Note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles that mine the Be Epic Podcast for lessons and insights that students and practitioners can apply to their lives as business leaders.
Just when you think Collin Jones is offering up a roadmap for would-be entrepreneurs, he reminds you, subtly and perhaps
without even realizing it, that there is no roadmap for would-be entrepreneurs.
During a recent conversation with Walton College Dean Matt Waller, Jones offered several pieces of rock-solid advice about what entrepreneurs might expect on their journey, only to end those offerings with phrase like whatever the next thing is, whatever is tomorrow, or my personal favorite: at least until robots automate things.
So, while Jones can tell us all about the path he took, not even he could repeat it – because that path is gone, and it’s not coming back.
What, then, can the next generation of entrepreneurs learn from Jones, who began his career in tech startups when he was a teenager and now is president of Resi Media, a fast-growing company that’s on the cutting edge of live video streaming?
Plenty. Just keep in mind that entrepreneurship is about creating the new. So, while the principles and lessons he shared on Waller’s Be Epic Podcast will stand the test of time, the environment where you put them into practice will most likely differ significantly.
With that in mind, here are eight takeaways that should prove helpful whatever the next thing is, whatever is tomorrow, and even when robots automate most things.
Jump in the game. Jones was 16 when he took a job with ClickMotive, a marketing startup in Plano, Texas, that catered to the automotive industry. He began learning about website development and search engine optimization, but he also saw firsthand how a business operated. Then in 2012, as a sophomore at the University of Arkansas, Jones started his own company that built websites for small businesses.
“That worked out well,” he said, “and it paid for a lot of my college life and savings after and all of that.”
Jones also looked for other opportunities to learn and practice business skills while he was in college. He did an internship with Hewlett Packard, for instance, and he and a friend had a side-hustle going door-to-door offering to paint street numbers for people in front of their homes. They made some money on the venture, he said, but the main point was to improve their sales skills.
“There’s only a few types of personalities in the world and ways to sell to them, and that was really, really helpful,” he said. “So I think actual marketing experience is great and what’s probably the most valuable thing is going and trying to sell things to people, which I’m sure any entrepreneur has had to do, whether they like it or not.”
Jones’ advice to students and young professionals typically focuses on having a willingness to learn new things – learning to write code, learning about blockchain, learning to write marketing copy, learning to sell door-to-door.
Learn the theory as well as the practical skills. Jones pursued an entrepreneurial degree track at the Walton College, which he said was vital to teaching him the theory behind the practical lessons he was learning from his work experiences.
“I loved my time at the Walton School of Business and got a lot of value out of it,” he said. “I miss Northwest Arkansas.”
Faculty not only taught theory, he said, but helped him work through how to apply what he was learning to specific situations, while also preparing him for challenges he’s faced in the years since he graduated.
“You just have a lot of flexibility in college when you can do your own businesses,” he said, “and it really taught me the founding core principles.”
Don’t be surprised by the potholes. It might seem like Jones had the world by the proverbial tail by the time he was graduating from college, but he faced some setbacks along the way. While in college, for instance, he could do a little of this and a little of that as he prepared for a more long-term career. Graduation meant actually picking that career.
“It’s so hard when you’re a senior and you’re looking at different things to do, even if you’ve had internships,” he said. “The whole world’s open, right? And you’ve seen a very small amount of it from a work perspective. That was a very pressure-filled, anxiety-filled time for me as someone who wanted to make a difference in the world and be a good steward of gifts and wanted to be high-performing. That was a very difficult time.”
Jones had several job interviews, including one memorable experience with a software company in San Francisco that started great and ended poorly. He went through the company’s extensive interview process and was offered a job, but he still had one final presentation to give. In the middle of that presentation, however, something happened for the first time in his life: He froze.
“I couldn’t remember the next thing on my mind,” he said. “People in the front row started crying because they believed in me so much and then they were seeing me fail.”
The job was all about presenting technology to executives, so he didn’t get it. But while he walked out disappointed, he also said he was “thankful for the clarity” it added to his job search.
Find your fit. Jones learned from that interview and from his internships that he fit best with certain types of organizations. For him, it was smaller companies, especially those in their early stages. He also looked for places where he could do what he was good at, learn new things, and feel like he and the company were making a positive impact on society at large. He ended up leading the digital marketing effort for a healthcare software company for two years, and then he joined a friend who had launched Resi Media.
Take some risks. The lower-paying entry level jobs at Resi, Jones said, are in what the company calls “customer success.” But those jobs, which might involve things like talking to customers who are canceling their service, can quickly lead to much higher-paying roles. One employee, he noted, doubled his salary in 11 months because he was willing to take the entry-level job and make the most of it.
Stay connected. Jones stayed in touch with friends he made throughout his life and helped some of them out when they started new business. One of those friends was Paul Martel, who co-founded Living As One in 2014. Jones helped the company get going and then joined as president before it was rebranded as Resi Media.
Find the problem, solve the problem. Entrepreneurship is all about identifying and solving problems in the marketplace. Jones gravitated toward people and companies that were doing that. His first job was with a company that built websites for automobile dealers, then he started building websites for small businesses at a time when those businesses had very few options for creating a presence on the internet. And Resi was founded because Martel, who was in charge of live streaming the video for a church, realized that churches, nonprofits, and businesses needed a more stable platform so that groups weren’t sitting in a room watching a screen that was buffering more than it was broadcasting.
“So we created a patent and a way to do it with much better clarity and reliability,” Jones said, “and so the technology got a really great value prop and was changing the world in that aspect, and all we had to do was scale it.”
Be prepared to grow or go. If you launch a new company with growth potential and things go well, eventually the startup has started up and it’s ready to run, run, run. As the company grows, you have to grow with it or leave for some other opportunity. Resi has grown to more than 80 employees, and Jones has the challenge of hiring more talent in a tight labor market while also maintaining the tight-knit, purpose-driven culture that has been foundational to the company’s success. And all of that still excites Jones.
“I get to be in a really fun position that has a lot of risk, but a lot of reward,” he said, “and I love getting to lead a culture and getting to be the guy that does all the dirty work.”
This brings me to a second thread you might spot if you listen to Jones talk for very long. While the first was about the uncertainty of the future given changes in technology, the second involves attitude. No matter what stage of his career he was discussing, Jones talked about doing things that were “cool,” doing things he “loved,” gaining “clarity” from mistakes and generally appreciating everything he was experiencing. So, while there’s no map for entrepreneurship, there’s also no reason you can’t enjoy the twists and turns regardless of where they take you.
