Your Security + Biz Growth by EntrepreneursRadioShow

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Episode 123: Darren Berkovitz In this episode, Travis talks to dynamic business owner Darren Berkovitz. Darren is a successful entrepreneur and co-founder of TeleSign, whose goal is to provide business owners with secure solutions with their online transactions. Travis and Darren touch on a lot of valuable lessons on this interview. Darren shares his knowledge on how to effectively adapt when your company is growing exponentially. He also emphasizes the importance of prioritization and having a good sense of humor to cope effectively with the challenges of the business. They also talked about the key lessons that they did which led them to the success they’re having today. Darren also emphasized a valuable lesson of knowing which direction your company should take and work hard on reaching your goals. These and so much more are what you can expect from this episode of the Entrepreneur’s Radio Show.

Your Security + Biz Growth TRAVIS: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode 123 of the Entrepreneur's Radio Show, a production of rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, where each and every week I'm going to connect you with a rock star entrepreneurs that explain their journey to success and what's been the key principles to finding a high level of success as an entrepreneur. So that you can see that successful entrepreneurs are just everyday people that stayed committed to taking constant, focused action each and every day. Today I'm going to introduce you to Darren Berkovitz. Now before we get started I want to say thank you to another person for writing a review over on iTunes. So this thank you goes out to Bennyboy UK from the UK. Benny's headline title was Supremely well-done. And he gave us a 5-star rating also. Thank you for that Benny. Benny went on to say that the show has a higher level of expertise about it and he loves the show. Benny, thanks for taking the time write the review my friend, I really, really appreciate it. Just in case you don't know writing a review does help us reach more entrepreneurs like yourself through iTunes and Stitcher. So, if you have time and you do find value in the show, go ahead and leave us a review and tell me how we're doing. And then of course I'll recognize you on air and say thank you. One last thing, you can take these interviews with you on the go, through iTunes, Android, or Stitcher. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, click on the button right there on the menu bar and it will take you to whichever one that you prefer. Now that we've got all the normal housekeeping out of the way, let's go ahead and get down to business. Without further ado, welcome to the show Darren.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

DARREN: Thank you for having me. TRAVIS: You bet. Thanks for coming and hanging out with me. Man, you've got your hands in kind of a variety of things. And so, I don't know if you know but I like to dig into the back story and kind of find out what brought you to your level of success today. Do you mind sharing that back story with us? DARREN: Sure. That sounds good. TRAVIS: Cool. Lay it on me. DARREN: Yeah. I know, that sounds good. So, I was working at an incubator in 2005 and we have this idea for TeleSign, basically to send a phone call or an SMS to a user to prevent fraud. So, actually the first site that we did it on was an online backgammon site. And they were having a ton of fraud, credit card fraud, and bad stuff. So, we had the idea to send that SMS to a user before they completed the transaction to kind of touch them on the shoulder. It worked tremendously well. So basically all the fraudsters just left at that point. So we said, "Hey, there might be a business here." TRAVIS: So were they bots or something? How was the fraud happening? DARREN: Yeah, it was basically stolen credit cards. So people using stolen credit cards and trying to be anonymous. So, the idea was, "Hey, if we actually verify your phone number we know who you are." So they got scared and went somewhere else. TRAVIS: Oh, that makes sense. So as soon as you start verifying they're out of there. And there's all kinds of problems with charge backs and-- I would imagine it was causing an incredible amount of problems on the business. Now, when you say in an incubator I know what you mean. But for everybody else explain what that is. DARREN: So an incubator is basically a technology company where you try and incubate ideas. So you take an idea and you have the resources in one office to get it off the ground. So marketing, legal, finance, and they really help you see if this idea can turn into a real business. TRAVIS: Right. DARREN: So, it was great that we have the support of-- it's called the curious minds incubator, to get TeleSign off the ground. And we started to make some traction. And it took about 2 or 3 years before really started to get into some of the very large clients that we have today where we'll solving the biggest problems on the internet having to do with verification, authentication, identity, and all that stuff.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: So how did you even get to the incubator phase? Being the entrepreneur there's a path there. I know you have a bit of an education in business, right? DARREN: Yeah. So I knew from a very early age that I wanted be an entrepreneur, that I wanted to start a business. And the incubator was a great place because it took away some of the risk because you're in a place that support you. So, I thought it was kind of the best of both worlds since you got the benefit of starting your own business with the support and the people around you to help you succeed. Because I think one of the big lessons I've learned over the years is you don't succeed or fail alone. And especially in the early stages of the business. The more help from just advice to, someone to vent to, it really makes a big difference. TRAVIS: Right. So what did you have to give away? So this business is your business, right? DARREN: So, it's not just myself. So there are a few co-founders and the incubator that we were there. So it's not mine, it's spread throughout a lot of people. TRAVIS: I mean, like 3, 4, 5, or several-- A large number. DARREN: Yes. So there were a few founders, there are basically 3 founders that started the company. And as we expanded we have a lot of people obviously come now. We were now just past 220 people who work at TeleSign. TRAVIS: But the ownership comes through finding funding and the incubator process and everything else. Is that how additional ownership was kind of dealt out? Is that what I'm understanding you say? DARREN: Yeah, exactly And then we've done 2 rounds of financing. I'm sure you've seen in the news, we just raised $49 million for in our series B round which is great. TRAVIS: It's not too bad. DARREN: No, it's really good and it's going to allow us to accelerate a lot of the things we have on our product road map. TRAVIS: Well, you're a pretty young guy, right? DARREN: I am. yes. TRAVIS: So this is a complete different way to fast-track a business. You started this in 2005? DARREN: 2005, yeah.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: Okay. And so, less than 10 years you've built the business to pretty epic level. This is an uncommon way. Most people bootstrap their businesses, right? DARREN: Right. TRAVIS: And so, I completely get the mentoring and finding other people to help you build this thing. But this is a complete different path. Do you realize how different what you're doing is compared to most people? DARREN: No, it definitely is. And I think the other thing that made me a little bit different than the normal kind of technology company is we try to grow from profit. It sounds normal but in some businesses it's a little bit crazy where you raise money and then you try and figure out how to raise money later, or how to make money later. So with us it was always we need to pay the bills. So we need to create products that can create revenue now. So, almost from when we got our first client which is basically a month or two in. We were growing based on profits from the business. So we actually didn't raise our first round of financing until 2012, so 7 years. So we basically bootstrapped it through the initial funding and then through profits. TRAVIS: And so, now, what's the need for so much seed money? Why don't you explain what you do on kind of a deeper level, and isn't it kind of pretty high margins also? DARREN: So, what we do basically is mobile identity. So basically we associate your account with your phone number and we help you with verification and authentication around that phone number. The margins, it's not a super high margin business but we're providing a tremendous amount of value to companies as it relates to security verification, authentication, and for the user. Because at the end of the day, if you don't trust the website that you're on, if you don't have that level of trust, you're not going to use it. So, it really is the most important problem that is being solved right now. TRAVIS: Right. And it's just kind of something that goes on behind the scenes but there has to be that trust there for money to exchange hands between me and my customer, right? DARREN: Yeah. TRAVIS: You're just kind of the coupling in between those two. DARREN: Yeah. And not even just for money, obviously money, banks, and financial institutions attract criminals. But I tell most people, if you really think about it, the most dangerous place for a criminal to break in is your personal email. Because from your personal email you have financial stuff, you have personal correspondence. Everything is really tied to

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

that. Although you don't usually pay for your personal email if someone were to break into that they can basically break into your whole life. TRAVIS: Yeah. I guess I really don't think of that as a place that I'm highly worried about. I think that's a common attitude amongst people, wouldn't you agree? DARREN: Yeah. I think most people will think, "Well, I know my online banking, that's where I have my money, that's where I should really concentrate on." But if someone gets into your personal email, that's really kind of the brain of the nerve center for your entire life. So certainly you want to protect everywhere that you're working. But anywhere where someone could get information, that's where really criminals are after. That's where you want to protect. TRAVIS: Right. I never really thought about that. It's taken me down a whole path of all the things that I do within my personal email that if they were reading that they'd have just about everything but the passwords. And even in some cases the password. DARREN: Yeah. And really at TeleSign our mission is to get rid of the password. The user name and password is very antiquated technology. And obviously our way of doing that is through the phone and supplementing username and password with using your phone. But you're right. The personal email is the center of most people's lives. And it's scary. Once you start to think about it it's scary if someone were to get in there, the damage that they could cause. TRAVIS: Right. There's a famous marketer that talked about, thieves would go to a store to steal maybe 20, 50, $100 out of a register and possibly get shot. Where actually they could go down the street to a $3 million house that nobody's probably home at, walk-in, take his time, clear the place out, and make $100,000 with virtually no risk. DARREN: Right. TRAVIS: And it's just kind of a paradigm shift in a way of thinking that it's stage 1 of incompetence, you just don't know what you don't know, right? DARREN: Yeah, it's definitely true. TRAVIS: And so, what is if username and password is antiquated processes, what's the next phase? DARREN: Yeah, it's a good question and I don't think there's not one silver bullet. You have to find the technology that's secure but at the same time ubiquitous. So in my opinion it's going to be on using your mobile phone. So we're moving towards an area of using your phone as--

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

which we do as a second factor. And also making things frictionless when they can be, meaning that they when everything looks good, you can complete transactions relatively easily without much friction but when there's red flags raised you're going to have to do something. Whether it's receive an SMS, or do a fingerprint scan, or some kind of bio-metrics. But it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. TRAVIS: Right. Now, this is a SAS business model right? DARREN: Yes, correct. It's a totally SAS business model. TRAVIS: Right. So software as a service for those that don't know. And so, traditionally where's the bottlenecks within the business as you've built it. What's been your restrictions and what's holding you back? And I'm really curious, why would you need so much funding? DARREN: That's a good question. So, the bottlenecks to tell you the truth really are more on implementation. So even though it's SAS, there's a lot that goes into an implementation. So you're working with a client basically on their security flow. So there needs to be a lot of changes on the client's end as far as UI's, flows, and processes. So that's really where most of the implementation work is spent. But you're right. A SAS model is really nice because you can expand and contract as you need. Which is great for many clients we sign them up with one or two used cases and then they have some kind of issue, they're breached or something and they want to expand very quickly, which they can, which a soft model lets you do without too much pain. TRAVIS: Right. DARREN: As far as the funding goes, we really want to do two things, one accelerate our product road map. So, come with new and innovative security products that feed into our mobile identity story. And then two, expand internationally. So places like Asia and Europe, which we have clients there, we're very successful there but really require feet on the street and local presence to allow us to expand to those geographies. TRAVIS: Oh it does. Well that's surprising. I would definitely expect you to need somebody that understands the culture there on a very deep level. But as far as a physical presence there, are you talking about like as far as teams, or sales reps, or things like that? DARREN: Yeah. Sales reps, teams, and really being there. A lot of what we do, it's very indepth and require-- like with everything there's a lot beneath the surface so you really need competent teams that can meet with clients locally and work through their challenges and issues. And solve them in person often times. So, it requires special implications which is a huge geography, very spread out. It requires local teams to be able to do that.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: Well so, then you're focusing on B2B then rather than B2C is that correct? DARREN: Correct. So we really like to say we're B2B2C. So we sell to the business but the business oftentimes sells to the consumer. TRAVIS: Right. So that's where a big part of the implementation comes in, because you're working with these larger companies and helping them get things implemented within their networks or their systems? DARREN: Correct, yes. TRAVIS: Okay. I was thinking that the majority of your business was more business to consumer to where things could be delivered directly to the end user and didn't require all of the local teams, right? DARREN: Yeah. It's business to business. It serves the consumer eventually but we have to work through our clients, which does require a lot of teamwork and effort to get projects off the ground. TRAVIS: Right. So how have you managed to hang-on? Because this type of growth is like trying to hang on to a rocket. I've been on a fast trajectory growth pattern, and it's a break neck speed. How do you hang on, how did you prepare for that? DARREN: Yeah, it's a really good question. I don't know if there's any way you can prepare. You can try and get a good night's sleep and see. But I think two things, one, you have to be extremely flexible. So, the best laid plans often times get turned on their head. So you have to be really flexible and not be so spread in your ways. And I heard it so well; you have to really be able to thrive in chaos. Sounds kind of weird but there's a lot of chaos going around, you're moving really quickly. So you have to be able to thrive, which I think really comes down to prioritization. You have so many things going on at once you have to be able in your mind to say, "This is what's extremely important, that's what I need to focus on. This is a secondary importance and I need to get to it but maybe not very urgent. And these are things I can ignore." They're tempting, I want to look at it, I want to do it, but it's not going to really help me achieve my long-term objectives. TRAVIS: Right. And you're comfortable in that environment. DARREN: Yeah. I don't think I could be doing this for 10 years if I wasn't. And it helps to keep a good sense of humor, right? If you can keep a good sense of humor and have a good attitude about things, it helps you kind of power through some of the tougher challenge.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: Right. I agree. There's people out there that force their way through it. They don't like doing it but they do it. There's people even that excel at doing it and still don't like doing it. I'm with you. I can exist in that space and enjoy it. And then I have the ability to turn off. Once I decide that these two things are things I need to focus on I have the ability to turn off the other 9,899 things going, right? DARREN: Yeah, and you're right. There are people that try and power through that. And I think in the short term you can do that but it leads to burn out, right? What you see is very common in kind of high technology, fast-moving companies. You can't operate like that forever. TRAVIS: Right. Are all of the co-founders young guys, or new to business, or did you bring on a high-level CEO to manage this type of growth? DARREN: Yeah. So most of the co-founders are relatively young and like you said, we didn't know what we didn't know. So we did our best growing the business and we started to running to very good problems. So, problems of growth and scale. We have clients that want to use the service but how do we technically expand. So, we recruited a man named Steve Jillings to be the CEO who has been through this movie many times. So he was CEO of a technology company called FrontBridge that did email security. So very relevant to what we're doing, high technology, high growth, 24/7 by 365. They sold that business to Microsoft. So he's very familiar. So I think we put on the good sales hat and convinced him to join. TRAVIS: Oh, that's wise of you guys. DARREN: Yeah, which has been amazing and great. So he's brought a full management team with a lot of people that he's worked with in the past. A lot of people from FrontBridge and other businesses that he's run. So he's steering the ship now and he has a lot experience in high growth technology, security companies. And that's where we are today. TRAVIS: Man, that's brilliant, and that gets you through so much of the learning curve having someone like that. Plus having him bring key players into the business that he's worked with, and he knows they can perform. That's huge with getting you through some growth curves like you guys are experiencing. DARREN: Yeah. And that's his exact philosophy too. He wants to know people, work with people that he knows what their strengths and weaknesses are, and empower them to do their job. Because it's always hard when you have a new member on the team that you never worked with before. You don't know each other's styles, there's a little apprehension there. Whereas if you work with someone before you know how they function, you know how to talk to them, you know what they prefer, what they don't like. So you're right, they kind of cut the learning curve down tremendously.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: That was a brilliant move on all your part. What made you guys come to that conclusion. How did you all decide that? DARREN: Just gray hair. No, I think something that we needed to do-- Like I said we were starting to have very good problems. The problems of scale, big clients want to sign up and we don't have enough capacity. "Okay, what do we do?" Hey, we need more money, not because we're doing poorly, we do it because we need to make investments in the business. We need to buy servers, and capital, and we need to expand our office. So, we knew we're in a little bit over our head. So I think at that point we said, "Hey, we need to bring in really an expert." And we did. He's been running the company for almost 4 years now and got us to this level now over 220 people. TRAVIS: It allows you to kind of exist in the space that you're best at, right? DARREN: Yeah, exactly. And it allows us to bring in very key targeted people for specific jobs. In the early stages of the company in like any other start-up wear a lot of hats. You wear way too many hats. You're the president and janitor, you're marketing, sales, billing, operations. Whereas now as the company has grown we can bring in experts who focus on their specific area. And you can kind of take a step back and figure out, hey, where do you fit in. TRAVIS: Right. So you guys can focus on growing the business as a group rather than constantly working in the business. DARREN: Exactly. TRAVIS: Unfortunately, I had to work 10 plus, maybe even 15 years before I realize just because I own the company I don't need to be the CEO. DARREN: Yeah. TRAVIS: It's just something that for some reason I was waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and relieve me of the position. And I'm the boss so no one ever came and did that. And I think it's just kind of a duh type thing. Most people think, "I created this, I need to be at the helm." You can drive the business but you don't need to be the CEO. You can exist in the space that you're strongest and hire out all of that other stuff. Quite often the business owners are the bottleneck, right? DARREN: Yeah. And I think no matter what your role is you have to be very self-aware of your capabilities, your strengths and weaknesses. And think very strategically. I think a lot of times people just caught and just the mindset of done something because I've done it, that's the right way of doing it, which is not necessarily the right way to think if you want to grow and expand.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: Right. You've got to pivot to focusing on getting down to what's accurate rather than getting down to being right. That's a very different mentality. DARREN: Yeah, exactly. TRAVIS: So, do you guys share the numbers how much in funding have you raised collectively to grow the business? DARREN: So, let's see. TRAVIS: Just kind of in rough numbers. DARREN: I want to be accurate here. TRAVIS: Yeah. DARREN: So almost $80 million in 2 rounds. So, we just completed the series B, the second round of 49 million. TRAVIS: And so you're going to be diluted to like 1% for long. But it's going to be 1% of a lot. DARREN: A big pie, yeah, that's the-TRAVIS: Right. Too funny. So the revenue mark, what type of revenue are you guys generating? DARREN: So, I don't think we're disclosing it publicly but I know Steve has gone out. And the goal is to build a very high quality, well over $100 million company that possibly could be a public company. And I think we're well on our way of doing that. And I think with the funding that we raise will allow us to really take it to the next level, right? And as I said, expanding geographies where we've done well, but we need to feet on the street. We need to help us get to the next level. Combine that with the ability to create new and innovative products that our clients want to consume. We could be in a very good position to be a public company. TRAVIS: Right, nice. Excellent. How long before you guys-- You said you focused on profits early on. And a lot of people may not know this but most companies that are on kind of the path that you started out on, normally, growth is the main focus rather than profitability. And so, how quickly were you profitable and were you able to maintain profitability throughout the entire cycle of growth?

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

DARREN: Yeah, I think it came from necessity, as I said, because we needed to pay the bills and we didn't have this whole coffer of cash sitting there that we raised that we could go spend. So we need to bill people in order to pay the rent. I think it was definitely the right decision to make. And I think for the most part we've been able to maintain that profitability, which I think is- There's something to be said about that. I think certainly we want to grow and we've invested a lot to grow. But we have a proven business model and I think there's still something to be said about taking your profits and investing it is the way to grow. TRAVIS: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I do that myself. Looking back, what do you feel like were the critical things that you did or should have done that you feel like could convey to other business owners that would allow them to-- Maybe not ramp their business up to your level but to expedite the process of success. Because again, so many times we get in our own way. Looking back it's much easier to tell when you were in your own way and what you did right. What are those things off the top of your head? DARREN: Yeah, it reminded me of a quote. Youth is wasted on the young, right? It's very true. I think the biggest thing would be to think strategically. I think it's very easy to get caught in my todo list and I need to do these things today, this thing's on fire here so I need to fix it. Next thing you know you find yourself a year, two years, three years down the road, then you're kind of on this path to somewhere where maybe you don't want to be. So, I think it's important to take a step back whether it's once a month or once every six months. And think strategically, big picture of where am I going, why am I going here, what do I want. I think that's the first question you have to ask, why am I doing this, what do I really want here. Once you get the why, then the answers going to come later. So if you know why-- Then developing a plan and then I think the other thing is as we just talked about, adjusting your plan. You make the best plan and, sure there's going to be roadblocks and things aren't going to work. And not to be so stubborn that you're just trying to put a round peg in a square hole and wondering why you're not successful. TRAVIS: So, I take that as the last thing you said is being willing to pivot. And I think people confuse tenacity and never giving up because they hear that story so much and success, "Well, I never gave up" which is true. But you've got to pay attention to what's going on and what's being said, and the feedback that you're getting. And while you don't want to give up you need to pivot in to what is working and let go of some of those pieces that are not working. Because very rarely do we ever dial in the perfect thing that we're going to offer to someone, or the perfect business model on the first go around, right? DARREN: Yeah. And I think the whole „never give up‟ thing as you said is very relevant. And there is someone to be said about that because most people give up I think right before they're going to be successful. But you could be running east looking for a sunset, right? No matter how hard you work, if you're working on the wrong thing you're not going to make it. So you got to do both. You got to work hard, make sure you're working on the right things. And as you said, pivot.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

It's an overused cliché but the world's changing so quickly. So, what's relevant today, you have to re-assess, especially in technology almost monthly. Am I doing the right thing? If not, what changes do I need to make to be successful. TRAVIS: I deal with a lot of small businesses, and doctors, and even just service-based businesses. And the one common thing that I see that people are missing is they're not collecting enough data so that they can tell when to pivot. And so, they're ultimately not testing it. It's fine to take off on a hunch with something and try to dial things in but they're not collecting any of the data points that-- And this sounds really geeky and I'm a right-brainer so I wasn't crazy about collecting data myself either. But when you aggregate it and look at what's going on you can tell where you're missing and then quite often you can tell why you're missing and make that change. DARREN: And people think they hear the term collect data and it becomes this complicated thing of "I'm trying to collect data. I don't know how to deal with all this." But it can be pretty simple. Often times how you should pivot is kind of right in front of you, you just kind of have to pay attention and be open to getting the message. Because often times the pivot doesn't manifest itself just in one clue and it's many clues telling you, "Hey, you need to do this." TRAVIS: Yeah, I completely agree with you. Let me ask you, what book or program made an impact on you related to business that you'd recommend and why? DARREN: Wow, that's a really good question. There's been a lot. I think, and it's somewhat cliché but I think How to Win Friends and Influence People is one that's tremendous. And I think not to give a specific book but I think books about human psychology are fascinating. I read a lot of them. Because at the end of the day no matter what business you're in, you're in the people business and understanding how people think, why people do the things they do, even when it sometimes doesn't make sense is tremendously important. And if you're able to read people, understand people's motivations, understand why they're doing the things and saying the things that they do you can be really successful. So I think it's always no matter what business you're in you got to study people, you got to study yourself, understand why you're doing the things you're doing and your behavior. But at the same time, no matter how small your business is you're interacting with people and really understanding why someone thinks the way that they do is probably the most important skill you can develop. Which by the way is not something that's really taught in school-TRAVIS: Not at all. It's insane. There's a great book called Why People Buy. DARREN: Yeah.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: That is exactly about psychology. I agree with you, and I made that shift awhile back because someone, I think the CEO of Mindvalley made the point and it really kind of struck that he said, "A lot of people spend their time reading new tactics, and tactics are always changing. I focus on the broader picture of psychology and understanding the people's actions, my actions on a much deeper level." And it really made sense to me because there's a never ending cycle of how to do this or that. And for me a lot of times I'll bring those experts in and just let them do their thing. I don't have time to perfect all of these different strategies. I've perfected a large group of them over my 24 years as an entrepreneur, but I don't have any more room for a new subset of tactics when I want to focus deeper on the psychology and some of the aspects of business metrics that I already have. So I completely agree with you. DARREN: I agree. And I think the tactics are 20%. And the tactics you can read a book on it. You can go online and figure out what to do. Getting the motivation and why and the psychology behind it. What humans can achieve is tremendous. So how to do it is in a book and it's online. But getting yourself motivated in the psychological framework I think is the big question. TRAVIS: Right. What's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that you've recently discovered, if any, that you'd recommend to other business owners and why? DARREN: That's a good question. So I actually use a tool called Good Todo. So as you can imagine you have a lot to do. And like everyone I used to have a to-do list and crossing it off and then adding things. But it's proven to be really simple. It doesn't have to be, things don't need to be complicated to be effective. It's a very simple way of managing your to-do list in a way that's not overwhelming that you can manage it on your computer or on your phone. It's very easy. And it allows you to make sure things don't slip through the cracks, which I think I think is a source of a lot of stress. During meetings you're going here, you have this to-do, and things inevitably slip through the cracks. This is a way to simply put things in their place and be able to focus on what you need to focus while at the same time not letting things that you need to do just disappear. TRAVIS: And what did you say that was? DARREN: It's called Good Todo. TRAVIS: Good Todo. Okay, cool, I'll check that out. DARREN: It's written by a game named-- He wrote a book. It's by a guy named Mark Hurst, he wrote a book that's really good about how you manage so much information and how you synthesize all that into not being overwhelmed, which is I think a challenge for everyone today, you're just inundated, whether it's the phone, email, instant message, people coming to talk to

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

you. You're just constantly being bombarded and having a system in place to say, hey, let me try just don't get blown with the wind that I'm getting the things done that I need to do. TRAVIS: Right. Hey, what quote would best summarize your belief or your attitude in business? DARREN: That's a really good question. You know, I think it sounds-- As I said do not give up but it sounds cheesy but I think having that persistence and really never, never, never give up, it is cliché but the flip side of that is you really look at people that have overcome so many obstacles. That's really a core belief that you need to have. Never give up but then also expecting good things that are going to happen, right? I think there's a lot to be said about optimism. I think a good quote if I have to say is expect the best but tie up your camels, right? You expect the best but at the same time you're not just a blind optimist, you do the things necessary to be successful. TRAVIS: Right. DARREN: I think another one would be you make your own luck. I'm a big believer in that. Most people think the world includes with them but you really have to make your own luck. TRAVIS: Yeah, I completely agree. How do people connect with you? Who's your ideal client, and if someone wanted to learn more about the things that you guys offer, where would they go? DARREN: Yeah. So the best way is telesign.com. And the ideal client for us is basically someone with an online presence who has a user name and a password who has security issues. If someone has a website or works for a website with a username and password, whether it be a local credit union all the way up to the massive free email services that we discussed, our services are really relevant. And the best way to do that is through our website. And then engaging someone in our sales department.

End of Interview TRAVIS: Excellent, wonderful, thank you very much. Remember that you can find all the links to the books and resources, even a transcription of the show in the show notes. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com and you'll find everything there. Just look for episode 123, Darren Berkovitz. Now, before I close the show today, my quote comes from an unknown source, although I really love the message that it carries so I really wanted to share it with you. And the quote reads, "Life is short, live it. Love is rare, grab it. Anger is bad, dump it. Fear is awful, face it. Memories are sweet, cherish it." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now. To your incredible success my friend, take care.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

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