Andrew is a serial entrepreneur who was the first in his family to start a business, or as he calls it, a 1st Generation Entrepreneur.

In 2006, he started an IT consulting business as a one-man show. Over time that business grew to $2M/year before he sold it in 2021.

During that time, he also founded a digital advertising startup, a commercial real estate company, and even a small car dealership.

Important Note: Not all of these were a runaway success.

Because Andrew grew up without any formal training/education on what it takes to properly grow a business, he always felt as though he had to learn everything the hard way, and that the road to success was filled with uncertainty and indecision.

Now that he has successfully run the gamut of starting, growing and selling a successful business, he is on a mission to help as many 1st Gen Entrepreneurs as he can. His primary goal is to help them beat the odds of failure, get over the “entrepreneurial hump” (as he likes to call it), and actually enjoy the freedoms that business ownership has to offer.

To that end, he’s founded an online support community built specifically for 1st Generation Entrepreneurs, where they can get all the help, support & guidance they need to grow their business successfully.

Topics/Key Moments

[00:08:35] Outsourcing IT department provides predictable revenue, hiring, and peace of mind for CEO.

[00:09:42] Hiring full-time IT person expensive; diverse skills needed.

[00:14:54] Entrepreneurs aim to prevent mistakes but acknowledge that some will still be made.

[00:17:54] Entrepreneurship offers freedom, such as the ability to make spontaneous decisions and enjoy simple pleasures like going for walks.

[00:22:01] Some doubt their fit, but for those with passion, challenges can be overcome.

[00:23:23] Having a supportive community can greatly benefit entrepreneurs in overcoming challenges and increasing their chances of success.

Find Andrew Online

https://1stGen.biz

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-drives

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Transcript (Provided by CastMagic.io)

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneurs Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, for the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs. How we learn from adversity. Every week I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of The Entrepreneurs and think about podcast. As always, twice a week. I’m your host, Seth. Today. I have a budy of mine who I met through Jay Klaus’s creative science lab. I think that’s what he’s calling it now. Or lab science. I don’t know what he calls. He changes it ever so often, but it’s Andrew McIntosh. He runs his own little side thing called FirstGen Biz. It’s for first generation business entrepreneurs who need some help and coaching and all that stuff, figuring out what the heck they’re doing, why they’re doing it, all that good stuff. Andrew is a serial entrepreneur who was the first in his family to start a business. And so he calls it, obviously by default, first generation entrepreneur. Kind of makes logical sense. He was an overnight success. It took him about twelve years or so. He started his It company in 2006. And of course, my math is wrong. You can do the math yourself. It’s longer than twelve years. But he sold it in 2021. So he made it into a success. Not an overnight success, folks. Let’s remember that. And then he also founded a digital marketing, advertising startup, commercial real estate company, even a small car dealership. And remember, not all these were successes, as he says. Some of them were like, all right, maybe we’ll change our mind here. So let’s bring Andrew in here. Hey, buddy, how’s it going? Andrew hails from Louisville. Louisville, Kentucky.

Andrew [00:01:57]:

Louisville. Louisville, yes. How’s it going, budy?

Seth [00:02:01]:

How are you doing? How’s the weather out?

Andrew [00:02:02]:

Beautiful, man. Yeah, the rest of the country is like, melting, but it’s actually pleasant outside. Wow, it’s hot here.

Seth [00:02:10]:

Is yours muggy or is yours dry heat?

Andrew [00:02:12]:

It is muggy.

Seth [00:02:13]:

Yeah, you kind of get the Appalachians. Do you have Appalachians out there?

Andrew [00:02:17]:

Yeah, well, we’re in a valley and it’s so gathers down in here, so it’s typically muggy, but right now we’ve had enough rain. It’s been oh, her grass won’t stop growing.

Seth [00:02:28]:

I’m in an HOA, and the landscape company can’t keep up with it. My dog walks out and sits down to go pee. Too much information here, but her bum is in the grass. It’s just so hot. It keeps raining like crazy here. Hey, we’ll take it. The grass loves. So, Andrew, you are a first generation entrepreneur and you love the first generation entrepreneurs. So much so that you started a community to help first generation entrepreneurs, which is really cool. But let’s go back a little bit. What made you become an entrepreneur in the first place?

Andrew [00:02:59]:

Well, that’s a great question. And yeah, I appreciate your intro. I think I might start using that, actually. I’m an overnight 15 year success. I love it.

Seth [00:03:09]:

I think it was 15 years. Yeah, I said twelve, but yeah, it’s 15 years.

Andrew [00:03:11]:

Yeah, give or take. What’s the between?

Seth [00:03:14]:

It’s not overnight, though, folks. There you go.

Andrew [00:03:16]:

Yeah. I love that quote from Jeff Bezos that every overnight success takes ten years.

Seth [00:03:22]:

Oh, my God. Easily. He wasn’t overnight success.

Andrew [00:03:24]:

Right.

Seth [00:03:25]:

He kept on chugging along and doing his thing. Now he’s a gazillionaire.

Andrew [00:03:30]:

Right. By the time you’re actually on a bunch of people’s radar, there’s been a lot of effort put in to get to that point.

Seth [00:03:36]:

You’re able to sell your company saying that you had $2 million in revenue mean that when they buy your company, they’re getting something. They’re not just getting a logo kind of thing.

Andrew [00:03:46]:

Yeah, not just getting a logo, not just buying somebody else’s job. It was definitely a working, functioning machine that generated cash that they wanted to buy. Yeah.

Seth [00:03:57]:

And off front, I hear it was right at the right time. It was kind of like you were kind of, like, over it.

Andrew [00:04:02]:

Yeah, I was wrong.

Seth [00:04:03]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:04:04]:

I’d been doing it. My first quote, unquote, real job was at a computer store when I was 14 years old.

Seth [00:04:10]:

We all did that. Yeah.

Andrew [00:04:12]:

And it’s all I’ve ever done, is It stuff. So if I never have to fix someone’s computer again in my life, I will be totally cool with it.

Seth [00:04:21]:

You’re stuck, though, because friends, family orders, like Andrew. Well, I did something. Help me.

Andrew [00:04:26]:

I always joke that when I’m in the room, my wife just suddenly forgets how to use anything that plugs into a wall. It’s like, comical happens with my mom.

Seth [00:04:36]:

My mom just has to try things, and she’ll figure it out. And so she calls me and says, how do I hit print? I’m like, mom, you’re a boomer. You’re a boomer. Not a boomer in a derogatory sense. You came up. Yeah, I remember. Before the Internet. I’m 42, so I remember I’m at the cusp of the Internet. I remember not having remember dial up and all that stuff. But she wasn’t that old when this computer stuff came into fruition either. It’s smarter than she lets herself onto. Mean, hell, she has a PhD in psychology. She can figure out how to print.

Andrew [00:05:11]:

She’s no dummy. Yeah, that’s what I tell my wife, is like, okay, let’s just pretend that I wasn’t in the room for a moment. Now, what would you do? And then suddenly she figures it out. So it’s just a running joke.

Seth [00:05:23]:

It’s a crotch. Andrew’s here. I’ll have him fix it for me. We’re going to take a quick break, hear from our sponsors, and get right back to the show, right?

Andrew [00:05:31]:

Exactly. But, yeah, I’ve been an It guy for a very long time. Turned entrepreneur in 2006 when I quit my day job. Also, in it.

Seth [00:05:42]:

It wasn’t random that you started It company. It wasn’t like, I have no idea what it is. I’m going to start it. So you weren’t going completely blind.

Andrew [00:05:50]:

Correct. Granted, I’m a little biased, but I think I was a pretty good It guy, or at least I thought I was at the time.

Seth [00:05:58]:

You have the personality for you. You’re a nice guy, so you have that going for you.

Andrew [00:06:01]:

You know what’s funny is back in 2006, that was like an honest differentiator it was like, I’m an It guy who knows how to look people in the eye and smile.

Seth [00:06:11]:

Yeah. It’s still that way. There’s the gearheads that are kind of behind the scenes. They don’t want to be on the front.

Andrew [00:06:18]:

Right. I think that’s changing. That’s evolving. It’s not quite the stereotype anymore that it used to be, but that was a real thing for a long time now. I know a lot of It guys that are people. People. Right. For hire. $75 an hour. You run a small business. I will say it was exclusively businesses. I wasn’t doing any kind of residential stuff.

Seth [00:06:45]:

That’s a whole nother ballgame.

Andrew [00:06:47]:

Yeah. Whole different thing. I leave that to the geek squad.

Seth [00:06:51]:

Yeah, that’s better off to them. Exactly.

Andrew [00:06:53]:

Yeah. But $75 an hour and you just call me when you need me and I’ll work on your computers for you. But then it quickly evolved into, hey, if I’m billing you by the hour to fix your problems, then the more problems you have, the better off I am. And so we’re not really on the same team here.

Seth [00:07:13]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:07:14]:

And so I went to a flat rate model where you’re basically paying a monthly retainer.

Seth [00:07:20]:

You’re guaranteed some money in the pocket and they get you.

Andrew [00:07:24]:

Exactly. Yeah.

Seth [00:07:26]:

That’s what I do with my business. Yeah, absolutely. I could do hourly, but I have to only keep track of my damn hours. It’s dreadful.

Andrew [00:07:34]:

Yeah. It’s littered with problems when you do hourly stuff. Because there’s a couple of things. Number one is, like I said, I’m incentivized to bill you more hours. Right. And so I’m going to slow down in my work. That’s not great.

Seth [00:07:50]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:07:51]:

And then it calls into question your ethics and the trust. Like, I remember back when I was still billing hourly, I had a guy on like two or three occasions, he’d get a bill from me and he’d call me up and be like, so did you really spend 3 hours on this? And it was just like, bro, it.

Seth [00:08:09]:

Is what it is.

Andrew [00:08:10]:

You’re basically calling me a liar is what it works. I really took it personally. We wound up yelling at each other. It didn’t go nicely and I harbor resentment. But I got away from that model, went to a flat rate. You pay me a monthly retainer, but it scales. I priced mine based on the number of employees that you have.

Seth [00:08:33]:

More employees, more computers, more problems.

Andrew [00:08:35]:

Right. And then that creates some predictability for me too. Right? I’m assured that, yes, your scope and the workload is going to increase with time, but so does my revenue. And that makes predictability for me to be able to hire people. So people liked that model. It was basically an outsourced it. Department. So it’s just one thing that as the CEO or the owner of this business, you can just kind of check that off and just say, yeah, it’s done. Headache.

Seth [00:09:04]:

Andrew’s got it.

Andrew [00:09:06]:

Good.

Seth [00:09:06]:

I don’t have to hire someone in house. Another W? Two for something that I might need an Andrew for part time or not even part time. I might hire. Joe comes in, needs a new computer. I can say, hey, Andrew set up in one of those computers for know. And then you’re like, all right, give me a day. And you get set up brilliant.

Andrew [00:09:25]:

And it’s a little harder than that, too, because you’re absolutely right. The way that you described it, but the other part of it is it think of it like marketing.

Seth [00:09:34]:

Marketing.

Andrew [00:09:35]:

That’s a big word.

Seth [00:09:36]:

Yeah, it’s a big word.

Andrew [00:09:37]:

And there’s a lot of disciplines within the marketing umbrella.

Seth [00:09:41]:

Yeah, it is a lot too.

Andrew [00:09:42]:

Yeah, it is the same way. And so it’s more expensive to hire an It person full time. You don’t know what? You don’t know. So how are you going to go hire someone and know if they’re even qualified to do the job? And then there’s different disciplines that are required. Like one guy isn’t going to cut it because he doesn’t know all the things that you need to know to be able to have a functioning it. Department, Essentially.

Seth [00:10:09]:

Did you hire more people so that you could cover? Like you were at the Computer Builder? Then there was an it. Security Guy. There was a windows guy, a Mac guy. Eventually, yeah.

Andrew [00:10:20]:

So how it started was like any business. If you do good work and you charge a fair rate, your name starts to spread and referrals come in. And that’s great.

Seth [00:10:29]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:10:30]:

But in the It world, different from a lot of industries. You’re really kind of on call 24/7, especially back then. This was before the cloud was like a thing, right?

Seth [00:10:41]:

You could just text Google and say Google. Why is it down?

Andrew [00:10:44]:

Yeah, well, and people were still dependent on servers that were just humming away in a closet somewhere. And if that server went offline, their whole business shut down. Right?

Seth [00:10:55]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:10:55]:

Some businesses still operate that way, but it’s not advisable.

Seth [00:10:59]:

It’s not advisable anymore.

Andrew [00:11:00]:

Well. And it’s only the bigger businesses that are still doing that, because it’s ultimately still more cost effective for them at a certain scale than outsourcing everything. But most of your small businesses, though, that are under 10, 15, 20 employees, that’s a no.

Seth [00:11:16]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:11:16]:

Just get Google Cloud.

Seth [00:11:17]:

Honestly. Yeah.

Andrew [00:11:18]:

Nobody would do that.

Seth [00:11:18]:

Get Google cloud get google workspace.

Andrew [00:11:20]:

Yes.

Seth [00:11:21]:

It just seems to work.

Andrew [00:11:22]:

Yeah. But back in those days, they were dependent on these pieces of equipment there in their closet, and so if one of them went down, the whole business is shut down. And I’m on call, essentially. Twenty four seven.

Seth [00:11:36]:

Oh, God.

Andrew [00:11:38]:

So it got to the point where I had a lot of business coming in. I was actually making more money really, in my first year than I was Bravo at my day job, which sounds cool, but more that comes, more responsibility. And I couldn’t take time off. Like, I couldn’t take a vacation.

Seth [00:11:57]:

The entrepreneur’s dilemma.

Andrew [00:11:59]:

Yep, exactly. And then the straw on the camel’s back. For me, it was one day, I was actually home sick. I had, like, a stomach bug. I had no business going anywhere.

Seth [00:12:07]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:12:08]:

And a customer had a server crash, and their whole company was down, and they were blowing my phone up.

Seth [00:12:13]:

Like, of course you were also stomach bugged.

Andrew [00:12:17]:

Yeah. So I just had to take a bunch of ammonia or whatever.

Seth [00:12:22]:

Stop yourself up.

Andrew [00:12:24]:

Yeah, dude.

Seth [00:12:25]:

Oh, that sounds brutal, my friend.

Andrew [00:12:27]:

Yeah. That was the point where I said, okay, this isn’t working. I either need to go back to a day job, or I need to double down on this thing and hire somebody.

Seth [00:12:39]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:12:40]:

And I chose to hire somebody, which then came with a bunch of really tough learning experiences because HR, HR payroll.

Seth [00:12:49]:

I hear the first employee is the.

Andrew [00:12:52]:

Hardest for payroll 100%.

Seth [00:12:55]:

Even though you’re technically the first employee. I hear that first actual w two.

Andrew [00:12:59]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:12:59]:

Then you have two people on your team, you go.

Andrew [00:13:03]:

So I learned a bunch of things the hard way at that.

Seth [00:13:05]:

Of course you have.

Andrew [00:13:07]:

For one, I had no idea what I was doing and what it meant to be a good boss or a good leader. Yeah, I didn’t know. I assumed I went into this thinking, hey, if I hire this person, I’ve just overnight bolted on 40 hours a week worth of capacity.

Seth [00:13:27]:

We’ve all done it. Anyone who likes us, because we both are first generation entrepreneurs, not knowing our head from our asses. And, oh, yeah, they have a ramp up period. Let’s just remember that.

Andrew [00:13:38]:

There’s a long ramp up period, and it’ll probably vary depending on the job, depending on the industry. But for me, I think in the It world, it was on average, I would say, six months before somebody was fully kind of useful, if you will. Unless they happened to come from a competitor and they just could jump right in. Right?

Seth [00:13:59]:

Yeah. And even then, they still could learn how you do things then.

Andrew [00:14:04]:

Anyhow, so then what I found was it was like, okay, hold on a second. A month ago, I was making more money than I was at my day job. Now I’ve hired someone, and I’m making less money because I’m paying them. And I’m having to train them. And I have. Actually, I feel like less time on my hands than I did a minute ago.

Seth [00:14:28]:

Well, yeah, especially in the beginning, because you got the ramp up period. Yeah. Right.

Andrew [00:14:31]:

And it was like, this is not what I signed up for. And then that created some pressure on me. And then this individual is actually a friend of mine, and so they’re personal. Yeah, that was a mistake.

Seth [00:14:45]:

That’s another mistake.

Andrew [00:14:46]:

Another Mistake. Because it’s just too intertwined. So it’s just like all these rookie mistakes.

Seth [00:14:54]:

And so then you’re making this. That’s the whole reason why you’re making this. FirstGen biz entrepreneurs to help people try to not make or soften the blow of making the same mistake. Everyone says, oh, I’m trying to make it so you don’t make the same mistake. No. You’re going to make some of the same mistakes. Even if Andrew or I or somebody tells you don’t do that, you’re still going to do half of them.

Andrew [00:15:13]:

Right.

Seth [00:15:13]:

But you might be able to recover faster.

Andrew [00:15:16]:

Exactly. And that’s you’re spot on. Because since I was the first person in my family to start a business, I really didn’t have anybody to turn to for advice. In later years, I made the mistake of turning to my own employees when I wanted to bounce ideas off of them or whatever that actually creates.

Seth [00:15:33]:

Sometimes it’s good.

Andrew [00:15:34]:

Sometimes. But you can also overshare. And that’s what I did. And I wound up stressing them out because they’re like, wait, hold on a second. That’s just not a good look. Right. So I needed people that I could turn to. I didn’t have them. And that’s what this community is all about. But you’re spot on that it’s. Not that I’m going to help you avoid making mistakes.

Seth [00:15:58]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:15:59]:

It’s still going to be painful. It’s still going to be long. But you know what? If I can make it even just 10% less painful and 10% faster, that’s a huge win.

Seth [00:16:08]:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Andrew [00:16:11]:

So, yeah, that’s kind of what I’m out to do. And then back to my journey. I essentially just kind of kept repeating that process. Yeah, it was the school of hard knocks. It was just making a bunch of mistakes, getting a black eye, then trying to fix that and heal from it and then just be hard headed enough to just keep going. Yeah, but then that was the process is you just keep getting new business comes in, some from referrals, some from some outbound efforts that we were putting into place. And then you get to where you have a little too much work. Another person. Now. I’ve got a little too much staff and our margins are thin. I need more work. So let me get more customers. And then you just kind of keep doing that. Fast forward 15 years. We were at $2 million a year in revenue. I had 13 employees. Wow.

Seth [00:17:06]:

Lucky Number. 13. Hey.

Andrew [00:17:07]:

Yeah. And I was making the most amount of money I had ever made, and I was working the least amount of money.

Seth [00:17:17]:

You finally got to that point, and.

Andrew [00:17:21]:

That’S kind of the promised land, right? That’s where people are trying to get to, and I’ve been out there trying to beat that drum and let people know that’s a real place. It’s not a mirage. Like you can get there, but getting there requires an extraordinary amount of effort.

Seth [00:17:41]:

It absolutely does. In your mind, this is a two part question. What’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur in your mind? Because there is a lot of hard knocks, but there’s some good stuff, too.

Andrew [00:17:54]:

Yeah. So I think that it’s hard to articulate exactly, because no two people are going to define this the same way. But the freedom that you get as an entrepreneur, once you get over what I call the entrepreneurial Hump yes. Then once you taste the freedom of that, that like, hey, if I want to pick up and go to Disney World with my family and you know what? I decided today that I’m going to do it next week. It’s like, you can do that, and you don’t need permission from anybody. You don’t need to think twice about it. You can just do it. And then in that moment, it’s just like, wow, that’s pretty awesome. I wouldn’t be able to do that at a day job. Now. It doesn’t always have to be something big like that for me. I enjoy going on walks. There’s a park nearby and in the middle, in fact, after we’re done with this recording, guess what? I’m headed to the park to go do a walk.

Seth [00:18:51]:

Good boy. There you go. That’s a good thing. Air your brain out a little bit. That’s a good thing.

Andrew [00:18:55]:

And just having that freedom of choosing who you want to work with, what you want to do, how you want to do it, when you want to do it, when you want to take time off. And see, I haven’t even gotten into the financial aspect, which can also be pretty freeing. So all of that, once you get to that level of maturity in your business where it’s affording you that type of freedom, I think, is, like, by far the best aspect of entrepreneurship for me personally.

Seth [00:19:27]:

So on the flip side, what’s the scariest thing?

Andrew [00:19:30]:

Scariest thing is being on the wrong side of that Hump.

Seth [00:19:33]:

Yeah. Amen to that one.

Andrew [00:19:35]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:19:36]:

Or falling back into the Hump after you’ve seen the promised land.

Andrew [00:19:40]:

Well, so that’s interesting that you say that, because that’s where I’m at today. I sold that business, and it was 15 years old. It was established it was affording me that lifestyle and those freedoms, and that was good, and I sold it, and I did well on it, but not so well that I never need to work again a day in my life, I still need to do something, right?

Seth [00:20:02]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:20:03]:

And so I’ve decided to start up this community for first gens. Well, guess what? I’m bootstrapping it all over again. I’ve created something out of thin air, which is really cool and satisfying, but the revenue is not enough to live off of right now. And it’s slowly creeping its way up there and I’m just out there kind of grinding every day. I’m on social. I’m starting conversations with people. I’m educating them on what this is, to raise awareness while actually doing the thing inside the community and helping people bring people in.

Seth [00:20:38]:

Then you actually have to do the work.

Andrew [00:20:39]:

You need to do the work.

Seth [00:20:40]:

Right.

Andrew [00:20:40]:

It’s offense, defense. So it’s kind of ironic that here I am, a successful entrepreneur and I’m feeling the heat right now.

Seth [00:20:50]:

It’s also kind of addictive to rebuild, build something is.

Andrew [00:20:53]:

Yeah, it is. And I think it’s kind of know anything that you do a second time, it’s going to go quicker than the first time you did it. I remember one time my wife and I, we bought a playset for our daughter and the instructions is clearly made in China and the instructions were super unclear and it took us like all weekend to assemble this thing. But once I got to the end of it, I was like, man, if I had to assemble this again right.

Seth [00:21:23]:

Now yeah, you could do it.

Andrew [00:21:24]:

I could do it in like 4 hours instead of an entire Ikea kind of stuff. Yeah. So I’m banking on that, hoping. There you go. It’s true. On this second go around here. That’s good. Yeah. But it’s a real thing, man. Being on that side of the hump is a lot of work and I think that not everybody has the chops.

Seth [00:21:47]:

To do it, but it’s not nothing wrong with trying it. But then also be willing to say this isn’t for me. Maybe you go back and do a side hustle while you’re working for the man or the woman or the person, that kind of thing. Nothing wrong with a side hustle.

Andrew [00:22:01]:

Yeah. I had a conversation with someone recently who said, I’m not sure I’m cut out for this. It’s not really giving them the fulfillment that they thought it was going to. Now I tried to help them see that this takes time. You got to stick with it for a while to know for sure, but not everybody is going to enjoy it. But for those who kind of this is an itch that needs scratched. For them, there’s something there that really kind of fuels them and makes them want to push forward. It’s like, okay, well, you’ve got it. Whatever it is, you’ve got that kind of fire in your belly that’s going to help you to overcome the inevitable challenges that happen.

Seth [00:22:47]:

It’s inevitable, absolutely.

Andrew [00:22:49]:

Yeah. But then you’re going to get to a point where once you hit that inflection point and you reach the apex of that hump, everything starts getting easier, and you start making more money and you’re working less, and you get all these lifestyle benefits that start to come with it. And you get fulfillment that comes from providing a quality product or service to your customers. It’s just like you see it having an impact on your employees and the personal lives that they get to experience, and it’s like, this is really cool.

Seth [00:23:19]:

Yeah. This is what you want to be. So what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Andrew [00:23:23]:

You might take this with a grain of salt, because I’m literally out there selling a community membership that supports other entrepreneurs, so this might come off a little sales pitchy, but I do mean it, like, legitimately. Anytime I was faced with a challenge in my business and I tried to address it alone, that was ten times harder than when I just would reach out to some people who’ve been there who can either tell you what to do or ask you the right questions, to help you come to that conclusion on your own, or even just help you understand that this is normal, that you’ll be okay and that you’ll get through this and just keep chugging along because what’s the statistic like? 50% of all businesses fail in the first five years. How many of that 50% that fail would have survived if they were just rubbing shoulders with the right people who could help them get through the tough times? Yeah. And if you can hang on to that and get through the tough times and overcome them, there’s a lot of kind of reward at the end of the tunnel there. If you can stick with it, there is.

Seth [00:24:36]:

I love that. So where can people find you online? Where’s your main ordering hall? Like you said, socials. Where do you hang out the most?

Andrew [00:24:43]:

I hang out the most right now on LinkedIn.

Seth [00:24:47]:

I love LinkedIn. Of the closed platforms. I love LinkedIn.

Andrew [00:24:50]:

Yeah. I think it’s just where my people are mostly. However, I’ve recently started getting on Twitter as well.

Seth [00:24:59]:

You’re one of the brave ones jumping back into the dumpster fire.

Andrew [00:25:03]:

Yes. It’s 2023 July, and I’m actually going into Twitter, which feels pretty absurd. However, I’ve talked to a few people who are big advocates for it, though, and they make a pretty compelling case, because at the end of the day, it’s really about where your ideal audience is. Nothing else really matters. Say what you will about the guy running Twitter or about any other platform, what you like or dislike, but if that’s where your audience is, you got to be there.

Seth [00:25:34]:

You got to be there.

Andrew [00:25:35]:

Right. No point fishing in a pond that doesn’t have any fish in it.

Seth [00:25:39]:

Exactly.

Andrew [00:25:40]:

In terms of social, those are the two places that I tend to hang out. Yeah. The community itself is a private gated website. It is a paid subscription for people to join. But the general kind of strategy here is, like, I’m building a bridge that helps get you to the point where you can afford a one on one business coach. I think those are awesome. I love them. I had a great experience with mine. I think everybody needs one. You can’t always afford one, at least.

Seth [00:26:11]:

Not in the they’re expensive. Yeah.

Andrew [00:26:13]:

So this is like a substitute for that. That’s like group coaching that’ll help you get to the point where you can do that. So the main website, FirstGen Biz, if you want to check it out.

Seth [00:26:24]:

And first is first.

Andrew [00:26:27]:

Yes. Now that you say that, I’m pretty sure I bought it all spelled out as well.

Seth [00:26:33]:

I need to go reader at that.

Andrew [00:26:35]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:26:35]:

Yeah.

Andrew [00:26:36]:

I got to make sure that’s working. But, yes, the number one we’ll have.

Seth [00:26:40]:

In the show notes, so people can just click.

Andrew [00:26:41]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:26:42]:

Well, Andrew, this has been so much fun. I’m glad we’ve got you on. And guess what? We’ll see everyone next time.

Andrew [00:26:49]:

Hey, thanks for having me, Seth.

Seth [00:26:50]:

That was a great show. If you’re enjoying entrepreneurs Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the Marketing Podcast castnetwork at Marketingpodcast Network. Goldstein Gear hopes you have enjoyed this episode. This podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Marketing Podcast Network.