Today's Guest

Chris Joyce is the CEO and founder of Gusher, a startup platform that focuses on successfully launching a company by using time equity. Chris has also founded 24 other companies across a wide range of industries. Having started many companies, Chris kept running into the same issue over and over…the best ideas and entrepreneurs were not getting funded and promising ideas never saw the light of day. Chris shared about his background and how that led to the passion behind his current company, Gusher.

Resources Shared

• Gusher
• Thryv
  

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:             Hey, hey, this is Gordon Henry at Winning on Main Street. If you're interested in launching a company, you may have wondered how will I ever get it off the ground? Well, listen carefully to today's episode. Chris Joyce is the CEO and founder of Gusher. Chris has started, get this, 24 companies. And as he did, he kept running around and finding the same issue over and over. The best ideas in entrepreneurs were not getting funded and their ideas never saw the light of day. These entrepreneurs weren't getting funded for, let's say, not great reasons. They weren't in the right city. They didn't have the right connections. They didn't attend the right school. They didn't look a certain way. They were too old, they were too young. They were the wrong gender, the wrong race. They didn't have the right experience, the right team. Or you name it, they were rejected. But rarely was the true reason that they were rejected because of the quality of the idea.

                                   He believes great ideas can come from anywhere, anyone, and he believes the market and not venture capitalists should be the judge of whether or not these ideas see the light of date. So he created Gusher. Gusher is the simple, quick and easy way to create and build a startup without the need for investors, without the need for capital. How? Gusher helps entrepreneurs create and launch startups using performance equity. They have founders and companies from across the globe, everything from technology, media and health to design, finance and gaming.

                                   What should listeners get out of this episode? If you're looking to launch a business, you need to check out Gusher. This show is brought to you by Thryv: Small Business Runs Better on Thryv. So Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Joyce:                  Oh, thanks for having me, Gordon.

Gordon Henry:             Great to have you. So Chris, first tell us a little bit about your background. My God, 24 companies and what led you to launch Gusher?

Chris Joyce:                  I think you can go all the way back. I mean, I grew up in Fairborne, Ohio, Dayton, Ohio, and watching my mom's struggle to go ahead and put a roof over our heads. She always had great ideas, but this was a time in Ohio when there was no such thing as a venture capital ecosystem. She definitely didn't have any funds, any rich family or friends, but she always had great ideas. And seeing her struggle with that and not being able to really get anything off the ground, seeing that frustration, that kind stuck with me as I went out there in the business world on my own and doing my own deals and my own businesses, and it always hung there.

Gordon Henry:             Got it.

Chris Joyce:                  And that was really the start.

Gordon Henry:             So that made you want to be an entrepreneur, but then you went and launched not one or two companies, but 24 comp. How did that happen?

Chris Joyce:                  Sure. I really, I never set out to launch multiple companies, but I found out about myself very, very quickly after launching one or two or three of them that after the initial growth stages of a company, it just became really, really boring for me. Taking something from zero to 10 million or zero to 50 million, that holds interest for me. But taking it from 50 to 150 or 50 to 500, it's just basically an iteration of the same model and scaling. And creatively, it does absolutely nothing for me. I wish I would just go ahead and stick with one business, it'd make my life a hell of a lot easier. But I've always said I have to do something different, something new with each business that I haven't done before. And for me, exciting wise, that's really what led me to Gusher and doing what I do today.

Gordon Henry:             Interesting. So you're the guy who has the idea, the vision, puts the pieces in place, gets it off the ground, and then I suppose you probably then hand it off to somebody who would be called more of a professional manager?

Chris Joyce:                  Yeah, sure. I mean, I think of it this way there. There's tons of people that can step in once you're a middle market company. There are people that specialize in that there. There's standard educational pathways and routes to go ahead and take to be able to do that. That's why private equity exists today. But starting companies, starting companies is not necessarily a science. We think we have it down, we think we have our own methodologies for doing it, but it's very much the fog of war when you're starting, especially with nothing. And starting with nothing is kind of a difficult road to take, but it's really what the vast majority of people only have as their option.

                                   Just like my mom, many years ago in the eighties, people don't have that money to go ahead and start a business, so they're kind of caught in a catch 22. If they try to go the venture capital route, well, only one in 700 to one in 3,500 companies ends up getting venture capital. So how the hell do you do it? Well, you can do shoestring and hope for the best and whatever it may be, but we think we really have a much better route. We have a much higher success rate doing companies the Gusher way. If you want to go about it and talk about that, be happy to.

Gordon Henry:             Okay. So yeah, okay, we've established how you got here, what your qualifications are, and then you came up with this idea for Gusher to help solve this problem of helping companies get started. So what is the gusher way and what's unique about Gusher?

Chris Joyce:                  Well, think about it this way. What I tell prospective founders is the following. If you had a million or 2 million in the bank account, right this second, imagine that you had a million or 2 million in the bank account. What would you do? How would you build your company? And then Gusher that. Meaning that anything that you typically need it for. Your people typically makes up number one, your team, your chief financial officer, your developers, your CMO, your creative officers, your content, your UIUX, all those people that make up a startup team, that enable it to almost in a way leapfrog generational development and become a market viable product. You don't have to go ahead and sit there just yourself being alone because you don't have funds. The funds are meaningless in the beginning stages. What you need to have is an ability to talk and pitch in a certain way to attract people to your company that then end up catching onto your vision that end up going and helping you create and go from zero to actually launch.

                                   So you don't need money. What you need is people, and you need a methodology and a process to be able to get you there. And that's what we have. And people always ask me, do you charge anything? We don't. We're actually the type of thing, we're in the same boat, exactly with the entrepreneurs, with the founders, we're equity based also. So the only way we ever get anything, even if we're given stock in the company, is if that company succeeds. If it actually ends up growing and succeeding in the marketplace, that's the only time that we succeed. So we're going ahead and rowing right alongside with them.

Gordon Henry:             Okay. So your stake in the company that comes to you is you get a little piece of the equity and you-

Chris Joyce:                  Exactly.

Gordon Henry:             Have something called performance-based equity, which is how the startup founder attracts other people. Can you explain what performance equity is?

Chris Joyce:                  Sure. So think of it this way. When you're going ahead and having a startup and you're creating a team to create a product, let's just give an example, like a consumer good, a consumer product. Well, if you're going ahead and creating something like there's a new drink here called Smooch. Well, one of those roles may be a packaging designer, and a packaging designer's goals that would be based upon their performance-based equity would actually be the creation of those designs, the research on what materials to use, creating prototypes of that packaging, creating a deliverable final spec for how that packaging is, the artwork, whatever it may be. And so basically you craft a role to have objective goals to go ahead and attain that equity. And when those goals are completed, they get the equity when the company launches.

Gordon Henry:             Okay, so does that mean that the people, let's say I have a great idea for a new business, and I come to you and I say, "Hey, I want to launch this business." And I need CFO, a CMO, a CTO. Okay, did those people come work for me for free, no salary, only the equity.

Chris Joyce:                  Well, typically it's not free. I hate that term. I don't explain why. Because equity itself is one of the most expensive ways of financing your company. So almost as a last ditch, would you go ahead and utilize equity. But unfortunately, that's the vast majority of people that don't have that equity. So typically what happens is people that join equity-based companies, equity-based performance, they already have a full-time job. They're already people that are experts at what they do. So they're looking to get involved in something else. They're looking to get another horse in that race. They're looking to invest in themselves and be able to have that actually end up being something that they have ownership in, that it resonates with them.

                                   And so there's not typically transactional relationships. Usually people join a company because they believe in it. So if they're getting a salary, anybody will join a company they don't believe in for a salary. But how many people will join a company in exchange for equity that they don't believe in? Well, not many. But that also gives them market validation because if they're not able to attract that team, that product and company shouldn't be coming to market in the first place because that's a very big entry point and a big barrier.

Gordon Henry:             So we don't like the word free, I'm working for equity. But if I'm working for equity and I'm not getting a salary, doesn't that limit the pool of people who can be attracted because they're, let's face it-

Chris Joyce:                  Yeah, sure.

Gordon Henry:             A lot of people out there who need money to put food on the table, pay for the kid's school, so on and so forth.

Chris Joyce:                  And I hundred percent get that. And the one thing is you got to ask yourself, and maybe you're in a different scenario, I'm not sure. But do you actually have any excess capacity? Now, the fact of the matter is most people, they're not working 16, 20 hours a day. Yes, they may be working an eight-hour day. Yes, they may come home and they have their kids events or whatever it may be. But also, typically the more successful that you are, the higher up that food chain that you are, which also equates to more skillset that you have, usually you end up having a disproportionate amount of time compared to the other people out there.

                                   So building teams up of people that are really high quality that can move your company very quickly and develop it in a different way are not a problem getting. And so you attract a certain type of talent. Is it for everybody? No. Is it for the person that doesn't have a job right this second and can't cover their bills? Absolutely not. And that's one of the things that you use to go ahead and qualify a person. The last thing we want to do is bring on a person in a desperation mode. You need a person that is stable, that can go ahead and have excess time and can give it 10, 20 hours a week.

Gordon Henry:             Okay, so let's move on to then the next piece of it because, not only do I need just people to work on my idea with certain skill sets, but I may need to invest in marketing or I may need to invest in, you mentioned the can you held up of the soda or the drink?

Chris Joyce:                  Sure.

Gordon Henry:             I need to create a prototype or I need to work with a manufacturing, or I need to pay rent on the office that I want to have. So where does the money come for those types of expenses?

Chris Joyce:                  This may be hard to believe, but I'm going to say it again. Okay? You don't need a penny until you get to about the 10 million level, at which point you then need funds in a standardized way to scale. So I don't give an F, whether it's your rent, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's prototypes, whether it's plastic injection molding, whether it's apparel manufacturing, whether it's medical device research, whether it's anything. All these things, all these companies we've done. And so what you can go ahead and do is you involve people in different ways. You involve companies in different ways. Is it for every type of company. No. I mean certain companies are... this is the way they operate. But are there certain conditions and criteria of companies that can do business in this way? Absolutely. And so that's what we walk the founders through. You don't need anything, not a penny.

Gordon Henry:             Okay. So are you also giving equity to those... Well, stick with easy example, the office. Okay? Well, nowadays, maybe people don't need offices, but let's say for whatever reason, I absolutely needed an office or I need a temporary office or something. Do I give equity to the guy I'm renting from instead of money?

Chris Joyce:                  Well, let's talk about that real quickly in one scenario, and then I'll flip it to the manufacturing side, which will be more relevant. Okay? Because a lot of people are working from home, is an office requisite? Not necessarily. But is it a manufacturing requisite? Yes.

                                   So with offices, whether or not, you can do real estate deals left and right with this way. But the issue is when, where, how, how much, et cetera. So have I been able to step into offices and people that we have for nothing based upon equity? Yes. Do people start restaurants every day where they end up doing what're called gross leases where they're not really putting anything down and stepping into a restaurant and then able to launch their business? Yes, they can actually do that every day across everything from dry cleaners to restaurants, to bars, to anything you can possibly think of.

                                   We used to do all the time in New York when I owned a business brokerage there. I mean every possible type of business. But let's get to manufacturing, okay? With manufacturing, it ends up being a little bit of a different ballgame. So what ends up happening, there's something called the vested interest market, the VIM, the people that have the most to gain from the success or failure of the company.

                                   So if you're creating a product, a consumer good, who has the most to gain from the success or failure of that company? Yes, it can be the end user of that drink or that medical device or whatever it may be, but not really. What it is are the people that are manufacturing the material goods, the people that's the core manufacturer, the shipping, the distribution, the people that are manufacturing the corrugated, that are manufacturing, anything along that product line. And all it is, and it may sound crazy, is asking for it many times. And then you'll find companies that take you up and others will blow you off left and right until you're moving a couple million units and then they'll want all in on you. So it's a function of just staging and yes, getting those people and companies involved with your company for equity.

Gordon Henry:             Equity. Okay. So everybody sort of got some skin in the game. That's the idea, right?

Chris Joyce:                  Yes.

Gordon Henry:             Everybody who you're part of your ecosystem.

Chris Joyce:                  Right, and so what you end up developing is this mini community of people and companies whose vested interest is to see you succeed. And so that just creates generational... You're able to leapfrog generational development. So instead of creating an MVP, a minimum viable product, you're able to create a market viable product, one that actually can become self-sustaining and get out there and actually create and capture a market.

Gordon Henry:             Right. Fascinating. So give us some examples of companies you've launched or funded with Gusher, and obviously we'd love to hear a couple success stories.

Chris Joyce:                  Sure. Well, I'm going to give you one that I always give because it's easy to understand and I'll paint it out. All right? So there's a gentleman called Colin Buckley. All right? Colin Buckley had a very, very sick dog. He went ahead and took the dog to the vet, and the vet said, put your dog on this dog food and then put your dog on another dog food and another dog food. And this little puppy started to die. I mean, it was literally dying. And so Colin and desperation hacked together a dog food, and the dog magically came to life over 3, 4, 5 months. And he came to me and he's like, "I want to go ahead and create a dog food company."

                                   Now, Gordon, I don't know what you know about dog food, but dog food companies in the industry are some of the most vicious oriented companies in the world. I mean, it's red ocean territory. It takes a lot of money to penetrate the dog food industry. And so I sat there going, yeah, well, maybe. So he goes ahead and starts to put together a team and his first team he puts together, and it's of these people that are big time players that have managed these big budgets, $50 million, $100 million, $200 million budgets, and the company implodes six weeks later.

                                   He then listens to me and his second company, his second team, a year later, they're now worth, I think, more than 10, 15 million bucks a year, right? With zero capital. They're growing 30% month over month. I think they just got CVS or Walgreens as one of those really... And growing really crazy, crazy fast. Now, his second team all had something in common, Gordon, the first team did not. This is not a trick question, all right? His second team all had something in common. Think like an eight-year-old. It's a dog food company. What do you think his second team all had in common, the first team did not?

Gordon Henry:             They all love dogs.

Chris Joyce:                  They didn't just love dogs, they were like dog parents. They're dogs zealots. They didn't have kids like you and me. They have dogs. And so they ate dogs... Didn't ate dog, but they breed dog.

Gordon Henry:             They ate the dog too.

Chris Joyce:                  Right, exactly. And so there was a shorthand there. They all knew what the end game was. And so when you create teams of vested interest market them, those are the types of companies that take off. Those are the ones that really end up working extremely well.

Gordon Henry:             Fascinating. So are these businesses located all over the world? I mean, I guess this model would work in other countries. Where have you expanded to?

Chris Joyce:                  Sure, well, actually we have them all across the globe. We have founders literally all across the globe. They are US-based corporations, though. That's one of the things they have to be as a US-based corporation, but the founders can be anywhere out there. Approximately 60, 70% of our founders are US-based. But the companies are kind of like the UN. Even my company is like the UN. They are dispersed all across the globe. We have maybe 30% of our team in the US and the rest is international everywhere. And that's typically what happens with people because talent is spread evenly, but opportunity is not. And so that's what we go after, that's how we build our teams.

Gordon Henry:             Sure. I mean, nowadays, especially in the tech world, you hear about people from all sorts of countries, Eastern Europe and so forth. So makes a lot of sense. What does a business need to do to get help from Chris Joyce and Gusher? What should a listener be thinking about doing if they say, this might be for me?

Chris Joyce:                  Sure. If they're thinking about starting a business, if they're caught in the catch 22 of having nothing and not really knowing how to get started, but they've got an idea. And they don't even have to have a solution, they maybe only even have a problem. All they do is go to gusher.co. Log in, it doesn't cost anything, start working on a startup draft and we'll find you pretty damn quickly.

                                   And so then we end up, we help out face to face. We're there to help you. I don't care if you need us in Silicon Valley to go ahead and close the ex-chairman. Well, I can't say that anymore, because I was going to say the ex-chairman of Silicon Valley Bank, because of what happened with them. But if you need us on a plane to go ahead and help close the ex-chairman of Silicon Valley Bank on your deal, we're there. If you need us in the middle of Wisconsin to get a manufacturing facility for you, we're there. We do whatever it takes to help get your deal done. Because again, we don't get anything unless your deal works, unless your company is able to reach launch stage.

Gordon Henry:             Okay. So what you provide in addition to sort of coaching is you have a lot of the connections that a startup will need to realize this dream, is that?

Chris Joyce:                  Sure. Absolutely. But it's also the process. I mean, if you say to somebody, "Hey, go start your company and try to do it without nothing, or without anything," it's something where that's going to have a learning curve of about 10 to 20 years. And so we're able to boil that down into very much, we know exactly what works. And so it saves time. I mean, knowing right now, I can pretty much start any company inside a 14 to 30 days, at least a rough of it, and have it revenue generating within 3, 4, 5 months. I mean, pretty much anything. I don't care how capital intensive you may think it is. Almost any type of company.

Gordon Henry:             Incredible. So when did you start Gusher? How long has it been running?

Chris Joyce:                  Sure. About three and a half, four years. So we came out with our alpha version, our alpha version took off like a rocket. We've tried to stay below the radar and not really be out there. Right now we're coming out of beta. We've got more than 300 and approaching 350 companies across the globe.

Gordon Henry:             Wow.

Chris Joyce:                  Everything from B2B, B2C, B2B2C, from consumer goods manufacturing, SaaS, FinTech, AR, VR, AI, gaming, Blockchain, PropTech, you name it, we've got it. But most importantly, we've got greater than an 80% success rate where these companies become self-sustaining and, or, attract larger scale capital. And that's unbeatable.

Gordon Henry:             Wow. Fascinating. I would imagine that you turned some people down, right? People must come to you with ideas and enthusiasm and you say, great, but it's not the right fit, or we just don't believe in it. Is that correct?

Chris Joyce:                  It's incorrect, but let me explain. Okay? The only thing that we really turned down are I ideas that potentially cause extreme harm. So if you come out with a new landmine, we're not interested. You come out with a new type of machine gun, we're not interested in it. But when it comes down to really what we believe, we believe in letting the market decide upon the ideas.

                                   And so let me clarify, we've had ideas and internally we rate these companies using our own internal scales and everything else. And so we've noticed a pattern that even companies that we thought were awesome, those were the ones that wouldn't work. And the ones that we thought were absolutely horrible ideas, they would. Now, I've got a deal rule, and I'm not going to express it eloquently, but it's basically the deal rule is that bad ideas always, always lead to good ideas so long as you take action on them.

                                   So we don't believe in killing bad ideas. The fact matter is most companies, when they're in the ideation stage, end up evolving, they end up changing it. They end up bringing their own DNA and different outside forces to it. And so that end product that really is created wasn't really fundamentally maybe what they thought of or how they originally communicated it. So if they're able to go ahead and bring one person on for Gusher, we have a saying, one plus one equals done. If they're not able to bring one person on, that company is DOA. So it's really their ability to bring on one person.

Gordon Henry:             Good stuff. We're just going to take a quick break and we'll be back with more from Chris Joyce.

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Gordon Henry:             And we're back with Chris Joyce. Fascinating discussion around Gusher and the ability to launch a company essentially with no money down. Really fascinating, and I'm sure many people very interested in pursuing this idea. So you've talked about the model and how it's working for many, many companies in various stages of development. I'm really curious about your ideas about entrepreneurship. What types of people succeed launching companies? What is the makeup of a successful entrepreneur?

Chris Joyce:                  This is going to sound kind of a lame way of answering it. Okay? So we've been answer asking that same question for a very long time and trying to figure that out. All right? And what we originally concluded is that, all right, what do all these founders have in common? And we started researching, et cetera, et cetera. And all I could come up with after speaking with every individual founder is that the ones that really succeeded were insanely honest. It was like their religion. They did not fake it until they make it. If they needed help, they asked for help and then people were willing to give help.

                                   I don't know if you can see it, but I'm getting goosebumps talking about that because it is so damn important. We always hear almost in a way, fake it until you make it, fake it until you... No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Say exactly where you are, and then the right people appear at the right time. But also we saw a really extreme correlation that another person had an idea on, excuse me, an idea about, and she said, "Hey Chris, just make some calls and see if there's any correlation between this." I did, I set up meetings with every founder on our system. There was a 95% plus correlation. Would you like to know what that is?

Gordon Henry:             Yeah.

Chris Joyce:                  Take a guess, Gordon. Give me a bad guess. Give me one guess. What do you think? And it's not like, hey, they are ability to delay gratification, or hey, they're resilient as hell. Everybody is, when you're in a scenario like that. Or hey, they never give up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it and I understand that. But is there one thing you think in their past, some little bit of information?

Gordon Henry:             Good storytellers?

Chris Joyce:                  Well, that is something that they end up learning to do. Believe it or not, there's a 95% correlation with extreme sports. So at some point in time they played division one football, they did MMA, they went ahead and hung on the side of some mountain and lost four of their toes because they were frozen to death. We have professional surfers, we have Olympians, and these are all across all different types of people that you would not believe were extreme sports in any way, shape or fashion. But when I dug, there was a 95% plus correlation with that.

Gordon Henry:             Okay. So anybody listening who's an extreme sports person should apply to Gusher.

Chris Joyce:                  But you don't have to be.

Gordon Henry:             Yeah. That's funny. Right. So what's next for Gusher? It sounds like an amazing idea. 350 companies in various stages of success. You just see launching more and more companies that growing this thing all over the place?

Chris Joyce:                  There's 700 million people across the globe trying to figure out how to start a business at any point in time. They have no capital to do so. We've got the methodology that enables a good portion of them to be able to at least get a shot at making it and having a company that goes. So that's the market we're going after.

Gordon Henry:             Yeah. Terrific. Yeah, I could see in many countries that maybe not as set up for entrepreneurship as the US, they might be very interested in joining your system as well. So sounds like-

Chris Joyce:                  Absolutely.

Gordon Henry:             Like a great opportunity for many people. Well, Chris, this is a great idea. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that. And it sounds like you've had tons of success. You mentioned it before, but I want to make sure people who are listening who maybe are want to become part of the system, where do they come find you?

Chris Joyce:                  Sure. They just go to gusher.co, not com, gusher.co. You just sign on, log on there, join Gusher, and we'll just start working on what's called a startup draft and we'll reach out to you pretty much immediately.

Gordon Henry:             Okay, fantastic. Well, Chris, I want to thank you for coming on the show. Great to have you here and best of luck with Gusher.

Chris Joyce:                  Thanks for having me, Gordon.

Gordon Henry:             And I want to thank our producer, Tim Aliman and our coordinators D.F. Barnett and Daniel Huddleston. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends and family to subscribe and please leave us a five star review. We'd really appreciate it, it helps us in the rankings. Small business runs better on Thryv. Get a free demo at Thryv.com/pod. That's P-O-D, pod. Until next time, make it a great week.

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