WEBVTT
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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and if you're interested in growth, this is the episode for you, because we have went out and found one of the best guest experts that we could find when it comes to transformational growth in all of our businesses.
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This is someone who you're gonna see.
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He loves business from the inside out.
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He loves it at all different scales.
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This is someone who has led a business from zero dollars, literally from scratch, to over 500 million dollars.
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He's led an IPO.
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He's led so many mergers and acquisitions and exits.
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Today's guest honestly is living proof of what growth can be, how to achieve it, how to work towards it, how to strategize for it.
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I'm so excited for all of us to learn from today's guest.
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His name is Ken Givranovic.
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Ken is a corporate growth architect.
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I love that title architect.
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It's so revealing about his attitude towards growth is that you plan for it, you have a blueprint and then you work towards it.
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So he's a corporate growth architect with over two decades of experience in scaling tech and SaaS companies.
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Ken has led businesses like webcom through IPOs.
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He's guided over 35 mergers and acquisitions and he has helped generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new sales.
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He's also the CEO of Product Genius, which is an AI-driven platform revolutionizing business operations.
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It's very cool.
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It's basically like having an AI employee for your business.
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So we're definitely going to hear more about that from Ken here today.
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As a certified executive coach and thought leader, ken empowers businesses to achieve transformative growth through innovation and leadership.
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And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
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We're going to learn and explore so much more with Ken today, so I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with Ken Gibronovic.
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All right, ken, we are so very excited to have you on the show today.
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First things first.
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Welcome to the show.
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Brian, thanks so much.
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I'm glad for having a really nice intro.
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I really appreciate that, thank you.
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Heck, yeah, you make it easy because, ken, I always tell people I love entrepreneurship.
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Obviously, I'm super biased as the host of this show, but you love it just as much as I do, so I'm excited to go into your story.
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You've got to take us beyond the bio to kick things off.
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Who's Ken?
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How'd you start doing all these great things, right?
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Well, I always think maybe it's good to start off with the origin story right, because we all have a history right.
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We grew up in some sort of circumstance that often impacts us A lot of times.
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We don't even realize it much, much further into life.
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And so, when I grew up, one of the big things that I experienced is not being very wealthy.
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I knew what it felt like to not have money, to know what it was to kind of struggle to pay the bills, and that was something that motivated me.
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So, even as a young, young person, I said, well, I want more, I want to grow, and so entrepreneurship was the first path, and that's what kind of started that whole journey.
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I'm curious.
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I mean, you're on your own journey, too, with entrepreneurship.
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Yeah, Ken, I relate to it.
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It's something I forgot to ask you before we hit record today.
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I'm the son of an immigrant mom, so my mom's family is from Albania.
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It looks to me, based on your last name.
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You're from my neck of the woods.
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We're neighbors in some sort.
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So yeah, grew up super hardworking family didn't have money.
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I thought we were rich, Ken.
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I was convinced we were rich when I was a kid, but then I realized the value of hard work and how you can get anywhere you want to be.
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Yeah, no, totally.
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That's really what started me off.
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So as a young child I was always like, hey, I thought money led to success, and I'll just share this.
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A lot of times I think people get entrepreneurship, they're like, oh, money is going to be successful, or freedom, that's a big tribe or two.
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For me it was money.
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I thought, well, if I just made a certain amount by this time, then I would be happy and it'd be wonderful.
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And that's what started me on that journey.
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So I started in my early 20s kind of building multiple businesses, taking the chance, and when you do that at a young age it's scary.
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And by the time I was 24, I'd probably started a couple of businesses, had a couple of first base hits, but I really wanted that big opportunity.
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And it really started in an interesting time, like actually I think I told you I started off in Texas and then I kind of offered a lot of money to New York to run this business and I found myself in a really interesting way.
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You ever been in a situation where you're kind of, at that point in life you're like man, this is a pivotal moment, what am I going to do?
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And maybe I'll share a little bit about that.
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New York experience first.
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Yeah, please do, ken, I'm excited to hear it All right.
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So I've done a number of startups and built some businesses and some people offered me a ton of money for Galveston, texas, almost no money for New York.
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And I remember the beans in this little apartment in New York and I read this book Unleash the Giant Within Tony Robbins.
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I don't know if you're a Tony Robbins fan.
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I know some people are, some people aren't.
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Yeah, unleash, the Giant Within was my gateway drug to all of his work.
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Oh, that's awesome.
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So I remember reading this book.
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My car was almost going to be repossessed, my apartment was behind and the book was really all about empowerment, all about mindset, all about focus.
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And it was funny.
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Three years later, I went from that apartment to actually building a company called webcom in Atlanta, Georgia, taking it from zero to $200 million and actually driving into an IPO.
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And so by the age of 30, I'd actually hit every single, actually blew through all of my financial goals, and I thought now I'm going to be happy and everything's going to be wonderful.
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And guess what happened?
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Brian.
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Lay it on us.
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Well, like many people, when you have that goal of money is happiness?
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I was like, wait, I have all of my financial goals, but I hadn't hit all of the other things, and so with that, it kind of took me a moment to say, well, what do I want to do next?
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And I think that's where a lot of people are.
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When they're in a entrepreneur Maybe they've got that corporate job they're sitting back and they're thinking, if I only do this, if I only do that, then I'll be happy, then I'll be successful and everything will be great.
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And I'm sure you see that with a lot of different guests.
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Yeah, 100%.
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We're always chasing that next thing, for better and for worse, ken.
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Yeah, so it was an interesting time.
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So I was 30.
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I just got into that point and I'd already gone through some really interesting challenges.
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If you think about it.
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We went public after the dot-com crash.
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So as a 30-year-old, I remember before I even had built the company webcom, going to pitch VCs.
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And I remember one time I was sitting in New York in this really beautiful VC office and you look around and there's million-dollar pictures here, million-dollar pictures here, and I'm sitting down and I'm doing my presentation and I remember the VC at the end he said so kid, what are you really saying?
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And this is at the beginning of the Internet.
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So I've caught a couple of different waves and I was really, really convinced that every business was going to run their business on the Internet.
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And I remember this VC coming back to me and saying kids, you really believe you're bullshit.
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And again, that's a great example.
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You know, for me it was the Internet and that.
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But you know, I think when you start to have those ideas of that entrepreneur, there's going to be people, there's going to be thoughts that push you back and say you can't do it.
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And the first step is to think about what they're saying and believe and have your convictions, have that mindset, and then you can really move forward.
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Yeah, Ken, I want to jump into here, because there's something you said in there that I feel like newer entrepreneurs in particular get wrong, and that is you pointed out right there in your origin story that you had started multiple businesses, and I'm going to tag onto your baseball analogies.
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Is that too many entrepreneurs, and especially entrepreneurs, think that the more I study, the more I strategize, the more I prepare I'm going to hit a home run, when in fact, you have more chances of hitting a home run if you have 50 at bats rather than just one that you've put all of your eggs into.
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Talk to us about that, because it seems to me like you just continued swinging as many times as it took.
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Yeah, no, I think that's good.
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I think the first part is you've got to believe in yourself because you can overanalyze anything.
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That's funny I was reading.
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I mean, there was a Harvard Business Review article that said if you look at most business decisions, if you look at the ones where someone spent six months to do it or one month to do it, statistically there is no difference in the accuracy or success.
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So the key is to think about what you're trying to do, certainly get your direction, get your initial strategy, but then go, go for it, make the choices and learn so you might start in this direction.
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There's many businesses I've started where it's like this is the path to success.
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But if you listen to what people are saying, listen to what the market's telling you and then pivot, pivot, pivot, that's what's going to be the key difference up in our conversation to this point.
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Clearly it's important to you and I think that it took me a long time.
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I started my first business when I was 19 years old and I was lucky to be naive then that I just I didn't have any of those limiting beliefs.
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But you know, graduating college, having student loan, debt, entering the quote unquote real world I started to realize all these risks and all these calculations and all these limiting beliefs that society places upon us as well.
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And, ken, it took me a while to really understand at my core not just in my words or in my actions what belief really meant.
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What does it mean to you?
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Well, I think belief means that you know at the highest level, you're going to be okay and if you get focused in your direction and simply just take the next best step towards the area you want to go, the right thing is going to happen.
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You know I have a spiritual beliefs, you know.
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But whatever belief system you have, I'm a big believers.
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All you have to do is take the next step, show up for opportunity, keep moving and the right thing will unfold.
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And I've seen that happen time and time again.
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And you know time again.
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And I've got an interesting story One time.
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I'm sure you've heard of Benchmark Capital or Excel.
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So I've worked with some of the biggest VCs across the globe and just a gentleman.
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One time I remember sitting down with Bill Gurley.
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He was the guy who funded Uber.
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He was in the Uber movie, if you've seen that and I was sitting with Bill Gurley and he was talking about his investment in Zillow and at that point Zillow was failing in every single measurement.
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And I asked Bill.
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I said Bill, I said why did you guys invest in Zillow?
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It seems like a terrible idea.
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And he said Ken, we got the entire leadership team from Expedia and we're a big believer here at Benchmark If we get smart people with smart ideas, they're going to keep pivoting, pivoting, pivoting until they figure it out.
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And so not only is this a great thing for us to think about, but some of the best minds in venture capital, that's how they operate.
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They bet on ideas, certainly, but, number one, they bet on the entrepreneur.
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They bet on the people that are going to break through those obstacles.
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So it is really as simple as saying I'm going to move forward.
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I don't know if I'm going to get the exact path that I want or if it's going to be the exact pace that I want, but all I have to do is take the next best step.
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Yeah, I love that, especially because I feel like societally we almost act like there's some sort of dichotomy between pivoting and we attach meanings to that of oh, did you fail?
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But a pivot is completely different, and I always think about that false dichotomy between pivoting and consistency.
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I work with a former professional soccer player and he's a personal trainer and Ken.
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He always gives me the advice he's like if you're not going to go to the gym for two months in a row, don't bother going at all, because you need that level of consistency.
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And so when I think about business, I always, when I started this podcast, I said if I'm not going to make it to episode 50, I'm not going to do one episode whatsoever.
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Talk to me about that, because obviously we have to keep going without seeing those results immediately.
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There's a little bit of a delayed gratification there.
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But also we have to know when to pivot.
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I'd love to hear some of your insights there.
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Well, you know it's.
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It's funny, I think it's actually it's, it's, it's I used to think of, think through and all of it.
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You have lots of questions.
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I think it's as simple as resistance.
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If, if you're making the right decisions, if you're moving in the right direction, things will get easier.
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If you're taking the steps consistently and you consistently have friction and blockers and stuff, that's when it's time to pivot and I think it's as simple as that.
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Yeah, which part of that is intuition, ken, and you have years of experience to glean from.
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What did those early days look like?
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Because it's fun in hindsight and on these podcast episodes I feel like people always see the success story.
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What were those early days like for you that gave you enough insight, faith, intuition to say this is the right thing to be working on to be working on.
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Well, I think that's a great.
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So I'll talk about from a startup perspective and then I'll maybe share some examples where I've worked with other companies, where there's young startup entrepreneurs, where I help them grow and have a big exit.
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Maybe that might be an interesting way to approach it.
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So I think your question is like how do you know?
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What do you do?
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What's the best way to research?
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I think the first thing is trends.
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If you think I'll go back to VCs and the way I think about things is you're, if you're in a big trend early on, then you have an advantage, first mover advantage.
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So first thing is I like to look at trends.
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Is this the beginning of a change?
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Because then you don't have to be the only right person.
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You're writing that way.
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So I think trends are first.
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So look at big trends and opportunities.
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So for myself, the beginning of the internet it was very clear back when the internet started and I was in my 20s that this is going to be transformative.
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Later I got into public cloud transformation and they call it digital transformation and did that for many different companies and spoke across the globe.
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But many companies were operating still in this old way, and it was very clear to me as a trend that many of them are going to move into this more digital transformation.
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Now you hear, every business is a digital business, and I think the same thing, like right now I'm in another trend that I think is going to be just as huge as AI.
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I think AI is going to transform every single business.
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It's already impacting our lives.
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I think AI is going to transform every single business.
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It's already impacting our lives, and so if you can build a business in that space, you have an opportunity.
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And then the next step is okay, in this big transformation state, where's a place that I can play, where maybe my skills, my knowledge, is a differentiator?
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If you do those two things, then you've got a lot of wind at your back from success.
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Yeah, I want to talk about that term of obviously a corporate growth architect.
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You already know from the intro how much I love that label with regards to what you do.
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I'm a visual person, so when I hear architect, I immediately picture blueprints.
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With that in mind, ken, what are the ingredients?
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If we're building a building, we know there's walls, there's windows, there's a roof, what are those equivalents in terms of how to build a business?
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It's a good question.
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So, on how to build a business and it's funny, I actually wrote a book, Business Breakthroughs 3.0, where my partner who actually invented parts of the Amazon AWS system we talk a lot about this but I think when you're building a business, aside from that trend, is this the right idea?
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Is this at the right time?
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What skills do I bring in?
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But then it really is the people process, the people that you are going to partner with, the culture, the value alignment.
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If you have those things at the key parts at the starting, I think those are the key elements to get started in that entrepreneurial journey.
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So then you're aligned in values, you're at the right time, and then you just take those step backs and focus on execution.
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Yeah, execution.
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That's where all the money is.
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That's something that I think most entrepreneurs.
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It's the biggest difference maker between businesses that grow and those that don't.
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Ideas are a dime a dozen.
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I would actually argue that because of AI, ideas are the easy part now.
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And I do want to piggyback onto that because you were at the heyday of the internet.
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You talk about the big web boom back in your webcom days.
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Is AI that big of a disruptor you talk about?
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Every business is going to be on the web one day, which spoiler alert we all are.
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You are absolutely correct in that prediction.
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What's the impact of AI going to be?
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AI is going to be, I think, more impactful than the internet and it's going to be impactful in every single part of your life.
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So when I think about, first of all, if you're thinking about a job, there's going to be a lot of jobs that are simply going to go away.
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Customer service is one that you're going to see AI automate early.
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So anybody whose role is do step one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, rinse and repeat.
00:16:31.119 --> 00:16:32.686
That's something.
00:16:32.686 --> 00:16:39.499
If that's your career, I suggest you look at other opportunities because AI is going to be very ripe to disrupt that.
00:16:39.499 --> 00:16:47.558
I think if you run a business and you're not using AI and your competitors are, you're going to be in big trouble.
00:16:47.558 --> 00:16:48.428
I'll give you an example.
00:16:48.489 --> 00:17:02.168
Right now, a lot of VC companies are seeing that when they're building software say, it's a SaaS company if they don't have their developers use ai, they go about 35 slower than another startup.
00:17:02.208 --> 00:17:10.219
So what you're already seeing is people are to build software and go faster and faster than they ever could before with the same investment.
00:17:10.721 --> 00:17:19.459
So ai is absolutely going to impact whether how you build software, the jobs that we have and really is your, you know, the profitability of your business.
00:17:20.045 --> 00:17:28.936
I work with some companies where again, we've seen like, for example, building software literally a 30% increase in velocity just tremendous, tremendous difference.
00:17:28.936 --> 00:17:54.173
And with Product Genius, for example, is a new company that I've started, we're working with you know, basically brick and mortar businesses, and we're giving them AI intelligence where they can actually capture their customers' ideas, whether they have questions, whether they have feedback, and it basically takes all of those ideas and feedbacks and questions and turns it into clear profiles, the clear pattern of what customers are doing and what you can do to improve your business.
00:17:54.173 --> 00:18:03.207
So it literally can tell you hey, you have a staffing problem from 11 to 2 on Fridays things that you would have taken months to learn, now you can learn literally a week.
00:18:03.207 --> 00:18:05.974
So it's going to be transformational in every part of your life.
00:18:05.974 --> 00:18:15.696
So I suggest anybody who's thinking about AI to do the research and think about how it's going to impact what you're doing, your business, because it can either help you or it can really really hurt you.
00:18:19.865 --> 00:18:22.053
Yeah, and the word that you use there is obviously velocity, and I think about the accelerating force of AI.
00:18:22.053 --> 00:18:31.705
Whether we're talking about ideas, I can come up with 200 ideas right now by just asking ChatGPT a basic question or accelerating our workflows, just easing the load on.
00:18:31.705 --> 00:18:42.037
I love the product genius example that you gave us about identifying staffing issues, that, as humans with multivariate analyses, there's so many different things going on that we can't compute that way.
00:18:42.037 --> 00:18:48.067
Let me ask you about that accelerated growth, because to me, ken, as soon as we came across your work, you're the growth guy.
00:18:48.067 --> 00:18:49.996
I was just like we need to hear his insights on that.
00:18:50.519 --> 00:18:56.135
I also know, though, having been in business for 16 years myself, is that there's all these sorts of inflection points.
00:18:56.135 --> 00:19:05.102
For example, getting your first customer or client for sure, the first inflection point, reaching your first 5k a month for a lot of people, that's a big inflection point 10k a month.
00:19:05.102 --> 00:19:06.786
Obviously people want to scale from there.
00:19:06.786 --> 00:19:09.313
You've grown to huge scales, ken.
00:19:09.313 --> 00:19:11.116
What are those inflection points?
00:19:11.116 --> 00:19:22.028
And I'm curious the way that your mind works, because I know it's not necessarily measured in revenue what are the ways that we change as an organization over time with that growth?
00:19:22.048 --> 00:19:25.132
That's a good question, so maybe I'll take that as an example.
00:19:25.132 --> 00:19:27.315
I'll go into a particular example.
00:19:27.315 --> 00:19:38.615
So a couple of years ago I worked with a VC-funded company and since I'm a little bit further in my career these days, I was effectively the adult supervision.
00:19:38.615 --> 00:19:41.744
Since I'm a little bit further in my career these days, I was effectively the adult supervision.
