The Entrepreneurial Rollercoaster: Jason Sherman's Tale of Triumphs and Trials

Hang on to your seats as we take you through the thrilling journey of our guest, the multifaceted Jason Sherman. An award-winning filmmaker, a published author, a tech guru, and a journalist, Jason's entrepreneurial voyage is nothing short of inspirational. He reflects on his transition from the confines of Corporate America to the liberating world of entrepreneurship, driven by his passion for video, creative writing, music, and technology.

Jason dives deep into various life episodes, sharing the thrill of starting a film studio from the ground up and the unique experiences he garnered while transitioning into tech startups. Determined to master every sphere of his interest, Jason embraces tasks he didn’t necessarily love as stepping stones in his career. He also gets candid about the challenges of marketing a product, drawing from personal experiences with his unique video friendship app, Spinnr.

Our conversation with Jason isn't just about tracing his entrepreneurial journey and understanding his mission of building meaningful connections in this digitized world. Through his app, Spinnr, he emphasizes the importance of human interaction and the joy of fostering more profound relationships. This episode is a goldmine of insights for aspiring entrepreneurs, a testament to Jason's experiences, and a guide to maneuvering through the challenging yet rewarding world of entrepreneurship. Tune in, and don't miss out on this incredible ride with Jason Sherman!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:21

Hey guys, ryan Dement from Chasing Financial Freedom podcast. I hope you guys are having a great day. Today on the podcast, we have Jason Sherman. Jason is a successful entrepreneur, award-winning filmmaker, published author, tech startup expert and journalist. He's also been featured by several media outlets, including Wall Street Journal, usa Today, the Verge and ABC News. Jason is fluent in Spanish, is a classical trained violinist and was featured speaker of the Fox Futures TV show Exploration Earth 2050. Jason, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Thanks, man, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 0:58

No, not a problem. So I know it was a little bit of a wait and we had to do some rescheduling and so forth. But before we get into all our talks and going down rabbit holes, tell the listeners a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2: 1:12

Yeah, man, I'm a, like you said, technology expert. I've been doing tech since the 90s the 80s even, really and I kind of saw technology evolve before my eyes and I just always jumped on top of it. Throughout the years I also, as you mentioned, music was a big part of my life I mean there's a keyboard right behind me and also writing, whether it was creative writing, publishing books, as you mentioned, and podcasting is also creative as well. I took a jump into filmmaking in the mid-2000s and started to get pretty good at that and winning awards, and I carved out a nice little kind of career of filmmaking. So nowadays I kind of put all of them together and I do a little bit of video, a little bit of creative writing, music, technology, and all together they kind of really work well. So now I'm kind of an amalgamation of everything I learned over the past 20, 30 years and that's what I do every day.

Speaker 1: 2:17

So how do you melt those all together? What does that turn into?

Speaker 2: 2:21

It turns into not needing to hire as many people to do work for me, because I used to have to find someone to make this song for my commercial. I used to have to find someone to do the video editing for my commercial. I used to have to find someone to write the copy for my blog. I used to have to find someone to make the images for the thumbnails and so on and so forth. And if you pick up skills over the years and you get really good at those skills, you realize that, for example, let's say, you launch a new product or a new business, you're going to need a logo, you're going to need a website, you're going to need copy for your blog or for the website itself. You're going to need good images, you're going to need all sorts of videos and content for social media, et cetera, maybe print ads. And how are you going to do all that?

Speaker 2: 3:07

Most people are like well, I don't know how to do any of that stuff. I have to hire a consultant or hire a company to do that. So that's what it looks like for me is being able to do all that myself. Obviously, I have a great team and I work with a lot of great people in my companies, but that also took time to develop Not only be able to trust people to do the same type of work that I did, but have to teach them how I did the work. And that's where the years come in right 10, 20, 30 years of doing the work. I have a system and a process that works and now I can hand it off to people to do it for me.

Speaker 1: 3:42

That is. I think we all struggle with that. I mean that's entrepreneurship in general. I mean I've got VAs that can do great editing for video, like what we're doing today, and then I have a V that does social media. I mean they all have different skill sets, but I think entrepreneurship changed that for me, because you really had to dig in and figure out what can you do, what can't you do, and then if there's something you're passionate about, go after it. Corporate America because I was not always an entrepreneur didn't teach me that. It taught me how to survive, basically. And entrepreneurship has been a different ride and I think we're going to kind of get into that. But I wanted to kind of ask kind of digress and go back to where we were talking about initially. Excuse me, initially, have you always been an entrepreneur, ever worked in Corporate America?

Speaker 2: 4:34

So you mentioned Corporate America. You were just surviving and I like to say that, yes, I worked in Corporate America. Right after college, I got a job at IBM. I was a computer major, so for seven years I worked at 10 different companies pharmaceutical companies, computer companies, accounting companies, law firms, you name it. I tried each type of corporation and what I discovered was that it wasn't about surviving. It was about making them lots of money with my skills and talents. And I did not like that, Because what I found happened a lot, especially in my last actual job, which was 2004 to 2005,.

Speaker 2: 5:17

Last year, I transformed this fledgling company into an online behemoth that started earning a million dollars a month in sales because of the website I built for them and the online system that I built for them. I trained all their sales reps, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. After a year, I was obsolete. They were making tons of money, they didn't need me and they laid me off. Nice severance package and all that. But I realized why did I spend a year making them millions of dollars and all I get was a crummy paycheck? And that's when I decided I'm never doing that again. And I haven't. I've just looked forward and I've been constantly, constantly building things, trying things, learning things.

Speaker 2: 5:56

But going back to your question, if I was always an entrepreneur, as a kid, even at like eight years old, I was creating a board game or trying to write a book, or make a movie or do something creative. And then, at 12 years old, I was in middle school. I'll never forget this I made my first entrepreneurial profit by bringing music and bracelets back from Europe one summer that I loved and selling it to people there for like four times as much, and I sold out within a month and I made hundreds of dollars. As a 12-year-old, I was so proud I was able to buy a Nintendo and I was able to do all these things with my money and I realized I got to keep doing this. So, yeah, ever since then, that was the catalyst moment for me.

Speaker 1: 6:37

It's a bug, isn't it? Once you get it, you can see that you've got skills and you can continue to move forward and grow. I think the risk reward is there, but it also lends to taking the risk, and I think that's why most people don't jump into entrepreneurship because they're afraid of risk. It's a four-letter word for them and they don't see it as if I fail, I learn, if I succeed, I grow. And it's just one of those mindsets that people just they struggle and I know as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you have the same thing as there's times where we struggle and we're pushed down. We have to get back up, but we also have to grow and try to find ways to get out there, and that's risk.

Speaker 2: 7:22

Yeah, you can't be afraid of it, and I think that's one thing that you're absolutely right. I've I realized that over the past couple decades. I just didn't care about the consequences Because I realized the other side of the fence was working at the corporate you know company again and being miserable and giving them all my money and my time. So I'm like no, no, no, I got to keep taking risks and taking chances to break out of that cycle. I can't go back. And there were moments.

Speaker 2: 7:53

You know, every entrepreneur faces moments in their early years. My early years like After that, you know, layoff and then starting my businesses, I Struggled man like I couldn't pay the bills. Sometimes I was like just getting by week to week, month to month, and then I started realizing that I was doing some things wrong. Of course, those are the mistakes that people are afraid of, but I learned from them and I stopped doing them and then I started to improve and Then get better, and then get better and then find and even still today I find new processes that work better than the previous ones. But now, after so many years, I mean I have everything down to a science.

Speaker 2: 8:35

But that takes time and people have to realize that's the number one thing people have to take home is it takes time. You're not going to be rich overnight. You're not going to be an entrepreneur overnight. And it's not a job, it's a lifestyle. You have to become a certain kind of person. You have to change the way your mentality works and you have to shift the way that you see things. And what you said is right fear man, fear and risk. It's a big problem.

Speaker 1: 8:58

I Love that you talk about. It's a lifestyle and you have to continually Push to get through it and people don't realize all the work and effort that goes into Not just the business but yourself, because you, like you said, you have to evolve. There's so many things that come at you and you have to change and be Adaptable to those items. But then also I Can. I can think of some big times where I failed and I'm on my knees and I'm like how am I gonna get back up? And it's like you got to put one foot on one side and the other foot up on the other, man, and you got to get back up and you got to figure it out.

Speaker 2: 9:37

It's real tough. Yeah, I hear I feel your pain. I had moments like that too, or I literally wanted to just give up and just go get a job because it was easier to just.

Speaker 1: 9:47

It's easier.

Speaker 2: 9:48

It's easier to show up and get a paycheck, you know. But easy, as you know, entrepreneurship is not easy, you know. I, I Relate it to and I don't have any kids, but I always tell people it's similar to raising a child, even though I've never done it. People will disagree with me, fine, but it's similar to raising a child, why? Because I have to create it, I have to nurture it, I have to take care of it, I have to help it grow. Doesn't that sound like a child?

Speaker 1: 10:17

I have to.

Speaker 2: 10:17

I have to then release it into the world and let it do its thing and let people also interact with it. Sounds like a child to me. And then it gets ripped away from me at some point if I sell it or if it, you know, goes defunct and now I don't have the child anymore. So to me it's, and you have to put all your energy into it. And from all my friends who have kids, they all tell me the same thing once they had a kid, their life was over as they knew it and they had to become some other person that was taking care of this entity, this child, and, for me, those businesses that I started. I put my blood, sweat and tears into that.

Speaker 2: 10:50

And the reason why I say it's a lifestyle Is because most people and when I say most, I'm talking like probably 90% of the world's population they don't quite understand the Like, the psychology, the mentality, the physics, everything behind being an entrepreneur. They just can't quite grasp it. And maybe it's, maybe it's an internal thing and the way their brain works or their chemistry or the way they were brought up. But it is very. You know it's grueling, but it's satisfying, it's fulfilling. It can be, you know, exhilarating, it can be depressing. It's so many different emotions all wrapped into one, whereas like a job, it's just one thing you show up, you clock in, you do your work, you get paid, you go home, that's it. You know that's not how entrepreneurship works. You, you're thinking about it 24-7.

Speaker 1: 11:37

Yeah, it keeps you awake and you know you got a drink coffee all day to. You know keep yourself going. But yeah it's. Could we kind of go back to, not kind of. Can we go back to when you started and you left that that internet company? What was your first get what? What did you decide to do once you left? You got laid off or whatever? You got laid off, I'm sorry and you decided okay, I'm going into business for myself. What?

Speaker 2: 12:03

is that first venture look like and I just want to tell you, when I got laid off, I danced around the office and nobody understood why they thought I was crazy. I was dancing around the office because I was so happy because I was gonna get paid. I was gonna get paid to be unemployed, you know. And and I was so excited because, to answer your question, while I was there, I was planning for this, so I knew it was gonna happen eventually. I could. The writing wasn't the wall, I could tell and so I had already started my consulting company two years prior. And the consulting company I wasn't really charging people, I was helping people.

Speaker 2: 12:37

Keep in mind, this is 2003 to five. There was really not a lot of internet stuff going on. This was still pre Social networks and pre smartphones. The iPhone wasn't invented yet. So I really what I did was I.

Speaker 2: 12:49

I Realized that most people I was trying to work with I had to keep driving to their houses to help them with things, whether it was helping them with technology, helping them build a website, helping them build a computer, helping them sell their items on eBay anything really right and I needed a physical location.

Speaker 2: 13:06

So the first thing I did was I bought a house that had a storefront property on the bottom level and I lived in that house while I ran the storefront and the storefront and this and it was the cheapest way to do it and the Storefront allowed me to have people now come to me and it was the smartest decision I made because in that store for about five years that I ran it, I was able to have customers Constantly coming in the door, walk-ins from the signage outside, come in and I was able to build up my other skill sets Filmmaking, music, photography. I was able to start doing a lot of that kind of stuff and journalism and things like that until I was able to open up my own film studio and and and and kind of sell this and I sold the store. I sold it to somebody who wanted to buy it and they and they took it to Harrisburg. So that's really. That was really my first foray into like full-time entrepreneurship, as I took a huge Gamble that paid off.

Speaker 1: 14:04

That's pretty big. I'm guessing this was on the East Coast.

Speaker 2: 14:08

Yeah, I'm in Philadelphia.

Speaker 1: 14:09

Okay, philadelphia. So you were having all those customers come in. So you leave, you find this place, you get the storefront up and going. Can you remember your first customer that walked in?

Speaker 2: 14:22

I wish I could, I had so many. I mean I had thousands. I mean I really had so many customers. I mean these people were coming in for every single possible thing you can think of. The smartest thing I think I did and were again, people might disagree is Because they might say, well, you tried to do too much. Is that I did too much?

Speaker 2: 14:39

I, I, you know I had a consulting office where you can come in and have a consultation about Publishing your book or making a website or getting a custom gaming PC built or, you know, you needed help learning a software. I was doing all that kind of stuff. On the other side, I had a storefront where you could drop off your stuff to sell an eBay, and what I did was I hired local high school kids who needed work and they would run that for me. You know so it was like a lot of hands-off kind of work coming in and I was employing local kids, you know so that's really what I think worked for me really well was I was able to when a customer came in sometimes. Sometimes they were just curious like what was it? Because my signage was really colorful, it was really crazy. So, like I did that on purpose. I was on a very busy street that people were driving home from work every day, so I Think that by having them be curious is where I got a lot of my business.

Speaker 1: 15:33

That Reminds me of a book I read a while ago oh my gosh, get different by Mike Markowitz. I forget his last time. He's the guy that wrote profit first.

Speaker 2: 15:47

Sounds familiar.

Speaker 1: 15:49

Anyhow, he he talks about that and I read that book several years ago and it really says to stand out, you got to get different. And he uses words that end in EST, to stand out, so like best this and and so forth. But that just brought that to my mind. I'm like, oh, that's kind of you're standing out, you're loud and People are seeing you and they walk in so you were helping them with every aspect of their business or whatever they were trying to do. From that point, you sold it. What was your next? Where'd you go next?

Speaker 2: 16:24

So the reason I sold it? Two reasons. One, I felt like I was shackled. I had a chain on, I had a chain on my leg, I was attached to this store and it felt like back in the corporate world where I was. You know. Granted, it was my business, but I am not the kind of person you can have a pizza franchise for 50 years and I'm behind the counter for 50 years running that pizza franchise. That's just not me. I need to be free. And so I sold it. Because someone offered me an amount that I thought was fair. So I was like, okay, I can use this money to now open the studio. That's the first thing I did. I wanted to really start the film studio.

Speaker 2: 16:59

And Because my first movie that I made happened at the same time as this sale roughly. So I was like, okay, I made this movie, it's, it wants some film festivals, it got global distribution, it won awards. I got it. I got to see what this, I gotta see what happens with this. And At the same time, I jumped into the tech startup world. This is 2010, 2010. I released my first movie, I released my first tech startup.

Speaker 2: 17:26

At the same time, roughly, and I realized these are the things that I love to do. The iPhone had just come out, I realized I could start building apps. So I learned mobile app development. I started doing, I started taking my consulting business to the next level. Now it was like, okay, I'm gonna build mobile apps and websites for universities, museums, clients, companies, anybody who needs it. I'm gonna be that company to do that. So that's kind of where I started earning, you know, my living while doing the movies as a passion, which also turned into a career.

Speaker 2: 17:58

And Somewhere in the middle they intersected because in Philly the tech community is very video friendly. They want you to video their tech events and their investor meetups and hackathons and I Somehow, by default, became that guy. I was the guy who they went to to to film Every single possible event you could think of, run by like Comcast and big, big players, you know. And it was great because I'll tell you why. It was good because I was able to pitch my prod, my, my tech startups to all these people, because they knew who I was.

Speaker 2: 18:33

And then I learned a really tough lesson Philadelphia is Unfortunately not a good city to launch a tech startup unless it is B2B. If it is not B2B, you really got to go to California, chicago, texas, new York and the other places where they throw money at the wall and they don't care what it is Although now although nowadays you know it's not that way anymore, but it was that way back then. So I realized I really can't do this in Philly. So I started Bearing out into the New York area, got some funding for a startup and was able to succeed at that startup, which led me to write a book about all my experiences, turning it into a course for universities, turning it into a podcast. Before podcasting was popular and you know really kind of putting everything out there. And and that's where I am today- so, wow, that, that's a lot.

Speaker 1: 19:31

It's a lot to unpack, so can we? Great story, I love it. But now can we? I mean, I know the listeners are gonna want to. They're gonna want to have some Golden nuggets or some. You know those chunks in there. Do you have a couple Points in time where you thought you know, here's where I'm at and this is what I can do and this is where I'm gonna go, and then it kind of went backwards on you and then you got yourself out of it.

Speaker 2: 19:58

Interesting. Yeah, I'm gonna go back to that videography piece Because I wasn't happy doing that. I was doing that as a means to an end. I was doing it because I realized it was my foot in the door that I needed to open. But when I realized it didn't open the doors that I wanted it to open, I felt like I wasted a lot of time. You know, I I mean I was paid for my services, but that kind of money doesn't mean anything. You know, it's the same as getting paid at a job.

Speaker 2: 20:28

So I think the nugget or the piece of information that I could tell people is you do have to do things you don't want to do in order to do the things that you do want to do. It's a really hard lesson to learn and I hate that. It's the way life is. But no one said life is fair. You know it's not. So, yeah, you're not gonna work at the fortune 500 company at a desk every day, but you got to do this other thing that you don't like so much. And that's what I realized. I realized and, by the way, be careful what you wish for, because I kept saying to myself if only I could be the Videographer that gets paid to do this, that in the third. And then I became that person and I'm like, oh wait, I have to sit at these things for one, two hours lugging equipment around, standing there, filming it and then editing it later and then posting it, and then I don't, I just get paid for that and then that's it. It's. You know, for someone else who says that sounds like a great job, can I do that? And I'm like, yeah, you can do it, but I'm a creative. It when you're a creative, you need to be creating and when you're not creating, you're depressed.

Speaker 2: 21:34

And so I realized that this videography thing that got me into a lot of investors and it it helped me become a journalist. That's how? Because what I was doing was I was writing my own articles About these events I was going to, I was taking really professional pictures of these events. I was going to, shooting videos of these events I was going to, and then I was making my own articles on my blog and posting them on the Philadelphia Tech community websites and the forums and they were being read like crazy. So, technically, philly, which is the big tech Journalistic companies funded and everything in Philly they kept reaching out to me said hey, we want you to be a journalist for us. Why are you doing this on your blog? Do it? So I said okay, so they paid me to be a journalist and then I started getting into these high-end Venues and interviewing specific you know entrepreneurs and stuff like that, and that was really cool, because I did one thing I learned about that, and here's why you want to do things that you don't want to do.

Speaker 2: 22:32

In order to do things you want to do is by becoming that journalist. I learned what companies that are publications are looking for in a company. I learned what publications, what kind of information they want. I learned who they say yes to and who they say no to and why. I learned how Pitches come in and how you determine who's worth interviewing. I learned a lot of things about that which, by the way, I started when I no longer was a journalist Maybe, like you know, five years after that I I realized I'm gonna use all this knowledge. I am a journalist. I know how to pitch journalists now and it worked. I was able to get my startups featured on lots of publications, lots of TV news stations live on TV. I was able to get a lot of articles written for, especially one of my startups. So and I still know, I still know how to use that, those techniques. So that's why you want to learn things that may not really fit your skill set but they will benefit you in some way.

Speaker 1: 23:41

Could you share some of those techniques?

Speaker 2: 23:44

Yeah, I can share one in particular, and there's one thing that journalists hate is they hate when you send them an email Pitching your product or your idea or whatever it is You're trying to get them the right about. Just you can't do that. So if you're gonna pitch it a journalist through email, do not do it. Instead, just reach out to them and tell them how much you liked one of their articles and Be very specific as to why you like that article. Tell them what article it is. Maybe you can say hey, I also added a link to it on my blog about this article topic that I wrote that's related to years and I really thought this section in your your article was so perfect that I put it into my blog. Just wanted to let you know. I'd love to pick your brain some time Just something like that and then maybe follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn and everywhere else. Follow them everywhere, like their posts, share your blog Tag the minute, but don't pitch your idea to them. Rule number one is form a relationship with the journalist.

Speaker 1: 24:52

Isn't that kind of sales 101? Marketing 101 is build that relationship from the other side. I like that because have you heard of Harrow? Yes, yeah, so I get there that I'm on their feed because there's some pieces in real estate since we're in the real estate space that I'll write on if I think it's. It's a match. And most of the time when they're asking for specific information, I don't try to pitch them on anything other than if I have a blog post up or I have the knowledge. I'll just say, hey, here's what I have, here's some information, and then refer back to my blog. More times than not they'll respond back and say I like that, can you give me some more now and start going to depth.

Speaker 1: 25:37

That's when the relationship is there and and I like how you equated Don't pitch them. I Equate that to the same thing I have to do on my other side of my business is realtors. Realtors don't want to be pitched on anything whatsoever. So you got to build a relationship and I Do business in states that I don't live in. I live in Arizona and I do business in Kentucky, indiana, tennessee, the Midwest.

Speaker 1: 26:04

Guess what? I got to pick up the phone and call them and talk to them and email them and try to build a rapport with them. And Guys, if you're real to your listening, I'm gonna say this because it's just what it is. Sometimes you guys think that you're on a pedestal and you're not. I mean we're all equal. I mean it's, it's, you just have to be that way and it's like the one biggest thing I can tell you from that process and and maybe you can share on your, on your side, is I've found realtors the most Difficult group of people to get on the phone. But if I text them I can get an answer in like two seconds. Yeah, but if I, if I call them, write to voicemail.

Speaker 2: 26:45

I notice that too and it's funny, but, believe it or not, journalists do like to talk on the phone, really, absolutely, because they want to ask you questions. If they're gonna interview you, they want to ask you some questions first, and then Something that you should always have ready as an entrepreneur, no matter what business you're in, is always have numbers ready, percentages, statistics, data, like 47% of people when they tried my product, they instantly you know Things got better. Or you know 40% of people or 30% of people are having this problem and our solution solves it, or whatever. You know, whatever. Just have those numbers ready, you know, and they want that because they're gonna use it in their article. But they do like to talk on the phone, but you got to get them to that point.

Speaker 1: 27:33

Yeah, you got them, you got to get in there. So I mean that's the same thing with realtors. So, really, going back to you know, interacting, you share the tidbit, but within that tidbit, could we use that for also promoting our business and being better at that? When I say, what I'm trying to refer to is I have an acronym that says ABM always be marketing, because I mean you really have to. I mean your life blood is new clients and you want to continue to bring new clients on and customer services an aspect of it. But you can only grow so much if you just have existing base. You have to always have, you know, new customers coming in. How would you take that approach that you did with journalists? Do you apply that to also to your marketing and acquiring new clients?

Speaker 2: 28:23

So the like, for example, the current startup that I'm running now. It's a video friendship app called spinner and it's consumer based right. So we're targeting consumers using social media paid ads, videos mostly, so there's not a lot of that. But when we reach out to either elected officials Because we're solving the surge in general is loneliness epidemic so we're kind of targeting elected officials that are dealing with mental health yes, we use that kind of approach. When we reach out to journalists who have written articles for every publication about mental health crisis the loneliness epidemic people are friendless after the pandemic we do target them using that approach.

Speaker 2: 29:06

But it's hard, man like I'm not gonna sit here and tell everybody this thing is easy to do. Marketing is extremely difficult and you know, if you're developing a technology product, that's only half the battle. If you're building a prototype of a physical product, it's only half the battle. Marketing is a ridiculously necessary evil that is so difficult to navigate and it constantly changes. Like am I supposed to run a TikTok ad or am I supposed to run a Facebook ad? Am I supposed to do an Instagram story or am I supposed to do a YouTube ad? Am I supposed to pay for Google ads or am I supposed to do a Snapchat Like, what am I supposed to do? And the answer is usually all of the above, and figure out which one works for your product. But it's just not that easy right? It's? Formats change, rules change, ad networks change and it is expensive. If you don't have a lot of money to do marketing, then you have to get really lucky somehow, and getting lucky is not the name of the game when you're an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1: 30:10

No, it is not. That's kind of cool that you're doing that. I had no idea that you're working on an app. It's called Spinner.

Speaker 2: 30:16

Yeah, it's SPI NNR. You can see it at spinnerapp. And yeah, you didn't know because we just launched, maybe six months ago. It's brand new. We just hit 5,000 members last week. So we're growing and people realize that social media destroyed the world. Let's just say what happened here Facebook destroyed the world. Tiktok is not very healthy either, and the only way people were able to meet people during the pandemic if you really think about it entrepreneurs, single people, anybody is through dating apps, and those have been proven to cause 80% of disappointments in people trying to use them. They just don't work and there's a lot of scams and a lot of stuff like that. So basically, what we did was we took the best parts of all the apps that we liked, and we took the best parts of them and left out all the stuff we didn't like about them, and we created what we believe is the next wave of meeting new people in a safe, private way.

Speaker 1: 31:20

That's cool. I will definitely link that in the show notes so people can actually see that. I think that's great. I couldn't agree with you more about social media and what it's done. But it also, on the other side, is inflated entrepreneurship. You have all these guys that are throwing money around and they're rented Rolls Royces, Bentley's or whatever. They're in front of Ferraris and it's not truthful and people think that I'm going to put a TikTok video out. It's going to go viral and I'm going to be a billionaire and it's like really, dude, I'm young. I would say I'm young in my entrepreneur journey. I'm only eight, nine years into it and I would say the first four years, five years, were probably the most roughest. I mean.

Speaker 1: 32:07

Oh yeah absolutely, and same here. Just in the recent years it's gotten a lot better. I also had to deal, you know, we all had to deal with the pandemic, but real estate took a dump during the pandemic and then all of a sudden it's huge, yeah. And then now we're back to headwinds on the mortgage rates side. So that's a whole other story. But no one I just recently started to say I'm going to start sharing that story out there because I was embarrassed in some of it. But now I put it out there and I've started to share more and more of that. And the spin off of this podcast is called Chasing Happiness and that's kind of where that whole story is being played out on is on that side of that podcast, because people truly need to know the truth, because entrepreneurship is not as easy as you think it is and it's what they're showing you on social media is a bunch of BS, absolutely. I hate gurus.

Speaker 2: 32:55

Yes, buy my masterclass for $5,000 for my masterclass and you will be a millionaire in a year and what you know. The sad fact about and by the way.

Speaker 2: 33:04

The sad fact about and, by the way, the reason I wrote my book back in 2016 strap on your boots, I actually wrote it in 2015,. But I published it in 2015,. 16 is because I was so sick and tired of these people writing these books saying you can do this too, and then I would read the book and it would always be the same thing. Well, when I was 19, my uncle left me $100,000 and then I took that money and bought an apartment building and then I made a million dollars and then I was able to buy more properties and then I was able to make $10 million and yada, yada, yada, and I'm like dude, I can't duplicate that. And then the other guy you know, I became a professional poker player and I want a tournament and I want a million dollars. And then I took that and then I built my first business and that business made this much money. Again, I can't do that Like I need. I need someone to tell me something that I can do without these lucky breaks of million dollars that you're getting. So what I ended up having to do was I did the hard work for all of you guys is that I figured out how to do the right moves without the money, and then that's what strap on your boots is. It is a realistic guide that you can duplicate, that you can do page by page. You can follow what I write in there and do the work, and you will have a successful company. Whether or not it succeeds is based on how much work you put in. But I don't ask you to have any money up front. It's just you have to do the hard work to do it. And that's why the universities approached me is I gave them copies. I had connections at different universities from the journalism days and I said hey, check out my book, tell me what you think. Just curious, we want this in our business classes, our entrepreneurship classes. How can we? You know, they just bought like a crap load of copies, gave them to all the students and the next thing they realized was the students were doing well 2017. So in 2018, they approached me, said hey, we want you to do a course. So that's when I did startup essentials.

Speaker 2: 35:08

I taught that for a couple of semesters at various universities for their hackathon timeframe, and it just did so well. They were like this is phenomenal. So then I turned it into an online course and I said, okay, now, everybody online, everybody can do it now. And around the same time I turned it into a podcast strap on your business. So it's like every single. So it was just like this is how you really do things. And I'm not asking anybody for money. I pretty much give everything away for free. Anyway, I never, I've never made a you know an income on any of this stuff. I don't care. That's not why I did it. I did it number one, because people needed help and I was, frankly, I was, tired of helping everybody one by one. I was like I'm going to do it and it just took too long and I'm like now you can just learn it all. Here you go.

Speaker 1: 35:53

Is your book sold on Amazon?

Speaker 2: 35:55

Yeah, it is on Amazon.

Speaker 1: 35:56

Okay, we'll put a link in the show notes so we can get out there. I'm going to go check it out. Do you have an audio book too with it?

Speaker 2: 36:01

I do it's on audible.

Speaker 1: 36:03

Okay, is it? Is it a whisper mode, so you can actually listen and read at the same time? Do you know?

Speaker 2: 36:09

I don't know, I did it, I did it, we'll figure it out.

Speaker 1: 36:11

At some point people were asking me yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:14

Yeah, I ask is because for some reason I got turned on to that concept about a year and a half ago through a buddy of mine that's a podcaster also. He's like have you ever thought about just buying a whisper mode and having the audible version with the book? While you're reading, you hear the voice. I'm like no, I just read. He says do it a couple of times. And all of a sudden you're reading and your comprehension and your attention just goes through the roof and I started the first time like oh no, this is horrible, I can't do it. I tried it through one book and all of a sudden I will not buy a book unless it has whisper mode on it, because now it's just, I can rip through the book as quickly as I can and I will retain it.

Speaker 2: 36:55

I'll be honest with you. I didn't do the audio book at first because I was the book, was kind of already doing well, and so was the course. And then I did the podcast. So I was like I don't need an audiobook. But then at one point, of course, during the pandemic, people were like you really should have an audiobook. So when I released, when I did the audiobook first of all, it's a lot of work to do an audiobook Number one, number two I realized when I was reading the book it didn't, you know, not Like 90% of it was fine, but some parts didn't. You couldn't speak it very well. You had to change it a little bit. You know I'm saying because, yeah, it's a written book versus me talking about something. So so I, if you're doing that, it wouldn't match up unless I really just read it word for word. But I found myself kind of adding little tidbits here and there.

Speaker 1: 37:41

Yeah, a lot of authors do do that where they'll add tidbits in the audible and they'll say, well, this is not in the book because they know it's in whisper mode, and they'll kind of talk about it. Yeah, that's fine, that's yeah cool. We're gonna kind of bring this into a landing in in finish up. But I did have one other question. Sure, of all the things you've done in your journey of entrepreneurship, what would you say the one Moment in time that you're most proud of?

Speaker 2: 38:09

I Mean besides spinner, because I gotta say spinner is pretty amazing right now. I mean we're it's not you.

Speaker 2: 38:16

I think that's pretty cool it's, but it's not gonna be spinner. I'll tell you why. Spinner One thing you'll learn as an entrepreneur. This is another thing people can take home with them. It's very important to know. This is being an entrepreneur and launching a product or a service or a business. It has everything to do. This is legit, everything to do with the right time and the right product.

Speaker 2: 38:42

And met many businesses or products I launched over the past 20, 30 years. They were great, amazing products, but they were just the wrong time. People didn't understand it or they didn't know what it was, or they didn't need it yet. And so a lot of things I I launched or I did it was either too early Like I was way ahead of its time, or too late. I jumped in. I you know. For example, I did an NFT project during the NFT craze and I finished the entire project, which was huge, this big project, and when I, when I launched it did, the market had crashed, so I couldn't do anything. I was like up too late, I should have launched six months earlier, you know. So that was again. But spinner is at the right place at the right time. That the surgeon general declared the latest health crisis is the loneliness epidemic. Here comes a video friendship app. So, yeah, right time. But in terms of the most proud, I'm looking at this award on my wall and one behind me from the governor of Pennsylvania that declared Kings Highway Day in Pennsylvania August 20th to honor my documentary and my nonprofit foundation, the Kings Highway in In 26.

Speaker 2: 39:48

In 2016, I produced this documentary that was picked up by PBS WHY. It was streaming and on those networks and Comcast for 30 million homes. It won a bunch of film festivals it was. It's globally distributed. It had me touring everywhere and speaking at events, doing for movie premieres, and it got me in front of so many people. And if I felt like a real movie star for once in my life and I felt like a real, like a real director, you know, I was on the front page of newspapers every week it was just like, wow, this is what it's like to. And here's the thing I had no idea that was gonna happen, right, I thought I was just doing this movie and then, all of a sudden, it exploded and and I was just thrilled that all of that happened and Everyone still talks about it, people still watch it, and that was my proudest moment was that, that movie and everything that happened after that movie. But spinner is my latest.

Speaker 1: 40:43

Well, you know what? We'll have to have a follow-up on spinner and see how that's going. But yeah, that's a. That's an awesome story. If someone wants to connect with you, where's the best place for them to do so?

Speaker 2: 40:54

I'm pretty active on social networks, so if you, um, hey, add me on spinner, you can add me on LinkedIn, twitter, you know, facebook, instagram, but I am very. I know it's kind of a shameful, shameless plug, but I am very active on spinner because it is a talking app. So if you jump on there and you add me, we can talk a lot more personally. If not, find me on socials and I'll Definitely talk to you there too. My website is Jason Shermanorg, if you want to find all of them there.

Speaker 1: 41:24

That is, we'll link in the show notes also, but we'll put your, we'll put your app in there because we need All the help we can, because people really need to connect with others. It's yep, it's basic human, you know we're, it's at our core.

Speaker 2: 41:38

So basic human interaction. That's what we talk about all the time.

Speaker 1: 41:41

Yeah, so I will check it out myself. Sir, thank you for coming on the show, love the conversation, love your journey, but also what you're doing. You're trying to make a difference and a change in the world, and it's your passion.

Speaker 2: 41:53

Thanks for having me right. This was awesome.

Speaker 1: 41:56

You're welcome.