#496 From Accidental Founder to 30,000+ Entrepreneurs | Jeremy Ames on Building Businesses That Last

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to an episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet today. I'm very pleased having with me from the US Jeremy Ames, CEO of Guided Financial. Jeremy, thank you very much for being here with me today. As I was explaining to you before we started the actual [00:01:00] recording, the way I love to do it, I keep it to my guest.

To introduce themselves. Tell us more about, you know, your background, your journey, and what you're currently up to. We're gonna talk a lot about, you know, entrepreneurship, about starting up, about, uh, Guidant other entrepreneurs also as well. So the floor is yours, Derby. 

Jeremy: Okay. My name's Jeremy Ames. I'm the CEO, uh, and co-founder of Guidant Financial.

I've had this business for 22 years, but I've also started six other companies, bought a couple companies. I've also been a franchisee three different times, so. I have toyed around with all the different paths to ownership, some more successfully than others. And, uh, I've had a front row seat by nature of what I do at Guidant Financial to see over 30,000 people start companies.

Because what we do at Guidant is we help people use their US based retirement funds to make an investment into buying or starting a company. So we've helped launch over 30,000 companies now over the last 22 years. And so we've seen a lot, we've [00:02:00] seen a lot of, uh, how trends have changed and. What kind of small businesses are getting set up, although for us, that's primarily in the US based on uh, what those regulations guide.

Mehmet: Sure. And, uh, thank you again Jeremy, for being here with me today. May be kind of a traditional question. What sparked you to start this? Like what was the main motivation for you to decide to go help you know, people do this? 

Jeremy: Yeah, I'd love to say there was some really. Intention put to this amendment, but it was kind of a happy accident.

So I worked in the restaurant industry when it was in my twenties, so I managed restaurants essentially. And I moved to the Seattle area, which is where I'm from, to take a job managing a restaurant. And within four months of being there, I had an encounter with the assistant general manager where she pulled me aside in the restaurant and said, Jeremy.

You are trying too hard. It [00:03:00] feels like you're trying to make everyone look bad. You need to stop. And I literally cried in the middle of this restaurant. I'm this 23-year-old kid feeling like I had been putting all this effort and energy to try and bring change and improve things, uh, at this new role that I had taken on.

And this woman was just crushing it. And so I ended up quitting. I gave my notice within a couple weeks. And that was a happy accident because within six months I had randomly started my first company, never had an intention to do it, but saw an opportunity, uh, in the real estate industry with uh, a partner who has now been my wife for 20 years.

And we started a real estate company that was really focused on helping people get started in investment real estate. And it was through that that I got introduced to my longtime business partner, David Nelson. A mutual contact we had said, Hey, you gotta meet this guy. He's also in his early twenties. He is really cool.

He likes Michael Jackson music just like you. And so I think you guys will hit it off. [00:04:00] We met each other. We did hit it off. And so we started doing some investment projects together, and one of the projects we were working on together was a raw land development, and it's where we bought attractive land.

We subdivided it into smaller plats. And then we would, our strategy was we would put a concrete foundation down. We had a buddy who had a mobile home license. So we'd buy these mobile homes and then we would secure them to these concrete foundations. And that enabled these houses to get traditional financing because you could take off of title that it was a mobile home.

And so we went to this group of attorneys to, 'cause we were gonna raise money for this project to do all this construction. And they said, Hey, have you thought about using self-directed IRAs? We said, what are you talking about? Uh, and so they gave us an education about how in the United States there's the ability for people to use retirement funds, to invest in all sorts of alternative assets if you know how to do it and where to, uh, what companies to work with.

And so [00:05:00] we went out to our network, ended up getting two thirds of the funding for this real estate project through people that were committing retirement funds. And of course we told them. We can totally handle it for you. And we had no idea what we were doing. So we went back to these attorneys and we said, please help us.

We have all these people that want to invest in this project and we're not sure how to help them. So they helped us with that. And we walked away from that experience amendment saying, this is incredible. Most people don't know you can do this when they find out. Many of them are really excited about it, but it's also super confusing.

And so that was the genesis of how we started Guidant Financial was originally helping people. Access real estate based assets with retirement fund investments. But we very quickly pivoted to helping people set up and start companies. And that came to dominate both what we did and what we were passionate about.

So much so that we, many, many years ago, stopped doing any of the real estate related things. We sold off that part of the business to really double down on serving [00:06:00] entrepreneurs 'cause that's where our heart's at, helping more people become entrepreneurs. 

Mehmet: Awesome. I like, I've loved the story also as well.

And, uh, you know, while preparing, I know that you, you, you talk a lot about creating the life you want, right? Yeah. Um, just usually I do this at the end, but I want to do it at the beginning. This time. There's a lot of people, Jeremy, that, and I was one of them. That don't get me wrong, and it's not like to say they are not, uh, let's say visionaries or like they are, they don't have enough courage.

But you know, we are all humans. We sit in the nine to five jobs and we think that there is no other option. Um. What? What do you think we can do to have more people like yourself? As I said, usually I keep this to the end, but the story, you know, it, it matched, you know that I have to ask you this, how we can push more people to become entrepreneurs.

Jeremy: Yeah. [00:07:00] Well, I read a Gallup poll the other day, and what they determined was that 62% of people, at least in the United States, want to be their own boss. That's about 130 million people when you do the math about the adult working population in the us. And yet I've seen the data. There are only about 300 to 400,000 employer businesses that get set up each year.

So that is a huge, huge gap between the number of people who say, Hey, I'd like to do something where I'm more in control and have more freedom and more autonomy, versus the people that actually do it. And I'll tell you meme, I think the biggest gap that I see, it's not tactics, it's not confidence. It's people willing to commit and invest the time to learn, the path to get there.

I think especially if you're somebody who's already in a career, you've got something to lose, right? Most of the clients we serve, they have many things to lose. They have kids maybe who are about to go to college. They may have aging parents that haven't saved up enough to take [00:08:00] care of their own retirement.

They certainly have mortgages and car payments and all the other trappings of people who have worked hard and built these successful lives. They can see the risks really, really clearly of what they have to lose. But until, and unless you spend the time to figure out what you could do and how you would do it, you can't see the path to the rewards nearly as well.

And I think that's what really holds people back. I have a buddy who used to be on our board of directors. His name is Ta McCann. He runs the venture arm of Pioneer Square Labs, not the venture arm, but the accelerator arm, where they basically spin up companies. I think they've spun up maybe 45 startups in the last five or six years, and he has this concept that I love.

He calls it the side project. What TA says is that anytime he wants to have one or two side projects going, and for him a side project is he's going to commit [00:09:00] three to five hours a week to explore something that he's interested in, usually with someone else where they say, Hey, we're really interested in exploring agentic AI and how it could impact this particular industry.

And so they will commit to a month of spending this three to five hours a week. And they'll meet once a week and grab coffee and talk about what they're gonna do and what they're gonna explore and research. And then at the end of the month, they get back together and decide, are we still having fun? Are we learning something?

Do we want to keep doing this? And he's done these side projects for years. And I think for him, they have turned into four different companies that he started, I think three of which he exited. 

Mehmet: Cool. Now I gotta ask you something here, Jeremy. Um. It's like from both sides as well. Yeah. So I think it's, you know, usually the statistics come from the US because, you know, it's the biggest, um, startup and like small medium businesses market globally.

And it's, I think it's say famous, [00:10:00] uh, thing. We see always, like I think 90% of the startups, businesses, whatever they fail in their second year or something like this now. Having this in mind and, you know, going and talking to someone who gonna, um, you know, they want to save the money for retirements and, you know, they, they, how, how do you have like to deal with objections from people when, when, when you discuss, like, for example, leveraging retirement funds for.

Such class of assets. Of course I know the answer, but you know, would love to hear what you hear from people and how you answer that. 

Jeremy: Yeah. We don't see our job as trying to convince people that they should or shouldn't do any particular business investment. That's not our expertise. Our job is to educate them on if they want to use retirement funds, what does that look like?

What are the implications? What are the costs? What are the boundaries within which they have to live and operate? And that's what we do. [00:11:00] And at the end of the day, they've gotta figure out if the thing they want to do is really worth it. Now, I think underlying your question, if I were to give people one piece of advice, maybe I'll actually tell a story for you here.

Sure. So I know an entrepreneur, his name is Eric Torres Garcia, and I love this guy's story. So I was chatting with Eric and he was telling me after college he went over to Europe to do an internship and he did an internship with the company Kinder. So you may have seen, uh, the Kinder eggs that you can get different places that have the toys in the middle or the Kinder Boyer bears that you can see at grocery stores.

It's a huge German company, I believe. And he went over to Europe and he saw that they, this. This technology that they were using to put toys inside these eggs they were using for so many other things. In Europe, you can find entire wine bottles in a giant chocolate egg if that's what you're looking for.

And so he was fascinated by this concept and [00:12:00] when he came back to the US he was like, I wanna figure out how to do something like that here. But they're obviously some regulations and restrictions in the us uh, based on that. And one day he was going through the store and he saw a bath bomb. And I don't know if you know what a bath bomb are, but there are these sort of balls that you just drop in the bathtub and they release all these aromas and bubbles and all these other things.

And he looked at that and he thought, wait a second. What if I could do that with hot cocoa? And so he ran to the grocery store and he bought chocolate and marshmallows and all these other things in this little, you know, plastic mold. And he worked up this prototype. And he said, okay, now I've got this prototype.

I'm gonna make a video and I'm gonna try putting it online and just see if people respond to this. So he takes this one prototype he has, and he, you know, sets up his little iPhone camera and he turns on Mariah Carey's all I want for Christmas as you and you know, drops us in and does this little 32nd video and posts it on TikTok [00:13:00] and.

It starts blowing up so many people commenting like, where can I get one of these? And so he pulled it down within a couple hours 'cause he was like, okay, I'm getting interest but I don't know what to do with these people. So he pulls it down and the next weekend he goes and signs up for a two week free trial on Shopify and sets up a website, mocks up a bunch of, you know, fake front end for what he called cocoa bombs.

These hot cocoa bombs that you can sort of drop in a cup of milk and they melt and turn into hot chocolate. And so he mocked up four or five different flavors and set up a basic merchant account and then relaunched this TikTok video. And then I think he went to dinner that night that he launched it and all of a sudden he is at dinner and he is hearing ping.

He's got a sale, ping. He's got a sail, ping, ping, ping. He ends up shutting the thing down after about six hours because he realizes he had sold $8,500 of these cocoa bombs and he had no idea how he was gonna [00:14:00] make them as scale. So he scrambled and went back to his entrepreneurship professor at school and tapped into everyone that he knew to find, uh, a bunch of people to help mentor him.

His mom ended up. Getting their local church to let 'em use their commercial kitchen. They bought a bunch of random stuff at the grocery store and they made this first batch of, you know, $8,500 worth of, uh, worth of stuff. Today, I think Eric has 25 employees and he's got an over million dollar revenue business out of this small town in Idaho that he lives in.

And I look at his story and I think that's what most people miss. When it comes to entrepreneurship, they think they have to come in and spend three or $400,000 to set something up. And so they worry about getting an office space and buying the right furniture and having the right coffee machine. And the reality of this, it is that none of that really matters until in unless you have a customer.

And this is something that [00:15:00] I love about the tech industry in general. There's so much more thinking on this plane of go test something first. So that's usually what I tell people when they say, well, how do I think about the risk piece? Well, I'll say, what are your assumptions that are driving why you think this is gonna work?

Go test those. So another example of a client who did this, there was a guy who used to work for IBM. His name was S Spero Eggos, and he decided he wanted to be a business owner, but he was looking around at different opportunities and couldn't find the thing he wanted to do. And then his wife one day says, Spiro, you need to go clean out our garbage bins.

So, I don't know how this works in different areas of the country, but here, here in the US usually you wheel out your garbage bin every week to the, to the curb that you've thrown all your garbage in. Well, after you've done that for a year or two, those garbage bins get real nasty, and he did not want to clean this thing.

So he starts searching online for a solution of how to clean this garbage bin, and he finds this random guy in southern [00:16:00] Florida that has this modified commercial truck that he's turned into, essentially a mobile carwash for garbage bins. So he calls this guy and says, can you come up to where I'm at and clean my garbage bin?

And the guy says, absolutely not. You're an hour and a half away. I'm not gonna come up there for a $15 service. It doesn't make sense, but I'll sell you a truck. And so Spiro gets off the phone and thinks, wait a second. I wonder if I'm not the only person who thinks that this would be interesting. And at the time, Spiro had a daughter that was in Girl Scouts.

So what did he do? He went and took a clipboard, went to his local grocery store and stood outside the grocery store and talked to people as they came out. And what he was doing was telling 'em about the service, asking them if they would be interested, and then he also asked people, Hey, I'll give you a discount if you pay for the first three months.

And if I get enough people that say, yes, I'll start this service and come do it. If not, I'll, you know, refund your money and you'll be no worse for it. So he gets something like 60 [00:17:00] people. To sign up and then goes and decides that it's worth it for him to invest a hundred thousand dollars in this truck because it was no, you know, no small expense to make this happen Today, he has a three or $4 million business.

He's got three or four different trucks. He does the garbage bins for an entire city in Florida. And it all started because he said, well, well, before I make this big bet, let me actually test the thing. That is gonna drive this model whether people actually need this service and want the service and are willing to pay for it.

Mehmet: Right. Just I note on that because you mentioned about the tech, but you know, uh, I see a lot of people in the us I have a lot of, of France there. Um, and even here, you know, in, in, I think in Europe it applies, but I can say in Dubai where I live, um. Uh, do you think like, you know, these kinds of what we call traditional businesses are sometimes underrated for success because people usually, they try to [00:18:00] go follow the shiny things, you know, and start, you know, what is trending now, while if you go back to the basics of.

Yeah, very simple ideas like the one you, you, you mentioned, you see a lot of success and services basically. I know for a fact like services, if you execute it the right way, there's a huge potential. Do you see like something like similar in the US where people, they try to follow the shiny things instead of going back to basics as we, as we say.

How about I 

Jeremy: tell you a back to the basic story that I love, 'cause this I think will resonate with people in the technology industry. So we have a client, his name is James Ellis. He was a software engineer for many, many years and worked for a lot of big companies like Microsoft and LinkedIn and right around the COVID Pandemic, he got laid off from LinkedIn and it was difficult to find a job.

And he had already been a part of a couple startups and had learned about himself that while he was really [00:19:00] good at building product, he wasn't great at the sales side of what needed to be done. Uh, he had also dabbled in a franchise and had realized that wasn't the thing. So he decided, okay, I'm not able to find a job.

I'm gonna go buy a business, but I wanna buy a business that is going to be recession proof. So putting on his technology hat, he goes, okay, I'm gonna go online and I'm gonna find all the data I can about default rates. And so he ends up finding a bunch of this SBA related data that gets published that talks about default rates, and he organized them by default rate the industries.

And the two that popped up at the very top for him were home repair services and auto repair. Because when he looked at the ones that had the lowest default rates. Then he also filtered 'em through this lens of which of these things would I pay for, even if I was struggling financially? And his thought was, if I get a hole in my roof, I'm gonna fix it.

Even if I'm struggling [00:20:00] financially, if my car breaks down, I'm gonna fix it. Even if I'm struggling financially 'cause I need to to get to my job or whatever. And so he decides he's gonna look for home service repair. So this is a software engineer who decides he's gonna do home service repair or auto repair.

And then he builds this algorithm to start pulling stuff off the internet, filtering it for companies in the areas that he's willing to move to that have Google reviews that average more than four stars, but are of a certain size. So he pulls this in and then he is got this autogenerated email thing that then starts reaching out and pinging these owners.

He ends up actually finding the opportunity that he purchased off Craigslist of all places. So he buys this auto repair shop and he has taken this thing from, I don't know, probably a half a million in revenue, and now his location is doing over 2 million and he's about to open a second one. And all he did was come in and say, here's an old school business that's been treated old [00:21:00] school for a long time.

It was dirty when he walked in. They had poor marketing. They didn't do a good job when it came to pricing and finding the best customers. And all he did was come in and take his. Understanding of how to apply marketing and technology to this old school business. So I have seen that there are huge opportunities in doing that because most of the people who are in these industries don't have that knowledge.

So if you can find an existing business that already has the skills to deliver on that service, and you can bring this part that it doesn't have, uh, it can be a real amplifier. 

Mehmet: Cool. Yeah, I, I like, uh, you know, this story also, I'm liking the conversation because you're telling us story, Jeremy, which is I like the most actually.

Now, uh, talking about technology, tell me how have you adopted that with what you do currently? Like, uh, how it changed, you know, your customer's experience? I would say. [00:22:00] 

Jeremy: Yeah, well, I mean the big thing that's on our mind, maybe on the mind of everyone in the world is ai. What's gonna happen here? I can look at our business and say, over time, AI should make a lot of what we currently do so much easier or possibly irrelevant.

And so we're constantly asking the question of what is it that we're delivering for our customers that's uniquely human? And what are the other components that we can automate? And you know, we've. We're approaching this from multiple different angles. So for one, we have big, top down high data security projects involving ai.

In fact, we've been working over the last nine months on this tool that we use where clients can take whatever information they can get from their payroll providers and dump it into this AI tool, and then our AI tool figures out what's in there, translates it into the format we need, checks it against prior years.

And then comes back with [00:23:00] any questions or validations that the client needs to resolve so that we have all the information about their employees to then do the annual work for their 401k. That's a huge project, right? Involves PII information. We've gotta have all this stuff locked down and it's top down, but top down is super slow.

And so we've also begun experimenting with a couple of internal programs. One is we have this new AI innovation program where. Uh, if any one of our team members goes out and tests a solution to a particular problem that makes their job easier and can write up a one pager that shows how it saves the company at least five grand a year, then we have an innovation bonus that we give to them.

So we're trying to build some bottom up piece. We've got a couple of internal groups now that are meeting once a month to go through and talk about things that they're building, custom GPTs and other things to try and make their jobs more efficient. [00:24:00] And we're gonna be implementing this new role that we're testing called an AI Solutions Builder.

And the goal is to test, we, you know, we have an engineering team in-house that builds things, but our engineering team builds things that are super code intensive. And what we're trying to do is test, can we take someone who's really technology forward but not a programmer, and set them loose on some part of the business and have them use ag agentic AI solutions in order to solve problems.

Because if they can do that, that's an interesting idea that we can scale throughout other departments of the company. So I'm trying to find both top down and bottom up and kind of in between ways to address this because. AI is the kind of thing where I, I think if you expect that you're gonna go get a certification on AI and that, that's going to be helpful.

It doesn't really work because it changes so fast that what you learn today [00:25:00] is irrelevant or is not particularly relevant two or three months from now. Instead, it's the kind of thing where you have to be experimenting with it constantly to figure out how to use it, and so we're trying to figure out how to create a culture.

Where everyone in the company is constantly experimenting with it and using it, uh, as ways to drive innovation. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that is the absolutely number one thing that's on my mind right now as a business owner that I'm trying to figure out. 

Mehmet: Absolutely, it answers the question.

And, you know, just fun fact, uh, about, you know, like certifications and how knowledge will change. Uh, when I started the podcast, so chat, GPT was maybe only two months, uh, or less old. It was like Jan 2023. And at that time, you know, I speak to different people in different industries, technology leaders, business people, so.

The question is, especially for tech people, like, okay, what do you think the trends would be in AI for the next five years? I stopped [00:26:00] asking this question because I can't even ask after six months, because to your point, things are changing very, very fast and you know, what we know today might be become obsolete just in one week time, not even in in one month.

So absolutely on this, but yeah, you, you answered my question and. Again, it's not like about trends or something. Business financing changed a lot. Also, Jeremy, right? So, and from tech perspective and. Excuse me, ignore this a little bit because I'm not aware, you know, how things are done a hundred percent in the us but I mean, if, if you decide to have, uh, financing for your business, there will be some kind of due diligence or like, um, you know, background checks both financially, personally, and, and all this stuff.

Correct me if I'm wrong now, are you seeing technology also? Speeding up this [00:27:00] process. So, you know, entrepreneurs, they can get their hands on the cash faster than it used to be before. Are you seeing like such also, uh, enhancements in the overall process of the financing? I. 

Jeremy: Yeah, I'm not seeing any direct ones yet.

There may be a little bit happening beside behind the scenes with lenders, but we're also experiencing an interest rate environment where there are far few fewer people that are getting SBA ish loans because the interest rates are 10 plus percent. Yeah. Start doing the math on businesses that can be really prohibitive for a lot of these companies.

Um, one thing it does help with. Is that typically if you're going to get any type of commercial financing, a bank is going to ask you for a business plan. And that can feel really overwhelming for people. So much so that there are companies out there that charge people four or $5,000 to create these business plans for them.

Chat TPT is really good at creating a lot of the component pieces you would [00:28:00] need in a business plan. And this is kind of a, what I would call a pro andana con is it's nice 'cause it can save people time. But it's also a con in that if CHATT PT is doing your thinking for you, you're missing the real point of doing a business plan, which is really making you think through, who is my customer?

How am I gonna find them? How am I gonna get paid? What are the key assumptions that are driving me considering and thinking that this thing is going to be a success? So there are certainly some technologies that can help speed up some components of the process. But it's not making the government move faster yet.

It's not making lenders move any faster than they have in the past yet. 

Mehmet: Yeah. Hopefully we will. Yeah. 'cause you know, as much as we can shorten the process, the better it is. Um, now something related to entrepreneurship, again, Jeremy, you've done it yourself multiple times and you helped a lot of them. What do you think [00:29:00] is the major.

I would say the number one mistake usually entrepreneurs do after lodging. Okay. They decided, let's do it, and they secured their financing. What do you see usually the first mistake they do and you think they should avoid it? Hmm.

Jeremy: I think there are two that come up for me. 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Jeremy: So one is you would be shocked how many people start businesses without some form of a financial projection. Which is crazy to me. There are, there are many people who manage their businesses by just logging into their bank account to look at their cash value.

That's a big mistake. Uh, and the reason it's a big mistake is because not only are you not gonna see how what you're doing is gonna impact you 6, 7, 12 months down the line, you're gonna miss the fact that what a financial model forces you to do is get clear on the assumptions that drive your model. And I've [00:30:00] built a lot of financial models in, in my day, and I will tell you there are always three to four numbers that matter way more than all the other ones.

And you don't always realize that until you build the financial model and start playing around with some of those assumption assumptions. And then you realize, oh, if I'm gonna open a restaurant, this food cost thing matters a lot. Or, Hey, in this services businesses, everything really comes down to labor because my labor cost isn't here.

So really the the thing that. Leads to people being successful in the business is they learn how the business operates. They learn how to make it work. You're gonna learn faster if you force yourself to make those assumptions upfront. Now you're gonna be wrong, but at least if you're wrong, you're going to be able to see then pretty quickly where you're wrong.

And that leads to sort of the second piece of this, which is a lot of people think, ah, I don't want to pay someone to do this, so I'll just do my own bookkeeping. Then guess what happens? They don't do it [00:31:00] and they don't do it. So they're essentially flying a plane blind. And the reason I use the plane analogy is because it could be deadly if you crash, right?

So I wouldn't fly a plane with a blindfold on. I don't know why you'd operate a business without constantly getting that, that information in. And it speaks to, I think, a larger pattern that I've seen with business owners. One is. Before they start or buy the company, they are full of hope and excitement.

They're willing to spend money with the, in the spirit of making money. And then they launch the business and all of a sudden they lose their minds. 'cause they're fearful now every penny counts. And so now they're not willing to invest money in having people that are specialized, do particular parts of what they need to do.

And I will tell you. The most important thing you can do as a business owner is get super clear on what are the one or two things that you as the business owner need to do to drive the [00:32:00] business forward. Usually in the early stages, that's almost always something to do with sales, business development, or marketing, because all these businesses grow when they get customers, and if you don't spend your time doing those things, then what will happen is your business will die before it gets off the ground.

And I think getting clear on what those are and tracking your time to that and being willing to say, there are other things that are gonna have to get done in the business, and I need to be willing to pay to have someone do those things because it's more important that I spend two hours making phone calls to find my next customer than it is that I spend two hours beating my head against the wall, trying to put numbers into QuickBooks so that I can see what my finances look like.

Mehmet: Right. I think this is, uh, compliments what you mentioned before about, you know, validating and trying to, to understand, you know, what kind of business you're gonna, uh, start. We talked a [00:33:00] lot to, and it applies in any business, but because the podcast folks more on tech startups, but I think it's universal.

I tell people like, you can't. You know, go and say, I'm gonna open a pizza restaurant, uh, without at least going and checking out like, are all people in this town or in this, you know, a neighborhood? You need to go and see if actually they like pizzas. Like you can't just open a pizza restaurant because you heard from your friend that opening a pizza restaurant in this place is good.

Now, one thing, like I speak to a lot of, you know, ambitious entrepreneur, not in tech, uh, here in Dubai. And when I ask them, for example, what do you. What do you have an idea for for a business? And they say, yeah, I want to open a coffee shop. I say, okay, fine, but why? Like, why do you want to open a coffee shop?

And I'm surprised. Yeah, because we think it's a good business. I said, have you went and tried to understand, you know, what are the costs, you know, the labor costs, like material cost, rent, and [00:34:00] how much you're gonna sell the coffee for? Because usually rents are like a little bit expensive here in Dubai, like as their usual state, especially in like luxury malls and all this.

And I'm surprised still Jeremy, that people, to your point, they get little bit emotional. I can understand. I, I, I relate to my younger self, you know, we are, we are excited, we want to start a business, but I think it's just the validation plus the financial modeling and. When I put it to people, you know, on a simple Excel sheet, I'm not a financial model by any chance, but I say like, just keep it simple.

Just assume what are your costs, how much you gonna sell it, sell for? And is this like, just check? Is this the income that you want to aim for, uh, as they're living? Are you okay with this? And can you actually deliver on that? Like do you have the capability, let's say to do, I don't know, just $10,000 sales a month, you're gonna have cost of [00:35:00] 8,000, so you're gonna stay with $2,000.

Are you okay with that? And you would be surprised, Jeremy, when I ask them the simple question and I put it in the simple Excel sheet without financial modeling. Still, we didn't speak forecast. They say like, oh, we never thought about it this way. So that really resonated with me. Um, uh, and I, I think it's a global, it's not only in the US or in Dubai or in Europe.

I think this is something that happens everywhere. Um, it's meme, 

Jeremy: it's a universal truth. 

Mehmet: Yeah, 

Jeremy: it is. I have a friend who recently lost 35 pounds. He's been struggling with this weight thing for a long time. Mm-hmm. And he came to me and he said, Jeremy. I know you're a pretty healthy guy, like how do you stay healthy?

And I said, lemme tell you, Josh, the number one thing that you can do. It's really simple. Just start tracking everything you need. I even gave him an app that I use. I said, you will be surprised when you bring visibility to it what's [00:36:00] actually happening. That same dynamic happens everywhere. I promise. If you are not tracking the calories that go in your body, you are eating more calories than you think.

Just like. If you have to sit down and put on paper what this revenue thing is actually gonna be and you have to stare at it, you might be surprised, but I'll give you two other things when it comes to validation amendment that, um, mm-hmm. Please. I've learned through some experts. One came through, uh, a group that does pricing consulting and they said the absolute best thing you can do when you're considering a business, let's say it's a coffee shop, is go locate the 10 best coffee shops in your area.

Just go stock those coffee shops. Go sit in them, go order coffee, go talk to the customers that are in them. Ask them why do you choose this coffee shop? How often do you come here? Uh, what do you think's missing in a coffee shop that you wish was there? Because at the end of the day, the thing you're gonna have to do when you start a business is figure out how are you going to be different or more desirable than something else that's out there?

Is it you're gonna be [00:37:00] in a location where a coffee shop isn't? Is it gonna be, you're gonna offer some unique thing that other coffee shops don't have that people are looking for. You gotta figure out what that thing is, and the best way to do that is just to go talk to people. The second thing you can do, and this came from my buddy who he runs a 10 plus million dollar business, and all they do is find industry experts for private equity companies to consult on acquisition deals that they're considering.

And so they have this thing dialed in on how to reach out to these. Really smart, really capable people. Filter 'em, get 'em to an interview and then pull information outta their brains. And he actually walked me through and helped me develop this process for how someone could do this as a small business owner.

Uh, and really it would be, okay, so you want to open a pizza shop. So go find three executives that worked in a pizza business. Go find three people that own pizza shops. Maybe not in your local area, maybe somewhere else. [00:38:00] And then interview 'em. Ask 'em the questions that are on your mind. Would you go back into this industry?

Why or why not? Where do you see this industry going? Um, if you were gonna open one today, what would you focus on? What do you think missing in the market? I, you know, I often tell people, the thing people often believe is that you have to be an expert in the thing to go start a business with it. And I would tell them that can be helpful.

But it can also be hurtful in that when you get too close to something, you can be the kind of person who builds a product that no one wants to buy. It's the field of dreams moving. Build it and they will come. Anyone in tech knows that's not true. Just 'cause you build some cool product does not mean people are gonna come buy it.

So, 

Mehmet: absolutely. 

Jeremy: Uh, you gotta validate that. And one way to do that is through stealing the expertise. You don't have to know how, if you know who, 'cause you can go find those who's. You can pull out of their brains the things that you'd be missing. I am a big fan of go put your [00:39:00] financial projections together and then go find your three or four industry experts and then ask them about the assumptions you have.

So if you're gonna start a pizza restaurant, tell them, Hey, my financial model, I've got 40% food cost. What do you think about that? Because they'll tell you, couple of them will probably laugh at you and say, oh, you think it's gonna be 40% when you start? You better expect it's going to be 75% for the first.

Three months, and then if you're really good, it's gonna be this, but if it's above this number, people are probably stealing from you. And if it's below this number, you probably have a lot of waste. I mean, those are the things you can find out when you tap into people who already know and have that knowledge.

Ab 

Mehmet: Absolutely. And this is why also we. We tend to advise people, um, you know, if you feel you are missing something as expertise, get a co-founder with you. So don't start by yourself because you can't cover it all. You can't scale everything by yourself. You would need someone with you to give you hands to your point, like go seek mentors, coaches, [00:40:00] whatever you want to call them, that would give you the insight and to your point, like go.

Go talk to people who did it before you, like, this is the best advice ever. I would say. Jeremy, just out of curiosity, Jeremy, like having, you know, this success with that, you know, huge numbers of, of entrepreneurs, do you have, you felt that it also added to you kind of a, you have now like more knowledge about multiple businesses as well, ha have, have this affected, you know, your knowledge about different businesses?

Helping these entrepreneurs succeed? 

Jeremy: What has helped me identify meme? Um, 'cause it's less about specific industry expertise. 'cause I know you know, a little bit about a lot of different things, but probably just enough to get myself in trouble. What it has helped me see though, are the patterns. Mm-hmm.

Regardless of industry, of where things show up. Things like testing assumptions. It doesn't matter whether it's a coffee shop or a technology business or a [00:41:00] pizza place. You wanna open up, you're gonna have assumptions baked into why you think this thing is gonna succeed. And the faster you can expose those and figure out cheap, inexpensive ways to test it, the more likely you're gonna be to succeed.

Um, so that's been really the part. And also understanding, I think people have this idea that all entrepreneurs are a particular type of person. I will just tell you, I've seen 30,000 plus people. They are not, they are so different and so all over the board. The important thing is that you're building a business that's consistent with who you are, right?

Because if you read a book and then you try and emulate that book because you think that has all the answers to it, but that book is totally inconsistent with how you lead and where your strengths are. I can promise you you're gonna fail and I can promise you that because I've tried it. I've tried it.

You've gotta find, I often tell people the thing I learned from having an amazing board of directors [00:42:00] is that 50% of what these amazing people say is brilliant, and 50% is total garbage for your business. And no one's gonna tell you which is which. It's not 'cause they're not smart, it's because only you have enough context for all the things going on in your business to filter in.

But you've gotta filter it not just through the business you have, but who and how you lead. Because if that part isn't consistent, then it's your foundation is gonna crumble 

Mehmet: a hundred percent. You know, especially the part when you said about, you know, you read the book and you think like, yeah, if I I apply everything, I would be fine.

I have, um. A theory. I call it like little bit philosophical. I tell people, look, you know, there are a lot of, uh, things we can learn from books, a podcast like this, but there is a factor that I call it the three dimension. So the first dimension is the time you are acting [00:43:00] on something. So. Like the person who succeeded in 2021, you are now in 2025.

So it's not the same time. Second location. Uh, and when I say location, I mean not only geographical location, I mean like everything. Who are your friends, who you are surrounded by and so on. And the third thing is you personality. And you can take something from a book and copy it. Actually, you try to copy it, but it'll not be copied.

The reason is you are not the same. That person other than you are not the same location your same time. You can be inspired by it, but not, you know, you, you can't copy it and, uh, expect like results to come. And I say, you know what, like the people who. Try to do this. I was like one of them when I was in my twenties.

Yeah. Because we are lazy. We try to just copy things and we think that it gonna click at work. Maybe if you are lucky, it'll, but 99% of the time it'll not. So [00:44:00] to your point, that's a hundred percent correct, Jeremy. 

Jeremy: Well, I think that's brilliant me, because what you're acknowledging is that there are multiple variables that contribute, and I can tell you a failure story from my own life that emphasizes this, me and my business partner.

We decided we were gonna buy a massage franchise and we decided we were gonna buy it 'cause we had a family member that we thought was gonna run it. Well it turned out that that family member did not wanna run it. So right after we bought it, we had to scramble to find a manager. 'cause we already had our other businesses we were running.

So this was just going to be an absentee owner business. And the reason we bought it meme is because we looked at the model and we said. We even talked to other franchisees in this organization. The thing that this model needed was somebody that was good at marketing and bringing people into the store and we said, oh, that is a core strength we have.

We can do this. This is going to be easy. We have, we can put butts in the seats. And so we bought this business and we proceeded to put the things into it. [00:45:00] And what happened was we drove lots of people into the store and then we could not get them. Service because we ran out of therapists. So we went from, I think when we bought it, there were five or six massage therapists.

Immediately, three of them quit, and turns out you can bring all the people you want in the store. If you don't have people to do the work, it doesn't matter. And what we learned was that we had made the assumption that this franchise location was gonna be just like all the other franchise locations, but it wasn't because it was in the middle of a really busy city.

So it was really great for getting people in the door that had the money to pay, but it was really difficult for finding massage therapists because it was so far from where these people lived. It was much easier for the franchises that were on the outskirts of the city to be more successful because they could recruit the people near where they lived.

And still pull in customers. So, you know, we ended up selling that business for a loss to get out, both because it became a [00:46:00] distraction for us, but it was just a realization that even in a franchise where you think all these are the same, so I can just copy what worked for everyone else. There are still variables that show up.

Mehmet: Absolutely. And thank you for sharing this story, Jeremy, with, with with us today, Jeremy, as we are almost coming to an end. Any final. Thoughts you want to share with us and where people can get in touch? 

Jeremy: Yeah. Uh, I would just say, I know we're talking about failure stories and all these other things that I really do truly be believe that at our core humans are entrepreneurs.

That's why we have become the dominant species on this planet is because we are wired to want to improve the things around us. I think we are increasingly entering a world and an environment where it's becoming less safe to operate in the corporate world, right? I, I have a bunch of friends who have kids who went to school to be software [00:47:00] engineers, and they cannot find jobs, and they cannot find jobs because that profession right now is shrinking based on the leverage that people can get out of those that are in there.

So. I am a firm believer that the best way to predict the future is to create the future. And the best way to create the future is to decide who and how you want to make an impact, turn that into a business and be able to drive that forward. It changes people. It gives you, I don't think people realize how much agency they have to change themselves and change the world until they become business owners.

And then you realize at the end of the day. If there's something you don't like about your life, you can change it. It just takes time and effort and energy. Uh, and we all have different starting points and we all have different obstacles we have to overcome. Uh, but it can be done. And so my encouragement would be just invest the time, commit to a few hours a week that you're gonna invest to explore the [00:48:00] path, because if nothing else.

If you spend the time over two or three or six or 12 months and you decide, ah, this isn't gonna work for me, at least you're not gonna be on your deathbed wondering, oh man, I wish I had done What if I had done that thing? You're gonna know for sure, Hey, I, I did the work. I invested some time in that and I figured out that is not my dream anymore.

Something else is my dream. But if your dream is to become a business owner, you gotta start by carving out the time. And people often tell me, wow, I'm just so busy. I don't have the time. I got kids. I got this, I got that. And my answer always, memo is fine. Gimme your phone, show me your screen time app.

Mehmet: Yeah. 

Jeremy: I'll tell you where you'll find your time. We all have time. We all make time for the things that matter to us. If my mom got sick and was in the hospital tomorrow, I would make time to be there for her. It's just really a question of what's important to you. And you know, my hope is that when you think about your future, that that is one thing that's important [00:49:00] to you.

Creating a future where you have ownership of your life, when you have freedom over your time, and the priorities that you get to focus on. So go out there, make things happen. That's, uh, that's what makes this world go forward. And, uh, if I can be helpful, you can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, my name's Jeremy Ames.

Uh, I have a website, jeremy ames.com as well, where I. Publish information and share stories and, and tools and things, uh, to help people on this path to entrepreneurship. 'cause it's something I'm super passionate about it. I never intended to be an entrepreneur, but I am so lucky that I fell into this particular version of the multiverse because it has changed my life.

And, uh, I'd love to help anyone else who wants to change theirs, access them. 

Mehmet: Great. Thank you so much Jeremy, for, you know, the discussion today and all the stories, inspiring stories that you told us today. And I'm sure the audience will benefit a lot out of it. Um, they will find the [00:50:00] links in, in the show notes if they are listening on their.

Favorite podcasting app. Uh, they can find it in the description on the YouTube also as well. Again, thank you so much Jeremy for this discussion and this is usually how I add my episodes. This is for the audience. If you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it.

If you did, so give me a favor, subscribe and share it to your friends and colleagues, and if you are one of the people who. Keep coming again and again, thank you so much for your support, guys. Like we are in July now, and what we started it with is something I never seen before. I know like I'm repeating this every time at the end of each episode, but we are trending now in seven countries in the top 200, uh, upper podcasts in the entrepreneurship, uh, category in seven countries simultaneously never seen before.

We were on the four, then five, now seven. And this cannot happen without two. I would say factors or like two categories. First, you the audience, thank you so much. And second, my [00:51:00] guest, including you, Jeremy, because I couldn't do this alone without my guests. I couldn't do this podcast. So I'm grateful to all my guests, to all my audience, and I hope you're enjoying your summertime also as well.

And I hope we will be again in a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.