Product Startup Podcast Episode 106: Build an Early Hardware Startup Team

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Guest: EA Csolkovits, Founder of 75 Products.

Host: , founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.

How to Assemble the Team Around a Hardware Venture

EA Csolkovits explains why mentors, trusted relationships, complementary capabilities, and a strong inner circle matter early in a hardware company. The episode also explores team design, mentor and partner selection, accountability, development oversight, and the operating priorities behind growth.

Podcast cover for Episode 106 about build an Early Hardware Startup Team

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Categories of team members
  • The importance of mentorship
  • The importance of the inner circle
  • Get a mentor that has been successful
  • Relationships are the most important in a fast-moving world
  • The single most important thing you can do to succeed is to develop a great team
  • Don’t listen to what people say, see what they do.
  • There are 3 different categories of team members
  • Key points to develop your inner team
  • Decide, Invite, Seed, Convene, Establish, Rotate, and Numbers

Episode transcript

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Read the full episode transcript

Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learned from the founder of 75 consumer products on how to build a great team early on to grow your product business.

Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors,

Narrator: product developers, and hardware industry professionals. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial

Narrator: idea to getting your product on store shelves. We're taking you step by. step to build a functional product and scale your product business.

Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, one of North America's leading experts on hardware development for small product businesses.

Narrator: Now, on to the show. Welcome back, everyone.

Kevin Mako: Today, I'm very excited to introduce EA Csolkovits to the show. EA has founded in multiple product businesses, which in total brought 75 new products to market

Kevin Mako: and health and wellness space. He has been in the business of building hardware teams for 40 years and is the founder of Giver's

Kevin Mako: University and as a fellow plane pilot just like myself. Today, EA is going to share some valuable

Kevin Mako: knowledge for inventors, product, startups, and small manufacturers on the importance of building

Kevin Mako: great product business teams early on and how specifically to choose great product team members for building and scaling your hardware business. Now on the episode.

Kevin Mako: EA, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I tell you, it's a pleasure to be here and hopefully give your listeners some great nuggets today.

Kevin Mako: Well, building a team is a big part of any hardware, especially as they start to scale and accelerate as they finish development and they start getting

Kevin Mako: it to the market and even arguably before that. So very excited to talk about that. First and foremost, you're a fellow pilot. I noticed you went a lot further in the process.

Kevin Mako: You did multi-engine commercial the whole bit.

EA Csolkovits: Yes, I did. I was very fortunate. And actually, what's weird about the story is that I became a pilot because of a contest.

EA Csolkovits: My business mentor came to me and said, I want to compete with you. And he said, whoever makes the other more money in one year,

EA Csolkovits: The loser has to buy the winner anything they want. So the first year, I lost so bad, and I cashed out a house for my partner in Florida.

EA Csolkovits: Paid cash for the house.

EA Csolkovits: And I thought, man, I got to catch on. This is going to hurt really bad every year if this is the deal.

EA Csolkovits: And then the next year, he bought me an Aero Star 601P, which you may be familiar with of being a pilot.

EA Csolkovits: And then the next year he bought me a limousine. And the next year he bought me a Navajo chieftain, which I used to refer to as my station wagon airplane.

EA Csolkovits: So I became a commercial pilot as a direct result of that contest my business mentor came to me with.

Kevin Mako: I did not know that backstory. I appreciate you sharing that. That is absolutely crazy. Yes. I've done the private pilot thing just as a side hobby.

Kevin Mako: And I must say, it's a lot of work and it's tough to do while simultaneously running a business. Now, you've brought 75 products to market. Can you

EA Csolkovits: give us a bit of a backstory on how that all started? Yes. Almost all of those products are wellness products that, you know, we would manufacture for other firms.

EA Csolkovits: We were doing something back then that actually there wasn't even a name for it. Now it is. And we owned manufacturing equipment ourselves in the past

EA Csolkovits: where we manufactured wellness products like nutritional shakes and different, you know, foods and

EA Csolkovits: diet products and that kind of thing. And we actually manufactured these four other companies.

EA Csolkovits: And, you know, we handle this equipment sitting all the time. And, you know, and equipment when it's not running is dead equipment.

EA Csolkovits: You know, it's like the empty airplane on the tarmac. You know, you own this equipment. It's sitting there. It's dead unless it's running. And one day it just dawned to me,

EA Csolkovits: because we were making this huge product that had all of these ingredients in it. And our customer said, all the products, all the ingredients will be there.

EA Csolkovits: So we said, okay, okay. We set them up on the line already.

EA Csolkovits: Ingredient, a couple of them don't show. Well, without all the ingredients, we can't make it. So meanwhile, we're sitting there dead, full-time employees, equipment's not moving.

EA Csolkovits: Our couple of ingredients, they promise to be there, are not there, so we're dead in the water. I said, this is never going to happen again. So we actually came up with something.

EA Csolkovits: We're going back to the late 70s, early 80s now. We came up with something, and we went to a couple of the people who made products just like us.

EA Csolkovits: And we said, is your equipment running all the time?

EA Csolkovits: And they said, well, no. And I said, how about if we lease your equipment on the off time, on the time when you're not using it,

EA Csolkovits: and we will lease your employees, will lease the equipment,

EA Csolkovits: we will send all of the ingredients and all the product packaging there and a couple of people from our firm to watch over it and we will pay you a certain

EA Csolkovits: fee for the leasing of all your equipment employees and everything else and you'll do this run later on that actually came up

EA Csolkovits: there was a name that came around what we were doing called toll manufacturing basically you know

EA Csolkovits: you pay a toll for all this right but back then there was no such thing it was just like they

EA Csolkovits: were they were like a little astonished we even called them because we normally would be

EA Csolkovits: competitors. And I said, and I told my partner, I said, this is great because we don't have to own

EA Csolkovits: the equipment. So, you know, we only have to do our runs and we got, we have maximum flexibility

EA Csolkovits: because now if we get jammed or if a marketplace changes, we don't have to sit there and justify what are we doing with a million dollar piece of equipment.

EA Csolkovits: We're only using everyone else's equipment that they're going to be doing that. So we have a high amount of flexibility,

EA Csolkovits: product by product, project by project, and not being, you know, having to buy all this equipment up front going forward.

EA Csolkovits: So that's actually how we did it. And we, you know, co-formulated and reformulated over 75 products, you know, in my career

Kevin Mako: with that and working with all the different aspects, you know. And I'd say it was quite an astonishing time period. I'm very blessed to have had that happen.

Kevin Mako: Well, you know, that's amazing because that really is the start of how most new products are manufactured today. Back then, the idea was, well, you've got to

Kevin Mako: build a plant and produce your invention or your gadget or your formula or whatever it might be. Nowadays, I look at most of our clients at Mako Design.

Kevin Mako: Pretty much all of the work we do for a first product goes to contract manufacturing. Very few of our clients actually set up their own, at least full stack facility.

Kevin Mako: Sometimes they'll set up their own assembly house or distribution house or whatever else that might help them with a small piece of the overall puzzle.

Kevin Mako: But the vast majority of at least their first few production rounds is done via, like you said, a toll manufacturer, as we call it contract manufacturing.

Kevin Mako: Just simply outsourcing your production, right, somebody else. But you were one of the pioneers of that. model back in the day.

Kevin Mako: It seems so logical and normal now, but really that was something in the evolution of new product development. And arguably, that's one of the things that really helped

Kevin Mako: earlier stage companies get into the game because it's far too capital intensive for almost any hardware inventor, especially to build a factory.

Kevin Mako: But it is possible to work with a factory. And I love hearing your example because any kind of innovation in manufacturing that makes your

Kevin Mako: product work or get to market or get you off the ground is a phenomenal story. And I love that intuition and innovation.

Kevin Mako: Now, of course, one of the things that you and I talked about before the show, there was a big catalyst

Kevin Mako: to a lot of these business decisions and ideas and execution of those was having an amazing team behind your innovations and your business.

EA Csolkovits: Can you explain what you look at in terms of the three different categories of teams? And then let's get into best practices for actually building these teams as you scale a

EA Csolkovits: hardware business. For sure. I'd like that if I can just go back just a little bit in history. sort of set the stage.

EA Csolkovits: When I was 16 years old, I was a janitor, and I was able to meet an amazing lady. And you want to talk about bringing a product to market. They became masters.

EA Csolkovits: I'll say the name, and I won't mean anything to your listeners, until I referenced the movie.

EA Csolkovits: There was a movie out a few years back called The Founder with Michael Keaton playing Ray Krock.

EA Csolkovits: And for your listeners that have seen it, he's always talking to a lady outside his office, June this, June that, June, Martino. I clean that lady's house every single way.

EA Csolkovits: Wednesday, June Martino, who, interestingly enough, became the first woman in her trade stock on the Florida New York Stock Exchange.

EA Csolkovits: And when I met her, she had the third most controlling stock in McDonald's. So you talk about a massive bringing a consumer product to the marketplace, you know,

EA Csolkovits: and duplication of effort and scaling McDonald's obviously is a story. And she told me one day the whole McDonald's story. I lived in that area anyway.

EA Csolkovits: I'm originally from Chicago and lived in the Oak Brook area. And she told me how Ray Kroc really became her mentor.

EA Csolkovits: So the first thing I want to mention about any and all teams, the team leader needs to have a mentor.

EA Csolkovits: If they don't, in my world, we call them naive, because you're about ready to lead your team

EA Csolkovits: into many mistakes that you're about ready to make that someone else has already made. Why not?

EA Csolkovits: And the key with the mentor, first I want to mention Kevin is, your mentor should be someone who's done it, not as I call an educated idiot.

EA Csolkovits: You know, the educated idiots are the ones who have all the book knowledge and they can spew it back at you. But if you simply ask them, can you show me what you've done?

EA Csolkovits: You get nothing back, right? So find a mentor who's done it, who has accomplished it. And usually,

EA Csolkovits: by the way, they're much easier to talk to and want to help you because they know what it's like to do it as opposed to someone who's an educated idiot.

EA Csolkovits: So first and foremost, get a mentor. With the mentor, we live in this amazing world that I know you see all the time as products

EA Csolkovits: coming and going faster than ever before in history.

EA Csolkovits: Businesses open and closing faster than ever before in history.

EA Csolkovits: So what do we have left?

EA Csolkovits: Our relationships or the ability to discern who we want to have around us. And that's really the heart of what we teach at Givers University.

EA Csolkovits: We teach relationship discernment. It's like I was doing an interview with the gentleman a few weeks, a few months back. And he said, oh, man, this is great. I read this book.

EA Csolkovits: and his book says I should have five really good people around me. I said, you're absolutely right, you should. Question for you. Which five?

EA Csolkovits: And he stared back at me with these little orphan and the eyes, you know, and I said, do you see my point?

EA Csolkovits: Everyone's saying these things and he's brought innocuous swaths of information, but no one has broken it down to the granular level and said, how do I choose my team?

EA Csolkovits: What do I look for? What are the details at a very granular level? What should I watch?

EA Csolkovits: So we teach people in team forming, and I will share with you any one of your business owners that are listening,

EA Csolkovits: the single most important thing they can do is develop a great team around them.

EA Csolkovits: Because otherwise, they're going to be unwilling collateral damage when they bring those people in.

EA Csolkovits: And all of a sudden, because they say, well, they're so good at this and I need to bring them in. Next thing you know, you're stomping out fires, not of your making.

EA Csolkovits: And your productivity goes out the window because you're putting it. out these fires. So how do you do that? How do you build that team? What do you look for? We teach people.

EA Csolkovits: Don't listen to what they say because anyone can learn the right thing.

EA Csolkovits: Watch what they do and here's the things you should be watching them do. In other words,

EA Csolkovits: we have actually one checklist that we call the 25 dues Kevin, which actually is the 25 things you should see these people do.

EA Csolkovits: Not what they say. Because our talking, our talk, talk talks and our walk talks but our walk will always talk louder than our talk talks so and by

EA Csolkovits: the way I practiced that for I said it right now anyway so the uh so yeah so yeah so what we want to

EA Csolkovits: teach people is real simple watch become observant and watch their deeds of what they do and this

EA Csolkovits: will help you and we actually give them a 25 checklist these are the 25 things and when you see them doing these 25 you may want to pull them in and make them a part of your team

EA Csolkovits: in your inner circle. By contrast, if you see them doing these 25, or part of them, or 13 of the 25,

EA Csolkovits: you may want to begin respectfully distancing, not nasty or route, but respectfully distancing yourself

EA Csolkovits: because when they come in, they're going to bring with them all the collateral damage you're not

EA Csolkovits: going to want to. And when you're starting up your business, you do not have time to be stomping

EA Csolkovits: out fires and being collateral damage or having your stress level going up because you're going to have enough stress as it is anyway. Why do you want to associate and

EA Csolkovits: have people around you. And all these business owners I've talked to, they say, no one ever taught me that. No one ever taught me.

EA Csolkovits: How do I select the people? So we have three different categories of what we call Junotos.

EA Csolkovits: The Juntoe word, by the way, is interesting. It's actually a Spanish word from the 1600s. Wasn't used too much. And then it was picked up in the 1700s by a man by the name of

EA Csolkovits: Benjamin Franklin. And in the early 1700s, actually 1727, Benjamin Franklin started a group

EA Csolkovits: that he called, it was 12 friends, and he called it the Mutual Improvement Club.

EA Csolkovits: Later on, he called it the Juntoe, and later on he called it the Leather Apron Club. These 12 got together, and they got together, which a Junto does, they get together

EA Csolkovits: for a mutual purpose.

EA Csolkovits: Not like so many of the communities today that I call Taker Communities. The Taker Communities, by contrast, would be the ones, and even little teams and little groups, say,

EA Csolkovits: join our community, join our community. And two hours later, they're selling you something. right that's not that's not a community that's a customer buying

EA Csolkovits: list that's a customer list right that's the old uh you know the old west where they circled the covered wagons but with taker

EA Csolkovits: community they start shooting inward backwards you know so wrong way so it with the giver community

EA Csolkovits: that inner of course we have the what's called the greater juntoe which is the larger you know worldwide these are people that can befall backgrounds etc etc then the inner

EA Csolkovits: june toe is that two to 12 group, if you will, the Ben Franklin group. What's interesting about Ben Franklin's group

EA Csolkovits: because of what they talked about, and it's a more intimate group and more intimate team. He was

EA Csolkovits: very selective on who he wanted to have a part of that group, and they talked about everything.

EA Csolkovits: And you know what's interesting is that our very declaration of independence could arguably be traced back to the conversations that happened at the Ben Franklin Junto.

EA Csolkovits: So no one can tell me a group of 12 people cannot be powerful.

EA Csolkovits: Then subsequently, then we have what we also call the, that's what we call the givers insider junto.

EA Csolkovits: Two to 12 people, your inside team. Then we have the givers millionaire junto. This is two to 12 people. I was a part of that with my business

EA Csolkovits: mentor. And also interestingly enough, another good example that would be in 1915, Henry Ford started a Junto.

EA Csolkovits: And it consisted of him, Thomas Edison, obviously an inventor, Harvey Firestone, Firestone Tires, and John Burroughs, who

EA Csolkovits: was a writer, a poem. Interestingly enough, when I talk about being diverse, John Burroughs was also a federal bank examiner.

EA Csolkovits: So I have to guess he must have been to Money Man.

EA Csolkovits: Federal bank examiner. Don't do this, don't do that. Anyway, so literally, Henry Ford called this group the four vagabonds.

EA Csolkovits: And they would actually even travel together.

EA Csolkovits: Now, it has been said that this group, Thomas Edison,

EA Csolkovits: Firestone Burroughs, and Harvey Firestone, and Henry Ford, I mean,

EA Csolkovits: all four of them, the impact they had on each one of their businesses was astounding. And here's the difference.

EA Csolkovits: A taker community is formed for the purpose of making money. money off from each other.

EA Csolkovits: For this, I am not for.

EA Csolkovits: A giver community are those that have a fiduciary responsibility to give more to the team than they're getting back. And he say, wait, how in the world can

EA Csolkovits: that happen? I mean, how do you even do that, right? And my business mentor taught me. He said, the importance of that, he said, and those people are fewer and farther in between.

EA Csolkovits: But once you have them and you have discerned in those relationships,

EA Csolkovits: the rewards you will see, because of the extra time you took in finding that right

EA Csolkovits: team catapulted you way past the time you thought

EA Csolkovits: you lost while you were looking for them as opposed to finding a team that didn't work and that basically sucked and you ended up stomping out fires more businesses i

EA Csolkovits: have seen in my life and i can share with you i mean you know helped literally co -formulate and reformulate 75 products over 40 years.

EA Csolkovits: I know what it takes to bring products into 20 different countries.

EA Csolkovits: And what it takes to manufacture those products from the point of an idea all the way through

EA Csolkovits: the entire design and development process to the point of the first manufacturer run in the world of nutrition. We do what's called a hand run first.

EA Csolkovits: You know, and you make sure finding out, you know, when we made food bars one time that the equipment got hot and melted the fat and it turned

EA Csolkovits: and turn the food bars into the worst tasting salty bars you'd ever imagine in your life because all the fat that was hiding the taste melted.

EA Csolkovits: We didn't know until we went into manufacturing, right? So all of those mistakes all the way through,

EA Csolkovits: but all those things were helped a lot because of number one, I had a mentor. He's okay. We go on, right?

EA Csolkovits: That costs us a half a million, all right? We go on. You know, we don't cry over spilt milk. You go buy another gallon. So he said, and then he said, the next.

EA Csolkovits: thing is we always had the right team around us and the time i didn't have the right team kevin and there was a few times in my life it cost me millions and millions

EA Csolkovits: of dollars you know one time i was paying a guy a million dollars a year and bought him a brand new silver spur rolls royce to

Kevin Mako: later on have him betray me and do everything to try to destroy the company because i had not listened to my own

Kevin Mako: teaching because he was very talented at what he did and I offset what I knew to be looking for

EA Csolkovits: for his ability and short term yeah it was great long term I took a real bloodbath right

EA Csolkovits: so I can share with your listeners when you're forming those teams so I want to touch on the five

EA Csolkovits: steps of forming a team if I can because I think that will really that would be great you know we've developed it into an acronym the acronym is seven letters it spells out the

EA Csolkovits: word discern the key point in developing your inner team.

EA Csolkovits: Nothing will be as prolific in your business,

EA Csolkovits: whoever's listening to this podcast,

EA Csolkovits: than the people you have around you. They will influence your decisions, the things you do, how happy you are when you put your head on your pillow at night, your family,

EA Csolkovits: they will influence all parts of that.

EA Csolkovits: So be discerning. So the first thing we have, the D in discern stands for,

EA Csolkovits: How do you decide those people? How do you decide? those 12 people in your team. What do you look for? So what we do is we actually provide a free checklist

EA Csolkovits: and we say these are the 25 things. We call it the 25 dues. These are the deeds. Forget about what they're saying. Watch what they're doing.

EA Csolkovits: Can you run through some examples of those dues? Because you brought up before and that popped into mind and I know you and I talked about it a bit on the show,

EA Csolkovits: but just some of the some of the real juicy ones for our listeners just to get their appetite going

EA Csolkovits: on what some of those specific dues are versus listening to what people are saying. Because I think that's

EA Csolkovits: very powerful. One of them is a giver, you know, because we have givers versus taker dues. And

EA Csolkovits: when we say, by the way, give and taker, I want your listeners know, we love everybody. We're not labeling people.

EA Csolkovits: We label deeds. So when we say giver, we're actually identifying giver deeds. And we say taker, we're not labeling a person. We're labeling taker deeds. So a good example of a

EA Csolkovits: couple of the dues, if you will, for a giver. A giver that you would have around you is willing to delay gratification for the overall project.

EA Csolkovits: Another thing with a giver, a giver will not do shortcuts. We call it do the thing to get the thing. Do not the thing get something else.

EA Csolkovits: A taker will always be shortcutting. You'll see them glom onto other people's efforts.

EA Csolkovits: You'll see them try to get credit for what other people have done. Yes, we did this and they didn't do anything. They just happened to be hanging out there, right?

EA Csolkovits: So a giver, the part that you want on a team, are those people who you will see. And they'll be identified by the first ones that's

EA Csolkovits: step up when something needs to be done you'll see them step up first and say i'll do that or yeah i'll do

EA Csolkovits: that as opposed to oh you know crap i got to work weekends you know why sit there and talk them into working

EA Csolkovits: weekends get rid of them replace supplant that person so those are just a couple of the 25 dues

EA Csolkovits: that we give people as a free checklist to help them discern who should they have in their team the second part is called involve or invite i should say

EA Csolkovits: you know when you have these 20 these 12 people, you got to invite them, right? So decide, so there's decide, then invite. The third is what we call seed.

EA Csolkovits: And that is, you simply begin to, from the onset,

EA Csolkovits: let them know from an expectational standpoint, what's to be expected. In other words, this is what we're doing. This is what's expected.

EA Csolkovits: Are you willing to do these 25 things? Are you willing to be a part of this? Because if so, this can be great.

EA Csolkovits: But if not, I want to let you know, we're bound by this, and we have no problem parting away friends. Either way is okay.

EA Csolkovits: So we teach people, look for people that have the ability to do what I just said.

EA Csolkovits: Independent, not dependent thinkers. If you have dependent thinkers in your team, dependent meaning, they will do

EA Csolkovits: things dependent on what everyone else is thinking and saying. An independent thinker has the ability to think and hold their own counsel.

EA Csolkovits: They will work and think independently. They will listen to everyone else.

EA Csolkovits: but they're not going to emotionalize it because they have the ability to do the following. They do not allow their emotions to rule their intellect. They have their intellect

EA Csolkovits: controlling their emotions.

EA Csolkovits: Big difference of who you want around you.

EA Csolkovits: You want the person who has that ability of their intellect controlling their emotions. And they can listen to someone who's maybe even mad at them.

EA Csolkovits: And you watch and they see they don't even flinch. In fact, they can even smile back at them because they're saying they're just talking. Those are just words, right?

EA Csolkovits: So the first one, is discern or decide second one's invite third one is seed and i was explain what's expected to them

EA Csolkovits: up front uh and then um the next one is convene which is really important get with your team meet with

EA Csolkovits: them on a regular basis and set that up front now it may adjust weekly daily whatever it is and also

EA Csolkovits: you know we we joked about this earlier i'm a firm believer of when you show up on time you're already 15 minutes late so you know with your team you don't want the one

EA Csolkovits: if you see them being consistently late, you say, hey, you know, what's the deal here? You know, this is called get up early. This is called leave five minutes early.

EA Csolkovits: This is called be a big boy, you know, and let's get done. You know, so I sometimes have gotten very detailed with people right up front.

EA Csolkovits: But I say, it wasn't like we didn't talk about this. So what are you doing this for? You know, let me know. You know, we'll work through it. So convene.

EA Csolkovits: The next one is to establish, by the way, with your team, this is a really important, simple things. Name your team.

EA Csolkovits: name it with ben franklin the leather apron club with henry ford um the four vagabonds

EA Csolkovits: give your team your inner you know eight 10 12 people two to 12 people give it a name

EA Csolkovits: give it an identity and that helps so much with creating because here's something that most people don't recognize with the team whenever two or

EA Csolkovits: more minds formed together in a spirit of harmony a third mind is formed by the way that works all the time with givers, and it works all the time with takers.

EA Csolkovits: With takers, it's called a lynch mob. With givers, it's called those people working together for a common purpose.

EA Csolkovits: So when we've identified them with the 25 dues, we have that spirit of harmony. As my business

EA Csolkovits: mentor said, and I share this with every one of your guys starting something up or starting something new, you do not have money problems. There's no such thing.

EA Csolkovits: You have idea problems. Work with the idea problems. And you won't have to worry about any money. problems and I can share story after story personally with

EA Csolkovits: my personal experiences when there wasn't two nickels to rub together or small amounts of money to rub together how massive things happened by simply crafting with

EA Csolkovits: a great idea a way where everyone could benefit so it's not money problems it has to do with

EA Csolkovits: idea problems so we had convene we had and then established which means really a name the last one is rotate get don't always be the person who has to be upfront

EA Csolkovits: Give the people of your team rotate who's going to be in charge of the meetings or the teams and have an agenda to give it a high structure, but also make sure that

EA Csolkovits: you rotate the leaders. Give everyone a shot at the podium, so to speak, you know, but set forth the agenda, right?

EA Csolkovits: And then the last being numbers, because as the first few people of your innermost team

EA Csolkovits: begin to manifest themselves in your company scales, what you have set up in the beginning, not only as your core group,

EA Csolkovits: but also it will manifest through the entire organization.

EA Csolkovits: Sidebar story, as was taught to me by Michael Bash, one of the co-founders of Federal Express. And he told me that Federal Express in the very beginning

EA Csolkovits: had a simple slogan, absolutely positively overnight. I don't know if you remember that. He said, when Federal Express started,

EA Csolkovits: they had 600 employees, 250 jets, and told all the employees, please do not cash your money. your check, there's no money in the bank.

EA Csolkovits: So imagine telling 600 employees. The first day they delivered five packages, and four of them were by their salesmen to other clients about getting

EA Csolkovits: them customers. He said it cost about $250,000 a package.

EA Csolkovits: You know, for to sell it. So, and what was amazing is Michael said the following. He said, we had this goofy thing absolutely positively

EA Csolkovits: overnight. And he said, the, and he said, we had, we were going basically out of business. He said, And later on, by the way, obviously they didn't.

EA Csolkovits: They changed the start date of the company and went public because they didn't want everyone to know when it actually started because the numbers looked so bad.

EA Csolkovits: So they restarted the start date of the company. So when they went public, it looked good. And he said he had this gal in Chicago that wanted to fly, pilot

Kevin Mako: story, a Piper Cub and had never flown one. And the company back then had given everyone a $50 bill, basically, do whatever you need to get a customer and we got a $50 leeway.

Kevin Mako: This person called said, I need my. wedding dress it's got to be here the same day so this little gal an employee of federal express goes and

Kevin Mako: rents a piper cub pays a 50 bucks flies the wedding dress from chicago to Milwaukee it turns out that the

Kevin Mako: wedding was for the chairman of the board's daughter for rca and everyone at the wedding was talking about

Kevin Mako: how they got this wedding dress there the same day it was unbelievable back then and so they Michael Bash, the co-founder, asked the girl, why'd you do it?

Kevin Mako: Whatever provoked you to do this? She goes, well, I was just following my job description. He said, what? She said, well, absolutely positively overnight.

Kevin Mako: He said, that's not your job description. That's what we tell customers and clients. She's, oh, I didn't know. I thought it was my job description.

Kevin Mako: So I got, so there's the importance of the team. See, when you have the right team, it will have a profound effect.

Kevin Mako: And it's arguably the main account that got Federal Express and saved it and became the fellow express we all knew today. For your listeners, be selective,

Kevin Mako: get a mentor, if you don't, find one, and make sure you're asked the most important question.

Kevin Mako: Can I see what you've done? Number two, build a team and be discerning on your team, even if it's laborious, if it requires more time than you think it should.

Kevin Mako: Better, you have less people, and as each person comes in, they are doing those 25 things, and then you know

Kevin Mako: they're a long-term team mender and you will have a dynamic of that spirit of harmony where you get that greater part

Kevin Mako: like attaching two batteries together and you get a greater electrical charge because of the synergy of it that team will make or break

Kevin Mako: your business start out and I've seen great products with crappy teams that folded

Kevin Mako: and I've seen lackluster products

EA Csolkovits: with spectacular teams that became highly successful.

EA Csolkovits: I experienced them both myself, and I can tell you,

EA Csolkovits: the team and the relationships and the discernment you use with those people around you will impact you in profound ways.

EA Csolkovits: One of the things I find so amazing when you go to these business award shows and whatnot, you hear the speeches and been up there and done them myself.

EA Csolkovits: And one of the first things that always pops to mind is the team and the effort that went behind it for everybody. It's not just you and me talking about it here.

EA Csolkovits: I would say almost unanimously across any successful scaling entrepreneur that has got

EA Csolkovits: to a certain point that is award worthy or whatever else, they'll tell you the same thing. It couldn't have happened without an incredible group of people around them

EA Csolkovits: that amplifies that goal. And something that really resonates with me that really kind of flowed through everything

Kevin Mako: you said on this talk today is the power of vision. And it seems that if the FedEx example was a great one,

Kevin Mako: that if you can align everybody from the get-go, both in choosing, then hiring and bringing on that team, keep them aligned to the goals and vision,

Kevin Mako: they will naturally fulfill that vision for you when you're not there to make the decisions or when they can make better decisions than you can or simply amplifying your message.

Kevin Mako: And that really plays into the rotation element that you mentioned too, bringing on different players of the team, on different meetings or on different decisions

Kevin Mako: to bring out their leadership so that you're not missing out on the value of those incredible

Kevin Mako: people that have been brought into your organization that match that shining star that you put

Kevin Mako: forth and making sure that they are there to contribute and you're not missing out listening to some of this very profound advice.

Kevin Mako: It might be coming from anybody within your organization. And final that I'd say to that as well, and I like how you kind of wrapped it all together,

Kevin Mako: you need structure to all this. Having structure makes things happen. It keeps things moving and really structure is to be.

Kevin Mako: And if you can have both this innovation with this team, as you mentioned, by having the right people and allowing them to innovate and be independent thinkers, but in conjunction

Kevin Mako: as well, have that structure in there to keep things flowing and keep everybody following that shining star that you've set forth, then is very powerful to any business.

Kevin Mako: And I can tell you, from my own business, I would never be at a 30-person team across four

Kevin Mako: offices without having all kinds of people that I can look back in the early days, in the middle

EA Csolkovits: days that even to today that I relied on heavily to help build that that entire establishment

EA Csolkovits: for sure for sure um one just a side two-minute story at the best because it really does sort of

EA Csolkovits: it's a great sum up story um i saw an interview many many years ago about a guy he was interviewed

EA Csolkovits: his name was j paul getty at the time jay paul getty was the wealthiest person in the world

EA Csolkovits: and he was being interviewed and the interview asked him i remember the interview like it was

EA Csolkovits: yesterday. The interview asked him, said, you know, if you lost all of your oil, that's where he made

EA Csolkovits: his money, oil, tankers, you know, big oil tankers and shipping oil and that kind of thing, and subsequently

EA Csolkovits: a lot of other products and businesses, they said, if we took it all from you, all of your holdings, all of your tankers, all of your oil, could you do it again?

EA Csolkovits: Could you do it again? And he said, not only could I do it again, but in one year, it would be bigger than it is

EA Csolkovits: today. And I would ask that you only leave me one thing. Take it all. Take all of my money. Take all of the

EA Csolkovits: assets, all of the ships, all of the oil, all of it. Take it all. Just leave me one thing, my organization.

Kevin Mako: That's amazing. And you know, Grant Cardone just did that on TV.

Kevin Mako: He took that challenge where somebody said, if you started over again, I forget what the number was, X thousand dollars and 10 grand in your pocket or something like that.

Kevin Mako: Could you build something? And he actually, did a reality TV show. I think it's over the course of 90 days or something like that where he converts that into a big thing.

EA Csolkovits: And I said, man, that that's amazing because he really did it, put the proof in the pudding. A lot of people have said that over the years.

EA Csolkovits: And he took the challenge and actually pulled it off. But that is a reality. And a lot of entrepreneurs will tell you the same

EA Csolkovits: thing. A lot of entrepreneurs as well, I heard some stat. It's an arguably some X million dollar entrepreneurs have failed or gone bankrupt twice in their life.

EA Csolkovits: And that just goes to show you that that there's something well beyond luck or even hard work. There's a combination of elements.

Kevin Mako: And as you mentioned, you believe the most important one is the team. And there's a lot of merit to that.

Kevin Mako: But it proves it when you watch these people that have failed and then rebound it from great failure, learn from that and then built something new again.

Kevin Mako: And I think that's very powerful, especially if we're thinking about hardware startups

EA Csolkovits: and understanding the journey that you have to go through up front before you start getting money. You have to give a lot, as you said, before you start receiving.

EA Csolkovits: and that is in actually producing your product and getting payments in. You have to give a lot first, build yourself a great team, invest a lot both personally,

EA Csolkovits: financially and emotionally to get a product over the line. But if you do it well and you give enough, the dividends are incredible,

EA Csolkovits: especially if you surround yourself with a great team to get there. I interviewed over two years, 1,000 millionaires.

EA Csolkovits: And you know, Kevin, every single one of them had the story you just said.

EA Csolkovits: Every one of them had a time where everything looked dark, where everything, the business, the money, the family. Everyone said, throw in a towel, throw in a towel.

EA Csolkovits: Do you know some of them, interesting, even use the same words with me. Some of them even said, do you know I took the next step out

EA Csolkovits: of morbid fascination just to see if there's anything else that could go wrong? He said, it was like I was thinking, I hit them all. Is there anything else?

EA Csolkovits: And they took the next step. And they said the amazing thing about that. And they all, I'm not saying some of them, Kevin, they all 100% had that story.

EA Csolkovits: And they all said they took that next step when they were, and for some reason,

EA Csolkovits: it was like failure left them.

Kevin Mako: And all of a sudden things started coming together almost on, they said almost magically on its own, in spite of them.

EA Csolkovits: It was amazing that all thousand of them had that exact same story out no matter what kind of industry and business.

EA Csolkovits: And what happens is when we have our product, it becomes our baby. You know, we're giving birth to this thing. breathing air in it in his nachos every single day.

EA Csolkovits: I think it was Malcolm Gladwell that said when you feel like you've hit the breaking point,

EA Csolkovits: your failure, you're almost at the tipping point where it's going to become exponentially successful. Like when you finally feel like you've hit wit's end, you're very, very

EA Csolkovits: close to success. And that's what you refer to as that next step, just a little bit further and you're over that hill.

EA Csolkovits: And if you have the right team, they're going to be there, see? the wrong team they're all going to be of the mindset you know last one left in a restaurant

EA Csolkovits: get stuck with the check you know that's their mindset right but when you have a givers team they're

EA Csolkovits: going to say hey we can do this this is nothing let's do it you know no problem so and and again

EA Csolkovits: because those times are going to happen and it'd be naive to think they're not going to they're going to but with the right team and following very specific

EA Csolkovits: proven methodologies in discerning who to have a part of that team it's a winning it's a winning formula look appreciate you being on

EA Csolkovits: Now, just talk fairly quickly about Givers University that you've established and how folks can

EA Csolkovits: reach out to learn more about your processes, especially that 25-point list of the dues.

EA Csolkovits: I really want everyone to know where they can get this information, where they can learn more from you as they're building out their teams. Just go to our website.

EA Csolkovits: It's giversuniversity.com. So it's plural, giversuniversity.com. Sign it for our newsletter. It's absolutely free. We're not spammers.

EA Csolkovits: So as soon as you do that, you'll get a thing in your email. It says, do you want to communicate these people? Say yes.

EA Csolkovits: and about an hour later you'll get an email that has a download in it that is called the six arrows that takers shoot at givers and

EA Csolkovits: then about two days later you'll get that 25 dues checklist and then every week on Thursday Thursday morning will be a short suite

EA Csolkovits: what we call the givers toolbox this is specifically every week we give a new tool that every business owner can add to the relationship

EA Csolkovits: toolbox on how to discern their team What should they should be looking for? And every week, it's short, sweet, it's not detailed.

EA Csolkovits: You know, we're not one of those. I hate that. You sign up for something next thing. You know, you get 10 emails a day. And unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe, right?

EA Csolkovits: And once a week on Thursday, they're going to get a simple, short little thing that's going to help them build up a great relationship team toolbox, which

EA Csolkovits: will be the most important thing. And as crazy as that sounds, I can submit to you with absolute proof.

EA Csolkovits: it'll be more important than their product or their service. Because what will happen is that product or service at Sunday will have a life.

EA Csolkovits: But a great team, they're going to keep that after the life of that product or service.

EA Csolkovits: Powerful stuff. Yeah, I really appreciate you being on the show today. Thanks again. You bet. Thank you.

Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast. The show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market

Narrator: and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you, Bob. by Mako Design + Invent, the original and leading firm in

Narrator: North America to provide global caliber in-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product business clients.

Narrator: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to Mako -design.com.

Narrator: That's M-A-K-O Design dot com for a free consultation from one of Mako Design's Ford Design Studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening.

Narrator: and see you next time.

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