Say YES to Beautiful Business Proposals

0:05 There are some people that make their work just another thing they have to do, and there are those that make their work something that they want to do. Welcome to Working on Purpose with your host Elise Cortes. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration from those people who have found deeper meaning and personal connection to their work life. It's beyond nine to five. It's working on purpose. Now Here is your host, Elise Cortes. I'm your host Elise Cortes, joining you from Dallas, Texas, which is home base for me. This program is all about helping people more meaningfully and productively connect with their work and equipping organizations to do the same for their employees. So I bring on guests to have a particular perspective or experience that I think expands that conversation, and I often draw on the meeting and work research I've conducted over the last fifteen years, as well as my own experience consulting, speaking and developing workforces across the globe. I'll get to the program in just a MoMA, but let me think my sponsor Recover Mattress. As an athlete and very active professional myself, I know the importance of good sleep and Recover Mattress is a hybrid mattress designed specifically to improve sleep for muscle recovery for active lifestyles.

1:12 You can learn more about the story of how this company was founded and the mattress itself by visiting recover mattress dot com. There's no E after the v and if you decide to buy a mattress, you can enjoy a fifty percent discount by using the code WOP fifty short for Working on Purpose fifty percent off. Thanks to our partnership. Last week, if you missed the show live, you can always catch it via recorded podcast. We were on the air with doctor Erica Jacobi, the executive director of LC Global Consulting, a change, growth and innovation consulting firm with offices in New York City and Munich, Germany. We talked about her fresh dissertation research on the topic of cognition of innovation. Now with us this week is Brian Anio, who is an entrepreneur who is currently the founder and CEO of Proposa, a best in class SaaS solution for building stunningly beautiful proposals in half the time. We'll be talking about what it takes to be an entrepreneur today, his own journey of entrepreneurship starting at age twenty four, and the important lessons he's learned from his work as an entrepreneur. He joined us today from Raleigh, North Carolina. Brian, Welcome to Working on Purpose. Hey, thank you for having me Alas.

2:15 It's really great to have you, and I do want to call out and thank Don Thompson for bringing you to me. He is somebody who's been on the show a couple of times, and you know, I have connected in terms of our professional lives and enjoy and appreciate his perspective. So when he introduced me to you, I was delighted and I can't wait to share this story with our listeners. Are you ready? I am indeed. Okay, Well, the first thing I want to start with is you said in our initial call something that I found to be quite arresting. You said I'd rather work seventy hours for myself than forty hours for somebody else. So let's start with that. Can you explain that statement of what's behind that for you? You know, I really think that I heard that statement that is certainly not an original of mine, but I heard someone else say that, and it really made me think about my own journey as an entrepreneur. And I think for a lot of folks who find themselves in the position of working for themselves or growing a company or scaling a company, that really has to ring true to you that folks that give up that nine to five corporate job would rather go and work double the amount of time for themselves than just to give that forty hours standard work week to somebody else. I think that's something that's innate to a lot of entrepreneurs and certainly a statement that really was true for me and spoke a lot for me. And you know what's fascinating about that, Brian is somebody who works supporting various organizations and working with a lot of executives who are in those corporate organizations. They are working well more than forty hours.

3:40 They're working maybe sometimes as many as seventy hours, and yet and they do that for their careers, and so it's interesting I appreciate the distinction that you would do that for yourself. And since part of the show is really designed to be able to educate as well as inspired, I'm guessing that some of the people that have tuned in are aspiring entrepreneurs. So I'd like to be able to tap your brain and hear what you think. What are the top reasons people choose to become an entrepreneur? You know? I think that that if you ask somebody who is just looking to go out and try and see what it's like to be an entrepreneur, they're probably seeking freedom, some semblance of independence or security. Maybe they're wondering in their minds, do I have it? Or are they kind of tired of that day job. A lot of folks maybe they have that job that they're not passionate about, but they see themselves going through the motions of just doing it because that's what you have to do to make ends need. Or you know, just as myself, some people may find themselves in kind of a corporate career track that you just don't like and you don't feel like that you can change it, and you don't feel like that you have the means through the corporate life to really make that change for yourself. I think those are all compelling reasons why people decide to become entrepreneurs. And certainly the reason why I did was to kind of break those chains of habit I was fortunate enough to discover when I was relatively young, you know, twenty four years old to realize that then you know, of course, where the risk profile and a young person is much different than a risk profile for someone with a mortgage, a car and a

5:10 couple of children along the way. And that all comes back home to do I feel like I can do this. I'm going to give it a shot. And do you have a suitable plan b for if things don't work out? What is that backup plan? You know? You're also reminding me of something else, Brian, that I want to share as I as I think about and reflect on my own research. I've over the years research I guess I've interviewed one hundred and forty people specifically in my research to discover how they ascribe meaning to the work that they do and what does that work mean to their sense of self or identity. And I'm now recalling when I interviewed a young man would have been in his early thirties. He was at the time employed in the IT space, and he had this thing inside of him, Brian. He was so bent an on fire. He was working in a corporate job and he said, I am just he says, I know that for me, work is the thing that I want my life to stand for, and I need to know that I made of the same stuff of my that my father was, who was a very very successful entrepreneur and also a surgeon. And so there's I think there's also something in some people about this notion of how you make something of your life through entrepreneurship. Can you comment on that. I think most of us find meeting through the work that we do. It's why we choose to career paths that we do. And maybe folks find themselves in a situation where they just have to do it to make ends meet. But at the end of the day, we're going to be at work for a third to a half of our lives. You know, hopefully you can find meaning and what you're doing, because I think that's really

6:41 going to be the recipe for what it means to live a life that you can consider fulfilled. A lot of talk about, you know, work life balance in the workplace. You know, for me personally, it's more about how does work and life integrate, how do I make both of those work together? As opposed to this oil and water analogy of their work and then there's life. You know, for me, growing up essentially my professional career as an entrepreneur work in life, there was no difference. It just was. And when you find yourself in a career path being an entrepreneur or you know, at your day job, doing the best that you can at what you're doing, I think that finding meaning in that is going to be something that brings people a lot of kind of mental satisfaction. Absolutely, And of course that is a huge reason why I host to show every single week, is to try to help people more meaningfully and productively connect with their work.

7:30 And I also know that there is an abundance, there's a spectrum of meaning that I discovered in my own research, So there's lots of ways to find meaning, which I think I hope that our listeners find to be encouraging for themselves. Absolutely. So one of the other things I wanted to pick your brain on, Brian, I've been really fascinated with this whole relationship that we hear that the unemployment rate in the United States is currently at like three point eight percent, something that hasn't been in for like years, and I'm really interested in your perspective on whether you think more people start a business when the economy and jobs are good versus not what that number really means to you. I'm just curious about your perspective on that with relation to entrepreneurship and jobs.

8:11 I think it's harder to make the jump when the unemployment rate is so low, when the job market is so wide open, because the risk is just different. You know, you know, you hear the phrase necessity is the mother of invention. You know, that's certainly where a lot of great companies were founded, was out of that need to make something happen. Certainly with a more sour economy where the unemployment rate is higher, maybe this is the only alternative is you know, struck out on a couple of job interviews, But you've got to make those ends meet. So what can you do to innovate? What can you do to bring a service or a product to market? Certainly services are easier than products. You know, we all we're all innovators in our own way, making small, meaningful changes in our lives that that are different from anybody else. That's we all innovate. So how do you take that? Can it put in a presentation and start company out of it? But with the relative economy the way that it is right now, I think that it's much easier or sorry, much harder to go out and give up the maybe cushy corporate job with the great benefits for a zero dollars salary and no benefits. Yeah, I think it really takes. It takes a real leap of faith and or this maybe the notion that somehow they've got something that they can provide fairly soon that's a value or needed or necessary in the marketplace. Again though, you know, such a perspective. I was chatting earlier this week with a gentleman who just he just out of the gate.

9:31 Like you, he was very very very young in his early twenties, and he hit the jackpot on being able to find a niche offering in the healthcare space. And you know, he gave me a perspective about you know, it's all about your lens on how you see things or you know then that includes how you look at risk, how you look at opportunity, how you look at positioning into the marketplace, any perspective on that. Yeah, I think that I don't have much of a perspective above what you just said, because I think it's really spot on. It's really about execution at that point in time. If you've got an idea, you've got an innovative solution, how do you bring it to market? What do you do? Who are those first customers? And have you gone through the appropriate routes of doing customer discovery? Have you evalidated that idea, and what are the meaningful steps that you can take that may be small, but point you in that direction where you have your compass aligned with what those goals are. Great. So I want to talk a little bit about leadership because certainly with regard to being an entrepreneur, whether you're going completely solo or whether you bring a team with you, there certainly is an element of leadership. So before I got really involved in coaching executives as I do today, I spent a lot of years coaching men and women at the individual contributor level who are really just starting to maybe go into a manager role or wanted to, and they were really wondering is there a leader in me? And if so, how can I develop that leader? So it gets to that age old question of leaders being born or made, And I'm wondering, you in your own world of entrepreneurship and experience. Can first do you what's your what's your take on you know,

11:03 are leaders born or made? And then I want to bring that over to to entrepreneurs as well. It's a really good question. I think it kind of it goes back to is it nature or is it nurture? And it's actually above my pay grade to kind of say definitively one or the other, Whereas maybe it's more born than made, or made than born. I'm not exactly sure, but I think it's possible given the right circumstances that regardless of what the answer that question is, there's there's ways to achieve that, become a leader, become an entrepreneur. Uh. It just may be more difficult for some than it is for others. M h my take on it. And maybe this is just simply because this is the space I work in. I work in the space of development and consulting, right, so I got to believe from the vantage point that of the services that that that I offer over the years, that that leaders can be made now to a certain you know, to what degree, we don't know, but I think they certainly can be developed. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe about what that might be for entrepreneurship. Do you think entrepreneurs are born or made? You know?

12:01 Again, it kind of goes back the same thing. But I do want to share a quick story on things that we all can do for the next generation. Is that at home, I've got a couple of children, an eight and a four year old, and my eight year old approached me and he sees both his mom and his dad are entrepreneurs. We work a lot of hours, and he said, Dad, I want to get a job. And this is quite satisfaction that he's asking this question. He certainly doesn't need to work or anything like that, but he wanted to make money. And I said to him, I said, Ethan, this is the first lesson I'm going to give that I really hope you remember, is that you don't have to wait for somebody else to pay you. You can make money. Now. Growing up in a relatively you know, lower middle class family in the East Coast North Carolina, and I, at the age of twelve, had a couple of full time jobs during summers to pay for, you know, leisure time activities that I wanted to undertake. It was up to me to provide those things and I got I think the federal minimum wage back then was four fifteen or four to twenty five or something like that.

13:00 But I told him was like, you can make your own money. And so he came up with the idea to do a little trash valet service around our neighborhood where he would take the trash from the house to the road and then return it after the trash trucks have come. And he had a little sales pitch and he went door to door and there's no experience like going door to door, no matter how young or old, basically saying I'm going to provide the service, but you're going to pay me this. And he got ten or eleven customers and he makes his routes, you know, once a week. But it's had experience right there that I think we can do as adults for the next generation. So we can instill some principles where they can learn early on. And it doesn't have to be a father or a parent a child relationship. It can be really any sort of mentoring relationship. But plant those seats because you really don't know how they'll grow. To answer your question directly, is it nature or nurture? Are they born or are they made. I'm not sure, but I'm going to make sure that they can be made. That I do my partner. You're reminding me fondly, just quickly, Brian. When I was in sixth and seventh grade, I was in a small northeastern town in Oregon called Hermas, and I'm the oldest of four kids. And whenever I wanted I wanted to either amuse myself or I wanted money, I would gather at the gang of whatever kids I could find in the neighborhood, and then I would grab them all and we would go door to door. I would be the person knocking in the door, making the pitch, saying, we can do one of two things for you.

14:16 We can rake your leaves or we can wash your car. Which would you like? The sales doctor, It was fantastic, and we would be out there regularaves. I'm sure it was ridiculous. I'm sure I probably charged something ridiculously small in some and so they said, sure, what the heck, I've got nothing to lose, go for it, right. That's the thing I needed for him. It really wasn't about the money he's paid. He's getting paid five dollars per month per house, which isn't a lot of money to make eight separate trips. But it really wasn't about the money, because he doesn't need the money, of course, But for me, it was about that exercise, going through the motions, really putting together a sales pitch and making that sale. And for him, he was ecstatic he got those first couple of customers. He was beaming ear to ear. Now, whether he'll become an entrepreneur or not, I don't know, but I do want to make sure that I as a parent, certainly I'm doing those things to facilitate that if he so chooses that career path, that's awesome. Well, speaking of what you said, your presence, the whole notion of socialization here, so associating with people like the Donald Thompsons of the world that we talked about before, who I know has been in some way helpful to your own journey. Absolutely, I'm interested in also understanding and sharing with our listeners what kind of a profile of a person might you recommend to consider avoiding entrepreneurship and why so. First, there's the association piece of who you're hanging out with.

15:35 That's one part of the question, and The second piece is you know who might actually avoid entrepreneurship. You know, I think it's someone you have to be really tolerant of extremes, and you've got to be a pretty level person throughout extremes because good things happen, bad things happen, You yourself have got to be kind of in between, you know. Certainly risk is one thing. People who are too risk averse they may find it more difficult, but it's also in the flip end. The gambler is they got their work cut out for them too, those who just go and throw caution to the wind. It's more about calculated risk. You know, what's in between there and are you making the right decisions? Are you gambling in the right places? Are you investing in the right places? You know, But aside from having quote unquote it, does your idea have it? Have you validated that?

16:19 Because certainly it's personality driven when it's a one person show, two person show, but as you grow in scale, it's really going to have some more substance outside of personality to make that work. Got that. I want to talk more about the association piece, but let's take a quick break first. I'm your host, Alis Cortez. We've went on the year with Brian and Orio, an entrepreneur who is currently the founder and CEO of Proposa, the best in class SaaS solution for building stunningly beautiful proposals in half the time. Brian started his first company, walk West, in marketing and advertising agency, at the age of twenty four. After scaling walk West to thirty five people, Brian created Proposa based on intellectual property that walk West had created. He joins us today from Raleigh, North Carolina. We've been talking a bit about his perspective of entrepreneurship. Now we can cultivate it. After the break, we'll hear more about his own journey. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Alis Cortes is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elisecortes dot com.

17:33 She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with Elise Cortes. To reach our program today, send an email to a lease Alic at a Lasecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose if you're just joining us. My guest is Brian, an entrepreneur who is currently the founder and CEO of Proposa, a best in class SaaS solution for building stunningly beautiful proposals in half the time. We've been talking a bit about his perspective on entrepreneurship and how to nurture it. Now we want to get into his own journey. I'm Alice Cortes, your host.

18:15 So before we get into your journey, Brian, as I mentioned before the break, I wanted to have you say more about the socialization aspect of being an entrepreneur. We talked about Donald Thompson being in your space. I've talked with enough people on the show even who talk about maybe they've got an informal board, or they've got an actual board, or they've got a cadre of people that they rely on to be able to bounce ideas off and gain ideas from that they don't have their own expertise in Can you comment on the importance of socialization as an entrepreneur, Oh, I think it's critical. I think that certainly my journey too illustrate that that. You know, when I started walk West, the marketing and advertising agency, I had spent seven years trying to grow and scale this company with some success. You know, we had a couple of employees. Certainly I was proud of what we were doing.

19:03 But I met my mentor and now, you know, certainly good personal friend, Donald Thompson, back in twenty fifteen, twenty fourteen, and when you put two and two together, where we're able to feed off of each other and I'm able to get some insight onto the roads I haven't traveled yet, where I can actually mitigate my risk a little bit just by learning from the approaches of those around me. We were able to triple revenue in twenty fifteen alone, that we doubled it in twenty sixteen and doubled it again in twenty seventeen. And it's that kind of explosive growth that's very very difficult to do in a silo because there's questions that I would have, you know, I put myself back in the situation of being twenty four. None of my peers had gone through this experience. You know, certainly maybe a few of them had an MBA or so, but living that experience and going through the motions of what does it mean to cut payroll to make payroll? What do you have to do to make sure that you're able to, you know, maintain your business and grow your business and scale your business. These aren't things that I could get from my natural friend base. Just do them to age and time. So as I got a bit older, we grew the company a little bit, you know, finding that those set of people to make sure that they can fill in your blind spots. Everybody has them, and it's important that you find an advisor or a partner that can fill yours and vice versa, because again, you know, it's living in the silos bad and when you can open that up, I think that's when you really start to experience some positive growth. I can't imagine any other way to do it.

20:27 And I appreciate how you presence that for our listeners. That was incredibly crisp. Okay, So next I want to talk about your journey, Brian. So you know we already said that you started your first company at age twenty four. But beyond that, I think it's important to let our listeners understand a bit more about where you came from. So did you for school? Did you go to college? Well, obviously, what did you do before you started your company in age twenty four? Yeah, it's a great question. I did. I went to NC State University and I graduated with a degree in computer science back in two thousand and four. And after that, I, having very little financial resources coming from home, I couldn't wait to get out and find the first job that would pay me a suitable amount of money, just because I was seeking financial independence and freedom, which is something I'd never had throughout the course of my young adulthood and certainly childhood.

21:15 That moved me out to Kansas City, Missouri, where I found myself working as a systems engineer for a healthcare company. I traveled a lot for that job, and traveled to a young twenty one or twenty two year old sounds great until you find out that you're going to Fond de Lac, Wisconsin and the dead of winter. You know, certainly fond of Loac is a charming place, but it was December and it's cold. And I grew up on the beach of North Carolina. I had never felt windshiels that cold before. But I was living out of an airport, living out of a suitcase. And after some time that gets to anybody that burn out kind of kicks in the Midwest, I really didn't find it was for me. So I moved back to North Carolina and worked a couple more years as a software developer for a hospital here in Durham, North Carolina, before starting what turned out to be a freelance gig. I took a couple of freelance jobs developing some websites.

22:07 Through the money in the bank, saved up about twenty thousand dollars and you know, bid farewell to my full time day job. And I won't forget that date. It was August first, two thousand and eight. That was the last day that I was employed by someone else. Okay, So what made you actually take the leap? You know, it's another good question there, And given that I grew up in my nature itself was kind of risk verse. I had to have enough money in the bank just to make me feel comfortable that if I didn't have any sales that I could still eat and maintain. But you know, overall my life was relatively simple. You know, I was newly wed, we were renting a small house. I didn't have a lot of debt, so really it was a chance for me just to exercise and give that whole thing a shot. Now, I mentioned earlier in my last day of the full time job was August first, two thousand and eight. And for those who are old enough to remember, you know, fast forward a month and a half. It was the financial crisis in mid September, and everything just came tumbling down around me. Made me very nervous, you know, to the point where I picked up the phone.

23:07 I called the old boss man and I said, hey, boss Man, that job that I quit, just kidding, let's get the band back together. And he met me with the news of we filled that job. Good luck and I won't forget it. But I had went home that evening told my wife, I said, we've jumped at sink or swim and there's no other option. Wow, that can be incredibly powerful motiv motivation for you. So what did you do to make it work? I won't lie. There were times where you know, I'd get a gig, you know, it'd be enough to kind of tide me over for the next you know, twenty one or thirty days, and I would go through the motion of updating the resume, thinking that the whole journey had to come to an end. You know, looking back, it's it's almost kind of an illogical fear.

23:48 But my biggest fear at that point in time, being at that point in my life was admitting to my friends that I had failed. But I gave it a shot and failed, and that kept me going because I didn't want to have that conversation with anybody else that I couldn't make it work. So somehow, some way, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. You find yourself in a financial pinch, you go out and you make it happen. And that literally is calling as many people as you can, getting as many references or referrals as you can, and you make that next gig happen, and you try to make that snowball effect happen from there. Brian, I want to thank you and acknowledge you for just really being real with us, because you know this journey is not for the faint of heart and for the listeners to recognize that, Wow, somebody who has been as successful as you are went through that some of those troughs. Is really important to be able for them to be able to recognize and evaluate whether this is something they can do and want to do. I've never met an entrepreneur that hasn't had those pinches, those troughs, And there they can be low moments, you know, where even things such a self doubt can kind of creep in to those who can take that little bit of self doubt and turn it into a motivator as an inspirator to kind of push harder and go further.

24:56 You asked a question earlier about what does it take to be an on entrepreneur, and that's certainly if you're the type of personality that can do that, you've got a great chance of success. The word that comes to mind is what Angela Dougworth put out there, which is grit. It's a great word, That's what it is. You've got to get your hands thirty. You know, you may call yourself CEO, and certainly you are, and there's no taking that away. If you've went out and started your own thing, you are the CEO. But you're also the janitor and everything in the twy and that means getting in the trenches. That means, you know, there's literally no point in a day where you can say that's not my job. Wow. Now stepping back then, we were actually in the trenches of starting this business. Now, if we can kind of step back as looking backwards from it being successful, I'm interested in hearing how what was your strategy to actually develop that agency such that you've scaled it to thirty five people.

25:48 You know, I think that the strategy was, again, it's hard work finding the right people to surround yourself with, hiring really really well. And that's something that I say we at this point in time because this is certainly after we scaled and as the company grew, have become less and less dependent on me, and it became more of an entity of itself. And that's a good moment when you can sit back and think about a company that you'd started where really your input was five or ten percent, and the company that you created around you, the people that you gave positions to, were doing their job far better than you could have, and you kind of take a step back and you kind of look at that and you think, wow, you know, that's when you really have done it, whatever it may be, is that when it's kind of its own little thing that can live and breed as if it's a person itself and it's just going along and it's trucking along. That is so great to distinguish that, Brian, right, because there's the notion of what people say, well, just kind of just what you said. You went out and you were building websites on your own and getting gigs. That's very very, very very different than building a company that now becomes an entity of itself and breeds almost as if it was it was on its own. That's very distinct. Yeah, you know, what we considered gigs in the early days have turned into massive contracts. And you know twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen where we're doing a lot of work for some government agencies. We're going through the RFP processes for educational institutions and healthcare institutions and we're winning. You know, it's putting the right team together. And as you grow in scale, the value of a great employee is like double their

27:21 salary, but the liability of maybe some that aren't as great is kind of double their salary as well. So you've really got to look. You got to refine who you're working with and make sure that you surround yourself with the right people, because it really is make or break at thirty five person company. It feels big to me because that's the biggest company I've ever been a part of. But you think, you know, one sour apple or so can certainly spoil the bunch for sure, especially for that for that size. Now, Walkwist is still completely functioning. Yes, it is still in sie Okay, walkwest dot com and it's doing well. And I'm still a part of the board of directors there and very involved, you know with kind of corporate governance and some day to day but not much anymore. Okay, got it. Well, that brings me to my next question. So I know that you launched Proposer early this year. I'm interested in sharing how the idea for the offering came to be and how did you actually start. You know, it was building a lot of websites. Going back to that back in twenty fourteen, I had an idea that why were we still sending power points like every other company was sending, you know, certainly our powerpoints looked good, but they were just another PowerPoint deck proposal in the middle of a stack of so many others. So I had an idea, and we got a group together every weekend to build that a prototype that we kind of dubbed the proposal Engine that would allow us to put our proposals on a website. And for me, it was about validating that we could do what we said we could do. You know, we were pitching you web design and development services,

28:52 and here we are giving a proposal on a website. So back in twenty fourteen is really where the roots for proposal lie. And again it was one of those precipitators for scale. You know, we started winning seven out of every ten projects that we were betting on, and it wasn't slowing down and allow us to grow very very rapidly over the course of twenty fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. You know, it's to the point where our prospects that we had sent these proposals to they had turned our clients, and you know, inevitably three months later they'd come back and say, hey, that proposal that you sent us, which software did you use, because we want to use it too. You know, I did not explained that it was a back office tool that we created for ourselves, but that conversation became increasingly common to the point where Donald Thompson, you have a business partner of mind that you mentioned, We got together in twenty seventeen and said, we've got to do something about this because what we're hearing this customer demand. There's a hole in the marketplace that we could fill. We just got to have the guts to go out there and do it. What a concept. Listening to what's out there and floating in terms of need and answering or solving that problem.

29:55 What a concept. You make it sound so simple, Brian, but that makes complete sense to me. It really is. It comes down to what are your customers saying? You know, there's opportunities for innovation in everything that you do being an entrepreneur or not. You know, what are you doing? What are your customers, your people around you saying that you're doing it's different? What do they want you to do differently? Those are all kind of micro concepts of being innovative, and that's certainly where Proposa had its birthplace. Now I've had a chance to look at your demo offering on YouTube, which is great, it's easy to follow, But I don't know anything about this space. So what different differentiates you in the marketplace with this product? What makes what distinguishes you? It's another way to say that, well, we've been selling the same way for two and a half decades. You know, back in the mid nineties, people were sending PowerPoint dex as proposals, and here we are in twenty eighteen, we're still sending power points as proposals. We want to stop that habit because what happens once you send a PowerPoint out as an email attachment, it's kind of gone poof. I have no information about if that proposal was even opened, was it read. Now that we're sending digital links through proposal, of what you can do is I can find out at least that if I send you a proposal that you opened it, and that gives me, as a salesperson, just a piece of information knowing that, hey, you got it, you've opened it. But also it'll give me kind of a heat map showing what you're looking at a lot, what you're looking at a little maybe skimming over. And the purpose is to be as relevant as possible to the person that you're trying to create a partnership with, is that you know, if you're a relationship driven you

31:26 may be spending a lot of time on our team section of a proposal. If you're a price conscious buyer, you're probably concentrating a lot on the pricing table. And those little pieces of information are actually really really valuable and helping you really start to sell better and smarter, as opposed to just sending that PowerPoint deck out again that you did in the previous you know, five or ten times. That's incredibly exciting, Brian, that is incredibly exciting. I did notice that that you do call that in the tutorial or the demo. You do call that, and I didn't, and I understood the importance of it, but the way you just brought it to life there is really really add some color for me well. As an executive for a marketing advertising company for in the past ten years. You know, there's no lack of data in the marketing space, especially digital marketing. I can tell what click through rates are, what your engagement rates are, which campaigns are right side up or upside down in terms of ROI, But in sales it's send a PowerPoint and weight, and we just knew there had to be a better answer to that. How can we apply some good digital marketing techniques, apply those to sales proposals and start to really help and enable either sales individuals or sales teams sell better, smarter and faster. Sounds good to me. I think everybody, whether they really embrace it or not, is a salesperson, some of us more so than others, of course, right, And to that end, I'm really interested in your strategy to develop and grow this business. Do you have a plan in place or you're just peddling your bicycle so fast to start? We haven't gotten there yet. Where are you in that plan?

32:58 Yeah, we certainly have a plan in play. So one of those things I talked about earlier was filling your blind spots. You know, for me, the vast majority of my career was in the services space, not the product space. So one of the first things I did is I got a board of advisors, and I got some very good qualified people who lived in the product space to sit there alongside me to kind of sanity check my decisions. And you know, one of the things we found out very early on was you know, we're selling a solution to a problem that people don't know they have. You know, they're not looking for the solution to get to educate them that there's something else that's out there that you can do it better and differently. So it's really changing consumer habits and informing the world out there that there is a better alternative than just the same old status quo. Really sounds great, Brian. I'm finding this conversation very inspiring. I thank you for that, and I hope our listeners are as well. This is a good time for our last break. I'm Alice Cortez, your host. We've been on the air with Brian Honorio, who is an entrepreneur currently the founder and CEO of Proposa, a best in class SaaS solution for building stunningly beautiful proposals and half the time. Brian started his first company, walk West, a marketing and advertising agency, at the age of twenty four. After scaling walk West to thirty five people, Brian created Proposa based on intellectual property that walk West had created. He joined it today from Raleigh, North Carolina.

34:15 We've been talking a bit about his own entrepreneurial journey and how he started Proposa. After the break, we're going to hear about his lessons learned. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Alice Cortes is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elisecortes dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with Elise Cortes. To reach our program today, send an email to a lease Ali at a lascortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose. If you're just tuning in, My guest is Brian Anrio, an entrepreneur who is currently the founder and CEO of Proposa, a best in class SaaS solution for building stunningly beautiful proposals in half the time. I'm your host, Atlis Cortes. So for this last segment, here, Brian, what I'd love to have a showcase, and I so appreciate You're already a very real and accessible, authentic human beings, so I appreciate whatever it is that you share. I want to move on and have you talk about maybe two or three of the really viable lessons that you've learned as you've gone through your entrepreneurial journey and how they've helped you become more effective in business today. You know, I've got to and I

35:49 hope we're not beating a drum here, but the first one is find a mentor. I can't tell you the difference that you know early in my career as an executive running things solo and running things with the team. There's such a big difference, and people are out there already and willing to help. You know, certainly I have gone through the bruises of general warfare here with starting and growing a business, and certainly when folks approach me and ask questions, I am more than happy to open up like a book and letting people know, don't do this, do that instead. If you have any questions, email me, call me, text me, because really it's kind of that responsibility. It's a close knit community where they talk about founder's courage a lot for people who go out and they make that leap, and they make that jump, there's certainly a camaraderie around that, and I certainly want to help as many people as I can because I realized I didn't get here on my own, and I had the help and the hand of a lot of people along the way. So that really is lesson number one, don't try to go it alone. You probably are special, but you're not that special.

36:49 Make sure you got back up planned there, and he finds some qualified people to go in your corner. But the second is the lesson that's been a hard one for me to learn over time. Really it's been try fail adjusts. Try fail adjusts has been the concept of running towards problems, not away from them. And I think that you know, the idea may creeping your head that you can sweep this under the rug. Be it a financial issue, maybe it's a client service issue, maybe it's something in between, but you can sweep it under the rug and it just just goes away. And those things never go away. To really be a successful entrepreneur, to be a successful business leader, you've got to have that personality that you're going to put on the fire jacket and run towards the fire, as opposed to away from it, which is where everybody else is running. They're running away.

37:34 You've got to run towards. And you know, when you run towards a problem early on, all you do is you buy yourself time to fix it. It's going to pop back up and then you're not going to have the time to fix it. So you might as well tackle it early, tackle it often, and tackle it hard. That is great advice, Brian, That is great advice. That idea of running to the problem rather than away from it. I think that's brilliant. Now I have to dig a little bit deeper on the mentor thing that you said. So when you mention the importance of mentors, what I wonder is, did you was there a time where you want it alone longer than maybe you could have or should have, or did you immediately latch on and find mentors in your journey? I think the course of growing walk West, what it really came down to was was burnout and I was kind of done. Certainly, I was making plenty of money, certainly more money than I'd ever made before. There was nothing wrong with the company, but I just could never go on vacation. I didn't know how to scale to get over that next hump. You know, when I did try to go on vacation, I spent half my days on the telephone trying to solve problems or you know, fix issues, or get a proposal out or get a contract signed, or there's always things that you can do. And there came a point in time where I could keep doing it. I could keep going, but I didn't want to because I was doing it alone. And certainly I actually found my mentor, Donald Thompson, because I sent one of his companies a proposal generated by the proposal Engine, and he thought, wait, wait a minute, this is a two or three person company. They're doing things way different than anybody else. I've got to have a converse with them. And certainly Donald and I had a lot of conversations in those early days about how he could help. And at that

39:06 point, at that point my career, I just looked at it and said, what do I have to lose by bringing a partner to help growth grow and scale? Because he's been there and done that. I really didn't have much to lose other than giving it a shot. And if it didn't work, you know, I could certainly find myself gainingtally employed with the experience I had built over the previous you know, six or seven years at that point in time. Two things I want to say about that, Brian. One is the importance of scaling, finding a way to scale. I hear so often, and I've had many people on the show talking about this. When once you can actually find that way to scale, your world changes dramatically. If everything depends on you and your decision or even your move, or it's a you know, one to one retaro between you and time, you're in big trouble. So I really appreciate how you distinguish that for us. I can go a bit deeper with that, as I think that a lot of folks that have small companies they consider them lifestyle companies. I don't consider small companies lifestyle companies because or chained that telephone, you can't break away because you are the company. And those situations work fine for a lot of people, have worked out great for me for the longest time. But there came a point in time where I had to make the decision do I want to scale and if I don't then how can I systematize this a bit more so it's not so dependent on me. But the answer for me was, you know, still relatively young, I want to give this whole scale thing a shot, and we certainly did that. We grew from a couple of employees to thirty five and two and a half years. It's so admirable and and I wish I would have met you years ago, Brian, when I and a business partner started a small online feedback portal the human resource space. It was

40:37 called Improved Experience, and we did this in ready, drumroll please two thousand and six to twenty ten, yeap, and let that fall off at the edge of the cliff, shall we? But if we would have we were in the process of building a board of advisors toward the end, and had we done that much sooner, I think we would have been in much better shape and maybe found a way to remain relevant through that recetsession and such that because our product dependent on people getting hired to use it right in the middle of the recession. So but there probably were other things that we could have done to be able to address the market space that would have allowed us to remain viable and handle those sort of things while the market recovered, and we just didn't have the wherewithal, or the space or the forethought to consider that option until later in the process when by the time it was too late.

41:24 Yeah, everybody works hard, you know, especially when you have your own company, your own product that you're working towards. It's not a question of work ethic. It's really about working smarter and can you find people to surround yourself with. And again, I cannot go back on it any and you say it any more than how critical it is to make sure that you that you find yourself a person that can be a compidant that you can talk about business issues, just to help you see over the trees a little bit. When you're in it, you can't see the forest because of the trees. You got to pull back a little bit, and sometimes it takes another human being to create that tug. I'm very interested in hearing what does your work mean to you in your overall life. I think there's a satisfaction certainly that I'm sitting here now in my mid thirties and I've been to this journey now in my second company, there's a big satisfaction that goes along with that.

42:14 But really the meaning is not in finances or anything else. It really comes down to the people that I've surrounded myself with over the past ten years. I mentioned earlier, this is not a solo act. You know, this is a band, and any one piece outside is not going to create that chorus that you need. The meaning really has been the relationships I developed, the customers that have trusted me with their business, those really early ambassadors who did nothing but speak my name in all the right places. I didn't get here alone, and certainly paying homage and thanks to those folks along the way, because it's been an exciting journey, and looking back, it's one that you don't want to take a loan, because I think it can be a lonely journey for a lot of people. So I heard a couple of things in that I heard achievement. I heard connection. I heard the privilege of being trusted by others, people who helped you and went out of their way to help presence you in the marketplace. And it's interesting that you set aside immediately to the financial piece. Yeah, because I think that that's not necessarily meaning, that doesn't bring meaning to a lot of people that certainly, the lack of finances can create strife, it can create discontent, it can create a lot of stress. And certainly I'm not what you would consider quote unquote rich, but you know, having enough to live on helps out that you can start concentrating on the other things around you, because I think that when you find meaning, it's not necessarily in things, it's in people. You know, I come to the office every day and I see people that i've that have been with me for years, and those are the there's the true

43:46 trusted partners that you develop over time. That that really helped to grow where the sum of two parts is greater than the whole, or the whole in the sum of two parts, I got that really quick. On the money piece, what I've learned by interviewing people is that money means different things to people. For some people who grew up without very much of it, when they do have some of it, it gives them security. For other people, making a good living whatever that is, gives them a sense of pride because they're providing for people that they love. So I've really come and there's just a whole other spectrum of things that fall all over the place, and there's power in that for people. There's all kinds of stuff. So what I've learned by researching meaning about money is really fascinating, really really intense and deep. You have a specific description to it, and as do I.

44:35 But I just wanted to STEMIs that for our listeners in case that wasn't quite it for them? Absolutely? I think that for me it's always been about security. Is there enough? Yeah, certainly not to go out and have three houses, but is there enough for me to get by and make sure my kids are taken care of and make sure payroll cleayers, Because that's a pretty important piece. Absolutely, that goes back to the trust piece, right and right. Okay, So that's why I wanted to kind of deepen that little bit, just because it Having been a researcher for as long as I have, I just know there's a lot to it. No, there is, Okay. So I want to ask you maybe just two more questions. Were almost out of time here and you may have already gotten to this, but I want to give you the chance to answer this specific question. What are you most proud of in your journey as an entrepreneur? Self? Satisfaction that I was able to do it. You know, what plagued me early on was that self doubt and that nagging fear that I'd have to open up to my friends on barnight, you know, when I'm twenty five years old, saying hey, I gave it a shop, but it didn't work out, and now I'm going back to work for somebody else. I didn't want that, and it actually kind of horrified me. I'm kind of downplaying a little bit, but those are the things that kept me up awake at night early on. Now, certainly there were challenges that kept me up, you know later in my career that they kept me up at night and had me thinking where I couldn't sleep, But that was the early one and kind of looking back over the past ten or eleven years, it really has been that satisfaction of doing it, and certainly the pride that I have have and building two companies. It's it's something that not a lot of people do, and I'm certainly proud that I am, and I just want to make sure that when there's an opportunity, that I have an opportunity to work with younger folks

46:07 who are considering the same path and where can I play my part in the same way that some other folks have played that part for me. That's great, Brian, that's really beautiful, and I really appreciate that what you shared about not want to tell your friends. Look, I gave it my best shot, but it didn't quite work out. And then motivation that comes from wanting to avoid having to say that I really got that. So in our last little bit of time here, I like to be able to give you the last word here. You know, the show is about helping listeners across the globe more meaningfully connect with their work. What would you like to leave them with and say about thirty seconds. In thirty seconds, I'd say, read as much as you can read anything and everything that you can that relates to either you personally professional or professionally. And I'm going to say it once more, even though I've done it three times here, but really seek out networks people within your hometowns, even online or digitally. Folks are out there, they want to share their experience, they want to help and get help at the same time. They're out there and they're available, And I wish it was the thing that I'd done earlier in my career. Beautiful way to finish, Brian, and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your experience, and absolutely your passion. You let us into your space in a way that I like to share with my listeners, and I really appreciate that.

47:16 Brian, Thank you. Aliso's my pleasure. If you want to learn more about Brian and his team at Proposa and what they're up to, go visit their website. It's getproposa dot com. So g E T P R PO s A getproposa dot com. Join us next week when we talk with Lauren Middley, and she has just released another book on productivity, something I think most of us need more of. I'll look forward to the conversation. Join us in Remember that work is at least one third of our life, so let's work on purpose. Well you hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune in to Working on Purpose, featuring your host Alis Cortes, each week on the Voice America Empowerment Channel. This week, find your life's purpose at work