John SmallMtn (00:00)

Welcome to another episode of Founders Growth. My name is John Hill, AKA Small Mountain. Today I’m joined by Cameron Cushman. Cameron is the founder of Red Sage Innovations, and he has been the long-time community organizer of 1MillionCups here in my hometown of Fort Worth. We’re going to be talking to him about his path of being a founder and also a lot about 1MillionCups, because it’s a very cool organization for entrepreneurs and founders. It really helps bring community and awareness around small business and entrepreneurship. Very excited to have you on the show, Cameron. Can you talk a little bit more about what you’re doing with Red Sage and kind of how it’s going so far?

Cameron (00:36)

Yeah, thanks, John. Thanks so much for having me on. Great to be here with you today. I started Red Sage Innovations back in May of 2025. It was essentially my private consulting effort to continue the work that I’ve been doing to build the entrepreneurial community in Fort Worth, or wherever clients may need my services. I have this really weird and unique background that has enabled me to build entrepreneurial communities not only in the United States, but literally across the world. I’ve got this very unique training that I want to put into practice to help more people innovate, help more people become entrepreneurs, and take technologies to market. That includes working with universities, economic development organizations, and the community—because there are so many great resources in the community of any stripe, of any size, that most people just don’t realize exist.

John SmallMtn (01:26)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (01:31)

We’re kind of moving out of this top-down world where the hierarchy was so important—it’s who works for who, how do you move up the chain, and all that kind of stuff—to a world of more connected networks. Connected networks are so important these days. I want to make sure that I can help connect people into the right network to get them the right connection, the right resource, and the right educational opportunity that they need at the right time in their business as they move their innovation to market, or their idea to market. I want to be that connecting piece between different entities, different people, and different ideas, so that we can maximize our chances for success—and your chances for success as a university, as a startup, as a researcher, whatever that may look like.

John SmallMtn (02:15)

I love that. You know, I’ve lived in Fort Worth my entire life. Until I went into super small business with a business partner, I had no real appreciation for the small business community or the entrepreneurial community that was here. My business partner had been on the path for a great deal longer than I had. He was talking about going out and networking, and I didn’t even know what that meant. When he talked about that, there was a pretty great ecosystem here in Fort Worth, right? This was back in 2012. When you go looking for it, you can find it.

It’s very cool. Everybody that I know who’s been around networking and small business has got some experience with 1MillionCups. It’s so awesome because, to your point, community is so important when you’re going out on your own. It’s super easy to over-isolate yourself. It’s super easy to think that no one gets it, that no one’s going to understand you, and that we’re just going to go build in secret and come back and unveil everything when it’s all big, huge, cool, and flashy. Most of those people spend more time languishing and struggling than they do actually making forward progress. I love that, and I love the idea of trying to take that further and really pushing that idea. There are a lot of digital communities now and that’s really great, but finding your people was a game changer for me and everybody I know here locally that has had some success. It all comes from finding that right kind of community.

Jumping into that a little bit, what do you think really defines a good startup community ecosystem? What are the most important pillars of that if people are going to go out looking for it?

Cameron (04:07)

Well, the first one is an overarching recognition that starting a company is probably the hardest thing most people do in their entire lives. It is not easy to go out on your own. Even if you have all the expertise in the world in your particular issue, or you have all the drive and all the gumption to open that restaurant, solve that problem, or take that research to market, you’re still going to have gaps. You’re still going to have the roller coaster of every startup company ever. You’re going to have to figure out how to smooth out those bumps and how to get through the tough times. You talk to entrepreneurs, and they talk about, “I was at the highest of highs at noon, and then by 5:00, I thought I was going to go out of business.” Sometimes that’s an everyday or every-week occurrence. It is not for the faint of heart.

To find other people who can, A, fill in your gaps—because nobody’s good at everything—but also B, be a cheerleader for you, I think that’s so important in an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Even if they’re not the ones that can help write that check, be the co-founder, or be your first customer, whatever it is that you need at that particular juncture—and you probably need all of those at some point—they can still help you. I think it’s that willingness to help. This is where I sort of have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with Fort Worth in this, because it’s such a helpful community. People show up and they want to help you, and yet we are missing some of the big fundamental pieces, particularly around the funding ecosystem building, that I think Fort Worth really lacks compared to other cities of our size, or other cities that developed and came up in a different way—not necessarily related to population size, just how their city and community developed.

To be able to access that network, fill in your gaps, and find those people… you mentioned it: starting a company is also really lonely. If you can find other people who are in the same boat with you, that can be so valuable to just let you know you’re not crazy, to let you know you’re normal, and to have people that are cheering you on along the way. “I’m not the only one that’s having this particular struggle right now. I just met a guy or a gal who’s struggling with the exact same thing, and I don’t feel so crazy anymore.”

John SmallMtn (06:07)

Yeah, exactly. “I don’t feel so crazy anymore. I’m not the only person going through these struggles.” That’s such a big part of the journey, because it’s super easy to get… One of my favorite lines is: “A founder’s vision is always a little dirty; the lane’s too wide.” We all think we’re super special, no one else has ever done anything like this, and no one else is going to get it. It’s not helpful at all.

So, one of the things that I think is really cool about 1MillionCups specifically is that it’s not just a philosophical conversation. It starts with a pitch. You have to get up in front of a group of people and pitch your idea or your startup like you would be going out for investors. Being a guy who’s really focused on helping people find great ways to practice for their sales conversations, that really floored me that it was so focused around that. There are a lot of very hard rules around how you pitch in that situation. Can you give a quick rundown of what those boundaries are, so anyone who might be thinking about trying out 1MillionCups can have an inside lane?

Cameron (07:31)

Yes, and the first thing I’ll start with is we’ve got to get the language right here: It is not a pitch at 1MillionCups. That indicates you’re presenting for money, you’re trying to go on Shark Tank, or you are trying to get something out of it. Now, of course, you get lots of things out of a presentation, but we use the word “presentation” because, A, we don’t want the SEC to show up and say that we’re pitching to a room full of non-accredited investors. B, as far as the Kauffman Foundation goes, it’s an educational program.

John SmallMtn (07:40)

Mmm. Yeah, that’s fair.

Cameron (07:59)

You are presenting your business, but you’re also learning. Not just the presenter or the person asking the question—I’ve been going to 1MillionCups for 12 or 13 years now, and I’ve never been to one where I didn’t learn something. You’re learning about an industry that you didn’t know about, you’re learning about a problem in the world that you didn’t know existed, or you’re seeing a new solution. Even when the most recent ones these days have been a lot about AI or a lot about mental health…

John SmallMtn (08:10)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (08:25)

…those are important things, but everybody comes at it from a little bit of a different way.

As far as what goes into a good presentation: We typically in Fort Worth have two startups every week. They get six minutes to present. There’s no magic to the six minutes—that’s just where we felt like it worked really well. Five felt a little too short; seven, eight, or 10 felt a little too long. So we ended up at about six minutes. Then you take 20 minutes of Q&A from essentially a live studio audience. It’s whoever shows up from your community, and you never know who that’s going to be. It might be that investor that you’re looking for, it might be that co-founder, or it might just be a group of people who are interested to hear what you’re working on. They can help just as much as the person with the deep pockets or the deep technological expertise.

First off, I’d say you’ve got to make sure that everybody understands what it is you’re doing. Just use simple terms. Sometimes these tech nerds, researchers, or scientists get up there and they use all the jargon. It’s like, no—

John SmallMtn (09:03)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (09:22)

…you’ve got to dumb it down so that I can understand it. I’m not a very smart individual myself, so if I can understand it, then I think you’re probably doing okay. Just keep in mind those jargon terms—every industry has them, every technology has them. You can use those, just make sure that you define them.

The second thing is make sure that you work on the problem. Tell me what the problem is. Too many entrepreneurs jump in and say, “My solution is this, my solution is this.” Great, but fall in love with the problem. Describe the problem to me first, and make sure you understand the problem you’re solving really, really well before you tell me what your solution is.

Third thing: I can’t tell you how many people get up there, present, and just forget to tell us how they’re going to make money. If you’re a nonprofit, that’s one thing. Nonprofits can still make money, and they probably should think about some sort of a revenue stream in some form or fashion. But people will finish their whole presentation and not tell me how they’re going to make money. Now, in certain industries, that’s kind of obvious, right? If I’m opening a restaurant, I’m going to serve some sort of food or beverage to you, and you’re going to pay me money for it. But in other places, it’s really hard to figure out how the company’s actually going to make money. That can be a huge miss if companies don’t at least describe that part of it.

I would also say the next thing is: Why are you the person to solve this problem? We talk a lot in startup culture about that “unfair advantage.” “I worked at Apple, so I understand everything there is to know about the iPhone.” Okay, that’s a really cool unfair advantage. It doesn’t have to be slick and cool like that. It could be, “My dad owned a restaurant, and I know everything there is to know about how to run a Mexican food restaurant,” or whatever it is you’re trying to do. What is your unfair advantage, and how are you going to leverage that into what it is that you want to start?

Those are just some basic tips that I see over and over again:

1. Make sure you tell me what you’re doing and use layman’s terms so I can understand it. If you want to use jargon, fine, just make sure you define those terms.
2. Be sure and tell me your problem. What are you actually solving?
3. Tell me how you’re going to make money, or at least provide for the business.
4. What is your unfair advantage?

John SmallMtn (11:21)

I love that. I’m just thinking about the time and everything. How many people push back around the idea that it needs to be six minutes? Do you get a lot of, “Well, we can’t possibly shoehorn all of our value into six minutes”? Do you get a lot of pushback, or do people get excited about the opportunity and are willing to try and figure it out?

Cameron (11:57)

Yeah, I don’t have much sympathy for that, because the point of the exercise is to fit it into six minutes. You can talk about your business probably for hours; nobody wants to hear you talk about it for an hour. But also, this is not an elevator pitch situation where you only have 90 seconds to tell the guy you’re on the elevator with what you’re working on. Part of this is you have to talk about it in an efficient kind of way. You can only use so many slides. You can only describe the problem in so much detail. You have to figure out what’s important. I think that’s a huge part of the exercise—getting it down to those bite-sized chunks, not going too deep on any one thing, and yet covering the waterfront.

The other thing you can do is save some for the Q&A. Let’s say I can only fit 10 slides into my six-minute presentation, but you know what? I’m going to have slide 11, 12, 13, and 14 just in case I get a question about it. Or do like a politician does and say, “That’s a great question, but here’s what I’d also like to address.” Use your liberty and your time in the Q&A to bring up some things that maybe you didn’t have time for.

The other thing that evolved over time in 1MillionCups is the last question we always ask: “What can we, the 1MillionCups community in [insert city name here]—what can we in Fort Worth do to help you in your startup?” You can already bake that question in and know that it is coming. That gives you a little bit of extra time at the end of the Q&A to say, “Here’s what I really need. I really need an investment, I really need a co-founder, I really need a space, or I really need a customer.” You can leverage the Q&A time to help you with something that you don’t get into that initial six-minute presentation.

John SmallMtn (13:38)

That is awesome. I love the idea about using the time well and being prepared, but I love the idea of, “How can we help you?” As a general question, not to put you on the spot, how many 1MillionCups communities are there here in the United States?

Cameron (14:03)

It varies because it’s all volunteer-driven. There’s not a payroll for this because we’re all volunteers, except for a few staff in Kansas City at the Kauffman Foundation where it started in 2012. I can confidently say there are over 100 in the United States. It has also gone international. The concept kind of caught on and has gone international. They had to change the branding, so it’s called Startup Huddle internationally, but the idea and concept are the same. It’s run through a different organization, but it’s in about 60 international cities. They’re literally all over the world.

It’s been really fun to see this thing grow. If your audience is local, there’s one in Arlington, one in North Richland Hills, one in Dallas, one in Frisco, and one in Plano. I tell people to use that as a go-to-market strategy. We’ve had companies that have literally used 1MillionCups as a ready-made audience to introduce themselves, their idea, and their company to the community.

There’s one guy—I think he holds the record—who has presented in like 62 different cities. Now, some of those were virtual, but a lot of those he’s been to in person. I was on with a gal just a week or two ago who has been to like 42 cities. The way she does it is she figures out, “Hey, I’m going to be in Dallas-Fort Worth for a conference. I’m going to make sure I go a little bit early or stay a day late, and I’m going to make sure I hit a 1MillionCups while I’m there. I’m going to apply a few months in advance. This is the only date I’m going to be there, so you can kind of take it or leave it.”

I love that because they get the opportunity to get in front of an audience. It may only be 10 or 12 people, but it might be 40 or 50 people on that particular day that would never have heard about their product or service had they not shown up at a 1MillionCups. Then you never know where it leads. “Hey, do you have lunch plans? I’d really like for you to meet so-and-so. He would love your idea and would love to write you a check. Can you stick around, or can we schedule a follow-up call?”

I always tell people: Go to one and see if you like it. If you do like it, go present. It’s always free to present and free to attend. If you find value in that, then go apply for the rest of them in your neighborhood, in your region, or wherever you’re going to be on the road. See if there’s a 1MillionCups and use that to your advantage.

John SmallMtn (15:58)

That’s a huge nugget, Cameron. The fact that it is so prevalent, there are so many of them, and it’s kind of an open call… Because if you’re doing something like this, there is always a need to have solid people come in and present. The fact that it’s open means it’s literally your game to lose or not try out. That’s fascinating.

After 40 cities, can you imagine how tight that person is at talking about what they’re doing? It’s very easy to get a little nervous, overtalk the point, or not remember all your talking points. After 40, I would imagine that person has got it very much dialed in. That is awesome. Holy smokes! Now I kind of want to go do some traveling and check out some of the other ones. That is cool.

Cameron (17:08)

There you go. It always frustrates me—and I just don’t understand the psychology of it—there’s a whole school of people who are like, “I’m too nervous to get in front of people. I don’t want to present.” Okay, then you’re not serious, because you should be wanting to talk about your business at every chance you get. Especially if it’s free and it’s people who are going to be friendly.

One thing I didn’t mention: We all love Shark Tank, and the point of Shark Tank is that the sharks create the drama by tearing into the startup or picking apart their business idea. At 1MillionCups, we say it’s like Shark Tank, except it’s friendly. We call it a “dolphin tank,” because everybody wants to swim with dolphins; not everybody wants to swim with sharks. There’s really no downside to you presenting, and yet people get so nervous. “I could never do that. I don’t know how to use PowerPoint.” I’m like, “My gosh, you don’t even have to have PowerPoint. Just come tell me what you’re working on, give me your flyer, whatever—it doesn’t matter.”

They’ve kind of changed the saying, but my dad always used to say, “Practice makes perfect.” The more you practice, the better off your pitch is going to be every time. This is the beauty of a 1MillionCups presentation: Somebody in the back room will say—and hopefully respectfully in a dolphin tank kind of way—”I didn’t understand slide seven. Can you help me understand that?” Or, “Can you define that term again?” If you’re a cognizant entrepreneur and you’re trying to maximize that interaction, you’re telling yourself, “Okay, what did that individual not understand about slide seven? How can I make that better for the next presentation? How can I not get that question again?” Because you’ve explained it better, the slide looks better, the chart is easier to read, or whatever it is.

The more you get in front of an audience, the more of that feedback you get. You’re right: the better off you’re going to be. Hopefully, you’re improving every time you present, every time you talk about your company, and every time you take that Q&A—you’re getting better and better.

There’s one other thing that I think is super important to this: 1MillionCups is a great place to go in and make your mistakes. This is where you’re going to trip coming out of the blocks, because we’re going to be a friendly community and there’s no investment on the line. There’s no potential future sale on the line. It’s just a chance to practice in front of a friendly group of people. If you totally screw it up—and boy, I’ve seen some people absolutely get cold feet and screw it up—that’s great, because you’ve gotten that one out of the way. I’d much rather you do that in front of a 1MillionCups group of supportive folks than in a venture capitalist’s office, a banker’s office, or with the CEO of X company who would be your ideal target customer. You want to get those reps in so that you can be really prepared for those kind of meetings when they come in the future of your business.

John SmallMtn (19:38)

Yeah, absolutely. Kind of backing up a little bit: In your past role, you were talking about how Fort Worth is missing funding and stuff like this, but we also have a community here in Fort Worth called Cowtown Angels that does some investments. You were on top of that in your old role. If a founder is thinking about bootstrapping or doing their own thing versus going down the road of investment, what do they need to be thinking about? What do they need to keep top of mind, and how does that influence their decision one way or the other?

Cameron (20:31)

Great question. I just want to dispel a myth right off the bat: Very few startups actually go raise that kind of capital, either angel capital or venture capital. We have been wooed by this myth of Silicon Valley that everybody’s got to go raise money. “If you don’t raise venture capital money, you suck and you’re never going to go anywhere.” Yet every time you do that, you’re giving away a slice of the company—either an equity stake or you’re taking on debt. You’re changing the profile of the company and giving up less ownership for yourself.

If you can bootstrap it—which, just to define a term, bootstrapping is where you don’t take any outside investment, you just cash flow it and use the money that you make to continue growing your business—if you can bootstrap it, that is almost always the best way to go.

However, if you’re in certain industries like tech, where anybody can copy you, but you’ve got to be first to market and get a million users or whatever your target is, you’re going to need to dump a bunch of money into marketing, product development, or whatever it is. You’re going to need that outside capital because it’s a race.

The other industry I would say that requires a lot of outside capital is anything involving biotech, particularly around pharma. If you’re talking about FDA approval or it’s a medical device and you’ve got to test it on humans before you can sell it, that requires a lot of money and a lot of time. It’s 10 years before a drug will hit the market, and that’s a good thing—we want to make sure that it’s safe—but boy, it sure does cost a whole lot of money to get those clinical trials going, or whatever testing you’ve got to do to make sure that it’s safe.

If you fall into one of those categories, you may have to raise money; that may be the only way that you can do it. But there are also a lot of other ways you can do it. Look at a 7(a) loan from the SBA. Banks typically love to loan to small businesses, especially the right kind of small businesses—those that you can collateralize, like a restaurant, a retail shop, or a product. You can walk in with, “I have an order for a thousand of my widgets,” and they’ll loan you money on that sometimes before you’ve even made them yet.

There are a lot of ways that you can finance your company, but bootstrapping is typically the best way to do it.

You asked specifically about Cowtown Angels. Yes, we have several angel groups in town and throughout the country. Some companies make a point of going to raise angel capital. It tends to be pretty early stage. They call them “angels,” but they’re typically just retired people or people that have made a decent amount of money and want to invest in startup companies. Now, it’s highly risky, but the hope is that they get really good returns out of it.

Typically, you’ll go present to an angel group. They tend to meet in groups of 20, 30, or 50, depending on how big the group is. They find strength and de-risking in having multiple people in the room hearing the same pitches. In this case, it really is a pitch, because you’re actually pitching for investment. A lot of times, you might find one angel that really likes your deal, and he’ll say, “Yes, I’ll write you a $100,000 check” or a $200,000 check. What typically happens, though, is it’s 10 guys or girls writing $10,000 checks to get to that $100,000 investment. It spreads the risk around, but it also puts more people on your cap table—your capitalization table, which is who owns your business. You also have more investors you have to deal with in case you get to a point where you’re asking, “Should I sell the company or not sell the company? Should I go down path A or path B?” You have to ask your shareholders. At that point, it does get a little bit more complicated.

As long as you understand some of those basics, angel capital can be a great way to go for the right kind of businesses. If you think that’s what you need, the other question you have to ask yourself is: “What am I going to actually spend that money on?” People say, “Oh, I need to raise a million dollars.” Okay, what for? What do you need a million dollars for? “Well, I have to buy this machine.” Okay, if you’ve got to buy a thing that’s going to help you, great, but is there a way you could rent that machine? Is there a way you could use some extra time after hours in a lab, at a factory, or whatever it is that you need? There are other questions you’ve got to ask yourself.

The other thing that drives me bonkers is when people wake up with this idea: “My gosh, I’ve got the best idea for a company. I’ve got to go raise a million dollars. I’ve got to go hit the venture investors.” No, you don’t. You’ve got about 17 steps you probably need to take before you get to that point. You’ve got to validate the concept, prove it’ll work, find some initial customers, and do a whole bunch of things before you even really need that venture money. Once you decide you do need it, then you’ve got to figure out what you’re actually going to spend it on.

John SmallMtn (00:25:10)

Yeah, I think, man, I’m thinking back to before I really worked in this space, and I had such weird views on what entrepreneurship was and the idea of getting investors and things like this. But that idea that it’s probably not going to be one person writing a check for $100,000, it’s going to be a bunch of people writing $10,000 checks—that has the potential to put a lot of cooks in the kitchen.

Just hearing that makes me a little nervous as far as managing all those relationships and making sure that everyone’s aligned with the right kind of vision and stuff like that. So very, very interesting.

Cameron (00:25:46)

Well, and it works both ways, because you may want those people on your cap table. Go back to Shark Tank: People want to do a deal with Mark Cuban because they know he’s a really successful businessman. They want to do a deal with Mr. Wonderful because he’s really good at specific industry segments. You want someone like that because they can help open doors for you that you could probably never open for yourself. But then you have Mr. Wonderful breathing down your neck. You have Mark Cuban calling and saying,

John SmallMtn (00:25:51)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:26:14)

“Hey buddy, I saw last week that you didn’t grow as fast. You need to do better,” or, “How can I help?”—or whatever that conversation looks like. So it’s a two-way street, and you’ve just got to understand what you’re actually getting into before you jump in and start taking other people’s money.

John SmallMtn (00:26:23)

Yeah. One thing that I’ve heard from someone I was networking with—I met a guy who had done the venture thing, put himself out there as a venture capitalist after he’d grown a thing and sold it, and stuff like this—and he was talking about how most people don’t really have the mindset. Because it is a big gamble, to your point that you said a second ago.

People love the idea of growth on their money and stuff like that. Timeline-wise, it always takes twice as long as we’re planning for, and all these other mantras that are very popular in our space. What should someone be thinking about when they’re going down that path? How do they avoid the short-term thinkers, the people who aren’t really able to handle that risk? How can they make sure that they’re partnering with the right people?

Cameron (00:27:26)

Yeah, great question. So I’ll sort of start at the top and then end up at the bottom, so to speak. There’s a Harvard professor named Noam Wasserman who wrote a book called The Founder’s Dilemmas probably 15 or 20 years ago. He interviewed a bunch of founders and boiled it down to a bunch of different things. One of the ways I heard him present one time—I think it’s so valuable—is he said if you’re going to go down this high-growth, venture-backed kind of path,

John SmallMtn (00:27:30)

Okay. Mmm.

Cameron (00:27:55)

he said you have to decide at some point—it’s probably not initially, but it’s a good question to ask yourself—”Do I want to be rich, or do I want to be king?” It is very rare that you can be both. Now, Mark Zuckerberg is probably both. Elon Musk is probably both. But it’s very rare that you can do both, because there will be a time where you have to make really tough decisions that could include you stepping away from the company or selling the company because you want to be rich. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? That’s capitalism as a whole. If you can grow something

John SmallMtn (00:28:05)

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:28:25)

that has value and solves a real problem, go for it. Make money on it; you absolutely should. That’s why we do this, right? Or you can be king. You can have all the power: “I’m never going to step down as the CEO. I’m never going to make those tough decisions to maximize shareholder value.” However you want to say it, “I want the power.” I think you have to decide fairly early on: Do I want to be rich, or do I want to be king?

Let me take it all the way back to the beginning.

John SmallMtn (00:28:29)

Mm-hmm. I love that distinction.

Cameron (00:28:50)

One of my favorite people in the entrepreneurial community is a guy named Gary Schoeniger, and he has boiled this down to this mindset of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and how to think like an entrepreneur. He’s written several books on the subject, and I’d highly recommend both of them. It’s not necessarily about whether I want to be rich or king, or whether I need to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or anything like that. His point is just

go into the world thinking like an entrepreneur: What are the problems that I see in my everyday life that I might be able to solve? He even takes it down to how you are raising your children. What’s the conversation around the dinner table? “Hey kids, did anyone see a problem in the world today that bothered them, or that they think they could solve in a unique way?” It’s literally that easy to begin to think like an entrepreneur.

Gary has tons of different examples of somebody who was the least entrepreneurial person you could probably imagine.

John SmallMtn (00:29:27)

Mmm, yeah.

Cameron (00:29:50)

One story he likes to tell is about a sanitation worker. I think he was in Albuquerque—a low-level guy driving a trash truck, or whatever it was that he did working for the city. Cities are not known for being very entrepreneurial. He has an idea that he thinks could actually save the city some money on a specific process in the sanitation world. He presents it to his boss after he takes some of this entrepreneurial mindset education, and turns out his boss really likes it,

John SmallMtn (00:29:59)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:30:16)

and they implement it, and it saves the city millions of dollars. It was all just because this guy saw a problem. He began to think about a solution that could help not only him, but also everybody in the city, his boss, the sanitation department, the environment, you name it. He had the gumption and the bravery to sort of put it forward, and it turned into a real thing.

So it doesn’t have to be these grand visions. It doesn’t have to be “I’m going to solve climate change” or “I’m going to become the next Facebook.”

John SmallMtn (00:30:42)

Yeah.

Cameron (00:30:46)

You opening a restaurant that serves a new kind of food and employs 10 people is hugely valuable for your community. But someone has to take that risk. Someone has to think like an entrepreneur. Someone has to develop that mindset. And it may not be you. You may have the idea, but you know the person who could actually become the entrepreneur. Maybe that’s how you exercise that muscle—by sharing that idea with someone that you think could take it to market, not necessarily doing it yourself. Not everybody’s cut out to be an entrepreneur. It’s very hard.

John SmallMtn (00:30:52)

Yeah. Yeah.

Cameron (00:31:14)

As I said a couple of minutes ago, it’s probably the hardest thing most people do in their entire lives.

John SmallMtn (00:31:20)

Yeah, for sure. Man, so much value just in the first couple of minutes of this, right? Just trying to make sure that you’re working with the end in mind. A mentor said that line to me and I think about it all the time.

Now, after all this time of being around 1MillionCups, being around the angel groups, and being around all these entrepreneurs… One of the things we were talking about before we hit record was still the difficulty of going out on your own, right? It’s easier to help other people than it is to help yourself. So, going out on your own as a founder, what have been the struggles for you, the hard parts for you? Does anything come to mind as, “I was really not expecting to struggle with this”?

Cameron (00:32:11)

Yeah. So I have recently jumped into the pool with both feet starting my own company, and I had a former boss who liked to say it’s like eating your own dog food, right? I’m eating my own dog food on a daily basis. There are parts of what I’m doing now at Red Sage Innovations that I kind of know what to do. I know where to find the people that I want to target. I don’t always have the right messaging, but I’m working on that. The words come pretty easily to me.

John SmallMtn (00:32:19)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:32:41)

But like anybody else in the world, there are parts that I know I’m not good at, and I hope I’m self-aware enough to know those. I think I am, after doing this kind of work for a long time.

I’ll give you two quick examples. One is how to track everything on the backend—your expenses, your mileage, your driving. I drive to a lot of meetings, and I should be getting credit for that. The federal government says that I get credit for that as a small business owner. Well, I wasn’t sure how to do that. I wasn’t sure which technology I should use. I’m terrible at spreadsheets, so I was like, I’m not going to do this on my own.

So I put it out on my LinkedIn and I just said, “Hey entrepreneurial community, I don’t care who: How do you track your mileage? Because I’m not good at this, I’ve never done this before. How do I track my mileage so I can make sure I’m getting every dollar back from the federal government that they want me to have?” I’m not trying to cheat the government here; they have told me I can do this.

John SmallMtn (00:33:37)

Yeah.

Cameron (00:33:41)

Within a few minutes, I get 15 responses: “I like this platform,” “I like this platform.” I looked at them and maybe eight people recommended the same one, and a couple of people recommended a different one. I was like, “Great, that’s all I need.” Boom—downloaded it on my phone. It has been an absolute game changer. It shows you exactly how much money you’re saving every time you take a drive, and you can classify it as personal because I took my kid to school, or you’re doing it as business. It was just a really easy, simple way that I was able to leverage the community to solve a real problem that I had.

John SmallMtn (00:33:52)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. That is cool. Can you share which solution you ended up working with?

Cameron (00:34:13)

Yeah, it’s called MileIQ, and I highly recommend it. Yeah, it’s a game changer. It kind of automatically does it in the background as long as you sit there every few days and tell it, “No, that was personal,” “Yep, that’s business.” It really adds up, and it’s just a little thing that can become a big thing. If you’re not taking advantage of it, shame on you, and let the technology do the work for you. You’re a busy entrepreneur, you’ve got a thousand things you’re worried about, so let the technology work for you.

The second thing I would say

John SmallMtn (00:34:15)

I use the same one. Yeah, game changer. Absolutely.

Cameron (00:34:42)

as far as eating your own dog food is: I’m not good at the financial piece. How do I make sure I’m paying my taxes? How do I make sure I’m tracking these expenses the right way? How do I pay subcontractors? These are silly little things that can have a huge impact, and frankly, can get you in a whole lot of trouble if you aren’t good at it, right?

So I had a call just this week with the gal that had done my taxes in the past, and I was asking her very basic questions:

John SmallMtn (00:34:48)

Okay. Yeah.

Cameron (00:35:11)

“How should I think about this?” “You can do this, you can do that. I would think of it like this.” It was hugely beneficial to me because that’s not my expertise. I don’t like doing that kind of stuff, but I know it’s an important part of the business, and so you have to kind of delve into what you’re not good at.

So, A, being self-aware to know that you’re not good at it; B, finding someone who is good at it that can help you with it; and C, knowing where you need to pay for services versus doing it yourself. In this case,

John SmallMtn (00:35:27)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm.

Cameron (00:35:39)

she’s an expert at this. I’m more than happy to pay her and write her a check to, A, keep me out of jail; B, keep me from getting those terrible letters from the IRS; and C, just give me the peace of mind to know that I’m legal and doing things in the right way, because this is not my strength.

If you flip it around, she would probably say, “Well, I’m not good at PowerPoint presentations.” Good, that’s something I’m good at, right? “I’m not good at doing a podcast.” Great, I’m good at doing a podcast; I could help you with that.

John SmallMtn (00:35:45)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:36:06)

That’s what I love about this community of entrepreneurs—it’s always a way that we can try to help each other. The MileIQ example, right? People jumped right in: “This is the one I like. I tried five of them; this is the one I like.” That was so valuable for me and so helpful.

John SmallMtn (00:36:18)

Yeah, I love that. How do you get better at isolating the things that you should be offloading and delegating versus the things that you should be trying to figure out and know so that you can do it yourself? How does that work for Cameron specifically?

Cameron (00:36:38)

That is a great question. I don’t know that I have mastered that yet. It is a daily struggle, because there are times where I just love talking to people and helping people, and 90% of the time that doesn’t give me any benefit; that doesn’t pay me, right? But I like doing it.

Going back to the previous example, there’s a big writing project that I’m working on that we’ll talk about in a minute, and I found myself… Instead of working on the writing project—words are my jam—

John SmallMtn (00:36:42)

Same, honestly, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cameron (00:37:07)

I was excited to work on the project, and just for whatever reason, I couldn’t get going on it. So what did I do? I started tracking my mileage on a spreadsheet before I started using MileIQ. I was like, man, this tells me that there’s something going on—that today is just not a good writing day for me. Because if I’m picking this task, which was one of my least favorite tasks, then today’s just not the day I’m going to write. So I’ve got to find a way to make up for it later in the week, over the weekend, tonight, or whatever,

John SmallMtn (00:37:11)

Mm. Yeah.

Cameron (00:37:32)

when maybe I’m more in that mood or more in that vein. Because if I’m doing this task that I really, really don’t like, that tells me that my brain is just not in the right spot to do the work that I probably need to be doing that has way higher value. And yet somehow it scares me today, I’m not in the mood, or I’m not feeling creative.

John SmallMtn (00:37:32)

Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah. One of the biggest lessons I learned from my sales coach way back before I ever did any of these things was the concept of avoidance and reluctance, right? Whenever I was writing my book—my wife is my editor—I finished the rough draft of it and we’re working through it and everything, and then she comes up with a polished version. She goes, “Okay, I need you to read this.”

After years of

Cameron (00:38:00)

Yeah, that’s right.

John SmallMtn (00:38:21)

journaling, trying to be very reflective, owning my avoidance triggers and things that come easily—and some things are just tough—I read three other sales books that had been on my shelves for years, but now it felt super important! It’s just weird how you can even be familiar with the concept and not really recognize that you’re being avoidant of the situation.

Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art—I wish I’d read that back when I was still trying to work on my first book, because it talks a lot about resistance, the difference between a professional and a hobbyist, and everything. I was reading that book a couple of years ago after I’d put out my book, and I was like, “Where was this?” It was there; I just didn’t go looking for it. I thought it was going to be fine and I wasn’t going to have any issues. But three other books later, she had to call me out. She was like, “Hey, when are you going to read this? We have a goal, we’re trying to get this out.” I was like, “I’m going to get to it.” Then I just realized I was hiding for largely unfounded reasons. So I had to have a conversation with myself, bring myself back to the path, and get it all done.

Let’s talk a little…

Cameron (00:39:37)

Well, there’s fear and vulnerability. There’s fear and imposter syndrome. There’s fear and “I’m not good enough.” If you’re going to be an entrepreneur, you’re going to struggle with that. I’ll tell you right now, everybody struggles with that. But if you want to be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to find mental ways, physical ways, or ways to get around that, because everybody struggles with it. It can be absolutely incapacitating if you let it control you, if you let it own you.

This is where having a strong entrepreneurial mindset can really help, because it’s like, “No,

John SmallMtn (00:39:42)

Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cameron (00:40:06)

I can do this. I am the person to bring this thing to market. I am uniquely trained, I have the unique experience, I have the unique vision.” You have to constantly remind yourself in that sort of self-talk, cheerleader kind of way. But then you also do need to hear it from others sometimes. Your wife was probably encouraging to you at the same time. She was loving—maybe it felt harsh or firm at some point, but you do need that from other people as well to just keep you going, because

John SmallMtn (00:40:11)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Cameron (00:40:35)

it’s too easy to just fall into the trap of, “I can’t do it,” or “That setback’s going to kill the business.” Sometimes that does happen, but the one thing I would say about most successful entrepreneurs is they just persist. They just persevere. They won’t go away. They won’t give up the dream; they just keep going. It’s kind of like riding a bike: If you stop pedaling, you fall off. So you’ve just got to keep pedaling. Even if you’re not going in the right direction, even if you’re not pedaling fast, once you stop pedaling, you’re going to fall off. So just keep going. Just keep pedaling.

John SmallMtn (00:40:51)

Yeah. Yeah. I’ve actually written about that concept of “just keep pedaling”—don’t overthink the whole thing, just stay in motion. It’s been very helpful to me on my path here, because it’s easy for me to start thinking about the big, huge thing, and I’m not where I want to be, and how are we going to get there? I can push myself into some unhelpful mindsets, but if I can just think about, “Okay, what is next, and what is next, and how does that relate to the whole?” I can be pretty consistent and stay in motion.

Talking specifically about the book thing, because you come from presenting, messaging, marketing, and things like this: What has been the biggest challenge for you around the book so far?

Cameron (00:41:50)

Well, I’m not even sure I really mentioned the book. Not only have I led 1MillionCups in Fort Worth for a long time since the summer or fall of 2013, I was also the co-founder in Kansas City when it very first began and we kind of hatched this initial idea. I’ll keep a super long story short, but it seemed to me over the summer, after visiting the Kauffman Foundation and interacting with other volunteer organizers from around the country, that the origin story of 1MillionCups had largely been lost.

John SmallMtn (00:41:58)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:42:19)

I thought it was a story that really needed to be told. I shouldn’t be surprised by that, because there are plenty of volunteer organizers across the country who work on it all the time, and they come and go because it’s a volunteer gig. But I thought it was very important that the 1MillionCups origin story be told for a whole lot of reasons.

So, yes, I am writing a book that’s going to talk about the origin story of 1MillionCups. It’s going to share some stories from people whose lives have absolutely been changed by the program—by their ability to present and get feedback from a live studio audience. I also think there are some interesting takeaways about what it takes to build a movement that we learned in entrepreneurship.

One way to read the fact that 1MillionCups even still exists… I’m the most surprised person that it even still exists and has survived a global pandemic, multiple leadership changes at the Kauffman Foundation, and volunteers coming and going. The fact that it’s still going so strong

John SmallMtn (00:42:58)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:43:17)

just tells you that we really hit on something. What did we learn along the way that you can take to build a movement out of anything? If you want to build a movement about cycling—as we were just talking about pedaling—great. What did we learn from 1MillionCups about how you can build the cycling community and build a movement around that in your community? Or maybe it’s politics, religion, or whatever it is you want to build a movement on; it doesn’t really matter.

Some of these lessons I felt were very core to what we did. Some of it was luck, some of it was skill, and some of it was stuff that we learned over time.

John SmallMtn (00:43:19)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:43:45)

Because of the fact that it’s had such staying power, 2027 is hopefully when the book will come out, when 1MillionCups will celebrate its 15-year anniversary. What can we do to share what worked for us that might help you in whatever it is that you’re working on?

John SmallMtn (00:44:02)

That is awesome. Very, very, very cool. Have you had any unique struggles—anything that you didn’t think was going to be a problem that ended up putting you behind, waylaying your progress, or any avoidance?

Cameron (00:44:16)

Lots of avoidance, yes. I love the Mary Poppins quote: “Well begun is half done.” Some days it’s just about me starting. I just have to get in that frame of mind where I’m not worried about the dishes in the sink or that the mailman just showed up; I just have to start writing.

The other thing that has been an interesting surprise to me is that I hadn’t really anticipated playing historian, which is to say that

John SmallMtn (00:44:33)

Yeah. Mmm.

Cameron (00:44:44)

I know a lot of what happened, but there are lots of details and other people’s perspectives that I hadn’t really considered. As I’m going down this path, I’m interviewing a lot of people along the way, and we’re recording it almost like a podcast for some sort of future marketing use that I don’t even know what we’re going to do with yet. I need their words and their perspective to finish the book.

It’s just fascinating the way that people talk about it, and the insights that they’ve gleaned from it both currently and over time as they’ve watched it.

John SmallMtn (00:45:00)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:45:14)

The way different people remember different events: “Wait, did you drive to Des Moines that day when Des Moines, Iowa launched?” “No, that wasn’t me. I was in Denver.” “Well, who went to Denver?” It’s been a decade plus since a lot of these things happened, and so I’m having to reconstruct it as a historian, which has been kind of fun. But it was not a challenge I was expecting or anticipating.

I’ve got a lot of work to do to come up with the best, most organized version of the story that is also still authentic and true to the story.

John SmallMtn (00:45:22)

Mmm. Yeah.

Cameron (00:45:43)

If you tell every last detail, it’d be a super boring book. If you don’t organize it correctly, then it’s going to maybe feel like it’s not authentic or relying on something, and that’s not what I want to do either. So it’s going to be a little bit of a balancing act on what to include and how to tell the story. But I also get excited about that too, because I think it’s a really cool story to tell.

John SmallMtn (00:45:51)

Yeah. Absolutely, for sure.

Changing gears just a little bit, Cam: When you think about community, innovation, finding your people, and everything else like this, what advice would you give to someone who’s starting today when they’re thinking about that?

Cameron (00:46:22)

Find your tribe. Find whatever tribe it is that you’re looking for. Make sure that you have a network, and even if it’s just your mom, your neighbor, your high school buddies, or whoever—you have a network. But you really need to start leveraging that network to connect into other networks.

This is where I think 1MillionCups can be so important. It’s not about networking in this traditional sense of “I’m going to meet somebody, give them a business card, and never talk to them again.”

John SmallMtn (00:46:36)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:46:51)

What we call it at 1MillionCups is connecting. You need to find connections to other people that can really help you with whatever it is that you need help with. The only way to do that is to get out, press the flesh, kiss the babies, talk to people, ask questions, and show up at events. I don’t care how big or small your community is, there’s something going on for entrepreneurs.

1MillionCups is a great place to start—it’s kind of the top of the funnel. But if your city or community doesn’t have something, there are other ways you can connect:

John SmallMtn (00:47:16)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:47:21)

through your local university, through your local incubator, or co-working space. There are other people that do events all the time, so make sure that you’re plugging into that network and don’t be afraid to ask tough questions: “Hey, how did you track your mileage?” “Hey, how did you make the decision about either raising investment or not raising investment?”

I have always found that people are very willing to help you, especially if you’re just open and honest with them.

The next thing I would say, too: You may have some students listening.

John SmallMtn (00:47:27)

Yeah. Mmm, yeah.

Cameron (00:47:51)

If you’re a student, people will help you. You might think, “I’m a student; I can’t start a company.” That is absolutely wrong, because you have the one gift as a student that a lot of us don’t have, particularly as you get a little bit older and take on additional responsibilities: You have the gift of time. You may not have capital or money, but you have time. When you’re a student, people are probably 10 times more likely to meet you for coffee or give you advice.

John SmallMtn (00:48:08)

Mm.

Cameron (00:48:18)

The day you graduate, the day you don’t become a student anymore, it’s just like that moniker lifts and people just aren’t as willing to help.

Particularly if there’s an alumni network or something… Our local university is TCU. If you went to TCU and you can find the right person that’s an investor from TCU, or a potential customer who went to TCU, my goodness—if you’re a TCU student, you’re going to have a way better chance of getting that meeting than I would or somebody else would. So don’t hesitate to

John SmallMtn (00:48:25)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Cameron (00:48:48)

start something just because you’re a student.

Another important point here is that it is cheaper, faster, and easier to start a company now than it ever has been in the history of the world. Take advantage of that, because anybody can start just about anything with a few clicks of a mouse or a trackpad and a credit card. That’s all you really need to get started anymore. It’s very different than most of the rest of how history has worked.

John SmallMtn (00:49:13)

Yeah. Interesting. Okay.

When you talk about finding your tribe, how important is it to find a tribe that’s going to share openly? Some communities are just flex fests: “Look how great we are, look what we did,” and everything else like this. You can go in there and play bad comparison games. “Comparison is the thief of joy” is a line that I really enjoy. How important is it to seek out transparency and vulnerability, and then also be able to cultivate that in yourself?

Cameron (00:49:50)

Starting a company is really, really hard, and it requires a ton of vulnerability. Admitting one thing we always used to say… Trey Bowles, who used to run the Techstars Accelerator here in Fort Worth that I worked very closely with and helped establish, he would always say, “Entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know.” That’s an extremely difficult thing to think about, because there is a lot of stuff that you don’t know. You don’t know if your idea is going to work, you don’t know if people are going to buy it, you don’t know

John SmallMtn (00:50:08)

Mmm. Yeah.

Cameron (00:50:19)

if the stock market is going to crash tomorrow and everything is going to go up in flames. We just don’t know. Is there another September 11th or another pandemic around the bend? We don’t know.

You have to control what you can control, and a lot of times that’s not very much, particularly in a startup. But how do you fill in those gaps of what you do know and can know?

Another super nerdy way to say it is Donald Rumsfeld’s quote—remember Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense for Bush and long-time public servant?

John SmallMtn (00:50:24)

Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (00:50:49)

He gives this amazing statement about how there are the known knowns, the known unknowns, the unknown knowns, and the unknown unknowns. It makes zero sense when he says it, but if you really think about it, there are things you can know that you don’t know, there are some things that you know you know, and there are some things that you don’t know, but you could probably figure out. How do you figure out what those buckets are? It might be as helpful as just drawing on a sheet of paper: “Here’s what I know I know;

John SmallMtn (00:51:03)

Yeah.

Cameron (00:51:18)

here’s what I don’t know that I’m never going to figure out”—because I don’t know if a pandemic is coming next week—and just go through some of those thought exercises.

The female/male side of this aside, another thing I would say is: Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Too many times we rush to the solution, and you’ve got to make sure you really understand the problem. Ask a bunch of people: Would they actually buy it? Would they actually pay you for this service?

This is something I’ve struggled with, because

John SmallMtn (00:51:18)

Mm-hmm. I love that. Yeah.

Cameron (00:51:47)

I sort of know this in my heart of hearts, and I’ve had a really hard time doing it—just having the discipline to do it and spending the time on it like I probably should. What are those real problems that I should be out there solving? Too often people jump right to the solution. Spend plenty of time on the problem and make sure you really understand it, because it’s probably not where you initially think it is. It’s probably a little bit somewhere else, and that can save you a lot of steps in the long run if you make sure you understand the problem.

John SmallMtn (00:52:20)

Thank you for touching on that, because I will talk to people and they’ll miss that gap. They’ll be focused on, “I’m going to build a lookalike, but it’s going to be cheaper, it’s going to be better, or we’re just going to disrupt this space.” They’re almost like alone in their ivory tower; they’re not talking to anybody. Then what happens is they inevitably struggle, and I’m always the last guy to call whenever it’s those kinds of people.

Then they’ll reach out: “Okay, John, I’ve tried everything. I now need help selling this thing.” They’re still thinking that the job is to force people over this barrier and over this hurdle to get them to buy. It’s like, well, let’s go back and talk to the people and figure out exactly what they were hoping for, what they see the problem as, and what the symptoms are that lead people to awareness of this problem. It’s so easy to jump over all that stuff, and sometimes we’re just too smart for our own good. So thank you very much for talking about that.

Cameron (00:53:14)

Yeah, there’s a great book on this subject called The Mom Test. It’s this idea that your mom’s always going to buy your product, but your mom is not your ideal customer. She loves you because she’s your mom. Whether you’re selling lemonade in the front yard or building a high-growth tech company, it doesn’t matter; your mom’s always going to love what you do.

A piece of this is also this notion that you have to validate your assumptions. “I assume that people are going to buy this product because…” Yeah, but why do I assume that? You’ve got to get out there and validate. You’ve got to get out of the room and out of your comfort zone, and talk to real people with real money who are looking at, “Do I want to buy lunch, or do I want to buy your product?” It’s sometimes just that simple. You’ve got to make sure that they’re going to put that $20, $100, or $1,000 into what you’re selling versus whatever it is they want to spend their money on elsewhere, because we all have plenty of choices of where we can spend our money.

John SmallMtn (00:53:51)

Yeah. Absolutely. One of my favorite books on this is Obviously Awesome by April Dunford. She talks about how the minute you decide that it’s a CRM, you’re starting to put walls around what it could be, as opposed to just going out and asking, “Hey, what’s the hard part with growing sales, growing revenue, and growing your company?” You might end up on a very different path that might make it so much easier to sell.

Now that you are a founder, after being around so many founders and entrepreneurs on your path, what is the struggle, the thing, or the lesson that you can now appreciate that you didn’t really have the room to appreciate when you were just hearing it from other people? What comes to mind for you?

Cameron (00:54:53)

I think it’s just the uncertainty: Is this going to work? How long is it going to take? How much perseverance, blood, sweat, and tears am I willing to put into this thing before I just go spend my time being an Uber driver or take a job? Those are difficult decisions.

I’m married and I have three kids. It’s not a decision that I just get to make alone, because I have a mortgage and other costs I have to pay for.

John SmallMtn (00:54:56)

Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

Cameron (00:55:21)

I wouldn’t change that in a heartbeat, because I love my family. But there are some decisions that I have to make. You can try and try and try, and it may not work, and you may run out of time.

I’ll quote Trey Bowles again here: He says the biggest enemy of any startup is time. I have really felt that, in terms of: I know I can do this, I know this will work, it’s just going to take me a while to figure out the right mix of clients. You’re going to have to shoot 10 baskets so you can make two of them, that sort of thing. But if those are the two right baskets that pay me and are good work, then it’s totally worth it. It’s okay that I missed on eight shots as long as I make the two.

A lot of it is: I know I can make this work if given enough time. But how much time do I actually have before I have to pivot, change, or take my life in a different direction? That’s been a really interesting internal discussion and, frankly, a struggle of mine:

John SmallMtn (00:56:00)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Cameron (00:56:18)

How much time do I actually give this thing before I’m just feeding the beast that’s never going to turn into anything, or whatever the right analogy is there?

John SmallMtn (00:56:25)

Right. Identity, right? If you wrap yourself up in this identity of being a founder, and then all of a sudden it’s not working, you might just be creating a blind spot around all of these signals indicating that it’s not working out. It’s super easy to sell yourself on, “Well, I’m an entrepreneur; I’m going to figure this out. We’ve just got to keep hammering at it.” That’s where the concept of “this is an experiment” is really important, because an experiment has an end date, and there are certain goals that indicate that this is a successful experiment versus one that we shouldn’t continue. I love that.

Last question, Cameron, and then I can let you get on with your day. Thank you so much for coming on. You’ve been in the space for a very long time, and obviously the world has changed since you started being a volunteer for 1MillionCups. Now with AI and everything that is changing, other than “go find your tribe”—because we already talked about that—what is your piece of advice for someone who is starting today?

Cameron (00:57:29)

I’ll go back to this reluctance that people have to share what it is that they’re working on. I think another myth we have taken from the Silicon Valley culture and the Facebook culture—we’ve all seen the Steve Jobs movie, The Social Network, and things like that—is that “I can’t tell you what I’m working on; it’s too secretive and you’re going to steal it and run with it.” Now, there are some cases—and I want to be very careful—where you have to be extremely careful, and you

John SmallMtn (00:57:53)

Yeah.

Cameron (00:57:58)

do need to sign an NDA and things like that. But probably 9.9 out of 10 times, you’re in a position where you can share what you’re working on. You need to find ways to talk about what you’re working on that doesn’t deliver anything proprietary, doesn’t get you into trouble, and doesn’t reveal the secret sauce, right? We know all about Coca-Cola, but nobody actually knows the secret recipe.

John SmallMtn (00:58:20)

Yeah. Absolutely.

Cameron (00:58:25)

Coca-Cola talks about themselves all the time. They market it, they get people to drink it, they do all kinds of crazy things. But there’s only a handful of people in the entire world that know the secret recipe that’s locked up in the safe. Don’t give me the code to the safe; lock it away—I don’t need to know that.

There’s this hesitancy from both entrepreneurs and the community that if we don’t know what you’re working on, then we won’t know how to help you. Conversely, if you won’t share what you’re working on, then there is no way that the community can help you.

John SmallMtn (00:58:39)

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah.

Cameron (00:58:55)

I’m a huge believer that the more you share with the community, the more the community can come in and fix whatever problem it is that you’re working on. It’s one of the core beliefs behind 1MillionCups.

I also say this to elected officials, local leaders, economic development folks, and corporate leaders: If you don’t know who the local entrepreneurs operating in your own community are, you won’t know how to help them. I think it’s an imperative that we have these

John SmallMtn (00:59:07)

Mmm.

Cameron (00:59:22)

new businesses constantly getting started, trying new things, trying to bring new innovation to market, trying to create jobs, and trying to build wealth for our society. If we as a community don’t embrace them and give them a big hug for what they’re doing, then I think we’re failing them as a community, and we’re leaving a whole lot of economic growth and job creation at the doorstep that is already going on pretty naturally—we just don’t embrace it as a community and as a society.

So, if you don’t know who the entrepreneurs are, you don’t know how to help them. And if you’re the entrepreneur and you’re not willing to share what you’re working on, even at a basic level, then I think you’re really doing yourself a disservice.

John SmallMtn (00:59:58)

Well said, my friend. It’s super easy to feel uncomfortable about it, but it’s not going to get better if you don’t try. When I’m working with certain people, I’m like, “Hey, you’ve just got to talk loudly about the things that you’re working on.” You don’t have to go on with some over-polished version of it or anything, but talk about what you’re working on. I love all the examples of people working in public on social media and stuff like that, because when you can just broadcast early, you can have some people that are ready for it whenever it gets closer to launch. That can be a game-changer.

Can we quickly talk about your podcast real quick? I think that might also help some people. Can you talk about where that is and how it’s structured, so anyone who wants to learn a little bit more about you can find their way over to your stuff?

Cameron (01:00:52)

Absolutely. Well, it’s all built from all this stuff that we’ve talked about: If the community doesn’t know what you’re working on, they don’t know how to help you. All we’re doing is telling stories of people in the community who are innovating and doing really cool stuff.

It is sponsored by the Texas A&M Fort Worth folks—a specific division of theirs called the Fort Worth-Tarrant County Innovation Partnership. It’s real simple: It’s just called Fort Worth Innovates. Just search it—it’s on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

John SmallMtn (01:00:59)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (01:01:18)

All we do is interview local innovators, and that can be everybody from entrepreneurs to researchers to people that are just doing interesting things in the community. We’ve even had a couple of political leaders on. We have an episode that comes out every other Tuesday.

If you really want to learn about stuff that’s going on in your community that doesn’t make the news typically—because a lot of these are really early-stage technologies, or it’s just one guy and he’s got a cool idea—that’s a great place to do it.

We’ve had some real success in a very similar previous podcast where we put a podcast episode out, and then a couple of weeks later the media picks them up, they get the story written about them, or they find that one thing that they were looking for—they found that co-founder, or maybe they sign that term sheet and get that investment. If you don’t tell your story in a broad way, and if we as a community aren’t telling those stories, then those connections and interactions don’t happen.

John SmallMtn (01:01:56)

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (01:02:14)

I just think it’s imperative for us as a community to understand who these people are and what they’re working on. Again, you learn something. I am just fascinated by the cool stuff that’s going on right in our own city. It goes on in all cities across the country that most people just don’t know about, mostly because they don’t tune in. You can listen to a podcast while you’re driving, and people watch YouTube all the time. Just put on something like Fort Worth Innovates, and you’re going to learn something

John SmallMtn (01:02:22)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Cameron (01:02:40)

that’s going to better yourself as a community member. Maybe you have the secret sauce; maybe you can help that company without even knowing it. But you won’t know if you don’t tune in.

John SmallMtn (01:02:50)

Awesome. Cam, I can’t thank you enough for coming on here. Such a cool conversation. I think we uncovered a lot for people: people who are already in progress and might be struggling, and people who were under the weight of bad ideas of what entrepreneurship really is and what it looks like to start a business. I think this is really going to help a lot of people, and I really appreciate you coming on and sharing so openly.

Cameron (01:03:13)

Well, thanks for having me. As you can probably tell, I’m passionate about this stuff, and I really do believe that this is an imperative for the future of our country, particularly when it comes to economic development and innovation. Almost all net-new jobs come from new companies. So if we want to continue growing our economy as a city, a county, a state, and a country, this is super important, and we don’t talk about it enough.

John SmallMtn (01:03:39)

Awesome. Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

Cameron (01:03:43)

Thanks, John. Appreciate it.