Bio

Forward thinking founders and visionary leaders turn to Jeffrey Van Dyk when they’re Innovating the Invisible™—pioneering transformative work that activates new markets, reshapes industries, and inspires change. Jeffrey possesses a rare genius for turning bold ideas into messaging and marketing that forges new markets and sparks deep connections with ideal buyers.

An international speaker and mentor, Jeffrey’s career highlights include collaborating with global leaders in Colombia, Israel, and at Microsoft, where he designed speaker training systems, working directly with luminaries like Bill Gates, Marc Benioff and Peter Jennings. Jeffrey bridges the gap between visionary ideas and the audiences and industries ready to embrace them.

Intro

Jeffrey Van Dyk elucidates the pivotal concept of "innovating the invisible," which serves as the cornerstone of his professional endeavors. Through his extensive experience, he aids entrepreneurs in articulating their visionary ideas and formulating market strategies that resonate with unmet needs in their industries. This episode explores the categorization of entrepreneurs into four distinct types—replicators, synthesizers, innovators, and visionaries—each contributing uniquely to the entrepreneurial landscape. Van Dyk further reveals that personal adversity often ignites a profound drive within individuals, compelling them to succeed and transform their visions into reality. The discussion underscores the importance of aligning one's innate insights with market opportunities, ultimately fostering innovation that addresses the unrecognized demands of society.

Episode

In an enlightening conversation, Jeffrey Van Dyk articulates his profound insights on entrepreneurship and market innovation alongside host Jothy Rosenberg. With over twenty years of experience, Van Dyk has dedicated his career to aiding entrepreneurs in articulating their visions and developing impactful marketing strategies. He elucidates the concept of categorizing entrepreneurs into four archetypes—replicators, synthesizers, innovators, and visionaries—each embodying distinct characteristics and roles within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This framework provides a lens through which to understand the diverse motivations and strategies that propel entrepreneurs forward.

A pivotal theme of the discussion is Van Dyk's innovative approach, termed 'innovating the invisible.' This concept revolves around identifying and addressing unmet needs within the market that others may overlook. He emphasizes the importance of intuition and insight in recognizing these opportunities and explains how he collaborates with founders to refine their ideas and shape them into commercially viable ventures. This process often involves helping clients articulate their offerings in a manner that resonates with potential customers, thereby establishing a strong market presence.

Moreover, Van Dyk delves into the psychological dimensions of entrepreneurship, particularly the role of personal adversity in shaping an entrepreneur's journey. He posits that many successful leaders have faced significant challenges in their formative years, which instills a sense of resilience and purpose. As the conversation unfolds, Van Dyk encourages a shift from a mindset centered on proving others wrong to one that is fundamentally driven by a deeper sense of purpose and vision. This evolution, he argues, is crucial for fostering sustainable success and meaningful innovation in today's dynamic business landscape.

Takeaways

• Jeffrey Van Dyk elucidates the significance of articulating innovative ideas effectively to achieve market success.
• The four types of entrepreneurs identified include replicators, synthesizers, innovators, and visionaries, each serving distinct market roles.
• A profound connection exists between personal adversity and entrepreneurial grit, often driving individuals toward success.
• The process of innovating the invisible entails recognizing and addressing emerging market needs that others may overlook.
• Successful entrepreneurs often transition from a mindset of proving others wrong to one centered around purposeful innovation.
• Van Dyk's approach emphasizes the importance of storytelling in conveying new concepts and value propositions to potential markets.

Foreign.

Rosenberg, the host of Designing Successful Startups, where today's guest is Jeffrey Van Dyke.

It's stuff that's in the zeitgeist, it's unseen.

It's not replicator, it's not, oh, there's a known market where people are competing and some are winning and some are losing.

It's, there's, there's an innovation that people in that market are hungry for and they have not yet seen the answer to.

In this episode, Jeffrey Van Dyke talks about how he helps successful entrepreneurs develop innovative market changing ideas by helping them articulate their vision and create effective messaging.

Categorizing entrepreneurs into four types, replicators, synthesizers, innovators, and visionaries.

His work reveals that while childhood adversity often drives initial entrepreneurial success, the most effective leaders eventually transition from proving others wrong to being purpose driven, as illustrated through his conversation with me as well.

Advice.

I have channeled my own physical challenges into becoming both a successful athlete and an entrepreneur.

Forward thinking founders and visionary leaders turn to Jeffrey Van Dyke when they're innovating the invisible, pioneering, transformative work that activates new markets, reshapes industries and inspires change.

Jeffrey possesses a rare genius for turning bold ideas into messaging and marketing that forges new markets and, and sparks deep connections with ideal buyers.

Well, hello Jeffrey, and welcome to the show.

Thanks, Jyothi.

I'm glad to be here.

I appreciate our mutual friend who was also on this podcast, Alicia Kramer made the introduction and then you returned the favor and introduced my next guest after you.

Awesome.

To the show.

That's great.

So that's fun.

So I'd love to set context in the following way.

I'd love to know where you're originally from and where you live now.

All right.

I was born and raised in Granite Prince, Michigan, with a brief stint in Vienna, Austria, and I currently live in Los Angeles.

Goodness gracious.

I went to Kalamazoo College.

Oh my gosh.

My father is from Kalamazoo.

My mom, my dad, and my sister all went to Western across the Tracks.

And I'm from.

I'm actually from a suburb of Detroit, Michiganders.

That's awesome.

Yes, Michiganders is right.

And, and, and now the, the suburb or the part of LA that you live in is what?

I'm in Los Feliz.

I'm at the base of Griffith park, right by the Hollywood sign.

Basically like Hollywood Hills.

Yeah.

Needless to say, you're still in your house.

It's still standing.

The fire wasn't right on top of you.

Nope.

We, we've been very Fortunate.

Yeah.

Well, tell us a little bit about your startup, what you're doing.

So these days I've, I've worked with entrepreneurs for about 20 years.

I was in training and development in some tech startups and then at Microsoft, and then I've been on my own for about 20 years.

And these days the majority of my clients are founders and entrepreneurs who usually come to me not in earliest stage of building their first company.

It's usually they've built something, they've had success with it, maybe they've built a few things in their industry and then there's something new they see on the horizon that is perhaps really forward thinking would push their industry forward.

Maybe there's not an obvious established market for it yet.

And they usually come to me to kind of flesh out the idea to see if it's a viable idea and then eventually to kind of build the brand story, the go to market strategy, all that good stuff.

Are you like a one person LLC or do you have other people that work with you?

I used to and I slimmed down.

I decided to make it easier on myself.

So right now I'm, I mean, basically one person with, you know, an assistant and a little bit of staff.

Do you just call it your name or do you have a name for it?

I'm actually rebranding this year.

It's not done yet.

I'm working on it.

So the business has been called the Courageous messenger for some time.

And because all my people have, they're all very mission driven, they all have that gut sense I'm here to do this thing in the world.

And they usually have a message for their industry or for the world in some, some way.

So it's been called the Courageous Messenger.

I'm rebranding this year and building out a whole, whole new piece around Innovating the Invisible, which is about tapping into what's emerging in the zeitgeist that maybe other people in your industry aren't seeing that, you know, you're here to respond to and build what's next in your market.

So what gave you the idea of doing this?

Just seeing founders need this, this kind of help.

How did this come about in the first place?

A few years ago I kind of started.

Well, I started to dismantle some of the ways I was working.

I got burnt out on it.

And that same summer I got new client after new client after new client, you know, coming to me in all sorts of arenas.

Some, some are like, I heard you on a podcast, I need to work with you.

Others, there's this training in this mastermind I'm a part of, and it's in the vault from four years ago and you're my guy, you know, and referrals and whatnot.

And shared this, a few things.

One, they were all very mission driven.

They all had a lot of access to their intuition.

And so they had this inner drive, this inner knowing of something they were meant to do.

But none of them had the whole picture fleshed out.

None of them can see it fully, and they didn't have the language for it.

A lot of what I do is helping people put language to something that's new, right?

How do I talk about this thing?

How do I bring this to my market?

How do I get people to understand the value and the need for this in the market?

How do I talk about the value proposition in a way that people will quickly and easily get it?

And so it was more just noticing, as I think a lot of entrepreneurs do, noticing what's showing up in your field, right?

Like, oh, this keeps showing up, this keeps showing up.

And noticing that those people were my favorite people to work.

I, I have a gift for working with people in that state.

So that's how it, that's how it's emerged.

It sounds to me like your training must have been in, in product marketing.

Some of the things that you just described are the kinds of things I expect really good product marketing people to be able to articulate.

Well, my formal training is in music.

I was trained to be an opera singer and I fell into training and development, actually.

But early days in a few startups, I was part of product development and was part of teams that greenlit, you know, what we wanted to build next in the product and why.

I don't think that the reason I'm good at it is really from any formal training.

I honestly can't tell you exactly why I'm good at it.

I just started to notice over time when I'd work with clients.

Originally, all my work was, was shaped around messaging, right?

That's kind of where, where it all began.

People would come to me and they'd talk about their stuff.

And people are notoriously bad at being able to describe their work and to describe their value proposition.

And I'd listen to them and I ask questions and I go, oh, you mean this?

And they go, oh, my God, that's it.

That's.

That's what I need to be saying, right?

And so I noticed I just had this knack for that.

It's an important knack.

Yeah, it's.

And even that I can't, I mean, I, okay, I don't have a degree in English or in marketing or in any product development, but I have been a storyteller my whole life, right, As a, as a singer and someone on stage.

And I've done a lot of public speaking and trained entrepreneurs in storytelling.

I was a recording engineer for an NPR way back in the day.

So storytelling and broadcasting has always been part of my DNA.

And once I started working with entrepreneurs and founders in this way, to notice like, oh, this is a, this is a big need that they have that I, I happen to be good at.

So the time when they need you the most is when they've got, they think they've got, identified a problem in the market and they have a solution and they need to be able to explain it.

I know you said that earlier, but I'm just trying to.

Well, let, let me give you an example.

So I have a client who is a real estate developer, very successful.

He was one of the pioneers in co housing.

And he came to me and he said, hey, I have, I keep, I have this hunch, this gut sense that there's a way to use real estate to help people contribute more to society.

I think his actual words to help them self actualize.

And he's like, I know it sounds nuts, but I think there's something here and I want your help fleshing this out.

So when someone comes to me with this gut sense that they've got something, I find that there's always energy to it, there's some life force to their idea and that a lot of the information they need around fleshing it out and eventually launching it lives kind of in the life force of that work.

And so a lot of my work is helping them tap into, almost as if the idea itself has a consciousness, right?

To tap into that, to listen to it and to discern what does this thing want to be in the world.

So with him, over time, what we started to see is that this was about building a new form of residential real estate, like large, large apartment buildings in urban areas that uses all sorts of understanding about how to use the built environment to help our nervous system relax, to help people, you know, kind of come home to themselves in a way and feel better about who they are.

So there's science around all of this theory about which colors affect your mood.

There is lighting that works with your circadian rhythm there.

He worked with a scientist at the University of Oregon who studied natural shapes, shapes and nature and their impact on our nervous system.

And then worked for the textile company to put those shapes into the carpets in the hallways as you're walking down to your apartment building.

So the entire building, the wraparound of the building is all designed for personal optimization.

And that's kind of how we translate that into the market.

It's, it lives inside of a larger field of wellness and the massively growing market of wellness.

We see this kind of thing in high end hotels, right, Resorts, but nobody has brought it into residential real estate yet.

So part of it is developing the idea, seeing if there is a market, doing some market tests, understanding how to shape the value proposition.

His first pitch deck was very mission driven.

And I'm like, dude, you are a developer.

Like, would you buy this?

You know?

He's like, no, not exactly.

I'm like, okay, what do developers want?

He's like, oh, they want differentiation and they want retention of renters once they move in.

Great.

We have got that handled in spades.

No one is, is selling a, a building where, if you live in it, just by living in it, your life becomes better.

Right.

And it's all backed by science.

This is all research back.

So.

And in terms of wellness, right, I live in Los Angeles.

There are very fancy gyms.

I go to one.

It's expensive, it's dumb expensive, but it's lovely.

And there's a lot of amenities in it.

And the same kind of amenities that are in that gym are being put into these apartment buildings.

So if I can live in a place that the very fact that I live there will increase the odds that my life will get better, that's an easy sell.

And people like to be in places where they feel good.

That's really easy.

Right.

So the chances that they will stay go up exponentially in a place that is optimized for human wellbeing.

So you help them find and identify, hopefully, a big and growing market, you then make sure that their product is a good fit.

I mean, you're, you're essentially a product market fit expert.

Yeah.

Especially when it's kind of on the emerging edge of a market.

So with this guy, for example, in terms of product market fit, once we've fleshed out the idea, we said, all right, you've got a lot of colleagues in, in this arena.

Why don't you go and have, you know, some coffee dates, some zoom dates and share this idea and see if light bulbs go off, see if their eyes go, eyeballs, you know, light up and which markets light up and why, what about that?

Market has them be interested in this.

So one market that he didn't anticipate at first is 55 plus communities.

As people get older, they're interested in longevity and well being in increasing numbers.

And some of the higher end versions of these places really want to be the creme de la creme.

And so that's been a big emerging market for him in this arena.

I think 20 year olds, if they could see the future, would suddenly be into longevity.

But they think they're going to live forever at 20.

And actually, gosh, what's his name?

There's that guy that's trying to live forever.

Any documents at all.

And it's all on social media.

My, I have a cousin who is, what, in his 30s, so not 20 something, right.

But he and his wife, they live in North Carolina, they're very much into wellness, well being, longevity.

Partner's nephew, same deal.

They're young professionals, right?

One's in pharma, ones in finance.

So they have the money to live in nice apartment buildings.

They haven't yet invested in a home purchase.

That's another market that this goes after.

Homeowners.

No, the pre home market, the pre late is early.

These professionals who are interested in well being, I mean look at Huberman Lab, right?

It's a massive podcast.

The cousins that I mentioned, they all listen to Huberman Lab and I talked to them about this building.

They're like, oh my God, I want to live in a place like that.

Right.

So because nothing exists like it yet.

So how long does an engagement with the client last for you?

Usually everything we've talked about is about a six month gig.

I do have clients on retainer that's more about ongoing leadership development and just being a strategic guide along their side.

I have some clients that have worked with me for seven, eight years, you know, so some clients, I'm just a good place to bounce ideas and to see what's next.

These tend to be people who are multidisciplinary, are always pulling from a lot of different fields to get ideas about what's next or what could be next.

And messaging is always a need as, as our product evolves and the market evolves, we always need to shift our messaging.

So I do have people that just stay on retainer with me.

But in terms of going from that kind of idea to market testing to getting usually our first draft over website up and our first beta clients in the bag, that's usually about a six month journey to get the foundations of that set up.

And then I Also have a group I lead of these very kind of entrepreneurs who are pushing the edge in their market because a lot of times they don't have a lot of colleagues that fit that bill.

So I've brought them together.

We meet a couple times a year.

The ones that you've got that you do an engagement that last six months, you're not interacting with them every day.

You've.

You've probably got a relatively sparse sort of schedule with them, so you can handle quite a few at a time.

Yep.

Yeah, I usually meet with them like three times a month.

Sometimes in the six months, we'll do a day long together or a couple day longs together.

They'll fly to la or I'll fly to them.

Usually in the first two months, I like to do a day long where I can really, like, kind of get all the ideas on the wall and see what's there and kind of tune into what, like, what is.

I always have this feeling that they come to me with an idea that wants to be born, right?

An idea that wants to come out.

And the question is, what is that idea and how do we give birth to it?

How do we create it in such a way that it becomes the thing it's meant to be in their market?

So, you know, the first chunk where I'm deep in that listening state of what's in their heart and soul to create what's the.

In every market there is.

Okay, I'm going to.

I'm going to go in a particular place.

Jody.

I break down entrepreneurs into four different types of entrepreneurs.

Synthesizers, innovators, and visionaries.

And they all have a different role in the market.

Locators keep what's been going.

My dad was a real estate developer.

I learned to be a real estate developer, and I'm doing real estate development done.

Synthesizers are people who take emerging trends and synthesize them and bring them together in a way that is understandable for the rest of the market.

So when you look at a lot of, say, the business books in the airport, right?

Adam Grant, Malcolm Gladwell, those are all written by synthesizers, and they're fantastic.

I mean, some of them are.

And those synthesizers are largely speaking to replicators.

And then there are innovators.

And innovators, I believe, are responding to a cult, excuse me, a zeitgeist in their industry or a cultural zeitgeist.

What's emerging?

What are the new trends?

What.

What's the new life springing up that they're meant to bring to an industry?

So, for example, Wellness is not new.

The wellness industry is not new.

Things like color theory and lighting technology that.

That helps with personal well being.

Not new.

None of it's new.

What's new is bringing it to that market and.

And giving a wraparound service where there is scientifically backed intellectual property with consulting for developers to implement this in a variety of markets.

So that's what I call an innovator responding to cultural zeitgeist.

And then there's visionaries.

And visionaries are each one, you get fewer and fewer in a market as you go down that line.

Visionaries.

Here's my language for it.

They're responding to what I consider to be a spiritual zeitgeist, meaning an emerging consciousness in a marketplace.

So that sense that like some, there's a new hunger emerging in this market that I somehow have my finger on the pulse of, I don't even necessarily know exactly what the answer is meant to be at first, but I can sense that there's an emerging yearning or hunger in this market that I meant to respond to.

Poster child for that category is Steve Jobs.

Hi.

The podcast you are listening to is a companion to my recent book, Tech Startup Toolkit how to Launch Strong and Exit Big.

This is the book I wish I'd had as I was founding and running eight startups over 35 years.

I tell the unvarnished truth about what went right and especially about what went wrong.

You could get it from all the usual booksellers.

I hope you like it.

It's a true labor of love.

Now back to the show.

And he.

I would put him in a straddling place between visionary and innovator, right?

Because there was cultural, there were emerging trends in a marketplace and an emerging consciousness in a marketplace.

It still is like, you know, where the guy smashes the thing.

It's all dark like it was.

It was bananas.

You've never, you had never seen a commercial like that.

But it spoke to this yearning, especially in the 80s, to break through that kind of static IBM.

You know, this is the box you need to sit in.

Way of being.

You know what else he was really good at?

Messaging.

The messaging for the original ipod.

Thousand songs in your pocket.

Done.

I know, it's just, it's.

You just.

Why couldn't I think of things like that?

You know, it's funny.

My.

My partner at the time ran sales for the west coast at Entertainment Weekly and Apple did a lot of advertising with Entertainment Weekly.

And Steve was involved in the messaging to the very end.

I mean, even proofs of the magazine.

And he would, he.

His hands were in that and he.

Would be like, no, not good enough.

So, yeah, he definitely was a poster child of that.

Well, so, so, Jeffrey, maybe last topic.

I am.

I'm fascinated with stories of grit and, and, and so a.

You've done startup more than one and you work with people that are doing startups.

So either by talking about your own story of grit or maybe ones that you've heard.

I'd love to hear a little bit about that.

I'm going to take it in a particular direction because it's what I attribute the success I've had to.

But it also, what I attribute the success of most of my best clients to.

Everybody I work with seems to have a high degree of trust in their innate knowing and a high degree of willingness to take risks and go into arenas that there are no guarantees at first.

Right.

And I think that's true for all entrepreneurs or all successful entrepreneurs.

The thing that, uh, what's coming to mind is a hotelier, that's a client.

Fifteen years ago, his son died in a car accident.

His two sons were on his way to their way to Mammoth to go skiing.

Car flipped.

The younger son died and it sent him on this deep, deep journey and, and quest internally.

And he comes from a long line of hoteliers.

And his great grandfather helped develop the west side of la, but he took that and stayed with it to develop this stunning resort in Paso Robles.

It's actually where the group I lead meets each year.

But for him, it wasn't just a resort for resort's sake, because you can do those.

That's easy.

This was almost his homage to his son.

And so there are all these details in this resort that you would never think of.

You'd never, never go, oh, that's necessary in a resort to make it successful.

Here's an example.

He's very much into how energy feels in a space.

He flew to France to visit the quarries for the marble, to pick up the marble for the statues that would be in the courtyard, such that the direction the marble was in, in the earth, would be the same direction the statues were facing in the courtyard.

Sent the marble to these.

This famous family in Italy that carved the statues.

Right.

I mean, that's just one little piece throughout this resort.

And when you are innovating the invisible, when you are tuning into the zeitgeist and going, there's something here that I am meant to do and at first, they might not even know or have really a clear sense that there is a market need for it.

Right.

It's stuff that's in zeitgeist, it's unseen.

It's not replicator, it's not, oh, there's a known market where people are competing and some are winning and some are losing.

It's.

There's an innovation that people in that market are hungry for and they have not yet seen the answer to it.

So there aren't many models for it.

There's not.

Here's the tried and true path.

Yes, there are ways to be successful and not successful.

There are ways to build businesses that are known and work better than others.

But in terms of, I'm sure that there's a market here, I'm going to exploit the market or dominate the market or win in that market.

There's not a lot of that.

And so for, you know, the grit I see in these people is their ability to follow that gut sense, that innate knowing there's something here I'm meant to be doing, I'm the one to do it.

I've got to follow this thing through come hell or high water.

And either a whole new section of the market's going to emerge that I will then be the leader of, or I'm going to fail and fall on my face.

And I don't know which one it's going to be at first, but I'm going to do it anyway.

But what happened to them that they have that capability?

I don't truly believe you can.

You're born with it.

I think something, some life experience or a model, a parent who's a model for behavior.

Where does it come from?

Occasionally I'll work with a client who had spectacular models, great parents, often entrepreneurial parents, and they were raised with that kind of way of thinking and way of being and, and an understanding of finance and value creation and markets.

So like my hotelier, he was raised in that.

And his dad is still part of the business and God, I think he's 93, you know, a part of that more often than not, though, most of my clients have a lot of adversity in their childhood.

And they had to get out, they had to find a way forward.

There was something in them that was born that says, again, come hell or how water.

My real estate developer that I talk about, he.

He had an awful, tumultuous relationship with his father, left home when he was 16.

He wasn't raised with real estate development.

His dad wasn't a Dev, like he didn't, you know, he got a job parking cars at a hotel, somehow met somebody in real estate development, apprenticed with them and began his journey.

So for a lot of them, I see that the grit comes from their adversity and something, some drive in them that says no more.

I'm not going to live that life.

I'm going to create a new path, get through.

Born now.

I will also add that later in life that same grit that drove them to succeed come hell or high water, ends up being their Achilles heel because they're on some level subconsciously running away from something and it starts to bite them in the ass.

And so there is a leadership development path where they can resolve some of that and move from a, I would say a more generative place inside of them.

You know, a client that, God, his dad always, you know, told me he was a son of a bitch, he'll never amount to anything, you know, through, like beat him like there I have clients like that in the first part of life, they're, they're trying to prove their dad is wrong, that they're going to succeed no matter what.

And that, that, that fuel is powerful.

It really can get you out the gate.

But then you reach your.

And something that kind of midlife transition dies.

That like, I can't keep pushing that way.

There's gotta be another way.

And I find that interestingly enough that often coincides with their desire to give birth to something new in their market.

Like it's an interesting thing.

I can't keep pushing this way.

And there's this new thing I need to do.

So in some ways, like my work is on the surface market development and messaging and all that sort of stuff.

There's another part of it that is about helping them resolve some of that fuel, kind of a wound driven fuel, and go more deeply into their purpose driven fuel.

And how they lead and manage that becomes more sustainable and ultimately leads to greater success and a better life.

I'm definitely a subscriber to the adversity and I have personal experience with it.

But this other thing you're talking about I'll have to think about.

I don't have experience with that.

I mean I lost a leg and a lung before I was 19, so I had a lot of adversity to deal with.

And to me, the, the initially, the out, the outlet that got me to understand that all the things people were telling me I can't do anymore pushed me to prove that not to be true.

And the vehicle I used for that was sports.

So I became an expert one legged skier and rode my bike one legged from Boston to New York City four times.

And I now I've done the Alcatraz swim this year will be my 30th time.

Then I've been able to carry that over and do startups one after the other.

I am curious about the.

Because of that path of using something like sports as a, as an outlet for it if maybe because I'm 68 so I don't think it's going to suddenly vaporize on me.

You know what Jothi?

I might summarize this tre transition this way.

It's, it's drive to prove other people to be untrue.

Right?

I'm going to prove them wrong.

To drive for your own benefit.

It's, it's in sports, right.

We especially individual sports like skiing or cycling.

And I'm a skier and a cycler.

Right.

Probably not as good as you are.

Those are sports where you're, you're the only person you're competing against is you ultimately, you know.

And so I think there's this place where people move from oh, I'm competing against them.

And in terms of childhood adversity, I'm trying to prove those awful people to be untrue and I'm proving them wrong.

And to, I'm doing this for me, I'm competing for.

That's a really good insight because I can imagine if you had this, you know, very, very bad relationship with a parent and that is your source of adversity that you, that could be really difficult to deal with.

But you're right and I and I have created a foundation to help other kids who become disabled.

And what we do is we get them, let's if they want to run, they, we get them a running leg, they want a snowboard, we get them a special snowboarding leg.

Suddenly the world, you know, that they, they thought might be closing off from, closed off from them is, is now attainable and they, they take off like we got it, we got a young lady who was a snowboarder.

She was not a, you know, a world class snowboarder but she was a competent snowboarder.

And and then she had a bad interaction with a motor, motorboat propeller.

She was actually below knee amputee and so she could snowboard.

Well because she had a knee, she still needed a snow special leg that it was her back foot so it was the one that was twisting and if you twist inside the, the prosthetic well then you, you won't turn that energy to the, you know, won't transfer that energy to the board because it's getting slipped, but if it's too tight, you're going to hurt yourself.

So it's very, very, you know, meticulous.

Anyway, she is now officially in Finland training for the Paralympics.

I mean, she's a phenomenal.

That's so cool.

Yeah, it's really exciting.

But I think it is true that there may be a difference and I'll have to really think about this because I, because of my experience, I so focus on sports being an outlet and then you transfer it to, you know, your startup career.

You know, one of the things that.

Me, it was the arts, right.

I became a singer and an actor and a performer.

So some outlet.

Yeah, I'm with you on that.

And there are times when I've, you know, I've come within days of missing payroll.

And it's a horrible thing because you care about the people's families that you're supporting.

But, you know, people would say to me, how can you deal with that?

And what really is going on is that I remember what I had already dealt with.

And, and so I, I put it, it's relative.

I put it in perspective.

Here's what I'm.

Here's what I noticed about you the moment I met you, Jothi.

There's a level of humility and wisdom that you have that might be age and might be other things.

It might be experience, might be partially how you were raised.

I don't know.

You and I have both been around plenty of CEOs, founders that are high on themselves and the empathy that you're describing of, I pay like I know adversity.

So on one hand, there's perspective I have when it comes to this.

You know, I'm two days away from payroll.

On the other hand, so there's perspective.

On the other hand, there's also empathy.

Right.

You know, the pain of going through difficult things.

And you, you don't want to inflict that pain on their families of missing payroll and the snowball effect that can have in different families.

So there's something that I see in you that is centered in your heart where you.

You about people.

And I can't always say that about every founder I encounter.

Some of them seem to care much more about themselves, you know, but I do think that, that you're someone who really cares about people and that informs how you lead and why you make the decisions you make and, and have done what you've done.

That is my imagination well, that's very.

Kind of you to say.

Thank you.

And I think we've done a a nice episode.

I think we were at a good stopping point.

Very good.

Thank you very much for spending this time with me and for some just wonderful comments and topics that we covered.

I really appreciate it.

Yes, it's been really enjoyable.

I thank you for having me on the show.

Jathy that's a wrap.

Thanks for tuning in.

Today's takeaways about Jeffrey Van Dyke are He helps founders articulate their ideas and market market strategies.

The concept of innovating the invisible is central to his work.

There are four types of entrepreneurs replicators, synthesizers, innovators, and visionaries.

Grit often stems from personal adversity and a desire to prove others wrong.

Personal experiences of adversity can shape one's entrepreneurial journey.

The show notes contain useful resources and links.

Please follow and rate us at podchasers Designing Successful Startups.

Also, please share and like us on your social media channels.

This is Jothi Rosenberg saying TTFN ta ta for now.