What does it take to build a durable firm in a competitive, constantly changing market like data and AI consulting? Josh Miramant grew Blue Orange Digital to 150 people and delivered 250+ complex projects over ten years. He breaks down five key lessons founders can’t afford to miss: why survival matters more than scale (at first), how grit beats brilliance, the hidden cost of FOMO, and why reinvention—not burnout—is the real growth strategy.
TRANSCRIPT
Greg Alexander: Hey, everybody. This is Greg Alexander. You’re listening to the Pro Serv podcast. Brought to you by Collective 54. If you’re new to this show we are dedicated to helping founders and executive leadership teams of boutique professional services. Firms make more money, make scaling easier and making an exit achievable. So if you’re in the expertise business, this is for you. And on today’s show we have a long standing, well-respected member. His name is Josh Miramant. He is the founder of Blue Orange Digital. And what prompted me to have Josh on the call is, he is celebrating a milestone. And he wrote a fantastic article about it, and I wanted to share it with everybody, because it resonated with me. The title of the article is 10 Lessons from 10 years as a founder and check out these deets. So he’s been in business for 10 years, which a lot of services firms don’t make it that long. He’s got 150 people, which is, he’s reached scale, and they’ve done over 250 projects. And these just aren’t any kind of projects. He’s in that complicated data and AI space. So these are like real meaty projects that have, you know, significant outcomes associated with them with major clients, etc. And so many members of our community haven’t reached this milestone yet. So the benefit of being in a community is, you can hear from people that have quote unquote, been there and done that, and maybe avoid some dump taxes. And this article was a reflection on the past 10 years. So it lended itself to that really? Well, so, Josh, it’s good to see you again. Would you please introduce yourself to the audience.
Josh Miramant: Hey, Greg, thanks for having me on. Yeah. Great introduction. Appreciate it. Yeah, I am. Josh Miramant founded Blue Orange Digital and I am. Yeah, I’ve been kind of in this world for a while. So actually started a couple of companies prior to this. But you know it’s pretty exciting to sit down and take some reflection on moving from my last 2 companies were in Sas venture backed companies which are very dissimilar, and then now 10 years as a professional services provider and really falling in love with that space and have grown in that area has been a really great, you know. 10 year mark to reflect on the differences and get a little bit of a grass is greener, and also a little bit reflection on what I like more, too. So it’s a fun opportunity. Thanks for having me on.
Greg Alexander: So we don’t have the time. A lot of today’s show to cover all 10. So I’m going to try to cover 5. I Cherry pick the 5 that resonated with me. But that’s just me. I encourage everybody to read the article, because I think all 10 might resonate with everybody, and then we’ll cover the other 5 on the member Q&A session. So I’m going to start with Number 4, which really hit with me when I think back about my journey. The title of Number 4 is, Survive, first, st thrive second. So, Josh, tell us a little bit about that reflection.
Josh Miramant: Yeah, this one feels very real that any of us founders or anyone aspiring founders should know. You know, whatever analogy you want to use the roller, coaster, the ups and downs. But what that really means the day in, day out is, you know, do you have enough money in the bank account, and can you pay your employees? Because that is the be all end all that is the count. As soon as the checks don’t clear, businesses die. So in the theme of this I’m big with adventure sports. And there’s this, you know, big thing. The 1st rule in extreme sports that I was into is don’t die. It’s that simple feels very applicable here. But candidly, it’s, I think there’s. I wouldn’t have enough time on the podcast to give as many examples as I had of outlandish solutions that we had to solve problems. And it’s so easy in retrospect to look back on a decade and be like, oh, we have all these accolades, and we’re working on, you know, toning Eos. And when does our L. 10 meetings? And how do we like? Do these little tweaks, but there are just countless numbers of things that we had to accomplish to overcome. You know, times where I had to put personal money in to cover payroll, so we had no discontinuity or fly overnight from San Francisco to New York to beat time zones, so I could get money cleared in a bank account, so I could make sure things ran like the early days were wild, but we always 1st and foremost, took it very seriously to ensure that we had an eye on what it took to ensure the continuity of business, making sure we’re thinking about the next client thinking about solving deliverables, making sure about getting money in the bank, and I think it’s just a you know, there’s a lot of things on the sexiness of hyper growth and scale and candidly, survival is a lot to be appreciated, and it takes a lot of effort in and of itself.
Greg Alexander: It’s often under appreciated. You know, we we get into these firms with these big dreams, and we want to get to scale as soon as possible. But meanwhile you got to make payroll every month right? I mean, it was a really good reminder, you know, to me when I read that.
Josh Miramant: And there’s always that other side, too, where it’s like the, you know the the joke of the 5 year overnight success, or whatever it stands where, like you see that? Well, those 5 years are survival, and that to get to that overnight success, or wherever it stands, or the year long overnight success. It’s like, that’s just grinding up survival. Yeah.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, yeah, all right, let’s go to the next one that really hit with me, which was number 5, which is titled Grit trumps genius. So tell us about that.
Josh Miramant: Yeah, I’ll be the 1st to admit I have not this like, I have come up engineering and doing all this work, and I’ve been humbled and fortunate to be around a lot of software engineers and data engineers and machine learning experts that are just so much smarter than I. And so I will double down and stand by that. There is no question that that the idea of just actually sticking through and perseverance is a far more important function for the positive outcomes that you’re looking for, particularly in entrepreneurism and just building businesses. I have this. There’s this fantastic book. I just referenced it in the post in there that I am. You’re probably grinning because you must love it and know it new, just knowing you, Greg. But Carol Duckworth is, and the book grit is just a fantastic guide to actually thinking a little bit deeper on what it is. And it was amazing because I’m actually a mainer. I grew up in Maine, and there’s just this distinction that I’ve always had coupled with my sense of place and my identity as a mainer is part of us as a people surviving our cold winters and kind of being hardy, quirky folk is grit. It’s a word that we always grew up with. And it’s funny how much I’ve reflected on that transferring over to entrepreneurism. But I always say that the idea is, you know, like, set yourself up for luck, you know. It’s like to make your own luck. I think grit is the recipe for how you make luck grit sticking in the game. Pushing through the hard. You know this, this classic startup scale mantra where it’s like, do things that don’t scale. Yeah, true. Go do the things that figure out first, st and then you figure out how to and doing enough of those and testing and continuing to get up even when you get kicked down. I think those are really core pieces. But I threw this quote in the post which I recommend, and also the book. But Duckworth’s quote on this is, you know, contrary to popular opinion. Success does not depend on talent depends on intensely focused on goal with passion and perseverance, and so like that resonates with me so deeply. I’m sure you, too.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, yeah, I love that book. I’m glad you just brought it up because I was going to tell everybody to read it. I think the title of the book is grit correct?
Josh Miramant: It is sorry. Yeah, it is. It is simply named. So it’s an easy Google.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, it’s true, you know, in my time I’ve been at this now 30 years. I’ve seen a lot of brilliant people fail. Because at the 1st sign of adversity they quit. And I’ve seen a lot of people, and I put myself in this category that have average intelligence. But for some reason, because of grit and not giving up. They figured it out and got to the finish line. So, but it’s it is often overlooked for sure. So it was. It was great to see that in your article, and it was a good reminder, all right. 10 lessons from 10 years. So let me go to Number 7. This might be my favorite one. And that is partially because of the crazy vanity driven world we live in. Now. Focus beats Fomo. Tell us about that.
Josh Miramant: Oh, it’s as I think. Yeah, this hits home deeply for me, Greg and I know why we both drawn to this one. But I think the idea of there are 2 things that focus be—Fomo is supposed to represent, but the core of it is the idea of focusing on a very consistent area. So it’s like somewhat narrowing of an area and sticking within a space. Those 2 things are very critical to focus, and the inverse of that Fomo, which is fear of missing out—like something new pops up and you jump to the new thing. So not only do you narrow, but you also stay the course, and those are 2 separate disciplines. You can stay broad and stay the course. But those 2 are super critical, and I don’t think I understood both of those separately at first. I’ve always been disciplined. We’ve always done data and analytics for years and years of the company. But we have been all over on TAM. Our addressable markets have been—you know, it’s been broad. We used to serve every client type—a disaster, which you smile, and you know, because you taught me that. Not that it doesn’t work. I’m gonna quote you here. It’s not you, of course, that you use more than anything but “riches is in the niches,” you know. That’s the truth. But I find that that thing has proven true consistently. Even if you serve multiple markets as you start compounding those, you still have to start with one. You have to build to a second. And all these pieces—it’s so important to find that narrow lens. And then there’s also this struck balance, which this isn’t easy. These aren’t easy advices. But that Fomo component of staying disciplined in the area—there’s this other quote that I always love, which is “strong opinions loosely held.” I forget where I picked that up in the world. But it’s like being very strong on your assumptions, being intentional and being researched and disciplined to it, but then being adaptive to feedback and calibrating against that with some consistency and some rigor—like, what are the assumptions where you go forward and where you don’t—and that dials into the Fomo piece. Like, don’t be distracted easily, but also make sure you give the room and the framework for adaptivity, and finding that right calibration. It’s critical for sustainable growth and scalability, but also staying disciplined where the money comes from, which is identifiable, positioned and defined go-to-markets.
Greg Alexander: You know. I’ll add my 2 cents here. So early in my career, the—which is now part of Dell—and the M in EMC—was a mentor of mine. His name is Roger Morito. So a man who became a billionaire from very humble beginnings eventually went on to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins, etc. He said to me one time, “Greg, there’s always someone who has more than you,” and if you’re constantly measuring yourself against others, which is what Fomo is about, you’re never really going to be happy. The only thing that matters is that when you’re brushing your teeth in the morning, and you’re staring at yourself in the mirror—what do you think about yourself? Forget about everybody else. So I wanted to throw that out there, because, you know, as entrepreneurs, we’re constantly looking at other entrepreneurs and saying, “Oh, you know, that person’s doing this, and I’m not,” blah blah! It’s incredibly destructive. What matters is: Who do you see when you look in the mirror? So my 2 cents on that one. All right. That’s a good lead into Number 8, which is burnout is not a badge of honor, which I got to tell you when I read that, you know, in my knowledge of your background and your Silicon Valley heritage—I was surprised to see that. So tell us a little bit about that one.
Josh Miramant: Yeah. And you’re dead right that this is one of the things that is the hardest for me to practice. But I believe in it. I find this thing that—I’ll tie this back in—but there’s this idea that you don’t get—I give this advice to mentees in this piece—it’s like you don’t get better at being a junior analyst by working harder at being a junior analyst. You don’t get better at being a director by working harder at being a director. You actually have to do something different. And I have learned through my career that in practice on this—that when I learn how to do something better, I get better results. And it’s not just doing more of it alone. That’s a smarter/harder quotient here. And so I think there’s this piece that—it is not—it is certainly difficult to tackle all the things that are needed, and I can take up more hours of the day. But actually finding out how to be good at what is important and structuring systems and delegation and all these things has made me the best I’ve ever been. And the areas I’m worst at are where I don’t do that. And if—you know, right around this corner here, you’re going to see “The Founder’s Bottleneck.” I’ll pull that right out of the bookshelf right here by yours truly, Greg Alexander. I think if there’s a lesson that emanates across all the areas of the ways that that’s ledged, it’s: How do you be thoughtful, methodical, and kind of strategic on compounding yourself as a business practice? And so I think that’s the idea here where what I found is burnout is the failure of that. It’s just trying very hard in a way that doesn’t yield better results. And it isn’t the thoughtful piece. There’s 2 sides of it. It’s not the thoughtful execution of good system design, and it’s something that makes the output that you’re capable of worse. And so, as much as everybody feels there’s just like ingrained sense of, you know, tying out to the side of grit—”Here I am patting myself on the back for working hard”—it isn’t actually. It’s: How do you work effectively to get the outcomes that you want? And you just do not—you got to have your health, got to manage your stress, and you got to get good sleep. Those are foundational things that are just crushed by burnout.
Greg Alexander: You know, for those listening, if you want to make it to the 10-year mark as Josh has done, I mean, you simply can’t do it if you’re going to work 80 hours a week every single week. You can’t go the distance. So, you know, burnout not being a badge of honor is really good advice, and it does—I know it might sound counterintuitive when measured up against grit, but it’s not. It’s a complementary perspective on things. All right. That takes me to number 9, which is the 5th one that I wanted to review with you on this call. And again, we’ll review the other 5 on the member Q&A. And this is something that—you know, having been around you now, I have witnessed you do this. This isn’t some guy who hit a milestone and wants to brag to the world saying, “Look how great I am.” I see you do this all the time, which is: Keep reinventing yourself. You have an incredible curiosity. And just in the short time I’ve known you—just a few years—you’ve reinvented yourself several times. So tell us about that.
Josh Miramant: Yeah. I think that there’s just—I don’t know where these tenets come from, but this is actually probably one of my favorite things about being a founder, is that the job is always changing. And so to be good at it, you have to both quickly learn how to be good at the area that you need, and then adapt to the next and strike that balance. It’s a very hard balance, and I mostly look to people I respect and mentors and founders that have done that really well. I’ve watched them do it. So it’s learned—it’s very much so a skill. And you know it’s hard, but I think the reinventing piece is just that endless curiosity side. Not to get too philosophical, but there’s an idea of like: Why do we—you know, there’s many ways to make money. So as long as you can select what is the right level. But the thing that—you know, we’re here just to effectively choose the right level of hard. You know, we want to put problems in our life, but they want to be accomplishable. And so I found this thing that—you know, I’m not a big—I’m certainly not an advocate of “follow your passion” in this stuff. But you certainly need to find that right level of hard. And I find that through creating problems like a company—building the goals that are realistic and iterative. You can solve it. And then you need to create new problems, and kind of create new accomplishments and thinking about it in that way. That’s how you eat the elephant—you know, it’s one bite at a time. So it’s like setting goals for your business and for yourself that are obtainable and are the right level of accomplishment. And you’re feeling that you’re able to make progress against and then reiterate. Like, that’s the process of building a company. You’re like, what does the company need? Not pre-optimizing scale. And inside of that it takes a leader and it takes a self-drive to work on that process—like, what types of skills do I want to get better at? How do I get excited about that? I feel like I can make progress.
Josh Miramant: And to your point, like I would hope that that’s a big compliment coming from you. Knowing me for a few years. I hope that is how people look at me. I would look proudly upon myself if that was something people said of me. That man you’ve learned a lot and change. I think that’s a great compliment. So I think that is not only a necessity, or the profligate of anti fragility, or whatever you need to get to that level. But I also think it’s just what makes life fun and companies are a good facility. We have a lot of agency within it to choose how to do that. So it’s a kind of a piece I’m motivated by, but also a facilitation of really good corporate growth, if you will, especially through the like 0 to one phase of a company, particularly the real, just like creating something from nothing.
Greg Alexander: Now one of the features of Collective 54 is a, you get assigned to a peer group, or you you can opt into a peer group, which is a group of like 10 to 12 people you meet once a month, and you kind of, you know, Co problem solve. And I’m very lucky in that. Not only am I the founder of Collective 54. I’m also a member, and I participate in one of these peer groups, and Josh and I are in the same Peer group. And one thing I learned from you, Josh, that’s related to Number 9 is this concept of how to learn which was really striking to me, because I never really thought about how do you learn something? But if you’re going to be curious and you’re gonna be an entrepreneur. You want to be curious in the right areas, right? Because there’s only so many hours in the day. And you had referenced something to me. I think it was something in. Was it Tim Ferris’s book that he talked about? Could you.
Josh Miramant: Yeah. Oh, my God, yeah, Meta, learning, that’s the whole thing. It’s like, yeah. Yeah. So Meta learning from Tim Ferris, this is one. So I was of the era that Tim Ferriss is the early, very impactful god. My 1st company. He really stepped me on the path of like in the middle of being an entrepreneur what it meant to be. But he wrote this book. It’s it’s kind of the 1st preamble of earliest opening to the 4 h chef his book that he teaches you how to learn. He was bad cook and long story short. But Meta, learning he really just broke down a just the components of what it is to be efficient, how to. You know there’s some tips and specific things. But even just how you process information quickly, how you understand and break things into pieces of it, how you can have retention and testing. It’s like all the component skills of it. And I think if there’s a single skill that is probably the most reusable. Skill is being self reflective on how to learn quickly, not only just being able to learn well, but quickly is a super skill inside of that, too, for adaptivity. So yeah, the highly he uses this thing. It’s called the diss, which is how he breaks down all the parts of Meta, learning but instructional design and pedagogical framing. My first, st my 1st company was in was in Ed Tech, and this was a big part of how it becomes, but it’s it’s that process of going to be on the spot here. But I think it’s deconstruction. Selection sequencing, and one other that I’m like stakes. I think it is you have to have like subscribe to the game. Yes, I’m going to go with that. But that’s the things I’ve worried. I think that’s it. I got put on the spot, but I believe that is, but though I’ve used that over and over. I have like systems and ways that breaking things down into process of what those areas are is incredibly effective. And then just having some intentionality about. I want to learn this topic. So you have to get it into a framework that’s so helpful in of itself. I abandon learning things all the time, too, which is a newer thing for me. If I’ve taken a pursuit of something I’m like. This isn’t exciting. It’s not what I thought it was. I don’t feel the application, but man being incredibly effective, for how like the ability to absorb and and be interested in the frame information easily. One of the most like extendable skills that I’ve I’ve had in my, you know, early career.
Greg Alexander: Highly relevant to our community, which is largely made up of 1st time founders. So learning how to be a founder, learning how to be an entrepreneur. Not doing it just by accident and being focused and controlled in that environment is a wonderful thing. So that was great great advice.
Greg Alexander: All right? So those are the 5 that I want to cover again. We’ll cover the other 5 on the private member Q. And a. With Josh. He’ll be our weekly role model.
Greg Alexander: But Josh, on behalf of the community congratulations on reaching the ten-year mark and creating 150 high quality high paying jobs. That’s what it means to be an entrepreneur delivering 250 plus and counting projects for clients that doesn’t happen if you produce shitty work, so just hats off to you, man, you built a great company, and we’re really proud of you.
Josh Miramant: Thanks, Greg. I’ve been learning a lot from you and the team so, and all the peers among C. 54. So it means a lot to all that you’ve been part of that, too, I appreciate. Let me come on and talk about it.
Greg Alexander: All right. A couple of calls to action here to wrap up. So first, st if you’re a member, and you want to hear the other 5 and talk to Josh about his hard one. Lessons. Look for the invitation. Attend the member, Q. And a. If you’re not a member, and you want to become one and have to listen to this. How can you not go to Collective 5, 4.com filled an application and we’ll get in contact with you, but until next time I appreciate you listening to this show, and I wish you the best of luck, as you try to grow, scale and someday. Exit your firm.
Note: This transcript was generated by Zoom.