, buying assets, income producing assets and using leverage and lending to do that using debt. It is, it can be very, very powerful. But to just use your credit card to, you know, go on a cruise or go out to eat a whole bunch of times or something like that and have nothing to show for it. No asset to show for it is a terrible thing to do.

John: And people don't understand the difference. You know, there's a great book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, that kind of thing. Lays that out and it can be really illuminating for folks that, you know, buy income producing assets like rental properties or, or stocks with a dividend or bonds, those type of things that are giving you an income stream off of the [00:14:00] money you spent so that your money's working for you 24 seven while you sleep.

John: The other part of predatory practices that people don't really understand is marketing and marketing is basically creating manufactured desires. You know, you look at something like Oh, my God, I have to have it because it's that there's a lot of intense psychology that goes into the advertising and marketing and people are prey to that.

John: If we're not, if we don't have critical thinking skills to say, wait a minute, that really seems enticing, like the sirens on the rocks that Ulysses had to avoid, but I'm not going to go there because that's going to put me in debt and trying to stay out of debt so that you can actually save some money to put into investments to use as a You know, uh, dry powder to start a, a company as an entrepreneur, that's really where we want to go.

John: And they don't teach those kind of things in school. They should really focus on that life skills in, in high school. And certainly in college, [00:15:00] you know, we used to have courses. Well, we used to have like wood shop and metal shop where people would learn how to use their hands and things. They got rid of all that because they were everybody had to be on a on a program to go to college.

John: We used to have home economics where people would learn how to run a household because there is a enterprise component to our lives. Um, as soon as, like you say, we get out of school and it's a shock that all of a sudden, We have to run our lives like a mini enterprise. You know, how much money's coming in, how much we spend, how much is left over at the end of the month, what our balance sheet looks like, what assets we're buying, how we're financing those assets with debt and equity, our money and, and our, our borrowing, um, and how to use those things smartly.

John: We're going to generate a bunch of assets that are going to give us income streams so that we don't have to rely only on our salary and things that we can feel more safe in life, then we can negotiate on better terms for ourselves, because we don't have to worry. Oh, my [00:16:00] God, if I lose this job, how am I going to pay the rent next month?

John: It's like, no, I have some money coming in from my income streams from invest smart investments I've made. And so now I can go in and say, hey, I need a raise to in order to do this job, or I'm going to. quit and go find a better job and I can survive for three months while I look for that better job and having that kind of confidence allows us to negotiate better and to have better outcomes for ourselves.

John: So yeah, financial literacy is absolutely key.

Mehmet: Absolutely, John. Well, one of the things that I'm interested to hear from you You know, I was doing my research and I figured out that, you know, you have reached around 30, 000 students worldwide. Like, any inspiring and surprising Saxon stories that you can share with us from your students?

John: Oh, absolutely. Well, the most inspiring story is for me. I mean, Yeah, my MBA [00:17:00] ASAP courses have had well over 30, 000 students, and now I've had them in 167 countries. So I have students in Dubai, I have students in Japan, I have students throughout Europe, South America, you know, Madagascar, the Maldives, everywhere.

John: I just got my first student in Yemen, so hi to you, you know, I mean just everywhere. It's just amazing. You know, it varies and it keeps changing, but only a little bit over 200, maybe between 195 and 205 countries. So 167 countries covering most of the world. And for me to touch with all those people and to understand, like you said, that, um, that people all over the world are aspiring to.

John: Be better for their lives under sort of capitalist rules where, you know, if we can build it and we can sell it, we can, we can have a wonderful life for us and for our families and create generational wealth and really have an impact in the world [00:18:00] and how satisfying that is. And to see that, that, that is a shared vision.

John: Across the globe has been just incredibly satisfying for me, and I have a lot of testimonials from students that you know where they where they say that the classes have been great. It's really helped them in their career. It's helped them to have the confidence to start businesses and to And to create other income streams, like have, you know, side hustles.

John: So they say that the average millionaire has seven income streams. They don't rely on just one, you know, job or something like that. They have income to do. They have real estate, income producing properties, and they have stocks, and they have bonds, and they have some online businesses, which nowadays are incredibly easy to, to form.

John: You know, you can get a website and get a, uh, an email list for free and just start, uh, start marketing products and things. And, uh, everyone should be doing that. And, uh, like Andy Warhol said, you know, in the future, everybody will be [00:19:00] famous for 15 minutes. Well, nowadays we can actually do that. We have. You know, there's no gatekeepers anymore for, uh, creating digital products.

John: You know, you can create a song and download it and put it on tick tock and start to, or you can create a book or you can create videos, um, all kinds of things where you can, uh, be a knowledge worker and not have to trade your time for money. But use the products, you know, of your, of your mind, you know, uh, thinking products.

John: So it's a wonderful time to be, be doing this.

Mehmet: Let me ask you this before I jump to the other question. How AI is, is, is shifting this, John,

John: incredible moment. I mean, it's just unbelievable. Um, the artificial intelligence tools that I always, you know, joke around and kid people that during my entrepreneurial journey, um, I, first of all, I wanted to get rid of bosses and I did that a long time ago and then I decided, you know, being a boss is also hard to, I, I stopped having [00:20:00] partners because partnerships can work and sometimes they don't work.

John: Um, I stopped having employees because employees. First of all, it's a burden because you feel responsible for them and their families and you have to pay them, you know, going forward forever. Now I like to use consultants, if anything, and create mosaics of talent that I use for particular projects. Um, so I got rid of employees, got rid of, of, of, uh, Of partners.

John: I got rid of bosses. I got rid of big customers because I didn't want to have to be enthralled to one or two big customers that if I lost them, the revenue of the company would collapse. And now I have lots of little customers and developed over time organically my, my, uh, approach towards a business model where it's just me and the robots.

John: That's what I basically say, because everything that I do, you. is automated. I find what I can do with automation and you can create sales funnels. You can get in the top of the funnel with paid ads and social media and then have a sales funnel through, uh, you know, webinars and email drip campaigns [00:21:00] and all that stuff can be automated right up to the paywall and that's automated.

John: And then the product can be Videos and audio and PDFs and books and all of that can be digitally downloaded. So the whole process can be automated. And so now as AI comes into the picture over the last, well, since chat GPT in November of 22, right? Just blew everybody's mind. Unbelievable. Right now I am launching in the next week here.

John: I think I've been working on it for about six months with this, you know, AI based firm, a, a, uh, AI engine. Driven negotiations course that's based on my negotiations, course and content, and it's a, uh, it's an a strictly AI, an avatar of me. So it's me rendered in video in real time speaking with my lips moving, you know, uh, in my voice because 11 labs and these other ones have these voice synthesis.

John: Now that's just incredible. And, um, Interacting with [00:22:00] students on like about 15 seconds back and forth on negotiations topics with lots of role playing and going over practice sessions to be get better at negotiations using my whole program for negotiate how to be a better negotiator and It speaks and understands in 120 languages.

John: So, until now, all of my courses have been in English. And English has become, you know, the second language of the world. And so lots of people understand English all over the world. But lots of people don't. And lots of people would rather than listening to things in their second language, work in their first language.

John: So I'm very excited about this. And it's an AI tool. That works one on one with students interactively finds out what they know and what they don't know about negotiations as it goes forward and fills in those gaps. So the foundations are really set before we move up into higher and higher nuanced, uh, you know, learning.

John: And so that type of learning is incredibly good from a pedagogical [00:23:00] standpoint, and it's all based on a I, um, And so I'm very excited to launch that that course. I'm also translating my other courses right now. I'm starting with Spanish and Hindi and because more than more than 30 percent of my students have been in India or in India, only 15 percent of the US where I am.

John: I thought I'd be more US centric, but so Hindi is a big Spanish is a big language for me and using these tools on page and is the one I'm using for this. But it actually changes my lip movements to look lip sync when I'm speaking Spanish, when I'm speaking Hindi, and it's in my voice. It's recorded my voice and uses my voice phonemes.

John: And I've seen the results and in the next, you know, few weeks I'll be releasing those too. And the results are absolutely remarkable. Now, I also use AI to, uh, to help me with content creation. I use a tool now called Notebook LM, which is from, uh, [00:24:00] which is from Google, which is incredible. I can upload a PDF of one of my books, and then it digests that, and you can put up all kinds of, and make these mini You know, uh, chat, GP chat bot, GBT things using any type of, uh, only the, the content that you want to extract from.

John: I just put up one PDF of my book and it creates a, it can create what they call a deep dive, which is a conversation between two people, a man and a woman. It doesn't sound like synthesized voices anymore. And they're talking about my content. And I'm like, this sounds more elegant, eloquent and succinctly, you know, distilled of my content than I could even say of my own stuff.

John: And it's remarkable. And so then I can take that. It's like, it'll make like a 20 minute, you know, conversation on content. And then I put it into a tool, say like Pictory or something that actually makes a, first I go into Otter and I make a, uh, A text of that audio. Take [00:25:00] that text, put it in the pictory that goes and looks at the text for keywords and then goes and finds, uh, stock footage, video footage that represents those keywords.

John: You know that what's going on in and creates a video. Of that content and then I put that video with the audio that was made by notebook LM and I have I have content is created all with AI derived from my content that I wrote. I mean, so I'm using these tools constantly and they keep evolving every week.

John: There's something new moment and I'm just like, just blown away. And it's just always so I mean, we're living like, like William Gibson said, you know, the future is here. It's just not evenly distributed. I mean, these, if you get, you know, turned on to these tools and you start using it, oh my gosh, and, uh, it's just remarkable.

John: So it's just a thrilling time to be alive. And now with deep sea coming out and really starting to, uh, you know, I think that's gonna, it's like one of those Sputnik moments where [00:26:00] it's going to make everybody else work harder. Plus it's it's uh, you know, open source so people can see how it was done so they can start applying those those techniques and that's going to make things go even faster.

John: It's just a accelerated development time and who knows where we're going to end up. But it's actually absolutely thrilling and exciting for me.

Mehmet: Absolutely. It's exciting. And, uh, you know, you mentioned notebook LM and all these tools. So people, they ask me, are you using all of these? Why you need? I said, yeah, because each time I immerse myself in these AI tools, I discover a lot.

Mehmet: And honestly, I started to feel myself like a. Superman or Iron Man, whatever you want to call me, right? Because all of a sudden, yeah, like I'm a guy who's Curious about knowledge like yourself John like okay. I need to learn more about finance I need to learn more about this and now all of a sudden You know, I asked Chad GPT or I asked Claude or I asked, you know, a wonderful, just a story because of, of [00:27:00] notebook LM, which, you know, blew my mind.

Mehmet: So what I did, so I have a newsletter that I post on LinkedIn every Sunday. So just out of curiosity, I said, let me give it to notebook LM and see what it will come up with. And, you know, I was. Mind blown. How, you know, the conversation between the two characters there went. I mean, you know, like, wow, like I didn't even think about it this way.

Mehmet: So it's really fantastic. Now, John, I want to ask you something because we're talking about money and all this. So you've raised capital yourself. You've taken companies public. Uh, you're, you run a hedge fund. What are like some of the most counterintuitive, I would say, lessons you've learned about finance?

John: Well, um, I think the fundamental lesson is that, um, uh, you want, you want to, you want to have income producing assets and you want to invest in income producing assets. And then how do you value those assets? Um, [00:28:00] so basically, uh, the way that it's a present value calculations, and it's very simple. You take if you're, if, if an asset, say a bond or a rental property where you're getting rent each month, Okay.

John: How much is that income each year, say, and going into the future, and each year you have to discount that income a little bit more, right, because a dollar today is worth more than a dollar five years from now, right, because you could put that dollar today, say, into the bank or an investment and say, just for easy math, It was making 10 percent interest on that money.

John: Well, then next year it would be worth a dollar 10. The year after that, it'd be worth a dollar 21 because you're actually. Getting interest on the interest that you had from the year before too. And that's the magic of compounding and understanding how compound interest works to your benefit is another big, big revelation.

John: And so you take all of those into the future that are being discounted and then you add, you add them all [00:29:00] up. And that is basically the value of that asset. And so then the trick becomes, well, how, what's the discount rate you use to reduce each of those. You know, subsequent years to bring it back to that present value to add on them all up.

John: And that's called the discount rate. And once you decide that, then you can see, is this income stream worth the price of that asset? And how much should I pay for this rental property? How much should I pay for this, this, this stock or this bond? And then you can start to make those decisions. And when you come across good deals, you know, then you can do it.

John: And then the next step is called net present value, where you say, okay, say you're going to build a project and you expect it's going to make this much of money into the future, right? Going into the future. And, uh, then you bring it back to the present value and you say, okay, that present value now say is 1 million.

John: And now, uh, but the project is going to cost you one and a half million dollars to, to construct, to make. Is it a good [00:30:00] deal? No, because it's going to cost you more than the present value of those future cash flows. And so that is considered a bad deal. Don't do that deal. But if it's say it's going to cost you a half a million dollars to make this project and the present value of those future cash flows that that project is going to generate is 1 million.

John: Then you have 500, 000 on top of the 500 that, you know, you're going to use to make the project that's going to be your profit. That's a good deal to make. So you start using these quantitative decision making tools to make decisions about what's a good investment, what's a bad investment, what's a good project to undertake, what's a not, not a good project to undertake.

John: And I think that's really the key kind of things to understand, uh, discounting cash flows and the present value.

Mehmet: Great. Now, I want to ask you now from a investor perspective a little bit. And, uh, you know, I know like some of the founders would be curious to know, [00:31:00] uh, what are some of the common traits you look into the founders and you say, okay, these guys, you know, are up to something interesting.

Mehmet: And, you know, I think they will be able to build successful companies.

John: Well, that's a great question, mom. That's actually the foundational thing, right? I mean, at the end of the day, when you're investing in a company, and I do a bunch of angel investing now, you know, and besides running a hedge fund, my private hedge fund basically is, you know, I like Okay.

John: I like the public markets because of liquidity that I can get the money in and out. And the market is a price discovery mechanism, right? It's basically a all day long people making their guesses about the future value of those cash flows of a company. And that's what the price of the company is. And so we use the, u of crowds, um, that all o guesses that make that au [00:32:00] prices and what we settle of everybody is a very ac love the public markets f I also love private marke Startup companies, because those companies can really make the big 10 X, you know, 10 times returns and more.

John: And I like to discover those, uncover those kinds of things. So in those kinds of instances, we're always betting on the horse, right? We're, we're betting on the jockey, not the horse. We're betting on the manager, the leader, the person with the, with the, uh, with the vision. So you're looking to see, is this person really going to be able to do it?

John: Because at the end of the day, ideas are cheap. It's execution that matters and execution is key. So I look for a lot of times, I look, you know, people say like, why did that guy, I pitched to him and he said, come back to me when you're starting your second company. And why does he want to do that? Because I have this great idea.

John: Well, that investor wants to make sure that you learn the lessons from that first time you [00:33:00] do it, about why it didn't go right. And then once you learn those lessons, then come back. You want, when somebody with experience, somebody where it's not their first rodeo, they've done this before, um, and they've had success or they've had failures.

John: But they learned from why did that thing fail? Well, it failed because of this, that, and that. And you're not going to repeat those failures. So you, you, uh, you have that experience and that experience is priceless. Failures can be more, much more, um, of a, of a learning experience than a success. Because when you do having a success, you think I'm a genius.

John: I know everything I can do this. And then you set yourself up for a catastrophic failure. If you failed, You start to question what did I do wrong? What's wrong with my approach? How did I do this? And that type of introspection really makes for a toughened entrepreneur that's really going to make it work.

John: And then also you're looking for where technologies are going to converge and what's going to be the thing. And is this person going to be at the right spot at the right time? Because a lot of it is timing and luck. And is this [00:34:00] investment going to increase my luck surface where I can actually maybe This might happen even in spite of some failures or stumbling around because a startup is going to have those things.

John: So Yeah, it's always about looking at the personality of of the entrepreneur and seeing is this person wizened and and, uh, sort of, uh, toughened by having a couple of failures under their belt or maybe a real success. And this is another company where they know they can win in a place. Or, um, is this somebody just starting out?

John: And if they're just starting out, they better be super brilliant and super tough and really willing to work like crazy because that's what it's going to take. And so you're making those assessments. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's a lot of, uh, of a judgment on personality.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Now, um, talking about also the work you do from education perspective.

Mehmet: Um, one, I think, you know, people [00:35:00] get a little bit kind into analysis paralysis. Would I be, especially if they're starting a business, like getting the leadership skills and getting, you know, the ability to really, you know, Manage the business, right? And part of it is, you know, knowing how to communicate to people.

Mehmet: Part of it is, you know, maybe sometime finding your co mate or co founder. Um, so I hear a lot from people, John, like they say, Oh, but this is, you know, I, I like to be focused on one part of the things I need to leave the other part for others. Now, part of you do with the. You know, the MBA ASAP is trying to get, you know, this bite sized, you know, knowledge to us.

Mehmet: And so being able to understand the whole, why do you think a lot of us still get this kind of, no, I want to be like, just [00:36:00] specialize in this. I don't need to be getting into, I hear it by the way, a lot. I'm not into sales. I'm not into marketing. I'm not into leadership. So how we can together, and if you can tell me, John, we can, let's say, debunk this myth from your experience, of course.

John: Thanks, Mohammed. And it is, it is a debunking of that myth. And, and in my personal experience, what I've found is and why I shy away from having partners now, besides some of the personalities. And when things start to make money, people get funny sometimes. And so you run into these conflicts. That's one thing.

John: But the other thing is. Um, I've realized in my own life, um, first of all, I just want to, Naval Ravinkan, who I love, said, you know, if you can, if you can build and you can sell, you are unstoppable. And that's really, I think, so insightful and where we want to be is be able to build and also to be able to sell.

John: And a lot of people. shy away from marketing and sales and [00:37:00] think that's ooh, that's kind of distasteful. I don't want to be like a used car salesman or something hawking my wares and stuff like that. I just want to build things and I want the integrity of the purity of that. And I'll leave those other things to other people.

John: Um, that is a, a recipe for failure, I think. And, and, uh, because what I found is any, any part of the business, and this is another reason why I like that now I'm a. basically a solopreneur and I have some, some, you know, human contractors that I work with and freelancers, but it's mostly me and the robots.

John: It's me and automation. It's me and AI and AI is incredible power tools. Like when you think of, you know, a chainsaw as being faster than trying to saw through the wood, AI is like that kind of tool on steroids. It gives us, like you say, it gives us this feeling of. You know, we can do so much more because we have these incredible tools at our disposal.

John: So every time that I've had partners, I delegate any part of my business [00:38:00] enterprises to anyone else and I stopped thinking about that. That side of my understanding of that business, I found it atrophies. I no longer understand how the marketing is going on. I no longer understand how the accounting is happening.

John: I no longer understand whatever it is. I really now know that I have to be, and I'm interested at the bottom. Every part of business is fascinating. If you're not fascinated by every part of business, then maybe that's not what you should be doing because it's all, it's all fascinating. And nowadays it's all kind of gamified because you can see immediately.

John: If your idea works or not, because you can see it did somebody buy things off of that advertisement or is somebody buy buy things off of this new feature I added or are, uh, how are our social media posts doing and you can see right away how things are going. So you get excited. It's like these little dopamine rushes when you see, oh, wow, a whole bunch of people have downloaded this or that or listen to my [00:39:00] podcast or read my article, whatever it is.

John: That is exciting for us and spurs us on to do more. And so I really think that we should do every aspect of business. And especially if you're a technical person and you can build stuff, if you have computer skills or whatever, mechanical engineering, you can build stuff. You don't need a business person.

John: Don't get it. Don't just go get a, uh, a partner that is a business person because you're too lazy to learn the business things. Business skills are easy. Like you said, Mom, finance, there's nothing, there's nothing fancy about that or accounting. You can learn those. Anyone can learn those things. It's shrouded in buzzwords because people want to keep it kind of.

John: Seeming like it's something that's too complicated for people because there's that guild mentality where then they can control that type of aspect of things. But if you can break through that, you'll realize, oh, that's simple. It makes sense. It's common sense. None of it is like esoteric. It's all absolutely common sense.

John: Otherwise it wouldn't be practical, right? And [00:40:00] everybody uses it. So it has to be relatively simple. So learning those skills, if you can build and you can sell and if selling is something you find a tasteful Figure out how to make it interesting to yourself, because that's the part that, that, that is really important.

John: You're not building things that you think are something that you really like, and, oh, customers and the world, the audience just doesn't understand to get something that they will. You have to separate your ego for what, from what you build and try to build things that people actually want and are interested in.

John: And it may not be, it probably isn't going to be the first thing that you build, that's why you build a minimal viable product and then iterate to find out when you get that product market fit and get an audience that actually is willing to part with their hard earned money for what you've built because it satisfies some sort of need, either it's, it's, you know, relieving some pain they have, or it's giving them some delight.

Mehmet: Absolutely. You know, you touch on a [00:41:00] couple of points, John, which, uh, you know, I really liked. So the first thing about yourself being a solopreneur and maybe some of the people will be surprised, but you know, this is the trend I see it now currently. And even, you know, Sam Altman, he mentioned also like, uh, about, you know, the one person company, right, which, which is going to be like kind of a norm.

Mehmet: Um, and to your point also about, uh, how you can utilize, now we're going to have the agents also as well, the AI agents. Uh, that will, will help us a lot doing a lot of the repetitive tasks. And, you know, just a small like story. Like I used to tell people, I can tell them about the accounting stuff. I said, Hey, I'm sure like, you know, at the end of each academic year, when you were at school, you used to get some.

Mehmet: Some money right so to spend the summer they are they say yes, I said i'm sure like you used to put okay So this is the revenue This is how we're gonna spend it [00:42:00] And then every day you go and find out like how much you still have and this is your cash flow I said, yeah. Yeah, so see, you know accounting so accounting starts even when we are kids At school and we're counting, you know, the money that our parents or, you know, I mean like like friends of parents who used to give us and it's it's not it's not rocket science I think we overcomplicate things sometimes and i'm happy john, you know with all the things you've done And I want to ask you because you touched about writing the books 60 books you know, it's it's it's not like something small to talk about and you mentioned about it, but Uh, there must also be a kind of a secret sauce for you for distilling complex concept into these actionable insights.

Mehmet: I wanted to re highlight this again, if you don't mind.

John: Oh yeah. Thank you. Well, I, you know, I, I, I sort of live by the adage that, um, if you're underthinking read and I re I [00:43:00] think reading is a superpower. Look at the books. I read all the time. Consuming knowledge is just the best way to get ideas and to get into other people's minds and really helpful.

John: So if you're underthinking, read. If you're overthinking, write. And that's part of it. It's like when you have all these ideas jumbling around in your head, which I have all the time, I, uh, I really need to write them down and I found that writing is very hard to do. It's so hard. It's but I think the hard way is basically the right way a lot of times.

John: Um, and so writing your ideas down, you suddenly discover you think you understand your ideas. You think they're clear in your mind. But when you start to try to write them down, you realize. I really don't have a clear idea about that. And so, writing is the craft of clarifying those ideas. And like I say, reducing them, distilling them to something clear that you understand, so that you can present to other people, so they can understand these ideas too.

John: And, and the idea, the fact of communicating with others [00:44:00] is just so satisfying, that writing and then disseminating that writing and seeing people actually read it is an incredibly satisfying thing. So it looks like a lot of books. But when you think about like a snowstorm, right, it's a little flake on flake on flake on flake.

John: And then suddenly you have, you know, six feet of snow. Um, and that's what's happened. Uh, we tend to underestimate, uh, we tend to overestimate what we can do in a year. We make plans. You say, well, I'm going to do this in a year. And we usually never accomplish what we think. And we tend to really underestimate what we can do in a decade.

John: And so I've been writing for maybe 20 years now, you know, as a practice, a habit, you know, and habits are what we do every day. And if I can write 500 words a day. that I'm happy with. Well, 500 words every day. It's a thousand words every two days. Maybe a book might be, you know, a short book could be 30, 000 words.

John: So that's 30 days times. It took two days to write the thousand 60 days every two months [00:45:00] I can have a book. And when you start thinking in decades, you know, that's six books a year. You know, 10 years is 60 books. And so it's not that challenging to do. If you break it down into, I'm going to do this every day.

John: If you think about, you know, I want to write 60 books. How am I going to do that? That's just too insurmountable of a task where you have to break it down into those small everyday tasks. And then those are what adds up. And over time in my life, my experience, I've, I've learned to understand that it's the, uh, little things that we do consistently.

John: It's like, you know, how do you eat an elephant? Well, one bite at a time. That old, that old story. I love that, you know, Annie Lamont's book, Bird by Bird. And she wrote that and said that, uh, you know, it was because when she was young, her brother, her older brother was sitting at the table at their house and he had to write a report for school on birds.

John: And he had three months to do it. And it was the night before it was due and he hadn't done it. He had [00:46:00] procrastinated and he was there almost in tears. And, you know, uh, uh, He had these books on birds and had the paper there and on is like, how am I going to write this paper? And her dad came down and put her his his arm around his shoulder and said bird by bird, buddy Just take it bird by bird and that's the thing, you know, break it down Don't think of the giant task of like, oh my gosh, this is insurmountable What's the next step?

John: You don't have to see the whole staircase if you can just see the next step and just take those steps. And I found that that type of habitual routine type of thing works for me. There's a H. L. Mencken, the great writer, you know, they asked him, how do you, how does, how do you get inspired? When does inspiration sit?

John: Inspiration strikes every day at nine in the morning when I sit down at my desk, it's a, it's a job. You know, you got to do it. Jerry Seinfeld, the great comedian. He was like, uh, you know, he used to, he said, I started out, I would write, write jokes for, you know, a couple and an hour a day and stuff like that.

John: And then one day I was coming [00:47:00] back in New York from lunch and I saw these construction workers and they got done with their lunch. And they started, you know, just slowly going back to work, determined. And I said, that's the key. I have to be like those guys in the afternoon when I don't want to do it. I just have to go back, got to go back to work and do more writing.

John: That's the kind of, you know, attitude that I found has really helped me to when I don't want to do it, that's when I really need to do it. And that's what I'm going to make. That's when I'm going to move the needle.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Fantastic advice, John. And I love, you know, by 9 AM, you know, the inspiration starts.

Mehmet: So absolutely. Like this is, this is the way, you know, I, I motivated myself, you know, also as well, because, um, whenever I feel like I'm proxying on something. So the way I do it is just, you know, and, uh, the famous book, the seven habits, uh, you know, you know, this is, Yeah, so [00:48:00] that's a great book by, uh, by Harry.

Mehmet: And, uh, yeah, so, and, uh, and every time, you know, there's a lot of books that, you know, we can advise people to read. But, as you said, the more you read, the more you discover. And, uh, maybe I'm a little bit biased. For me, the podcast, you know, talking to people like yourself, Joan, like, this is was Absolutely fantastic opportunity to learn.

Mehmet: And of course I used to listen to podcasts and I still do. So if you can find the time to have a quiet place to read, you can listen to podcasts also as well, which is a great, great way to learn from the great, uh, minds, I would say. John, you know, I, I'm, I'm enjoying, and I think we're going to have to do a part two of this episode to, you know, with you, but before we, we wrap up, I just want you to leave us with like kind of final words of wisdom and tell people where they can find more about the work you have done.[00:49:00]

John: Oh, thanks so much. And Mamet, I just wanted to say, it's been an absolute pleasure. And like you say, Speaking to people like you, it's an inspiration to me. And I love to, the work you do, you know, doing this, you know, is you're inspiring so many people and hopefully, well, and I'm sure, you know, you are, and, and even just, you know, the little inflection points that if somebody grabs one thing that just sort of helps him in, in one little bit.

John: You know, like a like a ship going across the Pacific Ocean. You know, if it changes by half a degree, it's navigation. It's going to go to a completely different place. And so these small inflection points can really be super meaningful over the long time. Like I said, decades in people's lives. So it can really make a huge difference.

John: So thank you. You know, you're doing wonderful work, and it's just just great. And as far as where people can find me, um, I'm on all social media and everything else, but my my website's the best place mba asap. com [00:50:00] and that's the place you can sign up for my email list and get a free course that's done over four emails that just starts out and you can sign up for my course and Once you get on my email list, just email me and I answer all emails and correspondence.

John: I love to talk with everyone. So yeah, really appreciate it. Look forward to anybody asking me any questions.

Mehmet: Great. Thank you very much, John. And for the audience, you don't need to look around. I'm going to put a link in the show notes if you're listening on your favorite podcasting app. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you will find in the description, John, just.

Mehmet: You know, a small thing about what you said. This is what it seems. We have a lot of synergies, actually, because people ask me why you do it. I tell the story and I say, I started it out of a curiosity myself. Can I do it? What's my aim? Okay. My aim is to inspire, to educate someone. And they asked me, okay, what's your goal?

Mehmet: Like I said, of course I have ambitions. I want to make it like [00:51:00] big, right. But I said, look, When I started, I knew that it would not be a overnight success, right? But I said, if I see one person in this world that listened, watched, whatever, or maybe even before I did the podcast, read an article that I write, and get, you know, something out of it.

Mehmet: I said, I feel like I fulfilled partially my mission. And this is, you know, people ask me, Oh, how come you have been doing so much episodes and posting so much? I said, because yeah, I've seen people coming and telling me, Hey, like, by the way, we listened to this episode, you know, we liked, you know, what the guests said, or we learned a lot from the guests.

Mehmet: I said, Oh, good. Like mission accomplished for me. This is. Great. So thank you also john for you because you are part of this journey. I'm trying to leave a legacy I'm trying to you know, inspire as much people as we can and of course, I cannot do it by myself I [00:52:00] need people like you john and thank you very much for being my guest here today And this is for the audience if you just discovered this podcast by luck.

Mehmet: Thank you for passing by I hope you enjoyed it if you did so Please share it with your friends and colleagues. And of course, don't forget to subscribe and give us the thumbs up. And if you are one of the people who keeps coming back, thank you very much. With your support, with all what you are doing in the background, we managed for the first time since two years, now we are entering the.

Mehmet: Two top hundred charts simultaneously in multiple countries You managed to make the podcast in the top 40 most listened podcast in dubai Ranking at the number 14. So thank you very much for this Still we are like trying to you know, improve ourselves get the things done in a better way But thank you for all your support.

Mehmet: And as I say always thank you for tuning in We will be again in a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye. Bye [00:53:00]