Full Transcript – Ken Gavranovic – Wild Business Growth Podcast #328

This is the full transcript for Episode #328 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Ken Gavranovic – Growing Your Business, Product Genius. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Ken Gavranovic 0:00
The biggest win in entrepreneur land is if you could, you know, have success doing something that you’re actually passionate about.

Max Branstetter 0:21
Hi, welcome back to Wild Business Growth. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host. Max Branstetter, founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting, that’s , and this is episode three, two, ocho. Today’s guest is Ken Gavranovic, a name that rolls off the tongue and turns into a beautiful butterfly floating into the air. Ken is was at the time of this recording, the CEO, and is now a board member for Product Genius. He has a long, long history of starting building growing startups and leading companies as an executive as well. And in this episode, we talk how he brought web.com, to IPO, the key things that make or break success for entrepreneurs, and his thoughts on money and how important or not it is. It is Kenny G Enjoyyyyy the showwwwww! Aaaaaalrightyyyyyy we are here with Ken Gavranovic. I nailed it right. Awesome. CEO of Product Genius and long time entrepreneur and CEO, and just so much growth and success and scaling and some negative business things as well. You know, ups and downs, roller coaster. But Ken so excited to talk to you, learn from you today. Thank you so much for joining How you

Ken Gavranovic 1:59
doing today? Great, doing fantastic. And thanks for having me on your

Max Branstetter 2:02
show. Yeah, yeah. Of course, of course. My pleasure. So

before we get to your life and career of growing and scaling businesses, I heard that there’s one particular movie growing up that was very influential in terms of how you thought about your life and career in technology. Can you share what that was,

Ken Gavranovic 2:20
that’s funny that you said that. Give you a short version of that, but I was a kid. I grew up very poor, and we’ll talk about that a little bit later. But I remember going to this movie, movie called war games. And I remember sitting in the theater and and I it wasn’t like about war like that wasn’t the part that excited me. But what excited me is, wow, this new thing called coding and all that stuff. If you can do that, you literally can touch the world. And this is, again, you know, a little, you know, dating myself a little bit, been doing this a long, long time. And so that, that movie was war games. And later, I used to go do a lot of keynotes. You’ve probably heard of new relics with tech. I ran that kind of product and engineering team. I would go do a lot of the keynotes. And that’s one thing I always reference, because it really is that moment for me is like, wow, with technology really can be anything. And I think now more than any think about startups, and we’ll talk more about that. You know, now people are building multi million dollar businesses. You know, I was with 225 year old Columbia guys where, you know, I was the adult supervision. We’re all working remotely. We went from four to 10 million in one year, and sold that business for 81 million. So it’s really is amazing what you can do.

Max Branstetter 3:29
Oh my God, it is, yeah, and if we’re gonna get to the numbers, we got numbers on numbers and on numbers, so which I’ll get confused very quickly on that. But what was it about war games that just kind of like blew your mind and unlock something for you. Well, it

Ken Gavranovic 3:44
really was just a simple like, you think, the Matthew Broderick character sitting in his room, and he’s, you know, of course, in his case, he’s hacking things, but really just the idea of, wow, if you know computers, then you could do that. So I was probably 11 and started teaching myself to code. So I started off as a coder. I remember very proudly going TO to my parents and showing them how fast I could code. And I was like, cranking code out like this. And they said, What are you doing? And I’m like, I’m coding. And they’re like, why are you doing it with one hand? And I’m like, Well, I bought a book from the library, and they said, That’s how to do it. And they go, let us see that book, and it was how to type if you have one hand. So but answer your question is that Matthew Broderick is like, wow, I can have an idea, and from my own room, not having any resources, I could be anything. And that’s the part that kind of got me excited about technology.

Max Branstetter 4:36
Well, speaking of technology, if you look at your career, one of the the earlier stops that like turned into a huge success is web.com can you give us the insight of what the quote, unquote, internet was like in the 90s, when you started gotten really rolling with web.com

Ken Gavranovic 4:52
it’s always in my 20s. And I’ll say this, first of all, just in general, about ideas. I always say is, listen. Two ideas. If you’re thinking about doing startups, you never know. You never know where that next great idea is. Because, you know, even, like, I’ve done some angel investing, and I’ll give you an example of where I kind of blew it, this gentleman came to me, and he’s like, man, everybody’s going to trade tennis shoes. They’re going to spend 1000s of dollars down to the and I was like, What? No one’s going to do that stock X, right? So, you know, I would say, Listen to what’s going on and be clear that maybe you’re not right. Now, in this case, I knew a lot of people that were investing a ton of money in dial up. So back then on the internet, we’d have those slow connections. Again, you don’t remember it, but just to give you an idea,

Max Branstetter 5:37
I do. I guess I’m old enough that I remember dial up, shout out my grandparents, Barb and Fred had it in Indiana, much longer than we had it growing up in Cleveland. Yeah, one of the fun memories from grandma and grandpa’s house. But anyway, so

Ken Gavranovic 5:52
I was in my early 20s, and this was the internet thing was starting. And back then, I was living in South Florida, and I’ve lived in Texas. I lived in New York, lots of different places. But back then, all of South Florida, the entire internet backbone to South Florida, was 45 minute connection. Just to give you how crazy it was, and everybody was spending all this money creating dial up, but I was like, Wait, we’re gonna have to build these websites. That’s where everybody’s gonna go. That sounds like a much better business. And of course, I looked into it, and basically I could buy a server for, say, $5,000 and I could literally rent it out for $5,000 a month. Now what a great business is that you spend $5,000 and you’re making $5,000 the first month you paid for it. After that, it’s all groovy. So I started that business early 20s, and I had some partners, and already at that point, I had made other people 10s of millions of dollars and not got much. So I was very much into giving equity, and I had some partners down in Florida, and I said, we got to give equity to everybody. And they said, no, no, we’re not going to do that. We just started a business, and literally went from the first month to the second month, $50,000 in revenue, just straight up to the right, and just from a belief, I’m a big belief, and, you know, integrity, morals are important. You know, unfortunately, you don’t always see that, especially if you get higher up in the business world. But I said, this is great. Everybody’s going to do this. I said, if you’re not going to, we’re not going to give equity, then I’m going to go started that same business, or you could start the same business, or you could buy me out, or I’ll buy you out. So they said, We’ll buy you out. I moved to Atlanta, and back then, Atlanta just passed the Olympics and rented half of an entire skyscraper floor with all of my savings, went all in. And that business, we went from zero to 200 million in a couple of years, and eventually became web.com actually, after we went public, it was Interland and a company called micron PC, and we merged those together, created web.com, I

Max Branstetter 7:44
got chills from that. I think IPO is something that a lot of business owners dream of, and of course, like there’s lots of positives, there’s also lots of negatives with IPO. But that’s, you know, when you think about an end for your business, IPO is pretty big time. What do you think is the difference between companies that IPO versus those that like don’t even come close to something

Ken Gavranovic 8:04
like that. Well, I would say it’s also seasonal, and I’ll give you a couple of stories IPO. So first of all, I think when you’re a young founder, you know, it’s a little bit harder. So if you think about it, not many people go from startup, stay as the CEO all the way to public. Usually you get pushed out by, quote, adults, if you’re a young founder. So I was always reading books. I was always listening to people. So one of the things people knew always knew about me is I didn’t I had an opinion, and I was going to always act decisively, but I was always willing to listen to it. So I’d say that was, I think one of the keys is, how do you get to IPO? Is you need to be able to, first of all, to be able to grow. Because not everybody can grow from you know, when I first hired you, I said, here’s the screwdriver. There’s your desk in a box. Please put it together. Congratulations. You’re a new employee, you know, to now I’ve got, you know, people that were twice my age, you know, that had a Harvard grad that are working for, you know, a young, 20 something year old founder. So it’s a process, is what I would say. It’s also cyclical. If you look at it, we just had a wave where a bunch of companies went public. So definitely, the public markets get harder and softer in cycles, just like you see VC money. VC money when there’s lots of exits, cash flows everywhere, including businesses that shouldn’t right. And I could tell you a story about a turnaround that I did. I won’t mention which company, but it was for some brand name VCs, where a young founder had raised $25 million on $3 million in revenue. Now that was a hard company to deal with, but so to answer your question is, you know, the cycles of IPO, it’s very exciting, if you can pull it off. It’s super stressful. But if you know, obviously the financial aspects are really, really something to look out for, but it’s an exciting time. But then it’s tough on your teams, because then every day, you know, unlike a private company, it’s your value in your head of what your company is, right? When you’re a public company, every day, all of your employees get to get the. Public markets view, which may or may not be accurate of what your company’s worth, which can be a pretty big emotional role roll ride for you and them. Yeah, just

Max Branstetter 10:08
a little bit of pressure when you’re under the public, the microscope of the public and anybody possible who wants to be interested in your business. So speaking of growing and scaling and exiting businesses. That’s something that you’ve done pretty consistently across your career. So I think there’s a lot I want to dive more into there. So I’m not going to, like, hand pick one of the companies that you’ve been in. Like, we can kind of just keep this general and then you can dive into whatever examples you want. But across your career, what are some key principles that are really helpful in terms of, actually, like, growing your business and getting it to the next level of revenue, whatever that may be. Well, I think

Ken Gavranovic 10:50
that’s the good part. I think that’s the part of, like, how do you know that you should be an entrepreneur, and how do you keep focused on it? And I’ll share, first of all, I have a lot of times, especially because I’ve also done big corporate things. So fortune 50. So I’ve had people like, hey, you know, I think you did that startup thing earlier. I’ve been thinking about the startup thing, you know, I always say to people, you know, first of all, if you’re younger in your career, definitely take the risk. Right? When you’re in your 20s and 30s, you can afford to take the risk when you get later in your career, where maybe you’re betting a family and other types of things, that kind of calculus becomes different. So I always encourage people take risk early. That’s when you’re going to learn the most, because that’s the other part startup does. You will learn more in one or two years than you will learn seven years at a fortune 50 so especially if you’re around good leaders and all those kind of things. So so I would say, you know, when we, you know, think about startups. Like, what really does is, first of all, it’s the right time where you can afford to take the risk. Because if you’re so constantly second guessing, like, how am I going to take care of the family having, you know, then you could get divorced. You go, I’ve seen some really, you know, ugly scenarios, right? I think then, you know, make sure you have the right idea. You know, there’s lean startups, there’s a lot of different books. And, you know, I’ve had some ideas that are great, and we go straight to the moon, but I’ve had some ideas where I’ve got crickets, right? And so if I would think about, how would I do those over is make sure you do your homework on that product market fit as early as you can before you get too invested.

Max Branstetter 12:16
I want one note on crickets. By the way, you could have a fantastic business in the cricket space as well. I just want to put that out there. Crickets could be

Ken Gavranovic 12:24
great. That’s true. And I’m sure somebody has a business that drop ships those crickets to you for bait right away. So I would say, like, I think those are kind of the beginning parts of like, how do you do a successful startup? So then you’ve got the right idea, and then you just have to believe in yourself and get yourself get a good team around you. You know, smart people will keep pivoting. And I’ll give you a little story that I got when I was younger. I was thinking of moving to the West Coast, even though I live in the live in Georgia, I’ve only worked for West Coast or New York companies for the last 10 years. So you

Max Branstetter 12:57
spearheaded the long distance or virtual remote work, right? I remember

Ken Gavranovic 13:01
one year, I literally fly 200,000 mine would fly weekly to like Portland or San Francisco. Was absolutely crazy. But another time when I was earlier in my career, I was thinking of going there, and I ran into a guy named Bill Gurley from Benchmark Capital. You probably, you know, he was the guy that, if you saw, like the Uber movie that was sitting in the room and all those kind of things, but it was interesting. And at that point, he had invested in a company called Zillow, which was not doing well, wasn’t public. It was like trying to figure out a business model. And I said, Hey, what do you what made you, you guys are really smart, what made you invest? And they go, Oh, it’s, it’s real simple. We got the whole Expedia team for Microsoft, and we know if they don’t have the right idea at beginning with enough capital, they’ll pivot to find the right idea in product market fit. So going back to summarizing, my thing is, make sure you’re ready to take the risk. Make sure you’ve got you’ve done your homework on your idea, make sure you’re fully committed, and then surround yourself with smart people and hopefully raise enough capital that you have the time to learn and pivot, because you’re going to have to learn and pivot.

Max Branstetter 14:04
And I really appreciate you organizing that and, like, taking away the key bullet points, because I always take notes, like, when the guest is talking and I had that in order, but it’s much easier when the guest just recaps it themselves afterwards. So you’re a pro, experienced professional there, yeah, of those areas that you just talked about, which is, like, the most important, like make or break, in terms of, I guess, indicator of business success? Well,

Ken Gavranovic 14:26
I would say two things. I’m going to say, if you would have caught me earlier, I would say commitment. If you catch me now, I’d probably say Good idea, good timing and commitment. Because I have seen people that had a ton of commitment to either the wrong idea the wrong timing, and it’s unfortunate, I’ve seen people waste five years of their life on a startup that went absolutely nowhere. And I’m a big believer, the most important thing any of us have to invest every single day is the one thing we never get back, and that’s our time. So I always you know. Think about it’s really, really important. But other than that, it’s just that commitment to fight through and, you know, giving you like stories. I remember sitting in New York City when I was raising some venture capital, originally, eventually, Verizon invested, Microsoft invested, you know, a bunch of different big players. But I was doing my VC round, and I was sitting there 20 something year old. I’ve got people on my right and left that work for me that are twice my age. And I’m in this beautiful room where you just got the big mahogany table. And, you know, it’s, I won’t mention

Max Branstetter 15:27
what. Why is it always rich mahogany,

Ken Gavranovic 15:31
mahogany table, literally even had the, you know, the little they must have had 20, $30 million with the pictures on the wall. And I remember sitting there, and I did my whole presentation. The VC looked at me, and again, I won’t mention who, but it’d be one that you’ve you’ve heard of, and he’s like, kid. Bottom line, what are you saying? And I said, all right. Bottom line, you know, I just presented for 20 minutes, but bottom line, every business is going to run their business on the internet. He looked at me and said, Ken, do you believe you’re bullshit? And so the point being is that when you’re committed, especially if it’s an idea, you’re creating a new product category or really doing something different, you just got to be committed and believe in your idea, because no one else, and some of the best ideas, everybody’s going to tell you you’re wrong. Your timings off, maybe you’re not good enough, you know, same story going back to Internet. I remember one time an investor who wanted to invest it, hey, you’ve done really good job, kid, getting this thing to 50 million. But if we’re going to invest, then we’re going to bring in our people, you know. And I was like, No, I think I’ve done a great job, and I’m going to continue to execute on that, but I had that confidence in myself to say something like that, and I was willing to walk away from their capital. Turned out we raised actually more capital at an even better valuation. But that commitment to yourself, because you’re going to have some really trying times where you’re going to feel alone other than

Max Branstetter 16:57
any of your businesses, because that’s obvious. Obviously, you know, those are your favorites. Those are my favorites too, by the way, so, but what’s like? The best example you can think of of like, the timing being perfect, and it likes, just skyrocketed a business’s success. Well,

Ken Gavranovic 17:12
I give you back to perfect. I’d probably have to get to go back to inner land slash web.com because,

Max Branstetter 17:18
no, no, I was saying outside of your businesses, like in general, oh, outside, I made that question very confusing for you right

Ken Gavranovic 17:24
now. I think generative, AI, I mean, if you’re anybody who was early on building the models, I mean, you’ve built a business that’s worth $150 billion in two or three, four years, you know? And if you think about right now, the businesses that are getting funded anywhere around AI, and it’s getting tougher. Like, at first, I’d say, like, a year ago, it was like, if it smelled like AI, you raised a ton of money. And for many people, those business think about like, you probably use either Claude or chat GPT, like, that’s been transformative. So I think that’s probably the closest real life example of a business that talk about product market fit, talk about just escalating even the price point that they’ve given us to start trying it, 20 $30 we’re all going to try it, and once we see how much time we can save. I mean, let’s face it, I think almost everybody uses, you know, a Gen AI in their business.

Max Branstetter 18:19
Yeah, that. I mean, just in general, that blows my mind. Of like, like, businesses like that would not have popped even, you know, five years ago, like, the tech wasn’t there yet. And then same thing for, you know, like, social media boom, and, you know, internet boom, which you really experience. And there’s plenty before that with computer. Like, it’s so fascinating to me how like, make or break it can be depending on timing. You know, Mark COVID always talks about that with broadcast.com and you know how he first hit it big was like it was the perfect timing. And he always says how lucky he was that they went all in on that at that exact time. It’s really mind blowing. Yeah, I

Ken Gavranovic 18:55
always tell people luck, skill and timing. When all three of those come together, you can often have a really nice financial return, but it’s all three of

Max Branstetter 19:04
those. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So speaking of timing, so like, more, more on the personal levels, like you’ve been, you know, CEO, many times executive, many times entrepreneur. How personally like, what are some some tricks and tools I guess you use to make sure that you’re spending your timing best, you know, inside and outside work each day. One

Ken Gavranovic 19:25
of the things I’m a big believer is critical thinking frameworks. And a lot of times, even I’d understand, you know, you think about the again, the 20 year old version. I’ve been doing it a long time. Later, I would read books. I’m like, Oh, wow, that’s what credit it’s called Critical Thinking framework. I’ve been doing it a long time. But, you know, one of the things I go back to people, is, I have this phrase that I go back to, is I always say objectives over activity. That’s one of the biggest mistakes startups, big companies, people do, in general, is they forget what’s the outcome they’re trying to do. They get so much focus on the activity. And let me just share a little story. Like, I think this goes back to entrepreneur Leon too. Is I, you know, one of the things I think that’s a great to do is like, where your life is, whether your business or whatever choose. I think have a vision I want to go here. It looks like this, if I’m successful, I have so much money, I have a great relationship with my wife, or traveling, whatever it is, whatever your your vision is for you. And then this is the part where I think a lot of people get tripped up. Is most people then go to the how, how am I going to get there? But I would say a better question is, why? Why do you want to have that great relationship? Why do you want to be able to travel? Why do you want to do those things? And this goes back to intrinsic motivation. Because if you know where and you know why, then there’s only one more question before we get to how is it a must or a should? And here’s what I’ve seen, if you know where you want to go, if you know why you want to go there, and most importantly, that is a must, you’ll figure out the how. I’ve just seen it time. I’ve done it myself. I’ve seen it time after time. So that’s what I would say, is one of the big things. I always go back to a ticket in businesses. A lot of times, people will be like, Okay, who’s doing what? Who’s doing this, who’s doing that, you know? And this is where, you know, critical you probably heard of OKRs, you know, it’s one of the critical thinking frameworks. But what is the key result? So let’s not talk about, we like built a new feature. That’s one of the things software companies do terribly, right? Success is our customers said we want a feature. Well, what should success be? And I’ve got a fun story, if you want, for around that kind of critical thinking. Oh

Max Branstetter 21:37
yeah, now that we’ve dangled it out there. So how about this? Ken, what’s a fun story you have about, I don’t know, critical thinking?

Ken Gavranovic 21:44
Well, it’s fun to me. Hopefully it’ll be fun to you. But

Max Branstetter 21:47
I just thought of this. I don’t know where it came from. I’ll

Ken Gavranovic 21:49
just see an example. So I was at a company called New Relic, and worked for the founder. And he had built the business from zero to 300 million ish Republic, and I was there from the 300 to 500 million phase so like 1000 to 2000 employees. A lot of fun, like many things, when they started scaling, when you have a technology company start to have the business team thinks you should do this. The sales team thinks you should do this. Your customers think you should do this. Other thing, your product team thinks this, and your engineering team wonders, why is everybody always constantly getting us to shift priorities? And so to some extent, it had gone through some of that phase where they weren’t shipping things as quickly as possible. I was talking somebody came into my office that was going to build a new feature. And if you’re not familiar with New Relic, if there’s a reason why the internet works really well. So like when you think about if you have a Disney app or a website and there’s Datadog, there’s a lot of competitors. Lou actually invented the whole genre, but the idea is we built some software that monitors software. It lets you know if it breaks, so our consumers don’t have to figure out we’ve got a bad experience. So just a little bit on New Relic, but jumping into that particular scenario, we needed to add this new API that’s going to allow people to put in, like Kubernetes and more technical, fancy stuff, right? And so they came into my team and they said, Okay, we’re going to spend X million dollars to build this thing. I said, Great. What’s success? And they go, we’re going to ship it in two months. I said, Well, appreciate the aggressive timeline, but I don’t like success as we’re going to do it. I said, Why are we doing it? We’re going to get new revenue. I said, Great. So we’re going to get new revenue. So how much new revenue? Well, we’re not quite sure yet. I said, Okay, so we’re gonna go build this new thing. I’m with you that the market says you must build it, but just follow through my thinking here, how much revenue, what’s gonna be success? And I go, we hadn’t thought about I said, Well, come back to me tomorrow. So they came back to me tomorrow, and they said, Well, we’re gonna make success be that we get a million different people using this API with data points. And I said, Okay, I like that, so that’s your success criteria. And he like, yeah. And then wait, he stopped and looked at me. He goes, But wait, if that’s my goal, then we got to add these other things that we weren’t planning to do. And I said, Should you add those other things? They looked at me, yeah, we should. That’s the only we’re gonna hit that goal. And that’s a great example. If you focus on, why are we doing this thing? And whether it be, you know, sales, whether it be product, whatever it might be, what’s the outcome we’re actually driving? And let’s measure that as success versus check mark. We completed the activity. So hopefully that wasn’t too deep, but it’s an example, when you get really, really focused on key results, your business moves faster your people. And I oftentimes work with people that are doing startups, and I say when you start focusing on key results, you move from an operator to an owner.

Max Branstetter 24:39
I appreciate that story and glad it. You know, I had planned it in my notes. I meant to ask that the entire time, it didn’t come up impromptu or anything good. That’s like the, I don’t remember the exact analogy, but it’s, you know, it’s like the difference of throwing darts blindfolded versus actually, like seeing the dartboard and going out and it’s like seeing your targets and. Point totals there. So that’s an awesome story there. So you hinted earlier at AI and generative AI, which generative is hard to say. I guess that’s why people say Gen AI. Yeah, exactly. And so that actually involves what you’re doing today with product genius. Can you see, can you share what product genius is, and like how this came about for you. Yeah,

Ken Gavranovic 25:21
and let me show you a quick short story. So I’ve been doing AI for seven years now. When I say that, wait, you invented AI? No, AI’s only been around two years. How could you have been doing it for seven you know, AI’s actually been around for a long time in different forms. So back when I was at New Relic, and I was mentioning all that data, but we used to literally ingest 2 billion events from the internet, like from websites, from mobile apps per minute, like very, very fast amount of data. So one of the problems we had is letting our customers kind of get through that noise to the signal. Great use of AI, so we built anomaly detection with AI. Was a huge hit. That was the product I launched there. Another company I went to was a company called blameless, cool name, right? And you think about when, when software breaks. So when Taylor Swift breaks Ticketmaster, they actually use software to facilitate all the things after happenings. You got to communicate, you got to technically fix it, you got to do a lot of stuff. You got to coordinate a lot of things, and so we had software that did that. And one of the problems we saw is, if people would come to an issue, they would have to spend a lot of time getting up to speed on what everybody’s done. Great example, and this was Gen AI. What a great use for Gen AI. We could go and summarize everything that happened before they came to it and give them just what they needed in the moment. The other part is technical people, believe this or not, are not good at giving the marketing team the things they need to write a press release on an outage. I know that’s surprising to you, but it’s true. And so again, another great example where we could use Gen AI, where could take the technical data and then actually reformat it in a business friendly term. So did that and and I was like, Where is another opportunity to use AI? I think it’s going to be huge. And so I started thinking about small to medium sized businesses. A lot of people are trying to use AI to help medium and enterprise business, but where could you help small to medium sized business? And so this is where we built a company called product genius that literally allows you to create digital employees, give them a personality. Someone can click on a QR code in your business. They can go on your website. The AI automatically knows everything on your website, can answer, can do surveys, basically act exactly like a human being, you know, in a in a limited basis, really taking away the, I would say, the boring work from humans. Because I always think AI is not there to replace people. It’s there to take away the boring work so that we can focus on things that actually requires human thinking. And so that’s what product genius is really excited about that. And again, we’re in that product market test phase, so it’s an exciting time. If you want to check it out, product genius, dot guru, you

Max Branstetter 28:03
don’t personally love boring work. I love boring work. It’s the most exciting

Ken Gavranovic 28:07
we all do, right? Yes.

Max Branstetter 28:10
What advice do you have for other founders, or like aspiring founders out there who are really intrigued by this AI space and maybe want to start a business in a one

Ken Gavranovic 28:19
day? Well, I would say the AI space in particular is really check your idea. There’s a tremendous amount of money and a tremendous amount of people chasing ideas in AI, so you’re gonna have to work really hard to find an idea that hasn’t been done. And then, even if it hasn’t been done, does it need to be done? So what I would say first open yourself up is that need to be AI. AI is a trend. But again, focus on a real business that solves real business problems that someone wants to give you hard earned dollars for. If you can raise a lot of capital, then medium to enterprise. Businesses are great. If you can’t raise a lot of capital, you want to focus on SMB, because SMB customers, if they like your product, they’re going to buy it, right? Then there’s a very low, short sale cycle. If you’re in medium and enterprise, it’s going to be a very long sale cycle. So again, even when you think about your ideas, this something that a small business will buy. If so, then I could go capital light. If not, then you need to be prepared to go raise, you know, half a million million dollars, you know, to really have a shot at being successful in this market, because innovation is happening faster than it ever did. You think, because of AI, I work a lot of times with private equity and VC companies, and what they’re seeing in their portfolio companies, where you’d have maybe the the wall to compete was $30 million because it was really hard to build the software. Now you can build it for $2 million and half the time. So great ideas are key. The software is getting cheaper and cheaper to build. So again, I’ll do my little summary is I wouldn’t just pick AI, pick a great idea, make sure you’re committed, and then be really thoughtful of the capital structure, small. In a medium sized business, those are great low capital. Otherwise you’re gonna need to raise a little bit more capital. Give yourself a real shot.

Max Branstetter 30:10
Well, AI is something that I think still you could call it unusual, but it was especially unusual, you know, even 510, years ago, which brings us to an unusual segment called the unusual. So this is, we’re gonna switch it up a bit. This can is more just like to get to know you personality wise. First thing here, this could be about anything. It doesn’t need to tie back to your business. What’s a weird talent you have, or, like, a party trick you have, like something small that you’re just really good at? Oh,

Ken Gavranovic 30:39
that’s hard. If you say really bad at I would say, my daughters would say jokes, but that’s

Max Branstetter 30:43
it. Well, do you have an example? Because we might need to test the product market fit for that, I’ve got

Ken Gavranovic 30:47
so many bad joke, bad dad jokes. They’ve called it, I think, a secret talent. I would say, probably this is business, but I’m pretty good at getting people aligned. Okay, let’s stop you know, most people argue about Tactics versus direction, and so I’m pretty good about, Hey, are we could we agree we’re all going in this direction? And I use that with my kids. I use that and work because a lot of times the debate is the tactic. So let’s get the line and where we’re going. So I’d say that’s probably off the top of my head, something I think I’m pretty good at. We’ll give it to

Max Branstetter 31:18
you. How about quirks? What’s something a little quirky that your family, friends team, somebody calls you out for, but it’s, it’s who you are. I

Ken Gavranovic 31:25
probably like to be funnier than I am. So like I’ve gone and done it goes back to the same things, like I’ve gone and done stand up classes. Maybe I take something people know is that when I get interested in something, I go all in. So if it’s like health, like, I’ll figure out, like, what does stem cells mean in some country in Panama? And you know, why did Tony Robbins and Mel Gibson go there? So I’d say, probably I get pretty committed to whatever it is I do, or speaking. So like, I’ve did an Amazon bestseller book, started speaking across the globe. So I went and got a trainer and learned at the what are the best ways to be a better communicator. So I’d say probably, when I get interested in something, I really dig deep into it

Max Branstetter 32:07
real quick on that what’s like a tip for stand up comedy that, like, you didn’t know before you started learning more about that? I would probably say less the

Ken Gavranovic 32:15
stand up comedy. But I’d say improv is I didn’t know that improv is actually one of the best things you could do if you want to teach your central nervous system to be very responsive. So it’s great for speaking. It’s great for being a leader. So I would say I didn’t know how powerful improv was, and also how much fun

Max Branstetter 32:35
it is. A lot of fun. Like, I haven’t done like an official I haven’t done an official improv class, but I had an internship at an agency in Dallas after my junior year of college called rap, R, A, P, P, and as part of that, you know, like the HR team there would like, organize all the events for the interns, and every now and then, you’d have, you know, different classes, or somebody from a department would come speak, and all that. And one day it was like an improv session. And so we were, you know, at the time, like, making jokes about Chili’s and Applebee’s, because our product was about Chili’s. I mean, our project was about Chili’s. And I just remember, like, being up there in front of everybody, and I don’t remember exactly how it went down, but within like, a minute or less of starting to do improv, like, everybody in the room was just cracking up, yeah, cracking up, having fun. Yeah, yeah. It’s a really unique thing, and a great brain exercise, and clearly central nervous exercise too. Just going back

Ken Gavranovic 33:27
to that as the same guy who taught Mark Zuckerberg to speak was one of my coaches when I was on the West Coast, and I always said, what’s the one thing I could do? And that people don’t think about that really helps your speaking. And it was improv. Well,

Max Branstetter 33:41
let’s improvise. One more question here for the unusual. Now, I’m just kidding, it’s the same ones I always ask in the usual, what’s your biggest pet peeve? Something to just kind of annoys you?

Ken Gavranovic 33:51
I would say someone who’s dishonest. You know, integrity is really, really important to me. We can make tough decisions, but do it with integrity. I thought you asked me something like, crazy stuff that I done because I got those off top my head. Like, flown a jet, jumped off a plane, all kinds of crazy, good stuff. Well,

Max Branstetter 34:09
please, yeah, yeah. No, you can keep going with that list. I’m interested in

Ken Gavranovic 34:13
that too. If you’ve never done that, that is fun. Like flying a make fighter jet, where you literally, like, can turn it like, if you sure you played video games, right? Yeah, never you could, like, go like this, and you’re upside down, or you’re doing full verticals. That was one of the coolest things. Oh, my God. How did that come about for you? I’ve been blessed, you know, to be able to have some financial success, which allows you to kind of access some of those weird, you know, like, see the northern lights with your own eyes, go to the globe. So I’m big into, like, try to, you know, experience things. Because I will say, I do regret some of the cars that I bought, but I don’t regret the experiences I bought. That’s one of the things I’ll never regret.

Max Branstetter 34:49
Yeah, always, like, every year for, uh, birthday, holiday timing, like that. Like, I’ve always just been so much more interested in experiences than, like, material good, like, it’s, that’s living man. As they say, speaking of living, let’s wrap up with some rapid fire. Q, A, this is not limited to unusual, but we might have some unusual answers here too. So, okay, ready for it? I am. Let’s do it all right, let’s get wild. What’s your favorite Aggie tradition, Texas A and M football? What about just any, any particular type I know that like, why

Ken Gavranovic 35:23
just remember the football games when I was at when am just the football games, just the energy that’s go stop my head? Well, I’m

Max Branstetter 35:31
a big Browns fan. So for better or for worse, we’re linked by Johnny Football. So we’ll leave that there. Great documentary about him, by the way, in his time there and rise to, like, unbelievable what he did in College Station. All right, what is the most underrated part about Atlanta or the Greater Atlanta area?

Ken Gavranovic 35:53
But I’d say now as we’ve got food, like, when I first moved to Atlanta, we just had a lot of chains, you know, now we’ve got everybody that’s moved in from the Northeast or the West Coast, and now we have great original food. So I would say you could be a foodie in Atlanta. Now,

Max Branstetter 36:07
it’s a beautiful thing and good stuff to be. Isn’t that a like, Chick fil A? There’s a

Ken Gavranovic 36:11
lot of like, we do have the chains too, like we started, yeah, Chick fil A and so forth. You know, they even have their original like, Hawaii, there’s a Hawaiian version of Chick fil A, because originally he tested all these different concepts. Oh, wow. There’s like, all kinds of, like, really bizarre Chick Fil A’s, like, one’s called the dwarf house that has like, little doors, like, for decoration, you know,

Max Branstetter 36:31
oh, my God, I need to dive into that. I didn’t know about that. And if you go,

Ken Gavranovic 36:34
I’ve actually been to the headquarters of Chick Fil, a big Batman fan. So if you go into HQ, there’s the Batmobile car from the original series.

Max Branstetter 36:46
Holy cow. This is really cool. That could be a whole separate podcast interview. I had this thought, I’m sure others have. How often do you get called Kenny G, like the jazz musician,

Ken Gavranovic 36:55
I have been called Kenny G many times, a lot of times. I’ll just open up with it, because Ken God, how do I say that last name like Kenny G, it’s good,

Max Branstetter 37:04
many times, many times, all right? And then last one, it’s a deeper one. You started out mentioning that you grew up poor, and obviously you experienced, you know, wide range of financial levels in your lifetime. How would you say it’s changed, just how you your philosophy about money, like experiencing like poor and not poor, and anything in between. I think,

Ken Gavranovic 37:23
you know, you think about money as a resource. Money doesn’t make you happy. I would say, when I was when I had no money, I thought money could make me happy. But, you know, once you actually have money, money does not make you happy. It just gives you more choices to either be happy or unhappy or do things in life. That was the big thing. And then I also encourage anybody, if you did have a tough childhood, as you get older, those do things to your central nervous system that a lot of people don’t know. It’s one of the things I think that would gave me my drive. But it can also, if you don’t understand where it is. I always encourage anybody, you know, if you, if you have that nice success, and you’ve got a few extra dollars, might try some therapy, because that that exciting childhood did a lot of great things for you, but maybe brought some things into adulthood that you don’t want.

Max Branstetter 38:07
Ken. Kenny G, I should say, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing all your lessons and stories and tips and and key bullet points to recap each section. So thanks so much for making time. Really appreciate all you’re doing. So product genius, I know, is product genius, dot guru, G, u, r, u, and then where’s the best place that people want to connect with you online or check out your book. You know your Business Breakthrough, 3.0 where’s the best place if

Ken Gavranovic 38:35
you I have a personal website, So Ken, and my last name, Gavranovic if you Google me, I’ve got a pretty big presence. And of course, you know, on LinkedIn, if you want to reach out, and a lot of people do this, I don’t want anything from you, but there’s any I do zoom calls, I do a lot of things. If anything I could do to help you run an idea, balance, make a connection, just feel free to reach out.

Max Branstetter 38:57
Awesome. Appreciate it. And I can vouch for I would just say, like, Ken’s a total asshole, like you don’t want to talk to him at all, just absolutely miserable. So no, all right. And then last thing, final thoughts, it could be a just a quote, few words to live by, whatever you want send us home here. Well,

Ken Gavranovic 39:13
I would say I’m inspired by you because you look like you really enjoy what you’re doing. So I say the biggest win in entrepreneur land is, if you could, you know, have success doing something that you’re actually passionate about. Because I’ve seen a lot of people, they’ll do something that they thought they could make some money, and that’s great. Maybe you get the exit, and then you do the thing you’re really passionate about. But if you can do a business you actually love every day, that’s a huge win. And looks like you’re doing that. And really appreciate you having me on the podcast today.

Max Branstetter 39:40
Oh, thank you. That means a ton. Well, the I would say, the guests aren’t innocent in this. The guests make it a little bit fun as well. So, so thank you

Ken Gavranovic 39:47
be well. We’ll talk soon, and congrats on some of the upcoming news for you.

Max Branstetter 39:53
Can the men. Thank you so much, Ken, for sharing all you’ve done. All you do. And thank you, Wild Listeners for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow Wild Business Growth on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe on YouTube for the video versions. YouTube is @MaxBranstetter, you can learn more about MaxPodcasting, the Podcasting to the Max newsletter, Wild Business Growth, and yours truly at MaxPodcasting.com and until next time, Let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!