Sep 13, 2023
It’s natural to not likecompetition, but having it is key for successful entrepreneurs. Inthis episode of the Class E Podcast, we talked with Fred Cary, aserial entrepreneur and thought leader who has over thirty years ofexperience. Cary discusses the various successful companies he hastaken to the next level and shares how his current company, IdeaPros, provides anyone a path into the entrepreneurial world. Healso encourages entrepreneurs to view failure and competition asgood things in their ventures.
Guest: Fred Cary
Host: Mary Sturgill
Producer: Isabella Martinez'24
TRANSCRIPT
MARY: Hi, everyone. Welcome tothe Class E Podcast. I am your host Mary Sturgill. As you all know,this is the podcast that's brought to you through a partnershipbetween the Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, andthe Communication Studies Department here at Furman University. Ourhope with these podcasts is to share the story of innovative andentrepreneurial thinkers in hopes of inspiring you. And today wewelcome, serial entrepreneur and thought leader with over thirtyyears of experience in that space, Fred Cary, has createdtransformational strategies that have resulted in billions ofdollars in corporate value, and these stories cross boundaries.He's built high-growth businesses in finance and software, mobiletechnologies, data, retail, consumer products and E-commerce andprobably a lot more. Through all of that, he's acquired of coursethousands of lessons along the way that he is now going to sharewith us and he's sharing in his latest venture Idea Pros, which isan entrepreneurial startup services company. Fred, welcome to theshow.
FRED: Well, thank you so much. I'm not sure I'm gonna I'mgoing to share thousands of lessons but we'll hit some of the bigones.
MARY: We'll share what we can with the time we have. So youhave a… just to give everybody a little bit of background on you,you have a background in law with the Thomas Jefferson School ofLaw and Harvard and you have an MBA in business from the Universityof Liverpool. But I suspect that your history with entrepreneurshipstarted kind of way before long, way before you did any of thatstuff. What sparked innovation and entrepreneurship foryou?
FRED: The fact that I didn't fit the mold. I always felt kindof like an outsider from the way that my childhood and teenagefriends approached what they thought was going to be their adultlife. And the way that I did it, I was always all over the place.And I was always thinking about how to do things the different way,in a more unusual way, than my friends were. So that's really… by21 I knew I could never work for anybody else.
MARY: So you knew at that point that you were just going tocreate whatever you needed to create at that point in time to workfor yourself?
FRED: Absolutely.
MARY: Yeah. You've… we've listed briefly some of the venturesthat you've had. What I'd like you to do, just to give everybody alittle bit of background, can you go… take us through some ofthose, just briefly, maybe your favorites and briefly talk aboutwhat they are and where you took them.
FRED: My favorite companies?
MARY: Yes, yeah.
FRED: Historically?
MARY: Yeah.
FRED: Ok. So I think one of my favorites was Boxlot. And thereason for that is it was a company that was going to be adisaster. We started in 1998. And we were chasing eBay. eBay wasliterally a year ahead of us with their app and well, their websitemostly at that point, and we just couldn't catch up. We had anauction website, we did better auctions than they did, much finerquality things than they did. And we ended up being just a distantsecond that we couldn't change. We had a lot of money that hadalready been invested in us. And it was time to either shut thedoors down or figure something else out. And we had to make areally, really big pivot. I don't like quitting, and so, our pivotbecame let's be a technology company. The reason was a lot of theunderlying technology needed for options, reverse bidding, bitterbuy, accepting multiple bids, automated bidding increments, and alot of that technology didn't exist. And so we turned ourselvesinto a technology company and re-sparked everything and all thebiggest companies in the world started using our technology. And weended up getting an agreement 18 months later for $125 millionacquisition of our company which it was something that should havebeen in the assets. So I think that's a good one forme.
MARY: Yeah, that's huge.
FRED: Yeah. Another one's Imagine Communications. When HDfirst started penetrating American households, the cable industrywas in really bad shape because the cable that would go to the homewould only support one megabit of data and they needed back then1.5 megabits to deliver an HD signal. And so it was going to bedisaster for the cable industry. We came up with a technology thatwe approached the cable companies with our proposed technology andthey said if you can make it we'll buy it and my engineers said,“You're crazy. We can't make it.” But we did. And nine monthslater, we came up with a technology that could in differentresidential communities that actually took their infrastructure andwe quadrupled their throughput. So instead of only being able tohandle one standard definition signal, they were able to deliver toHD and one standard using all the same infrastructure they had inplace. So that company now, Imagine Communications, does probably$750 million a year in revenue and you know, it started from anidea that couldn't happen.
MARY: Right, that people thought just wasn't possible at thetime. Yeah, that's amazing. And then what would be your thirdone?
FRED: Well, my third one is IdeaPros, the company I’m in rightnow. It's the hardest even though I brought a couple of companiespublic, it’s the hardest I've ever worked really. And it's becausewe become co-founders with entrepreneurs and it's expensive to workwith us. It's not cheap at all, but the entrepreneurs that we'reabout ready to go out and spend 100, 200, 300, $500,000 to build anapp, build a company, do all the engineering for physical products,we approach them or they approach us most likely to be the cofounder and they will pay us an upfront fee, a fixed fee of around,it's around $100,000 and they give us 30% of the company we'regoing to form together and then we do everything. We do all theheavy lifting from research and competitive analysis, customerprofiling, branding, naming, positioning, development of thewebsite, development of the app, development of the physicalproduct, engineering, and all the way through marketing and thenlaunching while we're training the entrepreneur how to really,really be experienced in a year period of time. So that's beenvery, very fruitful. I've had 100,000 applications in the last twoyears. We’ve taken 400 companies and we have about 24 of them thatwe think are going to be worth around $100 million dollars each. So$2.4 billion worth of value right there. So that's been veryrewarding and very stressful at the same time.
MARY: Yeah, I bet so because I mean, I know, and you probablyexperienced this in your own journey that, you know, you have thisgreat idea, but sometimes, a lot of times, you don't necessarilyhave the skills that it takes to make that idea into a company or aviable company, right? And you guys seem like you're providing thatfor some of the idea people.
FRED: You know, when I was a kid, the rich people were thedoctors and lawyers and the businesses down the street and themovie stars, the athletes…now when people think about wealth, it’sabout entrepreneurs. When you have social media, it makes it lookeasy, but if you look at the underlying data, literally 94% of themultimillionaires and billionaires are entrepreneurs, went toreally great schools, over 60% of them got advanced degrees fromthose schools. They know how to be an insider, they know how toplay that insider game. And the rest of us the 95% of us, includingme, we were all outsiders. We don't know the rules. We don't havethe connections. We don't know what we're supposed to build andthat's why the biggest cause of failure for new companies inAmerica is that entrepreneurs build something there's no demandfor. How crazy is that? You think the number one thing would be notenough money. The number one thing is that you built something thatnobody wants. Your mother won't even buy it and that's reallydevastating to think all those dreams crushed. And so we startedIdea Pros to really turn those outsiders into insights.
MARY: Yeah, so that's what I was gonna say is you're takingthose outsiders and giving them the path to get on theinside.
FRED: Exactly.
MARY: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So can you talk about a coupleof the companies that you're working with?
FRED: Yeah. And I have to be careful because I'm justlaunching in semi secret mode. But we have one company that is,it's an app company. It's basically if you think of it as Uber forthe construction industry, and it's called Grunt. You can find themat trygrunt.com. And basically, what it is is this, this foundercame from the construction industry, always breaking tools, runningout of supplies, and they need to go off the job site and you wastethe day, waste a couple days and a couple of people that are goingout there for hours. And with Grunt, you can place orders forwhatever you want. Grunt drivers pick it up, deliver it to yoursite within an hour and in some cases two depending on how manyplaces they need to go to. And so it really sells a major problemfor the industry. On top of that, we're trying to make Gruntdrivers sexy, you know? I can't tell you the number of guys intheir 20s and 30s that probably hate delivering groceries tograndma at 8 o'clock at night. You know, it's not a very compellingside hustle. Be able to tell your girlfriend you're gonna go outand pick up some lumber and that's part of what you do in the firstplace. We want to make it like UPS when UPS first started comingout their drivers with the sexy shorts and everything was a bigspin on things. And so we're doing the same thing with Grunt to tryto make it a side hustle that you can be proud of doing if you fitthat profile.
MARY: Yeah, and that's actually… I agree that's so muchneeded. I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, and it was my jobto get that project… get them all the materials we needed forwhatever project on site and it does take a lot of time away ifyou're not prepared for that.
FRED: Yeah, yeah, anything can happen. You get there and thenit's the wrong, the wrong thing.
MARY: Absolutely.
FRED: So, we're gonna do really, really well with that.There's another one that talking about kind of, Habitat forHumanity and things like that, there's another one called Exhale.Exhale is a web based solution. Our partner has been in health carefor many years, and she's dealt with people with lung issues. Andinsurance companies only cover you when you get to stage four lungdisease, which is insane to me. It's like okay, we're gonna helpyou die. Stages one, two, and three is where people really reallyneed the help and it’s not covered. So we built this company calledExhale. It's all… hundreds of videos, advice on how to eat, how tosleep, the types of exercises you do, you have groups. You put itall together and she's launched. She's doing really, really well.There's a lot of doctor groups that are signing up with her. Sheactually got picked to be on the board of the National Board ofDirectors for the American Lung Association, because of this work.So that's been a really noble work that’s's really really taken offso that I think that's another good example.
MARY: Yeah, absolutely. What are some of the criteria that youlook for? Because I'm sure some people have come to you, they'vehad the money. But you've looked at… you've done your due diligenceand you look at them and you just don't think this is viable. Whatare some of the things that you're looking for?
FRED: You know, I was the first person doing this and so I'vemade a ton of mistakes, speaking of thousands of lessons. When wefirst started, we were really mostly interested in the idea and ofcourse, the capital you had contributed or my model didn’t work. Ifyou don't have skin in the game, you're not as motivated as if youdo. That's one lesson that I learned historically. So now, theentrepreneurs are actually even more important than the idea,because we can take an idea as long as it's a decent idea, we cantake it and we can massage it and we can turn it into a great ideabut you can't turn somebody into a great entrepreneur, if theydon't have the heart if they don't have the grit and determination,not able to accept failure as a step towards success. If you don'thave those things, you're not going to make it no matter how greatof an idea we turn this into. So ultimately, obviously, got to beable to fit the financial profile. But then the very next step isare you somebody who's not going to quit? And if you got those twothings going, now let's take a look at your idea. And let's seewhat that real market need is and whether or not this thing can goin and become a dominant player in that space. Those are the thingsthat we look for in that order.
MARY: What's one of the problems that you wish that youdiscovered in any of your processes in any of your companies thatyou wish someone had told you beforehand?
FRED: Um, well, I think the most obvious one is things neverwork out the way you intend. And everything's gonna take twice aslong and cost twice as much. And that's just the way it is, youknow, and we have, we as entrepreneurs, we look at things and wesee that there's a real need, and we believe that the world isgoing to come running towards us with this new great solution. Andit's really, really a long process. I mean, if you look, everybodytalks about Elon Musk and, and Tesla and everything. Number one, hewasn't the founder of Tesla, it's two other guys that did it. Butnumber two, the first electric car 1890.
MARY: Right.
FRED: 1890.
MARY: I literally just read that the other day.
FRED: Oh you did?
MARY: Yeah.
FRED: I got my facts. So, the reality is that things take along time and just because you're first doesn't mean you're evergonna make it. And sometimes, I think the second lesson I learnedis sometimes it's good not to be first. If you're second, third,fourth, you're making something but you're making it better becauseyou've had the first ones go in there and crash and burn and try todo things but not do it well. And now you have a market demand, youhave people who have penetrated the market, you have customers thatare screaming about that one star component of the solution, andyou can make that one-star thing, your five-star thing. So I wouldsay don't be afraid of competition and understand that things takea really long time. So don't be afraid of failureeither.
MARY: I think a lot of times and correct me if I'm wrong,because you probably know more about this world than I do, but Ithink venture capitalists sometimes look at the competition aspectof it. Is there competition in the marketplace already? And thatkind of almost contradicts what you just said about it's okay to bethe second or third company.
FRED: Yeah, well, you know, if they were worried about that,they would have never taken HelloFresh after Blue Apron or Lyftafter Uber. There's always room for more than one. And if you lookat, for example, the food delivery apps, there are at least a halfdozen… ones that are doing really, really well.
MARY: Oh, yeah.
FRED: So venture capital, there's no venture capital firm thatwould give a dime to Quicken. When Quicken first started, heliterally went door to door to every venture capitalist in SiliconValley. Now over 240 of them, not one would give him a penny. Theythought it was a stupid idea. Of course, after he really startedkicking butt everybody wanted to give money at that.
MARY: Of course.
FRED: One thing you have to understand or the audience needsto understand about venture capital or any other type of investor,they don't know everything. A lot of times they haven't even everstarted their own company. Some of them are just finance people,and bankers, and they are theoretically inclined, as opposed tobeing able to really find that target market and understand thatthere's an opportunity so don't be discouraged. If you can't findmoney in one place, go find it somewhere else. Because eventuallyyou'll get it. Yeah, venture capital…To me, somebody comes in rightaway and says, “Hey, I have no competition. It's awesome.” If youhave no competition, there's no demand, right? Because competitionfills a demand that is generated by consumers or whoever theultimate customer is. And if there's no demand and you're doingsomething so revolutionary that you have to actually build a demandwhere none existed before, then that's billions of dollars probablyto get there. I mean, people..I use the example of the first caryou know, somebody could argue that there was no competition whenthe first car came out, but the competition was horses. You know,that the issue was transportation. And so the demand was there forto be transported. You just had a different way of transportingpeople. And you're going to compete against that horse in thebeginning. Cars were actually slower in some cases than horses andbuggies. So, there's always competition and if there isn't, youknow, you're gonna be one of those that fail because you createdsomething that there is no demand for.
MARY: Yeah, I think that's a very good point. Let's see, doyou have and I kind of feel like you do, just from ourconversation, do you have kind of an entrepreneurial philosophy ofentrepreneurism?
FRED: Well, my first philosophy is, don't.
MARY: That’s what everybody says.
FRED: Look, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you need tounderstand it's a lifelong struggle,no matter how far along youget. I mean, Elon Musk with SpaceX, he was one rocket failure awayfrom losing everything that he had after he'd already had a coupleof successes. A big payday for PayPal. And yet, still having thoseissues, problems with testing, problems with Twitter. There arealways fires. And if you're not comfortable wearing a fire suit,you shouldn't be an entrepreneur. But if you are, then I think forme, the kind of mantra for entrepreneurship is be comfortable withpain. Because you know that in the end, you can help a whole lot ofpeople. Whatever it is that you're doing, if you're doing it forthe right reason, with the right purpose, the right determinationthat you're a potentially a world changer, and you can't change theworld without hurting yourself. And as long as you're willing to dothat, and do things for the greater good, you're going to be ableto make it no matter what you're trying to do.
MARY: I think that's a great mindset to be in because I thinkyou're going to be more prosperous if you're in the mindset thatI'm doing a greater good, rather than I'm going to make money. Themoney is going to come.
FRED: Yeah, yeah. And I say that all the time too. Don't chasethe money, chase your dreams. Make it a reality and as long as youhave your dream and be really strategic about how you take thatdream and actualize it. When you can actualize your dream, themoney will follow. It's as simple as that because doing it theright way, doing the research, understanding what the real need is,and being able to deliver on that need results in capital comingyour way. But when you’re focused instead on the dollar, you end upbeing like the Enron's of the world and no matter how big you getthe corruption of chasing the dollar can take you down really,really hard.
MARY:
And fast. You know a lot ofpeople create business ventures obviously we talked about, thatthey're not always successful. Is there another piece ofinformation that you're thinking or advice maybe that you'rethinking that people need to understand or know that they might notknow?
FRED: Oh, yeah, we don't know anything when we start abusiness, you know? When I talk about that… literally the way thatwe approach entrepreneurship, nobody would do that in somethinglike sports. Can you imagine if I wanted to hire you as my coachfor a sports team, and you're asking me like, right, well, whatsport is it? And I tell you, I don't know. Do you have anycompetitors? I don't have any clue. But I think I'm the only one.And well how big is this sport? I don't know, what are the rules? Idon't know. How do you get all of the spectators to root for you? Idon't have a clue. Right? But that's how we go intoentrepreneurship. We don't know the market. We don't know themarket size. We don't know the growth. We don't know the holes inthe market that we can exploit. We don't know what those personasreally want and how to take them not only as customers but aspassionate advocates of a brand. So what I would say to ourentrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs, you need to do yourhomework. Think about it. That you’re a coach of a sports team. DOyou know all the rules? Do you know all the competitors? Do youknow how to win? And if you don't know those things, you gotta getthem. You know, I have on my website a free resource. It's calledthe insider checklist. And you can just go to ideapros.com anddownload it. As I said, it's absolutely free and it gives you sevenpoints, seven highlights of the things you need to consider whenyou're starting any business. And then on top of that, for the nextseven days, you get an email from me, and each day that email willcover one of those seven points and cover it in a lot greaterdetail and there's an embedded of 20 minute or so video on thatsubject from me. And so by the end of the seventh day, you'll notonly know all those seven points, but you really get in depthknowledge about them. They're a critical foundation for anythingthat you want to do as an entrepreneur.
MARY: Do you recommend that people do that before theyapproach you as far as becoming partners with you?
FRED: Yeah, oh, yeah. You know, you need to understand whatit's all about. And if somebody wanted to be my partner… Excuse me,that was a lingering allergy cough. But if somebody wants to be mypartner, I would definitely suggest going through those thingsfirst. And you know, one of the things that we did…Idea Pros endedup becoming a drinking out of a firehose. There was just so muchincredible demand. And I only had this one holding solution. Butnow we have a lot of things that are really inexpensive like I havemaster classes on purpose-driven entrepreneurship, we have things…for $1,800, we have a program that will take your idea andcompletely… everything I said about the market research andeverything, will completely dissect that idea. Look at all thesethings you need to be looking at. Give you back a 40-page report onexactly what that market is, how you should exploit it, who yourpersonas are, and how to go out and raise capital and you're goingto need to go further up that food chain. So we do have a whole lotof things. If any of your audience wants to reach me or learnmore…my executive assistant is not in the room because she alwayskills me when I say this, but you can write to me directlyfred@ideapros.com and I'm happy to kind of steer anybody where theyneed to go.
MARY: Yeah, and you can check that out on Fred's website aswell - ideapros.com. Fred, you've talked about the videos a littlebit. Am I mistaken, don't you have a TV show like onYouTube?
FRED: Um, we actually have a TV show coming up. It's not, it'snot out there yet. But, I do have over half a million followers onInstagram and I provide advice on personal developmententrepreneurship every single day. I encourage you to go there.It's official fred cary, C-A-R-Y. And that is… I put my heart intothat. I never have a script, I never have bullet points and neverknow what the heck I'm going to be saying. I'll just start talkingand I'll put it down there but I think you could spend a minute aday on just going and seeing what I'm saying today, it will giveyou a good foundation to be a better person and be a betterleader.
MARY: That's… how important do you think social media is nowfor companies for startups?
FRED: For a startup, well moststartups, it's critical. Your persona is represented digitallynowadays. You don't have a real storefront. You have digitalstorefronts, and everything that you do is measured by what is seenonline whether it's your website, whether it's your blog posts,whether it's your LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook or YouTubechannels. Everything you do is what you're being measured by. Andso if people look at you… Suppose you're a web development companyand you go to your website, your website doesn't look great, or youhave that copyright 2021 on there and instead of 2023. You know,these little things, that's how people would look at you in thereal world before. And so social media, in the sense that it isaddressing your customer base, it's critically important. Youalways want to have what you believe is your persona. It's theclear representation of your company and your belief system isprojected in everything that you do online.
MARY: When you say persona, you're talking aboutbrand?
FRED: Yeah, yeah, your brand. People think your brand is whatyou write down. Your brand is what people, your customers think ofyou. And so you can have, you can say your brand is this or that orwhatever it is and write it on all the walls in your office andmake every employee chant it when they walk in in the morning. Butthat's not your brand. Your brand is how you're perceived by yourpublic, by your audience, by your customers. That's what your brandis. So that's why it's so important - social media and otherwise,every engagement with your audience. It’s really important thatwhat you want your brand to be is projected in such a way that youraudience believes that as well.
MARY: Yeah, I just finished ghost-writing a book for a localbusinessman and so I'm totally stealing this from him.
FRED: Let’s tell his name.
MARY: I'm not sure he wants me to, but I'll ask him first. Buthe says perception is reality. So it's going along with exactlywhat you're saying that how your audience or your customer baseperceives you or the community that you're in perceives you is thereality of the situation.
FRED: Yeah, and you're, you know, no matter what you want thatto be, you're never gonna get unanimity. You're never gonna get100% of people buying into it. I mean, even in what I do, you know,but look at venture capital. Venture capital, 90% of their betsfail.
MARY: Right.
FRED: I'm trying to make my percentages way higher than that.But even so, let's suppose I have a 25% failure rate. That means25% of my clients, my customers, my partners, probably think Fredis…you know, they don't feel that highly of me because their dreamshave not been able to be met. So trying to manage your brandessence is very difficult when you can never make everybody happy.So you really have to make sure that what you're doing affects themost people so that you can curate. A lot of people don't likeApple, but their brand is very, very powerful and their brand… theydo that in everything they do. You know they start with their whyas much greater speakers than I did a really good review on butthey start with their why and everything that they do, you know, atthe end is we just happen to sell iPhones and computers, but that'sthe last part of the statement. They don't lead with that. Theylead with the essence of being different or thinking differently,in creating unusual things. And you can see how powerful theirbrand is because if I told you that, I just heard that tomorrowApple is releasing its first ever electric toothbrush. I wouldn'thave to say another word. Not true at all. But you would know it'sgoing to be sleek. It's going to have Bluetooth, it's going to tellyou whether you're brushing right. It's going to crash and breakinto little pieces as other stuff does. But you're going to knowthe essence of… what this thing…you have it, you're imagining it inyour head because they've done such a great job of creating theirbrand imagery for you. And that's what you need to strivefor.
MARY: Yeah, and that’s branded loyalty. Because Applecustomers are super loyal.
FRED: I argue they’re prisoners. Both of my daughters haveApple and I have Apple stock.
MARY: Well, that's good. I’m an Apple girl all the way. I callmyself gadget girl all the time because I have so many gadgets andmost of them are Apple. And Apple did not pay me for that littleplug there either.
FRED: Nor did they pay me for that toothbrush. If it comesout, you guys are my witnesses.
MARY: If they come up with it, yeah. You heard here firstfolks. Fred’s idea.Fred, what is nextfor you? And maybe Idea Pros, or maybe you want to separate thatinto you personally or Idea Pros.
Fred: Well, with Idea Pros, we still have a long journey aheadof us because as I started this company, previously, we only hadthis kind of flagship product. You know, all in co-founder. Andthere are a whole lot of entrepreneurs who need help at some level.Once you decide to be an entrepreneur, even if you fail miserablyyour first time, and you go back to corporate America, you’re goingto come back out. And so, we want to create this kind of umbrellathat really addresses entrepreneurship from the very nucleus allthe way through larger companies that need strategic consultingadvice. So, they’re a lot of programs, a lot of new solutions, thatwe’re building with Idea Pros, and that’s gonna keep me busy for awhile. We’re out raising capital right now and what hopes to be ourlast round before we think about going public within the nextcouple of years. But so, that’s a big journey, but I think one ofthe big things for me personally is finding a way to balance mylife a little bit. You know, I tell everybody else to do it and Ido spend the first hour of the day or more trying to take care ofme, working out, mediating, things like that. I’m working 10, 12hours a day, working on the weekends, and I gotta find a way tocalm down and relax a little bit. Maybe make, you know, threemonths out of the year working out of Italy.
MARY: Oh, that’s a great idea. I just went to Malta and Iworked from Malta when I was there so I think it’s a fabulousidea.
FRED: Yeah, yeah.
MARY: Well, Fred, thank you so much for this greatconversation. I’ve just thoroughly enjoyed it.
FRED: Thank you. I did as well. And I’m looking forward tocrossing your path again.
MARY: Yeah absolutely, We need to get you to come speak atFurman.
FRED: I would love to do that. I think if you can educatepeople early enough…one of our partners, client partners, actuallythey had double MBAs, from prestigious schools…so she came anddecided to work with us and she said the first six months ofworking with me, she learned more than both of those programstogether, so I’m happy to speak to young people and try to let themknow what they’re getting into and let them know how to deal withthe fires ahead.
MARY: Alright, listeners remember if you or someone you knowis an entrepreneur or just has an idea that they’ve been thinkingabout launching, our Greenville Starts program is a great place tolearn what you need to know and to make some of the connectionsthat you’re gonna need that can help you make your venture happen.The Fall cohort is full though, I will tell you, but you can get onthe list for the Spring cohort and all you have to do is go to theHill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship website and go,I think it’s the very first thing that pops up and put yourself onthat list so you can get into that cohort. We’ve had some fabulouslaunches from that group. That does it for this episode of theClass E Podcast. Remember this is the podcast that’s brought to youthrough a partnership between the Hill Institute for Innovation andEntrepreneurship and the Communication Studies department here atFurman University. Remember you can catch the podcast two ways nowwherever you listen to your podcasts and also we have a brand newYouTube channel where you can watch the podcast. So you can go toYouTube and check that out as well of course, it’s just under theClass E Podcast channel. To make sure that you don’t miss anepisode, make sure that you hit that subscribe button to YouTube orwherever you get your podcasts. This episode and most of ourepisodes are produced by student producers, currently IsabellaMartinez is our student producer. So she will have created thispodcast for you. We want to thank you for tuning in. I am your hostMary Sturgill. Until next time everybody, dream big.
