December 8, 2025 – Youngest Female IPO Marcy Syms and Networking SuperStar Judy Robinett

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from am and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award winning school for startups radio where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion. Jim Beach,

Jim Beach 0:25
hello everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for startups radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there riding the roller coaster life of being an entrepreneur, the ups, the downs, the fun, the pain, all of it. It’s rolled into the life that we have chosen to live. Oh, my goodness. All right, we got a great show for you today, and appreciate you being with us and happy holidays. Whatever holiday you celebrate, they’re all coming up soon. I hope you are ready to celebrate. First up today we have Marcy Sims, wow, youngest female IPO ever, and it might have, I don’t think it’s changed since she had her IPO. I don’t think any other females have come in younger, but I do think that that stat is still true. And boy, is this a cool company and an amazing story. I was blown away by how successful and how cool it was, how well thought out. And just a great, great story. After that, I have another great, great female to introduce you to, and this is sort of planned. So there’s several stories going on here. Number one story is that our server that we had been on for 10 years went out of business, and they decided they just were going to close down, and they gave us warning and all of that. And yes, this is the question I get asked the most by other entrepreneurs. Yes, I considered buying it and running it myself, but didn’t make sense. They were closing the business for good reason. And so all of the shows that were posted on that server died, and we had, you know, noticed to download them and all that stuff, and but they’re not there anymore, so we have to put them back up for you to listen to them. And number two, point, some of them are just so good that we have to get them out, as in Judy Robinette. And number three, she is the great networker, and I haven’t spoken to her now since covid, I guess, and so I’m doing this so that I can have a reason to reach out to her. And sometimes we do that, we manufacture reasons so that we can reach out to people who we would like to get in touch with. I can’t wait for you to hear some of Judy’s stories, especially about how she got her roommate a boyfriend and then married, one of the best stories I’ve ever heard in this interview. Thanks for being with us. We’ll be back and get started in just a second. Please go buy my book on the environment. It’s a great book on entrepreneurs.

The Real Environmentalists Ad 2:58
Time to talk and no action on climate change, introducing the real environmentalists, the bold new book by Jim beach. It’s not about activists, politicians or professors, it’s about the entrepreneurs, real risk takers, building cleaner, smarter solutions, not for applause, but for profit. The entrepreneurs in the book aren’t giving speeches. They’re in labs, factories and offices, cleaning the past and building clean products for the future, the real environmentalists is available now because the people saving the planet aren’t the ones you think. Go to Amazon and search for real environmentalist. Thank you.

Jim Beach 3:30
We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Boy, am I excited to introduce my first guest today. Please welcome Marcy Sims to the show. She is the former chair and CEO of Sims Corporation, which she took public so her family had a clothing retail a wholesale business selling clothing at cut rate prices. The company grew so big under Marcy’s leadership that she was able to take it public on the New York Stock Exchange. There’s in our little world here, there’s nothing more prestigious than that, and when doing so, she became the youngest female president in New York Stock Exchange history. For 35 years, she was on the TV. You probably saw her with her slogan, an educated consumer is our best customer, and that respect flows through her entire company and who she built the company on respect, leading with respect, and she has got a new book out called leading with respect. Marcy, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Marcy Syms 4:34
Hey, Hi, Jim. It’s so nice to be here. I that was a great introduction. Thank you.

Jim Beach 4:40
Oh, you have an amazing career. Tell us about your parents.

Marcy Syms 4:45
Well, it really all started with being first generation American. My dad, who was the breakaway person who showed respect to manufacturers and convinced them to sell him below wholesale. O was a first generation from parents of Russian descent who came to America in the first decade of the 1900s they were escaping persecution in Russia. And my mother’s parents came from Romania. They had a similar story of escaping the pogroms in Romania through the last decade and first decade of the last decade of the 1800s anyway, they got here, they found each other. My father grew up in Brooklyn, my mom grew up in the Bronx, and they met at the beach. And my mother was a professional singer. She became at 16, someone who did you know those live radio shows, Jim, you would love this, where they had a full orchestra playing while the singer sang songs, and there was an audience just like the live TV audiences that some shows still have today on old fashioned TV.

Jim Beach 6:07
Interesting, what a couple of characters and yes, the business. How did your father convince manufacturers to sell below wholesale?

Marcy Syms 6:19
He was a salesperson for nine years in a small retail store that was owned by his older brother, who was 14 years his senior. He thoroughly learned the business, and I always recommend this to entrepreneurs that you thoroughly learn the market that you intend to be a disrupter in or a contributor to, and he thoroughly learned the market of clothing manufacturing, clothing distribution. And it was a time where the market was changing because of the urban sprawl and the beginning of malls that dotted the landscape of America and real estate development. So all of a sudden, clothing manufacturers were manufacturing tons more. Really, the SKUs were increasing exponentially as department stores increased. So these manufacturers were left with a lot of overruns, they were left with returns from department stores. And during the time that my father was a salesperson, he saw this as a result of his relationships with the manufacturers. So his idea was to go to the manufacturers and say, Look, I’m interested in owning and operating my own business with a new format. I’m going to buy from you below wholesale, and I’m going to sell it to the consumer. I’m not going to send anything back to you that doesn’t sell, because I will take the responsibility of dealing with my consumers and selling to them. I will find the right price, and that’s how he started. He had London fog and jockey were his first two name brands that were willing to sell him below wholesale. And there was not a moment where he was unsuccessful that the word of mouth he opened near Wall Street down what became One World Trade Center. Then it was a small business area before the development of the World Trade Center, and in his small store, which was only a 12 Foot storefront, he was successful from the moment he opened the door.

Jim Beach 8:39
Wow. What an amazing innovation. And the companies went along. They did,

Marcy Syms 8:47
and they grew, and as companies saw that he wasn’t advertising their names so they didn’t have to worry about offending department stores by underselling them in consumer advertising. There was never in the 55 years that we were in business, we never used the manufacturers names, and that was key to keeping, not only the trust but the respect on what it took for a manufacturer to become a name brand, because consumers were coming in, not just because Sims created a contract of respect with the consumers intelligence and the respect they’re spending money, their hard earned money, with us, but there was also this deep respect for what a brand name needed to do To become a brand name, how long it took, how much sacrifice, how smart you had to be, how consistent, and really you had to be a listener. And that’s one of the keys to respect, is being able to listen.

Jim Beach 9:58
That is great advice. How did you come into the story, Marcy?

Marcy Syms 10:02
When my dad became large enough that his manufacturers, who also manufactured women’s clothing, wanted him to deal with them with women’s clothing, he asked me to come into the business. And I really hesitated. But being that I had worked at three other jobs before I joined Sims, and I had the experience of being fired, which, by the way, is priceless experience, even though it’s a blow to your ego and self image and all that. And there’s a lot of repair that, you know, if this were a different show we could go into, but my father asking me to join the business. The timing was perfect, and I did. And he asked me right away to represent the company in TV and radio, and I did. I also worked with him on a five year plan on how to expand the business, we not only devised a plan, but we included in our plan the relationship with the manufacturers, understanding what they needed for us to grow, because we would not be able to grow without dealing with them. And by the way, Jim none of this was in a contract on a piece of paper. This was all understandings between the manufacturer, designers and our company.

Jim Beach 11:32
No contracts at all.

Marcy Syms 11:34
No there was contracts when we purchased things, of course, because that includes inventory and taxes and all that, but there was no written contract about what we expected from each other in terms of dealing with each other with respect continuity and honesty.

Jim Beach 11:54
When did you start using the respect in terms of the customers and telling the customers that that was part of your value proposition to them

Marcy Syms 12:04
Very early on, even before I joined the company, but very consistently through the 80s and certainly when we went public, there was the differentiation that Our corporate culture and our messaging had with other retailers was very pronounced, and this idea that an educated consumer is our best customer had to be explained, and we also had to explain what off price was. Off price meaning you buy below wholesale, and the price to the consumer is within 10% of the manufacturer’s wholesale price. This was really before the explosion of vertical retailing, which is very pronounced today, the the idea that a retailer can control all the costs in the supply chain and create a sales price to the consumer that reflects all of their costs is not what we were doing. We were dealing with manufacturers who were the supply chain for us, so we had to explain that to the consumer. And we found that in educating consumers, our best customer, was a way to start that conversation and actually explaining and having that conversation was what our company did for our marketing for the entire life of the business.

Jim Beach 13:31
How many TV spots did you do?

Marcy Syms 13:35
Well, we created them together. I did a lot of the writing myself. We I wrote a commercial with my dad that explained the automatic markdown price tag that we had on women’s dresses and what we called PMS, that’s more cocktail attire, and we had this automatic markdown every 30 days it would go to final and that meant that this was moving quickly. The consumer could see the markdowns right in front of them on the price tag. This was something that created excitement. It also reflected the fact that there were about eight seasons in women’s as opposed to the basically two seasons in men’s clothing, we had in women’s so many different items coming down from our manufacturers that there was a need for a what we thought a visible markdown, so that the Consumer understood what our pricing was, and they could make the decision when to buy. That was the first commercial that I helped write. So the line was so you, as the consumer, can see when and how much each markdown will be. The other was about labels. Read label. Olis, when you buy something, know what the fiber content is, know what the care of the garment is. Understand if you’re going to be spending money on dry cleaning or not. Today, many people don’t even think of that because they’re into disposable fashion, but we were trying to say to the consumer, this is an investment. We understand that you work very hard for what you make. You’re separating yourself from your money. We want you to understand what it is that you’re getting, and we’ll help you figure that out. And we talked about sizing that we never charged more for bigger sizes. All of this had to do with the culture of the company and the culture of respect. Excellent.

Jim Beach 15:48
Tell us about the IPO. Why did you go public? It’s obviously the money cash out, but also you lose control of daddy’s business.

Marcy Syms 15:59
Yes, yes. Oh, Jim, you got to the heart of the issue right away. The going public was really for my dad, for him to be able to take some chips off the table. We had been a family of always tightening our belts as the expression went because there was always more money that the company needed to grow, that the stores needed new flooring, or there was, there was always a reason, that there were sacrifices that were made. And I think that’s part of entrepreneurship, is understanding what the trade offs are, and understanding that the investment of today is for the hopes and the work that will you’ll be the fruits of tomorrow, and that was what my dad was looking for with going public. It also was a way to professionalize the company. At that time, there were many, many more companies looking at the public market. IPOs are down about 50% from that time. And actually the, you know, the gray markets, private equity and hedge funds, etc, are much more prevalent today. They didn’t even exist in the 80s. In the 80s to finance growth the way they do today. So going public was a way in which to professionalize we, for the first time, we really had titles. You know, in an entrepreneurial setting, it was just whatever you need to do, you know, if I had to get coffee, that was fine. Someone needed coffee. There was no real fine lines, dotted lines, solid lines between work and title. It was all what needed to be done. Are you the best qualified to do it here? Catch the ball and that’s that’s the excitement of entrepreneurship. But because that was needed to be professionalized to get to another level, going public was a way to do that, and certainly the two investment banks that we worked with and consistent can continue to work with and one of those investment banks actually became a board member of our public board, but you’re absolutely right at that point, you no Longer are a family business, you no longer have control, and the other folks that are sitting at the table are all the shareholders and stakeholders, and your reporting really, really changes, and your sense of responsibility to those who are Owning your company really broadens and takes on new meaning.

Jim Beach 18:43
Tell us about the book, leading with respected ventures of an off price fashion pioneer. It’s five star rated on Amazon. Tell us about it.

Marcy Syms 18:54
Well, I really had this need to share my father’s story, first and foremost, and the how he created this business model that was a disruptor in retail. It was really the first of its kind for the men’s industry, for the men’s clothing industry. It hadn’t been done before, and I it was a tribute to him for the first 60 pages, and then working with the publisher, we developed more of what happened to me as I joined the business, as I became someone who had a public face that I hadn’t been really prepared for, but I did understand understanding the lack of women in the C suite, that this was an opportunity, and I wanted to share that. I also wanted to share some of the experiences I had with not for profit, entrepreneurship, and certainly there’s an hadn’t been just a short time ago. And. There’s the opportunity also of knowing life’s transitions that being an entrepreneur doesn’t always absorb the entire of your work life, that you can after being an entrepreneur successfully and perhaps cashing out or perhaps selling in a way that you no longer have full involvement, that you have time to do something else. So I wanted to show how transitions were possible,

Jim Beach 20:31
and how has that transition been for you? Marcy, are you still actively involved in the business? And what do you know

Marcy Syms 20:41
The businesses is now a real estate holding company. I have nothing to do with the business today. We are as a as a family. Myself, none, none of the family are shareholders. Today, the my involvement, I became very involved with the opportunities that women have in business, I created and helped to create a organization called the Equal Rights Coalition, and now working at NYU Law School on the Equality initiative that has to do with laws that help it be possible for women to have more teeth in the law when it comes to getting their equity.

Jim Beach 21:33
Yes, very important.

Marcy Syms 21:35
It is. It really is, and it really makes, I had the opportunity, really, of a growing business right now for universities, it’s it’s for retired folks and transitioning. And I had the opportunity to go to the first program that does this at Harvard University, called the Advanced Leadership Initiative. We had entrepreneurs and doctors who started their own practices and did roll ups. And we had all kinds of people in this program the year I went, and it was all about finding your next act, because so many people with a longer lifespan, we’re looking at maybe having, you know, solidly three, three or four or five opportunities to be entrepreneurs in your lifetime. It doesn’t stop with your first entrepreneurship. If you get excited and you become involved in an idea, and you can convince other people to join you and buy into your idea. You are an entrepreneur, and that skill, that passion, is something that can happen multiple times in your life.

Jim Beach 22:49
Yes, that’s the fun of it, and hopefully you’ll do better the second and the third time.

Marcy Syms 22:56
Yes, hopefully, oh, Jim, if you make the same mistakes, well, it’s like what Albert Einstein said, failure is success in progress. And I guess if you fail with a couple of entrepreneurial starts, and you finally get to something that clicks and you’ve learned something along the way, the failures are all worth it.

Jim Beach 23:20
How do I analyze whether my firm has respect now, if my employees feel respected, and then, how do I become better at it over time?

Marcy Syms 23:33
Oh, that’s a great question. Jim, thank you for that. You know, if your culture is a respectful one by number one, turnover three, the success of your messaging. Is it sticking? And I would say the last one is, Are people enjoying working with you? Is there a feeling of being seen? Respect is all about being seen, being heard, and in order to accomplish that, it helps to start from the very beginning of the culture, make sure, well, a couple of things. I mean, I have a list of things. I would say, the cultivating respect you have to model transparent and inclusive communications that you’re not speaking down to or above, the you have to honor people’s time and their contributions, make sure that you’re not just recognizing numbers that you’re recognizing the people that accomplish those numbers make accountability mutual, not just hierarchical. Don’t take ownership of successes, share failures. You have to redress a. Address disrespect swiftly and systematically. People in your business have to understand that there are processes for dealing with disrespect so that people can anticipate and you have to recognize people who are outstanding at communicating respect who work in the organization. That’s how you build it.

Jim Beach 25:27
All right, how do I ask if I am being respectful? If turnover? That’s one way. But seems like that would be a long term measure, not a short term measure.

Marcy Syms 25:39
Well, you can also see that in your hiring practices, because you do have the opportunity, as you go through hiring practices, and we established some very, I think, unique ways in which at a certain level that we would do hiring and training. Training is important part of respect when we hired someone to be on the sales floor. And this started when we were a smaller company. We would allow people to have an exposure to all the jobs in the store. They would over a 30 day period. You would get to do all the jobs, including sweeping the floor. Everyone had a taste of what it took to get that door open in the morning, and then they would find out what they particularly were good at they had an affinity for. And usually what we were able to do was let them do the job that they had the affinity for. That didn’t mean that’s where they stayed. So really, respect starts with the hiring process and the training process. When we were doing management training, there was a opportunity for feedback so that someone who was being trained could tell us, this worked. This didn’t work. What I learned my previous jobs that might help expand our understanding of training, there was always a dialog, and that you can tell. You can tell, if you’re having a dialog, is your culture expansive, or is it very focused, limited in a way that eventually will strangle it and will stop your business from growing.

Jim Beach 27:24
Yes, very true. Yes, you were about out of time. What final share with us?

Marcy Syms 27:33
Oh, well, maybe I’ll share something that my dad used to say all the time. He said, Don’t let the bad guys win. Actually, he used the word bastards. Don’t let the bastards win. And so it’s probably a good idea to also on a darker note, to identify that which you are overcoming. And what we identified was we were overcoming the culture of buyer beware, and we want it to be the forerunners of buyers need to know everything we know in order to make a good decision. And so it’s sometimes important to identify that as you create your company and you make a niche for yourself in the marketplace.

Jim Beach 28:21
How do we find out more? Follow you online, get a copy of the book.

Marcy Syms 28:25
Well, you can certainly go to your local bookstore and ask for leading with respect by Marcy Sims. I’m all for small business. Of course, it’s on Amazon and it’s also on audio books with me, reading

Jim Beach 28:41
it fantastic. Yeah. Thank you so very much for being with us, and congratulations on the book. I hope it sells well for the holiday season, and thanks for sharing just great story.

Marcy Syms 28:55
Thank you. Thank you. It is an inspirational book. So for those in our lives that need some inspiration to get it done. I recommend it. Thanks, Jim.

Jim Beach 29:05
Thank you, Marcy, and we will be right back.

Intro 2 29:20
Well, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a wonderful question, actually, oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim, wow, that’s, that’s, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question. And, and I don’t have a great answer, that’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question, and that’s actually a really good question. School for startups radio.

Jim Beach 29:48
And welcome back to the show again. Thank you so very much for being with us. I am really excited to welcome to the show today, a return guest. She was with us about four years ago. Her name is. Judy Robinette, she is the startup funding guru expert as a very popular speaker, and has a new book out called crack the funding code, how investors think and what they need to hear to fund your startup. She has been on some of the most important boards and really cool positions of responsibility with companies that you’re going to be impressed with. For example, She was on the advisory board of Luminate venture capital. You should have heard of them. Menlo Park ventures, also as a partner at crowdfund capital advisor, former managing director of golden seeds, angel investment firm, also a faculty member at Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business and an advisor to an upcoming movie. Her first book, I think it was her first book was came out four or five years ago, called How to be a power connector to the 1050 150 rule, and it won Business Book of the Year by Inc Magazine. She has been tortured. I’m sorry, featured tortured. We’re going to torture her. She has been featured in Forbes, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, a bunch of places like that. And I’m really excited to welcome her back. I think Judy, that the first interview you and I did was your first interview for your book tour. I think I took your radio virginity. Welcome to the show

Judy Robinett 31:31
you did. Thank you so much. Jim, delighted to be back here with you.

Jim Beach 31:35
I am so excited to talk. We haven’t caught up in a while. Congratulations on the new book, before we talk about that, I love your message about networking, and one of your stories sticks out to me. Still to this day, I think I’ve retold it many times. Tell me if you remember the story about your college roommate couldn’t get a date, the advice you gave or what happened and how that turned into your networking philosophy? Yes.

Judy Robinett 32:05
So my college roommate, Margaret was pretty shy, and she kept complaining to me that she didn’t think anybody would ever ask her out. So I gave her the task that she had to talk to, you know, four to five strangers just say hi during the day on campus. And sure enough, she ended up with several dates, and within that year, she was married.

Jim Beach 32:31
I mean, it’s sometimes in the networking space, it’s just taking the initiative to say hi to somebody, and that starts, doesn’t it?

Judy Robinett 32:39
Absolutely So, you know, research shows we only talk to strangers 2% of the time, and it’s really sad most of us didn’t know our spouses. They were at one point, strangers. And I tell people, you know, if you develop this skill, and the way to do it is to either offer a heartfelt compliment or to ask a question. And I’ve never had anybody be nasty to me when I’ve done this. Of course, I don’t, you know, bother people if they’re sleeping on the plane, but it has, you know, I’ve met billionaires who were taking hikes in Park City. So it’s an important skill to learn to talk to strangers.

Jim Beach 33:18
And in terms of networking, going to that chamber event, there’s always someone standing there by themselves who doesn’t know what to do, who would desperately appreciate you going up and shaking their hand Absolutely.

Judy Robinett 33:33
Just put your hand out. Say Hi, I’m Jim. I’m Judy. I’m excited to be here today, and it’s amazing if you can take the focus off of yourself and put it on the other person. And actually, introverts often are better than extroverts, because they know how to listen, and you never know who you’re standing by or the connections they may have. And I’ll give you an example. Last week, I was in New York doing a couple of TV shows that I was asked to speak at a black women in tech conference. And I did, and in the speaker room was the lady, and I just, you know, started talking to her a little bit. She just introduced me to two really high end media contacts. And so you just you never know, and it’s to your advantage to reach out to strangers.

Jim Beach 34:26
And I am an introvert, Judy, but I have found that in these situations where I am awkward, right, when I’m uncomfortable, like a chamber event or something like that, that’s not where you know the room I’m naturally comfortable in. It’s easier if I do go up and initiate a conversation than standing there by myself. I’m more comfortable having a bad conversation than being by myself, because then I feel awkward. And you know, everyone’s looking at me, and everyone knows that no one will talk to me. Judy, no one will talk to me. Everyone knows it, and that’s what everyone’s talking about. Well, no one’s even noticed.

Judy Robinett 35:01
And my fear was, why would anybody want to talk to me? Yeah. And so a trick you can do is, you know, go to the chamber a little early and talk to the organizers by name. You know, tell them what you’re doing and ask them to introduce you to a couple of key people. Another trick is to take somebody who’s been there before and have them. You can be their wing man. That works really well, too.

Jim Beach 35:25
All great advice. Judy. Let’s move on to the new book, five star rated with almost 55 star reviews on that Amazon place. Crack the funding code, how investors think and what they need to hear. That’s a really interesting way of of talking about this. It’s almost like we’re going to tailor our business pitch just for the investor?

Judy Robinett 35:49
Yes, yeah. So, you know, I had to write this book, Jim, because I was so frustrated meeting great founders who just couldn’t figure out how to get funded. And of course, those angels and VCs and family offices can be pretty opaque, and I’ve been an angel investor. I sit on VC boards, advise some incubators, and so I kind of learned, as Einstein said, if you’re going to play the game, you’d better know the rules. And the first one is that you position yourself as a high potential startup by being really clear on your exit, because those investors want their money back in an ROI. And the second is to mitigate risk as viewed by the investor. So often what you see is, during a pitch, someone will come in and go, geez, I’ve got just the greatest kool aid here. And you know, they’re drinking their Kool Aid. They’re showering in their Kool Aid. And the investors really want to focus on how you’re going to grow a successful business.

Jim Beach 36:58
All right, so let’s dive into exit first. Judy, I agree 100% of course, with what you’re saying. There’s no way I could disagree. But how do I work that in without it seeming like, Well, number one, my fear would be, I’m already thinking about the big payday at the end, and they’re not going to like that. And they’re thinking that my attack, my attention might be somehow distracted or, you know, I just won’t be focusing on building the real business. I’ll be trying to, you know, do that 2000 thing where we sell the fake business on vaporware, right on what we plan to do, talking about how to present all of that without how to, you know, coming across poorly.

Judy Robinett 37:41
Well, you know, if you understand that angels typically want their money back in five years in your go to market strategy, you can have how you’re going to scale the company all of that information, and then say that you’re looking at potential acquirers at year five. And this will be music to the investors ears and 95% of the of exits are indeed strategic sales. The average exit 65 million that would make you or I happy when that Jim,

Jim Beach 38:11
oh yeah, Sign me up. I’ll sign up.

Judy Robinett 38:15
And so you can find comparable. So my favorite two places are CB insights and the pitch book. Both of those are free resources. You can google and you can find out what the comparables are for the exits. You can also find out who’s investing, what VCs, what angel groups are investing in your specific sector.

Jim Beach 38:39
All right, that is some great advice, everybody. I hope you got that. We will put that up on the show notes for you. CB insights and pitch book, right? Judy, did I get both of those Correct? Yes. CB insights, okay, great. I’ll send it. I’ll send you a couple of their reports, okay? And I’ll make sure they’re up for all of the listeners. So we have a 15 slide pitch deck, and slide number 15 is my contact information, and slide number 14 is the timeline and shows the four or five things I’ve done to reduce risk. We’ll come back to that in a second, and also shows where I am now and then says blatantly at the bottom of slide 14, at the bottom, in five years, we are going to look for acquisition and possible exits that that that forward, right? Judy, am I okay?

Judy Robinett 39:35
Yeah, you know absolutely. And any strategic partnerships you’re planning to do so, one of the wisest moves to find funding is to find a corporate venture capital group that is in your industry. And it’s just amazing. There’s more of these than there are regular VCs, and the money they’re investing is, I think recently I read 28 Billion. It’s up considerably. It’s not up as you know, the total VC amount that was invested was is 100 billion. And so the numbers are looking really good. But any strategic partnership that you have anything to grow sales that’s really important to them. So if you’ve done your homework and you’ve looked at comparables of three other companies that have sold for them to have, and you don’t even have to have it on the slide, you can just talk to it as you’re talking through your story, or when you initially meet with the investors, you can tell them, because often they will want to know what your your plan is. And it’s really smart to have developed a relationship. You know, people have got to know you, like you, and trust you, to fund you. But of importance is, before those people invest you want to have an agreement on what kind of exit you’re looking on. There’s probably been more breakups and litigation over the the exit than you can imagine. So that’s an important one to have developed upfront. What’s your vision, how you’re going to scale and what you’re looking to do for the future of your company?

Jim Beach 41:18
All right, so how about this? As I wrap up here the final minute of the presentation, you see that we are looking at possibly being acquired in year four or five, and we will actively pursue that. Just coincidentally, three companies that are in a space very similar to us have been acquired in the last year. Miss Robinette and one of them went Katerra went for $100 million and so we see a very strong potential in our space. Now, final slide here is my contact, blah, blah, blah. How did I do you like that? Excellent.

Judy Robinett 41:53
Jim, that would be absolutely exceptional.

Jim Beach 41:57
Okay, just whip it out. Go ahead and say our one of our sort of competitors got bought, and we are too

Judy Robinett 42:03
Absolutely

Jim Beach 42:08
Alright, let’s move on to your other suggestion that we did a couple minutes ago, decrease risk, right? So talk to me about this a little bit.

Judy Robinett 42:19
Yeah, so often I will meet founders, and they’ve never done a startup before, and that causes a little bit of angst, often time with with investors. So you know, if you, if you look at the the Lean model that you have, the the one pager that shows you there’s a value proposition with a bowl around it, I tell people to put the prettiest bow they can. And one of the ways to do that is to bring on two or three powerful advisory board members, and then people will look and go, Oh my gosh, if this person is in on this deal, this is a good deal. I’ve helped bring on a director from Microsoft, to pass CFO from PayPal, and you have top quality people, then that helps them mitigate the risk. And you know, they often talk about this, this group needs adult supervision, and that’s one way to provide that is to show them you have very credible, powerful people that you’re going to listen to. So, you know, one of the ways to not get funded is not be perceived as coachable. So if you’re an arrogant, know it all, you’ll get booted out of the room very quickly.

Jim Beach 43:33
All right, I’m thinking about some businesses right now, Judy, that have this quote, unquote adult supervision, and I find that the adults are sometimes even more incompetent than the people they’re supervising. But for example, Facebook, I’ve written posts about this on LinkedIn, about how I think that the adult supervision horribly failed there, if not providing better education for Zuckerberg and oversight and addressing some of these issues in advance. So anyway, you said adult supervision, absolutely.

Judy Robinett 44:07
I mean, absolutely. You want to do your due diligence and make sure that the people really will add value and that there’s a good character chemistry set. You know, Oprah says, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. So you only want people that are committed to your business, and they’ll have your future, and they’ll have your back,

Jim Beach 44:30
all right? What about partnerships, that kind of things? We have a marketing deal with this company. They’re going to do blah, blah, blah for me, right? Is that another good way to reduce risk? And eyes of the investors, do they give that kind of stuff creates?

Judy Robinett 44:47
Oh, yeah. So Paul Graham, who’s the co founder of Y Combinator, says there’s only two reasons that a startup fails, the first is lack of a customer. The second is lack of funding. And so if. You have any partnerships, anything like that, you’re golden, because you’ve proven the dog is going to eat the dog food, as they say in the VC world. You know, I meet a lot of people, and they think they’ve got this brilliant idea, and maybe their friends and family will buy it, but nobody else will open their wallet, and at that point, you have a hobby.

Jim Beach 45:21
Again, we are speaking with Judy Robinette about her new book, crack the funding code, how investors think and what they need to hear to fund your startup. So we’ve been going through some suggestions, and we were focusing on reducing risk. I also know that in the book, Judy, you introduce your 3c that investors want. What are these?

Judy Robinett 45:48
Yeah, so the first one is be coachable. You know, I mentioned this briefly that if you’re an arrogant know it all, nobody’s going to give you their money. They worry what you’ll do with their money. You won’t listen to them. And this isn’t a deal where they fund you, forget you. So it’s important that you’re viewed as coachable. So angel investors in particular have often had exits themselves as entrepreneurs, and so they want to coach. I mean, they would like to be involved in mentor because they want it to be successful for everybody. The second one is your character and Howard Stevenson, who’s known as the godfather of entrepreneurism at Harvard, wrote a book teaching people how to invest, and he advised them that the first time they heard an exaggeration, a white lie, to run, not walk, because you would also lose your money. And the third one is a level of confidence, because people worry if you’re not confident, how are you going to sell? And so important to be a little confident. And I’ll give you some advice on this. When I was CEO of a public company, I walked around the house for a couple of months going, I can’t be the CEO of a public company, my P heart guy, who’d come out of a big firm, was asked to do a training video, and he liked the acting so well, he got an agent, but he got turned down all the time, and his agent sent him to a character actor, and this guy made him walk around the room for five minutes, morning and night, and Say out loud, I am perfect for the part, and it actually worked. It helped me, and it will help you as well. And then realize that, you know, everybody in that room knows you’re broke and your problem is their solution. So the one thing they lose sleep over is finding a good deal. So change that equation in your head. You actually solve their problem. Great advice.

Jim Beach 47:50
How do I let you know that I’m coachable? Is it as simple as when you say something like you reflect on slide number 12, or the answer to my question, and I go, That’s great advice. I appreciate that. I will remember that, and I’m going to try to address that situation if I just demonstrated

Judy Robinett 48:09
Absolutely, okay, yes, absolutely. It’s not that hard, that one’s easy, yeah. And you can also ask a question of them, you know, we’re considering, and this could be further on in a conversation, or earlier, but you could say, you know, we’re considering three paths here on scaling what has been your experience. All right,

Jim Beach 48:34
the quote from the Harvard business professor, that’s a scary quote, The if you get the faintest sense of exaggeration or white lie, run, because, as an entrepreneur, I’m certainly going to paint the prettiest picture I can, you know, and that’s not going to be a white lie or an exaggeration, but a lot of business plans that I’ve Seen would be what I consider exaggeration. I mean, you know, we’re going to get 42% market share in five years.

Judy Robinett 49:06
Judy, well, you know, there’s, there’s some things that become really obvious. So I’ve often sat through pitch events and I’ll hear we have no competition. Well, frankly, if you have no competition, there’s no market or we’re going to get one half of 1% of the money in China, and next year, our company will be valued at a billion. You know, those kind of things show you have not done your your homework. And so, you know, those are kind of serious exaggerations. Now, it’s always good to work with someone. The guy that I recommend on financial performance is David Meister out of New York, who will come up with very realistic pro formas. And it’s okay to be forward looking, but you’ve got to, you’ve got to as Jack Welch said, get better reality. You can’t say you’re going to have a. Valuation three times that of Facebook, or your revenues are going to be bigger. And so those are the things that you certainly can be positive and forward looking. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Jim Beach 50:13
All right, what do I need to do if I’m in a space, for example, podcasting? We all understand that it is, quote, unquote the future. I don’t know what it is the future of what I don’t know, right and but we certainly are. It certainly is going to be something that people are raising money in in that space, right? For various things, I’m starting to see podcasting, business plans and things, not for a show, but for as an industry, part of the whole infrastructure. For example, how do I present that to a venture capitalist or just an angel when we don’t really know what the industry is going to look like yet?

Judy Robinett 50:57
Yeah, so often, and Clayton Christian talks about this, if you’re disruptive, you’re the new person, the new kid on the block. It is hard to figure out what that market space might be. And the advice that I often give is look at something that could be comparable, and look at those rates. And often, if you if you’ve got an idea, there’s other people out there that have got the idea. So go Google and find out something that’s either similar or close to and that will often help you come up with something that’s reality based.

Jim Beach 51:37
All right, I like that example. That makes a lot of sense. Judy, what’s your final thought? We’re about out of time. Give us one more nugget, something that we haven’t mentioned. What did I not ask you?

Judy Robinett 51:49
So you didn’t really ask me about, you know, some of some of the investing things, and I’ll tell you, there’s no lack of money. There’s 279 trillion of private global wealth, 300 angel groups in the United States, equally, from north, south, west and east, and we’re seeing more and more family offices. Family Offices now are having better deal flow than the VCs, so no lack of money out there. It’s important to be persistent. Go to pitch events. Go to incubators, entrepreneurial programs certainly talk to the SBA, the SBDC, and score, they all have relationships with investors. And then ask what I call my two golden questions. You meet somebody, you’re telling them about your startup. Question one, What other ideas do you have for me? And question two, who else do you know I should talk to? You’ll be amazed. Your dentist probably knows investors. So be persistent. Ask for help.

Jim Beach 52:51
You know, I had one guest whose entire philosophy of raising money is go to people who’ve never invested before in something like this, like the dentist and that they’re easy targets, and yeah, usually they know stuff and know people so very, very good. Judy, I am so glad to get caught up with you and to spend some time with you. You are absolutely just the very best. How do you want people to find out more? Get in touch with you, follow you online and get a copy of the book.

Judy Robinett 53:23
So feel free to reach out to me at Judy, at Judy robinette.com with no E on the end, you can find my book on Amazon. I’m really thrilled that it’s an international bestseller, and I’m on, you know, LinkedIn, I tweet, so reach out. I’m happy to help.

Jim Beach 53:41
Thank you so very much. Congratulations on the book, and we’ll talk again soon. Thanks a lot. Judy, thank you, Jim. We are out of time, but we come back tomorrow. Be safe. Take care. Bye. Now you.