102: How to Avoid a $10,000 Mistake in Your Business

Behind Their Success: Episode 102

William: [00:00:00] fixing mistakes is really expensive and embarrassing. Avoiding them is priceless. 

Paden: Hello everybody. Welcome to Behind Their Success Podcast. I am Paden Squires, the host, and today we have on William Holsten. William is a seasoned entrepreneur, inventor, bestselling author, and renowned business mistake prevention specialist. With a decade of experience turning Uhoh moments into opportunities, William's innovative approach has helped countless entrepreneurs avoid common pitfalls.

So he's here to share some wisdom. With us and the guest today, William, good morning. Welcome on Behind Their Success.

William: Thanks, Paden. I'm really glad to be here. my background, I spent four decades, almost four decades in a major global consumer health multinational company in both marketing and innovation. In the last 10, 12 years of that time, I also ran a side hustle where my family and I invented and marketed unique party and, [00:01:00] and, uh, carnival games. it's a story I'll get into later. I learned, especially in my side gig, the hard way that preventable mistakes hurt when you're an entrepreneur. 'cause the money comes out of your wallet, not outta corporate treasury. Uh, that's why I wrote my uhoh book. When I, when I retired from, from my company in 2022, I got busy writing a book, to leverage what I had learned as far as dumb mistakes and also leverage what I had used in my corporate career when I was leading workshops for problem solving and new product ideation. Those tools. I applied them to dumb mistake making. And that's what the Uhoh book really is about. so what I, I became the business Mistake prevention Specialist.

It's a title I hadn't heard before. Uh, so that I can help teach entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses, 'cause they're the most vulnerable ones, [00:02:00] especially in the beginning.

Um. How to avoid costly blunders by teaching them decision discipline, by teaching them the art of seeing trouble before it happens and by understanding themselves.

Paden: So, yeah, William, you wrote a book, right, called Uhoh, avoid Unintentional Blunders that derail entrepreneurial success.

Like what, what inspired you to do that?

William: my own experience as a entrepreneur, before 2000, my wife and I were, we're part of a big family. I have six brothers and sisters, and. Um, we were all invited by my sis, my older sister's daughter, to contribute something to a Make-A-Wish Foundation carnival. And, uh, the part, the party, the carnival was in their backyard in southeastern Pennsylvania in August. It was gonna be really hot, so I said, what a cool thing, let's get a dumb tank.

And we were moving towards that date and I got a call [00:03:00] from the rental company. Maybe three weeks before, and they said, I'm sorry, we can't rent you the dunk tank here in the Northeast.

As you know, back then, there's a drought and local law prevented them, uh, renting something that required 500 gallons to fill up.

Paden: Gotcha.

William: And he said, do you want something else I could toss across? I said, no, no, I'll figure this out. So then my wife and I sat down at our kitchen table, pen and napkin in hand. How might we, we try to figure out how might we do that dunk tank experience? Without that 500 gallons and that rental

and what we came up with, we also be called a game called Pitch Burst. It's, it's a game where the person sits in a chair on the ground and a water balloon is suspended over their head.

And when you toss a ball, it hits, uh, a target and it makes a, a nail or a a sharp thing put, poke the balloon and the gallon of water falls on their head. Uh, we called it the [00:04:00] drought proof dunk tank. Uh, that day it was 95 and humid. It was perfect. It was a great audience, and they, they made many, many hundreds of dollars for the charity.

So we thought, uh, I was working in marketing and innovation at the time and said, boy, this is something we should do. And people called me the next few days and said, where can I get that?

I said, please hold. we looked into it. I hired an attorney, we did a patent search and found out this had never been done before, so we filed a provisional patent and got busy. I also put together a business plan and went to a bank and got nearly a hundred thousand dollars loan to be able to produce a hundred of these things and, uh, spend money on marketing to the the rental company industry.

We did all that 

So it made a hundred of those. And we spent the money in rental Management magazine. And this is back then, it was not online.

Uh, we, we spent for [00:05:00] magazine advertising and direct mail and things like that. So most of our money was spent on inventory and

marketing and we succeeded. We sold in our first winter season. 60 of the games now called Pitch First. And we figured this is great. Uh, we could probably quit the day job at some point in the

future. then the warm weather came and these rental companies, at least in the, the northern part of the United States, 'cause we sold 'em nationally, uh, began renting them out in April, may, June. And one day the phone rang and they said, you know, the arm that makes the target go, it fell off. We said, oh, well, I'll send you a new part. And then the next day another call came, you know, the, the, the the pitch, the, the logo thing, it peeled off. It looks crummy. And I said, oh, we'll send you a new one of those. After about the 10th call

we had, I called it an uh oh moment. Um, we [00:06:00] realized this wooden version was really not fit for purpose. So we suffered through that first big summer where these calls were very routine. We stopped selling, we stopped our marketing, uh, to allow things to catch up with themselves, uh, where there were demands for it. Of course, we gave a refund. If I sold you something, I'm good for it.

We'll make good. So we, we did that. And the, the, that's, that was our first big mistake. it took us another 18 months and a loan extension.

We hired somebody that helped us make the same game out of steel. So it was bulletproof. And by the way, two things, if you're watching a video of this behind me is the patent drawing of that game. ultimately, uh, succeeded and that was in 2002. That's still being sold today. We sold it off.

Uh, but it, it was a design that was durable,

uh, behind me.

We, we also over the next [00:07:00] five or six years launched, invented and launched new games. Uh, each of which had their own learning curve. You said in a prior podcast, uh, that entrepreneurs have to earn, uh, pay down their debt of ignorance. That was your term,

and Yes, 

Paden: And that's a stolen term by the way. 

William: Uh, That's.

okay. That's, So we made dumb mistakes and in retrospect, they were preventable. Had we had the right tools to find out how to prevent that. It takes a little bit more time, but you can, it won't be bulletproof, but you'll be much better.

Uh, when I retired, after finishing my 40 year career with my world company, I said, I've gotta put this on paper. And I described, the first things I wrote were my experience with this games company. But then I realized to make this valuable for people like me starting their own businesses, I need to put in the tools they can use, uh, to do, do [00:08:00] what I wish I had back then. So the book includes 10 tools anybody can use.

They're all do it yourself at their kitchen table in a conference room, anywhere. Makes sense. Uh, to help I call the word goof proof their business. it's not, absolute mistakes still happen, but you wanna anticipate the ones that could

really kill you. These tools are in four groups. Um, one is understanding yourself. So there's some self-analysis tools to know your own tendencies for making mistakes. Typically, is it when you're tired? Is it when you're stressed and when you're upset because you're, you're, you're doing too many things. It, it helps you go through those. Another set of tools is understanding your customers by tools that allow you to map your customer's experience.

'cause so many entrepreneurs think they got the right idea and they run ahead and I did. And you [00:09:00] put it out there and you don't know if anybody's gonna like it. So you don't want to fall victim to something nobody wants. Uh, and then there's this, a part in that same section on testing and learning. You take a, a piece of it and you Frankenstein it so people can have the experience without going to develop the

full thing. 

Paden: Or, or without maybe spending, you know, 

William: yeah, hundreds hundred 

Speaker 3: before, you know it 

William: a bank, all of your SBA bank loan money. Right?

The third is understanding your own business and one of, there are four tools there, and one of my favorites is, uh, it's not my tool, it's one I found it's called Pre-mortem. Everybody knows the post-mortem that the pathologist finds out why somebody dies in a pre-mortem. You imagine, you and your team, imagine it's your business four years from now, and you were an utter failure. Everything happened wrong. What you do is creatively think of what, what happened? What did we do now that made that happen? So you brainstorm [00:10:00] those things. Then you pick the most important ones and create an action plan.

How can you correct for that now before it

Paden: Yeah. Yeah. I see. And I, I love that. and that really reminds me of Charlie Munger's of Eyes he said, invert always invert. Right? As in you're, you're thinking you're not, you're not thinking about what, you know, what can I do to make things go, go wrong? It's like, okay, or go right.

I mean, you're thinking of like, okay, how can I kill this business? Right? Like, what, how can I kill this business? Okay. You know, it's a lot easier for you to think of all those things and then you're like, okay, I just need to do the opposite of all those things. 

William: Exactly. You, you, you're thinking of what could a competitor do to kill me?

Uh, but more than that, what might I do? Stupid.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

William: And it's easy to think of stupid things when there's no risk at all.

The other thing on understanding your business is actually having a business plan. I'm a mentor with SCORE and I see new people every week who is starting businesses or it's struggling with their businesses.

They're [00:11:00] looking for mentors to help, and I'm observing, boy, a bunch of them, they have their business plan. It's in their head. They never wrote it down. So there's nothing to keep them heading towards the North Star or their goals, or maybe they didn't articulate goals. So having a business plan is really important.

And then finding what are the weak points in your business plan. Is part of that, part of the tool set? The fourth set of tools is about understanding the external world and leveraging that for your purpose. And one of them is understand, uh, learning lessons from others' mistakes. It was Warren Buffet who said, it's great to learn from mistakes, but it's better to learn from other people's mistakes.

I've gone a little bit further into the book. Of course, I detail my own glu, my own uhoh moments. And, but then I looked to the world outside and found there's a lot to learn from. one example that's really famous is the 2017 Miss Universe pageant where Steve Harvey was hosting and it came down [00:12:00] to the final two, and he says the winner is Miss Columbia.

And turns out that was wrong.

He had, he had a wrong, reference in his ear, and then he had to come out and embarrassingly.

Say it was Miss Philippi, the other one. But you can learn from that. Things like, when you're under high pressure, always allow for a pause section where you can stop and ask questions if you're not sure.

There, the, there's other lessons to draw. The most dramatic one is, the last one I'll mention here is a skydiver in Pennsylvania who was asked to. Film a tandem couple coming out of the plane after him.

His name was Ivan McGuire, and they're up at 10,000 feet. They all give each other a thumbs up. This was in the days before GoPro and,

uh, iPhones and, and smartphones. He jumps out and so he was wearing a pretty heavy cam, you know, video camera, uh, film camera. [00:13:00] He jumps out, they give each other the thumbs up and they jump out. He's got his camera, he's catching it, and it was a great shot and perfect. They, then the other couple reach for their rip cords and they, their parachutes go up and they come down safely. Ivan still shooting reaches for his rip cord and it's not there. He focused so much on the camera that he forgot his parachute. There's lots of mistakes there, but the lesson in the book that you can draw from is. What is it in your business that if you ever once forgot it, it could be disastrous, not faulty, your death, but disastrous for your business.

And I think of an inner city retail store. Maybe they left for the day at six o'clock and they forgot to lock the door and then they were robbed. Or somebody who's in charge of the. Business insurance. They forgot to renew a policy, then a fire happens or something. They're all screwed. Everybody, everybody in your audience can think, well, in my business, what is the one [00:14:00] thing? That's the type of thinking that is to help you goof proof and it's leveraging, uh, outside learning. So those are the tool sets. I felt it was very important to articulate them. Uh, in the book we talk about why, and then it's a bit of a how, and then there's actually a, an example. Some are hypothetical, some are not, uh, of how this tool could be used.

Paden: Yeah. that's some great stuff, William. I guess my, my kind of takeaways of, what all you kind of went through there. One, you know, going back to you building, you know, your game, 99.9% of people, even if they would've built that game and that in the beginning would've just stopped there and done nothing with it.

Right. Like, oh, that was a great little Saturday. That was cool. Right? And, and they would've just moved on and never saw the opportunity there. Right. and then, you know, really just going through your different, you know, four different tool sets there and in your book. Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of stuff we talk about here all the time.

we talk about self-awareness being a superpower, like. Man, if I could just have ultimate self-awareness, I [00:15:00] feel like I could do anything I wanted in the world, you know?

And obviously understand your customers and testing a business before, you know, especially like a product, product based business. You know, people will run out, buy all these products, buy all this inventory and realize, man, nobody even wants this. I thought it was really cool, but nobody cares. Right? And, and so the ability to be able to test and in today's world with online stuff and be able to run.

Marketing ads and whatever. You can do a whole lot of testing before you really spend any amount of money to see if the market, you know, to see if the, the market is there for, for your actual 

William: Yeah. And it's, it's not asked, of course, you always ask your family, your kids, and your wife or your husband, you like this? And yes, let's go. No, no, no, no. Uh, put that aside. Put that aside. They

love 

Speaker 3: means very little.

William: Yeah, I know. Uh. Is something that's gonna be, it'll, it's on my website. It's a, a free download that's called The $10,000 Mistake Checklist, and it [00:16:00] lists eight different syndromes or problems that mistakes typical entrepreneurs can make.

And number one, you were just talking about, it's, I call it the no one actually needs this syndrome and it's because you didn't check and do any validation. That makes sense.

Paden: yeah, yeah. You can build this, this thing that you absolutely think is amazing. Um, but if no one cares, no one cares.

William: and you can't make them care.

Paden: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Not the best marketing in the world. It's still a nothing to them. Um, they just don't see the value. Right. while you might all day long, the market is the ultimate judge. And, that's why, you know, we talk about the market being, you know, being a business is like the.

I say it's the greatest like self-development tool because like your feelings, whatever your, your product you put out, none of that matters. It's like what the market thinks of it. It's just this brutal like feedback loop evaluation that there's nothing to hide from. It's like people either bought it or they didn't and, and if they didn't, you need to figure out why and, and your [00:17:00] feelings don't matter.

William: uh, Paden, I, I listened to your hundredth episode yesterday, by the way. It was

really good. uh, you gave six lessons from interviewing a hundred entrepreneurs, and your number one was. Think bigger than you think is possible. That's true.

but do it with, uh, some realism there by doing some testing. And my other comment on that is it's important. This is from my corporate days when I was doing ideation things. What's the other right answer? If you have designed something, if you are, if you're an inventor like I am and you want to get this out to the world, you might discover nobody wants this. But if you talk about the problem that it's solving, you expose them to your idea today and they say, no, I don't like that, but I still have that problem.

You might then go to how else might we solve that problem? And it could be a tweak that makes all the difference in the world, but you have to do the work to discover that.

Speaker 3: Yeah, 

Paden: yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, you, nobody can do it for [00:18:00] you, right? And, and you gotta dive into to really anything and take control of it and that, and you know, and that's what you did, right? Like, that's what you did. Going back to the, you know, the game you created, right? There was a problem. we thought, oh, we can get a duct tank just like anybody else.

And there was a problem and you decided, oh, that's a problem I can take on and figure out how to fix. Um, and once again. 99% of people would've just blown right past that opportunity and never even saw it. And, and that's, you know, that's a big part of all of this is it comes back to self-awareness and, and the mindset of like looking for opportunities because they're, they're everywhere.

Opportunities. And the more and more I get into business and the more and more I developed my mindset, I'm like, there's 10 million ways to make money there. The opportunities are absolutely everywhere. It's, it's just people don't. They can't even see it, um, because their mind isn't even looking for it.

William: Yeah, if I can, I'll add a comment on one of the other tools in the book,

and it's, it's about, uh, uh, [00:19:00] understanding your business. It's about reframing and asking questions and using a different lens. To look at your problem. one of my discoveries when I was researching was that Picasso sometimes turned his paintings upside down when he were almost done to see.

He could see a different perspective on. I heard Dr. Seuss also did the same thing. Not sure he did or not, but find another way to look at the problem. Look at your solution, uh, from the eyes of a customer, from the eyes of. If it's business to business, the business, who's gonna resell it? People who know and have experience with these things, it's really helpful.

Paden: Yeah. And that just ringing in the back of my head, as Charlie Munger saying, invert, invert, always ask the question from the different perspective, right? From the complete opposite perspective. It's like, not how can this go right, but how can this go wrong and how can I avoid that? Right? Um, and it's, it, our brains are wired that way to where it's, it's, it's, it's a whole lot easier to actually [00:20:00] come up with answers when you flip that question on its head, and you're no longer thinking like.

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Paden: okay, say you're coming into the business. Like what kinda strategy do you use to just identify, you know, and, and prevent, you know, potential issues that the, business doesn't even know about?

William: But if, if I'm beating you for the first time and we're sitting down, uh, I'll begin by. Onboarding, listening to you just talk about your business, why you did the, why you did it this way, whatever. We'll then talk about, it's interesting asking people, tell me about the mistakes you've made because most people won't admit them as at least not to somebody else.

So we begin with, one of the tools, it's, look in the mirror, it's called, it's that self-diagnostic tool. You do think all by yourself. I did do this before I get there [00:22:00] all by yourself. You sit down and list out the top three blunders you've made and then you check off. What were the reasons, the reasons most people make these simple mistakes.

These are not strategic big mistakes. These are simple ones they could have avoided. Um, they, they check off what are the causes? There's a checklist of what might have cost. I was tired, I was stressed. If I was angry, I wa it was four o'clock in the morning. I, I depended on faulty assumptions that I didn't check. Uh, they can find out what their pattern is, uh, if it's an individual or indi, if it's a team, everybody does it. And then we discuss what leads to these things. Then we'll be talking about what's the, we'll talk about the, the parachute thing. What's the worst thing that could happen and how might you prevent that? But then we'll see. Based on the company or the individual situation, what are you planning to do? Tell me, show me your business plan. What are you planning to do in the next couple years? And then we'll do the pre-mortem [00:23:00] to to do the, what might go wrong. Um, then I'll take from the 10 tools, appropriate ones to take the do the exercises. I use worksheets, we do things together on flip charts, um, to draw out. A action list of what are the five things to take away from this? if people are forgetting things, create the right checklist. if people are surprised that they didn't anticipate something, we'll design the exercises they might do to be a better anticipator, things like that.

It is customized, but it's generally applying what I've got in the book to their situation.

Paden: Yeah. Yeah. And, to me, you know, I hear it's, it's a lot of planning in an organization or, just like, okay, let's. know, they talk about, you know, people don't rise to the occasion, they fall to the level of preparedness, right? Like, you get in a stressful, you know, situation. People don't like suddenly become superheroes.

If anything, they fall to the [00:24:00] level of like their most preparedness, right? you know, when you hear this stuff, I mean, this is a lot of what that is. And you know, in my head at least, when you're working with entrepreneurs and whatnot, like they, they, some of these people cringe at some of this stuff, and the reason they cringe at some of this stuff is because like, they want to be this free creative artist.

You know what I mean? That, that kind of stuff. 

William: right? They wanna be Steve Jones.

Paden: yeah, they hear this and think, oh man, that sounds very, like, stifling to me. Right. Like, can you, can you speak to that a little bit of how, like, structure and planning, it doesn't actually even stifle you creativity.

It allows you to, not have to worry about a lot of day-to-day things and actually be even more creative, um, in my opinion. But can you, can you speak to that a little bit?

William: yes, each exercise is different, but each one causes you to think either by yourself or with your

team. More creative ideas, uh, both about the threats and about the solutions to those threats, so that at the end you're [00:25:00] smarter. Uh, by the way, the five words I use in the book you'll say, duh, but I say that the answer to avoiding these preventable mistakes is simply to think smartly and be more aware.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

William: But then I say, well, it, it is only that. But that's really hard

Paden: Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's a whole practice of that. It sounds easy.

William: 'cause ' when you're in, when you're draining the swamp, when you're in the thick of things, your customer did something wrong yesterday. Your, your competitors are doing something, you, there, there's a delay because of, um, shipping.

The, the, you don't have your product. You're outta stock. You are worried about all the things about growth and success. Nobody's looking for, how do I prevent.

You have to flip that and realize without this, you put that success, all that effort in danger if you do something dumb.

Paden: Yeah. the general personality of entrepreneur. This is, it's a weakness of theirs. [00:26:00] and that's not true across the board, but generally, these entrepreneurs are these kind of high driving, high autonomous, you know, creative people. That, once again, all this sounds, you know, probably.

Torturous them in their head. Right? But they don't understand that's exactly what they need to go to the next level. Right? It's like, it's like if you're, you're, you know where you're at today and you want to get to, you know, this higher level, well, you're missing something. Right? And, generally.

This is a huge hole for entrepreneurs, right, where they just, they don't want to be structured to be able to put any of this stuff together. And I, I promise you, if you don't build structure and operations and SOPs and all those things, you're never going to the next level.

William: that was your lesson number two you mentioned yesterday. That's right. Yeah. my take on this is, fixing mistakes is really expensive and embarrassing. Avoiding them is priceless.

The cost of. Time or by the book, or if you read the book or if we talk personally or you come to a talk, [00:27:00] I'm giving. That small investment can multiply itself. If you put it to work.

Paden: yeah, yeah, yeah. If you actually 

William: you need to be, need to be honest with yourself.

and the takeaway I try to give people what I'm talking is, all right. I give them a handout of, of the 10 and I said, in the next week, pick one of these and give it a try.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

William: Because no, you, you can't do everything all at once in any part of your business, and it's overwhelming to think of all the, all the time involved in doing each of these. Pick the one that appeals to you. And I always recommend do that self-analysis first

Paden: Yeah.

William: it's gonna last you beyond your business.

Paden: Yeah. one big thing I would tell all the listeners, like, if you haven't taken like, multiple, multiple personality tests on yourself, do it. There's plenty of them out there. And, that's gonna show you your weaknesses and it's gonna show you your strengths, right? And you can lean in your strengths, but then you need to especially build systems around your weaknesses, right?

And or bring, you know, more team members in that, that's their [00:28:00] strengths, to cover all those holes, right?

William: Oh, I, I do have to say what I put in the book is not Myers Briggs or one of the complicated ones. This is quite,

what went wrong and you realize, boy, I shouldn't do anything when I'm super stressed. I should just defer it.

Paden: Yeah. That's pretty much everybody, you know?

William: Yeah.

Paden: Yeah. And, and like, you know me, it's like, yeah, same thing, you know, when I, you know, maybe get angry or excitable about something where. I always do something where I'm like, you know, a day later I'm like, that was stupid. What did I do? You know what I mean? Like, you, you, when you're in that real emotional state, you're, you're always gonna do something that, you know, a couple days later you're like, man, I wish I wouldn't have done that, man, I 

William: I know 

Paden: All, all those things, right?

William: in my case, when I think back on my game business. my mistakes were material choices that made something that was not good for purpose, that was relying on, uh, faulty, unchecked assumptions

because I assumed it was okay. Based on my experience. It wasn't sufficient.

Paden: Yeah. you had your experience, you [00:29:00] used it the one day and you're like, ah, went great. Right? that is not necessarily every, um, environment that thing's gonna be in and, you know, yada yada, yada. Right? And, and yes, we humans are great at that experience something, and then projecting that out onto the entire world as, as just.

Truth, and that's how the world works. And, often we're wrong. so, you know, another question here for you, William. So, for new entrepreneurs, what habits or routines do you like consider essential for success?

William: Habits or routines? Um, thinking through being honest with yourself. And that does require writing a business plan. You do need to have, even if it's bullet points on a single page, this is what I'm intending. So it aligns your thinking. It also keeps you honest when you go. Three weeks in, and that didn't happen

with, with those, because you're going to articulate your assumptions and what your plan is and what [00:30:00] your success criteria are and with among other things. And if you don't have the success, you have to have a plan B or know how you'll pivot or make some different decision.

Paden: Yeah. here's the thing, you know, I'm a CPA accountant, been in business for well over a decade, and, I've never written one out. And, and, and I'm not saying that to, you know, um, denounce anything you just said there. I would've been way better off had I Right. Because it's, it's really thinking about what is success.

Like, okay, I'm going to, in my example, I'm gonna open up a tax firm. Okay? What. You know, three years from now, if I'm to look at this and say this is was successful, what does that mean specifically? Right? And, and that really gives you that north star of like, 'cause it's so easy to always be, you know, getting pulled off track and getting distracted and pulled into different opportunities or things you think are opportunities.

Um. And, and it's just having that north star right of, of [00:31:00] thinking through what am I building? Why am I building it? What is success? What is failure in my own terms? 'cause you get, actually get to define that. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. 

William: And those ventures won't be just your revenue or profit level. It's your personal satisfaction. It's your work life balance. It's how many people in the world you are helping, if that's important to you. So it, it's you design on your business plan what you're trying to achieve, then hold yourself to it.

Paden: Yeah. and the other thing think is, you know, very important about writing that down in the process of that is you've set something in stone or you know, as much as it could be set in stone, and then also. You should share that with people you know, and get accountability around that and that way you know, if someone else knows exactly what you're trying to accomplish and they can whip you when you need to get back in.

William: Yeah. one further thought. Having, uh, and, I'm a score mentor. There's 10,000 score mentors across the country. I do encourage somebody who's just beginning thinking about stuff. [00:32:00] Uh, the mentorship is free. you can go to score.org/find a mentor or mentor or something and get one assigned to you, and you could, that's a free person.

You can bounce ideas off. The other tool I use once in a while is AI check GPT.

You can write your business plan. Do it first, by the way, right at the best you can. Then you can

upload it and say, please clean this up and make

Paden: Yeah. Poke holes in it. You can even ask him, what, why wouldn't this work? What am I not even thinking about? What questions didn't I ask?

William: yes. And, and you can even put in there, uh, you play the role of a skeptical banker who won't lend me the money. What are the holes here that I'll have to fill? And you can sharpen it back and forth. So I'm, I'm amazed by that tool.

Paden: Yeah. Skeptical banker. I love that. Yeah. It's like, uh, it's because the banker wasn't an entrepreneur and he doesn't know how to run a business, last question here for you.

so looking back, you know, the beginning of your [00:33:00] career or I guess just really over your whole journey, um, for your perspective today, what is one piece of advice you'd give yourself or, you know, wish you would've known? Um, at the beginning?

William: I, I'll speak to my entrepreneurial journey, uh, because the corporate thing I wa I was, I was fortunate that I got to follow a career path. Part of it was traditional. Then I took a left turn and I got into innovation and I discovered what I really loved

that led me to this. Um. Uh, but, but when, when it was that hot day in August of 1999 and we were playing this pitch first game for the first time, the desire, if I could go back and be myself in that role again, would be to study it a bit more and look at the market and understand the market requirements a lot better, and then probably find a partner. Or look at a different business model. We decided to do it all ourselves,

have it manufactured and sell. We [00:34:00] owned a patent that we could have sold off to somebody who was already good at this,

and I would've learned a lot less, but I might've made a lot. A lot

Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. 

Paden: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, and it's true. It's like, you know, when we look back at our, you know, what we consider mistakes or, or sidesteps or, or whatever, it's, they're not really mistakes or sidesteps. I mean, the amount of knowledge you learned coming through that. has propelled you, I'm sure in all kinds of different areas, you know, further down your journey.

But yeah, you know, you're looking back on that patent. You could have waved it around in somebody's face like, Hey, who wants to make these for me? And Right.

William: Yeah. my own business plan at the beginning was to do this. To rental companies, business to business for a couple of years and then make a home version of it

and sell it through party and toy 

Speaker 3: Toys R Us or something. 

William: yeah, because we went so bad in the negative with the debt we had,

we, we didn't have the ability to design it that way and do anymore. Since then, if you go to walmart.com, you can [00:35:00] find people selling that game that way 'cause the patent, uh, is still enforced, but it doesn't apply to home games.

Paden: So William, you know, what is, the best way the listeners can get ahold of you, follow you, learn more about you, just kind of connect with you? What's the, what's the best way they can reach you?

William: Well, if you want to remind yourself that fixing mistakes is very expensive and preventing them is priceless, go to william holston.com. It's my name. on there, you'll get, my story, the reasons why preventing mistakes is so important. There is a free downloadable checklist, the the $10,000 mistake checklist, which is an entree to thinking what could go wrong.

Um, so it, it's, my website is the best place to go, William holston.com.

Paden: Awesome. William, I appreciate you coming on the show. It's been a great conversation. Any last parting words for the audience?

William: the Uhoh moments, uh, I, I made up an acronym for it. You think of the UHOH, they're unintentional, [00:36:00] unintentional, humbling, observable, and they cause a hardship.

I, I wish you life without uhoh moments.

Paden: I love it. Yeah. Or when they come, make sure you learn something from them. 

William: Absolutely think smartly. Be more aware.

Paden: I appreciate you so much. It's been a great conversation and listeners, we'll catch you next time.

William: Thanks, Paden Good to see you.

Paden: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build this and reach more people as we're trying to accomplish our goal of help creating more healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs. You can follow us on social media by searching for me Paden Squires.

Or going to padensquires.com on the website and social media. We're always sharing tips of personal growth and there we can actually interact. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.