Dan Martell - Episode #2 - Creating Sustainable Revenue Model From Your Non-Profit w⧸ Sarah Short, Director of YEC

00:00:00.000 Also, I think you're gonna love this show. I sat down with Sarah, who's an entrepreneur in the

00:00:07.080 community, does a lot of work with youths, and I was a judge at one of her programs and was just

00:00:14.080 blown away by the the kids and she wanted to talk about how does she develop that awareness in our

00:00:19.400 community for the young entrepreneurs and also how does she build a business model around a

00:00:23.160 nonprofit and and not only just depend on government sponsorship or grants or other

00:00:28.440 businesses but really get a revenue engine built out in their business so

00:00:33.180 we go deep on that we talk about value we talk about the right structure we

00:00:36.660 talk about kind of reverse engineering the network and the graph within the

00:00:39.900 community to get to the right people that are gonna get the message out there

00:00:43.200 all right Sarah I'm not gonna touch my phone yes I will I'm lying why has it

00:00:48.720 been so long since we summer yeah no we gotta fix that anyways I'm okay with

00:00:54.780 what are we talking about today today I really I'm hoping that I can get some

00:00:59.820 insight from you on how to create sustainable and scalable miss those are

00:01:06.900 two of my favorite words I know and they're mine to repeatable is another

00:01:10.560 one I like yeah yeah for what business for the youth entrepreneurship okay cool

00:01:15.540 for YC are you gonna rebrand it you mentioned that that might so what we did

00:01:18.600 we actually we worked with a branding company this summer Natalie Davidson

00:01:23.100 actually awesome yeah she did phenomenal work and they actually recommended

00:01:27.180 against changing the name but you can see that we changed the logo okay so

00:01:31.600 different logo different logo the other logo was like it was like a little

00:01:38.580 bonhomme yeah it just had his hands in the air yeah and so there was no real

00:01:42.120 clarity okay or consistency I like that word too yeah I know yeah I'm just using

00:01:47.280 all your favorite words yes perfect Dan dictionary yeah yeah do you have the

00:01:50.520 lexicon. It's like, oh, Dan's favorite words. Cool. So YEC, why did you start YEC? Let's go back to

00:01:58.300 like, yeah, what problem were you trying to solve in the community? Well, so I inherited an event

00:02:05.580 called the Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge, and it was all about business plans. And I have an

00:02:12.220 aversion to a business plan. Yeah. What's wrong with a business plan? You put in a whole bunch

00:02:17.660 of work and you never look at it again. Yeah, it's a guest plan. Yeah, like I just, I'm not a fan of

00:02:22.820 assumptions. Yeah. I'm not a fan of big documents. I thought you meant assumption in the company.

00:02:27.480 Really? No, they're great. Do tell me more. Which specific person? Okay, so the problem with business

00:02:33.620 plans from your point of view is that it's a document riddled with assumptions that nobody

00:02:36.920 ever uses it to guide the business. Yeah. Cool. So I'm all about action plans, visual sort of stuff,

00:02:44.340 So Lean Canvas, Business Model Canvas are two of our biggest tools that we use.

00:02:49.880 Incredible tools, yeah.

00:02:52.080 And so I inherited an event all about the business plan,

00:02:59.260 and I sort of was like, no, we need to be rewarding young people who are doing stuff

00:03:03.060 or who want to do things and teach them how.

00:03:06.040 The doers.

00:03:06.780 The doers, yeah.

00:03:07.280 The little doers.

00:03:08.160 What's the age?

00:03:09.380 So we do 5 to 25.

00:03:11.300 5 to 25.

00:03:12.540 It's pretty vast.

00:03:13.180 Yeah, I thought it was a lot younger. Why is it 25? Was it always 25?

00:03:16.800 Actually used to be 35.

00:03:18.220 So then the event that I was at, that was different?

00:03:20.780 No, we, so we, uh, we're open to, no, most of them were 12.

00:03:26.540 Yeah. Um, some of the best stuff comes out of the, the middle school,

00:03:30.320 early high school age. Um, but we just leave it open to 25 because the idea is

00:03:34.720 it's youth or more embryonic stage of entrepreneur.

00:03:40.740 cool so either younger or maybe they're just discovering so you you had the

00:03:45.840 problem you inherited this organization were they doing business plans prior they

00:03:49.980 were only doing business okay got it to more lean methods of building companies

00:03:56.160 yeah did you change the age groups of it I've tweaked it a little bit at first it

00:04:00.780 was just high school students now it's 5 to 25 really to meet the need of people

00:04:06.360 who are creative, innovative, they see chaos, they want to run into it and solve it, and to give them

00:04:12.920 a sort of roadmap on how to do something with their ideas. Okay, and if we were to kind of walk

00:04:21.780 away from this and you're like, man, that was an incredible conversation, what would you have

00:04:25.640 gotten from this conversation? Well, so we're a not-for-profit. Revenue-wise, we function as most

00:04:34.180 not-for-profits do a lot of government funding yeah exactly so we've gone from

00:04:39.160 a hundred percent government funding down to 50 mm-hmm which I'm really proud

00:04:42.580 of I want to go even lower and lower I want to create a revenue structure yeah

00:04:49.000 I want a revenue structure that that resembles a for-profit organization but

00:04:53.580 functions as a not-for-profit cool so that's a big thing yeah cool so if we

00:04:57.820 fast-forward five years or even three because that's probably better horizon

00:05:02.060 what do you see why you see looking like in three years hmm we actually we did

00:05:07.840 this this summer we I really see the the YEC being a curator of opportunities so

00:05:21.600 we want young people to be able to they have an idea they get in touch with us

00:05:28.340 via our website Facebook etc etc and we're able to immediately connect them

00:05:33.740 to the people that they need to be connected to or the events or the

00:05:38.100 opportunities that they can connect to to be able to execute on that do you

00:05:42.840 find the so there's two sides to it there's a supply and the demand side do

00:05:47.220 you feel like getting access to demand of young kids is an issue no okay so the

00:05:52.400 hard part then is getting them access to a great resources the matching process

00:05:58.100 yeah yeah is it the matching for finding those people in those communities or

00:06:01.640 actually the man hours putting into trying to figure out the right matching

00:06:04.980 I would say it's creating the funnel okay the funnel is the biggest issue okay

00:06:11.540 the funnel on the demand side or the funnel on the supply side supply being

00:06:14.860 the resources that they need both okay so there is an issue with getting kids to

00:06:19.460 be self-aware enough to know that they need something like they're there and

00:06:22.860 they're aware but because most of them are under 18 creating a funnel that is

00:06:27.620 effective and not invasive yeah what does invasive mean well I mean when

00:06:34.760 you're working with kids you just have to be careful of any sort of you can't

00:06:39.860 sell to children yeah right you can offer an opportunity and if it matches

00:06:43.800 with what they want and their guardians want them that's great and so finding

00:06:49.100 out what the steps are for that funnel cool is really the challenge on that so

00:06:53.340 So then, so really to me, it sounds like the communities are ready to support if there was enough of a demand that you could point to and say we have X kids ready for mentorship guidance, etc.

00:07:05.320 I, for my whole life, have been frustrated with this problem because most kids don't self-identify as entrepreneurs.

00:07:15.840 They don't know another entrepreneur.

00:07:17.360 I didn't know another entrepreneur except for my neighbor Wayne.

00:07:19.320 And, you know, he never called himself that.

00:07:21.820 I just was like, well, he owns a hotel, a grocery store, you know what I mean?

00:07:26.300 Like, I guess that's a businessman.

00:07:28.740 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:07:29.680 And, like, that was what I had to look towards, which, as we know, that's different than somebody that's kind of, like, a bit more of an entrepreneur.

00:07:37.900 He was kind of, like, happily unemployable, and he kind of made money whatever way he could.

00:07:44.400 You know, like, buying stuff inside the flea market.

00:07:46.700 Like, he just did stuff to make money, but he didn't have, there was no strategy.

00:07:50.160 there was no so how do you get the i mean and i think that's that's the kid to me it's the

00:07:56.660 competition which you guys do really well see the competition is such an opportunity because

00:08:00.900 if if a parent a guardian um an elder looks at a child and sees that innate in their dna and they

00:08:09.200 also hear about the competition then they're the guide to say hey you should really give this

00:08:12.880 a chance absolutely every so so to me the supply side or the demand side of getting more kids

00:08:19.580 is really focused on amplification of the contest yeah the more you can get the

00:08:26.740 contest you have a different kind of offer you want to put forward um not

00:08:31.820 necessarily no I mean I think what we do what we do what we're great at is the

00:08:35.920 celebration yeah so the the contest and the event right I think that many kids

00:08:41.920 applied last time we had 62 applications and I think that was about

00:08:49.160 300 and something kids okay so 300 kids in three years what would you want that number to be

00:08:53.320 um i mean i want it to be something that every kid who has any sort of creative bone in their

00:09:01.040 body is applying to yeah but see they're not this is the interesting part is that they won't

00:09:05.300 self-identify without that adult saying this is for you yeah like that's just like that's

00:09:11.400 that's like the like the way their brain works yeah you know so it's like you could wish that

00:09:17.740 isn't true and but that's not going to change it like at the end of the day you know and i've seen

00:09:23.040 it with my own kids like there's a reason my kids play hockey because i was like hey that would be

00:09:28.280 really fun but if i if i dismissed it they wouldn't be playing hockey you know i mean like i think i

00:09:32.520 think people underestimate like how much an adult guides oh for sure kids in a direction yeah right

00:09:39.120 so then so then here's here's the way i think about it so if you assume because i'm always kind

00:09:43.880 of like trying to reverse engineer the players, right? We're just focused on the demand side,

00:09:48.200 which is the kids, and then the supply will come too. So, you know, one thing I like to ask myself

00:09:53.420 in kind of like awareness stages is who currently sells to these people and what are those kind of

00:09:57.980 people buy? Because it's actually not the kids. I know the kids are the byproducts, but before you

00:10:01.840 get to the kids, you need to get to the adults. So what kind of adult is actually influential

00:10:07.800 enough to a group of kids that are on the, are aware of this? Like I remember when you asked me

00:10:13.300 to judge. I was like, what, how is this? Yeah. How have we not been friends? I think I said that

00:10:18.840 like, this is crazy. I didn't know about this for a while. So, so clearly there's a percentage of

00:10:23.800 the market that are still unaware of YEC. Yeah. Right. A huge percentage. Perfect. Yeah. So let's

00:10:29.880 call it five. How do we get to 50? Right. So if in three years we got to 50, that would be a huge

00:10:36.080 win because it's a 10 X. Right. Okay. Right. So then how do we do that? What are your thoughts?

00:10:41.320 um i mean and let's be let's actually let's do this let's be clear on who that is because that's

00:10:47.720 that's like step one is that if we don't get clear on who the person is and all the strategies don't

00:10:51.780 match so who are the influencers in the community that have the ear of children and kids you know

00:10:57.740 people are paying attention to them well we've been going off of the assumption to bring up

00:11:02.620 assumptions again that it's either parents or teachers yes um the path of least resistance

00:11:07.820 is teachers because they have multiple run to many yeah yeah um and it's a lot easier to get

00:11:15.940 their contact information i actually don't think it's the parents okay because if the parent isn't

00:11:21.220 an entrepreneur it's going to be really tough for them to guide the kids kind of like me that

00:11:24.660 doesn't play hockey um it's really weird that my kids play hockey but it's not now that you know

00:11:29.240 that i'm from canada because you can't not play thank you so much um you it's really it's it's

00:11:34.060 funny, this is how much I don't play hockey, like I don't even have skates, so I brought

00:11:38.140 my kid skating on Sunday, and I was the only adult on the open skate ice, in jeans, no

00:11:45.300 not in boots, my kicks, my sneakers, and my jeans, my kid was wearing jeans as well, all

00:11:49.820 the other kids were wearing snow outfits, but he's learning how to skate, that's

00:11:54.760 not normal, but if I were to say like how do I get in front of the parents that are

00:11:58.860 influencing the kids, I would say who are all the adults that play hockey, because even

00:12:02.420 if they're not the parent, they're the uncle, the cousin. So I guess one thing I'd love your

00:12:09.780 thoughts are, is it the entrepreneurs? I think so. I believe so. I mean, they're the ones that

00:12:17.260 see these kids do these entrepreneurial activities that the kid doesn't self-identify,

00:12:22.920 like trying to sell them a painting they made that goes, wow, you're really good at painting

00:12:26.660 and selling stuff. You should consider this event. Yeah, and I think that's an interesting point

00:12:30.580 because um i hope you don't mind no of course okay cool um i last year i would say we had the

00:12:38.200 most engagement from the community that we've ever had from all sides of the community perfect

00:12:44.940 government everybody but uh i believe that it started with the entrepreneurial community because

00:12:50.660 they started talking about it yeah here's the thing is like the fun part of today's world is

00:12:55.300 we have we have audiences right like entrepreneurs natalie mentioned natalie myself my brother like

00:13:00.340 all these entrepreneurs slowly are realizing like, hey, social media isn't a fad. It's not

00:13:04.960 going away. Like maybe I should invest in it and have a presence on Facebook or Instagram or snap,

00:13:09.980 maybe not Snapchat so much here yet, but they're going to get there. Um, we had a Snapchat filter

00:13:14.800 last year. I'm telling you guys did some great stuff, but the challenges is like there was still,

00:13:20.080 if we're at 5%, there's still 95% that don't. Okay. So then here's what I do is I ask myself

00:13:25.420 who has access to the 95 percent right so who does well the schools the teachers no no the

00:13:32.340 entrepreneurial community who has access to 95 percent of the entrepreneurs in the community

00:13:36.480 you no i have i probably have a good percentage but i don't have 95 yeah there's a ton of old

00:13:42.620 dudes that don't know who i am yeah well i mean the chambers the original gangsters they may hear

00:13:48.060 about me once in a while but they don't really know who i am the gray hairs um who really run

00:13:53.300 the city honestly um chamber of commerce yes but even chamber i feel like they're they don't have

00:13:59.820 they don't have 100 who's got 95 i'll tell you a big one community that actually just had their

00:14:06.400 event the um the ja community yeah i mean that's crazy they have a thousand of the entrepreneurs

00:14:12.660 from all across the province yeah go to that event and it is that's the people i don't have

00:14:18.220 access to, JA, right? Like their community of New Brunswick, they got it. So I would say if you got

00:14:26.320 the JA and then number two and three from that list, you would get access to 95% of the community.

00:14:32.820 What would stop you from working with them to get in front of their audience? What do you think they

00:14:37.360 would want? What they want. Because they also have access to the kids too, right? Yeah. Is it

00:14:45.400 competitive? Well, I mean, I think the, the reality is that the entrepreneurial ecosystem is

00:14:52.020 competitive in New Brunswick. Cool. Um, and the not-for-profit ecosystem is, is also competitive.

00:14:59.380 So yes. Um, but there's also a lot of collaboration, which is sort of a, an interesting

00:15:05.640 beast. The question I always ask myself is how can I support them? Cause like the JA program

00:15:11.160 is totally different than what you're doing.

00:15:12.980 Yeah, absolutely.

00:15:14.180 Yeah, you both have the same challenge,

00:15:15.760 which is getting in front of the audience.

00:15:18.200 As a group of people, if you say like,

00:15:20.780 you know, I think New Brunswick has a business council,

00:15:22.480 like there are like 12 entrepreneurs in the province

00:15:25.140 that really represent the entrepreneurial interest.

00:15:27.740 I feel like somebody, that's actually another group

00:15:30.780 that PS, FYI, you should get to know, right?

00:15:33.560 And they're really great people.

00:15:34.780 When I launched Clarity, they were there to support me.

00:15:36.740 I feel like that curation of getting in front and adding value because really it's about adding

00:15:44.260 value you do things that they don't do very well right like they don't do social media and vice

00:15:48.100 versa yeah yeah I think that would be really interesting but see that that's that's where I

00:15:53.380 would focus my time I'm such a like a network deconstructor like I figure out like who are

00:15:58.660 the 10 people that have access to 95% of community yeah how do I add value to their lives so that I

00:16:04.440 can get them to support me and getting the message out but it has to happen

00:16:07.620 way before you ever ask for anything absolutely yeah yeah so who else would

00:16:12.240 be on that list

00:16:17.840 I mean one organization that we do a lot of work with it's brilliant labs don't

00:16:22.780 that we don't do a lot of work with yeah

00:16:34.440 We have a lot of partners in the community.

00:16:37.280 So, like, in my mind, the people who would have access to these folks

00:16:40.100 would be people like Brilliant Labs or Event Center

00:16:43.040 or Planet Hatch in Fredericton.

00:16:45.820 And, you know, as we go up north, the CBDCs are very influential.

00:16:50.420 And so we're connected with all of them.

00:16:52.040 Are they promoting your events?

00:16:54.040 Some more than others, but they're all listed as partners on.

00:16:57.260 Yeah, so here's what I would do.

00:16:59.680 Spreadsheet, column called Status.

00:17:02.680 yeah and status is kind of like or even ranking or value or whatever you want to call it like one

00:17:07.200 out of ten ten meanings that you give them a press release they they send it as a blast of

00:17:11.840 their whole network yeah and and even better ten means that they send out your content to their

00:17:17.820 community so like one thing I do when I do speaking which I do very little because of the

00:17:22.540 travel constraint is one of my requirements is for them to send content my content to their

00:17:28.200 registered attendees before I show up so that I can build a relationship. Now that's strategic,

00:17:34.280 right? So I would call that a 10 and then kind of like an eight would be that they would share

00:17:39.200 your event coming up. You know what I mean? So then thank you so much. Oh, that's so good.

00:17:45.960 I had like three coffees before I got here. So I don't know if you can see my hand shaking,

00:17:49.140 but that's perfect. We're on the same page. Um, so that, that to me would be a big

00:17:55.340 like list and if you made that list and i've done this many times when i when i launched clarity i

00:18:00.240 hired somebody full-time to do the research and they made a list of like and i'll share it with

00:18:03.880 you if it's just old of every entrepreneurial program in around i think we did atlantic canada

00:18:11.940 yeah everything from like the the university program so whatever and it was it was hand-to-hand

00:18:17.940 combat like just straight up like email phone number etc i want to talk to you because like

00:18:23.560 Like they just, you know, they're not going to do an email response.

00:18:27.540 It's like they want a phone call.

00:18:28.620 You want to talk to them.

00:18:29.420 You want to explain to them your why.

00:18:30.660 You got to build a connection.

00:18:31.520 Then it's like, hey, how do I help your guys' organization?

00:18:34.240 And then not even just how, because I was actually just saying this to another entrepreneur.

00:18:37.780 It's a lazy question.

00:18:38.900 Super lazy question.

00:18:40.560 It's here are the things that we do really well, and here's the thing specifically I think I can help you guys with.

00:18:45.560 If you become the person that helps them with the other areas that they're not good at,

00:18:49.560 and I don't know what that is.

00:18:50.420 It could be social.

00:18:51.640 It could be curriculum structure.

00:18:52.920 it could be running the events right and the cool part is it's super high leverage so like if you

00:18:58.120 say look every month i organize a webinar where i teach how to run an event and if you want to send

00:19:04.120 your event person to it i'll coach them myself yeah that's like low you know we're talking google

00:19:09.240 hangouts yeah we actually do that with some of our champions perfect so yeah so you add add that to

00:19:14.120 all the other groups just like as a best best practice like ecosystem the back end's running

00:19:19.720 great events, but the byproduct is building relationship and adding value to people that

00:19:24.120 when you're ready to say like, hey, we're now doing this competition, here's some assets

00:19:28.780 that we put together.

00:19:29.780 And like, and I even go as far as like, you know, with some of my partner launches, because

00:19:33.720 I'm thinking like, this is just like a partner thing, so when I've built companies and partner

00:19:37.020 with like MailChimp or Constant Contact or like when we were doing Flowtown, we provided

00:19:43.160 them with emails, blog copy, design the visuals, like the co-branded banner ads, like we created

00:19:51.140 all the assets so all they had to do is copy-paste, right?

00:19:54.660 So for, and it's 80-20, when you look at your partners, 20% are going to drive the

00:19:58.960 rest of it, those are the ones where you want to make sure that you spend the time with.

00:20:03.600 If you did that in three years, like if you said this is the way we're going to get distribution,

00:20:07.480 is just focus on building and creating value for those people.

00:20:11.220 Like, one thing I do is I have a private Facebook group.

00:20:13.580 Yeah.

00:20:14.100 I have to be careful what I share because some of this stuff is, like, super ninja stuff.

00:20:17.320 But, um.

00:20:18.140 I won't tell anybody, I promise.

00:20:19.240 But, no, but, like, I'll deconstruct.

00:20:20.960 I'll, like, kind of go a little high level.

00:20:22.060 But the concept is, like, if I was to get, if I wanted to be one of the world's best AI investors.

00:20:26.860 Let's say I was, like, you know what, AI is my space.

00:20:28.840 I want to become the world's best.

00:20:30.720 The easiest thing for me to do is to research all the top AI entrepreneurs, create a Facebook group, invite all of them to it.

00:20:38.600 and then this is what I would do

00:20:40.060 because this is what I do in my other secret group

00:20:41.500 is I interview each person every week

00:20:44.300 and I publish the interview to the group privately.

00:20:47.920 So they're the value to each other.

00:20:51.080 All I do was curate it and I interview them

00:20:54.120 so the content isn't even like hard to get

00:20:56.300 because they're in the community

00:20:57.420 and it adds value to their world

00:20:59.160 because then they get highlighted within the group

00:21:02.160 for other people to understand what they're working on

00:21:04.040 and then it creates a really great sense of community.

00:21:05.960 If that's all you did for those partners is amongst themselves, help them get clear about what they do and brought awareness to their thing within the whole landscape, you're the person that did that.

00:21:20.640 And trust me, when you have that once a year thing that you need to get distribution on, they would have to be an evil person not to do it.

00:21:27.840 And they may be.

00:21:28.940 And that's okay.

00:21:30.320 But that's what I would do.

00:21:33.260 I would go all in on that.

00:21:34.600 If you did three years of focused energy on just building that network, you would create something that would be super competitive in the sense that nobody else has that.

00:21:45.500 And I've seen Nancy Mathis do this.

00:21:47.780 Oh yeah, she's fabulous.

00:21:48.400 With her newsletter, she was the first person all in New Brunswick to have a newsletter for entrepreneurs.

00:21:53.740 Crazy idea.

00:21:54.820 And it takes her probably 30 minutes to put it together, the Fast Five or whatever it is, for years now.

00:22:00.480 No government organization.

00:22:02.580 There's nothing fancy.

00:22:03.740 like she curates it and maybe three times in the last five years she was

00:22:08.360 there for me because I also was the guy sending her hey there's this really cool

00:22:12.920 thing going on you probably don't know about yeah you know so you kind of like

00:22:15.560 add add value by curating so that makes sense from an engagement perspective

00:22:20.860 now what about a revenue perspective right because okay that'll create demand

00:22:28.880 and all of that kind of stuff,

00:22:31.120 but at the end of the day,

00:22:34.460 money makes the world go around.

00:22:36.000 Well, you're talking my language.

00:22:37.680 I just, I have an adversity to a lot of programs

00:22:41.200 that don't care about revenue.

00:22:42.840 And the reason why is because if you don't care about revenue,

00:22:44.900 you don't care about serving people

00:22:45.860 because there's a direct correlation to people,

00:22:49.540 revenue, like if you charge a dollar a month

00:22:52.280 for what you do and you have 100 people,

00:22:55.920 it's revenue.

00:22:57.440 If you're making a million dollar a month

00:22:58.680 10 million a month or 100 million a month it means you're serving 100 million people

00:23:02.600 i like that yep it doesn't mean it has to make money it can be a non-profit it can be a break

00:23:06.520 even or whatever but the higher the revenue line the more people you serve nobody can debate that

00:23:11.720 that's just a pure fundraiser non-profits do it through like amount funded cost per meal this is

00:23:16.600 how many meals we were able to deliver this year great for a non-for-profit kind of like b corp

00:23:22.040 top line revenue matters and it should matter like it should for any normal business absolutely

00:23:27.620 First question you've got to answer is, who's your customer?

00:23:29.800 Who do you want to sell something to?

00:23:31.860 I know a lot of people are going to be like, you shouldn't be selling stuff.

00:23:34.780 Change the word sell to serve.

00:23:37.160 Who do you want to serve the most?

00:23:39.680 I want to serve.

00:23:42.080 I see what we do as an economic driver in the community.

00:23:47.560 Yeah.

00:23:50.020 You know, we do what we do for the kids to help them realize their potential.

00:23:53.760 all um so in the short term that's the investment that we're making in the long term we're investing

00:23:59.620 in new brunswick um and so i guess we're serving the kids but also our economy so everybody

00:24:09.300 which i know is you know kind of a pop out if you're talking target market but

00:24:14.380 essentially that's what's happening right we're we're retaining youth we're

00:24:20.680 creating entrepreneurs who's got who's got money that you want to serve

00:24:25.560 i mean the where we are right now is we have who's got money yeah it's funny because i see

00:24:37.520 what you're about to do who's got money that you want to serve it's like when an entrepreneur comes

00:24:42.040 to me and they're like yeah i do a lot of stuff and i'm like well you got to pick a customer

00:24:45.760 like well i don't know who to pick and i'm like well it's easy you make a list of everybody that

00:24:48.660 makes you the most money and you make a list of everybody you like to work with and you look for

00:24:52.260 the names on both lists and you circle them and that's your new target customer like it's yeah

00:24:56.460 so we can just answer those two questions who's got money disposable income budgets and that you

00:25:03.740 love to serve because you can love to serve somebody doesn't have money doesn't help the

00:25:07.840 business it doesn't mean that the business doesn't help those people either that's the cool part

00:25:11.680 Right. I don't even know how to answer that right now, though.

00:25:15.120 Why?

00:25:20.920 What's the block? What are you worried about saying?

00:25:23.480 What's the thing you don't want to say?

00:25:26.340 You're a pain in the butt.

00:25:27.760 You're not the other one I'm talking about. What do you not want to say?

00:25:33.100 I don't know that it's something that I don't want to say.

00:25:35.840 I think it's more...

00:25:38.340 What's the thing you're not saying that you know you should say?

00:25:41.680 I want to ask that question.

00:25:43.560 I don't know who has money that I love to serve.

00:25:46.900 I truly, like, I love working with young people.

00:25:57.860 I love seeing those lights go off.

00:25:59.900 I love walking into a classroom and working with a teacher.

00:26:03.700 What kind of revenue do you need to make a year?

00:26:06.100 Well, right now our annual is about $120.

00:26:09.320 Perfect.

00:26:10.200 Which is super lean, though.

00:26:11.680 So let's call it 300 because that's probably a more appropriate number, right?

00:26:15.180 Especially if you want to 10X it over the next three years because you should.

00:26:18.780 So then maybe it's a lot more.

00:26:22.760 The kids, even though you love to work with them, are not going to be able to invest at a level that's going to sustain you.

00:26:29.360 So they're not the customer.

00:26:30.780 So that just makes it an easy like, okay, they're not the customer.

00:26:33.240 Then you just got to look at the value chain of other areas you can add value that does have money.

00:26:40.200 So it's either going to be a high net worth individual, or it's going to be a business, or it could be government.

00:26:47.520 Which I'm trying to break free from.

00:26:49.080 So when I said that you love to serve, I'm pretty sure you don't, you're breaking free for a reason, right?

00:26:55.940 So then what's your other option?

00:27:00.580 The cool part is you just pick the customer. We'll figure something to sell them.

00:27:03.540 We'll sell them something.

00:27:04.260 I would love to involve post-secondary a little bit more I think that there's a

00:27:13.200 lot of value to be gained from them or for them rather some are some are they

00:27:21.660 have their independent their own independent budgets I think CCNB and

00:27:25.080 NBCC are directly government but everything else is pretty much is there

00:27:28.980 enough need there to build a 300 million or 300,000 sorry I'm just

00:27:33.300 deal with tech startups. I mean, I'm okay with 300 million, but it's actually easier to focus

00:27:40.300 on the big stuff. Is there enough budget there within their, like, you're obviously going to do

00:27:48.660 something around entrepreneurship for them or ideation or something. Do you think there's

00:27:53.280 enough of a budget in the Atlantic region? So I think so. Why not sell the companies? You have

00:28:02.440 decision you could sell to post-secondary or you could sell the businesses but so

00:28:06.160 I've been sitting on this idea because I think one when I look at the value that

00:28:14.380 we provide to young people it's allowing them to be creative around problems

00:28:18.520 right whatever those problems are one thing that that I find is underused is

00:28:25.660 is sort of the um the resource of kids creativity perfect so i've been sitting on this idea of

00:28:33.740 engaging the business community and essentially asking what their challenges are what their

00:28:38.940 problems are and building little mini youth focus groups so there's obviously a value add in there

00:28:50.780 I like it.

00:28:54.220 I like it because it incorporates the core mission and the audience that you're building.

00:28:59.240 The challenge, the thing that I would go validate would be how many of those companies actually

00:29:03.740 have that demographic as a customer to need focus groups with.

00:29:08.340 The other thing is, one thing I'm a big fan of is how do I design a business model that

00:29:14.740 gets me paid every month?

00:29:16.720 So I kind of always start with the revenue that I'd like to, like, so let's say, you

00:29:25.260 know, there's only, I don't know how many thousand, there's 600,000 people, it's like

00:29:29.600 probably 10% or whatever, I don't know, maybe call it 50,000 businesses in New Brunswick.

00:29:36.360 How many could I sell them to, sell them something, and then how many of them would pay, like,

00:29:42.720 ideally 500 bucks a month, right?

00:29:45.880 Once I know it's $500 a month, then I ask myself,

00:29:47.880 what value can I create to make them feel like that's a really great deal?

00:29:51.120 And usually it's a 10 to 1.

00:29:52.040 I always like to think, how can I create 10 times more value

00:29:54.300 than the investment they're making?

00:29:56.660 So $5,000 a month.

00:29:59.200 So it's kind of like, that's kind of strategy.

00:30:02.020 I mean, you've got resources, you've got kind of a market,

00:30:04.340 you know that it's going to be a slog selling a $10 a month kind of thing.

00:30:07.900 You know you've got expertise, you've got all these kind of pieces.

00:30:11.160 how do you package them up in a way so that you can you know create enough value that really

00:30:17.420 comes across like as a no-brainer so what is that for the business post-secondary it's kind

00:30:24.300 of like to me post-secondary is going to come on board if you sell the business yeah right but i

00:30:29.020 don't think there's two different things you want to pick one you want one thing like most of my

00:30:33.340 clients the funniest thing i do with them as i call it um you know tell me about three but pick

00:30:38.020 one. Everybody thinks they have three customers, small, medium, and large. The reason why is because

00:30:42.320 they don't want to say no to small because small support them. They really don't want to pick one

00:30:46.420 because they don't want to say no, but in truth, each one of them requires a different value prop,

00:30:51.020 a different marketing plan, a different operational plan, a different delivery plan,

00:30:54.320 different set of needs. They're different. A one-person business has different needs than

00:30:58.320 25-person business. So whatever you build, if you want to charge $500 a month, and it's kind of like

00:31:05.540 the residue of the business, the thing we do has a byproduct and we're going to package

00:31:09.620 that byproduct.

00:31:10.620 It's kind of like some of these microbrewers actually sell some of their waste to do bio

00:31:17.500 stuff, right?

00:31:18.500 And that's like a revenue line for the microbrewers to be able to like leverage their byproducts.

00:31:22.900 So like what you want to do is say, okay, we've got this output in the business that

00:31:27.880 we can redirect and monetize and it's 100% aligned, right?

00:31:34.260 So the more you do here, the more you do there.

00:31:36.760 Right.

00:31:37.760 Right?

00:31:38.760 It's like clarity.

00:31:39.760 The more calls we did, the more money was getting donated to charity.

00:31:41.760 Yeah.

00:31:42.760 So it was like 100% aligned.

00:31:44.260 But like you got to sell something first.

00:31:46.260 Yeah.

00:31:47.260 So really the contest has to be, it's kind of like when you do an event, it's like the

00:31:50.480 event seats that people pay are essentially a wash to the sponsors where you actually

00:31:55.480 make the money.

00:31:56.480 So usually you charge enough seats to cover your overhead costs and then the sponsors

00:31:59.520 make the money.

00:32:00.520 Yeah.

00:32:01.520 wash and you're gonna make the operating budget from the thing you sell yeah how many events you

00:32:06.380 do a year we do only the one the one big one the one paid that's the only one that we sell tickets

00:32:12.900 to cool yeah so you don't have really a staff the rest of the year uh it's me 12 months a year and

00:32:19.240 then i have would you want to do the business part of the back end of this full time um because

00:32:26.200 this is a business I think so I think so somebody would need to say yes yeah I

00:32:32.560 mean I'm I'm fascinated by the idea of growing this to something more than just

00:32:43.060 New Brunswick and I'm fascinated by the idea of having kids solve problems for

00:32:49.180 big companies community this is a real thing this is a real thing Millennials

00:32:53.200 gen y whatever you want to call them like this is a real thing and companies care so that version

00:32:58.780 my answer is yes okay so so so to make that it i didn't see post-secondary in that answer

00:33:04.620 so yeah like it's funny how like if we can just get clear you're gonna get there faster and with

00:33:10.540 more excitement you're smiling now you weren't smiling you're talking about post-secondary i

00:33:15.140 think there's something it's like like no um because there's just that's what i love about

00:33:21.440 markets they're so free and like when you nail it they love it like man there's nothing better

00:33:25.720 than selling something to somebody that really wanted and say where have you been my whole

00:33:29.040 life and it's gonna like save me a bunch of time my business so if we had more time that's what

00:33:35.420 that would be where I would focus is we now know who the core customer is we now know that's going

00:33:39.800 to be a byproduct of essentially doing this thing this thing's a wash that covers overhead

00:33:44.260 and to build the 300,000 a year economic engine to support this thing yeah and really it could

00:33:50.300 be 3 million, 30 million, if it's truly kind of like, you know, essentially it's a non-for-profit

00:33:55.420 agency that leverages the competition to build the network of the kids that we then present

00:34:00.440 as little mini X to help support business and that's how we fund it, which would be

00:34:06.260 a beautiful thing and a case study to be examined, right, because nobody's really figured that

00:34:10.140 out, but somebody's going to have to focus on this agency thing, and when it comes to

00:34:14.860 building agency that have a ton of content on that, you've got to pick one thing, and

00:34:18.460 you've got to charge for the strategic part of it, right? And I call that a roadmap because

00:34:23.800 without charging for that strategic thing, you'll spend a lot of time on proposal writing and you

00:34:29.500 know, people just smile and say, yeah, I love this. And you're like, yeah, we'll take out your credit

00:34:33.340 card. Does that help? It does a lot actually. All right. Thank you. Appreciate you doing what you

00:34:39.140 do. Thank you so much. Amazing. It's inspiring. So today I was hoping to sit down with Dan and get

00:34:43.800 clarity on how to create a sustainable and scalable version of the Youth

00:34:49.080 Entrepreneurship Challenge. We started talking about all kinds of different

00:34:52.680 things and really established who the customer needs to be for us, which I'm

00:34:59.680 really excited about. He's given me a lot to think about in terms of where we need

00:35:05.800 to go and some of the strategy that needs to be put in place. So I'm really

00:35:10.200 stoked to get started and to sort of put some of those thoughts on paper.

Dan Martell - November 16, 2017

Episode #2 - Creating Sustainable Revenue Model From Your Non-Profit w⧸ Sarah Short, Director of YEC

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