Lessons from 2,000+ Startup Founder Interviews with Entrepreneur Andrew Warner of Mixergy

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:04]

Not many people can claim to have run marathons on ALL seven continents but that is exactly what Andrew Warner did.

Andrew Warner [00:00:07]

One of the best things that I did for myself was I picked a year, and I decided I would run a marathon on every continent in that year.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:17]

And yes, that includes Antarctica.

Andrew Warner [00:00:18]

I lived for a week or so in a tent on the snow and waited for the weather to be strong enough and clear enough for me to be able to go and run my marathon by myself.>

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:28]:

It wasn't easy making that happen...

Andrew Warner [00:00:30]

And the Antarctica Marathon has a waitlist of many years. I was on it. It was many years in the future before I would be able to run it. We have all these rules to keep people from just polluting Antarctica. So I couldn't just get to Antarctica within a year just by buying a flight on Expedia. And I had to make call after call after call. And then I finally found this one company that supports people who trek from one side of the continent to the other. And it was like a $25,000 flight and set up just after I got to Chile, the southernmost point of, uh, South America. But then I got to do it. I ran a marathon on my own. And it was wonderful.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:07]

It was a one-person marathon and it took over seven hours but, at the end of it...

Andrew Warner [00:01:12]

The people who worked at home base in Antarctica presented me with a pickle jar lid that they had an Antarctica map on and the word winner because I had won the Antarctica marathon, and usually, when I get these gold medals from Marathons, I throw them right in the garbage this is the only one that I'd ever kept and you could see it's a lid from a pickle jar because that's all they had there that they created just for me. And it was amazing.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:43]

If you haven't guessed yet, Andrew Warner is by far one of the BEST storytellers I have had on the show.

Andrew Warner [00:01:48]

Hi! My name is Andrew Warner. After doing over 2000 interviews, I am now the author of Stop Asking Questions, a book about how to have more meaningful conversations with people, and the host of the podcast Mixergy, where I interview startup entrepreneurs.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:02]

I'm excited to interview the guy who has done more than two thousand interviews - so strap in and get ready for take-off!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:14]

Hi, my name is Yong-Soo Chung and I am a first-generation Korean-American entrepreneur living the American dream. I started Urban EDC to cater to enthusiasts of everyday carry gear. I also own two other successful ventures: GrowthJet, a climate-neutral certified third-party logistics company for emerging e-commerce brands, and SpottedByHumphrey, an online boutique curating dog goods for good dogs. Through these three ventures, my business has generated over $20 million dollars in 8 years and I'm here to tell you how YOU can do the same!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:49]:

On today's episode of First Class Founders, we are talking to Andrew Warner, the serial entrepreneur, storyteller, podcast host, and author extraordinaire. Andrew recently published a book called "Stop Asking Questions!" which I read from cover to cover! I invited him on the podcast so I could… ask him a LOT of questions.

Andrew Warner [00:03:08]

Thanks for having me on.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:10]

During our conversation, Andrew and I spoke about his life as an entrepreneur and went into some amazing details about: all his past ventures - including the one that failed, his learnings from each of them, why he thinks the current startup ecosystem has matured too much, his current partial hiatus and what he plans to do next, as well as his secret to conducting great interviews.

Premium members of First Class Founders will also be treated to a special segment in which Andrew spoke about the moment when he realized that his pivot from Mixergy the event site to Mixergy the podcast was the right decision. Andrew also shared the unique way in which he approaches his interviews - something that I haven't found anyone else doing. 

All of that and more will be made available in an extra segment included in the special ad-free version of this episode, available only to our premium members. Become a premium member of First Class Founders by signing up at firstclassfounders.com/join - I'll leave a link in the shownotes!

Let’s get this flight ready for take-off!

Andrew Warner [00:04:16]

Hi, my name is Andrew Warner. Let's get down to business!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:23]

Back in the days before hi-speed internet was everywhere, when the internet was still mostly dialup, people used to purchase software on disks - 1.44 MB floppy disks. You would place an order online and the disks would be shipped to you offline. Even Netflix sent you physical DVDs when you rented a movie from their site. Do you remember those days?

Well, Andrew Warner's first business was a joint venture with his brother Michael - selling software-on-a-disk that his brother wrote. That’s right, we’re not talking software-as-a-service here. We’re talking software-on-a-disk.

Andrew Warner [00:05:00]

The first software that he made was spell check that work anywhere. So you could spell check your email, you could spell check your letters, you could spell check any app, anything that you use on the Internet and we put it on discs in the mail.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:12]

People would buy the software online, which Andrew & his brother would then ship on disks to them offline.

Andrew Warner [00:05:19]

You could still do it online, but people valued a physical product, like a disk more.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:23]

But, in those days, floppy disks were expensive and you could quickly run up a sizable expense buying empty floppy disks, which they obviously wanted to avoid.

Andrew Warner [00:05:33]

This I'd never talked about because I forgot about it. But we didn't want to spend money on disks.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:28]

That's when Andrew suddenly had a lightbulb moment.

Andrew Warner [00:05:41]

But at the time, intel would pound people with disks. With what, I don't even remember that intel even had software, but they did have some kind of software that they would pound developers with it. And my brother used to get fed up that they would send him too much of it. I said, wait a minute, let's ask him for more of this.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:57]

Because what Andrew had realized was that the sticker Intel put on, with the name of their software was easy to peel off!

Andrew Warner [00:06:04]

I said, you know what, Michael, call them up, tell him you want more. And so they would send us boxes of this stuff and we would take off their little label easily. We would print up our own labels at home, put it on the disks, put it in these envelopes, and mail out the software that he made.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:22]

But, here's something that a lot of people don't know - the stationery that Andrew and Michael needed to send out those disks? Well, the money needed for that stationery also came from a VERY unusual source!


Andrew Warner [00:06:35]

You know what? It was the craziest thing at the time. J. Crew had one of these policies that said you could return your clothing back anytime for a full refund. When I graduated from school, I said, I need some money to start a business, and I realized wait, I bought all this. J Crew clothes. Would they take it back? And so, in order to get an RMA, one of these return numbers, I called up the company and I said, look, I've been buying your clothes religiously while I was in school. I wore them. Can I return them? And the woman says -- Absolutely. Our return policy is complete anytime you could return and get your money back. I said, but you know, I wore them a lot in school. she said -- Yeah. Absolutely. That's our policy. We'll take it back. I said I wore it on the subway, the New York City subway. Do you know what that's like? She goes -- That's our policy. We'll take it back. It said sure enough, she gave me an RMA number for every item that I'd bought when I was in school, I put it all in a box, I mailed it to them, and then a few weeks later, I got a check and that check was for I don't remember the exact number. It was 2 to $3000.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:35]

And those '$2000 to $3000' was essentially spent on buying envelopes and other stationery products for Andrew and Michael's software-on-a-disk business!

Andrew Warner [00:07:45]

It was little things, like envelopes in order to mail out orders to people.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:50]

The story of reusing floppy disks (which essentially were Intel's trash) to create spell-check software (which was Andrew and Michael's treasure) is a perfect example of the true entrepreneurial endeavor on full display.

And as for Andrew returning his used J-crew clothes and using the money as capital for his business? I am convinced that every entrepreneur has done something like this when they were just starting out - a sentiment that Paul Graham, the Founder of Y Combinator, echoes, in his 2007 essay titled "Do Things That Don't Scale" in which he says: "Startups often have to do dubious things. They have to bend the rules, push the envelope, and sometimes even break the law. This is because they are trying to do something new and innovative, and the old rules don't apply."

This conversation with Andrew has barely started and it is already brimming with lessons! Except, in honor of Andrew's book, "Stop Asking Questions" I am going to call them LIFE-QUESTIONS, that you might want to ask - and answer - yourself!

Ready? Here is...

LIFE-QUESTION NUMBER ONE: Do you have a J-crew story of your own? That is, are you willing to hustle to the point of potentially embarrassing yourself, to give your business a fighting chance to succeed?

In episode 32, Sam Browne told us that he raised money by buying and selling guitars and also used the money he won from a reality game show to kickstart his venture - Find-A-Band. In episode 37, Khe Hy told us that he sent his first email while still employed with BlackRock, which eventually became his much-loved newsletter RadReads.

And now, Andrew Warner.

Andrew Warner [00:09:27]

You know, I used to be embarrassed of that story. I didn't want to talk about it, I thought people were going to judge me negatively, and then I started doing interviews on Mixergy, and I saw that other entrepreneurs had these stories like you said, and I didn't judge them.

And so I went on and I talked about my experience, and I actually did get judged. There was a lot of heavy criticism coming at me. But I also got a few solid entrepreneurs emailing me, talking to me in person, texting me, and saying “That is the way to start. I did something similar. Nice hustle, kid “. And to me, having one of those people is way more valuable than having 50 trolls put me down, and so I've been much more open about that, and it was helpful.


Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:10]

Andrew and Michael's software-on-a-disk venture went on to make some serious money.

Andrew Warner [00:10:15]

I at one point, had a box of everything that was in my bedroom mailed to me by my parents and it included a QuickBooks chart showing our revenue climbing up to $30,000 a month, which was like 1000 a day. It felt so incredible.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:29]
But, Andrew didn't want to stop at earning *just* $1,000 a day! He was hungry for more. Lots more. So he and his brother decided to start searching for a fresh idea for a new business.

Andrew Warner [00:10:42]

And the fresh idea was, let's just create an email newsletter that's not about selling things to people but just like entertain people on a regular basis and then sell them advertising. I mean, sell advertising against them.

Yong-Soo Chung [0010:53]

An email newsletter. But not like the Beehiiv and Substack kind. The kind where you would subscribe and get a joke or a fun bit of trivia every day in your inbox. And, let me tell you, these were quite popular when email inboxes were only 2 MB or 5 MB.

Andrew Warner [00:11:11]

A joke a day. You know? You'd get a joke in your inbox  very and people would laugh and forward it to their friends as a way of staying in touch with people

Yong-Soo Chung [00:11:18]

Andrew would simply 'borrow' material from the experts.

Andrew Warner [00:11:22]

I would just see what the late-night talk show host jokes were. They're always very, I don’t know. They feel very written and easy to repeat, and they were always easily online, so I would go and copy those and attribute it to them, and suddenly I get some of the halo effect of being associated with them even though all I was doing was quoting them. My favorite one was I started a trivia email newsletter. And at the top, there would always be some trivia question that you hadn't thought to ask and then an ad then underneath that, the answer to this question that you didn't think to add but not to ask, but now you're super curious about. One of my favorites is why was it called the hot dog if it's not made out of dog? I would have questions like that, and the answer would be in the email newsletter, and people would read it, and they would enjoy it, and it was all free, and once I built that up, I could go out and sell advertising.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:12:12]

The thing is, this business didn't take off right away. Andrew and Michael had to WORK to make it happen. And when it did, it was a business that ended up earning them $30 MILLION a year.

Yeah, that's three followed by SEVEN zeroes.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:12:42]

Okay, now let's get back to Andrew's story and how he made thirty million dollars sending email newsletters to subscribers.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:12:50]

Andrew and Michael knew that their business model was entirely dependent on getting advertisers to buy ads in the newsletters they sent out. But, for that to happen, they needed to show the advertisers that they had a substantial subscriber base.

So, Andrew tried to get more people to subscribe - initially by buying paid ads...

Andrew Warner [00:13:10]

I would buy ads and couldn't convert people into this email newsletter because there was no real urgency for it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:17]

...and later by starting an affiliate program, which his brother Michael coded.

Andrew Warner [00:13:22]

And the deal was, anyone can send us a subscriber and we'd send them ten cents per subscriber that they got us. And we'd know that we'd make our money over time.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:14:29]

But... that didn't work out so great.

Andrew Warner [00:14:32]

So what we then created was this tool that allowed websites to tell their audiences that they could share the websites via email, right? So you build a website, you want people to share it via email. One button gets shared via email. We build the tool, and we gave it away for free. And by the way, there was a checkbox in there that said, you also want to subscribe to the Trivia newsletter, or do you want to get a joke by email? And people left that checkbox checked, and it was nice.>

Yong-Soo Chung [00:14:57]

So, every time people shared their website via email, they would get subscribed to the newsletter that Andrew had created.

And that's when another lightbulb moment happened.

Andrew Warner [00:15:06]

We then marry that with our affiliate program. We said, what if we pay people $0.10 every time someone sends out their website? That would be interesting. Now, people have a reason to promote their own websites and make money whenever their site was being promoted to their reader’s friends.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:21]

Or, in other words, Andrew was paying an acquisition cost of 10 cents per new user - dirt cheap even in those days, if you ask me!

And, as it usually happens with such ventures, it needed ONE person - a power user - to find the golden opportunity that was just lurking beneath the surface. For Andrew and Michael's venture, this opportunity manifested - bizarrely - in the form of HUGE payments to one of their affiliates.

Andrew Warner [00:15:48]

I just saw off the Hooks payments. It was like, suddenly a few hundred dollars to one person. When you think about ten cents a day, that's a lot. And I thought, we're getting scammed, Michael, we're getting scammed, but I'm going to call this person up. There's no way that someone's going to scam me and not be caught. So I called this guy up.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:06]

It was a power user of their website-sharing tool, named Alan.

Andrew Warner [00:16:10]

And I said, Alan, I see that you're doing a lot of business with us. He goes, yeah something like, Praise the Lord, we are, we're doing great with you. I said I've never seen anyone do anything like this. Do you mind telling me what you did? And so he says, no, don't mind. I'll tell you. He had a picture on a single web page of a cross that was like a giant cross, bigger than the one Jesus was crucified on. It was a picture of that, and underneath it was a prayer. Now, I am not enough of a religious person to know if that prayer was one that he had made up or one that was from the Bible, but it had a ring of sincerity, and it had a thing that connected with the religious Christian audience. And they saw it and they immediately wanted to send it to their friends. And right underneath that passage was our button to send to a friend. And boom, that's what worked for him.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:58]

We've all seen these kinds of pages before. "Share it with a loved one and be blessed forever" or something similar that tugs at your heartstrings or pulls at your faith. The guy had just found a way to follow his faith AND make money while doing it!

...which makes this the perfect point to bring up the next life question, based on this part of Andrew's journey.

LIFE-QUESTION NUMBER TWO: Do you have an Alan in YOUR business who can help you reach thirty MILLION dollars in sales? Can you create an Alan?

LIFE-QUESTION NUMBER TWO: Do you have power users in your business who will help you supercharge your growth? How can you enable them to help you boost your business?


When I say Alan, I am referring to a power user. The 1% user who knows how to make the best possible use of your product. Because it is these users who always end up evangelizing your product...

...which, by the way, is exactly what happened with Andrew and his website. The moment other users of the website and the website-sharing tool became aware of this possibility, they jumped on the opportunity!

Andrew Warner [00:17:45]

...and they said, you know what? I could do a religious version of this too. And so they did it also, or I could do something that's not religious that's similar to that. And so they would make these things that became greeting cards. And greeting cards are incredibly viral. And so we'd have someone who sure, absolutely had Jesus, and a quote from the Bible and all that stuff, and they would put our button on it, and they made $0.10 every time that was sent. But we also had people who just made a happy Monday smiley face page that looked cute to a certain group of people that group of people would hit the button underneath to send that page to their friends. And of course, whenever they did, the person who created it got ten cents. And we kept our checkbox that said, do you want to get a trivia email newsletter sent to you? And people would keep that. And so then we added another one. Do you also want to get a quote a day? And do you also want to get a joke a day? And suddenly our email grew. It just really took off.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:36]

Acquiring users at 10 cents a pop just because they wanted to share a webpage - how amazing is that!

The next step was to leverage all of these subscribers that they had acquired into eyeballs for advertisers. And, as it turned out, that particular step was a LOT easier compared to all the hoops they had jumped through to get this far...

Andrew Warner [00:18:55]

We then went to other companies and said, we've been growing our email newsletter to millions. Do you want yours to grow to millions? And if you do, all you have to do is give us a dollar per every time we get someone to join your email newsletter, you give us a buck. And so now we were paying out $0.10 every time our form was used, and earning a dollar every time our form was used. And you could see how that translated into especially with something viral like this, into millions of dollars. And that's what took off.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:21]

To say that it took off is an understatement. Making ninety cents on every email sent - that's a HUGE margin! And considering how VIRAL greeting cards used to be back in the day, I can tell you that Andrew and his brother were definitely raking in by the MILLION.

Specifically, $38,572,258 in annual sales - that's the number Andrew shared in a video titled "Okay, I'll show you my financials" on his website mixergy.com.

But, all good things do come to an end. And that's also what happened to Andrew's e-greeting cards. Plus, he was also getting burned out trying to run the email newsletter and greeting card businesses.

Andrew Warner [00:20:05]

And so I sold it. I took my share of the profits, and I just went off to Venice Beach and hung out and traveled through Europe and did all these things that I didn't get to do before.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:15]

But, being a true entrepreneur, Andrew could NOT sit still. Sure, he was enjoying his time on the beaches of Venice but the thought at the back of his mind was the same as when he had wrapped up his software-on-a-disk business: "What next?"

As it turned out, 'next' wasn't very different from what he had just gotten out of - it did involve emailing people and it did involve bringing them together. Only this time, it was a lot more literal than figurative.

Andrew Warner [00:20:41]

One way that I got back into business was I was organizing events for business people so that they could meet each other in person. And I didn't like any of the event invitation tools that were out there. And I said, wait, I was in greeting cards. That's essentially what our previous business was. I'll create my own software for these in-person events, because what I want to do at this stage of my life, I said to myself, was connect business people together, and I need my own invitation site for my events.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:03]

Events. Kinda like Evite and Insider and Eventbrite. And, fresh off the success of his greeting cards, Andrew was absolutely positive that it was going to work.

Andrew Warner [00:21:13]

And so I started to create it. And at first, I just paid a few developers to create it. Then I didn't like that. So I paid my past developer for my previous company, and then I didn't like that. So we kept investing and investing and investing. I was $300,000 in the hole on this software that was meant for invitations.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:32]

This site, as you may have figured out, was Mixergy. Or, more accurately, it was the first iteration of Mixergy. Except... it wasn't working as well as he had hoped it would.

Andrew Warner [00:21:43]

I only got into it so that I could have invitations for my events. And I needed after I started spending that much money, I needed other people to use it for their events, and they weren't.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:53]

The final nail in the coffin was delivered by none other than his wife.

Andrew Warner [00:2156]

And my wife had sent out invitations to my friends to come to my birthday party. And she used Evite, and I remember calling her and saying, “why didn't you use my invitation site, Mixergy?” and she said “that's an invitation site? I thought that was just your event, you know announcement page?” she didn't even use my own wife didn't know. This is terrible. And that gave me the guts to just close it down and say, I failed.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:22:23]

Yup, Mixergy failed. Three hundred thousand dollars. Poof. Vanished. Just like that. 

But, this is exactly what I admire about Andrew.

Even though Mixergy failed, Andrew did not stop. He rallied on. Partly egged by his failure and partly because his stint with this first iteration of Mixergy had opened the door to something AMAZING... It had revealed to him a hidden part of his personality that he didn't fully know existed.

Andrew Warner [00:22:51]

The one thing that I did like was as people were coming to my events, I started interviewing them. And the interviews started to become meaningful to me, even though no one else was listening to them.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:00]

Interviews. Andrew realized that he LOVED talking to people.

Andrew Warner [00:23:04]

I think I could do this for the rest of my life, do interviews and have other people feel as psyched about them as I am when I hear the people I'm interviewing talk about how they built their businesses, and I said, I'm going to go all in on that. Won't be any expenses. I'm just going to do a podcast and see where it goes.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:19]

Mixergy the event sharing site became Mixergy the podcast and the rest as they say, is history!

Andrew Warner [00:23:26]
And it just kept developing and developing, and it helped me connect with you. There are people like the founders of Airbnb who were listeners. There are people who are like the founders of Zapier who are listeners. It just kept growing and growing, and the people who were touched by it were people who went on to do amazing things.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:41]

I couldn't help but wonder whether there was a specific moment, or incident that sparked this idea in Andrew… That made him realize that what he really wanted to do for the rest of his life was to talk to people and hear from them their wisdom about how they built their business.

It turns out there was one specific interview which convinced Andrew that he was on the right track. And that part of our conversation is exactly what the premium members of the podcast are listening to at this very moment.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:13]

In each episode of this podcast, I craft a special segment for members of the First Class Founders community.

For this episode, I asked Andrew about the moment when he realized that his pivot from Mixergy the event site to Mixergy the podcast was the right decision. It happened while interviewing someone who was very close to him.

Andrew Warner [00:24:36]

I interviewed somebody who had both sold ads for my previous business, and she did tons of sales for us.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:43]

The interview with her made him realize something incredibly important

Andrew Warner [00:24:46]

In a conversation, you don't get to really ask the questions you want. You don't get to interrupt someone when they're not being useful to your curiosity.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:53]

Andrew also shared the unique way in which he approaches his interviews - something that I haven't found anyone else doing. He shared examples of two amazing interviews that happened as a result of his unique approach - one with Harold Mann of Mann Consulting.

Andrew Warner [00:25:09]

Harold, a guy who I'd never met before, who I never read about in any publication, reached out to me and said, you know what? I am really good at systemizing. am really good at systemizing. That's what we do in our business, for our clients, and so on.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:20]

...and the second being one of his many interviews with Seth Godin.

Andrew Warner [00:25:23]

I could say to him, hey, Seth, you're writing a book about tribes. No successful person that I know has, and I pointed to all these books, no successful person that I know has had a tribe.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:30]

If these examples have gotten you curious about Andrew's approach to interviewing, you can find all of it laid out in extensive detail in a special segment available exclusively to premium members of First Class Founders in the ad-free version of the podcast feed.

Additionally, the First Class Founders membership also comes with a ton of other perks. For instance, members of First Class Founders also get early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes - including the entire raw, unedited interview - the ability to Ask Me Anything, and much more!

Head on over to firstclassfounders.com/join - I'll put the link in the show notes! And while you do that, I'll queue up the final segment of this episode...

Yong-Soo Chung [00:26:17]

Alright, let's now delve a little deeper into the second iteration of Mixergy - that is, Mixergy the podcast - and see if we can get Andrew to share some of his learnings from the thousands of interviews he has conducted at Mixergy.

SEGMENT 4: 

Yong-Soo Chung [00:26:30]

Since it began, Andrew has recorded and published nearly two thousand interviews on Mixergy, in which he has spoken to all kinds of stalwart entrepreneurs - ranging from Seth Godin to Matt Mullenweg of WordPress, to Sam Parr of the Hustle.

You might think that Andrew would have managed to extract some amazing nuggets of wisdom from each and every one of them. In fact, he admits he started with that exact thought in his mind.

Andrew Warner [00:26:55]

I started doing these interviews, because I expected to come up with some kind of set of principles, something that led to success. Because the people who I admired growing up wrote books that had a clear path to success. You think about Napoleon Hill, right? He had his rules. You think about, um, he was an author of Think and Grow Rich. You think about Stephen covey? He had all of his success principles. And I thought, all right, I'm going to interview enough people. I'll come up with the real success principles. It'll be great.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:23]

Instead, what he kept finding... were

Andrew Warner [00:27:27]
Contradictions. I found that the beauty of I don't have a clear plan, but I have this understanding that the beauty of the startup world that we are in is that if you could live your contradiction fully and still be aware of the world around you, you win.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:44]

He cited the example of two entrepreneurs he knew personally.

Andrew Warner [00:27:47]

I had this guy Cody McClain over for a fire here at my place in Austin, Texas. As we were sitting around, he talked about how the thing that really got him to work. He needed to feel the pressure of almost failure or almost disruption to get to work so hard that he could make his company I think it was called Support Ninja, incredibly successful. And he needed that, and he lives off of that.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:10]

...and Shane Mack

Andrew Warner [00:28:11]

If I even bring any drama to him, he goes, no, I don't want any drama. I don't admire people of drama. You just got to live life.

And Shane ended up creating a company that I invested in called Assist. That was a chatbot system before AI. And so it didn't do nearly well enough and he was okay about it. He was fine. And then the next thing he did was he took someone that he worked with and he said, you know, a lot of my friends could use personal assistance. Can you help them? Let's create a business together. And he created a business with her where they are doing personal assistance for people. There's no pressure. If it works, great. If not, fine. You have a good enough personal assistance for awhile.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:52]

Both Shane and Cody's approaches to business are polar opposites of each other but they both have tasted success with their ventures.

Andrew Warner [00:29:00]

One embraces pressure. One wants the stress, the other doesn't. The thing that I could say is that what's interesting about them both is that they've each embraced their weirdness. They've each found the thing that they're especially weird at and will be a little obsessive about.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:29:16]

So, the moral of the story?

Andrew Warner [00:29:18]

Find that weirdness, embrace it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:29:20]

I think we have enough now to ask a THIRD life question for this episode.

LIFE-QUESTION NUMBER THREE: Do you have a weirdness of your own that you can embrace? How can you lean into that more to help you stand out?

Because - and I completely agree with Andrew on this point - the weirdness forms an important part of you. The weirdness is what actually appeals to your audience, to your customers, to the niche that you are looking to serve.

My weirdness was my love for everyday carry items, which I leveraged into my first e-commerce business UrbanEDC.com. My weirdness was how my French bulldog, Humphrey, became more famous than me on social media! My weirdness was my love for podcasting, which is why you see me putting so much time, effort, and a huge amount of resources into producing high-quality episodes for the First Class Founders podcast.

But, coming back to Andrew, it seems like he is currently dealing with some very big life questions of his own because he has currently paused actively growing Mixergy at the moment.

Andrew Warner [00:30:21]

I paused it almost altogether. There's a subscription part that people are still paying for, that they sign up for, and that gives them access to these old courses, what we called master classes that I did with entrepreneurs who I interviewed and access to the earlier interviews. And then there's advertising.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:30:37]

If that sounds familiar, that's because he did the same thing when he wanted to step away from his first business - selling software-on-disks.

Andrew Warner [00:30:45]

By cutting off the past, I was able to find the next. And the past was $30,000 a month in sales, which was phenomenal for me. But the future was $30 million a year in sales, which was even more phenomenal. I couldn't make the leap from one to the next without letting go of that first part.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:31:01]

So, he's moved to Austin, where he's bought himself a small plot of land and he's ventured into a few things since then - notably in web3 - but none of them have managed to really capture his attention the same way all of his previous businesses did. So, he's still waiting to find his next big interest.

Andrew Warner [00:31:19]

And so what I said to you before we started is I'm searching to see what's next. I'll never give up Mixergy and maybe the next thing is the next level for Mixergy. But I need the next thing, the thing that shocks my system and maybe shocks other people's systems a little bit too. I don't know what it'll be, but I'm in search mode right now.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:31:37]

Whatever it is, knowing Andrew, I know for a fact that it will be something that will be truly amazing, awesome, and inspiring for sure!

Before wrapping up the interview, I asked him what piece of advice he would give to those entrepreneurs who were starting their journey today.

Andrew Warner [00:31:52]

I kept watching different YouTube videos about how to plant here on our property. And it wasn't until I just went to the store and got some plants and stuck them in the ground that I started to figure out how to do the rest of it. I think that school has taught us that the way to learn is to learn. And I think that the way to learn is to do. And what I would say is don't be so precious about it. Start a business and learn that way and get started that way. And then what I would say is, once you're there, keep running little experiments and then keep these little experiments going, little experiments are not as distracting as keep the focus but keep experimenting on the side with 10%, 20% of your time.


Yong-Soo Chung [00:32:40]

What a wonderfully motivating way to deliver one of the most fundamental pieces of advice that every entrepreneur needs to hear - I told you Andrew was an amazing storyteller, didn't I?

CONCLUSION & SUMMARY

Yong-Soo Chung [00:32:52]

Before we conclude this episode, let me quickly reiterate the three(?) life-questions Andrew Warner gave us to mull over during the course of this episode...

LIFE-QUESTION NUMBER ONE: Do you have a J-crew story of your own? That is, are you willing to hustle to the point of potentially embarrassing yourself, so that your business may succeed?

In the words of Paul Graham of Y Combinator, "Startups often have to do dubious things. They have to bend the rules, push the envelope, and sometimes even break the law. This is because they are trying to do something new and innovative, and the old rules don't apply."


LIFE-QUESTION NUMBER TWO: Do you have power users in your business who will help you supercharge your growth? How can you enable them to help you boost your business?

Andrew had Alan, a power-user who figured out the perfect use-case for the website and the tool that Andrew and his brother created. It was due to Alan's innovative use of the tool that their greeting card website really took off. Every product needs an Alan.

LIFE-QUESTION NUMBER THREE: Do you have a weirdness of your own that you can embrace? How can you lean into that more to help you stand out?

As Andrew explained, the weirdness is what makes you unique and because - and I completely agree with Andrew on this point - the weirdness forms an important part of your brand identity.

Finally, don’t forget to check out Andrew’s podcast - there is a wealth of knowledge that you can acquire from every single one of his episodes…

Andrew Warner [00:34:18]

My podcast is available in every app. Of course, if you look for Mixergy, M-I-X-E-R-G-Y you'll see it. And if you're in Austin, look me up, we'll talk. In fact, even if you're not in Austin, I love talking to entrepreneurs. I love talking to your audience.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:34:38]

Alright, that wraps up today's show! 

In the next episode of First Class Founders, I’m revealing a brand new framework for any entrepreneur to build their online business. I’ve been working on this framework for the past several weeks and I can’t wait to deep dive it with you. I’ll reveal what it is next week so tune in!

And, one last thing before I go... If you're a new listener and you enjoyed this episode, you can follow the show by going to FirstClassFounders.com and clicking on the link that matches your preferred podcast player - like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, you can also add YOUR voice to the show by leaving a message on firstclassfounders.com - for example, what did you think of this episode specifically?

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If you wanna connect with me, you can hit me up on Twitter @YongSooChung. I’m pretty active there and would love to connect with you. You can find links to all my social accounts in the show notes.

I'll see you on the next episode of First Class Founders.