040: What You Do Today is For Your Future Self with Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg

The concept of building a company is the most exhilerating adrenalin rush, motivating thing in my life and having the opportunity to do that dozens of times a year, I don’t think I could get any luckier.

#00:00:47-2# Neil : Hello, its Neil Ball here, thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way. The entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneur’s journey, the vision, the mindset, the committment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Joshua Davidson. But before I introduce you to him, I have a little bit of a quote for you, Salcot Parson said, ‘theory not only formulates what we know but also tells us what we want to know. That is to the questions to which the answer is needed.’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions, so we all get the insight, inspiration, and ideas to apply in our businesses. Joshua, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:32-9# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Lets do this Neil.

#00:01:35-0# Neil : Ok, welcome to the show. Joshua Davidson builds products and grows companies, he is the founder of chopdawg thats with ch at the beginning and he is the co-host of the pawdcast. He has been featured on FOX, NBC, CBS, Technically and Mashable. Joshua, can you provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life to allow us to get to know more about what you do and who you are?

#00:02:04-5# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Yeh of course, so pretty much if people ask me to define my day, I spend 80% of my day staring at a screen talking with apple head phones on just like this, so that is pretty much a stereotypical day for me. But the real probably more in-depth look is, I help entrepreneurs around the world with great technical ideas that lack the technical resources, help turn them into reality. We basically at chopdawg help build the brands, build the products, primarily in the digital sphere, so did you look for portfolio clients, you will find iphone apps, android apps, web apps, software, wearable, websites, so we primarily work with non-technical entrepreneurs, but with these amazing technical ideas, which otherwise, they pretty much have no options on how to bring their ideas to market. They can go to a development firm here in the United States or over in Europe. But the issue is, for most of them they pretty much charge a second mortgage. Right, which most individuals cannot afford, and if somehow you can afford a second mortgage, the issue is you are not getting someone to help focus on building you a company, they are just trying to make you as happy as quick as possible, giving you that quickest turnaround, that quickest turnover, and what happens is that you end up with this very expensive toy that you are going to fail with. And vice-versa for those who can’t afford second mortgages. They look what we call here ‘going overseas’ but what pretty much most people know as outsourcing, over to countries such as Uganda, Ukraine, Russia, China, Pakistan, and I probably do not have to explain the eminites shamala plus that happens when working with overseas, outsource firms where you pay ‘paid on the dollars’ right? We have all heard those nightmare stories, time and time again, and we realised, pardon my french here but holy shit there is this amazing opportunity in this huge problem that people need to solve and for every technical individual with a great technical idea, there are ten great non-technical individuals, then everyone is always focusing on the technical individual but you are neglecting the serial entrepreneurs. The lawyers, the investors, the people who have been around the block, and know how technology can solve problems, is just they don’t have the capabilities of doing it, themselves only the idea. And we have been running Chopdawg for almost seven years now, August will mark our seventh anniversary. And we have launched over 160 companies to date, worldwide, in fact we literally just launched this week in Bangkok Thailand for prospective. Even though we are based here in the United States, we have clients everywhere, even throughout Europe and London, Spain, here in the States and Mexico and Canada.

#00:04:31-4# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Odds are if you look somewhere on the map, you are probably going to find somewhere where one of our clients is from. And yeh, that is kind of pretty much the nutshell that you mention, we are at Chopdawg also about inspiring people to become entrepreneurs and motivating them. And we do multiple things, we update our blog almost daily, it’s not exactly daily. We have a very very active social media channel. We introduced the Pawdcast this past year. Where we kind of de-construct amazing individuals, not necessarily entrepreneurs, but just amazing individuals that people can learn a lot from, and trying to help as well motivate and be a resource for inspiring in the act of entrepreneurs too.

#00:05:12-4# Neil : Can you just talk a little bit more, you talked about Chopdawg and the way that you helped these entrepreneurs, so how do you do that? Do you invest in their business, or do you take an equity stake in it? what happens? how do you actually help them?

#00:05:24-8# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : The majority of our clients are compensation based only, so number one we don’t build by hour by week by month. One of the reasons why is I hate that model, I think it incentivises companies like us, attorneys or any one service to take as long as possible. And two, that you ask me how many hours it is going to take to build your company. I would be lying to you if I gave you an answer. The amount of back and forth to planning, to high fidelities, the wire framing, the product development .. it’s very subjective right? and every client has a different personality, so we actually build by set rate, for exactly what it is you are trying to get done. So theoretically, lets say you are a $200,000 dollar project or a $200,000 pound project. Or a $150,000 euro project or whatever your currency is, thats exactly what you are looking at, you are not looking at a penny more, you are not being guessed, you know exactly what it is. I am a big believer in that, more transparency, our clients can better manage the cash flow, you know a lot of individuals that we work with are individuals right? they don’t have million dollar budgets, million pound budgets, million euro budgets, they need to be able to spend to a tee, they need to know what they are allocating.

#00:06:30-3# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : So our business models have to be fully transparent and so they know exactly what they are getting into, but we do on occasion take equity. And I guess you could consider investing, but we don’t physically invest, for example, this is a real example, lets say you came to me with a brilliant idea, alright Neil and it was for an iphone app. and I quoted you at $75,000 dollars. But you only had a $15,000 dollar budget, there is a $25,000 dollar difference in the scenario. Sometimes we will turn around to an entrepreneur and be like to he or she, ‘we really like you, we really like the idea, we think this has potential, that $25,000 dollar difference, we will take that as equity, so you don’t have to raise additional funds and you don’t have to worry about not being able to proceed forward, and we will work together. So we do in situations such as that, take ownership or profit-sharing or equity or whatever the situation we feel might be worth it. But most of our clientelle are paying us through currency, through compensation.

#00:07:26-2# Neil : Ok and what do you enjoy most about what you do?

#00:07:33-0# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : So there are actually two answers I am going to give you here, one is, I am known since I was very young, I love building stuff and the concept of building a company, is the most exhilerating adrenalin rush, motivating thing in my life and having the opportunity to do that dozens of times a year, I don’t think I could get any luckier and that is one of the reasons why I wanted to start a company such as this is because I get to do what to me is the most fun part about being an entrepreneur. Day in and day out, and I am privaleged that I have that opportunity with my amazing team to do that with such incredible clients and then vice-versa, I really really really do love helping people. Part of it is the fundementals, my parents fortunately raised into me, my DNA and having to build and turn people’s ideas into reality, again it goes hand-in-hand, it’s the most exhilerating humbling experience you could ever have, and its part of our company’s DNA, it’s why we produce so much extra content in our blog with the podcast and social media. Because we feel we have a social mission to help people with entrepreneurial tendencies become entrepreneurs.

#00:08:41-7# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : When people inspire to become entrepreneurs, get a playbook on how to become a succesful entrepreneur, on how to fail less and teach them less is a name for our clients, do everything possible to help them make their idea come to life, and to see them succeed and do everything we can to see them become successful. So it’s really a two-folded answer there, but they are not mutually exclusive, you know they kind of go hand-in-hand with why I absolutely love what we get to do everyday.

#00:09:06-6# Neil : Mmm hmm and what is it that drives you?

#00:09:09-9# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : That’s a really good question, so you know, I can give you both a selfish reason and more maybe an extra-skeleton layer of it, so selfish first is really a legacy. I guess I grew up in that Steve Jobs era where you know, we were here to put the ding in the universe right? otherwise, why are we here type mentality? Its true, I just look at life as you know it’s a finite resource, where we are eventually going to run out of it. And I don’t want to look back on it and regret what I have done, and I truly do believe we are in a modern-day gold rush. The modern-day revolution, where for the first time ever you can create something and a billion people can use it day one. We would never have any history of mankind right? and so wild west years, were, you know there is regulation now, but it is still limited to what it will become, and ideas, there are such good ideas out there now, happening every day, no ones ran out of ideas, paton trolls are having a tough time, like this is the greatest time in history to be an entrepreneur, if you are in the tech and you are in the digital sphere. And no legacy, I want to be able to look back upon myself or other people and look at me and say, ‘you help pioneer some of the greatest companies, products and things that people use in the modern era, in modern society or change the way how we do things.

#00:10:22-1# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : So that’s more of a selfish reason, but I never look at selfishness as a negative when it comes to things such as that. And then the more excel layers we are talking about it, so again, helping people. And again, not being too exclusive to the legacy, if I have the opportunity to help right now 160 entrepreneurs bring their products to life, and maybe my life help a couple of thousand, or help inspire a couple of thousand become entrepreneurs, or help them become wealthy or independent after I impacted people’s lives, and made that difference. And then god forbid, one or two or three of those companies go on to have millions and millions of users where otherwise I would not exist, I have left that mark. And I don’t need credit for it, I mean honestly that is one of the things where I am unselfish, I don’t care who gets the credit, in fact my team is the one who deserves all the credit for our success as a company, not me. You know that part that does drive me though, is the idea of like, I can leave my imprint in society and leave my mark and we as people, and we as in technology and we as in products and our economy are better off because I existed. I mean when you think of that, that deep layer, it’s truly what motivates me to the bone.

#00:11:34-6# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : And there is obviously a little more detail, and I ask myself this question all the time because I talked about this recently on another podcast that you can’t have one source of motivation because sometimes that source of motivation dies down a bit, and if that dies down and they have no new sources, you are going to burn out. And you are going to quit or you are going to be you know that’s it, so I am a big believer of having multiple multiple multiple facets of motivation. They say, ‘how do you be successful? have multiple sources of revenue.’ multiple sources of income, possibly the multiple sources of motivation. You can’t have just one factor, right? I mean money is an aspect right? I mean I don’t define myself as materialistic whatsoever, but for a lot of entrepreneurs they look at money as a motivational factor. And somehow in 2016, its looked at upon as a negative thing, to make money, to me I am like, pardon my french, I am like ‘what the hell?’ right? You know this is business, not charity. There is no negative in it right? And you need to have multiple sources of motivation, I think those two that I answered though, probably are going to be the ones that hit the core to me the most, out of anything else.

#00:12:33-7# Neil : Yeh Joshua, that was an awesome answer. I think really what you are saying there is quite a noble cause really, because obviously you make money out of what you do, but you are helping lots of people and that is a good thing isn’t it? so yeh, I totally buy into that. And how do you relax when you are not working in your business?

#00:12:51-1# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Ha ha ha, I wish I had an answer for that one for you man,

#00:12:54-7# Neil : Ha ha ha, well you have got multiple sources of motivaton, so you must have multiple ways of relaxing surely?

#0 #00:13:00-7# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : I believe sleep is one, for some reason the theme of this podcast is two folded answers. This is two folded, this is mentally relaxing, not physically, but lifting, going to the gym, cardio, that’s a huge stress reliever for me because I definitely deal with a lot of stresses and I have really learned how to train my thought patterns, in order to think ahead and when you are planning long-term you deal with a lot of less short-term stress and stuff like that, but I honestly working out, and I only discovered this is the past 24/26 months, that is a huge stress reliever and a way of mentally shut off, or it’s almost like a meditative state. If that kind of makes sense when you spend an hour, you shut everything off, just listening to music, you are focused on yourself, that’s a very very relaxing mental state for me now physically, sleep is honestly probably now the biggest one and another point is sports. I am a huge sports fan, I think people following me on social media listening. .. your sports team, I live breath and die by that right? Which to alot of people is a waste of time, to me its my outlet right? my enjoyment, my ability to escape reality temporarily. Of course my teams all … suck right now, but that is besides the point, you know one day I will have some enjoyment there, but it’s the truth.

#00:14:10-3# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : You know sports, and its also a way how I have bonded with my parents, especially my dad. And probably the last one is, not having a very close-knit family, you know my girlfriend, probably a couple of close friends, travelling, so there is relaxing things there. But honestly my big momentum dream in person, and when things are going good, I am all about how I can optimise every minute to my manage, and keep in mind, relaxing to me is interesting. I always try not to burn out, but I love what I do, this is not like a 9-5 grind to me. So when people are like, ‘I want some down time’ to me, I am like, ‘how can I fit in one more call or one more podcast or write one more blog post?’ Because to me this is living, I feel more alive doing this and shutting myself off, honestly feels counter productive towards what I am trying to do, and what I enjoy. So again, it’s a multi-facet answer here but it’s just the honest truth when you think about it, when you really break it down.

#00:15:05-6# Neil : And do you have any entrepreneurial role models?

#00:15:10-7# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Yeh indirectly. I had no like mentors, but indirectly I like do. Like as I mentioned, I grew up in the Steve Jobs generation. I think listening to him and just watching the way he conducted himself and learning about his life, is a very inspirational thing at a younger age, not so much now, part of maybe because he is dead, you know it’s not as relevant anymore, but when your teenage years were in apple’s heyday, even though they are still a gianormous company right? Thats very impressionable. Elon Musk and what he is able to accomplish is insanity. And there are a few other people, Johnny Earl who founded a brand called ‘Johnny cupcakes’ was still a direct influence in the way of how he conducts his brand and narrative and storytelling. But honestly, most role models that inspire me today like work ethic, things like that, are not necessarily entrepreneurs. And sometimes it can be top peak perfoming atheletes, musicians, creators, artists, I look for, kind of why we started a podcast, is because we look for signs of what makes the best of the best and whatever they do tick. And I look for that type of stuff and then try to use that as a role model, and take that as inspiration to what I do day-to-day.

#00:16:19-7# Neil : That makes sense, I mean it is just drawing from other people’s success isn’t it I suppose? so it takes dedication to achieve success in many walks of life, it does not have to be just entrepreneurialism does it?

#00:16:29-1# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Exactly, exactly. And I think the issue of entrepreneurialism is you get tunnel-focused, you just look at entrepreneurs as a source, but thats you are limiting your playing field, and often times you can learn a playbook somewhere else and adopt it to whatever you are doing, and you think outside the box, so I am always looking at every source of a person, industry, whatever the game plan is and trying to take that into your motivation into my day-to-day game plan like you are talking about fitness. I really go into all fitness in what I eat and what I do, increase my energy levels, make me more productive, thats a hack right there, most entrepreneurs are not thinking that way.

#00:17:03-3# Neil : Mmm hmmm

#00:17:03-3# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : But that playbook right, thats existed for years in the fitness scene and the bodybuilding scene, and the athelete scene, and just human DNA, so it is one of the ways to kind of approach things.

#00:17:13-6# Neil : Joshua, can we talk about the time before you were an entrepreneur? And can you tell us what difficulties you had to overcome to get started in your business?

#00:17:22-7# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Oh thats a very good question, I mean I have started my company at 16 years old. So talking about before hand, it’s very hard because before then I was on AO Hell (AOL) back in the day. On Yahoo GEO Cities making websites. I created a fan site to a local theme park when I was a kid that had thousands of users. You know I sold a website when I was a kid, and made money. So the answer is, I have always had entreprenial tendencies, but when I first started as an entrepreneur you know the earliest thing is proof of constant validation and it is significantly harder because you have a disadvantage of your age when you are trying to sell yourself, present yourself, trying to hustle. Having .. the types of obstacles and limitation of being young, but when you get initial traction, I also learned that’s an advantage, because then you have a narrative of being that you know, people loved the media and stuff, the boy wonder and the person that is doing it all and then you can spin into a positive once you get some traction, so I have been both on the receiving and the sending end area you know when it happens so. I did not have many struggles with most of the people I work with experience, where I become an entrepreneur, by losing a career, changing a career path or having a family I honestly .. and I am the first person to admit that, I put $20 bucks to my name to start my company. Which mainly is mine by the way there, but the honest answer is, ‘what was my risk?’ I failed at 16 years old, I was still in high school at the time, and I go the common path that every person does, that society constructed so I did not have as much at risk. I mean, yeh, I dropped out of college, but I did that because I was at the point where college was holding me back from opportunities, and I knew I had enough of income that I was not worried about livelihood at that point. And simulataneously, I had enough connections where god forbid shit hits the fan, I know tomorrow I can get a job in a heartbeat. I would probably be miserable but that is besides the point right? So I probably, especially people listening to this podcast, I probably would never have the type of obstacles they would face, and I am never going to try and pretend that I deal with those stresses that the people that I get to talk to and deal with on a day-to-day do have to deal with.

#00:19:23-5# Neil : Yeh. And did you have any doubts that delayed you starting, obviously you started very young there, but there must have been some doubt somewhere?

#00:19:30-2# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Oh yeh, I take this from Casey Nistatt who is probably another role model from a creative field, he is an entrepreneur now too but the idea of trusting during intuition. I always knew early on just, if I disagreed with something like I was never like a rebel, I wasn’t like a rebellion in starwars or anything. But if I trust my intuition, over what society taught me, I will do what my intuition told me. Obviously a moral complice and still not breaking the law and stuff like that, but society is not telling you to go and do your own thing at 16 years old. It’s telling you to go to school, study hard, and go to the best college you can and go through that cog-wheel right?

#00:20:05-6# Neil : Mmmm

#00:20:07-4# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Me I was like ‘thats not for me’ I love technology, I love building things, I love working with people, that is what I want to do, and I knew early on and I was able to understand you know, obviously I am learning every day. And trust me, a 16 year old me, I would kick my 16 year old ass, if you put me in the same room as him. But the thing is, I had enough business sense to understand market validation, understand what I was doing and that .. of Ryan Carsons what he considers ‘naive optimism’ I was naive enough to believe I could do something and optimistic enough to believe I could do something, and you know just took that leap, made me think twice.

#00:20:41-8# Neil : Yeh I think you were around at a time, by the sounds of it, if you were using AOL and everything, it was quite an exciting time though with the internet, wasn’t it? because I don’t think anybody then even had an idea of where it was going to end up.

#00:20:54-6# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : I think my age at that point, is one of the biggest assets I have now, I was not even an adult at that point, I was not even really a teenager at that point. So I am growing up with this technology. And I am like the first true generation to grow up with it, and I also have a head start over most people my age, because they are still in that social construct of school, or go and get jobs, I have a 10-20 year head start over most people my age, and I am the one that grew up with it. And I think that is a huge asset that most people don’t realise. But yeh listen, some of the most fun times back in the day man, but honestly we live in such great times now, I don’t even want to even undersell it because I think people are going to look back at this era and be like ‘holy shit, what we had here was amazing.’ and its the truth.

#00:21:34-7# Neil : Yeh absolutely, and what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey?

#00:21:39-7# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : I mean every mistake man, I think I tell all my team all the time, I have made every mistake you can think of. Over-promising, under-delivering, like losing track of time-frames, costs, wasting marketing money. One of my greatest assets is I am not afraid to take risks, but the first second I learn a lesson, I never repeat that same mistake again. And sometimes, I am a big believer in big risk, big reward, because that is the only way you grow up and I don’t like that idea of compound 1 / 2 percent growth a year, my goals, 50% 100% 200% 500% growth per year, so I take big risk and I make big decision feature like on a podcast, I said I loved the podcast format, I truly do believe we are at the stepping-stones, Serial opened the door, and with cars now getting podcast app and on demand when you want it, how you want it, where you want it, going over these devices, having these devices, where you want it, when you want it, podcast is only going to blow up significantly more over the next 24-36 months. And at the same time, I believe the current method, like no offence to you Neil, but like here, right now when no-one else is listening, this will be an out-dated method one day, the only people that would record with our audience are people like Serial who are doing like a production style podcast, but its a target interview and things like that, we are already in Blab. Where we have real people listening and real-time what we are talking about. Have them a part of the show, contributing to the content we are providing.

#00:23:07-1# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Putting a video based version to podcast, an audio based version, putting it on every channel. You know, I am already thinking ahead where we are going as far as distribution and brand and you are already get podcasts but the same point in time, I just don’t want to get podcasts it’s the same people whatever I do. I want to know where the bucks going to go, not where it is right now, and that is why everything that you see what we are doing, we are always looking long-term, planning 2, 3 steps ahead of everyone else. So by the time you are like, ‘ah I get it, we are already saying ‘we already got the market, it’s not saturated but we got in, we figured it out and we are kicking ass now and you are the ones mirror-imaging us’ and that is kind of like the methodology of everything that I do.

#00:23:47-8# Neil : And what are some of the things that you did before you started your business? that would be helpful tips for some of the listeners who have not yet taken the first step on the entrepreneur way?

#00:23:56-4# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : You know one of the things that I told you is I made websites as a kid. And yahoo, GEO cities, I learned that on my own, and I was running communities and running like at the time was the equivalent of having like a team. You know people who would volunteer and work with you and delegating, at 12, 13 years old I had 14 people working under me on a website. I was making ad revenue and I had 5,000 active users on a website. Like content every day, and I had some of the top SCO for what it is, I owned a four-letter domain name at the time, the best thing is experience, you just got to go in. And I told you as an entrepreneur today like, ‘what do I need to learn before I become an entrepreneur?’ pardon my french and … it. Go in and make the mistakes now, its how the best and the best do it. I make mistakes every single day, I know that for a fact. Like I probably made 20 mistakes on this podcast. But I learn from them, I don’t repeat them and from experience I grow, and that is the only way as an entrepreneur you are going to do it, there is no playbook. People teaching you how to become a successful entrepreneur one-on-one they are … liers. If they could be successful, why aren’t they the ones doing it? They sell and they promise they can make a million dollar company for you, why aren’t they the ones doing it? Why are they teaching it right?

#00:24:59-4# Neil : Mmm

#00:24:59-4# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : So the honest answer here is, one, if you are going to become successful and you are going to go to the entrepreneurial lifestyle, its two four to one, you don’t just become an entrepreneur. You know deep down you are an entrepreneur, because if you are not, you are going to be burned out and this game is going to swallow you alive because competition is a real thing. And two, you just go in, and part of that goes back to the first answer because you don’t know any way else how to do it. I started at 16 because I did not know anything else at 16, I still just don’t know anything else today. You know, I talk about it all the time, I have only ever had one real job, and within a year and a half I was a bus boy and a van driver ina burger place. I was the youngest trainer, I could do everything there except bar tend because I was not old enough, and I was miserable. I quickly grew through the ranks quicker than anyone else, because I am smart and I knew what to do, and I knew how the system worked and I knew how the business worked. And I knew how to scale, and I hated it.

#00:25:50-8# Neil : Mmmm

#00:25:50-8# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : I do something I love and I only know how to do things that are going to be optimising for me to be productive and to give value for others, and to do in an entrepreneurial lifestyle, its just the way I am programmed and how my DNA is set up.

#00:26:01-7# Neil : Joshua, what I would like to do now is just being an entrepreneur and the journey, so can you tell me, do you think that culture is important from the beginning in a business?

#00:26:10-2# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Oh 100% the culture set early on is going to be the tone, the foundation layer moving forward, so, there is no doubt about it, if you have a bad culture company in the beginning, or you hire B or C plus players early on, you set your tone of what your company is going to be. High quality, high expectation, that is what it is all about, so 100% believe in it, no doubt about it.

#00:26:38-8# Neil : So do you think it is something you should orchestrate at the beginning then? because obviously ..

#00:26:41-8# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Where here is the thing, you can’t just force culture. You force culture and you are not going, it’s not going to stick. Culture honestly just comes out to the type of people and personalities you hire in the work ethic installed. Thats really it, the rest is organic, it just happens. So my honest answer is, you just got to hire the best people possible, and you got to be the type of person to push yourself to the very limit of how you want others to be. And if you do that, the culture is going to set itself, if you try to fake it, you try to manipulate it, you hire crappy people, then you are going to have that type of culture because of what you have done.

#00:27:15-2# Neil : Ok, knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve?

#00:27:22-3# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Yeh I mean one of the things I can’t stress enough is outsourcing your nightmares. And what I mean by that is, I can’t stand HR stuff, I can’t stand legal stuff, I can’t stand insurance stuff, but they are necesseties, they are not evil necessesties, because they are not evil, I just can’t stand them. I think they take up too much of my time, I am not an expert on them, if you don’t do them right, it can cause the biggest headaches, so I think one of the things early on is just outsourcing what you don’t enjoy. Or what you don’t want to do and ultimately it is going to save you money and save you time because you are focusing more on what you are doing, your experts handling what you don’t enjoy. And when you are focusing on what you do enjoy, you are probably more of an asset, you are going to scale that much quicker, so probably definately early on the biggest thing is outsourcing your nightmares, as I like to call it.

#00:28:06-9# Neil : Yeh so when you are talking about outsourcing there, you are not talking about outsourcing to some of these lower wage countries are you? I assume you are talking about ..

#00:28:12-9# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : No no no, I mean outsourcing is, I have the greatest will in the world. Everything legal related is here, I am not dealing with it, you know I have the greatest payroll company in the world. I am not dealing with payroll, they are right? You have the greatest account in the world, I am not doing accounting, I am not using turbo tax, I am using .. right? So yeh I am not talking about outsourcing like pay us on the dollar type situation. I am just talking about just outsourcing it to companies or businesses or people, that are just experts and do love what they do. And they give you a reasonable value through the rate and then the proposition they are giving you from it for you to go and do what you do enjoy.

#00:28:43-6# Neil : Mmm and how much does gut feeling influence your decisions in your business?

#00:28:47-6# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : 50/50 50% gut, 50% what the data tells me. So it kind of goes hand-in-hand 50/50.

#00:28:55-0# Neil : Ok, but there must be sometimes when you have not got the data, so you have to go with your gut.

#00:28:59-6# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : No yeh, then you trust with intuition and most of the time my intuition has not failed me and a few times it has. Thats where you learn from it.

#00:29:07-1# Neil : Life is made of constant change, whether we like it or not, and some people say the only constant in life is change. So, Joshua, how do you try to keep up with change?

#00:29:17-9# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : I am a big believe in this, if I am not looking back at myself one year ago today and think I was an idiot then, I have wasted my time. And I also believe, if I go to bed at night, and I feel like I left something in the tank, I have wasted my day. So my big belief when it comes to change and everything is you should always be trying to improve yourself and always putting yourself to your limits, whatever you do and also, another thing, I learned this from the body building scene suprisingly was true, you are today from your previous actions, what you do today is for your future self. Saying I believe that can apply to business. You know, what you do today, you might not see the results a day for now, but you keep doing your sums every single day, a year from now, you will see the results. It does not matter personal, it does not matter physical, it does not matter business, its just how it works. It’s basically the cause and effect but cause and effect, the effect does not have to be immediate. But it will happen. So I just a big believer in .. mantras and if you do that, you are always going to be changing, but it’s not changing to me, its more evolving and that is kind of the way I like to look at it.

#00:30:18-7# Neil : Ok and what is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#00:30:28-7# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : It’s a tough one, there are so many great books, I am going to try and go with ‘the four-hour work week’ by Tim Ferris. It’s not a bible and you should not approach it as a bible, and the book is not about teaching you how to have a four-hour work week, listen I work probably harder than anybody else listening to this podcast. I am the first one to say it, from the time I open my eyes to the time I go to bed. But the book preaches about working smarter not harder, and working for things that produce results. And how they avoid busy work and basically everything you do has a reason for what it is doing. So if there is any book I can recommend, its the ‘four-hour work week’ by Tim Ferris. Unbelievable book, again, its not going to teach you how to work for four hours, it will teach you how to do certain things that again does not apply to me such as life-style business, stuff like that. But none the less, the principles you learn from it, it is such a great asset, something I always recommend to people.

#00:31:17-5# Neil : Everyone, when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge, in the time when you may be doing other things, such as driving or when you are at the gym. We have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing, to choose your free audio book, go to freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up, then you will qualify, Joshua, what I would like to do now is just speculate a little bit about the future. So, can you tell us ‘what one thing would you do with your business if you knew that you could not fail?’

#00:31:50-9# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : I honestly don’t know if I would change anything. Maybe the only thing is just put more capital in certain projects where they are more risk-aversed, you need to see some capital in order case, ‘shit hits the fan’ but decision-making and thought process is probably stay the same in what we are trying to do so I guess spending more money in certain aspects, if you know you are not going to fail, you know you are going to get out alive from it, and that is pretty much it.

#00:32:12-9# Neil : Ok and what skill if you were excellent at it, would help you the most to double your business?

#00:32:18-7# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : If I could clone myself, I think I would be an amazing skull to have, no the answer to your question is I still get too much distracted in pointless shit, at selling tweets I made, email and things like that, and they are necessary evils and I love it and hate it at the same time. Its hard when you are in the middle of momentum and you see an email, and you are like, ‘I should just respond to that, get out of the way.’ And the next thing you know, your thought pattern is broken. So maybe just not being as distracted so much as things which are important, but don’t need to be in the now when it comes I tell myself, ‘thats probably something I need to still improve upon, thats probably the best answer to give you.’

#00:32:54-2# Neil : Ok in five years from now, if a well-known business publication, was publishing an article on your business, after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

#00:33:02-1# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : What would I like it to say?

#00:33:07-6# Neil : Yeh

#00:33:14-3# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : I think it is a concept of go back to a question about legacy, you know, because of Chopdawg or a company exists, or we made that positive impact with society. So something relating to something existing or growing or scaling, because our company was there and helped them get to that point. That would probably be the best answer to give you.

# #00:33:32-8# Neil : Ok, we are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us, so what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it?

#00:33:41-3# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : We are all here to put a ding in the universe, otherwise why are we here? by Steve Jobs, something like that, and certain paraphrasing. Still quote I remember reading when I was like 14, 15, always stuck to me and we all have almost the same amount of time in life, obviously some people leave sooner, then others stay longer. But relatively, we all have the same opportunity, right? and how are you going to make every minute count because we all have 24 hours in a day, we all have 365 days in a year. But everyone is going to do a certain amount in that time period and how am I going to put the biggest debt in the universe, while I have this time and opportunity?

#00:34:14-8# Neil : Ok and do you have any favourite online resources that you can share with us?

#00:34:20-1# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : You mean like my own website man?

#00:34:22-4# Neil : Well you can talk about that at the end.

#00:34:23-7# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : I mean, we put alot of great content on there, I am not going to lie. Chopdawg.com but the real answer is I still find twitter to be such an amazing social media, have a little private list that I look at. Have some of my favourite people and favourite accounts that I use for motivation, knowledge, news. I think that is pretty much it right there,

#00:34:45-2# Neil : And what is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

#00:34:48-4# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Just f*****G go for it, you know. Somebody joked with me recently and said I should write a book, and said, ‘stop thinking about it and just f*****g do it’ and I said, that should be my book title. Because maybe that is my unofficial mantra in life, but its true. People over think you to the point where they just don’t do it. People just waste too much time, and at the end of the day, everyone was amateur when they started, and the answer is, they just did it right, they just jumped in, took the leap of faith, trusted themselves, trusted their own intellect and hustled their butts off. And I think, that is the advice I would give is for those listening who are hesitant, if you keep being hesitant, you are not a real entrepreneur, sorry to say but it is true. Those that are, just say I am doing it, I don’t know anybody else how not to do it, I will figure it out as I go along. That is the definition of being an entrepreneur right there. So that to me is the answer I will tell anyone who is listening to this podcast.

#00:35:44-2# Neil : Ok everyone if you did not manage to get a note of Joshua’s favourite resource, or his favourite book, you can find the links on Joshua’s shownotes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Joshua or Joshua Davidson in the search box. Joshua, is there anything else you would like to add about your business?

#00:36:03-9# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : We always give out free proposals of free consultations for everyone. So granted when I say this, I always tell people do you have a great idea in the shower and you are thinking of reaching out to us well let me give you a proposal, you have another thing coming. So for those who are serious, that have had a great idea and look for resource, know we spent alot of time without charging people because again, our jobs to help. Anybody in any situation could reach out to us, and the big thing and tell them what they do is always be transparent to us in advance what your goals are. What your financial goals are, your time-frame goals, your product, our objective is to help people. Its not to take advantage, you know we are a company but we have a social mission that always comes first. And that is part of what it is and part of another thing is our eco system is about helping others. You know only a fraction or percent of individuals work off us, everyone else in our eco system, we are giving our content for free for the purpose of just trying to help society. And our blog is a full transparent view on what to do and not to do as an entrepreneur, building a start-up, building a company, building something digital, building a brand, our podcast, we are talking to such amazing individuals and talking about such great subjects. We just talked today of Andrew Brandt, who is a part of ESPN and sports illustrated was the former CFO the green bay packers and the former general manager of the Barcelona Dragons.

#00:37:16-2# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Amazing individual, picked his brain, next week we are talking to Wayne Sutton about basically the rights and minorities and how people are still taking advantage of to this day and entrepreneurs and start-ups and not taken seriously and how disgraceful that is, how this is being corrected, what he is doing to fix it. You know talking about subject matter that people are sometimes uncomfortable about talking about and or don’t really talk about much you know? We talked to the founders of mercier works, and talked about what were their biggest failures. Something I am always very open about, I was very emotional. You know and again, people need to hear and then they can learn from it, and alot of times people have these centre ship or are afraid to talk about these sensitive subjects that to me its the only way we as a society and as people move forward and become better as people and as entrepreneurs and as creatives. And I guess last thing is always being forever curious, you know again, why we talk to people from any type of field, I am a big believer you can learn from anything and having tunnel vision is one of the worst things we can do as people. Not even as an entrepreneur but as a person, and I am very open-minded and I am always changing my own opinion, and I am always trying to learn and that is something that everyone needs to have and that skill set you need to teach yourself.

#00:38:27-4# Neil : Joshua, you have shared some absolutely awesome information, and you have given us some great answers and some great perspectives on being an entrepreneur, so thank you for that.

#00:38:38-8# Joshua Davidson Founder of ChopDawg and The Pawdcast : Its my pleasure, it’s what I am here for.

#00:38:40-6# Neil : You are welcome, thank you.