Arvid Kahl: Welcome to The Bootstrapped Founder. Today, I'm
talking to Andrew McIntosh. He is a first generation
entrepreneur. Andrew leads a community of people just like
himself. And in fact, myself too. I'm also a first generation
entrepreneur. And it's very likely that you are one, too.
Andrew and I talk about dealing with families that don't
understand why we do what we do, finding the people just like
ourselves, and how we can build profitable communities to help
our peers that really need help. And before we get to our
conversation, let me introduce the sponsor of this episode. Now
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if this is the right option for you. All right, here is Andrew
McIntosh.
So what's the most common issue that first generation
entrepreneurs run into that founders who come from
entrepreneurial backgrounds, families that have an
entrepreneurial background rarely ever experienced? What
have you found?
Andrew McIntosh: Well, for me, this all starts back in 2006
when I started my business. I got connected with this other
guy who was a few years younger than me. And it turns out, he
was a second gen entrepreneur. I'm a first gen. And it really
kind of made it obvious the differences between all the
things that he had. And let me preface this by saying I'm not
going to mention this person by name. But he was undoubtedly a
hard worker, he was undoubtedly smart. But he had all these
advantages that I didn't have. So what I mean by that is, every
time I talk to this guy, I would see him probably every month or
two. And in 2006, he was building websites for a living.
And if you recall in 2007 is when the iPhone came out, right?
So he pivots to I don't do websites anymore. Now, I do
apps. And every time I see him, he's on to some other completely
different, you know, wildly different app idea. And it would
never, whatever he had would never last more than a month or
two. And I was always like, man, you need to sit down and just
focus, just stick with something, just stick with one
thing and do it really well. Well, then one day, this guy he,
like falls off the face of the earth, doesn't respond to calls
or texts or anything. I don't know what's happened to him. And
then I find out through the grapevine. He's already sold his
business for seven figures. This is in 2008, probably. And I was
like, what? What gives? How, you know, at this point, I'm three
years into my bootstrapped business. I'm an IT guy by
trade. So I'm just fixing people's computers. But a few
years into my business, I'm still doing this full time and
then cleaning offices with my wife after hours, like we're
just barely scraping by. He's already sold his business. He's
like 26 years old and early retirement. And I'm like what
gives? So come to find out after the fact, his dad was the CEO of
a pretty sizable company here in town. And his dad was floating
him financially. He was covering his apartment and all of his
personal expenses. So this guy actually had, it's like, he had
50 darts in his hand and he could just keep throwing them
until he hit a bull's eye. Whereas I'm standing over here
going, I got one dart, man. I got one shot at this, you know
and so on reflecting on that now, just kind of looking back.
It's like, again, not trying to minimize what he's doing because
if he wasn't smart and hardworking, like this never
would have taken off, right? But he was able to get connections,
his dad was able to pull some strings, help him find his first
few clients. Here's my accountant. Here's my lawyer.
Here's how you set up an LLC. Here's how you market yourself,
here's how you sell. Here's the education you need to be able to
develop apps. Here's all these things none of which did I have
when I started my business, right? So for me being the first
in my family to start a business, my parents were like,
super proud, like and supportive, which was awesome.
I'm very, very grateful for that. But in terms of
mentorship, support, advice, connections, financial backing,
I had none of that whatsoever. So in the long term, I think it
was actually a good thing for me because it's kind of that
bootstrapper mentality. You know, it's not just the
financial aspect of it, but it's also learning by doing, by
making a bunch of mistakes. You know, I kind of learned
everything the hard way, it's the school of hard knocks,
right? But I couldn't help but look back on it. Now that I've
sold that business all these years later, which I know we'll
probably get into. But it's like, man, if I had had access
to some of those types of connections, my first few years
in business probably would have gone a whole lot smoother and
been a lot less painful and gotta change the trajectory even
better than what it was.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That really rings a
bell like with me. That is my experience too. My family was
they're hard workers, right? Like, people work hard. They try
to make a living but they did not have any knowledge outside
of their domain of work that they were in. So when I tried to
start things that were outside of that, I think I'm glad they
were kind of supportive to begin with, right?
Arvid Kahl: Because I want to talk about this too because
Andrew McIntosh: Right
that's something a lot of people struggle with, like they have no
support, in addition to having no mentorship, no guidance and
no actually like actual help, actual, initial fundamental and
foundational knowledge that might travel in there from from
their family. They don't have access to any of this. I, at
least, had a supportive family in a way. And I kind of wanted
to talk about this. I think mentorship and guidance,
particularly, they are a must have for entrepreneurs, like
they definitely need this. And at some point in our life,
hopefully, we find that somewhere. A lot of people have
the advantage of having it with their parents, which is great
because it kind of permeates your whole education, right?
It's not just you turn, like 21 years old or something. And then
somebody comes in and gives you kind of the pamphlets that you
need to read. And now you know everything. It's been instilled
in you if you have parents and a family that has this kind of
approach to life. But if you don't, at least having
alternative groups of people that can bring this into your
life as early as possible, that would be great. At least, that's
what I want entrepreneurs to see. So I do want to talk about
the actual support network too, right? Because that mentorship
guidance, that's kind of intellectual. But there is an
underlying feeling for me that I have only recently in the last
couple of years develop that I feel surrounded by supportive
people. Because I didn't really have that before. Short
excursion into my family story, like I said, everybody is kind
of hard working and working for the government or working for
private enterprise somewhere but in a paid position just really
as an employee. So when it came to just understanding risk,
financial risk or even understanding money,
understanding like how money has this cumulative effect, if you
invest it, it becomes bigger instead of if you just save it
and never touch it, right? There are these narratives, these
stories that we have in our lives, where our families are
kind of telling us a thing that worked for them. But in the end,
we need a different story. So how does kind of support
network? How can you build this if you don't have that in your
family? What are your suggestions when you need that
support network, but you can't really source it from your
relatives?
Andrew McIntosh: Well, it's interesting, I'm finding that
there's kind of two camps when it comes to your family and your
support network as a first gen entrepreneur. Either one, your
parents are like mine or yours, where they're supportive of what
you do, but there's a danger in that. Because in some cases,
they think you hung the moon, they think you're just
fantastic, right? They love you. You're their child and they
think you can do anything, but then they fail to point out to
you the pitfalls or the mistakes you're about to make or the
things that you're doing wrong because they don't know any
better, right? So they give you this false sense of, you know,
confidence, perhaps as you're going into this or it's the
other camp where they're overly critical of you. And they know
what your shortcomings are and they think that you're not cut
out for this and they'll make comments like you sure this is,
you know, this business is really gonna work out for you?
And like maybe should just go back to a day job and that is
super discouraging for people. And so for me when I think about
a support network, you know what I'm already witnessing happening
in this community that I've started which is still in its
infancy, frankly. But you know, a lot of people talk about
imposter syndrome, right? And we see it openly discussed on
social media and things like that. It's super, super common
thing. But once you kind of rub shoulders with your peers and
you know that they have it too, but then you see what they're
able to accomplish in their business, there's kind of this
sense of like, okay, yes, maybe I'm the first in my family to
start a business. I am the Trailblazer here, but what I'm
doing isn't actually all that different from what he's doing
or from what she's doing. I'm also saying where, you know, I
talked about this a lot. Entrepreneurship is a roller
coaster, man. I mean, it has higher highs and lower lows than
just working in a normal day job. And when you're
experiencing those lows, it's like everything feels like it's
crashing down on you. You know, you start to question, it's not
just imposter syndrome. It goes way, way beyond that. You're not
even thinking, am I an imposter here? You're thinking is this
whole thing gonna come crashing down? Is it even going to be
able to pay the bills by this time next month? And all that
self doubt starts to creep in. And that can actually lead to
depression, you know, where you find yourself struggling to get
out of bed. So when you're talking to people who aren't
entrepreneurs, then all they're focused on is the fact that,
yeah, you know, you're depressed and here's how we can, you know,
try to fix that or whatever. But when you're talking to people
who've been there, done that, have experienced the same exact
thing and have gotten through the other side of this thing,
they can validate the way that you're feeling. They can tell
you that it's going to be okay and you actually believe them
because you know, they've experienced it for themselves.
And it's like that can make or break your mental and emotional,
you know, outlook on whether your entrepreneurial journey
here is actually going to, you know, fall off a cliff or if
it's actually got a happy ending on the other side.
Arvid Kahl: That just speaks right from my heart, like I've
experienced the exact same thing. It's understandable that
people who have a nine to five job cannot relate to this
really, like they don't have this fundamental risk in
anything they do. That what they've been building for years,
might just come crashing down on them, like immediately and
forever. We had this with our business, too. It felt after a
while, that we had something really valuable, that if we
stopped working on it for a couple days, we just implode.
And that is a risk that most people who have a job don't have
like they think about job security and how quickly can I
find another job doing the thing that I'm already doing right
today? But for a founder, the risk is so much more intense.
And that is something people just really don't relate to,
right? Unless they have done this themselves, which as I said
earlier, if you had that in your family, people will raise you
with that understanding that certain things. You know, they
will come they will go. That's fine. You will find another way
or invest your time wisely. And then kind of diversify because
they understand the concepts underneath these. But if your
family doesn't have this and I come from a family like this,
they looked at me like why would you do this? Why wouldn't you
just, right? That's always the argument, the default path. And
I'm thinking about like Paul Millerd spoke here, the Pathless
Path. I read that recently. And he puts that so clearly, you
have the default path that everybody takes where the
outcome is guaranteed if you follow these steps and for most
people, that's their work life, that their whole work experience
is that default thing. And for you to take another path, being
kind of non compliant, that often creates some kind of
emotional distress that most people deal with by just kind of
isolating you to the side. Like I've seen this in families. You
have a lot of when it's Thanksgiving dinner and people
ask you what you're doing? And you tell them, oh, I'm building
a business and they just look at you like, I don't know, should
you really let's just talk about something else, right? That kind
of sucks and not having this. That's frustrating. And it's
good to have community for that. I think it's necessary to even
have the impetus and the motivation to keep working on
your thing. And for that you need people around you.
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah. So when people come into my community, I
asked them to create an introductory post, you know,
tell us a little bit about yourself. And I ask a series of
questions, you know, to kind of help start the conversation as
to what you do and why you do it, what industry you're in, who
you serve, all these things. But at the end, I asked this last
question. So as a first gen entrepreneur, have you always
been crazy? Or is this a new development, right? Because the
truth is, you have to be a little bit crazy to take on a
venture like this as if you're the first one in your family to
do it. Because you're right, the safe option is just well, let me
rephrase that the "safe option" is to just take a job, which
this is a whole other conversation, I think is a
totally false sense of security. I mean, just look at all the
layoffs that are happening. You've got all your eggs in one
basket. Things could be going great for 20 years and then you
get a new boss. And now everything changes overnight,
right?
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, job security, this is really a mirage at this
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, exactly. Whereas if you're an
point, right?
entrepreneur, you know, in my IT business before I sold it, I had
45 clients and my largest client represented 8% of my revenue. So
on my worst day, I can lose 8%, like the chances of me losing
100% of my income overnight, were virtually none, right?
That's not true if you work a day job, end of tangent. But I
think yet to be the first person in your family to go start a
business, you're a little bit crazy because this is totally
uncharted territory. It's scary, it's stressful. It's fraught
with risk or at least perceived risk. And you don't have a
roadmap, you know. You don't have this like clearly laid out
path to get from point A to point B. You feel kind of blind
as you're going through doing this. And that to me is kind of
where just having that network of fellow crazy people like,
hey, you know, even if it's the blind leading the blind, at
least we're all in this together. But that's not the
case. It's, you know, you've got your peers, you can bounce ideas
off each other, they can tell you if what you're saying is a
bad idea. And they're not going to hold back the way that you
know, someone who is a close family member might or they
might be supportive in a way that a close family might. And
just being a help you validate your ideas to know that you're
not alone. To help, you know, kind of decipher the crazy, I
think is just a huge benefit.
Arvid Kahl: I guess that's very much true, like particularly
from the perspective of somebody who's not doing it. It
definitely looks crazy. From the inside, it just looks ambitious.
I think we just reframe it as something positive, right?
Andrew McIntosh: Right! Yeah, these are people who get it, who
get you, you know, because I do think that if you're an
entrepreneur, there are a pretty decent group of people who are
what I call accidental entrepreneurs. You know, they
were kind of had a change in circumstances, lost their jobs,
whatever and sought out entrepreneurship as a backup
plan. But then there are others who are kind of born this way.
You know, they just, they enjoy building, they want to be able
to build something for themselves. They don't like
making other people wealthy. They just want to build
something that they own, right? And for those, I think it just
it does wonders for your mental and emotional state to be able
to rub shoulders with like minded individuals so that it
just makes the whole thing a little easier.
Arvid Kahl: I assume you were trying to look for these people
and you couldn't really find them. So you built your own
community around that. Is that right? How did that come to be?
Like what's the spark that made you make that choice to build
the 1st Gen Entrepreneurs Community?
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, so it's interesting. So I started my
business in 2006. I sold it 15 years later. So I'm jealous of
guys like you, two years. That's impressive. For me, I'm a slow
learner. So 15 years was my journey. I actually hired a
business coach, though, after I had been in business for about
six or seven years is when I hired this guy. And it was
awesome. Like, I finally had that he was like a father figure
in a business sense. And it did wonders for my mental and
emotional state like I could, I'd be freaking out about
something. And he would help me understand like, this is not as
big a deal as you think it is. And here's why. And here's what
you need to do. He was like the psychiatrist. I could lay on the
couch, so to speak and just, you know, pour my heart out. Because
you can't share these things with your employees, you'll
freak them out. You can't share these things with your family
because they won't understand. And it was just like, it was
phenomenal. I would absolutely recommend that someone get a
business coach. But here's the problem. I would have hired him
much earlier in the process if I could have afforded it. He was
like $1,000 a month. And that was a decade ago. And that was
his discounted rate because I was still small potatoes and he
was trying to help me out. And I couldn't help but think what if
I had had access to that type of mentorship and support from day
one? Like my first five years would have been completely
different. And so after I sold my business and I was thinking
about what I want to do next, I kept kind of reflecting on that.
And reflecting on that story I told you earlier about that
second gen entrepreneur. I actually was describing myself
as a first gen entrepreneur. I just kind of, after repeating
the story of enough times, I kind of coined that term and
immediately had people send me DMS, like, hey, I've never heard
it put that way, but I'm a first gen entrepreneur. And then you
instantly realize we all have the same emotions and the same
struggles in common. And so my thought was, man, if I can do
something that gets people that mentorship and advice and
support to help you just keep your sanity the way I got with
my coach, but do it in a way that's accessible for people
who, you know, inside their first five years, I would have
jumped at that opportunity if I had had it. So that's kind of
how I came up with the idea.
Arvid Kahl: That makes a lot of sense. That's just yet another
way of an entrepreneur finding a lack somewhere, just filling it
with a product or with a thing, right? A solution to a problem.
I love this. And I love, the coach thing always, it blows my
mind to just only have learned about this over the last couple
of years. Like I'm like, almost 40 now. And most of my life, I
thought I could do it all or I had to do it all. I had to be
able to do it all, deal with it all just all by myself and
nobody should need to help me. Otherwise, it wasn't my
accomplishment, which is obviously bizarre. So thinking
about coaching or therapy, I kind of feel that coach of yours
is both therapist and coach at the same time. That should be
way more normalized and there should be also more accessible
ways like the one that you're providing for people to get at
least a glimpse of this. Just even the presence of it, knowing
that it exists, probably changes your mind in a certain way. So I
love this. How are you building this kind of coaching guiding or
guidance mentorship into your community? How are people
helping each other there?
Andrew McIntosh: So that's a great question. Because this
thing, I like to tell people that I am very much building the
airplane while flying the airplane here, which the irony
is not lost on me. That, you know, here I am talking about
entrepreneurship, the first in your family to do it. And I am
once again figuring this out as I go. So I guess it is what it
is. That's just who I am. But this community is still like I
said in its early stages, but what we're doing right now
primarily revolves around holding weekly events. And we
just do it right there on Zoom. We've got people throughout the
US, London, Israel, New Zealand, a person in the Philippines,
it's basically the English speaking world is kind of the
limit right now. And so with these weekly events, what I'm
doing is trying to figure out the needs of the members. So
maybe you feel like what you need more than anything is
accountability. Well, we've got a format just for that, where we
can kind of check in weekly and keep each other held accountable
in a way that our friends and family wouldn't. Maybe what you
need is to generate more business and to do leads, well,
I'm working on a format for that to help you do that. Maybe it's
just strictly social hour and sometimes a place to just show
up and just kind of vent and tell people what's going on in
your business a little bit. Every time you facilitate
conversations like this, magic happens, it just kind of happens
all on its own. And it's really cool to see because as much as I
would like to take credit for it, it's really about getting
people in a room, kind of setting the stage for here's
what we're here to talk about. And then you watch as
connections are made, as people unearth these new opportunities
or share these tips and tricks they've picked up along the way.
And we had one yesterday, that was just like, this thing that
had been bothering one of the members of the community for
months now. And we just teed it up and one of the fellow members
like, have you ever thought about doing it this way? And
he's like, oh, my goodness! You know what I mean? And so it
really revolves around those weekly kind of live events. I
think that that's where that sense of community really starts
to, you know, get fostered, those connections are made. We
also have some additional spaces where people can post questions,
you know, so it's more of like an asynchronous type of thing,
you know, posts and comments and likes and that style of thing.
So there's that and there's the live event. So those are the two
main draws.
Arvid Kahl: That is very interesting. Interesting that
that's exactly the last thing you were saying because I kind
of wanted to ask you about that particular part because most
communities like in the real world, as we have them are very
synchronous, right? You show up. A community center is that,
right? You go to the place, some thing is happening, a meet up or
an event where people contribute to something and then you leave
and the communities kind of paused until it meets again. But
in digital communities, that's different. You have the option
to have a large synchronous part like what you've been doing and
it kinda reminds me of a community center because people
come to your community center in the virtual space. And then
there's these different rooms they can go into and do
different things. But something is there for whatever they need.
That's really cool. And then you have the asynchronous part where
I guess knowledge can be stored or made applicable when you need
it, instead of having to be present for it. I'm saying this
because I'm working through building a similar community
centric thing with my friend, Tyler Tringas. We try to build
something around Calm SaaS companies right now, like
businesses that slowly build like sustainable business models
and that stuff. And we want to build a community based approach
as well. And we've been thinking about this a lot. We have this
little podcast where we talk about this every week and just
try to brainstorm a new thing in public into being because
building in public, obviously, it's the best thing you could
possibly do.
Arvid Kahl: The idea is that we want to get feedback from the
Andrew McIntosh: Right
community as much as we can before we start the community.
And that is, one of the things that a lot of people have been
reaching out to me about is like, hey, guys, if you want to
build a community, make sure that it is both synchronous when
we need it, like having the opportunity to talk to other
people when we'd have this problem. And asynchronous for,
you talked about this. You have a global community, people in
New Zealand and people in the states try figuring out when
like a good time is for them to meet, right? How are you dealing
with that? Like the globalness of it all?
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, so that's a great question. And it's
something that is an ongoing thing that I'm trying to tackle.
Because I have these awesome ideas and plans on how exactly
I'm going to fix that problem. But it's dependent on me having
like, 1000 members in the community, which I don't as of
this exact moment because once you have a large enough
community, then what happens is, is people even at the small size
that we are today, I've already had people raised their hands to
basically, volunteers like ambassadors, essentially. You
know, they love the mission of what we're doing so much.
They're like, hey, how can I help? And so if you do that, I
think what you can actually do is you can say, alright, well,
here's a format that we've designed for this. I'm going to
host one of these at noon Eastern, but then this person is
going to host it at 4pm. And this one's going to host at 7pm.
Andrew McIntosh: If you can build the structure and then
Arvid Kahl: That was a great solution. And kind of an almost
Arvid Kahl: Thats good!
kind of have these ambassadors, these volunteers, you know, who
want to moderate these meetings and you give them a little, it
wouldn't take much, you know, to help kind of train them on what
the format looks like. I feel like we could actually have a
calendar full of events, you know. Every day of the week, you
might have three different time slots and different formats. And
you can now just kind of opt in to what suits your calendar, I
think would be the best way to do it.
meta perspective, it's yet another entrepreneurial thing
that nobody teaches you, unless you have entrepreneurial your
peers, like the idea that you can just kind of franchise out
parts of your business, just by designing them in a process
based structure, give that to other people and have them do an
equally good job as you could. Because you know, in any
business, you tend to delegate eventually. And this is just
another smart way of delegating business work in your community
to somebody who's better at and better for that particular job.
I love this. This is already super helpful. Like just to even
talk about that kind of stuff among entrepreneurs, right? This
community building right here. I love it.
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, that's like meta twice there. But yeah,
so and to your point, like, what I'm finding, too is the members
of the community have come to me with their ideas on what we can
put forth, even on the format. So take the accountability
thing, had a member come to me and say, hey, I think we should
start doing these weekly accountability meetings. I'm
like, oh, that's funny, you mentioned it. I was planning on
doing one every month. And I was going to build this whole system
where we can like track each other's goals and do all this,
you know, kind of cool stuff. And she's like, that's terrible
idea. And I just love the brutal, most straightforward
honesty, but she immediately you know, tore it to shreds. And I'm
appreciative of it because she was able to like help me see
instantly, like no, short, sweet bursts, you know, 30 minutes
every week, just get to the point. And let's just kind of
keep the needle moving. So not only did she help refine
something I was already working on but then she was one who
raised her hands like, hey, I'll run one of these. So now we're
doing two of them. And we're taking two different time slots
to help accommodate people. So even at a small size, we're able
to do that. And then the other thing that's really cool and it
excites me to think what this could become long term. I've had
more than one member already come to me and say hey, you
know, this could be more than just a community like this. One
person is an attorney who was like we could provide like legal
coaching services as part of this or financial advisors like
I can help implement Profit First, if you're familiar with
that one. I'm a big believer in that system and we could
actually help people with, like, the implementation of these
fundamental things for their business. So it goes beyond just
a community that's about support, but it's also about,
we'll give you the playbooks or we'll even help you with
implementation on things. So it's like, as this thing, you
know, kind of gets Frankenstein together, though, it's exciting,
you know, in a good way because you're just seeing all these
ways that we can help each other, collaborate, joint
ventures, you know, and partnerships and all these types
of things. It's just, it's a lot of fun if you're into that kind
of thing.
Arvid Kahl: I really love this. I think that reminds me very
strongly of how, like human settlements start to appear like
somebody settled somewhere. And then people need different jobs
solved differently. And people volunteer into those jobs,
either by having the skill already bringing it like through
the path of, you know, pioneering. You know, they came
with you, they had their little wagon and they came with you on
the trail or they just learned the thing that needs to be done
and then become the local expert added. That feels like this
community that you're currently building is going from little
village that just has a couple people living in farming there
to a whole bigger like a town, a city, maybe even with specific
people doing specific work, but all for the benefit of the local
community. It's so awesome to see this happening.
Andrew McIntosh: you said you're almost 40, so we're close to the
same age. There were two video games that I played growing up.
One was Oregon Trail. Did you ever play Oregon Trail?
Arvid Kahl: I heard about that. I never played it. But everybody
here in Canada talks about this game because apparently, it's
the only game people ever play.
Andrew McIntosh: Oregon Trail was like every grade school kid
ever who grew up you know, born in the 80s is going to identify
with this. But basically, you know, you're tasked with getting
all the way to Oregon in the old wild west. And it's fraught with
like, risks and dangers and all these other things. You know,
you can get attacked by wild animals or you can get dysentery
and die from it and all these other kinds of things. And I
think that that's a great analogy for entrepreneurship
when you're by yourself. It's just riddled with dangers and
risks, right? But on the flip side, to your point about kind
of the village, the community concept that's more like
SimCity. Did you play SimCity?
Arvid Kahl: Oh, yeah. I sure did.
Andrew McIntosh: Okay, I got you on this one. So how cool is
that? That you can start with, you know, didn't start with like
one little square or whatever
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, you had like the little the home, the houses
zone, the industrial zone and the business zone. And that was
it, right?
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, exactly. And it starts with this small
thing. And then over time, it just sprawls into this big,
thriving village or town or community or whatever. And
that's what I feel like entrepreneurship can be when
you're part of the community. It's not just this thing, this
path that you're on your own, you don't know what dangers
you're facing. It's like, no, you're part of this functioning
thing where everybody's helping each other out, which is really
cool. So thank you for putting that idea in my head. That's awesome.
Arvid Kahl: Oh, you're most welcome. I'm also very grateful
for you just bringing up some city because I'm not thinking
about it. In many ways. Entrepreneurship is just like
architecture ng are being the architect of a complex system of
individual things that all need an expert in them eventually,
like when you start a little city, and on SimCity, you kind
of figure out oh, yeah, I'm going to draw the power lines
here. And all of that kind of stuff, you have these details,
and you need to figure things out to understand each part of
your city. But as you scale it, these things become more
independent units that have their own purpose. So I'm just
thinking of my own video game experience and how much that
actually influenced. I think I learned that's the thing I
learned more from city about entrepreneurship than from my
parents. That's what I'm kind of figuring out just that. And that
is both sad. And it's both awesome that the game the video
game can actually supply this. Now in retrospect, that was
super helpful.
Andrew McIntosh: Yes. My parents always gave me a hard time for
my addiction to video games. But now I'm a grown man. And I want
this me like, look, this was good. For me. This was good for
me.
Arvid Kahl: It probably was right. I think video games in
particular as interactive problem solution scenarios, they
do train you to just never give up like the amount of times that
I played luthier to the wonderful Super Nintendo role
playing game. And these puzzles in the game. They were so hard,
but I would just sit there for four hours trying to figure it
out and eventually did and I knew I knew that it was figured
out double because the game was designed to be hard but not
impossible. And I think most of entrepreneurship is really that
it's hard but not impossible. And if it looks impossible, and
sounds and smells impossible, then maybe you just need to
shift your perspective a little bit and look at a different
angle, and then becomes possible again. So, again, videogames,
probably a solution to all our problems. That's what I'm
saying.
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, well, and legitimately, I think you make a
good point like there, there are real lessons to be learned from
that. Because how many times did you you know, throw your hands
up and throw the controller on the ground out of frustration,
right? It happens. But then on the flip side of that, how many
times do you actually finally solve that puzzle, or finally
beat that boss or whatever, to feel the immense satisfaction
that comes from that. And it's like, that's what
entrepreneurship does, it is, it is way more challenging than
just having a day job. But man, at some point, you stand and you
look back on what what you've accomplished, and what you've
built, and not just in a monetary way, but just the sense
of pride and satisfaction that comes from building something
that is truly yours. And it's like that SimCity, it starts
small. And then next thing, you know, you look back, and you've
got this sprawling metropolis. It's just, it's so satisfying.
And I think that, honestly, I think video games in some ways
can can train a person to understand that it takes that
persistency and that grit to kind of keep going until you,
you get to the other end.
Arvid Kahl: 100% I think so. And one thing that I also remember,
like, among my friends, I really enjoyed, like teaching them how
to beat the level, I teaching them, how to beat the boss and
how to play something. So that's also something that comes to my
mind, now that I do a lot of this. Like, as, as a person in
our community, I feel a lot of entrepreneurs through having to
deal with all of this themselves and having to figure it out,
they still have the sense of I kind of want to contribute this
back to people, so they don't have it that hard. Do you feel
that there's a stronger sense of volunteering in your community
than it normally is available to people?
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, I think that this is just one of the
core traits of, of most decent human beings is like, once
you've, once you've gone through something tough yourself, it
genuinely feels good to help someone else. either avoid that
pain entirely, or just help them to appreciate like you'll you'll
get on the other side of this thing, you know, and that, that
whole kind of pay it forward mentality. It doesn't only apply
to quote unquote, successful entrepreneurs, you don't need to
have been someone who's who built the business and sold it
for eight figures or something before you qualify to give
advice to someone else. I mean, I've got a couple of people who
have reached out to me who are in that category. And they're
like, Man, I love what you're doing, I'd like to, you know,
kind of be like a mentor in this community. That's awesome. I'm
all for it. But the reality is, is for the rest of us that are
still kind of boots on the ground, you know, just grinding
this out doing it one day at a time, there are small wins every
single day, all these little things that you pick up here and
there that I was able to do this quicker, or I was able to charge
a little bit more for this, or I've used this tool, and it
saved me some time. And sharing those wins is is super valuable
to other people. And then it also brings you measure
fulfillment to know that you've helped somebody else and you
just being able to foster that is it's really cool to see,
Arvid Kahl: do you leverage that in your community do encourage
people to share all these little things,
Andrew McIntosh: I have a dedicated space called Share
your wins. And it's in there, there's actually a little kind
of guideline up at the top that says, share your wins for two
reasons. Number one is it's it's spread some positivity, right.
And it's always nice for us to hear and we're going to
celebrate along with you. But more importantly, share what
steps you took that led up to that win, right? Because now we
all have something that we can we can learn from and maybe put
into use and so it doesn't even have to be something big. Right?
There's like I said small wins every day, little bits here and
there. And now now that just kind of helps all of us, you
know, pick up little pieces as we
Arvid Kahl: go. How do you deal with the small losses? The
little things that don't work? How do you encourage people or
do you encourage people to talk about this? And if so, how?
Andrew McIntosh: So I have another space called Share your
learns. And we don't call it share your losses? That's right,
we call it share your learns. That's interesting. So you know,
I personally started the very first post inside that space
where when I completed my first year in business I got a
surprise tax bill that I wasn't expecting it was $14,000 and I
had exactly $0 set aside for taxes and it just like was a big
deal right because I had I went into debt to cover this and put
me in the hole and and all this other kind of stuff. I still
have a bad taste in my mouth from all these years later. So
that space isn't to just share a story like a sob story. You
know, boohoo Woe is me. You know, please feel sorry for me.
But it's more importantly, what did you learn from that
experience? And how would you do it over again, if given the
opportunity. And now there's that Pitfall, there's that, that
thing that if you come from a family business, you know that's
been built in, it's been handed to you, your family is going to
have already avoided these pitfalls, and they're going to
educate you on what to look out for and how not to make costly
mistakes. But if you're the first in your family to do this,
you're gonna walk right into it, because you just didn't see it
coming. How could you you've never done this before, right?
So sharing your learns, that's another, you know, super
valuable thing that is just like, here's the things to look
out for what to avoid. The mistake I made, I paid the
price, but I'm sharing it so that you don't have to,
Arvid Kahl: that's a good way to rephrase it, right? A loss is
only a loss when you don't learn from it. So just rephrasing it
into learns immediately makes it useful. That's awesome. I think
I'm taking this away from that little part of a conversation.
It's just like to look at wins and losses as both like
celebrate double celebratory write situations. That is really
cool.
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a that's a great
way to put it. A loss is only a loss if you don't learn from it.
So yeah, we'll put well let's
Arvid Kahl: let's look at potential wins in the future. I
kind of want to know where you want to take this community,
like what's your, your long term vision for this? Or if you if
you even have one, because it might just be a community of
practice, and you see where it goes. But I do wonder, like,
where where do you want to see? Or what do you want to see first
gen entrepreneurs in like five years from now?
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, that's a fantastic question that I, you
know, honestly, I am partially embarrassed to admit this, and
partially proud to admit this, but like, I'm thinking about
this community 24/7, like, when my head hits the pillow at
night, I'm thinking about what I can, what I can do to make it
better and where it's headed. And then when I wake up in the
morning, it's clear, I've been processing it during my sleep,
right? And so that's a really good question, that I'm still
trying to wrap my mind around, like what this could be because
I come from an IT background, right? So at my previous
company, we were fixing people's computers, we're fixing their
printers. That's not the most like fulfilling thing in the
world. If I'm being honest with you, right? Nobody calls you up
to say, Hey, I just wanted to say things are running great. I
love what you guys do. It was it was a pretty thankless job. So
now with this, it's like the complete other end of the
spectrum where it is so fulfilling, to think about the
fact that you can make a meaningful impact on someone's
entrepreneurial journey. And not to get like too philosophical
about it. But like entrepreneurship to me, you
know, I come from a middle class, blue collar, Midwest
upbringing, and with that came some limiting limiting beliefs,
you know, what I what I thought was good money when I came out
of college, you know, what, what it means to be wealthy terms,
like building equity for yourself like this, none of
that. That was all foreign to me, basically, right? And now
that I've kind of gone through this whole process of starting a
business as a one man show, growing it over a 15 year
period, and then ultimately selling it, and, and rubbing
shoulders with all these other people who who do this all the
time. It's like, I think entrepreneurship is a very
valuable thing that can take you from a lower class to a middle
class or middle class to an upper class. Or take whatever
you define success as an help you get there, it's a vehicle to
help you to get there. So whether that's freedom of time,
freedom of money, freedom of choice as to who you want to
work with, and what you want to do for a living, like, once you
get a taste of these freedoms, you never, you never want to go
back. Right? So to me, it like brings an immense amount of, you
know, purpose and satisfaction to know that like this
community, or zooming out a little bit, this organization
can be something that helps people to achieve their their
definition of success. And so the idea of being able to help
say, 1000 people, you know, having a meaningful impact on
their lives is like, super fulfilling. So that's like my
big, hairy, audacious goal as this awesome. Yeah. Now the how,
you know what, what that actually looks like, is still
like I said, building the airplane while flying the
airplane. So I think it's going to be a combination of obviously
supporting people so that they're not doing it alone is
probably always going to be the the baseline, you know, kind of
thing. But then to what extent can we not just give them
support, but actually help them with the implementation of
systems that really set them up for success, I think is, is what
I'm still kind of charting out but that's the part that excites
me.
Arvid Kahl: I bet has also like that feels like it's both a
community building and business building thing at the same time.
So it has these these two connotations there. I do wonder
about the business part of this because obviously, it's a it's a
community of empowerment, which is awesome. I love that about
it, because it talks, it talks my language, right, that's kind
of what it is. But it's also a business. And that has to be
sustainable. So I do want to know, if you can divulge it,
obviously, like, how do you approach this to be a
sustainable and growing potentially growing or hopefully
very much potentially growing business? And what's your
business approach to this community?
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, so that's an interesting one, too, because
I kind of have these opposing forces happening right now. So
on the one hand, I, I belonged to a, like a CEO roundtable kind
of thing. I won't name it by name, because I don't know if
I'm gonna get myself in trouble at some point, because I'm going
to badmouth it a little bit here. So this unnamed executive
roundtable thing that I belong to, for a couple of years around
2017 2018. And it was $1,500 a month to belong to this thing.
So $18,000 a year. And they really leaned into this kind of
exclusivity thing, right? So the idea basically, is that if you
can afford to be in a room full of guys who can afford to be in
that room? That they are all doing something? Right, right?
These are all quote unquote, successful business owners. And
so through osmosis through the connections that you're going to
get, you might wind up doing business with each other, it'll
pay for itself. And the truth is, it works like it does
actually work that way. But they are leaning into this whole kind
of exclusive thing. And to me, that's like a boys club, like,
it really goes against the grain of kind of who I am. I'm trying
to swing the other way, I'm trying to be inclusive, I'm
trying to help the underdog here, I'm not looking to take
already successful people and just help them become even
wealthier. I'm trying to take the people who are just trying
to provide a comfortable lifestyle for their own family
trying to build something for themselves, and help them out,
right? So my business model is very different, like, at this
point in time, it's $75 a month to belong to this community.
Wow. And so it's very accessible, right? Like anybody
who is an entrepreneur who's who's actually like, gotten
started, you should have 75 bucks. And if you don't, that's
kind of a whole different, you know, I'm not in a position to
help you at that point. But for people who are established
that's accessible and I want to keep it accessible, long term.
But then to your point, there becomes like the business model
for this, like, how's that going to work? Because you really need
a lot of num, a lot of people at that price point before this
becomes something that that you can make long term, you know,
sustainability. So, I would like to always have that accessible
entry point that makes valuable, useful, tactical, tangible
resources available to first gen entrepreneurs, I always want
that to be there. But then I think what will happen is, is as
the community grows, and then as members start to mature in their
own businesses, then we can start to offer additional
services to help them with implementation of of systems and
processes, or with you know, kind of those a miniature
version of that, where it is like a CEO roundtable type of
thing. But it's still a fraction of the cost and a fraction of
the time commitment, with none of the highbrow exclusivity kind
of vibe, because that's just not not my people. And then if you
recall, at the beginning, I said how much I enjoyed business
coaching and think that it's awesome, and everybody should do
it. I'm just trying to build a bridge to get people to the
point where they can afford that business coach, right? So that's
that space that I'm trying to fill. And it's it's always
evolving and adapting. And so what it is today is maybe not
what it's going to be tomorrow, but that's kind of my overall
vision is to help people overcome the odds of failure,
which we both know is statistically way too high, to
not only survive, but then start to thrive and get to the point
where they can they can get where they want to go.
Arvid Kahl: That's I think what's what becomes very clear
when you explain it like this, like the whole communities
purpose is to get people from the point where they start at to
the point where they can kind of graduate from the community,
which is something interesting because most communities are
trying to be like this all encompassing thing that just
grabs you and holds you on forever. Doesn't sound
necessarily like that with yours like was, is it intentional that
it's kind of this transition there. Everything that you're
building, would you still want to build like a long term place
for people to be, but just get them to the point and then stick
around? What do you think about that?
Andrew McIntosh: I think that it's, it is intentional to do it
that way. Because what I have in common with all of my members is
we're all first gen entrepreneurs. But we all come
from different backgrounds and industries. And that's on
purpose, because now you can see one problem getting attacked 12
different ways, which is really cool, right? But then when you
start to get up to this point, you know, I'm not going to be
able to tell a trademark attorney how to handle
trademarks, right, or I'm not gonna be able to tell a
financial adviser how to how to build their business, I actually
advocate for belonging to two communities, you know, mine as
kind of like your general entrepreneurial support
community, and then another one that's really niche and specific
to your industry, where you're gonna have very different
conversations there. So I think there's space for both. But yes,
if someone graduates from this community, because they've
reached this point of success, man, I am just, I'm in your
corner, I'm celebrating that for you, right? Like, that's
awesome. You beat the odds, you're enjoying
entrepreneurship, it's had a meaningful impact on your life.
And I think that's awesome. That's like my mission. I think
what will happen is that if people get to that point, by
that point, 75 bucks or whatever it is, is like no big deal. And
they're probably gonna stick around just now purely out of
loyalty and wanting to pay it forward and help other people.
And if they opt in to do that, then that's great. Those are the
kinds of people I want around. But it's not some design where I
want to just get my get my hooks into you and keep you around
forever.
Arvid Kahl: That's, that's nice to know, it does remind me of
when we built feedback Panda, we had a couple of conversations
with customers who cancelled the product, because they found an
actual full time teaching job, because they now had the time to
actually be using a product, they had the time to file
logistics send out their their CVs to companies and stuff. So
we enabled them to find a better job that made using our product
not necessary anymore. This is the happiest kind of churn that
I've ever seen in my life is people graduating beyond needing
the product. So this sounds like you're you have a different
similar mindset here, too, as to if that is the success story,
right? The success story is being at a point where you don't
need the community anymore, at least not in a sense that it's
like, necessary to your survival. You still need it for
different things. It's kind of the pyramids, right? The you
know, the you know, which pyramid ticket escaping my mind
right now.
Andrew McIntosh: But well, yeah, that's just called being a good
person.
Arvid Kahl: Yes, again, that is something that not everybody in
business has, like, for some reason, people have been
trained. And it kind of harkens back to what we initially talked
about, like the default stories that we tell each other, like, I
have heard so many stories about cutthroat competition, and about
like never sharing your story with anybody, again, coming from
a family where people protected what they had, because they
needed to have control over the little things that they had
control over, right? They had no expansive abundance mindset that
just didn't work for them. But in our world now in the digital
economy, or even just our economy that we're in an
abundance mindset is extremely helpful, like sharing your
knowledge, sharing your story, getting people involved getting
their buy in, and then having them help you help them like
that is that is the kind of a never ending cycle of growth,
that people who don't have that experience would never think
about. It's a concept that is just unimaginable to them. So
it's nice to have people in the community. And it's nice that
you are building this community for people, I'm really, really
happy to hear of this to know that this is a concept, because
I am a first gen entrepreneur, but I write, but I've never
expressly seen myself as one. It's nice to know that the
concept exists. And now I have a phrase to describe it to people.
That is That is really cool. And I think with this Where Where
can people find this community? Where can people find more about
you? Because I think you're such a wonderful bridge into the
community that is the bridge to their, their future capacity of
paying somebody to help them with their business as a coach,
like where can people go to find you?
Andrew McIntosh: Alright, so I'm going to be very careful this
time. I was on a podcast a few weeks ago that has a pretty
sizable following. And he asked me that question. And I
completely bungled it. I was just like, oh, just just get in
touch with me on LinkedIn. And then I realized after the fact
that like, that was the lamest call to action of all time,
right? And I'm i I'm still beating myself up over it. So
here's what I'm gonna do. My website or the website for the
first gen entrepreneurs community is first gen dot biz,
and that's the number one S T G n dot biz. I'm just going to
leave it at that because that is a living, breathing website
that's going to change over time and you know, how we how we
position the community and all that is going to change. But if
you just come away with that one thing, then we're going to
continue to make more resources available with time, whether
it's courses and newsletters and community and all these, you
know, kind of cool things that we're building.
Arvid Kahl: That's a good call to action. I think that you
didn't watch this one, this, this one is perfect. And it's
also a great domain that is, as a spectacular, short and
extremely clear domain name for a project like this.
Andrew McIntosh: And I'll be honest, I don't know I just kind
of stumbled on the term first gen entrepreneur and then people
immediately started latching on to it. And then I stumbled on
like that domain name was available. And it just really
feels like I fell backwards into this thing. But I love it. I
love the brand. I love how it's self explanatory. And I love how
it connects with people, they instantly go, that's me. And we
both know how we how we feel about our journeys, just just by
a name. So I'm thrilled to have it. Yeah,
Arvid Kahl: I'm so thrilled to have had you on the show.
Because Thank you just so much for explaining all these things
and letting me dive into your community and learning from you
about building community, learning from you about being an
entrepreneur and fostering community. That was wonderful.
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Andrew McIntosh: Well, thank you very much. And let me just toss
it right back at you like the bootstrapped founder, you've got
the same thing going there were like the instant I saw that and
like, oh, that's me, you know, and you know what, that you
know, what that entails, you know, the emotions that come
with it. And you know, that when you when you go to your website,
or you listen to your podcast, you're gonna get real meat on
the bone in terms of the kind of content it's this isn't fluff.
This isn't Frou Frou stuff. It's like, I want to help the
Bootstrappers the underdogs, the people that are doing this the
hard way to succeed. And so I think I think we're both like,
that's why we're hitting it off. So well. But thank you so much
for having me on the show. An absolute
Arvid Kahl: pleasure. Thanks for that, too. I'm glad that that
resonates with you just as much. I should start a community
probably right. What do you think?
Andrew McIntosh: It's a good idea? I'm here.
Arvid Kahl: Oh, I'll give it a go. Thanks so much for being on
the show.
Andrew McIntosh: Yeah, thank you.
Arvid Kahl: And that's it for today. Thank you for listening
to The Bootstrapped Founder. You can find me on Twitter
@arvidkahl. You'll find my books and my Twitter course there as
well. If you want to support me and the show, please subscribe
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review, a good rating and a good review if you can, by going to
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Any of these things, will help the show in the end. Thank you
so much for listening today and have a great day. Bye bye.