Harnessing Curiosity and Innovation: A conversation with Mark Hayward of the Business Growth Podcast

In this episode, Danny Nathan shares his journey from a traditional advertising career to becoming a serial entrepreneur. Danny's story is a testament to the power of curiosity and the entrepreneurial mindset. He emphasizes how his natural inclination towards exploration and his dissatisfaction with the status quo led him to pivot from advertising to the tech world. His career transformation highlights the importance of questioning existing methods and seeking innovative solutions. Danny's experiences in advertising, where he often felt confined by traditional approaches, served as a catalyst for his ventures into product design and technology.

The Importance of Listening and Adaptability:

Danny delves into the significance of listening and adaptability in both personal and professional growth. Drawing from his background in theater, he discusses how the skills of active listening and reacting on the fly have been invaluable in his business endeavors. These abilities have enabled him to better understand client needs, foster collaboration, and drive meaningful innovation. Danny's perspective on the intersection of listening and adaptability offers valuable insights for entrepreneurs looking to enhance their leadership skills and build stronger connections with their teams and customers.

Strategies for Implementing Technology and Automation:

A major focus of the conversation is on the current trends impacting businesses, particularly the role of technology and automation. Danny discusses how Apollo 21 helps companies navigate the complexities of integrating AI and automation into their operations.

Check out the episode here.

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Transcript:

welcome to another exciting episode of business growth talks the podcast where we delve into the strategies and stories

behind some of the most successful business ventures I'm your host Mark Hayward and today we have an incredible

guest who has over two decades of experience in product and Technology joining us today is Danny Nathan a

dynamic leader who has been instrumental in helping companies create new products and launch new Ventures Danny's career

spans from founding Innovative startups like date the date night is and Seer to

drive major products for industry groups like Jager Meister Dyson and American Express known for his versatile roles in

product manag product person ux expert designer strategist and

marketeer currently Dany is the founder of Apollo 21 a unique blend of business

consultancy product design studio and ventur and Venture he specializes in

helping companies overcome complex business challenges and scale through Technology Solutions we are going to

explore lots of different areas for [Music]

Danny and thank you very much Danny thank you for joining me today thanks for having me I'm excited to be here and

looking forward to a great chat absolute pleasure so Danny first question I ask all of my guests is what does a business

mindset mean to you that's a great question Mark I think a lot of that comes down to what aspect of

business you're interested in or pursuing but for me that immediately brings to mind an entrepreneurial

mindset and a an innate curiosity to explore the world around you to look for

opportunities for new businesses or finding interesting new business models

that can change the way that people either accomplish things or help them themselves problems or just view the

world around them so you talked about curiosity so you've run a couple of

business like a number of businesses you seem to be a bit of a serial entrepreneur is how describe it no

that's that's good that's good what would you say how do you explain your curiosity where did it come from have

you always had that and part of your makeup and how have you been able to go through different businesses yeah

absolutely I've definitely always had some sort of ious nature behind what

I do that being said startups and business-minded entrepreneurial

Adventures came about for me relatively late in life relatively I had graduated

from graduate school before I ever thought about starting my own business or what the world of startups looked

like and me that Curiosity was born out of I to be frank it was born out of a

distaste for where my career started I started in the world of advertising on the creative side and very quickly

realized that I didn't enjoy spending my days doing that work in large part because I join the world of advertising

at a weird transitional point where when I went through AD school everything that we learned was how to create TV spots

how to create newspaper and magazine ads very traditional media outlets and then

I joined I joined the workforce right around a time when the internet was

becoming far more highly established and the idea of tech technology providing a

touch point for consumers to get involved with businesses was really

taking off and so that kind of ignited that Curiosity for me and in part was

driven by the frustration around how I had been trained to help companies

interact with customers and consumers and it just felt wrong to me so I took

it upon myself to give myself a crash course in what the next stage of the

world looked like and that really ignited that Curiosity for me and the thought process around how businesses

and consumers might interact so we started off in advertising which is an interesting area and then you went into

the product design and and and that so I find that really interesting that transition for you what was that what

what was that like for you when you were moving from one industry into another I

was fortunate I in my frustration uh cons considered a

number of paths to move forward that ranged anywhere from going after a second master's degree to leaving the

country and going and exploring the world and all of that fun stuff and For Better or Worse happened to find a job

before I took any of those drastic actions and I found myself working for a

company here in New York called poke which was the New York branch of a a

London company by the same name actually and it was the first place that I had

worked where the folks who ran the business were willing to say no and

really willing to stick to their guns so to speak in terms of how they approached

new business opportunities and what our clients and customers were asking us for and it gave me the opportunity to be

more provocative and more contrarian in my approach to the work that I was doing than anywhere I had seen before and I

think that in many ways smoothed at that transition for me because it was an outlet for the frustration that I had

felt in advertising and I suddenly felt like I had found my people I had found a

group of people who were highly encouraging of speaking my mind when it

came to ideas like no you shouldn't do that or no a TV spot that costs a

million bucks and is really just a brand screaming something at the world regardless of whether the people on the

other end of that megaphone were in their target market or anything like that I had gotten really frustrated with

that aspect of the world and my time at Pope gave me an opportunity to Branch

out and explore other ways for Brands and consumers to interact that's amazing that's a really interesting story at the

transition and so I was I worked in corporate all my audience know this I've worked in corporate for 14 years 12 13

14 years and and left I've been doing my podcast for a long time but left that environment and the transition

actually was something that I'd started many years ago yeah and starting a

self-development self like progression and then in went into Business and Entrepreneurship and it was something

that happened over a number of years it was just not until I left the corporate

job did I actually become the term business owner/ entrepreneur did you so you were finding

that frustration early early doors but was there you said that end location of

product design which is really where you've excelled and you've created businesses it's it like what like that

Rome wasn't built in a day what were the what were those key Milestones where you were like actually I need to try

something different and then moving into that new area there were definitely key Milestones I I'll be frank it came down

to and I this is utterly ingrained in my memory uh there was one specific meeting

at my last ad advertising job that I for lack of better terms broke me um I if I

can take a minute to tell the story and and I'll try to keep it brief my my art director partner sorry my copyrighting

partner and I were called into a meeting with the heads of our agency and to make a long story short they sat us down and

said we have a million dollars to create an online game that will attract kids

and we need to come up with a great idea the best that we have so far is online where's Waldo type of thing and we were

working for a a company that makes pancake syrup of all things yeah exactly

and so it's not the most natural fit is it exactly and so they they went on and on about how we had just completed a

series of TV spots where the bottle which happened to have kind of a human form factor animated to life and talk to

the kid on the table his mom's making pancakes in the background and blah blah blah and so I sat through this meeting

for about 45 minutes and I don't think I've said two words and I could I could tell I was getting side eye glances from

from the bosses they were going you're not contributing here come on and I finally spoke up and said okay let me

get this straight the talking bottle is the essence of this brand right because the strategy officer had spent a bunch

of time explaining that early in the meeting and they're going yes you get it this is great I said rather than

spending a million dollars on a where's Waldo game why don't we literally just put talking bottles on the shelves and

grocery stores so that kids get the same experience that we've just created ated in these TV

spots and the idea hit the room like a lead balloon and it was just dead quiet

in the room for what felt like an eternity and was probably a few seconds and finally my creative director looked

at me and said that's package design that's outside of our purview and that was it I I just I was

entirely demoralized at that point and from that day forward I I wish I could

tell you that I I threw my hands up and yelled I quit and ran out of the room because it make for a great story but of

course I was uh young and starving and living in New York City and so I instead of walking out the door that was the

moment that really instigated change for me and I I had been writing for a Blog

and had been exploring the digital space more and more over the year and a half or so previous and in that moment I or

following that moment I went out and I I bought a stack of books about yayi that were from Seth Goden and a bunch of

other folks that were espousing views of the world that align to the frustrations

that I've described and so I created a second MBA program for myself uh just

through Reading and really forced myself to have a a shift in mindset around what

the possibilities were for the type of work that I was doing and that uh set

the kind of set the tone for where I was looking for new jobs I was looking at any place that was not an ad agency

basically I happened to then meet the folks at poke which then led to the

opportunities that I've described and really created a shift in my view of the

world and my view of what was possible if you had folks that gave you the

freedom and the autonomy to start saying to the brands knocking on the door hey

we don't believe that's the way forward we think think that the solution to the problem you're describing is X and if

they didn't align to that type of thinking that was fine they they went on and found a better partner than what we

probably would have been because we didn't align to their thinking but we had the opportunity to work with some

amazing Brands you mentioned a couple American Express Dyson Etc General Mills and I I spent five years at poke having

the opportunity to work on projects with Brands and partners that I probably

never would have would have got my hands on otherwise and so that

experience introduced me to ux design forced me to start thinking about what

it meant to be a business in the age of technology and what it meant to provide

value for consumers first and foremost before you started asking something of

them and those experiences shaped everything that has come after amazing

thank you for expl explaining that and and sharing that right before we start going into more where you are now and

what you're doing let's go back so tell me one thing about your upbringing which

reflects on who you are today my my mom told me something all

the time and I throughout my childhood I I spent a lot of time in theater I grew

up in Texas where if you didn't play football you didn't exist and I didn't play football ball instead I was in the

theater and my mom continually said to me keep exploring your own path And when

everybody else zigs zag go your own Direction figure out who you are

and I that has literally become a rule that has guided my life when they zig

zag and it's something that I refer to often so I've my own rules since but and it

couples with the contrarian view that you got in poke as well well because I I

often think various books and podcasts where

people say about never follow everyone else like always think about the a

different way of doing things and I often think about like I'm quite contrarian with investing in stocks and

things like that if something is booming then I look okay what's going to be the next thing or where where is that coming

from and trying to be contrarian about it do you think that has helped you in

your life your story that you said about your mother and as well as poke do you think that there actually seems to be

some alignment and some sort of connection between what your mom was telling you when you were a kid and what

your experience was at poke uh there's no question I those two things align and

I think that the continuous encouragement to explore my own path and to make my own way in the world has

impacted everything that I've done I continued the pursuit of theater through my college Years and actually have

degree in acting which uh a lot of people looked at me and said what what are you going to do with that and it has

that that perspective on the world has encouraged me in just about everything that I have done and has dictated that

instead of taking the corporate career path for example that I have as you pointed out become a bit of a serial

entrepreneur and somebody who is always trying to find my own way through things and find my own way toward

success that's fantastic and and do you do any acting now in the theater do do you do

any no I I gave that up after college but I have to admit even my mom who as

I've espoused the tone for a lot of my way through the world continually said

to me during college really are you sure you want to keep doing this and what I have found is that my path in acting has

served me incredibly well throughout my career and I I did couple it with a second major in business in marketing at

my mom's encouragement but even she has come around at this point and said you know what never in a million years would

I have expected that your acting degree would serve you as well as I have seen it do and the ability to talk to people

to articulate myself to react on the Fly and to be comfortable in front of others

has served me in my career probably better than just about anything else that I can point at do you know

something I share an experience for me the reason why I started this show six and a half years ago was in my career I

was starting to do presentations and talks to groups and I was agonizing over

the preparation for it and I still prepare incredibly well like these interviews I spent an hour learning

about you Danny before you're even on the show um but the reason why I did the show was because I wanted to get find my

voice more comfortable in my in all those cliches but they are cliches for a reason and it has helped me and I feel

now that I'm a lot more comfortable explaining things talking to people go like interviewing people so I think

there is an element of that those soft skills those presentation skills being able to talk for you on a podcast me

interviewing on a podcast these skills should not be under underestimated how valuable they can be in business because

so many people don't want to do Sal calls do these sorts of interviews

communicate with people do you think that do you think it has given you that leverage that's that sort of

differentiated you as an entrepreneur undeniably what you're

describing has the need to get in front of people to make presentations to talk to people to learn how to ask people

questions things of that sort I agree are inherent in the world of business and I was fortunate that I didn't really

struggle with that aspect of the business World largely because I had spent years learning how to stand up in

front of people how to how to speak how to listen and you can look at it and say

okay there's the theater side of it in terms of being on a stage and so on but you study acting in the theater for as

long as I did you also learn a lot about how to listen to people and how to pay

attention to the Nuance of what they're presenting be it verbally or otherwise

so that you can react to it on stage and what I have found is that it helps me be

a better listener and become more attuned to the person across from me even when I'm not on stage because it

has trained me to listen and to pay attention and to think about things like body language and things of that sort

that helped me track a conversation that helped me tell a story in terms of a presentation

things like that and so it has been massively helpful do you do show tunes as well no no one thing that I never

learned how to do was sing and believe me you do not want me to try it's not pretty sorry I i' I've any teasing you I

just wondered whether you branched into singing as well all right no that yeah

never happened there all right let's get on to your experience in product so with your background in product in Tech what

are some of the trends that are impacting businesses in the current

market can I give you the pat expected answer here and then I'm I'm happy to move Beyond and then give me the real

answer afterward yes give give me the stock answer first it's fine you cannot ask that question today without somebody

saying Ai and it's changing everything it's it's going to have it has already

had but it is going to have an incredible impact on everything that we do and one of the biggest questions that

we get today is I think I need AI how does that happen or we're behind the

we're behind the eightball on AI what do we do and the reality in my mind is that while

companies undeniably cannot ignore the Advent of AI and what it is going to do

and enable for their business the sad truth is that most companies aren't

ready to implement AI in truly impactful and meaningful ways for their business

yet because for as much as we have all spent the last 10 years collecting data

most organizations have done a terrible job of figuring out out how to structure that data and make it useful and if as a

human you can't figure out what's going on with your data it's pretty it's a pretty big stretch to expect that some

sort of AI agent might be able to do that for you without needing needing some help and so we talk with a lot of

our clients about how to prepare for the implementation of AI we talk with a lot of our clients about some of the lower

hanging fruit and existing AI tools that they can use today that will help make their lives incrementally easier as we

build towards the tools that will make their lives dramatically easier um and then we also talk a lot about what you

can do without actually implementing Ai and so we get into the world of automation a fair bit and thinking about

simple if this then that opportunities around if this type of task comes

through our workflow and we see X and Y are true then we should blank and that

has played a massive role for how we approach our clients a lot of the work that we do is heavily focused on helping

clients build out useful impactful automation that can be done quickly that will change the way that their

organizations work as we prepare for the deeper implementation of

AI that's interesting so so as an entrepreneur we're told by people in the

node the automation is the way to go and and I agree when you're creating systems and processes to be able to automate

them makes a huge difference in in your life as an entrepreneur a solopreneur a business owner however you want to

describe it but it's interesting that the do you help them with the strategy

and the implementation of the automation CU a lot of people primarily give the

strategy and say oh this is what you need to go and then push them out the door and say okay we're on to the next one but you help them with the

implementation as well do you we do and I think that that's one of the things that makes us as a company and we

haven't dug into the world of Apollo 21 yet but as a as a bit of a as a bit of a hint I think that's one of the things

that differentiates us and we pride ourselves on not giving the advice and

then stepping away because there's a lot of companies that do that and it's frustrating if you're sitting on the

other side of that table and somebody says to you oh you should go blank great

should should is the worst world in the language is yes exactly you should great thank you I

should I should exercise every day I should do a lot of things but the

reality is that if you can't make that tangible and actionable and help

somebody figure out how to get Beyond should and into the world of doing and did then all of your advice is

marginally helpful at best it's what the old management consultancies were brilliant at wasn't it they would stay

with a team for 6 to8 weeks give a wonderful presentation at the end of it and just walk out the door awful what an

awful business model that that we ended up with as a and I do know I've got

friends of mine that are doing something similar not always in the tech but in other Industries and she was saying to

me we're in the trenches with them we're working with them to be able to make

those steps we're not just giving recommendations it's so important for a business to actually learn through the

process and not just get told to do and then you then have the issue of hiring the people to bring in to do what the

recommendations are and you're probably in spaces that you're not in terribly comfortable with yeah I think that's it

so tell me exactly what Apollo 21 does and who you help and who you serve yeah

that's a great segue cuz I'm itching to react to what you're saying by talking a bit about it so i' like to tell people

that Apollo 21 sits at the intersection of a management consultancy a product design studio and there's a venture

Studio component to it that I'll leave for later and the reason that I tell people that we sit at that intersection

is literally exactly what we're talking about right now Mark because if I told you that we were a management

consultancy either inwardly or outwardly you would probably roll your eyes and go great you're going to say should a lot

and you're going to hand me a presentation and leave and that is not what we do and to the point of what

you've just described from your friend one of the core tenants of our business is Relentless collaboration we also work

very hard to ingrain ourselves into the organizations that we're working with

and to ensure that when we are putting forward advice like you should that we

are following it up immediately with and here's how we think it can be done and

we can help you accomplish it if you would like and that's an important line to draw we

have executional capabilities inous we have folks who have built technology for their entire careers and I've spent much

of my career doing the same thing um and that's important because if you're going to give somebody that type of advice and

if you're going to help them think about the changes that will impact their business that will help them scale and

that will help them achieve growth you have to also be there to help them execute and what we find is that a lot

of our clients do not come from a technology background their businesses are not grounded in technology at least

beyond the reality of how much any business today is grounded in technology

and so they don't have product teams they don't have software Engineers they don't have the in-house capability to

implement the types of Technologies automations AI whatever it is that we're suggesting to them and so we have to be

ready willing and able to help them execute and to your point you also

mentioned the idea of building the team that's another one of the core tenants that we operate on is we expect that

when we work with those types of clients they will eventually outgrow us and so

I'll come back to that in one second but generally our business is focused on one of three things we help our clients

build new products that exist within their current portfolio thumbs up yeah we help clients

build and launch new Ventures that will enable greater scale and new business models beyond what they've explored to

date and then we help them solve core business Problems by Building Technology for them and so in doing that what we

find is that if we are successful in building a new product in building a new Venture alongside those teams inevitably

we're going to hit a point where they say to us guys this has been amazing you've helped us create something new we

now need to operationalize that internally and there's sort of two ways to look at that you can either fight

against that flow and try to hold on to that business and that client for as long as humanly possible ring every

penny out of them which I have learned is not the way that I like to do business or you can approach those

engagements with the understanding from day one that in success if we do our jobs they're going to outgrow us and

they're going to come to us one day and say guys it's time for us to to fly out of the nest and I would rather build a

business that helps those companies that helps our partners prepare for that eventuality

from day one and that could mean that we help build their team internally that

could mean that we hire a team that we then utilize for the execution and literally hand off to our client our

teams could become their team quite literally and then they they have the

benefit of continuing to work with a team that is familiar with and that built that product or that service from

the ground up and is now sitting in house and has the capability to continue

that activity to grow and to become the technology team that they may not have had at the start and when you're doing

that you're in essence you're creating products so new lines of

service or products that they have not thought about so if it was um this is a

terrible example if they were a ketchup company for example you might then

produce a brown sauce or mayonnaise what it's a terrible example I know but it's

you're you do it with technology rather than condiments but you're in essence looking for parallel businesses or or

business models to that are still aligned with the business but thinking about new product lines that they might

not have thought about or they didn't have the capability to be able to develop that's exactly right I love the

condiment example by the way although we don't do much work in condt yet to help ground that a little bit we often tell

people there's no reason that Hyatt or Hilton or Marriott couldn't have started Airbnb for example there's no reason

that a huge car rental company or the New York City taxi services couldn't

have created Uber uh but the reality is that as organizations grow they become

ingrained in whatever their day-to-day businesses now and it becomes very

difficult to see past the blinders of what could we do if we stepped just

beyond the comfort zone of hotel rooms for example and into the world of giving people

places to stay and it's such a simple kind of almost minor shift in mentality

of we're a hotel company we give people a place to stay what else might align to

the idea of people places to stay please yeah sorry to cut in this is actually

this is brilliant right and I tell you why it's brilliant Danny is because so

many businesses they get successful to an extent they find one area and thing

that's coming into my mind is Blockbusters versus Netflix of course and Blockbusters said we are a video

company or a CD like DVD company and we don't expand out of that what do you

like you see these companies and you're working with these companies what is the mentality the culture within a company

that doesn't think strategically to other product lines

just outside of their comfort zone what like why are these companies historically as telephones they didn't

embrace it what is it with culture of business which means that they won't

think slightly outside the box there is so much to unpack for that question mark

in my experiences as businesses grow they focus on efficiency and we look at

publicly traded companies just as an example that often focus on shareholder Returns on

quarterly returns and on metrics that force them to keep the blinders on

because the idea of exploration and Innovation and the idea of cultivating

growth in scale from areas that are just beyond your core business are

inherently not efficient they fall outside of those metrics that most businesses live and die by for example

let's with Blockbuster had Blockbuster looked around and said hey the internet's becoming a thing I wonder if we can send movies over the Internet it

would have required time and exploration and expenditure to get to the point to

figure out can we do it do people want it is there value there will people pay

for it etc etc and that expenditure goes against the idea of

creating shareholder value mitigating risk limiting the expenditure of capital

and ensuring that every penny sees a return within the shortest possible time

period And so as long as you're focused on those metrics you're going to struggle to create tangible Innovation

that lives just beyond your reach this is so fascinating I'm hooked I'm

absolutely hooked in this and I've got a lot of different ways that I want to go the one way I want to start with is so

the element of risk versus uh well not versus risk and R&D so research and

development that idea of going just outside your comfort zone and finding something I'm finding that absolutely

fascinating our conversation because R&D whatever industry you're in it should be

a package that you should be looking at for the next Trend the next wave the

next Direction you're going into but what you said about quarterly metrics

everyone is just thinking about the next quarter they're not thinking about where the next trend is coming what is the

essence of risk why why are companies even with all of our experiences of the

last 60 years of there is always a growing Trend there's always a new wave and you have to keep on top of it or you

could die what why is that risk of R&D so suppressed in

companies I think it is because as companies grow the primary focus becomes

earning money today and creating those short-term returns so that the books

look good so that we can continue the growth Trend that will keep our numbers

moving in the right direction that will then impact our stock prices positively Etc and if you look at if you look at

the trends across businesses what we're finding today is that businesses are lasting for the lifetime of a business

is much shorter today than it it has been previously businesses are growing

and then dying much faster than what we're used to and Blockbuster is a great example they had a great blip for

whatever that time period of 10 15 20 years was from VHS through DVD and now

they're gone and they're literally just gone maybe there's the last block think there's any I don't think there's any

left yeah exactly focusing on the now and not and ignoring the idea of

longevity effectively what you do is you limit your ability to the type of R&D

the type of innovation the type of exploration and ultimately the type of growth that will carry you beyond that

short Lifetime and I don't have a great answer for why

necessarily perhaps it's because as we look at how businesses and Founders are growing today they're getting enough you

look at unicorn type exits and you go hey if I can make a a billion dollar exit and walk away with a ton of money

in my pocket in five or 10 years why would I worry about extending that out

so that my business lives 50 or 100 years for example and a lot of that comes down to the trend of I think not

even a trend just the realities of what it means to create an exit for example Founders today when they create

companies are looking for the exit either getting bought or getting to the point of IPO and if you are looking for

an exit then you are in not going to be focused on longevity you're not going to be thinking about

what it means to build a legacy business that's going to last for a long time and

the reality is that starting companies is massively expensive or at least it has been traditionally in the way that

we're seeing a lot of VCS encourage companies to grow for example and so the

idea is that I need to take a bunch of money in to enable incredibly fast

growth so that I can then take the money back out and it's a huge shift from the

way that companies started where they were run by families generation after generation for example where the entire

purpose of building that business was to create a legacy was to create longevity was to create something that your

children could then grow into and take over and Carry On and hand off yet again and those shorter lifespans of companies

are almost a forcing factor into the world of near-term returns and

short-lived organizations that are not focused on Innovation and growth but

rather are focused on dollars tomorrow I could do a whole episode with

you just about that whole concept CU I'm now thinking it's all being driven by the CEO the founder the person and if

their Exit Plan is a major part of them starting their business and I've had

multiple people on this show who who say when you start a business you should be

thinking about your exit before you've even started the business and for me as a business owner myself I feel a little

bit uncomfortable I'm not in the tech space I'm in the service industry so it's a different model than a tech

company that's growing and looking to then be bought or go to IPO so it is a different model but it it it saddens me

in some ways that that Founders are thinking about how they can exit and not

thinking about how they can grow their company and it lasts 100 years rather than 5

years gets sold gets absorbed broken up into lots of different bits the bits the company likes they leverage and work

with and the bits they don't like they throw away it saddens me that people's mentality is that maybe call me

oldfashioned whatever you do but let let me finish my rant I want to

ask a little bit more about Apollo 21 so you said you work at that intersection of consultancy product design and

Venture so how is it that you're looking and what's the market size that you're

initially looking to Target with your marketing that's a really hard question

and it's one of those that I should be able to answer in a snap because everybody talks about not starting a business unless you're your total

addressable market and all of that fun stuff when you're little B differently it might make it easier to answer when

you're doing your marketing looking for new clients what's your ideal client

that you're looking for we look for clients that are what I call midsize to

Enterprise again I'm going to throw large kind of sads of numbers around if you're doing 510 million of Revenue a

year for example you're getting to that size where you're probably starting to

hit that point of lack of exploration of

focusing in on the things that are working and you're probably right at that pivot point of okay we B product

Market fit we know what works we're going to we're going to double down on that or you're already well down the

line of of that endeavor for example you know you look at Enterprise clients and

for the ones that have been around for a little while they've been doing the same thing perhaps they've been growing a bit

but just as an example I've done a ton of work with American Express throughout my career it just happens to be a client

that has surfaced a number of times and if you look at the way that technology

could enable them to grow new business opportunities that serve their

customers the the opportunity is Greenfield there's so many ways that you

could look at the intersection of how people spend money and how people use technology to create really interesting

products and services and for the most part they don't new products and

services from an American Express are here's a new card with a different picture on it yeah but with when it comes to money

what money loves is frictionless exchange yes so why are I don't want you to slag

off American Express but why are other companies like that why are they not

looking like blockchain for for an example like we we've had the Advent of crypto and there's good there's bad

there's speculation and I get that with crypto but why are financial institutions organizations looking for

ways to get frictionless exchange of value and exchange of money uh I think that there are

Financial organizations that are doing that but they are the startups of the financial space if you look at the or

Challenger Banks you've got Challenger Banks as well that yes exactly so I

again that's that is perfectly descriptive of the world that I'm attempting to describe here you have

your legacy Banks your legacy Financial organizations that are pardon me

continuing business as usual and I'm making gross generalizations here to be clear American Express of all companies

has released some really interesting Technologies to help their customers but to continue with my gross generalization

you have Legacy companies that are focused on the core business that has helped them discover and Achieve success

and then you have the traditional disruptive startups that are coming in and saying no there's a better way we're

going to do this and let's be clear one of the key opportunities for the Legacy companies to then participate in

the world of what might come next is through acquisition and there's nothing wrong with that that that is a massive

growth opportunity and for American Express just to to keep on the train here to go and acquire a company that is

highly focused on making spending more seamless that is a perfectly viable way

to expand their business line to capture new technology opportunities Etc and it

again it still just requires that mentality of regardless of whether we're going to find and build the opportunity

that lives just beyond what we're focused on today or we're going to find the company that is focused on that and

then go and you could acquire them you could invest in them you could partner with them to enable some sort of

interesting capability that perhaps they're struggling with today there's lots of ways that Legacy companies can

get involved evolved and participate in the world of what is next that don't require them to go and build a

technology team for example yeah and your idea of new product lines so how do

you do the analysis when you're looking at a company maybe give a case study or an example of a a a company that you worked

with but how do you go in and analyze the business and then think of those

alternate revenue streams alternate businesses or or how does one look at the market look at

the business and look at the product that can be made in that space Mark is less focused on us coming up with that

answer and is more focused on us enabling our clients to do so there's a

process and a mentality and an approach to finding and discovering those

opportunities that I think we're pretty good at but it's less about us knowing

the world of Finance for example or to give you another example we had a client that was highly focused on the western

Sports space so think Cowboys and rodeos and things like that very a very

traditional business if there ever was one that was born out of the American West hundreds of years ago kind of thing

a lot of what we do is less focused on telling those Partners how they should

expand and more about helping them discover those opportunities for themselves because the reality is that

Apollo 21 is an organization of bus Business and Technology experts not

rodeo and finance experts and so what we bring to the table are Frameworks

exercises party perspectives and what it really comes down to is asking a lot of

questions that it face value may sound dumb that force people to think about things that they haven't thought about

before and some of that comes through customer development and finding out

where their customer pain points are so some of the activities that we bring in are interviewing customers some of those

activities are focused on interviewing internal stakeholders to understand and uncover where they're seeing

opportunities and some of it really just comes down to um giving people the stage

on which they can articulate the ideas that they already have floating around if you look at a business like again an

American Express a Dyson whoever it is they have hundreds of employees inside their own walls if not thousands

who are focused every day on that Core Business they have ideas they have

amazing ideas that could lead to growth that could lead to scale that could lead to new product lines and they just

aren't asking and so half the time is it a mind abely a mindset yes

without question it is a mindset shift that requires the and let's be clear it

has to come from the top down it requires the leadership of that organization to be ready willing and

able to ask those questions of the people both inside and outside their own

walls and to allow for experimentation

ultimately to allow for failure and again I talk a lot about failure especially when I'm on shows like yours

because to me failure and learning are so deeply connected to one another that

if you don't allow your employees to fail and again it comes back to the internal ized version of your quarterly

shareholder goals we also have quarterly employee goals and things like that and if those goals are not designed to allow

employees to experiment and ultimately fail on the path to Discovery Innovation

is not going to happen so you're coming from a very from what you've described you're coming from a very Tech mindset

that whole idea of fail fast and experiment curiosity fail fast find the

next thing and then one of those of the five things that you might be experimenting with that one thing might

be the thing to make it a trillion dollar business for example so how do you when you're working with maybe more

traditional companies how do you instill that idea of fail fast get on to the

next thing one of those things will be the business the the next thing to catapult your business forward it can be

difficult and I want to be careful mark because the idea of fail fast is one that is deeply ingrained in kind of the

entrepreneurial and startup mentality and in my mind speed is of the essence

but it's less about fail fast and more about experiment fast learn fast and

then fail as little as possible so the entire idea behind exploration is is

learning is fig F out where those opportunities are so that you canate risk and I'm going to make this up but

pulling back to our Blockbuster example Blockbuster could have looked at the world and said the internet is changing

everything we should deliver movies over the internet and in this case history would tell that they would have been

right but at the time that would have been a huge scary question especially if you think about where the internet

itself was and the capabilities around delivering video over the Internet which of course is why Netflix of all things

started with DVDs even though they knew that they wanted to get to videos over the internet and so enabling your

organization to ask the right questions around do people want to watch videos over the Internet for example um is is

the first part of it and then the second part is viewing those opportunities those Explorations and the outcomes of

them almost like you would a risk portfolio we talk all the time in terms of Investing For example that you want

to diversify your portfolio and that you want to give yourself opportunity for wins and the reality in this world is

that um the wins happen at such an exponential level that it only requires

one or two to pay off a hundred losses and so what you have to help companies

understand is that provided that you're experimenting quickly and cheaply and

the cheap part is important there because what you want to do is spend as little money to learn as much as

possible to mitigate as much risk as possible to discover what you might do next and if you're going to do that 100

times over you can't go into that with the expectation that 98 of them are going to be successful and you'll eat

the cost for the other two you have to be prepared to go into that with the expectation that 98 of them will not be

successful but the two that are going to pay for the failures a 100 times over

and so it's creating minimal viable products in essence you're just trying to find

and then test them and do you test them with market research is that how you test the market we test at every step

and again one of the things that I think differentiates us highly is a lot of what I have a problem with the fail fast

mentality is that it is so deeply ingrained in the idea of go and build go

and create an MVP a thing that you can put out of the world so that you can test it and that is not incorrect by any

stretch but there is so much learning that can be done before you ever build the MVP and without getting into the now

long debate of what exactly an MVP is suffice it to say that through customer

development processes customer Discovery you can learn a ton before you ever go

and build an MVP just by asking the right questions and so a lot of what we

encourage is building lean customer development and the practice of learning

from your customers or potential customers before you build the MVP so that by the time you build it you

already know that you're down the right path and theoretically have already discovered your first 10 20 100

customers because you have asked them what the pain is that you can help them solve that is relevant to your business

so again making it up American Express could go to small business owners and

should be talking to them about what are the difficulties with finances in your business and how can we help you solve

them yeah you're going to learn so much doing that before you ever go and build a thing to put in front of them and go

here's the solution that you will be 10 times further ahead by the time you do

build we could go on and not I feel I could do another hour of this but unfortunately we're coming to the end

look I asked the same six questions to all of my guests say quickfire questions they don't need a quickfire answer the

question first question is I really don't want to AR's questions I want to keep on exploring business and but I

I've got to be respectful of your time first question what's the best decision that you've made I think the best

decision that I've made comes back to a lot of what we were talking about in the advice from my mom folks listen to your mom probably the best decision that I've

made is listening to my mom is committing to a path of curiosity and a path of

exploration myself in my career that did not pocket me into the traditional

career path and I could have gone and worked for some large organization doing the same thing every day and I can tell

you immediately that I would have been miserable doing so and so in the interest of not being miserable I think that's the best decision that I've made

awesome what's the best piece of advice you've been

given we've talked a lot about when they zigzag so I will leave that one by the

wayside for the moment the best piece of advice that I've been given has

I it's one I'm going to twist your question just a little bit here mark because it fits my answer forgive me but I I have a

personal monra that is fail beautifully and the idea of failure is something

that I think about a lot and the best piece of advice that comes out of that for me is learn to be okay with failure

because it is a learning experience and not a negative thing and I don't I can't

the reason that I'm twisting your question a little bit is because I can't point to an exact place where somebody said to me go and be okay with failure

it's one of those things that I have just learned over and over again throughout my career in many different

ways and so the wisdom that I then try to impart is learn to be okay with

failure who's the person that's helped you most in your career that would

probably be a guy named Tom aello who was the one who gave me a chance at poke

and way that I found myself in inside the walls of poke was was interesting

and everybody says to you go find the people that you want to work for go and make them pay attention to you and it's

such a pat piece of advice that we hear all the time and is so hard to actually Implement because for the most part

you're going to get ignored if you go knocking on doors not many people want to answer that door anymore however

don't give up on that because that's exactly how I have managed to succeed in my life I literally sent a cold email to

the folks at poke and said I heard about you I'm really interested in what you're doing

how do I get involved and to his credit Tom answered that email and gave me a

chance and one of the first people that saw something in me that I'm not even entirely sure at the time I saw in

myself and he gave me the freedom to learn the freedom to experiment the freedom to fail and ultimately enough

rope to hang myself along the way and I was fortunate that that I managed to get through without doing that but without

his guidance and without the opportunities that he put in front of me I wouldn't be where I am am today

without question amazing amazing tell me about a regret that you have oo

I this is one that has come hard earned and hard learned multiple times over now

I tend to trust first and allow people to prove me wrong and it is bitten me in

the butt a number of times especially in the business world I have often approach situations with the

assumption that the people around me have my best interests at heart because they are people and genuine and so on

and I've learned time and again that for as much as I want to believe that everybody out there is operating with integrity and is going to look out for

you as much as they're going to look out for themselves it just isn't true and so my regret is not learning soon enough

that well I believe you need to trust people because if you start from a perspective of a lack of trust

you're also going to cause yourself problems you should also learn to have a healthy skepticism and to think about

what the motivating factors for other people in your world are so that you can ensure that those motivating factors

align so I'm learning that experience currently I don't want to go into the ins and outs of it but I trusted someone

as a referral someone that was given as a referral to me and um I trusted them

and they my business partner who I've been talking about this with said to me

yeah it's a hard lesson you've got to learn unfortunately and he he says you

got to you got to get to I don't know if guns are the right word you've got to get to your guns faster because people

don't always have your best interests at heart they can be very selfish and very

like and and and I do believe in karma to an extent that people that keep on

doing things like that will run foul at a certain point like people don't have

integrity they might win with you once but at one stage they go into full foul

so for me it's a learning experience and equally I know even if we don't bring

him down there will be a someone will so I would say yeah it's a lesson that we

all have to learn yeah anyway moving on what are you most proud of right now I

am most proud of the fact that Apollo 21 is still kicking and that we've managed to survive for 3 years it has been to

put it bluntly there there have been moments where it's been a really rough go and even today there are things that we're struggling to overcome and to to

learn about in our quest to help companies achieve all of the things that that you and I have talked about for the

last hour but all of that being said I'm incredibly proud of the work that we have put in and I am proud that we've

managed to survive this long and hope that we will continue to thrive and find our footing and we've covered this next

question but it's one of the questions why do you do what you do and you can

take it from a from your business point of view from being an entrepreneur but why do you do what you

do I do what I do because I know myself well enough to know that if I

were stuck in a box a cubicle an office whatever it was every day of my life

working incredibly hard for the primary benefit of somebody else I would be

unhappy and so I put up with the negative aspects of being an

entrepreneur because the freedoms and the positive aspects of being an entrepreneur speak to me

and frankly make my days even the bad ones better than they would be otherwise

yeah I would agree with that and what does legacy mean to

you that's interesting I've been asked this question before for me a lot of people when they talk about Legacy

especially in the business world and to be clear even I just hinted at this a few minutes ago people talk about building a legacy in a lasting thing

that they can hand to somebody else and well I think that's an amazing Endeavor and if you can achieve it I would agree

that is probably the most fulfilling version of what a legacy could be

however that's also really hard and we need to be ready to admit to the difficulty in that and for me a legacy

is about positive L impacting a few people around me in ways that will

hopefully change their lives for the better we're a very small team I have three or four core employees who are

with me all the time and then we scale Up and Down based on the needs of a project but those three or four people

are folks that I've worked with at past companies who I trust implicitly and who

if I can have a positive impact on their lives if I can help them send their kids to college if I can help them have a

fulfilling career path because they're doing what we are doing together and they enjoy it to me that's a great

legacy regardless of whether it leaves something for a generation Beyond me or

not the fact that I can change the lives of the people around me is great that's so important and often that whole thing

of helping your employees have a job have a buy their

first house or whatever it is off Legacy people feel that the legacy is like

passing on to another generation what and actually just scale it back impact

five people three people in your circle positively because we're all going to

get forgotten in three generations that's the reality of it you're only going to really touch three generations

so if you can make an impact of those three to five to 10 whatever that number is in your life is an incredible Legacy

and should not be downplayed so that's a really great answer Danny last question if people want to reach out to you where

can they find you and where should they go to absolutely best place to find us is on our website which is Apollo 21 the

number two the number one. we have a bunch of case studies we have a ton of Articles and white papers

and things that help espouse much of what I've been talking about and help share our approach to this type of work

and then both the company and myself are active on social media I personally am blah blah blah SL among many am m o n g

m n y and of course Apollo 21 is active on all the socials as well and if you happen to be listening from New York and

you want to meet in person one please reach out but I also host monthly dinners for early stage Founders as well

as monthly dinners for folks that are in The Innovation space and that is literally six people sitting around a

table getting to know one another over a meal and so if you're interested in that please do reach out to me and I I always

enjoy meeting new people at those events brilliant Danny thank you so much for your time St it's been an absolute

pleasure I've really enjoyed this I've got probably another eight questions which I've not been able to ask you so I

apologize but I've had a really great time thank you so much for your time today and thank you thank you I've

really enjoyed our conversation as well Mark so it's been a pleasure to be here cheers I really hope you've enjoyed that

content it's a really fascinating interview that I've done there so please do if you are enjoying this content

please do give it a like uh please do give a subscribe it' be really good to boost of subscriptions it really makes a

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get all of the content you'll get notified when all the content is available thank you so much for your time it's really appreciated thanks a lot

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