Episode Summary

Stephen Neli is only six weeks into building Zellus, but he’s already going after one of small business’ biggest problems—late payments. In this episode, he shares the origin story behind Zellus, how he’s pitching investors and customers, and what it’s like starting up solo (with a lot of heart and a little help from Figma). Alan breaks down his pitch, offers advice on finding a tech co-founder, and chats about that sneaky startup sidekick: imposter syndrome. If you’re an early-stage founder, this one’s packed with gold.

Time Stamps

1:27 – Stephen’s startup story and the birth of Zellus

2:20 – The pitch: how Zellus helps small businesses get paid faster

5:30 – Alan’s feedback: strong structure, clear gestures, great storytelling

8:18 – Who Stephen needs on the team (CTO wanted!)

12:13 – Building in public and what Instagram has taught him

14:52 – Partnerships, pilots, and early traction

17:32 – Customer interviews, pivots, and prototyping with Figma

25:06 – Imposter syndrome and learning to share the lowlights

27:27 – Why sharing the lowlights helps others (and you)

29:49 – Mailout mishaps and the power of founder vulnerabilit

Resources

⚡️ Zellus on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/zellus-au/

🙋🏻‍♂️ Stephen’s Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sneli/

🛳️ Stephen’s Startup Voyage on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/stephen.startupvoyage

🎙️ TEDx Talk: Mike Cannon-Brookes on Imposter Syndrome - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwEquW_Yij0

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Mentioned in this episode:

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I'm building a suite of services for small businesses. We're trying to eliminate the problem of late payments and how it's affecting small business.

If this is the right time and the right place to solve this problem, then you won't be the only person working on solving it.

I will personally turn up to your front door.

I won't, but we're looking to partner with verified firms. That would help streamline their legal support and collection processes for small business. The thought of enormous Stephen filling in the entire doorframe, knocking on my door to collect an unpaid bill. My startup is only six weeks old. And, um, happy to be on the show.

Welcome to Pick My Brain, the podcast where we help startup founders hone their pitches to better connect with customers, co-founders, investors and more. My name's Alan Jones, and I'm an ex-startup founder and angel investor. With a few decades of experience helping your businesses find their footing and achieve their goals.

Well, I'd like to acknowledge that this podcast is being recorded on the Gadigal land of the Eora Nation, lands that were never ceded, and my respects to the first Nationals leaders and innovators past, present, and emerging on our show Pick My Brain. You'll hear real stories from founders as they pitch their startups, tackle the challenges of entrepreneurship and work towards turning their ideas into successful ventures.

Each episode, I'll be diving deep into these pitches to offer insights, advice, and strategies to help founders take their businesses to the next level. Thanks for joining me. Let's get started. Today we're joined by Stephen Neli of Zellus.

Hi Stephen. Would you like to, uh, introduce yourself? Hi there, I'm Stephen.

So my startup is Zellus. Uh, I'm building a suite of services for small businesses. We're trying to eliminate the problem of late payments and how it's affecting small business. So my startup is only six weeks old and I'm happy to be on the show.

Congratulatory licence for, um, having the courtesy set forward and, and, and join the show.

Right. I understand you're, uh, currently in a pre-accelerator program. Can you tell us about that program?

Yeah, that's correct. So I'm a part of the pre-accelerator cohort at, uh, Western Sydney Startup Pub, run by Space Cube. So the awesome folk over there. It's been an awesome experience, an eye-opening one for me because this is my first ever startup.

I've never done this stuff before. So daunting. But it's

good. That's good mate. Thank you for appearing on the show. Um, how about you run through your pitch, but before you begin, tell us who would this pitch be aimed at?

We've got a pre-accelerator pitch presentation night in 2, 2, 2 nights. Uh, and it's aimed at them, so it's, it's more of a, a.

People, it's 2024. This shouldn't be an issue. But the more I speak with small business owners, the more I get a sense that it's getting worse. One in four small businesses fail due to late payments fail, not just take a week break and come back. They fail. And only 8% of small business in Australia actually vet their clients before taking on projects.

So me, with my decade of experience in, uh, financial planning, sales collections found an opportunity for change. So I give you Zellus onboarding, risk management, cash flow collections, all in one app that integrates seamlessly into your current accounting software and gives that control back to small business in three steps.

Step one, the z filter. Enter in your client's details for a quote on the job. You get an automatic one to five star risk rating. Now, that risk rating is based on AI and live credit reporting. You also get 24 7 live notifications for any significant changes to your current client list. That means red flags, court actions, history of non-payments, voluntary administrations.

You need to know who you are going into business with. You need to get that notice and act accordingly. Number two, flow. For our eligible clients, we are willing to pay you up to 95% of any selected invoice in the first 48 hours because cash flow is survival. Go grow your business. Payroll supplies, you don't have to wait.

Go and be great. Finally, my favorite. Collections I will personally turn up to your front door. No wait, but we're looking to partner with verified firms that will help streamline their legal support and collection processes for small business at a click of a button. Zellus is a tier-based subscription model.

We're offering premium services, API access, and percent-based fees. My ask today is very simple. I'm looking for connections. I'm looking for partnerships, I'm looking for networks. So help build Zellus and if you're a small business out there or if you know of someone, please, let's connect. Let's talk.

Let's build a Zellus verified environment. Because I believe that we will be the ones to restore that trust back into small business. Thank you.

Thank you, Stephen. Here's my, my, uh, bull's hands. Well done. That was great. That was a really great pitch for, for a six-week-old startup. Let me first of all tell you about some of the things that, that I loved about it.

First of all, you have a, a credible presentation style and you seem like a, a hard worker and a determined person while also being friendly and approachable. But you do take the pitch through, you know, a couple of moves there, right? So there's a, there's a feeling of moving forward quickly and really enthusiasm for solving this problem.

And then you take us into, into a, a funny moment there where I think all of us, you know, recalled an shocker at the thought of enormous Stephen filling in the entire doorframe, knocking on my door, said collect an unpaid bill. So there was some real moves there in, in the pitch, and it also had. Reacts to the, to the story narrative there, right?

You were describing the problem, you were describing the solution, how the product's gonna work, and then you were describing your ask, what you were looking for from your audience today, but at a nice beginning, middle and end. I also really liked our bang on a bit from time to time about purposeful gestures because sometimes if you're a kind of person that that talks with their hands, we get into paddling hands.

You know, we just, our hands are just involved in the talk and that can get very, very distracting, particularly on a video call. Rosie had some, some really nice, clear gestures that I think add something to your pitch. I noticed there that, that you, you were punching in, you know, on a phone hit that was part of your pitch, and then right after that one you did, you did this, you were drew out something.

Those are two really good purposeful gestures. Another one was use the bullet point fingers, right? You gave your audience a a sense of, okay, I'm gonna talk about three things now, or I'm gonna talk about four things and you check them off with your fingers. When you did that, I thought they were all really great.

I. Another purposeful gesture that you might be able to script into this pitch is, is what I call the chopping block. Anytime when we're talking about the way things used to be done and the problems that causes and the way we're going in the future, it can be a really good idea to introduce the. Here's the chopping block and here's the cleaver, and those days are gone.

You know, we're moving on, we're outta here. But you've already got some really nice, clear, purposeful gestures and you're not letting your hands get in the way. So, so well done For a six-week-old startup, that was a really great pitch itself. Now let me, uh, be an investor for a moment and ask you some of the questions that I would ask if I was considering getting to know the company a bit better.

It sounds like you are the only person in the, in the, uh, Zellus at the moment, but I am looking, so there is a big gap there that I need to fill. I.

So

describe that gap

to me. Who do you need to, to fill?

What?

Uh, so I'm actually looking for someone that's very tech-based, like a tech expert, A CTO essentially, that could come and sort of close that knowledge gap that I have. Uh, I am working on a few things to push it towards an MVP. I'm not gonna, I'm not rushing into it, but I'm also don't want to be taking my time, but I want to get there very soon.

So, yeah, I need that CTO or that tech head to help me out. Do

think about how to motivate that tech. To join your start startup rather than doing their own startup or gonna work with another startup.

As far as that conversation's concerned, I do know there's, there's other way I've heard of, you know, the sweat equity and, and things of that nature of the, to possibly offer people, especially tech heads.

But, uh, me being very new at this stage, I think that was a conversation I was gonna address later, but I'm very, I'm absolutely happy for you to, to, to help me out there because

yeah. I know from previous experience, it can be hard for a non-technical person to find a technical person and motivate them to, to join the team.

Uh, because skilled technical people have car blanc, they can go to, um, whatever they want, they can go build their own sub if they like.

Yeah.

And they can certainly join a startup that's gonna pay them a pretty good wage and, and some, some equity, some employee equity.

I think one interesting way to, uh, engage with, with a good technical person is, is that, you know, if we imagine that, that, um, people in, in that profession have kind of a, an engineer's mindset, an engineer is, is quite often somebody that can't walk past, um, an oven or a microwave if the clock is flashing.

You know, like they come and visit your house and they walk, get your kitchen to have a chat, you and a beer, and they see that the, the microwave is flashing and, and they're just like, they've got this, they're distracted by it and they just wanna, they just wanna fix the clock for you and they see how come you, it is not showing the right time.

You know, I'll fix that for you. So sometimes when we put a problem right in front of a technical person, it can get to their engineer mindset of their brain and. I look at this and go, you know, I could probably do this bit of it for, for Steve in like, yeah, two days. And he seems like I'm blunt, nice bloke.

I don't wanna help him. And it sounds like a fun thing to do. Um, I could just do that bit of it, right? So sometimes that can be, you know, rather than going. To the world. I'm saying, Hey, I want a co-founder to join me for the next 10 years and help me build a 50% company. Like sometimes that is a really, really big ask.

Yeah. And if they were gonna do that, maybe they'd want go do it themselves. But if we say, I've just got this really specific problem, you know, I'm trying to move from, from, from where I am now to, to this next thing. You know, I'm trying to teach myself a little bit of code and I can't figure out this little bit, lemme describe it in detail.

And I just put that out there in the world and sometimes. Who's a software engineer will go, huh, I can do that. That's, that's easy. Let me help Stephen. Engineers want to help, right? Yeah. So that, that might be, uh, a way forward.

Yeah.

In order to do that, we have to be transparent though, about what's going on.

Mm. Ready to, um, talk to the rest of the world about what's

going on on your startup. I've been six weeks old. I'm as ready as a six-week-old startup can be, but I'm ready for any conversation, especially with the, it's interesting you bring up the CTO conversation or the, the tech. Uh, I've never thought of it that way.

I, I guess humans are automatically inclined to want to help, so I think that's an approach that I'll be looking into for sure. But I'm ready for that conversation to happen. I just need to align a few things, like partnerships and getting in what my services actually would look like. Uh, but yeah. That'll come with time.

I think you're, you're, you're sharing a bit about your journal on, on social media, is that right? Where can I find that?

So, um, my social media journey is on Instagram, so it's Stephens, so S-T-E-P-H-E-N do startup Voyage. And I've just listed there, uh, gone through all my experiences from the very start, from starting my.

So I'm pretty happy about that.

I believe that, that doesn't surprise me at all. That doesn't surprise me at all. He did a. Just now, um, so Stephen, if I went to Instagram, is it all, you know, kind of, you know, mostly positive.

Yeah, very, very much so. It's, uh, I, I'm trying not to make it my personal diary, but I am trying to highlight key stages that I'm going through and I'm surprisingly putting myself out there has allowed people to sort of chip in and chime and there are people that have reached out to try and, uh, you know, see if they can help me.

So it goes back to that point of putting a problem in front of people and they'll always try and. Oh, help out. So I've experienced that. Now that I think about it, the content is, is largely focused on, um, just some milestones that have hit problems that I've had, and it's fairly, fairly positive I think.

Great, great.

There are obviously, you know, software engineers on Instagram. Um, there are other social media and, and online community groups where, where more developers hang out. So, so don't be afraid to go and explore destinations where, where more software developers hang out, you know, in the real world community as well.

Um, tag along to, to software startup events. And, uh, don't stand for some reason that you already know and, and talk to them all night. 'cause you're afraid to make new friends. Yeah. See much of that room you can work and, and see if you can bump into software engineer. Um, along the way, if, if you get a chance to bump into somebody at a, at a startup event, then use that opportunity.

You know, to get through, you know, maybe like a five or a ten second version of your pitch, like the way you introduce yourself at, at, at the beginning of our chat. Yeah. And then raise the problem that, that's front of you right now. Mm. Trying to do this thing that's a software engineering thing and, and here's why I'm stuck to know anything about that.

Yeah. That might be helpful. Yeah. And, and then buy them a drink. So Stephen, you, you touched on partnerships there. Um, what, you know, what kind of

of partnerships are, are you hoping to try? So my startup is in three sections. So I've got the risk management and onboarding. Um, I've got the, the, the invoice financing, and then I've got the collection legal support.

So all of those three function partnerships obviously for, for myself to. To build out these functions from scratch is gonna be very, very, uh, cost and time consuming as well. But also there's other people out there that have, um, that. You know, have had this technology accessible and, and a matter of me bringing this stuff together and delivering it as a, as a, as a complete service.

Uh, so I'm looking to partner with, uh, people like Experian, uh, for the, for the credit reporting and, um, the credit insights for, uh, portion of the startup. And I'm looking at the various other, uh, invoice and finance companies here in Sydney to fill the gap for the. For the second portion and for the third portion of this morning, I actually just had a conversation with Legal Vision and I spoke with, uh, shout out to Fiona.

She's, um, she gave me a lot of context on what direction I should be heading and what I should be asking for, so she was awesome. Yeah.

That's great. There's some good people at Legal Vision not there.

Mm.

Let, let's come back to Experian for a, for a moment. I mean, they are in the business of, of helping startups like yours and other sorts of companies do, uh, credit checks on individuals and businesses, but I.

That's, that's the way they make a living, right? So they're probably more than happy to have Zell as, as a customer, but they probably wouldn't describe that as a, as a partnership. Uh, so it'll probably be necessary to have a sales relationship with, with, with Experian and, and, and sign up on something that's affordable for your business.

Yeah. To do that, that credit reporting. But I'm sure you'll be able to find, uh, law firms specializing in, in, in small businesses that would welcome, uh, new qualified leads, you know, for, for the legal side of things and, and certainly collection agencies that, that are interested in, in acquiring leads to.

So, so those, those two areas, I think that could work really well approaching people for partnerships there. The challenge though, in, in, in the meantime is, is you, you're right. If, if this is the right time and the right place to solve this problem, then you won't be the only person working on solving it.

Mm-hmm. Uh, and we don't necessarily have to be first out on market, but, but we do have to make sure that, that we're offering something new and differentiated to, to customers that. Tell me a bit about how you're, you're, you're making forward progress on, on, on a platform given at the moment, you don't have a software engineer working with you.

The work is pretty much based around interviewing client customers, and that's kind of molding where I'm headed. My, the traction is, you know, getting that validation from the clients and, um, sort of. Pivoting my idea. So what we have now at the six-week mark wasn't the same as what it was in the initial one-week mark.

It was, it's, the startup idea has pivoted quite a, quite a lot, but, and it's, it's all part of the process, that learning process, the molding process. So I'm pretty much, uh, in the phase of learning my numbers, what I need to, what I need to be, you know, sustainable. Um, what, what it would cost. It's for clients, for client acquisition.

Um, going through the whole process of, you know, just the, um, the nuts and bolts of what I need to sort of propel it. And also I'm doing it a lot on, uh, just drawing out what it is that I need from I. My app, whether it's just the basic features and functions is, is, is what I'm getting into. So I'm going onto things like Figma and I'm just, just fleshing out what that sort of would look like from a client experience and then from a wire framing perspective.

Yeah.

Great, great. Um, when we interview, um, customers that aren't in a business of working with software all the time, they find it really, really hard to, uh, picture in their mind what, what an app or a, or a web platform might look like. Right? So a Figma prototype doesn't have to be pretty. If, if a customer can see.

Uh, roughly the functionality might work. Right now, you know, I, I click in this field and I type in my ABM. I click in this field, I type in my company name, ET central, and then, and I click this button and I go to another screen that starts to, you know, ask me to connect my, my cloud accounting platform.

Say that, that helps the customer go from. Way too abstract to a bit more specific. And if we consciously don't make it really pretty, it's, it's unstated, but it's clear that this is not what the product's actually going to look like. And so they can, they can forget about thinking about whether the button should be blue or green, and they can actually think about, actually, for me, this process will work better if it was in a different order.

First, I want. To connect to my accounting platform. And then I wanna add in the, the details of, of my business, for instance.

Yeah.

So it, it can be really ability to, to gain some practice and, and mocking stuff up and, and Figma or something similar. And if you're moving from there to a low code or a low code tool, then.

A lot of those low-code, no-code tools now will automatically ingest, you know, they'll suck up your Figma designs and they'll start coding an app based on, on the designs that you had. So that can be a really good first step forward before you found that technical co-founder that you have to find.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Another really good thing about the process is, is, is that, you know, we get to learn a little about how hard it is to do and how long it takes. So it can be really, really hard to manage somebody to lead somebody if you don't really know what they do. Yeah. You know? So any chance we get to, to spend a little bit of time in their shoes is gonna make us a better leader, a better manager of somebody, you know, performing that, that task.

Mm.

My place at at home today. There's, there's a guy sanding, sanding the deck for me, probably do an okay job. But having attempted to do something like that in the past, you know, it gives me a rough sense of how long it ought to take him. Um, and, and that can be, you know, really helpful when, when I'm deciding whether or not he's doing it quickly enough and, and doing it well or enough.

Mm-hmm.

Oh yeah. You know. Being a founder basically means wearing all of the hats of, of the leadership functions in the, in the business from day one, right? So some of the time you're gonna be wearing the, the commercial and sales hat. Some of the time you're gonna be wearing the marketing hat. Some of the time you're gonna be wearing the, the CTO hat.

Some of the time you're gonna be wearing the, the people and culture hat. Um, all of these different hats, um, there's no way that, that all of them are gonna fit us well, right? But we're gonna look pretty stupid and, and, and some of them all the time. But that's, that's part of the founder journey, right?

Being prepared to put on a hat that doesn't suit me. And for me, it's definitely the CFO hat. Putting, putting that on for a while helps me, you know, further my appreciation of. Of the people who are doing that job. For me, when I'm in a position, being able to hire somebody or when I'm positioned to bring somebody on, um, as a, as a co-founder, so it's, it's not wasted time.

Getting uncomfortable, wearing that hat, getting comfortable, looking a bit silly in that hat is, is a really good process for, for being a better leader of a time at a, at a later stage, reaching out to, to customers one on one. Is, is a, is a, is a really good idea. We have to be careful though that we're not designing a product and, and a business that just suits the needs of, of one customer.

So, so if, if we get one small business and make them our, our customer energy customer, we're probably not gonna develop a cus a product that's gonna work for tens of thousands of business.

Designing a product for all small businesses or for, or, you know, all SMBs or SMEs, small, medium enterprises, um, all of those businesses are very, very different. Mm. And so it's gonna be very hard for us to learn anything very concrete, very specific that we can use to build something better from our customers and what they're currently use.

So it can be a diff difficult balancing act. You know, you and I are both, um, men over six foot. Men have a hundred kilograms, we probably don't have a whole lot in common other than that, right? So, so, you know, we couldn't go into this going, well, I'm just gonna build a product, you know, just for blokes over a hundred kilos and over, over six foot tall.

Um, you wouldn't really be designing a product to work for everybody. So see if you can find somewhere in between something in the, in the middle. Avenue to consider might be approaching professional associations. Professional associations that.

Often challenged with, well, how do we find new services? That would be a failure to our members. We want to provide new services for our members because that's why they pay an annual membership fee. And without their annual membership fee, we don't have an association or I'M manager job. So they're always looking for new things to bring to the members.

Right? So it might be that by approaching a professional or a trade association, you might be able to get their cooperation with you. To reach out to their members and get, you know, um, a group of, of 10 or 20, um, small business owners in their professional association that might prepare to collaborate with you, um, to be there for you for customer interviews, to review mock ups with you, um, to learn more about the problems that they face.

And then you're somewhere in the sweet spot between way too big and not targeted enough, and way too small and, and way too targeted. See if you, if, if you can approach a few associations that way. Yeah. Another really fruitful avenue of approach is often these organizations hang out online in places like LinkedIn groups or Facebook groups.

Um, you might be able to find, um, the members of an association, um, and you might be able to pick up 10 or 20 of them just by going to, to the social media place where they hang out rather than going through the, the association itself through its leadership. Man, are there any questions that, that, um, you have for me today?

I do have one. Uh, it's, I think it's just around. Imposter syndrome. And I find that I am, I myself, uh, become overwhelmed with positive problems, uh, to do with the, the workflow. And I tend to get a bit insular. And I just wanted to know what it, what have you done in your previous startups to, or your, from your experience to overcome the imposter syndrome and give any tips for me.

I do mean that I do so like you, I struggle with imposter syndrome. I still do today and, and when I'm in a position to have an open and honest conversation with anybody else in startups. We've all got it.

Yeah.

All of the time, and it never goes away. So, um, I really recommend there's a, there's a great talk that Mike Cannon Brooks, um, one of the co-founders of Atlassian did at a Tedex Sydney event, uh, a few years ago now, but you can find it on YouTube.

And, uh, he has a talk about his own struggle with imposter syndrome. The thing is, we're all tackling things. Um, that we're unqualified to do. Um, all of that's fine. And you'll, you'll tackle one challenge and you'll get through that, and then you go, you look around or, right. What I have to do next? Oh no.

There's another seemingly impossible challenge that I have to take on now. Right. And that's a. If, if you find yourself for a long period of time with no similarly impossible challenges to take on, then you're probably not really building a startup, or you're probably not advancing a startup at a place that's gonna allow it to succeed in the face of competition, right?

Mm. So first of all, we can accept that no matter how successful we are, no matter how long we go at this, we're always gonna suffer from imposter. Well, how do I, how do deal with. Mike has chosen to deal with it. The way that I've chosen to deal with it as well is, is to learn gradually to get more and more comfortable about open, about how difficult to find some of this, you know, so like you, I spend time sharing.

The highlights of my journey in startups on social media channels and blog, and email newsletters, and sometimes on my podcast. And, uh, what I'm trying to do is not just share the highlights, but also the lowlights as well.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. This is the thing that I just don't know how to do, you know, and, and I've, I've tried to do it myself.

Like, I think it's important to show that, you know, I've had a crack at this. And I'm just, I'm just stuck right here. I'm not reaching out explicitly to ask for help, but I'm just sharing with the world at the, with the people who sometimes glance at something that I've written. You know, I'm just, I'm just stuck on this thing.

When we put a problem out there in the world, somebody who might have a solution for that might, might step in and give us some advice or give us a connection and help us through that. It's natural to feel a little bit of shame. It's natural to feel a little bit embarrassed when we do that, but, um, it, it can be a, a really powerful thing when you get into the habit of being able to do that.

You can also call back times in the past, um, once, once the, you know, the immediate, the short term. Pain has passed of, of that way. You've stuffed up that time, you, you took the wrong approach. Um, or, or that time you thought you had it covered and you didn't Yeah. You know, it, it might be six months, it might be a year, it might be five years down the track, but when you look back on something, there's much less pain involved.

Mm-hmm. And, and then it can be a really good example to, to share with somebody, you know, I once spent like. A month working on a, on a physical mail out, you know, with real paper and envelopes and a brochure and all of that kind of thing. And I, and I had a budget to work to, and I was doing a mail out for 5,000 businesses and I obsessed about everything that was going into the envelope and the brochure and the copy, and the photos, all that kind of thing.

All that completely forgot about the cost of postage. Wow, it's waste. But I ended up going over budget by like 35% on, on the cost of sending this out. And I had to go to my boss and I had to say, look, I don't what told you that you could trust me with this, but I've really stuffed this out. We're gonna be 35% over budget.

I'm, I'm so, so, so sorry. It will never happen again. And here I am, you know, 35 years later, I, I can still recall that mistake. I'm never gonna make that mistake again. Right? So, you know, if, if I'm sending you a t-shirt or a sticker in the, in, in the mail. Or even if I'm doing a, a large, you know, EDM, um, email out to people, I'm still gonna think, what are the other costs I have to think about?

It's not just about creating the message itself. It's, yeah, there's also probably gonna be a cost of distribution.

Mm-hmm.

But when you can share that with, with somebody else, once the pain has passed, it kind of becomes liberating. It takes the power away from that thing that used to give you shame. And now it's just a funny thing that happened.

And I'm, you know what, you know, I'm, I'm still alive, I'm still going. It's all good. No one's all part of the journey. Mm. So I, I think that's that helpful way. To, to take it on, except that it's always gonna be with you. So it's never gonna go away. It doesn't matter how successful you're gonna be.

Yeah.

Except that, that you're gonna get a lot more help and support from people if you can be transparent, not just about the high points, but also the low points. Mm. Reach out for help, you know, before you've really messed things up yourself. If you, if this, I'm, here's why I'm stuff up. If I do it. A few years down the track, be ready to share those examples of the times you stuff start with, with people who are just starting on their journey too, and maybe that'll help them.

Ah, awesome points. Thank you so much. I.

Stephen, it was, it was really, really great to have you on the, on, on the show today. You're, you're two days out from pitching for the second time only to, uh, to the pre accelerated cohort. I think it's gonna go really well for you. I'm really looking forward to, to seeing where you go next with your startup.

Um, just one more time. Where can, can people find sellers?

So Zellus, you can find, uh, me on Instagram. So Stephen, so S-T-E-P-H-E-N dot startup voyage, one word. And that's on Instagram, um, Zellus, uh, bracket, a u and bracket, uh, on, on, uh, LinkedIn as well. But yeah, my startup journey has all my links. So if you want to go on there, I've got the, the highlights, the lowlights as we spoke about today, and that.

That's where you'll find a lot of my content. And yeah, I'm very much looking forward to what the next six, six months looks like and um, I'm sure we'll link up again at some point.

Definitely get along today if you can. Thanks for being on the show, Stephen. It was a real pleasure to meet you.

Thank you very much.

Cheers.

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