Episode 6: Navigating Entrepreneurship: Shawn's Tale of Tenacity and Triumph

They say the road to success is paved with failures, and my own entrepreneurial adventure is no exception. Embark on this journey with me, Shawn, as I take you back to the days when 'overqualified' was the only qualification I seemed to have, forcing me to turn a garage in Dallas, Victoria into the birthplace of my future. Alongside my wife's marketing prowess and the invaluable support of Sam, my sister-in-law's husband, we steered our ship through the treacherous waters of starting up, dodging the iceberg of COVID-19, and sailing into the domain of research and development.

Strap in for a narrative that weaves resilience and risk-taking into the very fabric of business life. We'll uncover the fine line between success and failure, and how both are essential ingredients in the entrepreneurial recipe. From passing on IT clients to laser-focusing on software, to the inception of UAM Tech, and all the way to the development of a small submarine – this episode is an arsenal of insights for any budding or seasoned entrepreneur. Join us for tales of camaraderie, strategic thinking, and those serendipitous encounters that define the transformative path of business.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to Full Circle with Sean. I'm Sean, I'm your host today and as we are continuing on with the early struggles and the start in Australia. So yeah, so I moved to Dallas, victoria, which was once the roughest neighborhood in all of Australia. Still wasn't not rough, let's just put it that way, but it was affordable, housing was affordable and everything. So I'm trying to find a job and I either got sorry, you're overqualified or you're lacking Australian experience, which is quite funny, because I worked on a multi-country contract overseas. But I couldn't, I just couldn't get a job. So I decided, and the wife decided with me, that we would put a sign outside the house that said we fix computers so, and then open the garage. And that's what we did a big, rusty steel garage and a sign out front that said I fix computers. Yeah, so we start. That's where I started, and people would come, which is surprising to me. People would come and I'd fix up their computers, their phones, stuff like that, and all while dealing with these large huntsman spiders. So the garage was just full of huntsmen. And, yeah, do a Google, have a check it's, they're. They're big, they're nasty and they're not very fun. So, yeah, built that into where I started getting contracts, so business contracts and retainers, so save $500 a month and I would give them X amount of hours and always gave them more.

Speaker 1: 1:37

So started that, grew that to a point where I had enough extra cash, to a point where I had enough extra cash that the wife and I ordered thousands of postcards on Vistaprint and we sat around in that pretty rundown house on the floor, wooden floor, and just hand addressed everything with the yellow pages, every business we thought would would benefit almost every business really in Melbourne. And yeah, we sent those out and we got one contact from a company called Total Trade Management. The owner's name is Adam Amazing company. And yeah, they started doing their IT and he ended up renting me my first office outside the house in the back of his warehouse. So they do construction and plumbing. So they also own Essendon Plumbing Services and yeah, I formed a relationship with them. It was funny because a lot of times you know how business is I'd be paid late or I wouldn't have the work and I'd be late on rent. And that's fine, man, whenever you get a chance. And yeah, it was great. It was a great first experience for me getting into the market having a place and growing it from there.

Speaker 1: 3:01

So grew that into quite a client base where I started doing software so websites and higher end software and apps. And what happened was I got so much work in software that I didn't have time for the IT work anymore. So I had been contracting a friend, somebody I met locally, and he was spinning up his own IT company and he started taking my clients. So I started just handing them over to him and no, no reward, just here you go, make sure they're taken care of. And he did. And he still has quite a bit of those clients today. And so I went solely software, transitioned completely to software and built that up.

Speaker 1: 3:49

And then my sister-in-law, who was living with us at the time, she ended up getting married to a guy named Sam and Sam was in the States. So Sam came over to Australia. She'd been over multiple times and he came over and his same problem was me having a hard time finding a job. So they offered him to go to Sydney his brother is in Sydney and work for him. And I said no, you know, I've always wanted to start a research lab. Why don't you head it up for me? And lo and behold, the research part of the company was born and he had that up for quite some time. I got some really cool stories about that which we will talk about in later episodes.

Speaker 1: 4:31

And he headed up the R&D company and it started to grow and the software company was growing and then we had our own products in the R&D firm. So it split off into a company which is now called UAM Tech and it's still growing. And then we had our own products in the R&D firm. So it split off into a company which is now called UAM Tech and it's still growing. Sam is a jack of all trades so he does lots of stuff there now.

Speaker 1: 4:56

And, yeah, so COVID hit and all of the companies that I had in the software company. So all of my clients they pulled out, they stopped works, everything let's focus on we don't know what's going to happen. Right, and I was leveraged, so I had a lot of people because we had a lot of work, we were growing, and it just crashed, absolutely crashed, and I wasn't sure that the R&D company would survive it either. I'm not really sure how it survived, actually, and I'll tell you more stories about that another time. But yeah, the software company crashed and I paid off almost everything, but it had to go.

Speaker 1: 5:48

And then I was trying to rebuild the R&D company and it had a. It had a submarine. We built it, it worked, had a small submarine, is about 1.3 meters long and and it worked. So we were again. It was just I myself and Sam. Everybody else had to be let go. So we went and we were looking for a small tunnel, because we wanted a tunnel, put it in the factory where the submarine was and prove that it worked. And so we found a tunnel on Gumtree from a construction company that had a job, that had some extra sections, and we went over to look at it.

Speaker 1: 6:25

While Sam went over to look at it and he was talking to the one of the directors and he said, well, what do you do? And he said, well, I'll come over and have a look. So he came over and have a look and he said, oh, I got to bring the other director. So I ended up bringing the other director over and the other director looked at me and said, um, who funds you? And I said, nobody, I haven't found anybody that'll give us any funds. And he said, no, I'm asking because I want to and yeah, so he gave us funding that I was able to bring everybody back that worked for the research lab and everybody came back and we've grown that. So we have multiple technologies now and we are growing internationally, so really, really exciting stuff. But through the midst of all of that, I did have some other software ventures that were going on. Um, that I sunk a lot of money into that.

Speaker 1: 7:18

The people that were involved did not have my best interest at heart and they now have them and it was pretty tough, tough learning, and I'll go over those stories and what happened and how I reflected on those as well, because at the end of the day, it is how we reflect on these things that come up, it's how we learn from these things and it's how we don't make those mistakes again. It's funny because I've been told a hundred times don't do work based on a promise, right, don't spin up things based on a promise, and that's true, but it's also not true Sometimes. You have to weigh those up, weigh those risks up and determine if it doesn't happen, is it still beneficial or is it okay to not do it and not have that opportunity. So those are some of the things that we will talk about later as well, because I don't completely agree with everybody when they say don't do things on a promise. There's a whole bunch of things that all these startup people or business people say that might not be so relevant.

Speaker 1: 8:30

Based on your own circumstance, your own situation, you just have to be willing to fail. If you take the punt and you fail. That's why they call it a risk. So you just got to be willing to take the risk. And what's an acceptable risk and I think that's what sets entrepreneurs apart from general civilians is what kind of risk are we willing to take?

Speaker 1: 8:53

And if you know me, sometimes I take a bit too much risk, but that's who I am as a person, as an entrepreneur, as in business, in my personal life, I mean, I'm a bit more of a risk taker than a lot of people, but I have learned over the years how to better filter out those risks and not be so frugal with money and yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:22

So a lot of things that we'll talk about in the upcoming episodes. So there you have it. That's a very high level overview of where I've come from, some of my background, and what I really want to start talking about is are things like resilience you know, both personal and professional and strategies and when to take risk, when not to take risk, and what to do when you fail and what not to do when you fail, and how to take success, because sometimes we get wrapped up in our own successes that we forget that we're not immune to still failing just because you have a success. So let's pick up in the next episode, and why don't we start with resilience in the face of adversity? I look forward to seeing you next time, thank you.