2962: Insights from "MBA Disrupted": Navigating the New Age of Entrepreneurship

[00:00:01] What does it take to succeed as an entrepreneur in today's rapidly evolving landscape? Well, my guest today is an author, entrepreneur. He's got a new book out called MBA Disrupted. And as the economic climate shifts and competition intensifies,

[00:00:18] my guest's insights today are going to be a deep dive into digital entrepreneurship and the CEO mindset and why they're more relevant than ever before. I will also explore a number of AI tools and how they're boosting productivity, the impact of economic downturns on funding and hiring,

[00:00:36] and some of those key principles from MBA Disrupted that can guide aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. Bringing you daily tech insights requires significant time and resources, so I'd like to extend my gratitude to today's sponsors. Legacy managed file transfer tools often appear dated

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[00:01:59] So buckle up and hold on tight because today I'm going to beam your ears all the way to Bulgaria where my guest is waiting to join me today. So a massive warm welcome to the show, Mario.

[00:02:12] Can you tell the listeners a little about who you are and what you do? Hey, Nino, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure being here. My name is Mario Pashev. I'm a serial executive. I'm currently the founder, CEO of DevRigs and GrowChilo.

[00:02:27] I'm an angel investor for about 20 different businesses, a contributor for Forbes, entrepreneur, and I recently altered a new book named MBA Disrupted, which I'm pretty happy about. And I'm spending kind of half my time speaking with publishers

[00:02:42] and trying to work on an audio book and lots of other exciting things. Wow, it sounds like you've been incredibly busy. One of the things that interested me about you when I was doing a little research is that you've been an entrepreneur for many years now.

[00:02:55] And I've got to ask, if you were to look back at your career, what's changed for entrepreneurs today in this more AI-driven digital age? Are there more opportunities, more young people wanting to start their own business

[00:03:07] than when you first began your journey, or is it largely the same? What have you seen there? Yeah, well, the digital landscape is shifting pretty quickly. Whenever there are more opportunities, whenever it gets easier to become an entrepreneur, there's an endless pool of applicants for the entrepreneur job.

[00:03:30] My post the other day on LinkedIn was about Steve Ballmer, who got to the sixth spot of the richest people in the world. And Ballmer is right now, I believe, probably the only person in top 10 who is not a founding CEO.

[00:03:47] He started at Microsoft in 1980, joined Microsoft as a CEO, or rather spent 20 years at Microsoft as an executive, but became Microsoft CEO in year 2000 and spent 14 years as a CEO. And he's not an active executive right now, so to speak,

[00:04:04] but he never founded a large unicorn or decacorn company, yet he's one of the top 10 richest people on the planet. And the reason I'm raising that right now is that entrepreneurship has always been about rainbows and unicorns, and how easy it is to become an entrepreneur,

[00:04:23] and how many success stories have been featured in the public. But in reality, it's not the only way. It's not the easiest way, and there's a lot of grind going on for different reasons. You just mentioned AI being one of them. Prior to that, it was a pandemic,

[00:04:39] and you'd go to events or meet people on site. Pre-that, it was the endless pile of money distributed and allocated to a series A, series B, series C startups, and endless teams, and the ability to pay unbelievable salaries to enterprises, and so on and so on.

[00:05:03] Well, bottom line, every couple of years, there's a massive shift to disruption space, and entrepreneurs are always having a hard time catching up to that. Now, for people who are really passionate about entrepreneurship, I'm more than happy to welcome them to our world,

[00:05:20] help them and support them if they speak to some great entrepreneurs, agency founders, small startup founders. But I'm also always willing to let people know that entrepreneurship is far from easy. There's a lot of grind, especially over the first year, sometimes year two.

[00:05:37] There are sleepless nights, working long weekends, not taking vacations for a while, the feasting time in cycle. And entrepreneurs are dealing with that pretty much at any point of their entrepreneurship career. I must warn you that I think I have some form of tech tourette,

[00:05:55] that whenever anybody says to me, I feel compelled to say, Yeah, that's one of the best videos on the planet. I think he probably made that much money because he was essentially the first video influencer on the planet. 100%. In your new book, you provide guidance

[00:06:15] to overcome some of the key challenges for digital entrepreneurs, and there are more than a few challenges out there. Between when an entrepreneur has an idea, for example, and wants to actually create, to building and growing a business. I've got to ask, what usually happens

[00:06:31] if the idea or business never gets off the ground? What have you seen here? Statistically speaking, again, that's anecdotal evidence of sorts, but statistically speaking, about 80% of all businesses fail. Some say it's 90%, some say it's even higher.

[00:06:48] But most of the businesses are not going to make it work. And we see that right now in the pandemic. And again, I don't want to be all about doom and gloom, but I just want to make it as realistic as possible

[00:07:01] for everyone to understand that entrepreneurship is a lot of hard work. That reaching product market fit is not really easy. Most people approach it incorrectly. They either invest in technology too much without doing any market research, or they just decide to spend all their savings on marketing

[00:07:20] without actually conducting customer research and so forth. So what I try to do in my book is go through 12 different business models, digital models, such as agencies and e-commerce, dropshipping, communities, memberships, software services, and a few more, and go through each of these separately

[00:07:42] and discuss how to start it the right way, how to conduct the proper market research, how to define your ideal customer profile, define your niche, doing competitive research, analyzing total addressable market, and so many other different steps, refining your offer,

[00:08:03] starting marketing about six months prior to even launching the product, and so forth. So a lot of these bits and pieces are far from exciting. And most businesses are trying to skip them because they're too passionate about,

[00:08:16] hey, I have a wonderful idea. I just want to build a product. Or now I have the audience, I believe I can sell them everything, but eventually they don't do the research. Or so the many AI businesses launched in the past couple of years

[00:08:29] who are already slashed or are going to be replaced by a simple checkbox in ChatGP or JVNet. So again, to sum it up, what I'm trying to say here is digital entrepreneurs have to be very careful and even methodical in starting their business.

[00:08:46] There's a good reason why second-time, third-time, fourth-time entrepreneurs are statistically far more successful than the first-timers because they know what's the level and amount and volume of legwork they need to put in ahead of time. And once you have your foundation steady, once you have your market research,

[00:09:05] I believe that everything is much smoother and businesses actually get off the ground. And as a final piece, I definitely haven't invented that idea myself. One of my favorite startup books is Lean Startup by Eric Pryce. And the whole concept of working on minimal viable products,

[00:09:27] on doing market research, on interviewing your prospects and competitors, as well as some of the books by 37signals, which is the founders of Basecamp and Hey.com, they have all doubled down and stressed on the importance of doing the right legwork ahead of time.

[00:09:46] So bottom line, my number one piece of advice for entrepreneurs is make sure you do your homework and ensure that you have your foundation steady and ready to go prior to launching your business. But other than that, if you're still determined,

[00:10:02] if you're not afraid of starting after everything you've heard, I'd be more than happy to see how it all plays out for you in the next year or two. And I think it can be quite overwhelming, this state of the world at the moment,

[00:10:15] the pace of technological change, etc. But for younger listeners here, we're both old enough to remember things like the dot-com bubble, digital disruption, economic uncertainty. We've been here many times before. So as someone who advises startups and has owned, operated, and successfully sold or exited numerous businesses,

[00:10:36] what do you think are some of the key factors here in 2024 from an economic perspective that entrepreneurs need to be aware of that might impact their business? Because as I said, these things happen in cycles, don't they? Oh yeah, they definitely are. And to mention the dot-com boom,

[00:10:53] and then it was a great recession. We've had some ups and downs over the years. Early on, there was the 70s and dropping the gold standard. You know, recessions come and go. That's definitely a cyclical thing. Another book and kind of a philosophy of the world

[00:11:09] that I really enjoy is Frey Dalio's Principles of the Changing World Order, where he analyzed about 500 years of history and leading empires changing the number one seed of the leading economy, controlling the reserve currency, education, technology, and innovation, and all that. And that level of cyclical environments

[00:11:34] is something that's definitely making a difference in understanding how a business works. And again, I don't want to sound like an old person, but the truth is that history is repeating itself. And when we understand that, it's a lot easier to spend more time researching success stories, biographies,

[00:11:54] case studies by successful startups, and even going back in time to Renaissance authors and creators and writers and philosophers and everyone else to understand what's driving economies, what's driving leadership, and even how marketing has started back in the day. And all of this can be applied today

[00:12:14] because they're essentially every green lesson you can learn. So how does that impact the current economy? Due to that level of cyclicity, there are ups and downs. And right now we're in a down round after everything that happened during the pandemic.

[00:12:32] So first off, we had three or four or five years of acceleration of the VC front, meaning that more and more money had been raised to fund startups because there have been lots of success stories that started with nothing and then turned into unicorns,

[00:12:48] or got billions, or tens of billions, or even hundreds of billions of valuations. So it was the type of gambling that made a lot of sense as people had lots of money, it was easier to launch a product, consumers were ready to purchase subscriptions and buy from startups,

[00:13:02] large corporations were hiring and hiring and hiring and growing larger businesses by just buying more seats for enterprise-level software. And all of this combined contributed to the fact that there was a lot of money in the economy and it was easy to start and launch a startup,

[00:13:19] salaries were rising. But right now we're in the reverse cycle. It got too much during the pandemic. We had work from home, so people saved a lot of money. There were lots of savings from not going outside, not taking gas, lunch, and all that stuff.

[00:13:33] There was a lot of money spent on e-commerce due to that, less time spent on entertainment, traveling, and so on. And all these cycles led to, for example, Amazon grew in a matter of two to three years. They grew from 750,000 employees

[00:13:49] to 1.5 million employees in just about two years. So when you think about how certain markets have completely exploded, it's more than expected that they have to normalize, they have to cut back and do some layoffs and kind of tighten the leash

[00:14:09] to make sure that the new market makes a lot of sense. So what entrepreneurs need to understand right now is that the economy looks different. It's right now in a down market. We're probably close to the reset. So I expect that reset's happening

[00:14:25] maybe end of this year or end of Q1 next year. But right now it's a down market, meaning that VC funding is really hard to raise right now. Salaries are on the rise. So if you're hiring, that's great because there are more opportunities.

[00:14:41] It's easier to hire people due to the layoffs. But also business is harder to acquire. Sales deals are taking a lot longer. Price rates, I'm speaking to other agencies, and this is something in my portfolio, they've been decreasing their standard hourly rates on retainer packages or maintenance packages

[00:14:58] because it's harder. More expensive consultants, coaches, advisors, they have cheaper plans, lightweight plans. They have some discounts because there's less money cycling in the economy right now. So as long as you understand the current shift of the economy, whether we're in a bear market or a bull market,

[00:15:17] and you're able to control that alongside your audience, you should be good to go. Just make sure you don't have false expectations of the time. We're talking today right in the height of summer here in the UK. Obviously, you're in Bulgaria, and holiday shopping is six months away,

[00:15:34] and Black Friday months away. All seems a long way off at the moment, but I think it's important to mention here, Prime Day here in July is often seen as the almost early kickoff to the holiday season, even though it's in the summer.

[00:15:48] So do you have any recommendations for e-commerce startups that maybe want to make an early impact on their sales this year? Yeah, so Prime Day is definitely one of the biggest shopping events out there, especially when it comes to direct to consumer and acquiring physical products.

[00:16:04] Last year, if I'm not mistaken, don't quote me on that, but I believe Amazon made something like $12.5-$12.7 billion in Prime Day revenue just from a couple of shopping days in the middle of July. And right now they're projected to do a little over $30 billion

[00:16:21] or maybe even over $40 billion. We are yet to see just now. But Prime Day is definitely one of the key security events. If you're into shopping, if you're into e-commerce and your business is related to that,

[00:16:34] it's definitely one of the most important events you need to care about. However, it's also worth noting that not everyone is in the e-commerce space. There are self-providers, agencies, membership sites, and whatnot. So other businesses may not see that specific peak from the economy

[00:16:53] because stores that are currently trying to make money on Prime Day are not investing as heavily into, let's say, browsing or Amazon Ads or server scalability and stability or email marketing and so forth. What we see here is that all that vendorship spend

[00:17:15] has been decreased over the past year. And right now consumers and store owners are just being careful and trying not to overinvest because they're conserving cash because they don't know when the economy is going to get better. So, bottom line, based on our predictions

[00:17:33] and our forecasts and the data that we see across our portfolios here, we do believe that Prime Day is going to be better than last year. So it is going to generate more revenue in terms of more GMV on Amazon's end.

[00:17:46] But when you account for inflation and price consumer index and everything else, that's probably not going to make such a significant impact over the summer for more businesses out there. So most of the B2B and B2C businesses we see,

[00:18:02] they are still buckling up and waiting for September to get closer to Q4 and the longer shopping season. That's going to make a more dramatic difference for most. And another thing that stood out to me when I was reading some of the background on you

[00:18:20] is how for new digital entrepreneurs, the fact that developing a CEO mindset is so important. So can you expand on that and any tips that you have that might help them gain those leadership skills that they need to succeed?

[00:18:34] About a decade ago or so when I started watching Shark Tank, well, I guess it should have been earlier, but it's probably 14 or 15 years ago. And of course, I've seen episodes of Dragons' Den, but unfortunately, it just wasn't too popular here.

[00:18:49] So apologies to all the UK watchers here. I do recognize you and I understand you invented that, so all credit where it's due. But when I watched Shark Tank back in the day, Robert Perjewa said that all founders are paranoid. And he as a founder was extremely paranoid

[00:19:09] and that's one of the key qualities that make a founder great. And at first, it sounded a bit extreme. We don't want to observe all the lunacy going in the digital space or just in the business ecosystem. But when you think about it, all that cyclical movements

[00:19:28] and how businesses are shifting and how much innovation is going on, how many disruptive technologies are coming up, especially over the past, let's say, 20, 30 years. You know, 25 years ago, we didn't even have widely accessible internet connectivity. About 25 years ago, we had a very cheap dial-up model at home.

[00:19:51] It was a duplex, so we had to coordinate that with our neighbors, making sure they could use the phone number. It was extremely slow. You couldn't even download an MP3 file, which was taking like four to five minutes for a single song.

[00:20:04] And that was a quarter century ago. It wasn't that long ago. And over the past 25 years, all that gained mass adoption. There were laptops and mobile phones, GPRS, 3G, 4G, 5G, broader connectivity, social networks, video streaming. Now we have virtual reality and so many different things

[00:20:29] happening just in a matter of about 20 years. So unless founders are really paranoid, as Robert said, it's really hard to just stay afloat. And understanding that business is a long sequence of ups and downs, a lot of grind, a lot of persistence and perseverance.

[00:20:47] Most of the time, things are not going to go your way. You have to admit and you have to accept that you need to delegate. Things are not going to be perfect. The customer is, if not always right, at least always the most important person in the room.

[00:21:03] And so many different shifts and paradigms that we as human beings and due to our ego and the way that we're being raised and being taught and being nurtured by our own parents or society, we're not thought to accept and recognize.

[00:21:18] So this is why, again, in MBA Disrupted, I'm talking a lot, and that's one of the first chapters, is the CEO mindset because this is the most important thing to learn. And probably the best reference I could make

[00:21:33] is to some of the world leaders who were not things for presidents. I'm talking about Martin Luther King Jr. or Pat McGonagall, these leaders who were sacrificing themselves, who were passionate about their communities, were doing things not because of themselves,

[00:21:53] not for their own good, but for the greater good. We're solving real problems. We're uniting people. We're giving hope. And all these principles are critical to becoming a CEO and elevating and putting the business above yourself and understanding that, essentially,

[00:22:11] you're probably the least important person in the room. You can't do anything without your team. You can't do anything without your customers. You can't do anything without your partners. You rely heavily on media, on journalists, on PRs, on everyone else.

[00:22:24] Just that level of humility combined with endless perseverance and faith and hard work are some of the key traits that executives need to have. And if you take a look at some of the best executives on the planet, they all share these traits,

[00:22:41] and this is what helped them go through the tough moments and turn their businesses into what they are today. And as this is a tech podcast, it's almost the law now in 2024 that I have to mention AI. But for business leaders, especially those with smaller teams

[00:22:58] or even solopreneurs that could be listening to our conversation today, trying to work out how they can use it, how do you see them using automation tools and AI to make their work more efficient and their time more productive? Anything you can share around how you're using it

[00:23:14] or how you'd recommend other people use it? Of course. We did a lot of things there to incorporate AI. First off, we have all the popular chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Jamie and I, Claude, and even Grok by X. He's actually used them for different purposes

[00:23:31] to tap into different kinds of datasets. We also use Perplexity to pull different scientific data and better verify the method studies. So I just want to pay a lot of attention to this at the same time. So three different sources or rather how I would differentiate

[00:23:48] the core leaders in the space. First off, ChatGPT, Ken, Crow, and Sorge Internet. Nowadays, we're GPT 4.40. So it's pretty important because we can do a lot of research as consolidated. Like, hey, give me the best agencies, vendors, something on the planet

[00:24:04] in that category with the best ratings and reviews and so on. So that level of research, actually our agency business this year has been receiving lead submissions and RFPs from people who found this through ChatGPT. So that's very important to understand. Now, GPTs are essentially a search engine.

[00:24:24] So that's very important. Claude is one of my favorite chatbots, by the way, one of my favorite GPTs. And I'll tell you why. Claude is my best assistant in breaking down business requirements and creating business plans and specifications and everything else. What do I mean here?

[00:24:44] Now, we had a meeting with our account managers the other day and we were working on new service propositions and breaking down a project. And I went to Claude and said, hey, act as a business developer or project manager, executive,

[00:24:58] VP of something here, and give me a breakdown. Like, this is a scope. A client's coming up with these requirements. They want a community site, membership site. Give me a breakdown. What are the different steps? Who are the different people? What are the different needs?

[00:25:11] And what's the standard breakdown in terms of pricing? So with just a couple of follow-ups, we actually had average pricing tiers for these packages, excellent realistic market-based pay, estimates on effort and labor for conducting some of these.

[00:25:28] And that's something you can get with two or three prompts right now. So the level of research, the level of brainstorming and building specifications, financial predictions, business plans, even presentations for businesses is just paramount. We use different things.

[00:25:44] I use Opus Clip for turning long-form videos into shorter clips for social media. That's very important and something I use heavily. I use PostWise for creating content for social, so based on certain ideas, it can follow up certain rules. Same goes for Tapio and LinkedIn

[00:26:00] and lots of other topical niche-specific tools that solve different problems in different needs. I make sure I research the availability and what's being present and what's being available in AI features integrating to tools such as Asana or Slack or Notion

[00:26:20] or some of the other systems because right now, Slack can summarize data and information from your conversations or from an entire chat, which is incredible. Same goes for Gemini. It can summarize email threads. You can feed a document and interview questions

[00:26:37] based on that document in your Google Drive. And the list goes on. But the moral of the story is, all the tools on the planet right now, some based on the leading engines on the planet and some still evolving. We're building existing tools.

[00:26:54] All of them provide incredible capabilities for businesses and just lots of new opportunities to increase your efficiency in your own business. Wow, so many cool tools that you mentioned there. I've used a few of them, and I completely echo everything you just said.

[00:27:12] And I'm also curious, we've mentioned your book a few times now, and I think it's a perfect moment to introduce everyone listening to that. Can you tell me more about the book? What inspired you to write it? And what do you hope readers will take away from it?

[00:27:26] I've always been passionate about education. First off, I refer to myself as a learnaholic. I just love studying, and I'm extremely grateful for all the opportunities I've had over time. Lending my first job, getting my first internship, being entrusted to take on some responsibility

[00:27:45] and leading teams and all that prior to becoming a librarian in the first place. We actually have interns right now at the office going through an internship program. So we still take students and college graduates and we try to make the most out of them

[00:28:01] and help them, give them the opportunity to become better people and start their jobs and all that. And all these things combined, I just love helping people out. The reason I'm so passionate about entrepreneurship is my previous book, One Hundred and Two Steps to Becoming an Entrepreneur,

[00:28:21] is more of an anti-entrepreneurship book. All the grinds and struggles I've faced. And right now, this one is... If the first one hadn't given you up, this is the actual framework, the actual playbook that we use to teach our people internally that our account managers, our leadership team

[00:28:40] is using to implement go-to-market strategies. So just use it. We know how much hard work there is, but if you are determined to spend the next two, three, four years building a product, well, at least start the right way. And the feedback so far has been overwhelming.

[00:28:58] Just in a matter of months, we sold many hundreds of copies, 80 reviews, five-star reviews on Amazon. And again, we're just starting out. So I'm more than happy to just push forward. Fantastic. And one of the things I wanted to ask you,

[00:29:13] because we've been talking a lot about the latest technology. You mentioned some great AI tools that you're using there. And it does feel incredibly overwhelming to a lot of people listening how they keep up to speed with the pace of technological change.

[00:29:24] So I've got to ask, how do you self-educate? How do you adapt and continuously learn to keep up to speed with the latest trends? Any tips you can share around that? Right. Well, one of the things I learned from, again, top leaders like, you know, Bill Gates,

[00:29:40] is spending at least an hour a day on learning. I've definitely been adopting that concept myself for close to a decade. And then spending time, more or less every single break that I can get away from standard work and family is listening to podcasts, reading newsletters,

[00:29:57] subscribing to specific YouTube channels. I rang the notification bell on top leaders from LinkedIn, same goes for eggs. And just, you know, I have, of course, favorite podcasts like yours that I'm subscribed to. So kind of all of these combined is really helping me

[00:30:14] stay in the loop and always be in touch with what's happening in the ecosystem. I'm also a member of several Slack communities and even school groups with industry leaders, and I try to catch up on weekends or on Monday mornings, spend an hour

[00:30:28] and see what people are facing, like different challenges and different troubles. I believe that's extremely important. We have that same conversation with our marketing teams in-house. Kind of our key message is stop searching in Google, right? Just don't look for regurgitated information.

[00:30:46] Everything that's online is two, three, four, five years old. The latest and greatest is interviews with leaders on podcasts and on YouTube and following top leaders directly and following SaaS founders directly. All of that is contributing to staying ahead of the curve.

[00:31:01] Otherwise you'll always be two, three, four years behind. Wow, that's fantastic advice. Absolutely love that. And we've covered a lot today. We've talked about yourself, your new book, MBA Disrupted. Obviously your work with Deverix.

[00:31:16] For anyone listening who wants to find out more information about anything we talked about today, including your book, where would you like to point everyone? Well, the best place to find me is mariopezsio.com, which is my own website. There are others, deverix.com for our agency,

[00:31:31] mbadisrupted.com for the book and so forth. Just head to mariopezsio.com, reach out through social or the contact form. Let me know that you've listened to the show and I'm more than happy to take it from there.

[00:31:43] Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I, for one, have just loved sitting down and chatting with you. I've learned so much from some of the tools that you mentioned. Some I have used, some I haven't.

[00:31:52] So I'm going to be checking those out, hearing more about your insights and that golden advice at the end there. Don't just rely on a Google search. You're already relying on outdated information. So true. But more than anything, just a big thank you

[00:32:04] for talking about that and I'll be checking your book out too. Thanks for your time today. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Neil. It's been great to be here. I think from navigating economic challenges to leveraging AI for efficiency, Mario has shared credible

[00:32:18] and invaluable insights for today's entrepreneurs and his book, MBA Disrupted, does offer a comprehensive framework for digital entrepreneurship and also emphasising the perseverance, hard work and strategic mindset that is required to thrive. And as we all face an ever-changing business landscape,

[00:32:39] these lessons are crucial for anyone looking to make their mark. But my question to you is how do you plan to adapt and innovate on your entrepreneurial journey? Love to hear your thoughts on this one. So send me a DM on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram

[00:32:54] just at Neil C. Hughes. Let me know your thoughts but it's time for me to go now. But I'll be back bright and early tomorrow. So thank you for listening as always and until next time, don't be a stranger.