In this week's episode of the Missing Half podcast, Bill talks with Scott Moffat, co-founder of Ideal Strategic Partners. Scott shares his expertise on helping inventors and entrepreneurs take their ideas from concept to commercialization through a disciplined, data-driven approach. He breaks down the biggest mistakes startups make—like failing to do proper market research—and offers insights on product-market fit, marketing execution, and scaling smartly. If you're launching a new product or refining your existing business model, this episode is full of valuable takeaways.
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Scott: I always tell people because they've spent a lot of time before they even come to us. I mean, they've obsessed over their idea. They've thought about it over and over and they're on version six in their head, but they don't even have version one on a piece of paper. And I say, listen, it's great that you see the forest. It's great that there's a forest here. But if you don't focus on the tree, you're never going to get to the forest. So the tree is really what we talk about is like the flagship product, the initial offering. If you don't put all your energy into that, stop thinking about version four or five. You know you can get there. But if you don't put all your energy into version one, version one may never get you to version five.
Intro
Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. I have a very special guest with me today, Scott Moffat. Scott is one of the founders of Ideal Strategic Partners as well as a number of other ventures. Scott, thank you for joining us today.
Scott: Thanks for having me.
Bill: So Scott, can you tell us a little bit about your journey and what you're doing with Ideal Strategic Partners to help inventors and entrepreneurs grow their businesses?
Scott: Sure. Ideal Strategic Partners is the company that I spend the majority of my time on. And our focus and our mission is to help make entrepreneurs' dreams come true. And that's a very broad statement, so narrowing it in a little bit more. What we do is we help inventors and entrepreneurs from really the idea concept phase. We have a proprietary four-step process that we take them through called IdeaPath that ultimately gets them to revenue generation commercialization of their products. Heavy emphasis on consumer products, but it's really data driven approach, disciplined approach. So it takes a lot of the emotion, the guesswork, the hypotheses out of it. It allows us to focus really on what the market wants, which is really the foundation or the secret sauce to the process. But we take an equity position. We invest in the portfolio partners that we select. So we get a ton of inquiries and we're very selective in terms of who we partner with because it's in, you know, our best interests as well as our partner's best interests to focus our time and resources where we can really move the ball the most. So we take them through that process and while we do all the heavy lifting to get them to market, we mentor and coach them and prepare them to be ready to run that business once it's built and ready to be scaled. So in a nutshell, that's what Ideal Strategic Partners has done. It's really important to me being able to help people even when they're not the right fit for us, pointing them in the right direction. The more successful entrepreneurs that we have in this country and this world, think the better off we're going to be.
Bill: No, Scott, I love that. And, you know, this is how we met. So you're also involved with entrepreneurship at Cedarville University. And my son is currently attending there. You participate in The Pitch and mentoring some of the teams at their Cedarville University Entrepreneurship organization. And I can just see how you're living that mission, not only through your business, but then through some of your, I guess, more extracurricular activities or just actions there. So that's kind of where we met and broke some bread together and were able to kind of find some mutual interests. Well, Scott, when you look at working with these entrepreneurs and their journeys and making their dreams come true, certainly taking products to market and the marketing function has to be an important part of that process because a lot of good ideas and good inventions occur. But then they never make it because they fail to get market traction. They fail to execute that marketing and sales function to execute revenue, cash flow and R&D growth, the whole nine yards. Could you talk about some of the challenges you see these entrepreneurs facing when it comes to marketing?
Scott: Sure, I mean, there's a myriad, I don't know how much time we have, but I can tell you some of the biggest ones as it pertains to marketing. When people come to us and they built a product or they prototype something or they have a few thousand units of something and they're having trouble selling it and they come and they say, we need help with marketing, that's like nails on a chalkboard to me. Because by the time someone goes to launch a product, or market, they should have a keen, very deep understanding of exactly who their target audience is, what their target market is going to be most receptive to, or what's important to them, and where they make those type of purchasing or engagement decisions. And because if you have those, we call them the three key data points, when you have those three data points, then really marketing is really just executing on what you already know and doing so consistently. When people are building what they think is right and doing everything on what they believe, and then all of a sudden they go to market and they're not being successful. It's usually because they don't really understand what the market is looking for, what's important to them. And so they're coming with what they think the market is wanting. And the market, if one of those elements is off, it kills deals. I mean, product market fit is made up, especially in the product space, right? You have to have the right consumer at the right time with the right product and the right messaging and the right price point in the right location. And all of those things have to come together for an engagement or purchasing decision to happen. If one of them is off, I mean, it could literally make or break a company. And so, you know, when it comes to the marketing function, it's executing on what's important. So you have to know what's important to execute on what's important to be able to give them what they're looking for. And you have to meet them where they're at and with the right messaging. So I think it's just lack of proper planning on the front end that leads to some of the larger challenges with marketing and marketing efforts on the back end.
Bill: So I love that answer and we see that as well. So we deal with a lot of manufacturers that are engineering heavy, science heavy, and there's usually the core product. But then there's something else that's in R&D. And usually we run into owners or very, very talented and intelligent engineers in the R&D space who get excited about something they're inventing or innovating. And then one of the gaps I see, and I think you hit on it, they don't do enough voice of customer research. They get so excited about what they're inventing and optimizing that they stop thinking about, what is the market, the total addressable market for this product? Like, is there a market for it? I remember an interview they did with Elon Musk and someone asked him about a submarine car. And he pauses and he thinks and he says, well, the market for that will be relatively small, enthusiastic, but small, right? So it's that situation where he was already thinking like, can this mass market? And I think that voice of customer research, getting and understanding the problems and solutions you're providing, because you're exactly right. You need four five of those things to work together for success. And whether that's D to C or in the commercial market, you need it. So I think that makes a ton of sense. Why do you think the young entrepreneurs and seasoned entrepreneurs and inventors get, is it just their fascination with their invention or why do they get away from focusing on the market?
Scott: Well, great question. And just to piggyback what you said before about Musk, Jeff Bezos is another great example. And in almost all the interviews that I've seen him talk about his company culture and meetings, in every one of his board meetings that he has as an executive team, they leave one seat open in that room. And they leave that seat open representative of the customer to remind everybody else at that table who they're doing everything they're doing for. I think, frankly, I… I think that sometimes people just get emotionally involved so much and they love what they're doing so much and they believe in what they're doing so much that they feel like what they see and what they believe, everyone else already sees and already believes. They have the perfect solution for it. So what we like to try to do when people come to us, they don't come to us with like, hey, I found a problem but I have no idea what the solution is. That wouldn't be a fit for us, right? They usually come to us with, here's the problem and here's what we believe the perfect solution is. And it's great that they brainstormed and they have some direction of what they think that could be, but it really needs to be just that. It's just some ideas and direction because if you really take the problem and you separate it, you take all the emotion out it, you put it on the table and say, okay, this is the problem. And then let's let the market determine the solution. So the way that we do that is we run surveys, we do focus groups, do competitive landscape research to really figure out, know, for when it's products, like, you know, what size, what user experience, what features, what functionality, what color, customization, price point, what are people willing to pay? Where do they make these purchasing decisions? Is it e-commerce? Is it, you know, direct to the website? Is it, you know, trade shows, whatever it is. And so then, you know, you're taking the problem and you're saying, okay, I believe this is the right solution. And sometimes people are pretty close, sometimes they're miles apart. But at the end of the day, it's really rare that people have nailed it to every degree. When I say rare, I've actually never seen to where we haven't needed to pivot something where they're really in perfect sync with what that product market fit is. So it's being able to be humble enough, I think that's the posture, being able to be humble enough to say, I don't know what I don't know. And be able to get from the end user because unless you're the only one that's going to be making the purchasing or engagement decisions, it's really as far as our model, which is a lot of D to C, it's the people who are going to take out one of these and they're going to buy from it. That's what matters. It's not what you think or what you hope unless you just want to have a very expensive hobby and you want to pay a lot for time and mistakes, then being data driven is what works for us.
Bill: No, I love that. My dad used to say, if you think you're the target market, you better be only willing to sell one and be successful selling one, right? Because like if it's in your head. Well, maybe what we should do is set some expectations because I think one of the things I've learned and maybe this is newer thinking or maybe I just wasn't exposed to it in my youth is learning to fail is OK and necessary, right? We need to be able to learn to fail and especially for entrepreneurs and you know, if we're innovating and inventing, we have to be willing to fail. If if someone comes to you or if we want to give general advice based on the history of all the people you've worked with, how much, how much discomfort should a new inventor or entrepreneur be willing to accept or expect? Like, hey, if you retain if this becomes successful and becomes commercialized and you retain 50% of the original idea, that's amazing. Or 30%. Or you might have to be willing to accept 10%. Like what type of perspective could you give someone who's thinking about that?
Scott: Great question. Reframing failure is something I talk about all the time. You know, you follow the books and you know, you've seen a lot of speakers talk about reframing it. But I mean, I live it daily and I encourage our partners to live it, meaning that like literally my son, he's four, he's going to be, as he gets a little bit older, I'm going to probably start next year. Five is a good starting point. I'm gonna ask him every day, as one of my mentors told me this is they did with their children, ask him every day, what did you fail at today? And I want him to give me an answer every single day. I want him to reframe failure at a young age because failure is something that so many people are scared of and fear blocks blessings all the time. So when people are scared to take that step, you know, confidence is a demonstration of knowledge and that knowledge doesn't always have to be present, but it has to be desired. And so, you know, when you are seeking that and you know that you're on the right track or going down the right path, you're going to be more confident about it. So frankly, you know, when I talk to entrepreneurs, I tell them you have to be a little crazy to go on this journey. You have to look at, you have to, if you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough. You need to be pushing every limit, getting pushback. Otherwise, you know, you're not you're not trying hard enough. You could be coasting and you could be successful. But if you're not bumping up against walls constantly and barriers constantly. I mean, I start to question if I'm really doing what I'm supposed to be doing, if things are going too smoothly. So it's controlled chaos, but then also how you know, you… the way that you approach it. So, you when you talk about failure too, it's an opportunity to really learn and pivot. So that reframing there and then you talk about what they think. I wrote that down when it comes to failure. You know, I think that a lot of times people are just, they're scared that taking that step is going to cost them everything. I actually have never heard of an instance where someone, you know, in their last days, says, I wish I didn't take so many chances. It's more I wish I took those chances because through those failures, through those journeys you learn, and those lessons are preparing us for our ultimate calling and our ultimate purpose. It's really reframed. That's what I wrote as a note as a reminder to say was a lot of times people go into this journey and they think that 80% is going to go the way that they thought it would go and 20% would go the opposite, right? And that would be the pivot adjusting. It's more like 10 or 20% goes the way you think it's gonna be the inverse of that and everything else pivoting and adjusting. But that's fun for me. Maybe that's just because I've retrained my mind, but being constantly pivoting and adjusting, I feel like I'd get bored if it wasn't that way, Bill.
Bill: Well, I think when you look at the great successes of history and you say, oh, over the 40 or 50 year career they had, it turned out amazing. The challenges that everybody faces are real. And the broad brushes that we look at over those courses, it doesn't show the sleepless nights, it doesn't show the struggle. And those are real and it's part of the journey. And that's what makes it interesting, right? Because if not, we would all be very, very bored. So whenever you're, another question I want to ask you about, when you're giving advice and guidance to these clients of yours, what do you think, where do you see the tipping point of where they really need to start outsourcing or delegating or bringing on other partners and people to help them move through their journey?
Scott: Pretty quickly to the extent that they have the availability because I, know, a lot of people talk about being well-rounded and being good at a lot of different things. I am not of that school of thought at all. I believe that God created us all individually and differently. If someone was created with the exact same skills and talents, then there wouldn't be the need for two of them. And so my point is, is everybody's created individually. So I'm not of that school of thought whatsoever. I think, repeat the question one more time, Bill?
Bill: No, so like whenever we're looking at the journey of an entrepreneur, so they come to Ideal Strategic Partners, you're moving through the process, you take your equity stake, you're helping them get going. And let's say we start to scale that company and they're…
Scott: Okay, when do they start to outsource and hire? So that's where I was going with it, with the well-rounded. I think that people need to focus on what their actual innate gifts are and really continuing to improve those and be a lead. And so when people, you don't have to know everything about everything. You just have to know someone who knows everything about something and fill in each of those individual gaps. And early on when a business is first starting to scale, hiring full time is usually not a good idea unless you have somebody who really can wear 10 different hats and wear them all really well. It's kind of a dream situation when you're first starting to scale, but it's hard to find that person. So a lot of times when a company is beginning to scale or beginning to grow, looking at vendors, outsourcing, third party, there's a marketing group that we work with that does a lot of our internal marketing. It's a four person, it's smaller organization, but they're partners of ours. They’re an extension of our company. You know, I can text them at 11, 12 o'clock at night with any question and I'll get a response within a reasonable degree of time. The first thing the next morning and latest, which I try not to do, by the way, but if there's something that's urgent, I will have to. But the point is, is that you do have to it's a, it's a difficult question because there's no one size fits all answer, but the sooner that you can start to delegate to experts in a space financially, feasibly, the better. But it's also the flip side of that is that I do believe that our partners need to have at least a cursory understanding of what's going on in that area. They don't need to be experts because at the end of the day, you have to hold those people or those groups accountable. So if you don't know anything whatsoever about a topic, you can bring in an expert, but the expert could completely drop the ball and you wouldn't know the difference, right? So they have to have, and that's why it's good early stage for them to wear a few of those hats. But as soon as you can start to delegate those and work on the business instead of in the business, that's when you can really start to focus on number one, what really matters to you, and number two, the vision of the company and continuing to grow and stay, not looking over six foot six linemen, but actually being in the office, coordinators booth being able to call plays from up top, you know.
Bill: I love that. I love that. One of the other things I wanted to ask you about, and we talked about this when we originally teed this up, was you've had a number of successful businesses prior to Ideal Strategic Partners. You've been involved in the marketplace, and you have engaged with agencies like ours, like the one you're dealing with currently. And one of the things you mentioned is you're an agency burn victim. So I'd like to explore that because I think one of the things that that is a challenge in our industry is there are so many providers who can hang a shingle so quickly on the internet and say they do the stuff, right? And they're competent and can execute. Maybe talk about your journey and what are the things that you saw caused you to be an agency burn victim and what moved you to a successful relationship and maybe compare and contrast that. Like what's the difference between a good relationship and a bad relationship?
Scott: Right, a few different questions there, good and bad. The first answer is yes, I have been a burn victim several times. And in all the scenarios, the agency did a tremendous job of marketing themselves. So you see a lot of marketing efforts, a lot of paid ads, a lot that's going on. And once becoming a client of theirs, which I don't really like the word client, even if there's not an equity position, I really don't. I believe that there's truly a partnership. Sure, you're paying someone to create and it's just a choice of words, but for me that word, I think the implication of whether there's an equity position or there's a vested interest in the success or not, I feel that a true partnership is me being able to say that I'm doing this for the best interest of the company. So essentially they're like partners, but I was treated more like a client. Like when there were questions, it was, you know, it seemed like a headache. I was dealing with the VP before we became clients and then we became clients and I have a 20 year old account rep who, you know, nothing against 20 year olds, but I mean that they have no real world experience and no real business world experience or at least very little. Right. And so, you know, and then getting someone that's higher level involved is kind of like pulling teeth. Meanwhile, during the sales process, they're front and center and I'm talking through with everything. there's almost that transition that doesn't feel nice right out of the gate. And then you see the constant marketing. What I think is one of the biggest challenges in the group that we work with now. They frankly with some of our portfolio companies will say we're not the right fit to help this guy. And I love that. I love that. Like tell me that you're not the right fit. I've never been turned down by a marketing agency. What is that? You know, like, never. And I think maybe one of the reasons for that is that genuinely they feel that regardless of whether or not I become successful, they can do a better job of what we're doing than we can. And that's fair. That's fair. But at the end of the day, to me, a real beneficial relationship is not just can you do better. It's can we get the intended results? So I think understanding what the intended results are going to be, or unmet expectations are the biggest reason for failure and division in all relationships, but specifically there. So if you say, is where I'm looking to get, and those conversations are having, everything's on the table, and this is what I'm looking to gain, this is how I'm going to measure success, these are all the things that I'm looking for, and the marketing group says, well, look, we can do a better job than you're doing, but I'm not sure we're going to accomplish this, then that needs to be discussed up front. And if we can't get there, do you still want to work with us? Otherwise, we're going into this and it's just another client and the exact expectations won't be met. And then that's when the burn victim situation happens. So the group we've worked with we’ve worked with for about four years. There's several portfolio partners where they say, look, we like the product, but it's just not a core strength of ours. We wouldn't be a good fit to really market this. And so that's where I think for marketing agencies, when I hear that, that's a trust builder. Like learn to say no, learn to turn business away from marketing agencies. That's for me. But hopefully.
Bill: No, I love that. So I had a call three weeks ago with a very, very large furniture manufacturing company that has two divisions. They have a B2B portfolio and a D2C portfolio. And we were talking about their B2B work and some things. And at the end of the conversation, they're like, well, do you do D2C work? Can you do all XYZ and set the scope? I was like, no. I was like, could we do it? Sure. Just like you said, could we execute it? Could we execute it better than their internal team? Probably. Are we good at that? Do we benchmark against that? Are we reading trade journals and like A-B testing and in that space and owning it? No, we are not. Right? So I just said, if your house is on fire and you need help, I'll do everything I can to help you in that space. But we are not a specialist in that arena. And ultimately, you know, they, like you said, appreciated our candor because we just and I'll be honest, I didn't want to do it because it was isn't in our wheelhouse. I would have spent extra 30, 40 hours a week for five weeks helping to figure that out for them. Whereas the other stuff we can onboard and go. Another point you brought up and we are really investing heavily in is making sure our client success team is as educated and trained and consultative as possible. And really investing in them to make sure that their experience with the client on a day-to-day basis is really strong. So I think that's very, important. I read a study.
Scott: Question-based selling, Bill, it's question-based selling, right? Everything that you're talking about is I mean, it's a great book. I have my team read it when they come on board. You know, what are the five most important things to you? Because what you're doing is number one, you're getting them to think right? Like what really is important to me? And the last thing on the on the services that I love that you said that story, because, you shared that story. When I go to a restaurant, and they have five pages of different food, my my my initial reaction is, man, I might hit the lottery and find something that's good, but I don't think anything's gonna be really, really good. If I go to a restaurant and they have four or five things on the menu item, I know those four or five things are gonna be fantastic, right? Because that's what they do well. And so, saying no, I appreciate you sharing that. So go ahead, I just wanted to.
Bill: No, I love that. And you're exactly right. Like if you go to that restaurant, I usually ask the waiter, okay, what are you known for? And I was in a restaurant in New Orleans a number of years back and the waiter said, hey, we are really known for barbecue grilled oysters. And I was like, that's weird. I was like, let's do it. And they were amazing. If I was reading that on the menu, I would have never selected it. But they were amazing and that was their specialty, but it wasn't on the menu. So sometimes you have to find those niches. I read a study the other day that 57% of agency relationship issues boiled down to the client success team not understanding the client's business. One of the other things we really are doubling down on and have for a long time is making sure we're not just providing commoditized products. Like, here's a case study. You have to really understand the client's business. And in some ways you have to understand it better than they do because as we go back to the original conversation we started with, if that client doesn't truly understand the problems that they're solving in the marketplace, like you got to really push them to know that so that you can do a good job for them. And we're really pushing our team hard to engage the clients in a more meaningful way. We have a number of tools and processes and frameworks to do that. Like we're not just sending them out and say, go learn, right? There's a format to that. I think those are very good points. And yes, the probably one of the biggest issues we face in the marketing agency industry is the fact that many, like you said, you've never been turned down by an agency. Right. Yeah, we can do that. Oh you have money? Yes, we will, we will dance for that song. So I love that feedback. Branding is a huge topic that is so very important, and especially when you're launching these new companies, could you talk about the emphasis you guys place on branding, not just going out with an offer, but you've got to create a brand around this new entity?
Scott: It's so important. It's so important, especially in the space that I'm in, because brand equity is everything. When you look at that check mark, you know who that company is, right? When you look at Yeti and you know what Yeti is, right? And so that's when we're launching a product, especially in the product space where there's so many different knockoffs and spinoffs and, you know, your brand is what's going to make people continue to buy from you, even when you get knocked off at a lower price point. People think they're a patent and they're wearing bubble wrap and they're not going to get knocked off. Any successful product, any successful product is going to be knocked off. So brand equity is so important for us when it comes to developing or rebranding your entire organization. It's, you know, again, it comes back to what the customer profile is and who you're looking to work with. So your brand, you know, when people look at your logo and your brand, the first feeling and emotion that should come to their mind is quality. I can trust them. I mean, these are things that you need to build into that branding. So you know, if your target audience is like teenagers or young adults, you're going to have a different branding kit than if it's senior citizens, right? Your color scheme is probably going be a little different. It's not going to be neon for senior citizens. You know, it's probably going to be a little bit different, more of an elegant look. So it's making sure that what your brand, and it's not just about logos or color palettes, but it's about the messaging and the taglines and how you promote yourself. Again, what's important to the customer, right? And so if you find out, you know, you have a group of customers and you say, these are my favorite customers, like or whatever they are, I would ask them what's important to you? Like, what are the most important things to you? And I build that into my brand messaging, my taglines, some of the ways that I promote my brand. So it's really important because the knockoffs come and people will generally pay a little bit more for something that they know they can trust. They know that they're gonna get quality and they know that the company stands for something, right? If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. They stand for something. They're more than just about the money side of it. So we encourage our partners to find a nonprofit, something they really believe in and get involved in that to show people that they're giving back. It's about that, but it's also about doing the right thing, right? Both at the same time. So that brand is what people will recognize. It's what people will remember. And so it's so important. We go through a full exercise looking at what different colors, what emotions and you know, what, we go through a full naming exercise, because we're creating brands, right? We're from nothing from an idea on a napkin. But it's a lot of fun because within that brand, there's so much different messaging. I mean, even our logo, if you look at ideal strategic partners, it's hands shaking and then a tree growing out of it. Right. And so it's there's a lot of messaging that can be found in those. So.
50 Marketing promo
Bill: So Scott, think that's a great recap of that and how important branding is. Let's also take it to another level when we think about not only the visualization and representation, but the brand promise. So, you know, your brand promise is what your client or what the customer experiences when they see marketing and advertising, when they talk to the salesperson or deal with the sales channel, when they order it, when they get it, and when they use or experience or whatever, right? However, that product or service is delivered. I think one of the challenges that I've seen with that element of the branding, the brand promise is in the entrepreneurial space or when we're launching a new product or service for an established company even, is the fact that when we pivot back to the earlier part of the conversation, when we talk about it's going to be 20% of what you expect, not 80%. How, what has your experience been in helping your clients and other folks in businesses understand how to move the brand promise effectively in step with the variations that are occurring in the product or service development, if that makes sense? And that's a layered question, but see if you can unpack that.
Scott: Sure. I mean, I think at the highest level, it's starting with the end in mind, right? And what that end goal is. And so that goes back to, you know, it all, all, it all connects everything we're talking about kind of the questions and what's important and understanding. It's like when a financial advisor sits down, right, and they start to ask you about your goals. And when I ask people about their why, you know, what is that why to them? What gets them out of bed in the morning? What keeps them up at night? That fire in the belly? You know, that is ultimately and then when you get people thinking about what's important to them. A lot of times they don't even think, because we're so inundated with daily chaos and what happens that we don't think about that. So you're encouraging that. They're thinking about what they're really working toward. And then you reverse engineer that plan to do it. Now, as far as the customer journey or the client journey, I think communication is everything. I mean, because, and especially in what we do, we're constantly hitting up against walls. Like we, you know, there's IP here, we want to make sure we're not too close to it. So we have to navigate around this way. We have to look at a different piece. Our costs of goods are too high. How do we lower costs without sacrificing quality? So there's constant challenges in our process. And actually we encourage, we encourage disagreement with our partners. And we encourage it because as long as the relationship has a strong foundation, I want you to disagree. I want you to tell me what angle you see something from and that, because I need to see it from that angle. We both, and I need to tell you what angle I see it from so you can see it from my angle. But in terms of understanding, and that's where true collaboration comes in. And then they feel comfortable because they've been involved, they felt heard asking those questions. What areas can we improve it? You know, a lot of people don't want to ask that question. Where are we maybe falling short? If there was one area that you could say you'd like to see us do more in this area or you'd like to see your business do more in this area, what would that be? So I think it's just it's all relationship driven and making sure that people are staying front and center because even the biggest of challenges, they're easy to overcome when you have a strong foundational relationship and your your client service people are connected with them. But a molehill can create a volcano if the relationship is not strong. And so to me, the key to that, answer to that question, I know it's a layered question, but there's really one answer and that's just the relationship, touchpoints, making sure that you really understand them. You're asking questions to invoke their needs and what they're looking to accomplish. And that's how you'll deliver the right solution to them because it's tailored to them.
Bill: So one of the, and I love that answer, and one of the other things we're seeing is a difference between the brand promise and brand aspirations and really getting people, especially inventors and entrepreneurs or early stage development companies to focus on, okay, the brand promise has to be what we can experience today. The brand aspiration, right? So if SpaceX brand promise is we can launch stuff into the atmosphere and into space, and then we can catch the rockets. That's their brand promise today because they're executing it. The aspiration is Mars, right? The aspiration is they want to go to Mars. How do you keep your inventors, and maybe this isn't true for your clients, but I've found this with our clients, is they're always talking about version three, four, five, six, and seven innovations that they have in their heads that they don't have like, they don't even have prototyped yet. So keeping them grounded on this is the brand promise and the product or service we can deliver today. That we could, if somebody clicks the button and swipes that credit card, we can deliver and those future iterations.
Scott: Right. No, it's a great, you know, I actually have never heard and this is why I'm not in marketing like you are. I've never heard brand promise versus brand aspiration. About 10 years ago or so someone shared something with me that was really like eye opening. It was one of those aha moments that it was. And it was, you know, when you look at some large corporations, Fortune 100 companies, Fortune 500 companies, and they gave me some examples too. And it kind of blew my mind. A lot of times these brands, you know, their tagline. And that's where I kind of see the, you know, our mission or mission statement, mission statement generally is where I would fit in the brand promise mission. Kind of the same same one of the same. Hopefully I'm on the right track with that. But when you look at these at these Fortune 100, 500 companies, he went through five or six of them and their mission statement is actually where they struggle the most. Believe it or not, it's where it's where they have the biggest challenge and it's usually like in a verb like putting, I don't even have an example, but it's doing something, like doing something, but they're not doing it. So I understand where we're coming from. And so it's usually like, this is what we're going to identify ourselves as a company, but it's probably actually the weakest area that we have right now. So usually when you see that, it started to have me retrain my mind where if I see that mission statement, a tagline, okay, so this is an area that they're working to get toward, but they're not there yet. Right. And so that's, so I understand the question wholeheartedly. You know, I think from a mission statement perspective, we try to keep them as broad as possible in terms of just identifying again, backing out of the weeds and staying at the highest level possible, this is the solution or service that we like to provide. And this is the benefit to the haves as a customer. So it's the with them factor, the what's in it for me, right? And the WIFM. And so when you're talking to your customers, you want to kind of combine this is what we do with this is how it benefits you. But it has to be accurate on what you can do right now. But I like to leave it a little bit more, again, higher level. Again, our mission statement, making entrepreneurs dreams come true. And we do it regularly. And it's an unbelievable time to be able to see people who had an idea and now they see their product on shelf and they see their business scaling. And so, you know, long answer to a short question, but I think that the aspiration, I'm not sure that that should be, it seems like people are using their brand aspiration as their brand promise is what it, that's.
Bill: I think that's where we run into trouble because if we're going to go out there and our brand promise is to be on Mars, we're not there yet. I think so many inventors get so excited about the future developments and the reality is cash flow and successful recurring revenue is not created on ideas that may or may not materialize in the future. And especially with the young, when I say young, I'm like young companies that you're dealing with, right? Because I'm sure you deal with all age ranges who are inventing and entrepreneurs, but these young companies, they need cash flow. They can't, and my guess is you're not in that pre-revenue funding arena like with some of the SaaS's and AI companies where it's this idea and they get a market cap of 50 million dollars.
Scott: They're raising money before they generate a dollar in revenue. Yeah, no, I know. Yeah, yeah.
Bill: Yeah, let alone profit. Don't worry about profit. We're pre-revenue. It's an idea and we just raised 100 million. One of the things you said I think is so important. We deal with a lot of manufacturing companies who've been very, very successful and B2B companies for a long time. But they have to become entrepreneurial again. They have to become entrepreneurial to reinvent themselves many times. And when we go in and we talk to them about their mission, vision, values, mission-driven organizations are more of a last 20 year thing than they were like when I was young, like early in my career. It wasn't about mission-driven. The corporation, the goal of the corporation was to return value to shareholders. That was the mission. I mean, it was like Wall Street days and Gordon Gekko and that whole arena. And now we've kind of, I think business in a certain sense is self-actualized, really moved forward, being more altruistic while returning shareholder wealth. So yeah, I think those are some great, comments.
Scott: I can piggyback on that because when you talk about focus on, you know, the board aspirations, one thing, Bill, just I always tell people because they've spent a lot of time before they even come to us. I mean, they've obsessed over their idea. They've thought about it over and over and they're on version six in their head, but they don't even have version one on a piece of paper. And I say, listen, it's great that you see the forest. It's great that there's a forest here. But if you don't focus on the tree, you're never going to get to the forest. So the tree is really what we talk about is like the flagship product, the initial offering. If you don't put all your energy into that, stop thinking about version four or five. You know you can get there. But if you don't put all your energy into version one, version one may never get you to version five. Right? And it's so important. And then when you talked about learning in some of these companies that need to be more entrepreneurial, my partner in NISP, he's taught me and he was actually my mentor. He's 20, a little over 20 years my senior, gave me my first position in leadership about 10 years ago. And it's been amazing to be an equal partner with him in the company, but he uses a term and that he coined or at least he's the only person I've ever heard use it. It's called learning agility and learning agility is what we look for our partners. So basically explained simply, it's the ability to learn things very quickly, but simultaneously be able to put them into effect. So being able to learn and act on that new information because the second you're either growing or you're dying. Right? And so if you're not learning and learning to be comfortable in the uncomfortable, then you're just on a branch that's willowing away.
Bill: That's right. No, I love that. I love that learning agility. Yeah. And the the ability to put things into action quickly, the speed of change accelerates daily. And I think we're only on another, like, we're going to hit another turbo here with AI. The speed is going to, the rate of change and acceleration is only going to accelerate. And I'm not a, I don't know physics, so I'm probably you know, someone knows physics. They're saying, Bill, you've just violated all of Newton's laws. Whatever. We'll let those folks figure that out. That's their area of genius. Physics is not mine. So one of the things that you do really well, Scott, with your company is you help people scale, right? They go from idea to implementation to, in some cases, mass market, mass production, mass distribution. When you think about scaling your own business, because sometimes I think I don't know if you would agree with this, we're better at helping our clients and partners scale than we are at helping ourselves scale, right? Like sometimes, so like sometimes I look at what I've done for my clients and what our team has done for our clients. And I'm like, why are we not able to mix that same sauce as successfully for ourselves as we do for other people? And I've probably beat myself up over this idea or like, concept more than I'd care to admit. Do you feel the same pain? Because that's all it is. It's just agony. And what what advice could you give entrepreneurs, consultants? Share with me. I'm willing to learn, right? Like what what is your take on this idea?
Scott: You mean the do as I say, not as I do? Is that what you mean? Because I know exactly what you're referring to. And yes, I mean, it's absolutely a challenge. I think one of the biggest challenges is just relinquishing control. So to me, the solution has been to be able to, and I've really only started to begin to figure it out because before I was completely perplexed. But about six months ago, someone said something to me and I was, probably will never forget it. Don't hire people that tell them what to do. Hire people so they tell you what to do. And when I started to do that and I started to really hire A team and that's not just internally, by the way. mean, this is vendor relationships. I mean, your market is primarily manufacturers. Well, I'll share this with you. At stage three of our process, out of our 44 portfolio companies, 42 are physical, manufacturable products. And so we work with a lot of factories. We got toasted by a couple of factories early on in the company. I mean, we were, there was trust and there was relationships. And then, as we kind of learned more and got more involved, we realized how not good of a deal it was for us and our partners. And so we were able to pivot and adjust in some of that. But I think that the scaling and the delegation side of it, you have to be willing to spend it and invest. And one of the challenges for me is, and you mentioned Cedarville, there's Cooper Peterson, I met Cooper, he's good friends with your son. I love serving there, I'm telling you, 100%, they thank me and they're always so grateful. It truly is, I can't imagine that it's not a bigger blessing for me than it is for them. Being able to go there and see so many young adults who are on fire for the Lord and for business. I mean, it's the next generation of leaders. Your son, it's incredible, young leader and where he's going. But in terms of being able to really look at it, I mean, I need to be able to step away and step back and get out of the trenches and be able to delegate, but be able to trust the people that do it. Otherwise, I'm just going to have to do it again. And that’s what happened, is I started to get to delegate and it's almost like becoming a burn victim in that too. You delegate, it doesn't get done right. So then not only is it done later than it would have been done if you had done it all in the beginning, but then you end up going and doing it again. So you're doing it and it's late. So then it's like, why do I do that? So I think the key is, again, going back to the factories, we had to find the right relationships, the ones we could trust, the ones that we really could, I could put on with one of our portfolio partners and know that they're going to represent my brand the right way or that they know what our interests are, they know what their interests are, and they're going to work together. And you know, in the investment, bringing Cooper on, there was four or five months where I was operating probably at about 30, 40% of my efficiency, which set me behind big time because he was here for a month and from Ohio. And I was spending so much time because I said, this is someone that I really trust to tell me what to do. And I see the vision. I know that he's the person. So I mean, it put me behind, you know, it really did, in investment. It put me majorly behind for a few months. I'm still actually climbing out of some hole in some regards. But you know what? It was the best investment ever because now he's taken 30 to 40% of my workload off and within two to three years, I expect him to be doing everything I'm doing. So you know, I guess the short answer is if you're not willing to invest in the top tier talent and be able to do, you have to bring people on or delegate to people you trust. If you don't trust them, don't delegate because you're just going to look over their shoulder and it's not going to be a good relationship and they're not going to be happy with you and you're not going be happy with them. So you know, continue down the struggle, you know, the struggle city and doing it all yourself. But if you find people you can trust, whether they're vendors, whether they're employees, and you can really start to delegate. So I had to start to drink my own juice with that, make that investment. And now I'm seeing the fruit of it. So I guess, the store, the moral of story is a lot of times you don't see the fruit of that investment right away, but that's part of the big picture again, in making sure you understand what you're working toward. Cause now I'm enjoying the fruit at 30, 40% of my workload’s going on by someone I fully trust to manage it. Right. So.
Bill:No, I love that. And it does take time, right? It does take commitment and investment. But the fruits are there and it is often hardest to take our own medicine. It is really hard. I mean, and that's just I mean, I guess we're having that moment where we're just being brutally honest with ourselves and with the audience about what what what it's like. One of the other things you mentioned there, and I think this is so true. We talked earlier about being a burn victim of marketing agencies. I used to own a company that we sourced a lot of material overseas. We imported from Africa, Asia, South America, Europe. And I think manufacturing companies are just as guilty as marketing agencies of saying, yes, we'll do it and not saying no. Right. And then they go to the back part of the factory with the old equipment that hasn't run in 60 years and then they go and dust it off to get your order out. And they're not good at it. They're not efficient, but they just needed the order and the cash flow. And it would have been better off for everybody if they would have just said, no, we don't do that. So I think, you know, I was being hard on the marketing industry earlier. I think a lot of I think every industry struggles with people taking work that they shouldn't take. And then in the end. And we've probably all done it early in our careers. Has any of that work ever turned out to be profitable? It kills you when you do it, you don't make money at it, you burn the relationship, you feel like a failure. There is no good that comes of this. It's just all bad.
Scott: Agreed. But Bill, I'll ask you something. I'm curious in your answer. I know you're interviewing me. But part of it also is when you start to realize that maybe there's more of an opportunity with that equipment in the back. Maybe you should say no right now, but also maybe the market is calling you into be doing more of that. So maybe that's why you have to be really aware and alert because you know, yes, you did it, you needed the cash flow, you said yes when you shouldn't have, and it turned out to be a brutal disaster. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't learn or invest in new equipment, right? And so there's one thing to stay in your lane, but you also can't be, you know, old dog that can't be taught new tricks, right? You have to, so there's that happy medium and that balance. And when you figure it out, let me know but that happy medium and that balance of, you know, where do I want to evolve into? I mean, the inquiries that we get now that people are reaching out to us, I mean, they're not just ideas and concepts. We have people that are running five, $10 million companies and they've been stuck in that trunche and they're looking to scale to a different level. So over the last three to six months, I've been building relationships to be able to help them. Because before we were build the race car, put gas in the race car, teach them how to drive it, and then send them on their way. Well, now we have people that have a race car that's already won a couple races. It needs to be refreshed, retuned, you know, some parts replaced, and it needs to get back on the road. It's a different problem, but it's a great problem because these are people who have demonstrated they can succeed. So while it's not in our primary lane, we had to then invest some time and resources in how do we service this because it's an opportunity that we want to be able to service. But we didn't say yes to any of those early on because we weren't ready for it, right? That's the point is being able to see opportunities and say, that is something that I wanna do. I need to get good at it before I say yes, or that's gonna take me away from my core business. It's gonna be more of a distraction. Do I really wanna do that, right?
Bill: No, and I think that's always a balancing act. Like one of the things we're doing right now is, we had a meeting, we lost five clients over the past three years that were major clients. The reason we lost them is they were all acquired. So then my business partner said, John said, well, we're really good at helping companies grow their marketing function and put them in a position to sell. And in every one of those cases, and I know this isn't always the truth, those companies sold for what I'm aware of and I'm not privy to all the details. They were very attractive offers that the owners were very excited about and very happy to accept and move on. So those were good situations, right? So we kind of looked at that and then we started having some conversations in the market. And one of the things we've identified is there is a tremendous gap for mid-market M&A and PE firms where they they do their thing, which is they assemble companies, they buy them up, they do all the accounting, they gut all the overhead and like they do their thing and they get it to this phase, maybe it's 18, 24 months in, and then they have to flip the switch and they've got to grow organically because you can't rape the balance sheet, you can't do cost cutting and efficiency methods, that only gets you so far. At some point in time, then you have to have top line growth. And one of the things we're finding, is that we were really good at helping those companies do that. And there is a tremendous need in the market for that service. So what did we do? I launched a podcast series. I'm doing it right now where my goal is to interview 20 people this year in the M&A and PE space to talk about that while we refine our offering. Because just like you said, we're not ready. I'm not ready today. We're going to make a decision sometime in June or July if we're going to launch that agency in 2026, because we're doing the research. But I think you're exactly right. You have to listen. You have to accurately and honestly assess, can you do it? The other thing is, and I had a good friend of mine, a CEO, he works with Goldman Sachs, and he said, Bill, if I was you, if you're going to launch this in June for next year, go find one and do it for free. Test it, do the prototype, get it out there, invest the money and prove it with a case study, then decide if you're gonna launch it. Then if you decide to launch it, you have the case study that'll, you'll take off like a rocket ship. And if it goes terribly and you're like, oh this is bad, we don't wanna do this, you only had one iteration, you don't have 10 contracts. Yeah, exactly, yeah, so I don't have to send anybody's money back, right? I just have to, you know. It hurts my pocketbook, but at least it wasn't like where you're having a situation where there was a promise that wasn't delivered. So yeah, so I think you're exactly right. We have to be open to opportunity, but also honest with our current capabilities. And as a buyer, as someone who's procuring it, I think one of the lessons for any entrepreneur or business owner is you have to do your due diligence. Because you can sign that purchase order really easily. You can never get that ink back. It's gone and then you are married and you are dialed into that relationship. Well, Scott, we are all about shameless plugs. So I want to give you this opportunity. All of the things you talk about in the next little bit and all of your contact details, the website address, all of your socials and handles will be in the footers in all of the promotional material. So people will find you, but just go ahead and articulate about your company, where you can be found. Obviously, Tampa with the beautiful backdrop. I don't have windows because all you'd see is snow and desolation in my background and depression. Whereas we can see nice sunny skies and beautiful skyline in yours. But tell us about Ideal Strategic Partners.
Scott: Sure, yeah, we are about a little over four year old company, but I've been helping entrepreneurs with product launches for almost 10 years now. And it's a lot of fun, and it's a lot of work, but I love to be able to work with people and we help them, like I said, from the idea concept phase to market launch. We get hundreds, sometimes over a thousand inquiries a month and we partner with one, sometimes two a month. So it's really looking for the right partner, the right product or brand opportunity, something that could really grow with the product roadmap. And it's difficult to find that right mix for us But it's when I say difficult it just means we're sifting through a lot of people to, we know exactly what we're looking for But that's when because we're making a significant investment in our success really depends on the success of those partners. So that said, there's a tremendous amount of people that we can't help. When we formed this business It was because just like anything we saw that there was a need there was a gap and we came to fill in that needed gap is there's so many people out there that have great ideas and they don't know, they don't have the first idea of what step to take, what order to take them in, how to get this from here into something that's tangible and actually a revenue generating venture. And so that's where our process IdeaPath came into play. It's four stages, it's data driven. We take them through its market research, a stage one, a really deep dive and understanding who our exact target audience is initially, highest probability success market. What they're going to be most receptive to and where they make their purchasing decisions. We go into strategy and branding where we take all that data, we put it into a succinct step-by-step executable business plan based on the data, not based on what anybody thinks. And then we build the brand, all the logos, taglines, color schemes, product messaging, all of that. Stage three is where engineering, when we partner, our engineering team does product design, development, prototyping, testing, DFM. We have an academy that I'll speak about in a minute, but in the academy, that is where there's actually a lot of tips and tricks on how to interview engineers or manufacturers. What are the right questions to ask? What verbiage? Because a lot of times, if you're not speaking their language, people will take advantage of that, a lack of knowledge. So preparing them to go in and negotiate proper deals with the right terms and how to get multiple quotes and how to guide through that part of the process. And then there's manufacturing which I know a lot of your market’s in. So it's tooling molds, the CNC, water jetting, whatever the product is, and then the pre-production, the tooling molds, production, packaging, distribution, shipping. And lastly is market launch, where we do trade shows, we build e-commerce, social media, influencers, wholesalers, distributors, channel partners, whatever the market research indicated, we execute, and then it's scaling and growing. So there's a limited amount of people that we're able to partner with because our investment and the time, we do so much heavy lifting that opportunity costs, we have to be selective there. But there's a lot of people who can benefit from that type of knowledge. And maybe it's just for them to be able to say, hey, entrepreneurship isn't for me. This is more than I can handle. And that's, that's okay. It's not for everyone. It takes someone that's really willing to get up off the ground 101 times if they get knocked down 100 times, right? Not everybody wants to do that. And that's okay. But that's we launched an academy because of that because there's so many people that we're we just can't help directly. So the Academy is, it's 91 videos, it's quizzing, it's testing. We spent two years developing it myself and six other course instructors. There is 160 page workbook and it's knowledge that it's whether it's, you know, athletic product, a medical device, a mobile application, a household good. It doesn't matter what industry or vertical. If it's a physical, manufacturable product, or it's a mobile app or software, then this process is the same because it's all data driven from what we uncover in stage one. So we launched a course about six months ago and it's been helping people to be able to go through the process and launch their products. So those are the two biggest. Lastly, I want to mention is Kingdom Kommerce. Kingdom Kommerce with a K. So kingdomkommerce.media is the website. A little over a year ago, myself, Cooper, Cooper Peterson, who I had mentioned before Luke Rykbost and Joe Abraham had launched. I had, last year was a crazy year for me, a lot that happened. I had to really kind of step away from it for a little bit and prioritize the time that I did have. Cooper ran with it. He's interviewed some tremendous folks, Christian Chamber of Commerce head. He's, Joe Abraham, the Entrepreneurial DNA author. That's where we talk about the practices and principles for kingdom-focused entrepreneurs and how to make sure that what you're doing as an entrepreneur is in line with what God calls us to be in the marketplace. So that would be the last shameless plug I'll give you, but I appreciate the opportunity to do it.
Bill: Yeah, I love that. And we'll have all of those links and all of those references in the, we distribute and the team will take care of that. Well, this has just been, Scott, a wonderful conversation. I enjoyed getting to meet you at The Pitch event last year and just interacting with you and your team on a couple of different levels. So yeah, just very exciting. I want to definitely extend another invite. We're going to run this back again, maybe in six months or so. I want to get an update, hear how things are going, and just really appreciate your insight today.
Scott: I appreciate you having me on. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you.