The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Grammar And Spelling Errors
Announcer 0:01
You’re listening to biz ninja entrepreneur radio. This show was created for entrepreneurs, business owners, marketers and dreamers who want to learn from the experts of today and drastically shortcut their own success to build a business that supports their dream lifestyle. Since 2011, Tyler Jorgensen has been interviewing business thought leaders from around the world, a serial entrepreneur himself. Tyler also shares his personal insights into what’s working in business today. Welcome to biz ninja, entrepreneur radio.
Tyler Jorgenson 0:38
Welcome out to biz ninja entrepreneur radio. I am your host, Tyler Jorgensen. And today we have Chad Burmeister. Chad is the CEO of scale x.ai, which I am really excited to learn about the concept of always on prospecting and web 3.0 marketing. I’m just really excited to talk about this. But he’s also a podcast host. He’s an author, and he’s got a lot of really cool things going on. So you should check him out at Chad burmeister.com. But for the meantime, we’re gonna dive right into this Chad, thanks for coming on the show.
Chad Burmeister 1:11
Well, biz ninja, how can I say no, I mean, what a cool idea. My best friend from when I was a kid was a second degree black belt. So when I saw a busy ninja, I was like, I have to be on this show.
Tyler Jorgenson 1:23
Yeah, I am. I’m a zero degree black belt. But But life and entrepreneurship. teach you the I guess it would be like the business school of hard knocks. Right? That’s right. Yeah. So but thanks for coming out. So my first question for you Chad is this When was the first time in your life that you realized you were an entrepreneur?
Chad Burmeister 1:40
Hmm. On the bus, when I learned how to sell suckers on the back of the bus, we would buy a gross of them. I think Gross is 144 in a big bucket, and we’d pay maybe $10. And I sold them for 25 cents each. And then I learned a hack. And that was the last couple were always worth a little more because scarcity kicks in. So I think I knew I was an entrepreneur when I was pre 10 years old. And it’s been all all fun and games since then.
Tyler Jorgenson 2:11
It’s interesting, almost every entrepreneur has that, like Elementary School Story. And then like a couple of high school stories of the hustles that they figured out and they did to to get things going, I think, because I think it’s just a way entrepreneurs see the world, right? They just see solutions, rather people see problems. And that’s right.
Chad Burmeister 2:29
Yeah, right. When when a problem comes our way, it’s like, awesome, that means there must be a solution. So when all the stuff happening over the last couple of years have come out. Entrepreneurs look at it like Wow, we got big problems to solve, bring
Tyler Jorgenson 2:44
huge opportunity, right? Huge opportunity. So in, we’re seeing a massive shift in, in technology in the way the internet works and the way the world works again, right. And for those of us that are remember plugging in the internet, is this is again, not for the first time to you, you founded scale x.ai. And what tell us a little bit about that?
Chad Burmeister 3:05
Well, it’s been four years, we just had our four year anniversary very recently. And it was exciting, because the very first month, you know, you’re always nervous. And I had been a CEO, an entrepreneur before. And I did that run for about a couple of years. And I hadn’t figured out the cash flow game yet, which I don’t know if I have yet either, which entrepreneur does. And then I also didn’t understand leadership and I and management leadership. So you know, now that I’m running my own company for years, it’s it’s been a lot of fun. I went into a company six, seven years ago with the goal of figuring out what the problem was that needed to be solved in the world. So I some could say why did you take a step back and run a business development team when you’re running quota carrying salespeople for so long? Right? And it’s because I wanted to find a business problem that needed solving. And what I found is when I scaled this team from 10 people up to 20, to 50, to eventually 100 Is that throwing human labor at a business problem like prospecting man, it’s it’s just a such a costly experience. And I think that where the world’s moving is that AI and technology and automation, it can actually make a person more human than they already are. And I think a lot of people think like, oh, it’s just gonna take away jobs, and it’s going to do all this other stuff. Maybe. But do you really want to be going out and manually pulling down the name of somebody and looking up where they went to college, when you could rely on a technology to not only pull that information at scale, tell me what groups they’re a part of on LinkedIn, pre configured the message that hits that person, because maybe one person reads in bullets and one reads and paragraphs. Like if I can power you With the Iron Man suit, now one single person can be p, the equivalent of five or 10 people. That’s what I’ve seen happen. That’s what I have people on the podcast that I talk about. And it’s just been really, really fun to see.
Tyler Jorgenson 5:14
I think there is a fine line between AI and technology, replacing jobs and AI and technology, allowing humans to do more human work and more like high level more where the interpersonal skills where the where the soft art of being a human comes in now, technology is, is I mean, massively gaining in a lot of those aspects. But in the end, you know, I think I’m really talking to you here.
Chad Burmeister 5:39
So I didn’t run the chat virtual chat today. Yeah, there is,
Tyler Jorgenson 5:44
there is a value in that human face to face interaction. And you’re right, like, I love staying connected with people. But I don’t love doing analytical research and diving in, right? So if there’s technology that can support that, so So you’ve created scale x data AI, what is the message that you guys are taking to the market? What is it that you’re doing?
Chad Burmeister 6:05
Well, it’s interesting, because we’re coming up on a new start of a new year. And it’s always time to kind of look in the mirror and say, Okay, what do I want to be when I grow up? And we’re, we’re even at this point where we may rebrand the business from scale x to x human, and it’s x UXH, UMN. And, and the, originally, we’re thinking delightfully human, because it makes you more human. I am always of the opinion of scale. And so it’s probably going to land on exponentially human. So x human is not you used to be a human. No, it’s you’re exponentially human. And that’s where I think things are gonna go right. Can I be one can is Am I a one to 1am, I one to two, one to five. I had lunch with Howard Dover from UT Dallas recently for two and a half hours breakfast, actually. And he had just driven his daughter cross country. And he said that when his students graduate, they’re the, you know, one of the top sales schools in the country, when they graduate, and they go to a job there, on average, five times more productive meetings, pipeline and sales. And so all the people around them are like, What are you doing what’s different? Well, they’ve embraced the new technology, right? It’s kind of like, if you went into a farm, and you were going to farm that field, and you go, Okay, there’s your little rototiller, you have fun, whatever that is. And then the other guy comes in and goes, What are you doing with that little thing? We’ve got this machinery now, where have you been? What year are you living in? And that’s what I feel we’re going through the transformation of, I remember being at a Salesforce Dreamforce conference, and Bill Clinton spoke one time. And he said that when he was president, productivity gains bumped by like two to three, maybe even 5%. And so our nation had a big GDP growth. And, you know, I’m not I don’t consider myself political one way or the other. I just love to hear people talk. And so thinking about AI, the internet brought a lot of productivity. What if AI really brings a 2x 5x 10x? Wow, what what will you know, what will it look like five years from now? It’s pretty exciting times,
Tyler Jorgenson 8:13
is there a point where the focus on productivity is the wrong focus?
Chad Burmeister 8:18
For sure. Thinking about account based selling, you’ll have a finite universe. So if you’ve only got 100 potential prospects, and you say, Okay, I’m going to call everybody 12 times each, and I’m going to email them all. And I’m going to, we have a customer who ran 32 sequences over four years into this one company and never got a meeting. And then they came to us and we have this we have this product that nobody else on the market has. It uses AI to identify who in your network knows your prospects. And then we ask the influencer for the introduction, rather than going to the end prospect. So imagine if I went to, you know, if I went to you and said, Hey, I see you know, the CEO of company ABC. According to a Salesforce study, I’m 181 times more likely to sign that customer, if you make the introduction for me, because I come in with a 10 out of 10 Trust, it’s mind to blow. If I do a cold call, I’ve got to come in and I’ve got to build that trust. I’d rather come in from a position of trust rather than trying to build it in the sales call. So there’s different technologies for different markets that are that are required.
Tyler Jorgenson 9:27
makes a ton of sense. I think it reminds me of like, back in the old days, where do you ask your friend to introduce you to the hot girl right, so then you got that initial like intro the wing man? Yeah, that’s your tech is like the ultra like it makes wingman out of out of all. I ever thought
Chad Burmeister 9:45
of it like that, because I was always a pretty good wingman, too. So yeah, I will be your wingman. It was just
Tyler Jorgenson 9:51
intuitive. You just built it on accident. What So being an entrepreneur is full of ups and downs what you know, throughout your journey, what was a major failure You’re a challenge that you faced and how did you overcome it?
Chad Burmeister 10:02
There’s one thing that I’ve done twice now. And so I guess third time’s a charm, but I’m never gonna get to number three, but I almost did recently. So. And that is when you go into business, you should not do a 5050 partnership. It’s just, it’s as an entrepreneur, it just doesn’t work most of the time, and I’ve heard so many failed stories, because if you do 5050, there’s always thinking think about it a relationship. Yeah, it’s so difficult, because if you get into a stalemate, then what? So the only way you can do a 5050 is if you have very clearly defined stalemate steps, right? Here’s what we’re gonna do. And so I was, you know, it’s been a while since I was an entrepreneur, and I said, Hey, yeah, bro, let’s do this. And I just said, yeah, 5050 is fine. Well, as you get three months in, and then six months in, you’re like, wait a second, I’ve spent 30 years building a career in this, my other business partner has spent the last five. And I’m like, Man, he’s one of the best cold callers on planet Earth. And so to hire, that person might cost $100,000 a year. And I’m not $100,000 A year person anymore. I’m just not. So the balance of power in the equation. And the Okay, we’re equals, and I’m going to go direct employees and contractors just like you, because I’m the equal partner, it just set up the entire situation to fail. Luckily, I figured that out three to six months in, it ended up costing the business about $100,000, to unwind and unravel all of that, which was unfortunate. But it’s those are the lessons that if you’re thinking of doing a 5050, just add a one and subtract one from some person in the party. And then you’ll you know,
Tyler Jorgenson 11:54
it’s interesting, I like you probably over the last 11 years doing this show partnerships comes up. When I asked that question, a good percentage of the time. Sure. And the 5050 thing comes up a lot. But another piece of advice that I got that really goes along with that, that I love and is never give equity or partnership to a role that you could have just hired. Right? So usually a 50. Like I’ve seen plenty of 5050 partnerships work, but it’s because the two people complement each other in a way where there’s a there’s a clear gap that will extend over time, like, Okay, I don’t want to be an operator, you’re going to be the operator in whatever it is, right? Yes, that’s one and then two, is there? Yes, there are stalemate steps, hey, who’s operate who’s the operating person as the day to day President versus the dated like CEO, or whatever each of those things are right. But then also like the ability at the very beginning to have those detailed conversations of how we’re going to handle the hard conversation, it basically the business prenup, right, you actually have an operating agreement that addresses the hard parts of the conversation I and what I always tell people is if you can’t sit down at the beginning of the honeymoon stage of a partnership, and before you start the business and say, How are we going to handle business? If you get divorced? How are we gonna handle business? If you die? How are we going to handle business? Yeah, and go through this worst case scenario, there’s
Unknown Speaker 13:11
an offer, or we need
Tyler Jorgenson 13:13
to bring in more equity who’s gonna who’s equity is gonna get damaged. If you can’t do that, when things are great at the beginning, the the funds, the fun part of business, that’s a red flag, right?
Unknown Speaker 13:22
And the last piece real quick would be, you can do okay, there’s 10 million shares that are authorized, you get a million I get a million, that’s just because we’re going into business together. And then the next 2 million shares we’re going to do under an option plan. So if in six months, you start realizing, wow, this is going south, I’m the CEO, Hey, man, you get to keep your million good news. And also good news, you get to go work for another company, and you’ll still keep your million shares.
Tyler Jorgenson 13:51
Yeah, and I love the types of bracketed stepping stone situations because it is fascinating to me how many people will be sitting around like, you know, having drinks together, come up with a business idea and then decide right then to go into business 5050 When I’m like, You got a lot to think about if you actually want that business to go anywhere otherwise, and I’ve had painful painful exits out of partnerships were my big thing I just like man, I know my future is worth more than this pain in the past and I’m just going to move forward. So I think there’s a lot but but what I don’t like is when people take that those problems and say well therefore I don’t ever want to be in a partnership it’s like it’s like friends of mine that have been divorced that exam never want to get married again. Yeah, marriage wasn’t the issue man. Like you know the partnerships aren’t the issue it’s how you went into it what in doing it right but really good lesson I think this is a part of the episode I hope people really listen to because these are the hard things that people don’t think about when they go into business they think about oh, if I just build this cool product or if I just create fine this great marketing or if I just hire the right sales person. But you know, if you if you messed up from the beginning and how you set it up, you’re gonna John Yeah,
Chad Burmeister 15:00
I mean, my friend Jason Adams is in Texas, and he’s what the company called the athlete group. So these NFL players come to him and he’s the deal, whisper, they go, Hey, man, I’m looking, you know, my brother said he’s got, he wants a million bucks. And here’s what it’s gonna happen. And so Jason looks at the deal sheet and goes, Okay, what are your goals, Mister athlete, and they go, Well, I want to make like, 10% a year, and then I think I can make 10 million at the exit, etc, etc. So okay, with those goals. So his thing is, there’s four pillars, right? There’s the team, there’s the investment vehicle, the exit strategy, and then there’s the structure. And his his deal, his understanding of the world is all around structure. So he can look at a deal like this and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, and he’ll ask the questions that I would never even think to ask that are two years, five years down the line, right? So it’s important to have team members who look over your shoulder like that, that you can rely upon to go alright, Jason went about this. Recently, he and its deeds told me three times, we’re talking to a company to potentially resell them and then resell us and ultimately, someday maybe merge. And he’s like, okay, the technology values one piece, but what about the other, the person, the other executive. And so he’s looking at it, like, that’s even more important, perhaps, than the technology and, and it’s like, I hadn’t even thought of it that way. And he had to tell me twice for me to figure that out.
Tyler Jorgenson 16:28
And so what I hear from that is, is if you’re going to be an entrepreneur, the importance of having good counsel around you, right, people are going to judge you, because we all have every business person, every entrepreneur has parts of the concept of the business model that they’re stronger with. There’s parts of the business makeup, right? Support our weaknesses, and I’m really big on just owning our weaknesses. I’m really big on not being the guy who’s like, I’m gonna go fix every one of my weaknesses, I just want to own it, and find people around me that have strength that in those gaps, right, and well,
Chad Burmeister 16:55
for me, Chris Rienner, a great guy, CEO of dugout mugs, they’re going to do $30 million in revenue this year. So his view on this area is very amazing. He says, Look, if I can go hire someone that does 80% of what I would do, then that’s great. He goes now the good news is I usually hire someone that’s 120% of what I can do, because you’re right, but even if it’s 80, that’s how I scale and he goes, and then I’ll hire two. So I’ll get 80 and 80, I’ll get 160%. And it’s like, there’s no way that I could humanly do that. So thinking of it, and then and he’s like, but I’m also good hire. So it’s I ended up getting 120 and 100. Yeah,
Tyler Jorgenson 17:38
yeah, yeah, it’s pretty powerful. And it’s hard, it does take giving up control. And I love that I love that he says 80, because so many people think if you can’t hire the 120, you shouldn’t do it. But I think Man, like if I can get somebody else doing 80%, they buy back all of that time, and all that resources to focus on the things that only I can do, or that I can do at a higher level. That’s powerful. I’ll follow up later, but you who what’s the founder or CEO,
Chad Burmeister 18:03
Chris dinners, D. H, and E RT super guy just willing to share his time, I’m sure he’d love to be on your podcast.
Tyler Jorgenson 18:10
Awesome. That sounds good. I love stories like that. I think the get my guests do too, is just people who are not only building great things, but you know, finding unique ways to solve those problems. So looking at what your company is doing with scale x and whatever, it’s going to be called here going into the new year, who is it helping? And how it like, you know, give us a little bit more of who the ideal customer is for that.
Chad Burmeister 18:33
It’s evolved. As I’m sure a lot of businesses do. We started working with funded startups in Technology Series ABCD, they’ve got money that’s burning a hole in their pocket, and we might as well capture a percentage of it, and and help them scale faster than they could than hiring a team. Where I think my passion has moved, the company is solopreneurs entrepreneurs, especially I’m drawn to people who’ve hit a challenge in life, maybe a traumatic experience. They’ve found a relationship with God, like the bringing in my faith to the equation. That’s where the two lines are starting to come together over time. I think traditionally a lot of people could, it was really separation of your business and your and your faith. Nowadays, with the advent, I’ll call it of COVID. It’s changed because now you’re coming into my house, right? It’s like, okay, we’re here. Let’s talk about it. So I really look for people who’ve experienced something traumatic, found a relationship in the process, and they want to share it with the world. So I can pivot one degree from what I’m used to doing, and providing the services to high end funded startups and move it to help people at a $500 a month rate instead of a $5,000 a month rate. And just like it’s kind of like Jerry Maguire movie right where it’s like wait, you’re gonna you’re doing what and you People on the border wait, you’re gonna do what? And you’ve got like 15 to 20, where you just donating services to what’s that all about? Like, I don’t know, I’m just listening to the little voice in my head. And he keeps telling me that I need to help people who are in need. And one day by doing that, I’m quite certain that something good is gonna happen. So, so that’s, it’s really the solopreneurs entrepreneurs. I’ll tell you one of the most recent stories, his name’s Jarvis Guthrie. He made one wrong decision in life. And I probably made more than that, but one that’s bad one that was very, he was drinking too much. It was in 2012. He said his brother in law’s house, he just had a baby. He walks out into the street, he’s stumbling around a little bit. And he’s like, I gotta go back to bed. And so he goes in, he kicks in the wrong door, because the door was locked. There was a police officers house. So the police officer aims the gun at them, the gun jams, any pistol whips him down. So he gets gets arrested, goes to jail for more than a year, a couple, two, three years. A minister finds him named Rodney and spends time with him. And he understands okay, this is why I went it’s to help other people because he meets people who, you know, he met people who were all kinds of different stories, right? That was his one bad decision. There’s people who make a lot of bad decisions. So now he’s his mom died in 2014. His dad died in 2019. He inherited his dad farm 32 acres. His dream now is to the whole farm 60 acres because the aunts and uncles own some others, so it’s in a part of Florida. He’s building a farm. He’s renovating all the land. He’s got an acre zoned for residential. And so if you get out of prison, you got a mark on your head, your stamp. You can’t come to work here because liability and everything else. He’s it’s like heaven. I drove there. It’s a mile and a half off the road. And you get to this farm, you’re like, Am I in heaven? And so that’s the kind of person
Tyler Jorgenson 21:56
so that yeah, that story’s amazing. How does Scale X? How does that help him? Yeah,
Chad Burmeister 22:03
well, we just learned how to do websites. So we build it, we started doing it on Squarespace we learned that doesn’t have all the bells and whistles. So now we’re doing WordPress, and we’re kind of cookie cutter in it, write a video, then you go talk to this person, you’re going to get you on a radio, then we’re going to help you have a kid’s book. And we’re going to help you build a parent book. Like we’ll help you with the series of steps to become an entrepreneur and tell your story. And then we’ll there’s a TV show we can get you on there’s so many then we do LinkedIn outreach. And so think about it if you hit a bell, and it’s has a big loud Gong noise. Well, that might hit for certain people. Jarvis big, long, Gong Bell, another person might be like, Tinkerbelle thing. So what I feel like is all these different entrepreneurs have different stories, ones that’s in prison ones, that’s I’m helping a group in Africa, I’m helping a group in India with 200 churches, it’s fun to be able to know that we’re rippling through eternity by helping these people website, LinkedIn outreach, voicemail drops, email blast, like everything that I’ve done for the last 30 years, is now being pointed at making the world a better place.
Tyler Jorgenson 23:12
And but in the end, though, like those are all of the products, the end concept is that you’re going to get them in front of the right people. Right? So you’re gonna that’s gonna help their their business move forward.
Chad Burmeister 23:22
Yeah, build the base so they could become an entrepreneur. Okay, doing
Tyler Jorgenson 23:26
is interesting. It’s very different than what I what I thought from, you know, from what you had, I thought it was more, okay, hey, you’re a salesperson, you’re trying to you’re trying to sell this while you’re an entrepreneur and you’re trying to sell this one service will help you have a pipeline full of ideas.
Chad Burmeister 23:39
Yeah, that’s, that’s still what we do. The that’s where two lines are starting to come together, living a better story, dot media living a better story.org Those are all kind of still on the dark web not not released yet. And but I’ve been doing those passion projects. Now for the last year and a half.
Tyler Jorgenson 23:59
You’ve been doing some cool things. You’ve got all this happening. I’m a big believer that entrepreneurship is building the lifestyle you want or like you say, you know, building a better story living a better story. What is one item on your personal not business, but your personal bucket list you’re gonna accomplish in the next 12 months.
Chad Burmeister 24:15
It’s funny when I wrote down my one year, two year, five year 10 year plans back in when I was early 20s. The only one I didn’t achieve in two years was getting a boat, and I never got it and I’m never going to so. So that one’s just gonna have a big blank checkbox by it forever. The one that’s really on the top of my mind is, is getting a house in the mountains. And because I love to ski, so my folks have a place in Winter Park right on the slope side. And you know what, that’s good enough placebo effect for me, because it’s 75 bucks for a cleaning fee. And I can stay for a week and you can’t really beat that. Yeah, but ultimately, within 12 months, I believe I will have a place in the mountains that guy could call my own as well.
Tyler Jorgenson 25:00
It’s interesting, I had a boat for a little while. And what I learned is it is better to have a friend that has a boat than to have a boat.
Chad Burmeister 25:07
That’s right. You know, I have a best friend who has any
Tyler Jorgenson 25:11
similar to a place in the mountains, it’s better to have a family member that has, you know, you know, I remember one of the first times when I read four hour workweek, he said like the old rich, it’s, you know, the last name of the town name, right. But now it’s about not being tied to a specific place. So we, we have a place in the mountains, but at the same time, like I’m not looking to get anything else, I’m like, you can just go rent a place and then try a new place out every every time and have the freedom to be new to go new places and stuff is a lot more flexible. I like that I crossed out boat for you.
Chad Burmeister 25:44
Perfect. That’s just gone. And I think it’s still in my file that’s moved seven houses by now. It’s still sitting there, and it’ll be there laminated for life.
Tyler Jorgenson 25:54
One of the greatest things about goals is that you set them but it’s okay to change them to. Right it’s okay to change what are what we think and what we want, as we grow up. But well, I love it. I hope that people go follow you and learn more at Chad Burmeister comm check out scale x.ai To see your got your software and what you’re doing any last words of wisdom for our listeners?
Chad Burmeister 26:18
You know, I’ve interviewed almost 100 people on the living a better story podcast, and I asked the same kinds of things. What was your passion when you were young? What’s the buzzsaw of life that hit you in the middle? And then what role does faith play in your journey? And where did God undeniably show up? And what’s almost true 100% of the time, is that the traumatic event that you experienced is when God showed up for people. So if you’re in a hard moment, and you’re listening to this right now, just look around and listen to people and pray about it, because he’ll just show up. And that’s the times that even though it feels tough, that’s the time when he does his best work. So don’t think that you got in that situation because of your Creator. But just look around for him and he’ll help you get out of the ditch. And all you got to do is ask and then he shows up 1010 fold. But that’s the biggest thing that I learned man. I’ve heard people who were abused people who are homeless when they’re kids. And this one woman I talked to yesterday, she she actually walked down the aisle at her church. And the church wasn’t very nice. And she she said she became elevated. She actually went like a foot off the into the air. And it’s like, Wait a second. And so it’s just fun talking to these people experience miracles and see things that happen. I think we get about that as entrepreneurs.
Tyler Jorgenson 27:42
It is interesting how many times we want the result of the refiners fire without going through the refiners fire. And it’s the tough chat the tough times the challenges that’s where we have an opportunity to grow and get better. I appreciate you coming out on the show Chad and to all my listeners, watchers, viewers, wherever you’re tuning in watching or listening, it’s your turn to go out and do something.
Announcer 28:05
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