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Sam Pantazopoulos

Vizer

Sam Pantazopoulos


@0:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

This meeting is being recorded. Three, two. Hello everyone and welcome to the shades of entrepreneurship. This is your host, Mr. Gabriel Flores. Today. I'm here with Samantha Pantazopoulos. 

Sam, how are we doing today? 

@0:39 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

I've been working on it my entire life. is the CEO and co-founder of Viver. It's a premier retail marketing intelligence platform, helping consumers, brands, online, a drive online shopping and source.

So we're going to get into all of that information. But first, Sam, give us a little background. Who is.

Samantha.

@1:01 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

Great question. It's such a big one. grew up in a small town in Maryland and I was just kind of living life there.

I never played sports as a kid. always into business ironically and only child so I had lot of time on my hands.

I was getting into kind of like different projects, different things. My COO who I work with today lived across the street and we were constantly doing little projects together and dreaming up with businesses could look like one day in the future but spent my time in Maryland until 17 just thinking about how do I get to California.

That was like the central north star that I always had dream on my heart and ended up going to University of San Diego for college.

So I moved out when I was 17 and never looked back.

@1:50 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Wow. That's a that's actually a pretty cool story that you and your chief operating officer have been neighbor.

@1:57 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

What are the things you guys are working on with kids? Like when you're We were getting into all kinds of things that we met very randomly.

His brother was riding a bike down the street and had flipped this bike and had to be rescued by my dad.

So that's how our family has kind of got connected. He's a few years older than me. So we may not have met in school or otherwise.

But we had very similar mindsets of what was fun to us. And it was creating different projects and different visions and different dreams.

And we did everything from a lawn care business that we ended up getting his younger brother to work in, to a podcast, to a rock band, to anything you could imagine.

We were thinking like, how do we turn this into something and who would the customer be and how could we scale it?

very, very early on.

@2:45 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

That is so unique. mean, there's so many. It's kind of funny, folks. think this is kind of life in general, right?

Where you never know where life can lead you and you're going to meet throughout life. That's actually going to propel you forward.

I think so often, especially in the entrepreneurship world, and this is Again, and the importance of networking I think when you're an entrepreneur is there are so many individuals out there that are willing to help you succeed.

You know that you just haven't met yet, so really just kind of take that time and go out there and meet folks.

@3:13 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

Now, let's talk a bit about Vibera. What is it? Tell us a little bit about it. So really simply what we're doing is we're helping consumer brands with discounts and promotions.

So I like to say if you went into a Walmart, a brand would work with Visor to do a discount on one of their products or services.

So say it's a dollar off, say it's a free product. We help create these offers and then the brands distribute them and consumers can go in and claim them.

So Visor is short for incentivize and we're basically powering that whole process for consumer brands.

@3:46 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So folks, I think, you know, this is one thing we kind of talk about pretty consistently on the show is the sales funnel.

And so folks, if you think about this, what essentially this is, this is a tool to help you retain a loyal customer.

Right?

@4:01 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

Totally. Yeah, I would say we're on both sides of the fence. retaining customers and also kind of growing new business, but it's great for the retention side because say you have an email list or you have a community of people that's interested in one product or interested in your brand, sending a offer like a dollar off product, try our new SKU, try this at a discount is a great way to kind of expand in the category and get more spaces in their pantry or in their fridge.

@4:28 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Ooh, that's, you know what, let's take us through that process because that's a really good point. So for somebody listening at home that is getting into this and is thinking about creating some type of marketing funnel, right, to get individuals either aware or become loyal, where do they start?

Like if I'm thinking of marketing, where do I even start?

@4:47 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

Yeah, that's such a great question and such a broad one because I think you have so many steps to the funnel, you have your kind of top of funnel brand awareness, which is who am I?

we stand for? What's the creative we're putting out? And it's so much deeper than a logo or a brand, but kind of having that top of funnel awareness.

But then how do you start moving people through that funnel? So what are your touch points going to be?

What channels are you using? I think often people over diversify too quickly when really if you are really consistent on one to two channels, that's a great way to get in front of a target audience and start to grow that relationship.

And the relationship piece becomes really key because customer feedback is regenerated content. All of these things can start supporting your content ecosystem to move people even deeper through the funnel.

Say you're only in one channel, ultimately driving people to that point of purchase, which is how do we get them over the line and how do we get them to buy the product.

That's where middle funnel, lower funnel, those discounts incentives, promotions become really powerful.

@5:51 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

How does marketing, you're kind of talking about capturing consumers, right, the consumer acquisition costs, how does marketing help actually lower?

the cost of a consumer acquisition in retaining those consumers.

@6:04 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

Yeah, I think marketing can be one of your biggest sales tools at the end of the day, especially if you're strategic about how you are structuring your funnel.

So many times, people are just pouring money into experimental channels or pouring money into paid, even after it's kind of lost its stickiness or its relevancy, to figuring out like, what are the evergreen tools and channels and programming I can use that's low cost, but high return and start pushing that out in a variety of ways.

You kind of find like, this is the thread, this went through the needle. Okay, now I want to start putting this on multiple channels, rather than doing that upfront and having the investment with every channel that you start to play with.

@6:48 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Smart, that is actually really smart. And one of the things you just, one word you just said that I think is really interesting is relevancy.

Why is, you know, when you think about marketing, and you think about branding and publications and things about, you know, sparking someone's

Why is relevancy so important in marketing?

@7:04 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

I think a lot of times people think about their sales and their marketing and their promotions from a very brand-centric perspective.

What they think is cool, what they think is timely, what they think is relevant, and that's great for creative idea formation, but it has to be relevant to the consumer at the end of the day for that campaign to perform well, which is why you see so many big creative campaigns just fall flat.

Understanding who is your customer, what are they looking for, what's their language that they're speaking, how do you make sure your messaging is resonant for your audience is kind of step one.

Then you can back up and say, okay, now what are the creative things that we can abuse with what we know about the brand internally?

I think it happens in the opposite order frequently, and then that creates a bit of a lack of relevancy for the customer.

@7:56 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

That's a very good point. I work in the health care industry folks. So I've been talking about that business development.

And so when you're kind of thinking about target audiences. So for example, if I'm trying to grow my advanced heart failure service line, my target audience is cardiologists.

Now cardiologists are probably going be more interested in devices and how the devices work, that kind of information, right?

And so my marketing to them is going to be more talking about outcomes, what we use these devices for, what the outcomes we receive.

Now all providers are going to generally want that, right? Now the thing about it is, again, the providers are primarily target audience.

Now when I switch on my oncology hack for cancer outreach, now the patients are my primary target audience. And so my marketing begins to change.

I'm no longer talking about devices and outcomes, although I will with the referring provider. for a patient, I'm not talking about patient stories, right?

about how we're going to care for the patient, how we're going to bring in their family member and to this patient care, how we're bringing in the community provider.

Because again, the messages. The message is a little different because the end goal is a little different as well to, you know, Samantha's point relevancy is important and so with the cardiologist devices are relevant right they they work with those they see them in clinics understand it.

And then for the patient relevancy is their family their well being right how they want to feel cared for and about and so understanding those two those segments is important.

And I really like what Samantha was saying is understanding who your customer is like what is your ideal customer profile is so important, because the last thing you want to do is go put a billboard in front of a basketball stadium talking about like McDonald's something because then you can kind of put you know marketing things in that nature.

Now Samantha let's let's take a step back little bit you mentioned. You know you started this marketing you you actually started with your neighbor who's your CEO Why marketing?

How did you how did you get into marketing?

@10:08 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

Where did that all start? So it's a very roundabout story in fact, and I always like to say what you start with usually isn't what you end with in the audience Not across all of your episodes, but I was a college student and setting it broad on semester at C I was participating in a social venture incubator actually and it had this whole kind of thesis around the competition How can you use business to spark social change?

And ideally with an issue that is personally passionate or you're personally passionate about And and I hated working out So I had the idea for an app where every day you work out you had the opportunity to donate meals through us food banks And then you could earn healthy rewards for yourself Actually wants to stay with my cousin who's my co-founder and the Nick joined a year or so later something about wanting to get a job that

Gage you. We didn't understand at the time, he joined a year or so later. And that was kind of how we got started.

So we were building this consumer app that had a rewards ecosystem to it. We started with restaurants, actually, but restaurants all shut down during COVID.

And that's how we ended up pivoting to retail. And we realized that the technology that we had built for this retail rewards program was actually much more powerful outside of the confines of our app because we can reach a lot more people than if it was kind of gate kept behind an app download.

And the company evolved really organically through customer conversation and just trying to figure out, like, what is the path forward?

But I certainly did not know we would arrive here when we started as I think most ideas kind of unfold.

@11:49 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know, I like your kind of trajectory into the business, because one of the things you kind of talked about was getting the customer feedback.

Why was that so important for determining how you're. you're going to essentially establish the new venture that you created?

@12:05 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

I think customer feedback is everything at the end of the day. The intention of the competition I did finding something that's personally relevant for you I think is important because that gives you kind of the determination and the conviction to stick with the idea when it's really challenging.

But I also heard somewhere your first idea is typically very self-interested. Going back to what we were saying about marketing campaigns, what do I think is cool?

What do I think is relevant? And it's not really until the customer is playing with it and consumers are playing with it that you realize what's missing and what it needs.

So we were very active from the first day starting the company and constantly talking to people and socializing the idea and figuring out what's working about this and what isn't.

And it was through a thousand conversations and people kind of nudging us in different directions that we ended up where we have.

And I think there's two pieces to that. collecting all of that feedback, but then how do you synthesize it with your own framework and figure out what you think is the best path forward.

But customer conversations were everything for us, and we still actively, to this day, every single day, are talking to customers about how is this working for you, what else would be interesting, how can we support with other problems that you have, and where's the overlap, it's a very ongoing conversation.

@13:25 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

And you know what's interesting about the two is they're kind of synonymous, like you kind of need them to work together.

Let me give you example. My first business, S.L.M. Apparel, completely crash and burn. I knew what the customers wanted, right?

Essentially, my goal was to create a new t-shirt, really kind of re-image the standardization of sizes. So I'm a kind of tall or lengthy guy, and I hated purchasing like certain brand shirts, like an extra large, and they fit me like a sleeping bag.

But as soon as I washed them, right, they became like a tube top. And so I was really trying to re-create how that looked.

so I wanted a slimmer length. fear that didn't really shrink. But the only problem was, I didn't know how to market.

I didn't know about SEO. I created a website, didn't do any blogs. Facebook was just kind of coming out at that time.

There was no TikTok, there was no Instagram, there was no social media push. So the only thing I was doing was like, you know, going out to different fairs and selling them out there.

I knew people wanted what I was creating, right, from the size perspective. And it became evident when untucked came out and pretty much had the same idea, much better marketing than I did.

But it's imperative that, you know, these two are synonymous with each other, one understanding, you know, you're marketing to and what they want.

And then actually how to market to them. Because I'll tell you that with folks, that was where my first company completely crashed and burned.

Because I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I didn't know how to market like at all. It was just something I did not know how to do.

@14:52 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

And I think it's so tough, right? Because you find something that you're personally passionate about and you want to bring it to life and you have to be open enough.

have to say, oh, the customer feedback isn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. Okay, how do I integrate what these people are saying?

And you kind of to check your own ego, and I certainly had to do that several, several times. And it's a tough spot to be in, but I think if you can do it and kind of move forward and continue making progress, you'll get all these nudges and signs telling you what to do.

You don't need to go in with the complete roadmap. And if you do, it will probably go completely differently.

So I always tell people to start, talk to people, see what they say, and then take a step at a time.

@15:34 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know, that's a very good point, because I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs, you're mentioning it, you know, we kind of tend to create like an entrepreneurial endeavor based off of personal needs or wants, right, trying to create or trying to solve a problem that we're facing ourselves individually.

But then sometimes not everybody has that problem, right? becomes like, oh, I'm basically have a solution for a problem that nobody has, I don't have a market for it.

And so when you receive credit, This is feedback, must say criticism, feedback from your consumers, don't take it personal, they're not attacking you, they're trying to help you fix your problem, because again, at the end of the day, if a consumer is willing to reach back in their pocket while they're wallet and pay you for something, it's easy to probably kind of listen to some of what they have to say, because they're the ones, they're the end consumer, they're the ones actually purchasing that item from you, and it's also a good opportunity for you to learn.

I mean, fail fast, failure is the best education you can get, it's free, you know, you can go pay, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars for a master's degree, or you can go try a bunch of things where a couple hundred dollars fell and learn a bunch, like I started learning about marketing and SEO because my clothing line business fell, right?

I started this podcast during the pandemic because I was paying the hundred thousand dollars to read a bunch of textbooks online because of the pandemic, right?

So it's like I'm paying a master's degree to basically read entrepreneur's success. Stories, why don't I just start a podcast and do it for free, right?

so there's, there's, there's a lot of things you can kind of learn, um, through failure, uh, but also just getting out there asking consumers what they want, what they don't like, and then, you know, continue to test your thesis.

Once you find that minimal, vile product that people are willing to purchase, okay, now they can scale it. Okay.

Now you can put in a little bit more money, right? If you want to, you know, purchase a large, a large, you know, whatever items of supplies or something to continue to move forward, okay, now at least you have a general idea that this product or service in fact does sell and people are interested in it.

Cause the last thing entrepreneurs should be doing is, you know, thinking of an idea and then going balls to the wall, putting in $10,000 into it and just completely burning because they're not a market.

So get out there and just make sure, you know, you meet with people and talk with people. Now Sam, you kind of mentioned, uh, pretty early on that you were like, you know what, I'm going to start this kind of venture and kind of see where it's going.

Although it has, it has different iterations. and it has a new iteration now, but what made you start your entrepreneurial journey in the first place?

@18:06 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

You know, that's the big question. I had some choices before me. I was about to graduate. Am I going to get a job?

Or am I going to pursue this project? as I was interviewing for jobs and meeting with different opportunities, somebody told me, I remember, I think it was somebody at Salesforce, but they were like, if you want to be innovative, a big company at your stage probably isn't the place to do it.

You should go to a startup. And I started talking to the different startups and the feedback I got was, well, if you have an idea for a startup, why aren't you doing that?

So with these people just kind of nudging again, why aren't you looking at this? You're talking about it. You're really passionate.

Sounds like something you would have the skillset for potentially. Don't you want to explore that? I think I just looked at the timeline of my life and I thought, okay, my 20s?

It was a time to really mess around and figure things out. And I don't have a family, I don't have a mortgage, when am I gonna have this freedom again to pursue something like this?

And if it doesn't work, I can always go get a job. Was kind of my mindset, but I think there was also an inkling in me that was, it will work.

So go do it. I think if I didn't have that confidence, I probably would have ended up at a big tech job.

@19:28 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know, it's kind of interesting. say that it's like, we were talking about it when we first started this conversation of the kind of the entrepreneurial ecosystem individuals willing to help you to propel you forward because they want to see you succeed, right?

It's really interesting in the small business kind of startup world where you'll go to a networking event and somebody will say, oh, you're starting up and I'll say, you know, we have operations.

Oh, I got like 20 people you can talk to about operational issues. Here's your contact information. It's almost like you become overwhelmed with information.

of contacts because people are so willing to help you.

@20:03 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

Now with you, how important was networking and growing your business? It was huge. And San Diego is such an incredible innovation ecosystem, and it was really evolving in that time period.

So we started full time on this in 2018. And San Diego goes up all tremendously just in that time period.

But everybody was so helpful. think being really young was a huge gift as well. I would email people for years after I graduated.

Recent college graduate, reaching out, dot, dot. And people were just so generous with their time. And there were a lot of accelerator programs that we participated in.

And my co-founder Dylan and I were also cousins. We're very intentional. If we're going to do a program, then we're going to go to lunch with these people.

We're going to reach out and we're going to get coffee. We want to have a deeper conversation than just that 10 minute.

Nice to meet you. This is what you're working on. And in the first year, we met with like four.

400, 500 people. Just saying, this is what we're doing. Do you any feedback? Any ideas? Any suggestions? Anybody else we should talk to?

And it created this tree of people who ended up being instrumental to the next step of our journey. And I don't think any of those things sort of happened had the door not been opened for our conversation.

And that person been generous enough to give their time.

@21:22 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I think, you know, people always say, they definitely want donations, right? Funding is gold.

But volunteer time is like platinum, to be honest with you folks. If you're able to get into somebody's room for, you know, 15, 20 minutes, who is an executive of a startup, or who has done this before, who has gone through many exits and gone through, you know, funding rounds, that opportunity is just immense.

I can't even begin to explain it. Samantha, you mentioned you've actually gone through, if I recall correctly, you mentioned the incubator and now you mentioned accelerator.

Tell me of your experience of going through those programs and what did you see was beneficial but as you know being an aspiring entrepreneur.

@22:10 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

Huge to be involved in some kind of program that's the right fit. I think there were several programs that were in front of us and we ended up doing a select few that were aligned with our vision of entrepreneurship, kind of company that we wanted to build with the economics of what we thought was reasonable.

So I always try to give that caveat because I do think there are a lot of accelerator programs and incubator programs where the economics don't make sense.

ROI is not there and I encourage founders away from those kinds of programs but the ones we did were very community based.

We ended up doing the first one we did was an all women's accelerator run by one of our now investors Dr.

Ma which was fabulous and Dylan my cousin and co-founder is a man but he was headed as well which was great and then we ended up doing an accelerator.

rate program probably a year or so after that, which was a competition that had a million dollar cash prize associated with it.

And we tied for winning that prize. So we won $500,000, which became effectively our pre-seed round. And absent these two experiences, I don't think visor exists today.

So having that foundation and the first one learning, how do you build a pitch? Like we done a bit of that in the program that I did in college, how do you communicate your idea?

Learning how to do these informational interviews and how to sit down with somebody and how to ask for help in a way that it'll be received.

mean, to your point, meeting with executives, I would email anybody. Quite literally, right? 90% of them would respond and say, yeah, I'd love to have you come in.

Let's coordinate a half hour an hour. They'd go to lunch, they'd go to coffee. So like just asking, I think, was what was really taught.

in the first program that we did, and that was key for everything we did thereafter.

@24:05 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, I agree. In fact, know, folks, I'm sure, you know, people are listening are very aware, because I probably talked about this by way too often.

We created a nonprofit Latino founders. It's a business accelerator pitch competition here in Oregon, very community-based. Our pitch competition is actually done in the community and the actual audience votes live on the winner right then and there.

And the beauty of it is we actually give out grant funding. So similar to you, we do have to give out an award.

So last year, we gave about $40,000 in grant funding to entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help scale 100 Latino businesses here in the Pacific Northwest to a million dollar reoccurring revenue in five years.

And we're doing it through our accelerator and pitch competition. We currently have 32 individuals in our business accelerator program.

We talk about, you know, value proposition, business canvas, minimal bio product, really kind of getting folks ready to scale the business.

And then the grant funding, you know, like Samantha, you mentioned that the award, there's a lot of, you know,

Folks, when you're thinking about raising funds, there's a lot of different opportunities out there that you should explore outside of the venture fund.

If you want to go venture out, by all means you should, certainly. The Small Business Association, the SBA, they have some good loans, banks have good loans.

But if you're looking for non-loan, like funds that you don't have to pay back, grant funding is a great way to find that.

And you can find that through a lot of these business accelerator and incubator programs. And to this point, make sure you find one that really suits your needs.

Our business accelerator program is business agnostic. And we made it that way because I was reading on the Harvard Business Review of the importance of kind of creating this business agnostic during the accelerator.

So it doesn't create a competition. A lot of times, if you're like tech heavy, you have your intellectual property.

so you don't want to indulge too much information about what you're doing. Well, then that doesn't really allow us to help you as much because you might, there might be some problems that

aren't on earth because you're unwilling to kind of share. so we really try to make our business accelerated, business agnostic, really let people share their ideas of what's going, what's working, what's not working, right?

To, you know, we've been talking about, just kind of networking, experiencing, understanding like, let's get the consumer in front of your product right now.

We'll let them tell you right now if it's good or not good. then take it to heart and we'll continue to adjust.

And then mentorship, right? Continue to build that, continue to build with them. Continue to say, you know, keep a connection with them.

Now, for you've been doing this for some time, you mentioned you've gone through accelerators, you've through incubators, you've gone through iterations of your actual organization.

What would you say has been the most rewarding piece for you as an entrepreneur?

@26:47 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

I would say the most rewarding piece has been building the team. We have 17 people now. We do all of our engineering in-house.

Most of our team is based in San Diego, we have a few folks that have moved. Around the country, everybody's US based and including the Portland, Oregon folks, we got, we got one of the employees up here in Portland exactly need to make a trip up.

But that has been the continuity. So although our product has evolved over time, and although the market that we've served has evolved a bit over time, we've been building this team since the beginning.

So I like to say that the product is probably 10% of the business. At the end of the day, the business is who's working there?

What are the structures of communication between them? What are the processes in place? What are the values? What are the day to day look like?

What are your systems? all of that is what enables the product at the end of the day. And we've been really intentional about finding incredible people and working really closely and collaboratively and figuring out how do we like maintain the health of the organization over time.

That's first and foremost for us. And if we have that, I think everything else will flow really naturally. So I've really, really enjoyed building the team and kind of nurturing that organizational health.

I'm very internal. My co-founder is very external. So we're really great balance in that way. And it's been a ton of fun for me.

@28:15 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I like that yin and yang, you know, between you and your co-founder. And that's, you know, individuals, folks listening, leaders are listening.

There is no bigger equity in your organization than your people. You can go buy a machine. You can go buy anything you want to buy, but there's nothing that's going to be more equitable for your organization and the people you hire.

And make sure you get the right people on the bus, right? sure you really have engaged employees that believe in your mission, that believe in your mission statement, that believe in your value proposition, and they're going to help you propel forward.

But it's also imperative as you as a leader, that you are making sure if you're going to ask them to do something that you're willing to do it yourselves.

I think that's why the startup world is so unique, because entrepreneurs will When you start your first, when you start your business, you're the jack-of-all-trade master of nine.

mean, you are the operations lead, you're the marketing, you're the sales lead, you're the IT tech, you're human resources, you're everything in one, right?

so the beauty of it is you get experience in all of those kind of, you know, essentially within the organization.

And then so when you begin to start to, you know, parse that stuff out and have somebody else work it, you know what should be doing, what should not be good.

Like, as a leader, though, it's also important to make sure your operations are sound. So your employees can succeed in what they do, you know, at the end of the day, you're employees are going be your biggest assets, but the operations, the way you have your operations plan and everything set up, that's going to help them succeed and really be enjoying their work and what they're doing, you know, you don't, you don't want to cave employees, someone that comes in, they're constantly against virtually everything because that will just erode your culture at your organization.

So just remember that, treat your employees with respect and dignity, those individuals that are truly your biggest asset.

@29:57 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

Now, Samantha, we talked about some of the easiest things. What would you say? have been some of the challenges of your growth through the entrepreneur endeavor that you've been doing.

Which of the thousand which you like? think entrepreneurship is an up and down journey for sure and figuring out I think how to build the muscle of resiliency is a really difficult and painful thing to do at the end of the day.

On the back end resiliency is a great trait to have but to navigate the experience of getting knocked down and getting back up and continuously having to do that.

think entrepreneurship is similar to maybe professional sports. It's like a very or acting it's a rare cohort of careers where you're continuously putting yourself out there and you're continuously being told now and just figuring out like how do you get your mindset in a place to be able to do that and to build the resiliency.

I think that's really really challenging but it's preparing. bring you to be able to do it in mass because the opportunities get bigger, the challenges get bigger, you get punched, it is harder to get back up with more strength.

So I think that's probably been the biggest challenge, but a very rewarding one in the day.

@31:15 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Very good point. I tell people, I think our character is judged by the way we deal with adversity, right?

If you go through an adverse moment and you're yelling and pouting and upset, people remember that, right? that's kind of how they remember you.

But if you're able to kind of take those adverse moments and deal with them in a calm, meaningful way and actually try to, you know, look through the smoke and mirrors and actually figure out what the problem is and move forward.

That's really what makes not only individuals successful and entrepreneurial endeavors, but in their own personal life as well. You know, I told my folks, I'll be complaining, talked to my counselor, got a meeting with him three 30 this afternoon and I was telling him the other day, I was like, you know, I love worrying because all the things I worry about never happened.

So, worrying is the best cure to any problem you ever have, just worry. about it. The same has never happened.

But one of those things I'm trying to work through is not try to worry so much because there's so many cool things happening out there in life and it's easy to get bogged down on a lot of the things that are occurring.

But there's innovation happening every day and there's nobody started at the finish line. All these great companies that have been started, have been started in various settings, have been started with sometimes with very little money.

And you can do it too. The only difference between you and them is they actually went out and started doing it.

These people that actually go out, if you have an idea like Samantha was mentioning, try it. Go out, talk to people, see if it makes sense.

Go out and if you figure out the idea does make sense. through an accelerator or incubator. Get up with some more like-minded people and really start to dive into it and see if it makes sense before you go and invest your own money.

Once you feel like, okay, I'm ready to do it, by all means, rip the bandit off. But just know that there are like Samantha mentioned, there are some ups and downs, there are going to be some-

challenge moments, but just continue to persevere and understand there is a community of entrepreneurs that are wanting to help you succeed in your community.

So just go out, just reach out, there's a lot of people out there, they're willing to help you, you just got to ask.

Now, Samantha, you've been doing this sometime, you've probably received a lot of good advice from a lot of individuals.

What advice would you have for aspiring entrepreneurs?

@33:24 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

The piece that you were talking about the worrying, I think that's something really cool to unpack, because worry is part of the course with entrepreneurship, there's always something to worry about, something breaking or capital running out or team issues or XYCC.

@33:41 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

There is a whole whole list.

@33:43 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

I remember who told me this, but somebody told me and I now preach it, like, preach it to my organization, which is don't buy invisible enemies.

It's so easy to invent a story, and then our brain will believe the story. and all of our behaviors from that point on are directed by this story, whether it's true or not.

And that, I'm like, it takes so much energy to invent this story of how this is going to go terribly and then prep for this terrible situation.

And you get on the call and it's perfectly fine. what you thought was a massive issue was maybe a slight inconvenience to someone.

So I'm constantly talking about this because it's so, so easy to do. Like, how do we pull ourselves back?

And then if we get on the call and we're confronted, oh, this is a massive issue. It's not a slight inconvenience.

At least you can collect all the information to then go worry about what you're going to do with like the facts.

So somebody told me that I, because I am also a big warrior. So they told me that and I think every day on repeat, is this an invisible entity?

@34:52 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Probably, okay, let's move on. And that's a good point. And I always tell people, know, fight the problem, not the people.

I think sometimes we get into heated covers. Stations where we might not see eye to eye on certain things and we tend to attack the individual versus attacking the problem You know, just focus on what you're what you're really what you're really trying to accomplish now.

It's a man the whip So let's what's what's what's the gold visor? What's the next five-year plan? are we gonna see some anthem the next five five years or so?

@35:20 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

I want to say it's Carta the founder of Carta who has a slogan. really like it's let's make this as big as possible So we can do as much good as we can and that's really our goal Which is how do we be really really performant?

How do we build a tool that's really of service? How do we grow resources and then how do we use those resources to redeploy them in a way that's meaningful the things that we value?

So for us, we're just trying to be laser focused. How do we build this company as big as we can and then how do we use that to be a service?

@35:51 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

That man you just dropping some quotes today. I'm like, I'm gonna have to write that one down too Oh, man, that is great.

think it's it's it's true. You know growing just growing as big as we can so because as much impact as possible, I think is really important because, again, folks, if you're starting out of business, making sure you have a good value proposition.

So that becomes your true north. So when you have, like Samantha mentioned, you have up and down days, have, you know, it usually starts first thing in the morning, you can't find your keys, coughing yourself, late to work, right, whatever it is.

But just remember, like, look at that value proposition, that is your true north. That's going to remind you, like, why you wake up every day, why you're sitting in your basement late at night by yourself, pound away at emails, know, looking over at financial reports, talking about operational issues.

It's that right there, it's that value proposition, why you created this organization, why you created this service, why you created this product, that goal is why you do it every day, right?

And if you don't have a passion for that, I will be honest with you folks, sometimes it is difficult to be an entrepreneur if you don't have passion for what you're doing.

It's sometimes being difficult just being an employee if you don't have passion for what you're doing, right? So making sure you have passion for what you're doing.

if you're unsure what that passion is, get out. Oh, I had an experienced live talk to people do different things, you know, go parachuting, go kayaking, go hiking, go find some inspiration.

And if you find things that you always seem loved, like, wow, that's something to do. Starbucks is a great example.

I mean, Howard Swartz took a trip to Milan, Italy. And from that trip, he's like, I really want these coffee shops in, in throughout the America.

Now I can't walk through Portland, Oregon without seeing a coffee shop every hundred yards, truthfully. Cannot, I just had a lavender latte the other day.

I didn't know I was supposed to have a lavender latte. And it was phenomenal. It was the greatest taste in the ever had never knew I needed in my life.

So it's just understanding, you know, getting out, travel, getting different experiences will actually create innovation. Now, Samantha, for the folks that are interested that want to learn more about you, maybe want to connect with you, how do they find you on the internet?

@37:47 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

How do what do they contact you? LinkedIn is probably the best place, pretty active on there. It's just my name.

I'm Hannah. Plus our website for the company is joined visor.com would love to connect to them there and bring the Oregon air.

I think we can get a lap under Lotte when I'm in town visiting one of our team members.

@38:04 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yes, you let me know I will gladly take you over there. It's this new copy shop. just all downtown Portland.

It was remarkable. I got to tell you folks. And again, he makes it in house. So it's like all freshly done.

So it was awesome. Now, folks, if you forget any of the content information that Sam just left you, please subscribe to the newsletter at the shades of E dot com.

We'll go ahead and have this information the week before the episode airs, the week this episode airs and the week after they will also be a dedicated webpage with the transcription of this conversation and the audio version of the recording.

And there will also be a video and a dedicated blog that was talking about some of highlights of this conversation.

@38:39 - Samantha Pantazopoulos

Sam, I really do appreciate you taking the time. Is there any last words you have for our listeners? No, thank you so much for having me.

I think my last words would be stop doubting and just go for it. Life's really short. And I think you said this earlier, but it's everyone's first time living life.

Nobody you're looking at has anything more special than you do. So, just start, figure it out along the way and have fun.

@39:02 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Just start. Nobody has anything more special than you do. I completely agree and folks, it's everybody's first iteration is going to be weird.

you go look back at my first podcast episodes, they're not as good as these ones, but you do get better over time and then just have fun with it, experience like when we're kids, you do fall down and get some scratches sometime, but at the same time, I encourage everybody to color outside the lines.

Because at the end of the day, it is your imperfections that make us perfect. So, Samantha, thank you again so much for joining the show.

For those interested, please follow me on the social sites, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at the Shades of E. You can also visit us at theshadesofe.com

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