[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast today. I am lucky enough to have a very special guest, Friday episode with the serial founder, the gentle giant of Philadelphia, Sean Boyce, founder of Nxt Step consulting. He's the founder of bottleneck buster and podcast chef and staff geek and a bunch of other things.
Sean, how are you, buddy?
[00:00:48] Sean: I'm doing well, Jay, thanks for having me on.
[00:00:50] Jay: Oh, it's a pleasure. I love having Philly folks on and, I don't think I could have. A more well rounded guest, a fellow podcaster, a fellow entrepreneur. So this should be good, man. So did you grow up in Philly? Is this where you're from?
[00:01:07] Sean: I did originally from Philly, bounced around a geographical region for the most part, but spent most of my time in Philly, including studying at Drexel University.
[00:01:18] Jay: So do you think that had an impact on you being a serial entrepreneur over the years or
[00:01:22] Sean: Great question. I would definitely say the education and people in my network have, including family members. My father eventually started his own business, but seeing the success that others have had in the region, especially as my network grew and expanded, definitely left an impression.
[00:01:39] Jay: what was the first one you started?
[00:01:42] Sean: Let's see way back when my original attempt at going into business for myself was included as service component, but it was intended to largely be software for the recruiting industry. I originally set out to solve a problem that I was referring to as people weren't quitting their jobs. They were quitting their bosses. It's kind of a similar experience. I had myself. So the idea was to solve that with a service software kind of hybrid solution. That's why I originally started. It's kind of like an early version of what staff geek became.
[00:02:11] Jay: Okay. And what was the kind of trajectory? And it sounds like it. Maybe didn't take off. What was, what did you learn from that?
[00:02:20] Sean: Learned a ton. In fact, still do to this day. That's probably the best experience I've had, despite all the degrees and everything else, still continuing to learn those lessons. And it really kind of launched me on a trajectory in terms of where I am today as well. And I'm happy to connect all those dots, but it was largely unsuccessful.
The reason I would say there's a few reasons. I actually had a recent LinkedIn post that went into some detail here, but I would say it was largely because the solution that we were leading with wasn't something that the market. In particular, needed or wanted. So we didn't really have good product market fit there. At the time I wasn't even fully aware of that conceptually in terms of what it meant and how important it was, but I continued to learn a lot from that experience and that led to big changes from there.
[00:02:59] Jay: And do you see that with clients you help and with just people in general, that are starting businesses, that they kind of run into that same thing, because I feel like I see that a lot as well.
[00:03:10] Sean: All the time, it is a common mistake and an easy pitfall that stumps a lot of folks who are trying to do something similar, especially most of who I help and work with on the software side, usually building SAS products, whether it's, you know, consumer facing or business facing. Most of my stuff is business facing, but people like to be kind of, they like to lead with the solution. And in reality, what it should always be is falling in love with the problem, making sure you can generate demand for whatever it is you would like to help them with solving. And that's really the key in terms of what I found where you need to start from. And had we done that originally, I think that would have made everything a lot easier and enabled us to be successful a lot sooner.
[00:03:49] Jay: Why do you think so many people fall into that same track? Why do you think it's so easy for people to do that?
[00:03:54] Sean: Great question. I think there's a lot of bad advice and misconceptions out there. I got plenty of it when I was just starting out. People are be very protective and secretive of your ideas. Someone's going to steal them, all this kind of stuff. And so it's easy for, I guess some of the panic or the worry around those kinds of concepts to make the rounds.
And then it influences people, I think, on the wrong direction. The best quote I've heard about this, which really put me back on the right track. I think it was trying to remember where I pulled inspiration from, but it was, the quote is basically, if you were to summarize, it's like, don't worry about anybody stealing your idea.
If your idea is any good, you're going to have to hammer it down people's throats. And it's, I've had more of that experience than worrying about people stealing ideas.
[00:04:36] Jay: I, that's a really great point. And even running your business. In a transparent way, like I have service business and I used to kind of be protective and, you know, you don't want to talk about rates and you want to talk about this and you want to talk about that. And internally, do you tell people how much you're making from the clients and how, and, you know, and then 1 of my friends who runs a fantastic, product management as a service agency, consultant group, he was like, just tell everybody everything.
Tell them, I mean, there's no, if,
you're going to never be able to remember all of the different things that you told her, I mean, just like, you know, when you're a kid, right, you're learning, like to tell the truth. It's like, you can't keep track of all the lies you're telling, not that you're lying, but you can't keep track of all the different pieces you're trying to keep hidden running a business.
So it is a lot easier just to be very transparent. So I love that.
Um, so, how did it grow? How did you grow that or change that or shift that into what staff geek became? Was that the next iteration of that business?
[00:05:31] Sean: Yeah, so I'll follow along here kind of from that experience that was largely unsuccessful. And then. To help kind of present day, but based on what I learned about that experience, all the mistakes that were made, you know, premature scaling, leading with the solution, not selling before I was building all that kind of stuff.
Those were all common mistakes that I made. So, like, for them all myself, then, as I learned, and I kind of, I really dove deep once that sputtered out, figure out, you know, why did I land here? What was I supposed to do instead? Like, what went wrong? So I learned all of those things. And then intended to reincorporate them back a similar value proposition. That's ultimately what Staff Geek became. So I was able to bring that product back in the format and in the fashion that made sense and had much better product market fit. And the rest there is kind of history. But since I was able to kind of make that transformation along the way, I ended up meeting a ton of other great folks, plenty of them in the Philly area. A lot of them were trying to do something similar for their own industry or with their whatever solution they wanted to sell. And I found a lot of them making the same mistakes that I was making. So I simply just kind of started helping as in like, Hey, I see you're about to do this or try that. If it's a value at all here, this was my experience just as a friend or help or whatever. And that's kind of what led me to building myself through next step as a consultant to help other people growing and building certain businesses that were similar to that largely like B2B SaaS. So anybody in the software world, I was just sharing with them what my experience was. Basically what I did wrong, which is many times what it was, they were about to do, explain to them why it went sideways when I tried that approach and what I did instead to actually make it work. So that kind of became a, like just a friend, you know, helping people kind of thing, which led to contracting, which ultimately led to consulting. And then, you know, since then I've continued to work on bigger and more projects of various different types across industries.
[00:07:28] Jay: How did you go about learning from those mistakes?
[00:07:34] Sean: It was, I think it was part of what you mentioned, Jay, actually, it's that whole, like. Share everything and nowadays I actually build in public, so I never wanted to be one of those folks. It's like, do as I say, not as I do kind of thing. I don't know if it's imposter syndrome or whatever, but realistically for me, I just I'm in it for the love of the game.
Like, I just love building software and providing people with a kind of value. It's just like, it's exciting for me. So I love to do it over and over again. That's why I like the. Consulting work towards folks who are trying to do the same thing, especially since I've done it a couple of times and hopefully I can help, but I think what ultimately for me meant that. Made it a lot easier to kind of continually do that work and learn from those lessons was, doing things like building in public and just sharing what I'm working on building at any given point in time, you know, just this year, I've built 2 B2B SaaS, AI powered, software products, which have turned into businesses themselves and all along the way, as I've been designing, building and launching those, growing them, Experiencing some type of bottleneck or running into some type of problem, I've just been forthcoming with all the details.
And that's what I share on my podcast and with my network now, because I always wanted to like experiment with different strategies to try to move various needles myself, see where that went, did it work, did it not. And then I take back the things that ultimately worked. And now I can share those with my consultants, clients, friends, whatever, anybody trying to do the same thing.
I can, I have a case study that I was actually able to run myself. So I can show them like, here's what I did, here's how I know that, here's why I think that this may work for you and what I'd recommend you try instead of whatever else they might be considering.
[00:09:10] Jay: Right. I love that. it's a very self aware process. so talk to me about the rest of them. I mean, you've got to, you know, your LinkedIn is just like founder, from staff geek and, you know, podcast chef and bottleneck buster, like Were these all just, kind of like you just said, like opportunities where you saw a problem that you were experiencing yourself and you spun that off into its own business.
[00:09:37] Sean: So, try to connect those all together because there is a lot going on. There's always too much, and that's one of the things that I'm working on. But, I got really good at figuring out how to uncover what I refer to as a problem worth solving, which is a process that I follow. It's largely like UX research and discovery based where I'll perform the homework necessary to find for a specific market for a target market buyer.
That's trying to make a certain type of progress. They have some type of things stopping them or preventing them from being able to make that progress, a bottleneck gap in a process, whatever it is, I'm able to. Rather effectively and efficiently now because I've done it so many times. I'm able to understand what that problem is, like what progress they want to make, what problem is preventing them from making that kind of progress, the impact of that problem is causing that gets to like lost time, dollars and cents, which leads to pain for businesses and things like that.
So then I can kind of quantify, all right, well, if I'm able to solve that problem in a better way. I can provide them with certain amount of value, which translates to a return on investment based on the impact that I uncovered from the problem. So once I had put all those pieces together, I can workshop a solution anywhere from service to product. I do a lot of the consulting work usually just under myself as a service. also perhaps with small team or some help from time to time. And then for the stuff that I want to be more scalable, or maybe like low touch, I'll turn into a product or a piece of software and I'll sell that usually in SaaS format or fashion. That's what the 2 marketing automation tools that I built just this year have turned into. They solve business problems that I'm experiencing myself for another service company that I built. And then in addition to leveraging them and taking advantage of the benefits they offer ourselves. For my business, we're also selling them externally for other people that may have the same problems.
So that's another pattern that I've had a lot of success with to kind of as a business solving your own problem. If you do that, chances are other businesses like you out there need the same solution. So that's kind of how it's all, what it's all led to is I just continuously doing this research and discovery to find these problems we're solving. And when I find one, if I figure out that I can provide a much better solution to the market, I'll typically build it.
[00:11:49] Jay: So let's talk about podcast chef a little bit. you know, we're on a podcast, podcast is great marketing. I think there's like a very. you know, it's like the stock market where it just there's times where it's high and it goes down, but it's kind of always going up. at least from, you know, back when it started, or at least got popular.
What was the problem you were solving with podcast chef and like, how are you kind of providing a service to people today?
[00:12:14] Sean: Great question. So this one goes back to, I wanted a different way to be able to find more people to help than just what was available at the time. A lot of people were still doing the same stuff they're doing now with different levels of success, like. Cold outreach, cold email, cold calling, whatever it is, or networking. And I think there's pros and cons to any of those strategies. I never found either of them to be to the level of performance that I was ideally hopeful for, especially as it pertains to efficiency. The cold outreach thing might be less time involved, but the results are typically not as good. The networking thing produces results, but it's very time consuming. So I wanted something to lived in the middle. I was looking for something more efficient than that. And it really, at the base of it was all networking. But some of the trick with networking was, you know, how am I know if I'm just going to a random event, Jay, I'm going to meet someone like you who like gets my world has overlap with my world and we can clearly help each other. I find people all the time because of my consulting work that I can refer to you and maybe vice versa. Right. So that's a high value relationship from a business perspective. But if I was just going to a random event. I don't know necessarily whether I'm going to meet Jay. I might meet someone who's in like education or healthcare or something else, which they may be great people.
It's just like, we may not be able to help each other business wise. So I came up with a proposition to test a couple of different ways to connect with people completely cold, but in a way that led with value instead of just leading with trying to sell them on something. Cause I never liked it when anybody approaches me that way either. And that's probably why the hit rate there is on the lower end. So instead I tried like a bunch of different ways to connect with folks. I'm like, Hey, can I write a blog for you? Or do you want to record a video together? Or do you want to be in a podcast together? And in typical fashion, like I recommend others do with the user research, I didn't lead with the solution.
I kind of. Started to figure out whether or not I could find a problem worth solving first and tried to measure it based on results before I had built it because I sent a bunch of messages inviting people to be a guest on my podcast before I even knew anything about podcasting or had recorded one. turned out that I got a lot of strong responses to that, which went out by a wide margin based on everything else that I was testing. And I'm like, wow, people really want to be a guest on the podcast. I'm going to go dive deep into this world, figure it out and get started. And, I don't know how good my episodes are these days.
They're probably better than when they started out. But when they started out, they were terrible. Although that stuff is all still online. So if you want to hear what I'm talking about, go check out some of my original content from my podcast, but same thing there too. I just gave it a shot, figured it out along the way.
And that's what I recommend others do too. So. basically, long story short, I packaged that up as a service, found out that like podcast is an excellent way to network with people and whomever you'd like to almost at any level and any geo, you can do it remotely like we're doing now, despite the fact that we're in this like similar geographical area. And it's been wonderful. It's just been like a great way to connect with people that I want to that I can provide awesome value. I can learn from that. My listeners can learn from that. I can grow a podcast about it's very kind of organic way to network and do so much more efficiently than I was before while all producing great content.
And I was at the time really struggling to figure out How do I do all these things at the same time and do my work like service my clients? So podcasting fit real well into that fold and there's only continued to provide more value in that way. So we developed podcast chef as a brand and a business of it in itself so that people essentially can buy that as a service.
They like to get involved in podcasting. They can hire our agency to essentially do everything for them from zero. And then they get all that value. It's just, they don't have to jump through all the hoops that I did to get here.
[00:15:50] Jay: Makes a lot of sense. it reminded me of, like, the. like the Dale Carnegie approach of. Okay. you know, having conversations and asking questions, right? It's like nobody. Nobody's going to think you're interesting if you're just talking about yourself the whole time, like you can have like the most one sided conversation where you're asking somebody else, everything about them and what they're doing and all that stuff.
And they're going to walk away saying, man, Sean is a great conversation is right. Like you didn't say anything. All you were doing is asking questions. And it's kind of like a, almost like the business analog of that, right? Where it's like, you get somebody that, that you can let them tell their story, build that relationship together.
And then, you know, if business is there, but it's, I like that kind of middle ground of networking and outreach kind of together where it's a great idea. I had,
Alex San Filippino on who is the CEO of Podmatch. Have you heard of Podmatch? It's a it's an awesome service, which I highly recommend everybody checks out.
which may be a good partnership for you, by the way.
but awesome service, and just kind of the same thing, but they built a SaaS platform out of it. And it's a dating app for. You know, people who want to be on podcasts and people who want to have guests in their podcast. And it's kind of like in that same vein, I think, where people are starting to understand.
Just the value of telling their story, but also have people on that may be a potential customer to tell their story as well. So, I love both of those. so, how are you, you know, how are you spending most of your time these days? You know, you've got a million different things going on. What is your kind of day to day look like as a serial founder?
[00:17:27] Sean: Great question. that's always evolving as well, too. I think I've done a better job with it now than I was, because I was just taking on too much way back when. But now, I've got like podcast chefs off and running. I built a team around that. So I'm largely out of the day to day, and I just do some of the strategic stuff to help my team. And then my focus most of the time is on SaaS, software as a service, usually B2B. And it's split between me doing the research and looking at other software products. I want to bring to market and me helping others do something similar. so I help. And then for the people that I help Early stage folks figure it out and grow, even, you know, if they're raising or they're early stages of growing a team and all that kind of stuff. And then I usually work with the founding teams there. And then I work with larger organizations with just like software product strategy. So if they have a SAS product, but they need to figure out how to grow it, get it back on track, get more value out of the development operations, whatever that is, I'll help them there too.
So basically splitting time there and then figuring out. Kind of what's next in terms of how do I take the lessons that I've learned and help people bring like new innovative products to market. So I'm experimenting with, ideas and concepts like finding a founder. Who's got great context. Like they're a subject matter expert and they've got great context for a problem that needs to be solved in a specific space, doing this with one entrepreneur now. And she's got great, context for a problem in the ed tech space. My concept here is to. Take the process that I've used to like launch over and over again, assess products that can go from zero to one rather effectively, and then hand all of that system essentially back to a potential founder to take it and run with it.
So I'm experimenting with that as a concept now as well to kind of like helping early stage folks get through that, like minefield that is getting a product off the ground, finding customers, figuring out sales and marketing, growing it so that you've got users and paying customers. For your early stage software product and like allowing them to take it from there.
So experimenting with that a little bit as well, too, on the side.
[00:19:34] Jay: So you get to do all the fun stuff now. that's the long game, right? Is, yeah,
[00:19:38] Sean: but here is
[00:19:40] Jay: Once you get once you delegate and you have an operations layer for your different businesses, kind of get the wrap back around and go, oh, this was the thing that I really enjoyed doing at the beginning, but I couldn't spend enough time doing it because I was putting out fires and Charlie and clients and doing all this different stuff.
So, good for you, man. That's an awesome. I love the journey. All right. 1 more question. non business related, nothing to do with any of your enterprises, nothing to do with anything else. Just personally, if you could do. Anything on earth, and he knew he couldn't fail. What would it be?
[00:20:10] Sean: That's a good one. New, I couldn't fail. The new, I couldn't fail part might require me to think about a little bit more because I might set my sights even higher. But 1 thing that I do want to do myself and I'm hoping to get there as well is to reinvest back in the communities where, you know, I essentially was raised myself as well to like in the city of Philadelphia, North Philly, other neighborhoods where there are a Tremendous opportunity to just help people. I get to do some of this through some of the consulting work I do through nonprofit organizations, which has been great, but I want to make a greater impact there as well also. So if I can continue on the trajectory that I'm on now, I'd like to spend a significant portion, if not most of my time helping these underserved communities with whatever it is they need revitalizing them. Providing programs for kids to learn these things, grow up and do some of these things themselves. Just there's so much area of opportunity for improvement and they're great communities. They're just underserved at the moment. So that is where I would encourage anyone who's lucky enough to be able to do this kind of stuff is to, like, if you've had some success. Think about and figure out how you can give back and like set your sights high, like, eradicate illiteracy or help kids figure out how to use technology or build careers and get educations and all these different cool, like big projects that, shouldn't be as big of a problem as they are, but they are.
Right. And like help these underserved communities, because you do that. You will see some remarkable transformations. I've seen some of that stuff happen. I want to play a more active role and starting right here in Philly.
[00:21:49] Jay: Beautiful. What a way to end it. Sean, if, people want to reach you, which obviously you're everywhere in Philly and you're all over LinkedIn and you've got a great presence, but if people want to contact you for any of your businesses, any of your services, what's the best way for them to reach you?
[00:22:03] Sean: Thank you, Jay. And thank you for having me on. It's been a great time. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find me just search Sean Boyce, S E A N B O Y C E, or you can email me directly. Sean S E A N at nxt step N X T S T E P dot IO.
[00:22:21] Jay: Love it. All right. Well, we talked a little bit beforehand. You are a. New dad. So get some rest,best of luck to you and your wife. and, you know, I hope you have a good rest of your, I guess it's another week or two of summer, but, I appreciate your time, brother. You're awesome, man.
Let's catch up again soon. All right.
[00:22:37] Sean: Likewise, Jay. And same. Thank you so much.
[00:22:39] Jay: Thanks, John.