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EP631: Brandon White - Back Of The Napkin Business Plan In 11 Slides
76 Plays11 days ago
“If you think creatively or think differently, you can market that. Even in highly competitive industries like water, there’s always room for differentiation.”
Creating a business plan doesn’t have to feel like an endless maze of spreadsheets and jargon. The secret? A streamlined, actionable approach that focuses on what truly matters. In this episode, you’ll discover a straightforward method to craft a winning business plan without losing your sanity—or your weekend.
Brandon White, entrepreneur, author, and business strategist, shares his game-changing “Back of the Napkin Business Plan” framework. With years of experience, including two successful business exits, Brandon reveals how to distill your vision into 11 clear slides. From defining your market to tackling financials, he explains how to create a plan that drives results, sparks investor interest, and helps you stay focused on growth. This episode is packed with practical advice to help you transform your ideas into reality.
Brandon White is an accomplished entrepreneur, investor, and author of Back of the Napkin to Business Plan in 11 Slides. Having successfully built and sold multiple businesses, Brandon is passionate about simplifying entrepreneurship and empowering others to succeed with practical, no-nonsense strategies.
Expert action steps:
• Be a great listener and practice that skill.
Actively listening helps you learn and connect more effectively in your business and personal interactions.
• Keep moving forward, even when it feels impossible.
Adopt the mindset of taking one more step, learning from each day, and believing in your ability to achieve what feels unattainable.
• Surround yourself with smarter people and embrace discomfort.
Seek out those who challenge you, create opportunities to learn, and intentionally put yourself in difficult situations to grow and make progress.
• Brandon White’s Website: https://brandoncwhite.com/
• Book: Back of the Napkin to… Business Plan in 11 Slides: So easy you can do it on a flight from San Francisco to New York
https://www.amazon.com/Back-Napkin-Business-Plan-Slides/dp/B0CY1XDB63
• Podcast: The Brandon White Show
Visit eCircleAcade
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Transcript
Essentials of Business Planning
00:00:02
Speaker
What traction and milestones do you have? And what do you want to hit? Specifically in the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 12 months. In my estimation, the most important other than your elevator pitch slide is your financials, which is really an Excel or Google sheets that has your business. And earlier a marketing tab is talking about, I think I'm going to get on podcasts. Okay. How many downloads do these podcasts get? How many listens do they get? How many people are actually going to click in the show notes? How many people are going to go to my website? What's my conversion on my landing page? How many meetings am I going to book?
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome to the Thought Leader Revolution with Nikki Ballou. Join the revolution. There's never been a better time in history to speak your truth, find your freedom, and make your fortune. Each week, we interview the world's top thought leaders and learn the secrets of how they built a six to seven figure practice. This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.
00:01:04
Speaker
Welcome to an exciting episode of the podcast, The Thought Leader Revolution.
Introduction to Brandon White and Journey
00:01:09
Speaker
I'm your host, Nicky Baloo. And boy, do we have an exciting guest lined up for you today. Today's guest is a friend of a repeat, multiple guests on the show. He is a man with two exits and he is a thought leader.
00:01:27
Speaker
who has written a very powerful book. I am speaking, of course, of none other than the one, the only, the legendary Brandon White. Welcome to the show, Brandon. Thanks, Nick. He has an amazing introduction. So Brandon, tell us your backstory. How'd you get to be the great Brandon White? Um, well, I guess let's go back to the beginning real quick and I started my career With not knowing what I was going to do at all I graduated college. I thought that I was going to become a lawyer I told everybody I was going to become a lawyer, but I don't think I was going to become a lawyer Nikki I think I just told everyone that because when you tell people you're going to be a lawyer a doctor And maybe a few other things no one bothers you. So, um, I did that true went to
00:02:14
Speaker
After I graduated, I went back to working of all things on a tree nursery where I had worked through college to pay my way through. My mom, I grew up with a single mom who had spent a lot of time and effort and sacrifice to put me through ah some really good schools. And she's like, hey, this is not your future. You need to go back to school and figure it out. you know If you go back to school, you work on your master's, it'll be a place where you have a breath. There's a lot of opportunity and you can think straight, blah, blah, blah. So I went back, worked on my master's in psychology.
00:02:42
Speaker
and I was a big fisherman and I decided that I wanted to bill write a fishing magazine that was for light tackle and fly fishermen in and around the Chesapeake Bay, which is on the east coast of the United States and where where I was living. And I realized through a very kind printer who I visited who asked me some very pointed questions that I did not have enough money or resources to print a magazine. This was 1995, 1996, 1996.
00:03:13
Speaker
And I was a self-taught engineer. I wrote ah taught myself basic on a VIC-20 and a Commodore 64
Investment and Business Growth
00:03:20
Speaker
back in the day. and And there was this thing called the internet that I had been messing around with through college and and then matt working on my master's. And I said, hey, well, why can't we just put a met magazine on the internet?
00:03:32
Speaker
so i started what became the largest social networking and e-commerce site for sport fishermen on the internet. And I wrote a business plan. I went and got in my wife's car and we drove from Chestertown, Maryland to Annapolis, Maryland, which is ah where the US Naval Academy is for those who don't know in Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay and went to either Borders Books or Barnes and Noble, bought a business plan book. I think it took me longer to read the business plan book than it might even took me to do the business plan. But they were still advising doing business plans written. And I think we wrote a 50 page business plan and I'd send it off to some investors. And through a friend, I'll just tell you this quick story because it's sort of crazy how your life can change. And as long as you keep moving forward and you keep making progress, good things can happen. So a friend had emailed me and said, hey, I had lunch with this guy.
00:04:33
Speaker
And I was telling him about your phishing site and he said he uses it and he's an investor. I think you should meet him. I didn't tell him your name or anything just out of privacy. But I wanted to ask you and I was like, yeah, sure. So I got an email like three hours later that said, hey, this is Tom. I was a partner at Sequoia Capital. ah You might know us. We did we did companies like Apple, Cisco, Yahoo and some other ones.
00:04:56
Speaker
um I met Matt and I'd love to see you tomorrow. Now you can imagine a kid who's living in a house that my wife and I bought for $108,000, just living like day to day, but surviving, happily surviving, but surviving. And I was like, hey, yeah, here's my business plan. Come on over tomorrow. And he he actually showed up on my doorstep, Nikki. um And he we talked for a minute. He's like, hey, take me to your office.
00:05:24
Speaker
So I started walking upstairs to my spare bedroom and you could see the look on his face sort of change a little bit, but I just kept walking. Probably my face was red and and I was getting heated just from, I don't know, not knowing what to do. We walked upstairs and he got into my spare bedroom and he didn't say a word and he looked around.
00:05:45
Speaker
And he looked at me, and he looked around. And before he could say anything, I was like, hey, look, I really appreciate you coming over here. It is very clear that you were, to me, it appears that you were looking for a lot more. And he just looked at me in the eyes again for like, felt like forever, but it was probably only a second or two. And he said, ah is this all you have? And I was like, yeah, my partner has a spare bedroom down the road we can go to. It's an office.
00:06:11
Speaker
And I started apologizing again. He's like, hey, look, stop talking. He's like, this is how we found Cisco. Relax. And that is the truth. Cisco, which one of the successful companies in the world, they found in the living room with a husband and wife making routers of that later learned that story. We went to lunch. We did the business plan on the back of a placemat. The thing about it is, is that I had sent him a 50 page business plan and he wrote down people, product, market and financing on the back of a placemat.
00:06:41
Speaker
And we did that business plan, he put it in his pocket, and I was like, hey, do you want to go fishing? And he's like, right now. And I was like, yeah, let's go fishing. So we went fishing. I went back, I hooked up my boat. On the way back, we're driving down a major highway on the eastern shore of Maryland. And he says, how much money do you have in your bank account? And I said, well, i have I'm not sure. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, well, I trade stocks to fund the company. And he said, what do you mean you trade stocks? And I was like, well, we trade stocks.
00:07:08
Speaker
He's like, you trade stocks with company money. I was like, I own the company. Yeah, we make some websites for people, but like this internet thing sort of new. So we do whatever we need to do. And he reached into his pocket, pulled out a checkbook, wrote me a check, which turned out to be for 50 grand. And he said, hey, let's go. You can't trade it though. And probably three months later, we had raised a million dollars. And that is
Reflections on Successes and Failures
00:07:31
Speaker
how I got started. So um crazy story didn't,
00:07:37
Speaker
you know and you did ah I really am grateful for your introduction. you know I've had some exits, but I've struck out a lot, probably 10 times, so um don't let the exits fool you. But I did get an exit on this company. It was a windy path. I became a venture capitalist. I worked at America Online. I had started another software company, but then about 12 years ago, I was lucky. and I had ah i built a business plan to sell it. when i I went to business school. i i went to business I got my master's in psychology. I finished business school after I was a VC and then I decided to build a business plan to revamp the company because I had bought it back from investors during the dot-com crash and eventually wanted to sell it and at year four in my five-year plan someone, a public company, a large public media company out of Canada
00:08:23
Speaker
at the time, which had a market cap of maybe $10 billion dollars or $8 billion at the time, came knocking and wanted to buy it and got really lucky and got an exit. And, um, that's sort of the, without going on to three hour story that no one, none of your listeners want to hear sort of how I got here, where I am today here in Half Moon Bay, California.
00:08:46
Speaker
So you've done two exits and 10 strikeouts. at least i That's not a bad ratio, man. The two exits make up for the 10 strikeouts. Maybe it's 15. Whatever. It could be a thousand. Doesn't matter. You got the two exits. I got lucky. Yeah. I got lucky.
00:09:06
Speaker
I had a coaching client of mine who has had two software exits, um and he's going through a divorce, so God bless him. It's it's not pretty right now, but ah the fact that he was able to take two companies to exit, to me, says that he's in a place that he could do it a third time, and I and i hope he goes for it. I hope he does it. um So now that you've had two exits,
00:09:35
Speaker
What is it that's firing up your passion?
Passion for Building and Future Ventures
00:09:40
Speaker
I realized that I just like building things. And whether it's starting from zero and and building something or joining a company. My last gig, I joined a company and it had several million in revenue and I was in charge of finance and operations. And we grew it and it just, and ah that company, I don't really call it an exit because the partner in that company was older and retiring and it wasn't a company that I could take over.
00:10:05
Speaker
Um, so I got a payout from that, but I really, I don't know that I would call an exit. Some people would. It was a lot of money, but, um, I think mostly I just like waking up in the morning and thinking like, Hey, what can we do? That's going to put a little dent in the world and make something better. And I like working on products that do that. So I generally tend to trend towards software products. Um, I like online media.
00:10:30
Speaker
i i I like consumer products, quite frankly, Nicky, and I probably I'm going to venture in and see if I can do something in the consumer product space, which is really hard. But, you know, why not? I interviewed um Pete Roberts of Origin USA, I think two or three weeks ago.
00:10:50
Speaker
um
00:10:54
Speaker
He sells jeans and boots made in the USA. Oh, yeah. I think I've heard of that company. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, it's ah it's a great, great company. And man, they're doing some cool things. They've got about 500 employees. um They're out in Maine. I'm looking for the episode.
00:11:20
Speaker
ah So, Brandon, hold on a sec, see if I can find it right now. I missed that when I was looking at your back episodes. I didn't realize it it was published. it it's It's very recent.
00:11:33
Speaker
I'm just pulling it up right now. um Thought Leader Revolution, it is episode 624. Pete Roberts. for to check it out Built by Freedom, the Origin USA story. And on Instagram, I tried putting my reels on on LinkedIn, and I'm having trouble doing it. But on Instagram, I got about 10 reels.
00:11:59
Speaker
ah from that episode, and they're all really, really great. I would definitely check it out. He's cool. um i I interviewed Jen Se, who used to be the um president of Levi's. She's now the ah founder and CEO of XXXY. It's a an athletic work company that's designed to save women's sports, keep women's sports for women and not let biological men come into it. And she's she's awesome. She's kick ass. She's growing that business pretty good. um I think there's an opportunity for ah people to get involved in good consumer products companies. So I say a fellow with your background ought to look at that. I think it'd be a fabulous thing. Just got to find the right one for you.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah. Got to do something fun and see if we can tackle that. I like, I think what I have learned going back to your original question is I like to be learning and I like to be around people who are smarter than I am. And I get bored when I am the smartest person in the room for the most part. Like it just gets boring or You know, there's people who you got to know your spot. So I'm a very good operator in creating systems and executing on systems and everything like that. But when we're not making progress or it just becomes routine, that's when I think I get bored and maybe everybody just gets bored with that. Right. Some people just accept it.
00:13:37
Speaker
I'll tell you my man, I'd love to see your business plan, but I'm going to pick your brain for something else. Inside my business, I i do a lot of programs for coaches, for consultants. ah And I've also done some programs for founders ah in and around thought leadership, how to make you the thought leader in your space become the Elon Musk of your space.
00:14:01
Speaker
ah We've had a couple software founders do our our our program. It's been really great. I'm really good at sales one-on-one. I'm really good at selling from stage. I'm really good at going on podcasts to generate leads.
00:14:14
Speaker
but I haven't been so good at getting the marketing engine going to like really get a ton of leads going for us. ah Inside my world, I need to get good at that. Cause right now, and this is a technical business term, I suck at it. You know what I mean? So,
Challenges in Sales and Marketing
00:14:30
Speaker
so Brandon.
00:14:32
Speaker
Coach me, man, what does a guy like me have to do to get the marketing pump primed properly? Because that has been Nicki Ballou's big challenge. branding I'm great at branding and I'm great at sales. Marketing not so much. I think, um do you have a, I mean, I'm going to go back to it because I wrote a book on this is basically how to write a business plan. So do you have a business plan? Do you have a legitimate business
Crafting a Streamlined Business Plan
00:14:56
Speaker
plan? No, I will say, yeah. And Alina.
00:15:00
Speaker
So no business plan, like can't jump to marketing. that market Marketing is is basically what slide is that? where i have i have um Write a business plan 11 slide. So for listeners out there, this isn't write 50 pages. You don't do that. But you can't jump to slide five, which is go to market, which is marketing until you've got the the other slides done, which is I'll just walk you through real quick. Walk me through it. Let's do it, man. Let's see. it Then you can you can can ask questions from there. So slide one is your use your elevator pitch. And you need to be able to do your elevator pitch in 15 seconds. So a good elevator pitch is we fix bad haircuts, right? I don't know what your elevator pitch is, but we can come back to it when we when when we're done these these other 10 slides. Then the problem. So what problem are you solving?
00:15:54
Speaker
a person And just use this equation, a person does X, their plan is, existing solutions are broken because it is that simple. Everything can be fit into that par in into that format. So whether you're a product or service. And you need to answer that because that's going to, number one and number two are going to inform your marketing, believe it or not. And then number three is what's your solution? So how do you fix the existing problems?
00:16:20
Speaker
the existing problem that's out there in there, what is your market? And this isn't, let's say you're doing coaching, this isn't I coach CEOs. That is not not going to work. And I'm going to get 1% of CEOs, never work. Got to go from the bottom up. So I coach CEOs who do are in the manufacturing or software ah business who are in the Northeast, just making this up. But you need to be specific because yeah Yes, you can eventually get to all CEOs, but you've got to make a step to get there. So who is your market? You've got to nail down to who is actually not just there's the market, there's the addressable market, there's a serviceable market. And then there's like ra legitimately what your market's going to be. And you can expand if you think about this as circles from the inner outer, but you can't go from the outer in or you'll be confused. And that's why a lot of people's marketing does suck.
00:17:15
Speaker
And then ah number five is how are you going to go to market? What are you going to go to market? Are you going to get on um podcasts? Is that going to lead be your lead gen? And if it is your lead gen, is it going to produce enough based on the projected impressions or downloads because you need to build that funnel. You have downloads, but then you have listens and then you have listen rate. A lot of people don't listen to full episodes of podcasts. That's an issue. So you have to account for that in your financial side, which we'll get to in a minute.
00:17:46
Speaker
um Then what traction, slide six, what traction and milestones do you have? So what do you traction do you have today? What milestones? And what do you want to hit? Specifically in the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 12 months. And then you can have a five year vision. But I wouldn't spend a lot of time on your one to five year because really what you what all we really know is 12 months ahead. um And then we have toe we have to rebuild our business plan.
00:18:13
Speaker
almost every year every on an ongoing 12 month basis. Then who is your competition? So you at least need to know your competition and where you fit into them. You don't need to focus on them, but you didn't and know who they are and how you're different. Number eight, possibly in my estimation, the most important other than your elevator pitch slide is your financials, which is really an Excel or Google sheets that has your business. And going back to what we were talking about earlier, a marketing tab,
00:18:42
Speaker
that is talking about, okay, well, I think I'm going to get on podcasts. Okay, how many downloads do these podcasts get? How many listens do they get? How many people are actually going to click in the show notes? How many people are going to go to my website? What's my conversion on my landing page? How many meetings am I going to book? That is literally what you have to build because then you're going to have an idea If what you're doing is enough or not enough, or you have to add something else. And then how much money can you make because the customer acquisition cost is higher than your cost to produce the product or service, then you're going to be running negative margin company and that's okay if you're building some sort of startup.
00:19:18
Speaker
wait But you need to know when you're going to turn profitable. And importantly, that's going to tell you how much money you need to get there. And then number nine, who is your team? Number 10, which is going to come off your financials. What are your funding needs? And then 11 is really an executive summary of all of these points. So I know we went through that fast, but let me just give a quick summary. Slide one is your opening slide with your elevator pitch.
00:19:40
Speaker
your problem slide, your solution slide, your market slide, your go to market, your traction and milestones, your competition, your financials, your team, your funding needs, and your summary. If you step back and look at this, Nikki, this is really a story. here's Here's the problem. Here's the solution. Here's how we're going to make this happen. This is pretty smart, man. This is actually genius, Brandon. I really like it. Thanks. It took me a really long time to make it. I really like it. I need to i need to go through this. You know,
00:20:09
Speaker
um
00:20:13
Speaker
Winston Churchill said that um the simplest concepts take the longest to come up with. And the most complicated concepts, you can come up with them in a few minutes. So I totally get that. um I think I need to go through this for myself, for our business. And I think that um All my clients need to go through this for their business. Any business, in my opinion, needs needs to have a plan. you don't yeah and you don't have to This thing, and I wrote it on the front of the book. It's so easy. You can do it on a flight from San Francisco to New York. Now, I could be exaggerating a little bit. It's five hours on that flight or five and a half, depending on on the jet stream. um bute
00:21:05
Speaker
This doesn't have to be complicated. You don't need to spend, and most people avoid this, and I guarantee you that everybody avoids slide eight in this thing, which is the financials. And it's because people don't, but they they'll give you a hundred excuses, Nikki, I can't do financials, I can't do this, that, and the other. if you If you don't run your financials or hire someone to help you with their financials, or in some way run your financials, ah you're just guessing.
00:21:29
Speaker
you're guessing because you're, you you can't do all that math in your head and you can't manage like, you know, your sales and marketing tabs or what feed your, your cashflow and your income statement. And that feeds your balance sheet, which is only a moment in time. But you know, importantly, it feeds your, your cashflow statement, which is going to tell you,
00:21:50
Speaker
you know, really how much money you need and how much money you can make and when you're going to get the cash. You see this happen in a lot of e-commerce businesses, coaching businesses, ah consumer product businesses where on a profit and&L basis, they're hugely profitable but on the cash flow they're not because if you're If you're a person who does coaching, for instance, and you're doing high ticket coaching,
00:22:13
Speaker
you know um the credit card companies are going to sometimes hold your money. So even though on a you know on a December basis on a profit and loss year profitable, you might not see that money until January because they held it for chargebacks.
00:22:28
Speaker
So you really need to know all this stuff and it's where I've seen, I've made the mistakes and I've seen a lot of people make mistakes. The elevator pitch, I think I can do a pretty good job with that pretty quick. Slide two, I think I can do a pretty good job with that. Slide three, yeah. Four, it's good, but I think it can go better. How will we go to market? I know what we've been doing. I think we need to do more and better with that.
00:22:53
Speaker
What traction and milestones do you have? Yeah, we can talk to that. What milestones do we want to hit? We can talk to that. you know Who's our competition? We can talk to that somewhat. Our financials, we're going to need to work on that. How much money can we make? It's a high ticket program, so simple. Team, yeah, that I need to get into that more and better funding needs.
00:23:16
Speaker
heck I don't know that we have funding needs per se right now. I don't think I'm looking to raise money for what we're doing right now. But we do have funding needs to hire all the people that I'd like to bring on the team. You don't have to raise money. You just have to figure out where you're going to get it. Yeah. So slide one, my elevator pitch. What's my elevator pitch? So um we help.
00:23:41
Speaker
Our main market, so we've had a couple of markets. okay But our main market are coaches and consultants that are under seven figures a year. So relatively good people, but unsophisticated in business. right And um most of them, the problem that they're dealing with, the problem we're solving for them is they're stuck. They they don't know how to how to grow. Like a lot of coaches get to a plateau and they stay on that plateau.
00:24:07
Speaker
you know ah this They're not sophisticated business people. They don't understand sales and marketing. In fact, selling is like one of these to them. You know what I mean? They just go, oh my God, I don't want to be one of those pushy sales people. No, no, no, no. don't don't Don't want to be one of those guys. you don't have I'm not going to push you. I'm never going to pressure you. like To me, that's crazy. To even think like that's crazy. um What's my solution? um Good question.
00:24:37
Speaker
It's my solution. My solution is A. ah We're going to help these guys reframe their mindset from ah sales to service. And we're going to help them get effective at having powerful and effective sales conversations and overcoming objections. We're also going to show them how to position themselves so they they can be seen by the marketplace as, hey, somebody that's ah an expert in this area, that somebody that people should listen to.
00:25:09
Speaker
um Our market, man, that's such a good question. I go, okay, the sweet spot of our market are guys who are, you know, they're not brand newbies.
00:25:22
Speaker
but they're also not doing seven figures as a coach yet. They're not even maybe doing the half a million as a coach yet. Those guys, they want to get to that higher level. How will we go to market? Man, how we've gone to market is through podcasting and we've gone through um LinkedIn and ah and through warm market strategies. What traction, ill name is I don't want to go through all of this, but through the first five slides,
00:25:46
Speaker
It made me think about it right now. I think this is genius. I'd like to sit down and do this for my business. I think every company should do this. You're absolutely right. A hundred percent right. Yeah, you should do it on. a and And this is a good time of year to have a closed down session where you, you know,
00:26:04
Speaker
you and your team or any companies or division, whatever that is, is sit down and say, hey, look, for three three days, we're not going to do business. We're going to figure out and go through the plan and see what's changed and see what's see what's evolved and see what next year looks like. Because every year your financials are going to update anyway. This is really smart. And I think that once I do this myself, I should get all my clients to go through this. We should we should put a ah bunch of slides at our January meeting and say, OK, slide one, let's create your elevator pitch. Slide two.
00:26:34
Speaker
What's the problem you're solving? And I'll give full credit to the great Brandon White. Gotta do it, man. This is genius stuff. Okay, so right now you're looking at what could be your next deal. I love it. Have you got a couple of opportunities in mind or are you still in looking mode? Yeah, I got some stuff on the whiteboard that I'm working on. um I've got a software company that that solves a problem that I built for my wife and I because there's no contact manager that actually works. And there's no way to share contacts with people in today's day and age of like we're living in AI and all this stuff. And my wife went away. The hot water
00:27:19
Speaker
heater broke and I didn't have the plumber's number. and i and i like Why don't I have the plumber's number? like Why can't I share contacts? I built a personal contacts. It's really just a contacts manager where it allows you to have a central repositive for all central repository for all your contacts and then allow you to share your contacts and it keeps your contact up to date. So if you update your contact and you have your people in your contacts, they get that updated information because the problem is is that you put you have my contact information, but if I switch jobs or do another thing, it doesn't update. and i see i thought that I thought that was crazy. So we fixed that and then I am thinking about
00:28:01
Speaker
consumer product company I don't want to say what it is yet, but well, I'll say what it is. It's possibly a dog treat company.
00:28:12
Speaker
That's a cool idea. I like that idea a lot. The contact manager sounds like it's going to make a lot of money, but the draw dog tweet company sounds like fun. Well, the one thing that I do know is you that I did learn over all these years is you really have to have a competitive advantage if you're going to go into a market. And these could wind up just being side hustles until they're full time or something for me. um But.
00:28:35
Speaker
you know In the dog thing, I do have a competitive advantage because my wife is ah a top dog agility athlete and has a has a um training facility here in Half Moon Bay. and In the software business, I just know software. I've spent a lot of time on that problem and I didn't go through my whole career, but spent a lot of time on contacts and CRMs and things data big data problems.
00:28:58
Speaker
so um I think obviously the software is ah might be a bigger market, but dog treats could be fun too. it's a It's a very highly competitive market. So when I was in business school, my innovation professor, Al Seegers, he worked on the iPad with Steve Jobs and he would leave a po a bottle of Voss water on the front of class, every class.
00:29:26
Speaker
And he said, if you if you have an idea for a product or service, and even if it's competitive, if you think if you think creatively or think differently, you can market that. And Voss Water was, I always think about Voss Water, Fiji Water is probably a good one too. But you know you think about that, water is highly competitive and there there's been a lot of lot of people who won. So um yeah, we'll see.
00:29:54
Speaker
I'm a knife collector. I love knives. like i I got 120, 30 knives in the house. This is a um a knife by a company called Demko Knives, John and Andrew Demko.
00:30:08
Speaker
and um This thing is a thing of beauty. OK, the the handle, you can see it's got ah a very bright, unusual color. It's made of a material called Timascus, which is a combination of titanium and Damascus steel. Damascus steel is Japanese style folded over twenty two thousand times. It's very difficult to do, but it's very beautiful and very durable. And um The blade of this knife is really, really nice as well. It's made out of a steel called 3V, which is specifically made for knife making and not just general tool steel. And um it's got a very powerful shark mechanism called the shark lock for for the for the lock. You just pull it like this and it opens and it closes. It's really wonderful. It's been patented by Andrew Demko, who's the fellow who invented it. Super, super cool.
00:30:58
Speaker
i I just like knives. I buy them, I collect them. And I just thought, is there is there a way to like do something in the knife world that could be disruptive? That's a question that goes through my head. Because if there is, man, I'd love to be part of that. I just think it's super cool and super fun. right The other thing that I think is really cool, and I'm in the process of exploring this, A, with a collaborator, and B, potentially on my own,
00:31:22
Speaker
um I think that there's a lot of peer groups out there for business owners that in the past have been quite wonderful. I'm sure you're familiar with some of them. YPO, entrepreneurs organization, Vistage, blah blah, strategic coach, blah blah blah.
00:31:39
Speaker
There's a couple of things that have changed in the last few years in in corporate America. Now, it may be changing back, but a lot of these companies have become ah very political. A lot of these organizations very woke. If you don't toe the politically correct correct line and you don't ah ah agree with certain things, they'll kick you out. A friend of mine was a member of YPO. He refused to get vaccinated. They voted to kick him out of the group.
00:32:07
Speaker
Like, that's crazy to me. That's absolute insanity and nuts. So I thought, wouldn't it be cool to create a non-woke peer group? So we're not talking a political group. This isn't the Republican Party kind of like version of ah of a peer group, but just, you know, you don't have to share your pronouns. You don't have to agree to the latest political orthodoxy to be a member.
00:32:32
Speaker
Free expression, good old First Amendment style. And I thought to myself, this could have some traction. This could be something cool. Is it enough to be a powerful business to overtake these businesses? I don't know.
00:32:44
Speaker
But I like the concept. I think it's pretty cool. I think it's got it's got some some potential. um And the other thing that I think could be cool is if you have most of the folks in this be guys that are over 45, over 50 years old, they're in the second half of life. So they've had a bit of life experience. They might have their kids already. they might you know, be in a stage of life where they're thinking about their health, making sure they keep it in and in in the best ah condition possible, those sorts of things. So those are some things that are interesting to me. um And I'm always thinking about God, what else could I be involved in that could be fun and could be lucrative?
00:33:26
Speaker
And listening to a man like yourself who's had two exits, who has created such a brilliant concept. I wrote out all the slides on the back of this. Well, I'll so i'll send you a book. so that you this of the book has The book actually has worksheets. It's very easy to read and and go through. It's really simple. So happy to do that.
00:33:49
Speaker
I appreciate that. I'll take that. and once ah Once I get your book and I read it, I'll probably go and and and order a bunch off of Amazon and maybe get you to send us some signature plates so that we can um we can give them to some of our clients because I think this will be a useful tool for our clients to use as well. I use it myself. so That's pretty obvious. I can tell. but Brandon, man, I've had a lot of fun. This has been a good conversation. I hope you've enjoyed it too. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Nicky. Great time.
00:34:18
Speaker
You bet. So Brandon, where do you want to send people? Do you want to send them to your website? Do you want to send them to buy your book? Where do we need to
Connect with Brandon C. White
00:34:26
Speaker
send folks? theres Just go to my website, Brandon, B-R-A-N-D-O-N-C-White dot.com, Brandon C. White, and um everything that I'm up to, some essays I've written. The book is there. um Everything that's happening in my life, I try to post there.
00:34:44
Speaker
Okay, cool. Brandoncwhite.com. I love it. I love it. All right. So we end off each episode by asking you as our guest expert, what are your top three expert action steps? These are what ah we call your three best pieces of advice for my listener to take his or her life to the next level. What say you, my friend?
00:35:15
Speaker
Be a great listener and practice that. Keep moving forward, even when you don't think you can move forward.
00:35:31
Speaker
And that's a strange thing to say, but I think entrepreneurs and people running their own businesses just have to believe they can do what they don't think they can do. And that probably sounds stranger, Nikki, to your listeners, but you really just have to have the attitude of,
00:35:53
Speaker
Let me just go a little further and see what happens or let's see what happens tomorrow. Today wasn't a good day or today was a great day. What could I learn? Right. um But keep moving forward even when you don't think you can and seek out people who are smarter than you are.
00:36:11
Speaker
Because that's how you're really going to learn and try to get surround yourself with those people and put you put yourself in positions where you're uncomfortable on purpose. I think you have to do hard things to do hard things. And if you don't do that, you're going to find yourself For lack of a better way to put it, my good friend John says this, you know, you're going to be a self-licking ice cream cone. and You're not going to make a lot of progress. And that's going to suck. So those are my three pieces. Self-licking ice cream cone. I've never heard that phrase before, but I got to tell you. ah It's a good one. What's the name of your book again? Back of the napkin to business plan in eleven slides. Back of the napkin.
00:37:02
Speaker
to business plan. 11 slides. So easy. You can do it on a business. So easy. You can build your business plan on a flight from San Francisco to New York. It was an Amazon bestseller. I love it, man. I think it's a, I think it's a great, great title for a book and the concepts of the book are excellent. I love the fact that you took me through the 11 slides. I learned a ton from you today, Brandon. i One secret that I have whenever I bring someone on my show is I'm i'm getting a a coaching or mentoring session from every guest. you know So ah it's a chance to connect with a fellow human being, a fellow child at God, and it's a chance to learn from somebody. And I thank you. I'm very grateful that you taught me this. This was ah this was worth the price of admission ah for me to do this podcast today at this time with you.
00:37:59
Speaker
um When I'm done with you, I've got to very quickly eat, and then I'm i'm in a course tonight. And normally, I don't schedule podcasts an hour before the course starts because I want to you know take my time, eat, relax, and then go sit down and do the course. But I'm really glad that God had me do this because the Almighty always has a purpose.
00:38:26
Speaker
and When I get an inkling from the Almighty to do something, it's always wise when I follow that inkling. And I did get that inkling this time. Well, it's been mutually beneficial and I've been really grateful for you having me on. Thank you. It was my pleasure to have you on and thank you for coming on the show. And listener, Brandon White is an American original with an absolute brilliant piece of thought leadership.
00:38:57
Speaker
his 11 slide business plan is something new, it's something unique, it's something powerful, it's something honestly that can help you get clear on how to take your business from tragic to magic. And if all you do in the month of December, you sit down and map out these 11 slides to the best of your ability And you do a really, really good job of it. You'll set yourself up for far greater success in 2025 than you could have ever imagined. And I highly recommend that you go and you pick up a copy of his book. ah Back of the napkin to business plan in 11 slides, go to Amazon, pick it up and start applying what he's talked about on this podcast.
00:39:57
Speaker
to your business right away. My greatest ah personality strength, according to the Clifton Strengths Finder from Gallup, is I'm an activator, which means that I activate myself to take action, and I activate others around me to do it. I'm gonna take action on this this week, and I'm gonna ensure that everyone in my circle does the same. Thank you again, my friend. God bless you.
00:40:26
Speaker
This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.