The Unsure Entrepreneur

SPEAKERS
Roger Pierce, Paul Chato

Paul Chato 00:00
So we made people pay right from the word go. And a lot of people in Silicon Valley who I got in touch with said that was genius

Roger Pierce 00:10
because you're getting paid right away. Right away!

Intro 00:12
You're listening to the Unsure Entrepreneur Podcast with Roger Pierce. Whether you're scribbling business ideas on a napkin or wrestling with the ‘should I shouldn't I’ question. Get ready to explore the realities, the risks and the rewards of entrepreneurship as we share the stories, scars and successes of small business owners.

Roger Pierce 00:35
Hey there, aspiring entrepreneurs. Welcome to the podcast. Let me tell you a bit about our special guest now you've likely seen him on TV, on a stage, on YouTube, or heard him on the radio. Paul Chato’s career has never followed a straight line, and that's exactly what makes him so darn interesting.

A graduate of the radio and television arts program at Ryerson University, Paul began his creative path in the world of comedy. Cofounding the legendary Canadian sketch troupe, The Frantics, the irreverent humor and cult classics like Mr. Canoehead earned them a loyal following across radio on the frantic times and television four on the floor, as well as a recurring spot at Just For Laughs. Now, after writing, performing and producing over a decade's worth of iconic comedy, Paul went behind the camera to serve as head of TV comedy development at CBC, where he helped shape Canada's comedy landscape from the executive chair.

But instead of staying within the comfort of network television, Paul pivoted into something most creatives dread. Running a business, founding Yourwebdepartment.com, Paul launched a full service web development agency with a client centric model that really prioritized, you know, design and content and ongoing support, kind of rejected the one and done mentality so common in freelance web work with over 2000 websites built, Paul and his team has embraced the subscription model before it was even trendy.

But in recent years, Paul has found a new audience and creative outlet on YouTube with his channels, call me channel and a Pauling news Paul brings his former network executive perspective and comedy skills to bear on tech trends, media mishaps and digital culture, giving his 130,000 subscribers exactly what they crave. His videos blend Industry Insight with satire and his trademark sharp commentary and on a personal note, here's a fun fact, Paul and I once created a small business comic strip called Sully startup. We tried pitching it to newspaper syndicates, but we ran out of stamps.
Welcome my friend.

Paul Chato 02:51
Hi. So after that intro, is there any time left to actually do this show? Thank you very much everyone. It's been so so great to be on this show. I appreciate it so long everyone. Bye exit. Stage left. Yeah, you're done well, Roger, Roger, we had a pre history before you knew it, because and when you were doing stuff for staples, I think you were the Small Business Super Deluxe Entrepreneur. And I was trying to be the web developer of choice for your your business, but I could never get hold of you, would never return any of my calls. And then, then I think you pivoted out of out of that you could even talk about why that either didn't work or why you didn't want to do it anymore. And then we joined through the new media sources, and we've been great friends ever since I really like you, you're you're a good person, and we've always had a good time together. And I loved doing Sully’s Startup, and I wish something happened, but you know, well, we'll always have the 24 strips that we did.

Roger Pierce 03:52
There you go. They're still online somewhere, but now what I learned from you in that, in that process, I mean, obviously your comedic and writing chops came through developing that strip, but I also learned that you have mad technical skills. You know your way around design and editing software, but you're also deep into the Mac universe, Mac computer universe. And I pulled this comment from one of your videos that I thought you might find interesting. We can talk about this. The quote from the video comments is:
“It still messes with my head that one of the biggest Hackintosh fanatics used to be Rick Green's comedy partner. Imagine if Rick Green was a Linux evangelist, or if Gordy Tapp rest in peace was making YouTube videos of turning used computers in a budget game systems.”

Paul Chato 04:43
Yeah, well, that's interesting. Now it's interesting on multiple levels, because the other Frantics, Rick, Peter and Dan, bless their hearts, and I don't mean to say this in any demeaning way, but their computer skills are useless. Are useless. They're still alive. I was the computer guy amongst The Frantics, and I brought the Macintosh into The Frantics Just so we had a universal way to abandon typewriters and get into using the computer for word processing, because then it kind of evened out how quickly we were each able to rewrite material, because the computer software on a computer to be able to do word processing was much better than the the word the typewriter version, which was just putting the carbon paper in and then retyping everything from scratch again. So the democratization of the writing was why I brought the Mac in, but then subsequently, many, many years later, talking about the Hackintosh. Apple just seemed to want to abandon Mac and and they were, I guess, drinking their own iPad Kool Aid. There was this whole notion of the computer free world, or whatever they called it. You remember Roger, what they how they named it? I don't. They were clearly on a trajectory to move to iPad and iPhones only. And during that time, they abandoned really any decent development on the Mac, and I needed a powerful Macintosh. And then I accidentally found out about Hackintoshing and realized that I could take a PC and literally create a Mac that was more powerful, easier to upgrade, faster, and half to 1/3 cheaper than what Apple was offering. So for six years, I built Hackintoshes and made videos about it on YouTube, and that's sort of how my YouTube career started doing Hackintoshes.

Roger Pierce 06:43
There you go, folks, there's the explanation of what is a Hackintosh. For those of you who don't know.

Paul Chato 06:48
That's right, it's basically the Mac OS surgically applied to a PC hardware.

Roger Pierce 06:54
And from what I understand, Apple, the corporation, is not a big fan of this.

Paul Chato 06:58
You know what? To my knowledge, they never attempted to stop it from happening, never. And my sense is that it was a great. Well, first of all, it's like anything with piracy, you're going to have a very large group of people who never would have would buy your product anyway, so there's no money lost there. Then you've got a whole group of people that are now being introduced to the Mac OS that would not otherwise have been introduced to the Mac OS, who fall in love with it and then eventually might buy a Mac, I would imagine internally, they probably were very positive about what was going on with the Hackintosh community. At no time, in my experience, did they ever try to shut it down.

Roger Pierce 07:43
They should have sent you a couple of free MacBook Pros.

Paul Chato 07:47
I just buy them now myself. And then Apple switched over to Apple Silicon, and the value proposition improved enormously, and I didn't feel like I was being ripped off anymore. So I switched back to Apple.

Roger Pierce 07:59
Mad computer skills just thank you. It's rare to see in a comedic type, right? You've got these, these left and right brain skills. I love it.

Paul Chato 08:08
Yes, I was examined by people with pokey things, and said You are one of the few people with both left and right brain skills almost equal..

Roger Pierce 08:20
That makes a lot of sense now. Thanks for sharing that. Let's get back to your origin story, because I know everyone's dying to hear about that, the comedy side of things. What led you into comedy? Way back when.

Paul Chato 08:32
I've always wanted to get into comedy, I was listening to the goon shows early, early on, when I was a kid, and I was always attracted to comedy. I don't know why. I mean, partly because, I think I also had family members my gene pool. My Aunt Monjo was a comedian in Budapest, and Fritzi Bachi, so that would be Uncle Fritzi was also known to be an actor and a comedian. I probably got some of that DNA from them. My mom was always into show business. She was a Usher at a theater in Budapest, and would talk about all that Robert Reed and all these different actors from the 40s, how much she was in love with these guys with mustaches. So show business was always there around me. And I loved comedy. Got into all the the recorded comedies, The Bob Newhart, Shelley Berman, Red Fox, the very dirty comedians, Derek and Clive, which Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and then just some phenomenal it was such a great time for comedy too, because comedy was available in print. National Lampoon. You had Saturday Night Live, you had tons of British comedy, The, you know, these duos and single comedians. And so comedy was one of the favorite things that I did.
And I did the, you know, a comedy newspaper in high school, which I got into huge trouble for. I wrote. Directed the comedy review production called April Antics. In grade 13, I got into huge trouble for that too. Can I tell a story, an act, anecdote, a couple of course. So my grade 13 happened in I guess the final year would have been 1973 so we already had the 1972 hockey summit with the Soviet Union, which was a very big deal. So in my April antics, the lights came down, and then a voice came over the speaker system and said, “Everyone, please stand for the national anthem.” And the lights went up stage left, and one of my friends, Stephen D'Angelo, had the Russian jersey. And we started with the Russian national anthem. Then on the right, stage right, a guy with a team Canada shirt, you know, the light spotlight picked them up. And did you know? Oh, Canada. Well, the next day, on the the announcing announcer system. “Paul Chato, please come to the office. Paul Chatto, please come to Mr. Cox's office.” So I went out to Mr. Cox's office, and he said, What the hell were you thinking? Do you know how many complaints? And this is again, the Cold War. There was no love loss against the Russian hockey. So they he said, you have to change it. You can't start with the Russian national anthem. And I'm not so you're gonna have to start with the Canadian anthem. So the next day, that night, light went up on the right hand side. Canadian anthem came up. Light went on with the left hand side Russian outfit, but Paul D'Angelo was wearing just the jock strap, and then the Russian national anthem played next morning. “Would Paul tChato Please come to the principal's office?!!”

Roger Pierce 12:02
This is a theme that's recurred throughout your life, I suspect,

Paul Chato 12:06
Yes, so to me, comedy was always big part of what I wanted to do. Although I wanted to be a nuclear physicist, I even had my own cloud chamber that I got from the Edmund scientific catalog with my own radium source. Wow, that was fun. But, you know, I went to Radio Television Arts, took it from there.

Roger Pierce 12:26
Well, we're glad you pivoted to comedy and not nuclear physicist.

Paul Chato 12:31
Well, I actually, after I finished Radio Television Arts, I learned how to do layout and design with the newspaper, and I became a graphic designer. Oh, my God. So I did that. I did that first, and actually did develop comedy magazines. There's just so much comedy. It was a fantastic time. And then I became head of marketing for Kelly Stereo Marts, a cross Canada chain. And I got tired of that. And then one day, I made enough money, squirreled enough money, even though I was making only $10,000 a year. And I decided to join with Rick Green, who was one of my chums at Don Mills Collegiate, who went on to become part of The Frantics, but also red was Bill on the Red Green show. For many of you out there who are who love the Red Green show, and there's an awful lot of Americans who really love the Red Green show. So Rick went on to direct and write a lot of Red Greens, but he was my partner, and we started a comedy duo called Green and Chato. We even went to the United States, got fantastic response, and then joined up with the other two guys, created The Frantics, and then, yeah, they did that for 10 years.

Roger Pierce 13:43
That's a fascinating backstory. And so much to talk with The Frantics. I wish we had more time but tell me about the origins of Mr. Canoehead.

Paul Chato 13:52
It so that was creation from by Dan Redican. And one of the the Frantics did writing exercises. Everyone come in with 10 sketches about a subject. And then we would come in and just write 10 things when we were doing this Frantics radio show, which we did for four years, and did about 120 half hour shows. But we also just wrote for each other, just to make each other laugh. And one of the things that came in Dan Redican and wrote this, Leave It to Beaver parody, but the father, who was an insurance adjuster, was also Mr. Canoehead, and we didn't like his sketch. The sketch we didn't like, but we kept the Mr. Canoehead part, and then wrote a whole superhero saga around the idea that a guy had his had an aluminum canoe welded to his head while he was portaging through Algonquin Park when a bolt of lightning hit his head that became Mr. Canoehead, which I think I showed you at the very beginning.

Roger Pierce 14:47
He’s showing me a bobble head here with Mr. Canoehead. I love it.

Paul Chato 14:50
For those of you who can't see through your podcast,

Roger Pierce 14:55
that's amazing. I hope you make those things available in your marketplace.

Paul Chato 14:59
No, no, and they're all sold out. I'm not doing it again.

Roger Pierce 15:03
That's a keepsake for sure. Your comedy career is prolific. But I want to kind of segue into what your web department business and your YouTube your YouTube business, how has writing and performing comedy shaped your storytelling skills and the way you talk to audiences?

Paul Chato 15:19
Well, let me just first briefly talk about how I got into business with The Frantics. Now this is again, you're talking about a bunch of creative people, and my introduction actually came from the fact that the other three guys had no idea how to fill out their tax forms, and I barely had an idea, and I hated doing them, but I was actually fastidious and logical, and I had a scientific brain. And so I volunteered to do the, not just the frantic taxes, but the other three guys, taxes, and my own and that, which meant opening up the, you know, the tax rules, and one by line by line, doing what the system asked, pulling out all the receipts and stuff. And so while I hated it, and while a an accountant could do it in their sleep, right? I mean, this is their skill set, I learned a lot about business by doing everyone else's tax returns. I started doing more and more of Frantic business, the hardcore business side of it. So when I started my own business, I was actually fairly well set up mentally to be able to do it. Now, one of the things you do as a business person is actually hand off important duties to people who are professionals and much better than you at at at those things, but you have to be also careful of that, because I hired several people who were advertised as ca bookkeepers, and two of them were horrible, and I didn't know it until six months down the road. So that's another lesson. Is that even if you don't fully abdicate your responsibilities as a business owner, you always have to keep an eye on things, even though you've handed it off, to quote, unquote, a professional.

Roger Pierce 17:08
So let me get this straight. You did Rick Green's taxes,

Paul Chato 17:11
Yes, for like, a two years, maybe.

Roger Pierce 17:14
So if he gets audited 40 years back, you're, you're gonna get the call.

Paul Chato 17:18
It's a seven, seven year limit, Roger, you know that.

Roger Pierce 17:22
That's true. That's true. No, you're right about business. You know, you learn things. It's transferable skills, yeah.

Paul Chato 17:29
And then the other thing that I learned through The Frantics That was really valuable was how people have different routes to complete a project, and sometimes you need to leave people alone, even if they're not doing it the way you think you would do it, and find another milestone where you could insert yourself and see where they are. I noticed a lot of people managers who will crush an individual's initial attempt at creating a finishing a job because they didn't do it like they might do it, and that's bad. So let them struggle at the beginning, see where they take it. Have a milestone which allows you to evaluate where they are in the project and then pivot then. But don't crush their thoughts and ideas at the beginning just because they're not doing it the way you would do it. That's a good lesson. And when it comes to brainstorming, the other thing that you find out is that people are most attached to their ideas when they first give it. So shut up. Let them learn on their own that it's a really stupid idea, because I found that eight out of 10 times they'll come back and say, you know, maybe that idea of mine wasn't very good. So it avoids you shutting people down and saying, Hey, that's a stupid idea. So, you know, it's a stupid idea. But generally speaking, people figure that out on their own, especially when they go through what I call a tasting session. So let them pitch it. So pitching is tasting the idea, and as they're verbalizing it, you can see it on their faces that they go, this is not very good. You could see it, yeah, and then you haven't argued. You haven't argued with them. You haven't put them down. They figured it out on their own, unless they're a sociopath, which, which, of course, you you know you work with also, and then you got to crush them early, because then it's fun. Try to avoid those. So those are the kinds of things that I I learned about ego and personal responsibility and and don't jump on people at the very beginning. Let them find their own journey, not the other point is, you hire people who are good, who are talented and better than yourself.

Roger Pierce 19:46
Well, they say a successful entrepreneur hires people who are smarter than they are.

Paul Chato 19:49
Yep, absolutely. And that was not hard for me or me. The toughest lesson was to learn that your employees are not your friends. So that was tough for me, because, again, you're a comedian, and you think you got to be buddies with everybody, and nope, sorry, they're not your friends.

Roger Pierce 20:09
It's lonely at the top.

Paul Chato 20:10
Yep, it is. This is why I talked with you. There you go.

Roger Pierce 20:14
I want to talk about subscription model, because one of the genius things you did was you set this whole thing up as a subscription model.

Paul Chato 20:20
Tell me about that. Well, we set up our website service after we worked with Daimler. We managed about 100 websites for Daimler, and then we took the software we developed for them and created our own subscription model, website development system that kind of competed with Wix. The most closest thing now would be Wix and Squarespace, Squarespace, so we were, we were up before they were but one of the things that we did was we didn't do a freemium model, because my understanding is only about 4% of Squarespace and Wix pay for the service, And that's a lot of hardware to manage. So we made people pay right from the word go. And a lot of people in Silicon Valley who I got in touch with said that was genius.

Roger Pierce 21:12
Because you're getting paid right away.

Paul Chato 21:13
Right away! Immediately. Now that being said, we were making millions of dollars as a custom development company, and it took us five years to start making money as a subscription model business. Of course, we were charging a lot less -- $25 a month versus hundreds of 1000s of dollars for for jobs. But on the other hand, when you do these big jobs for these large clients, you're basically killing an elephant and dragging it back to the office so everybody can eat from it. And now the subscription model, now that we've got more than 700 customers on our system, I don't have to work for a living. It's really feels good.

Roger Pierce 21:53
Allows you to go out there and explore in your RV correct? Now, it's so important just to dwell on it a bit more. I mean, what's happened since you started this whole business, your web department, everything has become a subscription. Now it's one of the things I recommend entrepreneurs look at doing. You know, it doesn't have to be software. It doesn't have to be in computer based it can be, you know, pet treats or socks of the month or anything. It seems can be a subscription model,

Paul Chato 22:18
Yep, yeah, it's true. I never thought of it that way. You're right, although you have to be careful that you don't frustrate your customers with yet another subscription. You have to make it really, really valuable, and you have to make your software fantastic. For instance, Uber has some of the best software on the planet. It just constantly amazes me just how good it is. What also was interesting, I was in Budapest about a month and a half ago. Their transit system software is like, is a ridiculously better than Toronto's transit software trying to electronic. Yeah, Toronto sat transit software is crap compared to Budapest.

Roger Pierce 22:54
Well, you should tell them that.

Paul Chato 22:57
I live in Burlington. I don't care anymore.

Roger Pierce 23:00
No, it's true. The tech is important. We got to pay attention to it. Look at your business model. Look for ways to have recurring revenue, because lumpy cash flow doesn't do a new entrepreneur any good. You got to need that recurring source of revenue,

Paul Chato 23:13
yep. But I have one piece of advice for people who are developing some kind of online software, don't blow your budget trying to automate it, or dream automate it right from the very beginning. Whatever you can do manually, do it manually, even if it's a pain in the ass. Get your business to the point where whatever you're doing manually is so intolerable, that's when you improve the software and start having it more automated. Don't dive in and try to compete with Uber or any of these places right from the very beginning. Do as much manually as you possibly can. Get your friends whenever someone sends something in to purchase something. I mean, obviously e com is easy to do, but stuff that's customizable, don't do it. Do it manually until it becomes intolerable. Good tip, I love it. Spend as little money as you can at the very beginning, because there's not a lot of it. That's and it's going to take you a lot longer for you to get your audience than you think.

Roger Pierce 24:15
That's so true about any business. So speaking of audience, let's talk about YouTube. You have built this up to your YouTube audience up to 130,000 or more. Yep, subscribers. I remember cheering you on when you were starting with just a handful, and you would update us like, Oh, I've got 100 Oh, I've got 200 Oh, I've got 300 subscribers. It was really fascinating to watch that progress. So what pulled you into this video world?

Paul Chato 24:42
Well, at the very beginning, because we were doing this website stuff and being technically interested, I also noticed that blogging was slowly dying. Sorry, I know that was your business. And and I, and I went. Well, why don't I pivot my customers to vlogging? It was way more interesting. It provided a much more high level of personal experience. It was clear that Google was prioritizing sticking a YouTube video on the homepage. So there's Google rules on how to optimize your homepage, and one of those things was to stick on a YouTube video on your homepage. So I tried to encourage everyone in our system to move to YouTube. But prior to doing that, I thought, Okay, I'm going to figure this out. I have to, if I'm going to become an expert on it, I'm going to have to learn the ins and outs. So I started doing YouTube videos for ourselves. And then that slowly pivoted to Hackintoshing, and just expanded from there. And I monetized it, learned how to monetize it, and then I was making good money on on YouTube, along with my living on on Your Web Department.

Roger Pierce 25:57
So how many subscribers, roughly does it take before you can start to see some money come in.

Paul Chato 26:01
That's a multi edged answer to their question, because you can take a very small bunch of subscribers and then create a recurring revenue subscription model service for makeup or clothing or something, and then, let's say you have only 10,000 people watching your YouTube videos as you're talking about your monthly box of crayon subscription, or whatever it happens to be, and if you send out 5000 of those every month at $50 a month, you're making great money with only 10,000 subscribers. So it really depends on how clever you are and what your business is. Now in my case, I don't take sponsorship. People with sponsors can have far fewer subscribers than me and make a good money, but then sponsors require (demand) that you produce videos on a regular basis a certain number of times every month. And I wasn't interested in that. So you can make really good money if you get sponsors. I've been approached by many, and I just refuse them all. Your goal isn't really subscribers. Your goal is views. And I can make anywhere from 1000 to $5,000 a month with 130,000 subscribers,

Roger Pierce 27:19
That's amazing. Yeah, and how did this whole network executive persona come about?

Paul Chato 27:25
Well, that's okay. So there's another good question YouTube, because I'm I'm interested in marketing myself and learning how things are going, and not satisfied with just maintaining the status quo when something isn't working. After the brief Hackintosh explosion. I was getting some really good views, but then I found the entire tech side of YouTubing was dying. The Crypto business suddenly made the cost of graphics cards explode. No one is able to afford their graphics cards. The CPUs were getting expensive. It was no longer fun, the really high end good tech YouTubers were now moving into super tech, like Steve and Linus tech tips. They were buying testing equipment. They weren't just unboxing at one point, you were unboxing a case that would get you a million views. That was when it was fun. Now, then it stopped being fun. And I went, Okay, I'm gonna get out of this. I had done some entertainment things with not great success, because YouTube also doesn't like you pivoting once you're in a lane. They want you to stay in that lane. And I didn't care. I like doing a variety of stuff on my channel.
And then I went, Okay, I noticed there was a lot of videos on YouTube by people who were reviewing movies and TV shows but didn't really understand what was going on behind the scenes, and they would complain about why something was crappy and why it wasn't working the way it was working. And so I came up with I went, Well, I was a former network executive, and my very first video, I think, I talked about the fact that I had one job, and that was to keep my job. I didn't care about the quality of the product. So why are you guys complaining about it? I don't give a shit. So that really caught people's attention, the fact that I was a behind the scenes person, and one of the very few behind the scenes people talking about what was go, what was making the cheese. I told everybody how the cheese was made, and that really fascinated the people. So I wasn't just one of the complainers about how things were bad. I told them that one of my jokes what, this is an old TV joke. There's no quality knob on your TV, only a volume knob.

Roger Pierce 29:46
No, you're right. You bring a lot of unique insight to bear. And that's, that's probably the secret sauce. I watched your Superman review the other day. Ah, and I loved it. You know, I love it when you you're very you're very current, you're always on the latest. I. Yeah, I should be Yeah, no, it's great for those of you haven't seen it, go and watch, Call Me Chato and check out some of Paul's reviews. So you've got that, Call Me Chato and then tell me briefly about aPauling News that's a whole different format.

Paul Chato 30:14
So again, I wanted something that was another YouTube experiment in that, okay, I'm going to create a channel where it's going to be hardcore comedy, but I'm going to create a character along the lines of what Steve Martin did with his wild and crazy guy thing. But this is going to be Walter Cronkite resurrected, and he's going to do fake Real News. I'm going to 100% adhere to the YouTube rules and see how far I could get adhering to YouTube rules without doing the variety stuff that I was doing on Call Me Chato, which YouTube hates. And so that was, again, another experiment. But I also wanted to get out my sarcastic side to talk about the stupid things that seemed to be cropping up constantly out there. So I created appalling news where I only talked about appalling news items, and that's been going really, really well. That's huge fun. I do you know a five minute clip every once in a while talking about the latest, dumbest things, and it's just not hard to find.

Roger Pierce 31:19
You've got comedy chops, you're a content creator, you're an entrepreneur. I'm trying to tie it all together a bit here, but you know, how important is YouTube as a strategy for new entrepreneurs? You think that's something people should be looking

Paul Chato 31:30
at? Yes, yeah. I think they should. Especially, again, it depends on your job, but what value can you offer people on your YouTube channel? And that's a great way to promote. What you're doing is giving away knowledge for free. There's a saying from F Scott Fitzgerald is that an idea is worth a drink, where he would give famous authors in these bars that he frequented, the outline to some of his greatest novels because he was an alcoholic and couldn't afford to buy the drink. So he got famous authors to buy him his booze, but none of them had his skills or insights to execute the work that he came up with. So feel free to give away all your secrets because your clients don't have time to use them anyway.

Roger Pierce 32:17
I couldn't agree more, an idea alone will not make you rich, correct, right?

Paul Chato 32:22
So, yeah. So if you have a business and you can offer value add real estate agents do this all the time, talk about that stuff. And also you're developing your personality, because people hire are hiring you based on who you are as a person, and YouTube is a great way to show your personality,

Roger Pierce 32:41
and for people who don't know, maybe people do. But YouTube is such a behemoth. The other day, I read it's a bigger podcasting platform than Spotify and Apple podcast combined,

Paul Chato 32:52
and it's the second largest search engine in the world.

Roger Pierce 32:56
There you go. Second largest search engine in the world, next to Google. Crazy, yeah, so you got to be there. And not only is it a way to get your brand out, you can actually monetize it.

Paul Chato 33:07
The tools that YouTube have created to become a content generator is just staggeringly brilliant. If you are a complete YouTube nerd, you can get along. You can get far, pretty far, if you dive deep into their tools

Roger Pierce 33:23
It's becoming easier and easier. So don't get intimidated by it.

Paul Chato 33:27
It's just about time, time and effort.

Roger Pierce 33:31
Now you’re pretty technical, but do you get any help? Are you doing all these thumbnails and things yourself?

Paul Chato 33:35
Oh yeah. And they have a thumbnail tool where you can create three different thumbnails, put them up, and then you'll find out, within two hours, three hours, which is the best thumbnail. And you go in there and say, Oh, this is getting 56% this is only getting 42% I'm going to stop the thumbnail testing and just pick the one that people like. AB testing, yeah, love it. So there's terrific tools like that. There's audience management tools, there's there. It's pretty robust now. It's quite, quite cool. I mean, more people, I think, are watching YouTube than watching network TV.

Roger Pierce 34:13
Including my university daughter, because she's always watching something on YouTube. I hope it doesn't distract her studies.

Paul Chato 34:20
It better not

Roger Pierce 34:22
So watching the clock here, Paul, you know, I could talk to you all day, but I want to get a couple last thoughts from I've been way too long. Oh no, I'm loving it. I'm loving it. I mean, I'm going to ask you two things. First of all, thinking back to your early days getting into business, starting off your career. This is a show for aspiring entrepreneurs, people on the fence about being in business. What advice would you give someone way back there?

Paul Chato 34:44
I think you have to do this, some operations, the swap stuff and things like that, which I'm sure you've you've discussed, make sure you've got two years worth of cash, because it's probably going to take you two years to be profitable. Spend as little as you can at the very. Beginning marketing, you have to be careful about marketing. Your best marketing is to pick up the phone and do stuff. I do have a trick that I've used to start three different businesses. Do you want to know what it is I do? I want to hear okay, people don't like to be sold, but you can talk to people at the highest level in businesses, if you contacted them and say, I have an idea, you are one of the leaders in this field, would you be willing to give me some advice, and they will talk your ear off, sort of like the way I am right now, people, C level, people, I've even got hold of presidents who say, I'll give you 15 minutes, two hours later, they're just talking to you about their life and and then you tell them, you know your idea, they'll poke holes in it. And a lot of times they'll go, You know what? That's not a bad idea. Once you get it going, once you get back to me, and we'll we'll try it. I have started three businesses that way, and it's the most successful way to start a business. Love it. So it's the non selling, selling, because you're always trying to make the your prospect make the decision, not make you making the decision for them, which won't. Everyone's first response is to say no, and it's wonderful talking, making connections with these individuals and asking their advice, like, because, like I said day, people who are running things love to talk about themselves.

Roger Pierce 36:28
Listen your way to a sale. Yeah, business, right? That's fantastic.

Paul Chato 36:33
So that's really one of the main tricks. The The other thing is, yeah, get an accountant. Talk about swap, find out what's going on spend as little as you can on on, you know, marketing people hate calling do it. It's really the only way you're going to spend bags of cash on, like social media or, again, depending on your situation, maybe Google Ads absolutely are the best way to do it, but it also depends on your category, because if you're an injury lawyer, every click is going to be $5,000 so I mean, that's in a very expensive category. Talk to your friends, talk to your family, find out who in your circle might want to avail themselves of what it is that you're offering. Go back to your high school yearbook, contact people and find out whether you know they might be interested in in what it is that you're doing. You can't be shy. I'm afraid that's just not you know, the only person who's going to make your business a success is you. You know, have a business plan. Don't get a partner. Avoid like the plague getting a partner. And if you do have a partner, get a shareholders agreement, right?

Roger Pierce 37:42
Yes, I've learned that lesson in the past too. It's uh, because you can delegate those skills. You know, be careful giving away half your equity just for some skills you think you might you don't have. It's better, you know, to outsource them. Maybe do it a contractor or an employee, instead of, yep, giving away half the company.

Paul Chato 37:58
There's that. And the other thing too is that put in the shareholders agreement what skills that they are offering, and the moment they stop providing it, you get rid of them. There you go. Bang, yeah, you gotta be cold. I've learned that painful lesson with some good friends, so that's Oh. And you know, the main thing is you have to at some point, even though you've done your enough research about it, you got to jump off the you got to step off the edge of the cliff. An entrepreneur is someone who is absolutely certain of success and surprised when it happens. I like that. You can't be cautious, because after building more than 2000 websites, I would say 80% of the people pivoted after six months because their original idea was either partially wrong or fully wrong.

Roger Pierce 38:45
Interesting, and if you don't try, you don't know, no,

Paul Chato 38:48
that's it. So I've always been an entrepreneur. So for me, stepping off the edge of the cliff has never been a difficult thing for me.

Roger Pierce 38:55
Okay, well, that that's the leads me to my next question, my last question, what is next? Can you tell us what's next?

Paul Chato 39:01
Next for me? I am selling my company off to my partner. I'm doing very little now, actually, luckily, I hired a fractional CFO, so my partner does all the design and the client management and everything else. I do sales and accounts receivable, because I like both of those things. I Hey, you owe me money. I don't mind that at all. And no one in my I mean, like everyone feels guilty about owing us money. This is not really a big deal. Everyone's scared to death. Oh, my God. Like, what am I doing? They owe us all this money? I gotta contact him. Yeah, well, they're more embarrassed about owing you money than you being embarrassed calling them about getting your money. Let me, let me tell you, don't worry about that. Money is just a thing. Don't think it's personal. Avoid the whole notion that money is personal. Forget it. It's money is is money. But the point I was going to make, where was I heading with this?

Roger Pierce 39:53
Roger, what's next? Yeah, what about YouTube?

Paul Chato 39:57
I'm going to keep doing that. I've written two screenplays that – it’s in Los Angeles, I just finished a sitcom. I just finished writing a sitcom based on BNI, a parody of BNI. We talked about that once years ago, yeah, but I resurrected it because I'm pitching it at the end of September to some Hollywood folks. So it keeps me busy. I'm not expecting anything to to come out of these, but I've learned to what is called complete the circle. Start something, finish it. And finishing it, for me is, let's say these screenplays was at least getting it in front of some decision maker, and even if they turned it down, I feel like I've completed the circle. Okay, so I'm saying finish it, finish it. Yeah, start it, finish it, sell it, or try to sell it. So now the sitcom is going to be pitched at the end of September, and so I'm I'm doing my YouTube and I'm writing this, Oh, and one of my bucket list items was to get my stand to get a stand up routine going, because I'm good at sketch and stand up. I'm not very good at (so I think you, you did that a few years ago?) I did 20 weeks at Yuk Yuk, and I was fair to middling, okay. And I don't want to be Fair to middling. I want to be okay.

Roger Pierce 41:14
I have to bring it up, because it was so topical in the news last week. I am dying to go see that new documentary about John Candy.

Paul Chato 41:21
That's, is that going to be in the theaters? Is that, I think that's on prime. Actually met my wife because of John Candy. So I'm going to be doing a video on that.

Roger Pierce 41:29
Oh, my God, you should release it soon. It's so topical.

Paul Chato 41:33
I'm going to do it when the thing comes out, October 10. I think the thing is going to come out. So I would not have met Ramona if it wasn't for John Candy,

Roger Pierce 41:42
That's quite a statement. Yep, that's awesome. Yeah, he's fantastic. Was all over tiff last week, of course, yeah. And it was John Candy Day at the BMO field when the Argos were playing,

Paul Chato 41:55
Yeah, because he owned the weekend piece of the Argos. And that's right, he owned a piece. And, well, I have met him, worked with him, and went out drinking with him. He stayed, I left.

Roger Pierce 42:07
That could be a whole other podcast. We'll do that in part two.

Paul Chato 42:09
And the other thing that I would recommend is speaking of BNI. You might want to expand on it a little bit more, but business network is international. I would recommend really strongly that you join your local BNI chapter.

Roger Pierce 42:24
For those of you don't know, BNI is a peer to peer networking group. There's like 25 people in a chapter, one lawyer, one accountant, one graphic designer, that kind of thing. And you get together and you share leads, and once a week, once a week, early breakfast. But the idea is you get to know each other's businesses so well that leads kind of come organic. You kind of think of them in your day to day life. And referrals happen there.

Paul Chato 42:44
Everyone becomes your sales person. Yeah, it's like an extension of yourself. Then it's, there's a like, I think it's the largest word of mouth networking business in the world, and I did that for 13 years, and was instrumental in help helping Your Web Department expand.

Roger Pierce 43:02
Was it? There you go. Folks. You heard it here from Paul Chatto. Go check out BNI as well. So listen,

I'm gonna head into the wrap. But okay, a couple final remarks.
From comedy clubs to CBC boardrooms to client calls and YouTube thumbnails. Paul Chato’s story is a great reminder that entrepreneurship doesn't always start with a big plan. Sometimes it's about following your curiosity, trying something new, and being willing to reinvent it when the moment calls for it, and finishing it, as Paul talks about in this interview. So Paul, thank you very much for doing this.
Oh, thanks for having me, Roger.
And if someone wants to get in touch, or someone wants to watch. What's the best way?

Paul Chato 43:43
Well, you can get in touch with me at PaulChato.com, you'll find my email information and everything there. You can fill out a form and contact me. That's the best. You can put a couple of 100 characters in the space I restrict. People don't don't write a play to me. Don't pitch me. Don't pitch me. But I'm happy to talk to anybody offer advice. I've had a good life, a charmed life, I've worked with some of the best people in the world, and I'm happy to offer whatever meager advice that might be useful to others. Fantastic.

Roger Pierce 44:19
I appreciate that, and don't forget to check out Paul's videos on YouTube.

Paul Chato 44:23
Yeah, you're worth, I think, point 05, cents every view

Roger Pierce 44:28
Definitely worth checking out. Subscribe, subscribe and like, as I say, All right. Well, thanks for tuning into this episode of The Unsure Entrepreneur. If you like this episode, please leave us a review. Visit UnsureEntrepreneur.com and if you're on the fence about launching a business, launching something of your own, just remember that being unsure is just part of the first step going forward. Thanks for listening.

Intro 44:52
That's it for this episode of The Unsure Entrepreneur podcast. Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss. Other candid conversations with small business owners and be sure to check us out at UnsureEntrepreneur.com.