Chapter 1: What is the background of Eddie Hartman and his entrepreneurial journey?
You're listening to Mick Unplugged, hosted by the one and only Mick Hunt. This is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation. Mick takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you discover your because and becoming unstoppable. I'm Rudy Rush, and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get unplugged.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another exciting episode of McUnplugged. And I'm honored to be sitting in front of someone that I've looked up to for a very long time. He revolutionized how America accesses the law by co-founding LegalZoom and bringing legal empowerment to millions. He's not only that, he's a trained thinker. He's a tech visionary and a scale architect.
He's helped launch many businesses and mentor the next wave of entrepreneurs. He's innovative.
Chapter 2: How important is it for entrepreneurs to discuss failures?
He's disruptive. He is relentless. He is my mentor, Mr. Eddie Hartman. Eddie, how are you doing today, sir?
Mick, my friend, you are too kind. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm honored myself.
I appreciate you, like I said, much more than you'll ever know. And today I want to kind of talk through those things. You know, I always ask my guests, what's there because? That thing that's deeper than your why. You know, Simon Sinek said, start with your why. And I like to take that a little bit further, right? Like your why is awesome. Your why is cool. But if I were to ask you, but why?
Usually that sentence starts with, well, because. And I care about what you say from, well, because.
Chapter 3: What common blind spots do early-stage founders have?
So if I were to say, Mr. Hartman, what is your because? What is your purpose? What is your mission today? Why do you keep doing the great things that you do?
Mick, I want people to thrive. I've been an entrepreneur. And here's the thing that nobody tells you. I have been a failed entrepreneur. You talk to anyone and they're going to talk to you about their successes. And of course, you know, that's the sizzle, right? That's what's sexy. What people do not talk about is the failures. I think they should talk about it more.
It's very real in entrepreneurship. You know, it's anybody who puts themselves out there, there's always the chance, you know, it's not going to work.
Chapter 4: How can entrepreneurs determine the value of their products?
The thing is, the discipline that I've been focusing on, the reason we wrote the book is it does not need to be as bad as it is. That is my message. And I'm not, apart from the book, I'm not selling anything. And I understand I get four pennies for every book sold, so I'm not even really selling that.
What I want to do is spread the gospel that you do not have to face the odds, which are daunting, that most people face as entrepreneurs today. You don't have to. There are a few things you can do to radically improve your chances of success. I would consider my life to be an amazing life if...
10 years from now, everywhere I went, people were like, you know, Mr. Hartman, your stuff helped me to thrive, not just survive, but thrive, you know? So that's what gets me up in the morning.
I love it. And before we get to the book, which I want to deep dive, you've mentored and advised countless startups. Right. For those that are watching, for those that are listening, what's the most common blind spot that you see or have seen in like early stage founders? Sure.
You create something that you have passion about that you love. And of course, because why else would you do it? And then two things happen. I'll talk about the first one and then the second one. First one is you love it so much you think everybody else is going to love it. I like to say, you think you're going to bake muffins and you think everyone is going to love these muffins.
And maybe they do. But if you're only saying, do you love this muffin? You know, hey, would you, you know, seem like a good muffin? You have half the story. The other half is, yeah, but would you pay for this muffin? Would you pay enough that I have muffins? the ability to get a business going.
If you only perfect the recipe, get it out there, try it with your friends and only then find out are people willing to pay $6 for a muffin and that's what you need to cover your costs and get things going, then you are not in possession of a business idea. You're in possession of a really, I'm sure I would love your muffins.
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Chapter 5: What role does self-belief play in entrepreneurship?
Mick, if you were to make muffins, I'm going to guess I would be like, I will have these muffins all day. But how long can you do that? You have a hobby essentially. And I think that's the first thing a lot of people go in. Failure rate is 72%.
I think it's because a lot of people, they say, I'm going to follow the thing I love without figuring out, is it something other people love enough that they're going to pay for it? The first thing. Second thing is, even if you succeed with a good product where people were willing to pay for it, as an entrepreneur, you have to be a little bit crazy.
You have to do something that some people are going to laugh at you. Mick, I don't know if you had that experience launching your podcast and getting out there, but I'm guessing sometimes you told people, yeah, I'm going to do a podcast. And they were like, everybody's doing a podcast. Come on, get real, get serious. So you have to have a crazy self-belief as an entrepreneur.
If you don't, you will fail. If you don't believe in yourself, you're going to fail. But that self-belief can also be a kind of quicksand. You lean into it so hard. You take the one thing you're good at. It might be sales. It might be product. It might be building a community. And before you know it, you built the whole company around that one thing. We call it the single engine trap.
You lean so hard into it because it's the same self-belief that got you off the ground and it becomes its own kind of trap. So those are the two problems. One, yeah, they like it, but are they going to pay for it? And second, did your own self-belief push you into a corner?
That's why you are who you are, man. That's why I love listening to you. You know, I was telling you before, like, I love how you break things down simply. And that it's relatable to everyone. And I appreciate you the most for that.
One question that I've always wanted to ask you, Eddie, is this, like knowing who you are and all the great things that you do, how do you balance innovation in a highly regulated industry, right? Or industries, because I know you're in multiple industries, but most of the industries you're in are highly regulated. So how do you balance innovation with that?
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Chapter 6: How can recurring revenue models transform businesses?
It's like anything.
You have to know what the rules are. right? No matter where you are. And by the way, there are written rules, there are unwritten rules, right? I'll tell you a story. Back in the day, we were getting together a product for LegalZoom, legal product, right? It happened to be divorce. And it was accepted everywhere. And then we kept getting rejected from this one county In Louisiana.
And we were like, why do all the filings in Louisiana get rejected? So we checked the letter of the laws, everything. Everything was airtight. Perfect. And then the clerk said, well, it's supposed to be on pink paper when you file and you've been filing on white paper.
I want to let you know, we then took our printers and we took, you know, they got those multiple printer drawers with multiple, you know, paper, took one and we loaded it with pink paper so that we would have those filings in that county in Louisiana, all the right color, right? They're still getting rejected. So we call back the same county clerk. We say, why? Right? They're legally perfect.
They're on pink paper. She says, it's the wrong shade of pink. And we say, really, it's the wrong shade of pink.
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Chapter 7: What strategies can help retain customers in subscription models?
What would be the right shade of pink? She said, well, you know, the judge here, his brother owns a paper store. And I believe that the pink paper he has there, that would be the right shade of pink if you want these filings to get accepted. So anywhere you go, there's going to be regulation. It might not be the kind of regulation that's written down.
You got to find out like what are the, what's the hidden handshake that sometimes you need to do to get through. All I tell people though is, You got to be aware of it. You can't be the prisoner of that. Find out what you need to do to get through, but don't let that dictate things for you.
Wow. So it's fascinating that in that county in Louisiana, which we will keep nameless, the only pink paper happens to be sold.
I would recommend, Mick, if you want to get your divorce filing or really any filing through that court, I would recommend going to the judge's brother's paper shop and buying that particular shade of paper.
You know, that actually says something to entrepreneurs too, right? It's like, hey, if you're going to own a market or own an idea, make sure you've got it really nailed down so that they have to use specifics to get things done, right?
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Chapter 8: What are the key insights from Eddie Hartman's books?
Like that's a business strategy right there in and of itself.
Yeah, find out those objections. I mean, listen, again, entrepreneurs who tend to be risk takers, people who are willing to do something other people were not. That means that you can't just expect the world's going to give you something back. You got to go the next step and say, if I'm not seeing the progress I hope for, why not? Like what's going on, right?
If you don't keep, if you just give up because your court filings are being rejected or nobody's buying your muffins or whatever it is, got to push, you got to find out why.
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Eddie, I want to deep dive and go into this book because I have a lot of questions and a lot of praise I want to give you. But for those that are watching or listening, let's talk through the title of the book. And then more importantly, what made you say this book needs to be seen? Yeah, sure.
Let me start there. We wrote a book in 2015. called Monetizing Innovation. We're very proud of that book. There is a major company that you know of, and they are in the provisioning of music tracks. You know, I'm not going to say who they are, but
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When you walked into their office, they had a copy of Monetizing Innovation on everyone's desks and they called it the Bible. Very, very proud of it. What that book was all about was if you think about it, if there are two packages that you're looking at and one is the silver and one is the gold or one is the standard and one is the pro, or really anything, you're looking at two options.
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