The Transcript

The Value of Crafting an Entrepreneurial Vision (and Sticking to It)

Jonny Nastor: Hack the Entrepreneurs is part of Rainmaker.FM, the digital business podcast network. Find more great shows and education at Rainmaker.FM.

Voiceover: Welcome to Hack the Entrepreneur, the show which reveals the fears, habits, and inner battles behind big name entrepreneurs and those on their way to joining them. Now, here is your host, Jon Nastor.

Jonny Nastor: Welcome back to Hack the Entrepreneur. It is so very cool of you to join me again today. I am your host, Jon Nastor, but you can call me Jonny.

My guest today is scientist turned digital artist, animator, entrepreneur, as well as an academic escapee. She has a PhD from the University of Waterloo and has over 15 years of experience in research. During this time, my guest has generated $340,000 in funding, prepared manuscripts, and lectured.

Today, my guest is the founder of Sciconic.com, where she explains scientific concepts through creating simple graphics, infographics, and custom animations and explainer videos. This year, she was recently named as one of the 25 top entrepreneurs to watch by Fizzle.co.

Now, let’s hack Shelley Sandiford.

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Welcome back to another episode of Hack the Entrepreneur. Today, we have a very, very, very special guest. Shelley, welcome to the show.

Shelley Sandiford: Hi, Jon, thanks. Thanks for having me.

Jonny Nastor: Oh, it’s absolutely my pleasure.

All right, Shelley, we’re going to jump straight into this. Could you tell me Shelley, as an entrepreneur, what has been the one thing that you do that you feel has been the biggest contributor to your successes so far?

Taking Herself Seriously — How It Affected Her Business Decisions

Shelley Sandiford: Wow, I think really the biggest thing that I’ve done is this realization that no one is going to take me seriously until I do. Coming in from a completely different career field, I tried to start my business on the side while I was still in academia. Science is an all-encompassing career. There was just absolutely no time.

I wouldn’t necessarily advocate this for anybody else, but for me, the decision to become serious about myself and where I wanted to go, the first decision I had to make was to walk away from that career, that doing this part-time wasn’t going to work in my case even though I wouldn’t necessarily advocate that for anybody else. Taking myself seriously also meant, in a sense — even though I still consider myself a scientist — meant almost shedding that identity temporarily. If I were to meet you in some sort of a public setting today and I went to introduce myself, I’d introduce myself as an animator and a storyteller, not as a scientist.

Taking myself seriously meant changing my identity. It also meant admitting that I had an awful lot to learn. There were a lot of things that I didn’t know, and I was way out of my comfort zone. I still am in many ways. It meant seeking out help. I’ve had the opportunity to work with a couple of business coaches this year, but it really did start with taking myself seriously. The decision to work with business coaches, the decision to change, to look at myself through a new identity, the decision to walk away from a career — it all stemmed from taking myself seriously.

Jonny Nastor: Wow. I love it. So you said tried to do it on the side, so you were a scientist in academia, as in working at a college?

Shelley Sandiford: Yeah, I was a bench scientist. I would conduct experiments during the day, come home at night, then open up my computer once my daughter was asleep, try and draw some pretty pictures and make them move, and I just didn’t have enough time.

Jonny Nastor: How long did you do that for?

Shelley Sandiford: I tried to get my business off the ground probably for about two years before I left.

Jonny Nastor: That seems pretty typical.

Shelley Sandiford: Yeah.

Jonny Nastor: At some point, you either have to give up on the business or you’ve got to give up on something.

Shelley Sandiford: Yep, you have to give up on the dream, or you have to give up on the … yeah, I agree.

Jonny Nastor: Can you — I guess you probably still can — remember what it felt like that last day you walked of your job?

Embracing Your Vision and Going for It

Shelley Sandiford: It felt fantastic.

Jonny Nastor: Really? You weren’t shaking and like, “Oh my god! What am I doing?”

Shelley Sandiford: Absolutely. Yeah, I would maybe stick some swear words in there, too. if I could, but absolute elation. I had wanted to walk away for a long time, or the circumstances were right before my mindset was right. The day I walked out I knew I was never going back. Even if the business idea failed, I knew that my life was going to go in a new direction, so it’s absolutely fantastic.

Jonny Nastor: Wow, so were you just fed up with academia, or did you just know that it would lead somewhere and you didn’t know where?

Shelley Sandiford: No, I was done with it.

Jonny Nastor: I know some people, they still do make that leap, but they’re also like, “But I love my job. I did. It just wasn’t fulfilling on the right level.” Or you want to know what you can accomplish.

Shelley Sandiford: Yeah, I love science, and I loved being a bench scientist. I fell out of love with academia. When that distaste eclipsed my love for being a scientist, it was time to go.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. Well, I think you’re in good company here, falling out of love with academia, so it’s good. Now I’d like to know, because there seems to be this point — this was the point for you — there seems to be two camps. Either you’re trying to go and make something big, like this big difference in the world, you simply just found that you just couldn’t work for somebody else, or as in your case, you just couldn’t work within academia. Which one pulled you harder, do you think?

Shelley Sandiford: Oh wow. At this point, once I had the idea in 2011, 2012, when I first started to have this idea for a website, even though I didn’t have a clear idea in my head of what it would look like at that time, I had that vision. It wasn’t so much about not necessarily wanting to work with other people anymore. It was like, “I have this thing in my head. I want to try this thing in my head, and if it doesn’t necessarily work, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t go back to work for somebody else or anything like that. This is my chance to give this a shot.”

Jonny Nastor: Exactly. I believe your story you didn’t just, “Oh, I’m going to just find a widget, sell it, and try to make more money than I did at my job.” You want to bring science to more people in an accessible way. That’s a big change. That’s awesome.

Shelley Sandiford: Yeah.

Jonny Nastor: Now, every blog post, every expert, they talk about the 80/20 rule. I’m sure you’ve heard of this.

Shelley Sandiford: I have.

Jonny Nastor: Do 20 percent, and get 80 percent of the results. Do what you’re good at. Delegate the rest. Shelley, could you tell me something that you’re absolutely not good at in your business?

Doing Whatever’s Necessary to Grow Your Business

Shelley Sandiford: Oh my god, it’s sales, for sure. I’m very introverted by nature. It’s quite difficult for me to reach out for people. Unfortunately, that 80/20 rule, right now, where my business is at, at this stage, I have to spend most of my time doing that one thing that I really don’t like to do. Spending a lot less time with the content creation these days as I am compared to the amount of outreach that I have to do.

Jonny Nastor: Nice.

Shelley Sandiford: It’s reaching out to people. It’s making phone calls. It’s sending out emails. It’s all that stuff that I wish I didn’t have to do right now but I do.

Jonny Nastor: Are you saying that you’re telling yourself that you’re going to work on this to do something every day that scares you?

Shelley Sandiford: Yes.

Jonny Nastor: Are you going to push yourself to get good at this, or are you going to push it so that hopefully your business grows enough so that you can delegate it out, immediately?

Shelley Sandiford: Absolutely, yes, answer B. Right now, I have to do it myself, but with the goal that someday … really if I didn’t do it myself, the business doesn’t grow. It’s that simple.

Jonny Nastor: Exactly.

Shelley Sandiford: If I can’t do it, won’t do it, or make excuses every morning why I shouldn’t do it, business doesn’t go anywhere. By refusing to do it, to me, that is a sign of giving up on this business, at this point. I’m not willing to do that. When I get to a point where I can bring somebody in to do that for me, that is the first hire that I make, absolutely, so I don’t have to do it. Right now, I’m not in that situation, so that’s just the way things are.

Jonny Nastor: Of course. Most businesses aren’t in that situation. Sometimes people just love the battle. Then, also, the most introverted of us, which I am myself, we find that sometimes we do like sales, especially online, because you don’t have to go knock on someone’s door necessarily and make a pitch.

Shelley Sandiford: That’s true. You don’t necessarily have to make cold calls. I can tell you this, I’ve actually gotten better at it, for sure. The more you do it, it’s gotten easier for sure. It’s still not my favorite thing to do.

Jonny Nastor: Right, small businesses, though, we don’t often get to do just that one thing we love to do. It takes a while to get there.

Shelley Sandiford: Yeah, I think so.

Jonny Nastor: Excellent. Let’s move on to work if we can. As you just said, you don’t want to make those excuses every morning not to do it because you have to do it. Could we, with work — and today’s a work day — you’ve come from academia, so probably fairly structured I would assume. How structured is your workday? You wake up today on a workday, could you walk us through the first 30 minutes and what you do to set yourself up to get the things done?

Self-Awareness — The Benefits of It

Shelley Sandiford: Oh gosh, yeah. Because sales and outreach is where I struggle and it’s not necessarily my strong suit, that is the first part of my day now. If I don’t do it first thing in the morning, I will make excuses as the day goes on why I don’t want to do it or why I have something more interesting to do.

Basically, I’m up and ready to go between eight and eight thirty in the morning. By that time, my daughter is off to school or camp. I open up my email. I either will research some companies or certain organizations that I would like to reach out to or I have already formulated from the day before, and I go. I just start trying to reach out to people. If I have already reached out and they’ve agreed to chat with me over the phone, then I also try and get those conversations out of the way as early in my day as possible as long as it works for them. That is always, always the first part of my day.

Jonny Nastor: Wow, I love it. Get it out of the way quickly.

Shelley Sandiford: Get it out of the way. Get out of the way, or it’s not going to happen. Shelley will think of something better to do. The day will come and go, and it won’t happen.

Jonny Nastor: Wow, I love the self-awareness of knowing that. I think I know that about myself, but I can still trick myself into, “No, I’ll do it later.”

Shelley Sandiford: It was months of trying to convince myself that I would do it at three in the afternoon until three in the afternoon. There’s no way it’s happening at three.

Jonny Nastor: You’re working from home at this point, or do you go out of the house sometimes?

Shelley Sandiford: I actually do a combination. This summer, I’m working a little more from home, but I actually do have some rented office space, downtown Ottawa. Most days of the week, you would actually find me there.

Jonny Nastor: Do you find that helps?

Shelley Sandiford: Absolutely. Yeah, I do. I’m actually pretty good. I don’t tend to get often distracted working out of my office at home, but I just find the office space that I rent out of is fabulous. There’s people walking around there. You can start conversations. There’s a couple people associated with it that have become almost like mentors to me. People that you can bounce ideas with, you can have chats with. I find the atmosphere really, really helpful, really invigorating, so when I can get down there, I choose to work downtown.

Jonny Nastor: Wow, that’s awesome. So is it co-working space, or is it literally separate offices but there’s communal areas?

Shelley Sandiford: No, it’s a business. Actually, I’ll give a shout-out because they’re fantastic. They’re called Rhapsody Strategies. They’re in Ottawa. They offer business coaching. They offer web strategies, social media, and they have a fantastic office space. They actually do rent out desks there. So if you want to come down, if you want to have a meeting, or if you want to work down there, you can arrange with them to go down and get some work done.

Jonny Nastor: That’s awesome. Rhapsody Strategies. We’ll link to that in the show notes, so it’s easy for everyone in Ottawa or going to Ottawa.

Shelley Sandiford: Yeah, please do. It’s an excellent space.

Jonny Nastor: Now, I just now realized that you’re Canadian. That’s awesome. I knew there was a...