How Entrepreneurs Win by Experimenting

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth to help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Mike Stemple, who has built over 20 startups and is an expert in ideation, innovation and startup psychology. He now spends his time writing books like the one we're going to talk about today, which is Innovating Innovation. And you have a new one, I believe, coming out as well, advising corporate executives on how to think and act more entrepreneurial, which is no easy feat, and pioneering the use of corporate entrepreneurs in residence. He has taught over 15,000 students from 149 countries on how to build successful startups, and has mentored at Techstars and Founder Institute. He is an ex-ultra-runner, doesn't surprise me, a semi- famous sports artist and a veteran of the US Army and thank you for your service. Most days he can be found listening to Jimmy Buffett, watching his beautiful wife surf from the comfort of his oceanview home, petting his dog and pontificating on all things innovative, which is a great segway because that's really why we're here today. So Mike, thank you. I know you're a busy person, having read the book, I know that you go way beyond what most people do in terms of your time and your effort. So thanks for making time for us.

Mike Stemple: Of course, I know it's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited to have this conversation.

Anita Brick: So let's start off, and I think that this is probably what a number of people are thinking when they read what you've written. What did you do the first time? How did you launch your first venture when you didn't have the resources you do today?

Mike Stemple: That's a great question. To get a role back to my 20s. I'm in my 50s now, so my memory's not as sharp as it used to be. Back in my 20s, I would say my very first entrepreneurial venture was my art career, actually. So after a significant car accident where I hit my head across a door frame of a car, I lost both my military and my mental toll. I was supposed to be a doctor in careers. It damaged the part of my brain that accounts for creativity in art. Within six months, I became a well-known sports artist and went from a science track of life to a highly creative track.

And then I had my own company in a solo artist, you kind of have to learn a lot really quick about accounting and sales and marketing. I did very well as an artist as my first venture. I think that was easier because it was talent based. Suddenly I had this amazing talent where I could draw pro sports figures and they wanted to buy my artwork.

But even back then, I was I was pretty savvy in how I marketed myself. I worked with a nonprofit to help children who are victims of child abuse, picked out a large building, 40ft by 80ft wall that faced the most busy highway in Colorado, and I convinced the city and all three major pro sports teams in Denver at the time where I lived the Denver Broncos, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Rockies took their top players, and I painted a mural on the most busy highway in Colorado with over a million views per week.

And I did it for free, and I donated all the rights to charity, an altruistic gesture that also was a brilliant marketing because a million people saw my artwork every week. It was featured on Monday Night Football, it was featured during the games. I got a lot of accolades. I got introductions to a lot of people because of that project, and I ended up painting two more large sports murals in Denver from that, that initial one that I did right after my car accident, if I look back on it, it was talent based. If I had to be solely logic based, based upon my mind and how it works, that would have been in 2000 when I launched my first tech startup called IQ 3G, and it was a spectacular fail. I only lasted two weeks before I quit and signed the back of my stock certificate and turned it back to the board of directors and left.

They couldn't understand my vision that they funded, and they brought in a lot of outside people to try to execute on something that I didn't agree with. And so my vision and my belief that my vision was correct, I chose to walk away from 2 million in funding for my very first tech startup and pursue something more bootstrapped on my own.

Anita Brick: So when you think about it, I mean, that's an amazing story because a lot of people would have just, I don't know, called it a day and they had sounds like a pretty catastrophic car accident. You went out immediately, you did something that was amazing. And I also had the courage to walk away. In the book, you talk about how important it is to be fierce. One of the students, one of the MBA students, said, you seem fierce. Not a surprise even how you look. You seem a little bit on the fierce side. How did you get that way and how can I build my own fierceness?

Mike Stemple: Another great question, your students are pretty smart. Fierceness is the most important quality for success. If you look at any successful individual, there is a quality around them that I call fierceness. The definition is a heartfelt and powerful intensity, and so they are very heartfelt. It's just not business to them. It's an emotional pursuit. The other word is powerful. This powerful intensity is so important. Before my car accident, I was very— I'm ex-military, on my way to med school, senior year, college, full ride and damaged my brain. Something unlocked. I spent a lot of time thinking about that time and what was specifically when I say something “unlocked” because that everyone wants to know what’s unlocked. What happened is I lost a lot of my memory, and specifically I stopped remembering all the times,  every teacher I've ever had told me that I couldn't do what I wanted to do. And so I went back to being in preschool psychologically, and seeing this world as this amazing place that I could go and do whatever I want. And I really didn't care what the spectators say. I had this conversation this weekend with someone about the difference between spectators and participants. Most people in life are spectators. They'll never step on the field, that they'll never step on the field to compete.

And I never listen to spectators. And so that's part of being fierce. Spectators will always criticize and critique and try to pull down and try to break and try to minimize the things that creators created, or the participants create. And so I never take their opinions into account. I only take the opinions of other participants, other people who are in the game, whatever the game might be, they're the only ones I seek out advice from, and they're the only ones that I will listen to, and everyone else is just kind of in a fog, as that applies to fierceness. I think that's one of the big qualities is knowing who to seek guidance from. Do not seek it from spectators, always seek it from people who are participated or have participated in the game. And the game can be anything in life, like the best advisors I've ever had were people who experienced what I am currently going through. Fellow entrepreneurs are super successful people, or other artists or other people who've put themselves out to be ridiculed and judged.

And I think that's part of being fierce is being smart enough to take only advice from the people around you, incorporating that advice into your life. I dismiss most, but I do take certain nuggets that align with my worldview and my vision of the world. That I am a creator. I create the future. I create my reality. It doesn't happen to me. I'm never a victim. I go through life making things. I do have setbacks and that's okay. I learn a lot from them, but I'm never a victim. I'm always pushing hard.

Anita Brick: I love that. Here’s a follow-up question about spectators. Sometimes spectators are people close to us. There are friends, there are family, there are air quotes, are “mentors”. I think it's very clear that for people who are not in the game, who we are not really connected, we can silence that. What about spectators who are close to us and really just want to help us be safe? How do we push back? Or how do we ignore what those kinds of spectators, friends, family, people close to us?

Mike Stemple: It's hard. It's one of the battles I have because I have a very close relationship with my mom. Over the years, I've talked to her and taken her advice and counsel on numerous things, and when I look back on it, I can see the filter now of her protection. Like when I decided to run the hardest foot race on the planet, a race called racing for the planet series, it was in northern Chile running Self-supported across the Atacama Desert, 156 miles. They only have a tent and water during the course. Everything else has to be in a race pack that you carry with you. People die doing these races. And when I decided to do that, I was coming off a major sickness. Doctors told me my future was going to be very complex medically and that if I wanted to do anything spectacular, now is the time.

So I started training for this race because I thought it would be a really interesting footnote to my my physical aspect of my life. My mom knew all about what was going on with me medically, and she would say things that, in retrospect, weren't supportive. Like right before I was getting on the plane to fly down to Chile, she says, Michael, if you need to quit, that's okay.

Everyone will understand. That's probably not the greatest thing to say to someone who's getting ready to do one of the hardest things they ever do in their life, right? But, you know, I can't imagine Neil Armstrong's mom saying, Mike, before he was launching up to the moon. You know, if you don't make it to the moon, you needed to come back and failure and that's okay. And so I have this mom role now, I have my family have an older brother, younger brother I've done business with pushed me very hard throughout my life. They're amazing friends and I'm very blessed. And my dad's an amazing entrepreneur in his own right. And so I have this amazing family of very intelligent, very accomplished people around me.

But what I've learned is they remember the broken Michael, they remember the young Michael, they remember everything bad that's ever happened to me. That affects how they think of me. They will unconsciously limitations based upon my history. Even though I have evolved, even though I'm not the same person I was, especially after my head injury. And so what I find now is I am very specific on who I seek advice from.

And it has to be people who within a certain timeframe, let's say five years, ten years at the max who have gone through the same thing or similar thing that I'm going through, and I've either failed or one, because you can learn a lot from someone who's failed and from someone who's who, who's accomplished something. And I seek their advice because they don't know me deeply. And this is one of the reasons why I think therapy is such an interesting concept, is you go talk to a stranger who doesn't know you, but asks a thousand questions about you, and can really form a picture of who you are and help you deal with past traumas that might have happened. Right? You should think of the same thing when it comes to your professional career, or your relationships or other aspects of your life.

Your friends’ jobs are not to support you. As weird as that may sound, they really are there to protect you from yourself, and so they will give you advice based and you, especially your family, will try to protect you from yourself, try to keep you alive. But so much of this amazing world exists at the edge of who we are physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally.

So much of what I do is in that last 1% before chaos and it's dangerous. It's hard and it's painful, and it's supposed to be uncovering the secrets of the world. You can't do it in a comfortable, safe place. You have to go to the edge of your life to experience that. When you do that, most people will hate you so consciously.

They will be mad if you go to that last 1% edge of your life framework where chaos exists. Looking for a truth whether it's physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, whatever it is, they will hate you because it shines a light on themselves. That how dare you have such great ambition in life! How dare you go to the edge of your life when I am so afraid that I can't do that?

How dare you and I think a lot about that. And so I filter that I dare you mentality through everything I do. Whether my wife is counseling me or people around me. I always ask when they say I can't do something. Are they actually saying that they can't do it? And so I shouldn't do it? And that's a big line.

Anita Brick: That is incredibly insightful and really deeply profound because you're absolutely right. The people who want to protect us are doing it, usually from a good heart. And there's another group that is, as you said, mad or jealous that they don't have the fierceness. But you're not only fierce. When I read the book, I was so taken by your experience with the six-year-old. And here is full disclosure: I am the alum who read this question. Where did you get the empathy, energy, and compassionate heart to create the magic stickers for the six-year-old who is bullied?

Mike Stemple: You clearly changed his life. I am that six year old. When I was young, my mom noticed one day before I could talk one two. She just noticed I was off. So she brought me to the doctor and the doctor told my mom that I'd been deaf for a while, that I'd had severe ear infections that damaged my ear canals, and they were filled with scar tissue and I couldn't hear.

And my mom was devastated because she didn't pick up on it for a while. I had seven surgeries to try to get my mind my hearing back. In that time, I learned to talk, and so I had a speech problem. I had a significant speech problem my whole time, from preschool through elementary school. Every day I was in speech therapy and able to talk the way I do today.

What an amazing gift. I still think about all those hours I spent in elementary school pre- processing everything I say to be able to pronounce it correctly, and it just made my brain more sharp. I learned quite a bit about vocabulary and how to pronounce things, and how to think about what you say before you say it. Adversity. Great gift. But when I got to preschool to kindergarten, I was like that kid. I talked differently and I remember the first day of school being picked on and bullied so hard and I told everyone that I was from Australia. So anyway, I got backed off a little bit. Teacher calls my mom and says, I didn't know you guys were from Australia. My mom says we're not from Australia. Mike's making that up to survive because he talks funny and he's in speech therapy. The kids I grew up with all thought I was from Australia. Fast forward 20 some years and then I'm confronted with that. The child, the pain that I saw in him was the pain I felt. So many people I know have such amazing stories of adversity from their youth, and they lock it away. They kind of say, that was then. It's not now. I'm over it. I'm beyond it. That's all a lie. You never get beyond the adversities in your life. You just learn to live with them. After my head injury, you know, I do the deep dive into all aspects of my life. And I realize what a gift, my speech impairment and my hearing loss was and how it affected my IQ. And I became brighter and more advanced. Learning to read at a very young age, sort of like all these amazing opportunities later in my life. But when I saw that kid, I realized that he was on a trajectory. If someone didn't interfere, if someone didn't be an angel in his life, step in. And I realized I was being called to do that. And so I did. Once again, most people would never have done what I did. And I'm not trying to promote myself on this, you know.

Anita Brick: I get it. But tell us what you did because it was really extraordinary.

Mike Stemple: Yeah, yeah. So so this young kid was in front of me in a fast food place and he was really upset. He was at the first day of school and kids had been bullying him. He didn't want to go back. And his mom, single mom, he was just crying and really, really upset because he was picked on so hard. She felt awful and she couldn't figure out how to make this pain go away. I realized uniquely, I was at the right place at the right time. The right solution. I could affect this kid's life. And so I did. So I knelt down next to him and asked him if I could make him some magic stickers. I owned one of the largest sticker companies in the world, I mean, it's called Skinit. It's still in business to this day, personalization for mobile devices. And he got excited because I showed him the Army skinit on my my phone, and his mom looked at me like I was crazy.

I gave her my business card and said, if you write your address, I just need your address. I will ship your son some stickers. She wrote it down. She's the hero of the story. She just thought she had the courage to give me her address to help solve a problem. I just think that's just a beautiful, trusting gesture.

I left and I made some stickers for this child and sent them off. I asked her to let me know how it turned out. I get a call the following week and she says, I don't know if you remember me. You made my son some stickers and I said, yeah, I don't know. Of course I need to work out.

She told me on the phone, you have no idea what you've done. And that's just was just a massive punch in my chest. I still feel to this day, like, did I do something wrong? Did I hurt this child? Because that was never my intention. And she starts telling me the story about how she went to go pick up her son after he had brought his magic stickers in to do, show and tell that day. She was scared to death. He was excited. He went in and did show and tell, and she went to go pick him up and he wasn't at the edge of the street. The school pick up zone. She couldn't find him. And so she was in panic mode because every day he was by himself right there at the curb, waiting to get into the car and leave that torturous place.

She couldn't find him, so she gets out of her car in a panic and she's looking for him. She suddenly hears his laugh, and he's in a group of kids and he's laughing. And these kids are having fun with them and being kids, Kindergartners. He sees his mom and he grabs a kid and pulls him over and introduces his new best friend. The new best friend says to the mom, your son's so cool. I wish I had diabetes too. And she was just devastated because the magic stickers I made were to cover his insulin pump. When I knelt down next to him, I studied his insulin pump and tried to figure out the make and model. I tried to be inconspicuous and I went back that night, made those stickers for him and I nailed it. Perfect. I don't know how I did it. Normally I have the device in front of me. When we were carrying things and figuring out where to place stickers and not cover buttons and all that. I have no idea how I did it without the device, but it didn't and changed his life because I camouflaged his handicap, camouflaged his difference so kids could no longer see that he was different.

In fact, I enhanced his difference and made it cool. And I think that has a profound impact. And everything that happened after that. Because suddenly I saw that the things I build and the things I create aren't just me going through life. I have a duty. I have an obligation to use my abilities and my mind to help others.

Anita Brick: Yeah, I totally agree. It was interesting. I was reading that on my way downtown Friday, and it reminded me of being more transparent about a challenge that I had that was related to being crushed by an elevator car. More for another time and not to dismiss it, but that's part of your story of origin. Share it. You are just so credible and authentic and oh my gosh, who wouldn't want to know you, now, you may scare people because you do this kind of these extraordinary things, but what an extraordinary person you are. I hate to shift from this, but I want to ask you something about getting a little practical fierceness and the compassion for you and the empathy or wrapped up in what makes you really, truly great.

So I just had to say that anyway, where you're welcome. People don't know how much time to give to an idea before either jumping in or saying, we're not moving forward. You talk about 200 hours. So an MBA student said in your book, you talk about giving an idea 200 hours before committing more time and resources or ditching it. What is included in your 200 hours and how does this give you more clarity, commitment and determination to move ahead or not?

Mike Stemple: Good kid, good question. I invented the 200 hour rule for myself because I have an ability to be hyper creative, so I have no shortage of really interesting good ideas. In fact, my new book that's coming out called Million Dollar Ideators kind of talks about this, I'm called a $1 million Idea, or I can come up million dollar ideas effortlessly. I have a whole process I go through and it's kind of fun. I have a lot of ideas. I'm constantly seeing the world as incomplete. Unfinished, broken problems exist everywhere I go. So it's a gift and a curse. It's a gift that I like to create and build things and make things. But it's also a curse because you see, reality is incomplete and it's frustrating. Notebooks full of ideas, all craving my attention. I found that that was creating some poor psychology. This dread almost. I need to do as much with my life as I can, but I get stuck and obsessed with a certain idea and run it into the ground.

And actually, you know, a year's gone by just happened. I built 20 companies. The majority of those failed because I wasn't disciplined enough. I didn't have a rule. I didn't have a metric to be able to figure out when to walk away. So the gambler's fallacy was definitely at play. I kept on working on things or reinvesting in things, thinking I was going to win just around the corner. Just I'm going to have success just around the bend. Give it another week. Now I'm very disciplined and 200 hours is my metric. And the reason why I put 200 hours in 200 hours, I can accomplish quite a bit. Yeah, well, I can have an idea. I can do a background on the idea. looking at patents and competition, understanding all the players. Just understand the field. I can put together my solution and find unique ways that my solutions better than what exists. I can put all that into a slide deck. A beautiful slide deck, articulates it very, very well when I can put together a really nice video on that, to be able to share it with people that can consume it, consume the idea and really understand it and understand the vision, the solution, the 20 year vision of the idea and all the little things that are going to happen between now and then.

That's going to build into that opportunity. And I can do all this for very, very quick. It doesn't take me a lot of time because I've done it so much. So 200 hours is my metric for a brand new entrepreneur. Might be 400 hours, maybe 500 hours. What I would counsel is pick a number and be disciplined about it, and track every single hour that you're working on a specific idea.

And if you don't find significant traction, kill it. Because the only thing you can't make more of is your time. You can make more money and you can find more opportunity. And there's always abundance everywhere around us except time. And your time is the one thing that you can't hack. because the minute you start bringing other people into the mix, your time actually decreases because you have to spend time bringing other people up to speed your alone time with your idea, is the most precious time and the most valuable time and and ideas in life cycle. What I mean by significant traction is people volunteering to be a part of it, and someone that's traction, showing it to potential customers. And there's like, when this is done, I want to buy or having people that you show it to say, are you looking for a CTO? Are you looking for someone to handle your book? How can I help? Right? Not people selling you like I want to be your accountant. but people saying, how do I join you? And how do I make this go? Because I believe in this. If I don't get people doing that. It's not that the idea is bad, it's just that I'm bad for the idea. Make it simple. Is it right for this idea? So maybe it's not my idea at all. I might have created it. but that doesn't mean I should take it on its whole journey. So I have the saying that not everyone makes the journey, including me. So when I get to 200 hours, if there's not significant traction, but it's a really good idea, I'll open source and put it out in the world, taking all the work I've put into it tens of thousands of dollars and just giving it away to someone else to let them do something with it, to bring it into reality.

And I found that the minute I came up with, my psychology got better, I just became happier because I don't go through life worrying and fretting and putting undue expectations on myself that I need to be successful with this one idea, I now see the world that there is an infinite number of ideas, wicked hard problems. I need to be solved, right?

And maybe this, in the work I did on this idea, was really to set somebody else up for success. Maybe that's the gift I give back. Maybe it's my ideas I created that I can give away to other people that will then turn them to amazingly awesome, beautiful things. And that's happened. The student who came up with this question.

And figure out your own metric and figure out what you can do to get to the point where you're sharing your idea with a large group of people. Figure how many hours it's going to take and what does it look like? And you can always get my new book, Million Dollar Ideators. And it kind of covers the ideation phase and kind of how I share ideas and all that. I'm giving it away free. Just got to cover shipping. So, it's a it's a it's a good book.

Anita Brick: Awesome. Do you have time for one more question? As I said, if you are incredibly insightful and profound and you're this very unusual combination of empathy, compassion and fierceness when you think of three things, what are three things you would advise someone who wants to be successful in a startup? How can they develop empathy, compassion, and fierceness?

Mike Stemple: The first thing that pops to mind is the idea you're pursuing. You should have a credible claim yourself. You, as an individual, should have a credible claim to be one of the top 1, 2 or 3 people in that industry or that market with that idea. And the reason why that I think that's important is if you believe that, and you can find a way to believe that, even if it's delusional.

I think most startup successful startup founders are delusional. They believe in something that doesn't exist. They believe in a fantasy until they build the reality. And then suddenly everyone's like, oh, I guess you weren't delusional. But most successful founders are are seen as delusional at the beginning. That's okay. So I have this delusion that I might be one of the top 1, 2 or 3 people. But more importantly, I only work in industries that I want to be a participant in. For the new book I wrote about, I have thousands of ideas in the finance space. I hate wearing suits and I don't like the culture of finance. I don't like the way people talk in conventions or in small groups. I was talking about money and using it as a measuring stick of success. I just think that's disgusting. I can never be in finance, even though I have a thousand ideas in finance. I cannot be in finance. So I have to be one of the top one or 2 or 3 people in an industry that I actually want to be in, because I like the people. So that's number one, you'll be happier.

Two, is the consumer in that industry. You have to have a radical love of their them and your solution. So your solution has to be this amazing gift that is worth magnitudes more than what they paid for. So they have to see what you created as something that they're emotionally attached to. And if you think of all the successful startups out there, I mean, I think Apple is a good example. Steve Jobs did that. Amazing. I love my iPhone. I love my Apple devices. They don't disappoint me that much. I have an emotional attachment to them. So radical love of the consumer just radically love your consumer. Talk to them as often as you can. The light in there, the whimsy of them, discovering your technology and playing with that should be the main driver that gets you out of bed every day is just delighting your consumer.

And I think finally is don't hide behind stupid rules that society throws out that trys to keep you in the box. Be emotional. Like one of the things I hate most is when people say it's just business. No, it's not just business. This is time of my life in every moment of my life is an emotional experience to me. So it is emotional and it is personal. it's not just business. I think we've gotten to the point where people believe it's just business. So that gives them an excuse to hurt other people. And I just think that's disgusting. If you're going to be a startup entrepreneur, you can change that. You can be the example. You can go out and have a radical love for your consumer and still be a great capitalist. You make a ton of money. There's nothing wrong with making a lot of money. More importantly, don't treat your consumer and your partners and your employees in such a way that it's, oh, it's just business. Every engagement with every person is personal, and you might just be the person that inspires somebody else to go on a track to go do amazing things.

If you just step out from behind that logical persona, that it's just business and step into the emotional side and just think of every interaction I have with people. I want to be an inspirer. I want them to be inspired. I'm going to share everything about my life. I'm not going to hold anything back. Sure, people are going to use the things I say as weapons against me, but that's okay because there's a lot more people who are going to take the things I say and bring them into heart, inspire them. I'm going to bring the definition of inspire means to breathe life into. So I'm going to breathe life into other people, and they're going to go do amazing things.

Anita Brick: I love it, it is absolutely important. That's the name of your website too: Inspire.

Mike Stemple: Yeah, I put that very specifically in the the icon for inspire. I have one right here in front of me is a compass. This one has this really expensive nice compass on my desk to always remind me no matter where I go, it always points north that if you have a vision and you know you have a good vision for an idea, it will always point in the same direction. No matter where you're at, in the ground, in the sky, it always will point exactly where you need to go. Never lose track of the ultimate vision of your idea at the beginning, it matters.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right and you gave you the chills, which very rarely happens. I don't know that it's ever happened during a career cast interview, but I am so glad that you made time. What you said is not just relevant, but it is so important in today's world because if everyone behaves a little bit more like you described, the world will be better, period. Done. So thank you so, so much. This was amazing. So thank you very, very much.

Mike Stemple: Well, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Anita Brick:  You too. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.