Fred Cary Podcast Transcript
Fred Cary joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Fred Carey. Fred Carey, a powerhouse entrepreneur, and CEO of IdeaPros, a company that guides qualified entrepreneurs through the complexities and pitfalls of the startup world. With his entrepreneurial spirit, Fred started many businesses in different industries, created many successes, and acquired thousands of lessons along the way.
His desire to give back to a community of like-minded eccentrics led him to create IdeaPros, the world’s first super venture partner. A company that could roll up its experienced sleeves and provide every entrepreneur with the opportunity to see their vision become a real company with a real product.
He also produces a weekly show for entrepreneurs that has been viewed by over 4 million people. As a top 1 percent business professional, who’s who in America, and a top ranked attorney for several years, Fred’s personal brand can be best described as F* AVERAGE BE LEGENDARY.
Well, good afternoon, Fred, welcome to the show!
Fred Cary: It’s good to be here. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.
Brian Thomas: You bet. I appreciate you making the time and love the San Diego area, by the way. Traverse the globe doing podcast 50 countries thus far and counting, but I love, love San Diego. I spent some time in Orange County. Obviously, I’m in Kansas City now, but appreciate you making that time.
That’s just so awesome. And Fred, we’re going to just jump right into the questions here. Let’s talk about your career as a successful corporate leader, switching into a serial entrepreneur, founding several successful companies. And now you’re the CEO of IdeaPros. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
Fred Cary: Yeah, I’d be happy to do so. And by the way, if you were in San Diego yesterday, would not be loving it. We had flooding streets everywhere because of the rain that we’ve had very unusually. But other than that, there’s a lot to love here. I, my successes, my career growth really amount to tenacity and having nobody else that would take me if you want to really get down to it, I started becoming an entrepreneur, not because I wanted to really change the world, but I seriously thought that there was no room for me in corporate America that I was too much of a Kind of individual thinker to really fit the mold that would make a good employee.
And so, realizing nobody else would have me as an employee. I decided to make myself my own slave as far as successes throughout the career success in entrepreneurship is really it’s a temporary thing and you go up. You go down the journey that never ends. Elon Musk reportedly the richest man in the world.
In 2008 was sleeping on his friend’s couches when he put the last money he had from PayPal into SpaceX and Tesla, the second batch of his remaining wealth. And literally had no money for rent and little money for food. So, here’s a prime situation of somebody going up and down, making it, losing it, risking it all over again.
So, I think what really has propelled me and driven me through what some people would call an unenjoyable ride, because entrepreneurship is that and unenjoyable. ride full of stress and challenges and really pushes you outside of your comfort zone. What’s kept me going is the fact that I love that, that the adrenaline, the adventure, the challenge of having to try to make things work that don’t work all the time is exhilarating.
And when you get it right, there, there’s no better feeling.
Brian Thomas: I love that. And you’re absolutely right. You know, a lot of people think that entrepreneurship is really this glorious thing and, you know, yeah, you get to sit at the top of, like they say that the illustration of the iceberg, right? The success iceberg, and they don’t realize how much that the entrepreneur has really gone through and suffered to get to where they are today.
So that, that story resonates with me, with our audience and many of our guests are entrepreneurs, by the way no matter what capacity or industry they’re in, but switching the gears here, Fred, how does idea pros uniquely support entrepreneurs compared to other startup incubators?
Fred Cary: I think because we’re really more of a co-founder than an incubator, you know, an incubator takes you on a temporary ride, supports you a little bit and gives you advice and sends you on your way when people, entrepreneurs come to work with idea pros, the flagship product that we’ve had is really, cradle to launch product. We’re really side by side. We’re building everything. People come to us pretty much at the idea stage with no co-founders, no support system, no access to venture capital or even angel groups. And we sit with them, and we build everything together with them using our resources to do so.
So, I think it’s very unique and I think it’s Kind of the secret sauce that’s the first time entrepreneurs especially really need because what happens is they get all the stuff to build things, but they don’t have the knowledge or the connections to know how to build things. Right. And what to do with them and how to get the capital you need once you get them done.
Brian Thomas: Thank you And you’re right. Big difference there. And I think there’s more value in what you provide versus the typical incubator. And obviously having somebody that, you know, as an entrepreneur comes in with an idea or maybe a startup, they know that they’re working with somebody that’s got some tried and true methodologies.
And also, has been through the trenches in doing this stuff. So, I love that model. Really do. And I know it’s been successful for you and other businesses. So, Fred, how was your personal, I should say, how has your personal philosophy shaped the culture and approach at idea pros?
Fred Cary: Well, you know, if you think you said a lot of your listeners are entrepreneurs themselves, and so you guys and girls out there all know how hard it is.
We happen to have 400 companies, so take how hard your hardest day has been and multiply it times 400. So, I think the shaping of The culture here idea of idea process, the shaping of resilience and laughing in the face of danger. Really? When it boils down to it, we have very dedicated people that are working under very hard, stressful conditions and I think the only thing that.
Allows us to continue doing so is knowing that we’re on the right path to help a lot of people and to build a great organization in the process. So I think that never give up and never sleep. You did that yesterday. Attitude is really what propels us here.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I know, again, part of that philosophy is, is some hard work.
I do appreciate that. And I mean, we, we know not everybody’s cut out for entrepreneurship, but you’ve kind of laid it out there. And I really do appreciate that. For the last question of the day, can you share a success story of a product or an app that you help launch, especially if it’s tech related?
Fred Cary: Well, talking about technology, I think the biggest thing that I ever did in that regard, not only helped launch, but was chiefly responsible for it would be Imagine Communications. It’s a company that I started with one impossible idea. Which was basically to save the cable industry and managed to do.
So, created a company that greatly expanded the available bandwidth that they had in their existing infrastructure. We made 20M dollars our 1st year that company now is has tens of thousands of employees and every habit habitable continent. And we have. Thousands of products now that the 50, I think it’s about 52 percent of the world’s television households have some of our products in their infrastructure.
Nobody knows it’s called Magic Communications. I said, as I said, nobody knows what that is, but it’s a close to a billion dollar a year revenue company that dishes out about 52 billion dollars of ad content across the world every year and very, very successful. Company that started out doing one thing that was impossible to do.
Brian Thomas: Love the story. Really do. And again, that’s what I get so excited when I was diving in and doing a little bit of research on you prior to the podcast. I’ve just saw how you were able to take something that worked for you and apply it. Again, it’s that age old adage where you apply a solution to a problem, right?
That people are looking for. I just love those stories. So, Fred, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Fred Cary: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. And say “hi” to Kansas City.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Fred Cary Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
