IAM048 – Entrepreneur’s Business is Dedicated to Raising the Small Business Success Rate

Frank Goodman is an entrepreneur from Washington, DC dedicated to raising the small business success rate through strategy, websites and apps. He went from trouble-maker to an accomplished Engineer and business owner. He has a BS in Computer Engineering (ODU) and a MS in Systems Engineering (GWU). His company, Bleeding Bulb, was inspired by his reputation for having tons of ideas.

• CEO Hack: Take time and ask “How can I be more productive tomorrow?” and Audible
• CEO Nugget: Don't get caught up with buzzwords or trends. Always focus on your goals and audiences problems. Enjoy the roller coaster.
• CEO Defined: Responsibility to have a clear vision, empower people and have people and processes in place.

• Website: https://www.bleedingbulb.com
• Bulb Suite (productivity apps) – http://www.bleedingbulb.com/our-apps/
• Instagram – http://www.instagram.com/bleedingbulb/

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:28

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today Frank Goodman of Bleeding Bulb.

Frank, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Frank Goodman 0:37

Hey, it's great to be here, man.

Gresham Harkless 0:38

Awesome. What I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Frank so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

Frank Goodman is an entrepreneur from Washington DC, dedicated to raising the small business success rate through strategy, website, and apps. He went from a troublemaker to an accomplished engineer and business owner. He has a BS in Computer Engineering from Old Dominion University and an MS in Systems Engineering from George Washington University. His company Bleeding Bulb was inspired by his reputation for having tons of ideas.

Frank, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Frank Goodman 1:12

Definitely, man, I'm ready to start.

Gresham Harkless 1:14

All right, let's do it. All right. So the first question I had for you was just to learn a little bit more about your CEO story. What kind led you just to start your business?

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Frank Goodman 1:23

Yes, sure. So like you said, as far as the whole troublemaking thing that kind of led to me having to write a letter to get into college, so half that was able to get into college through writing that letter. I was very fortunate for that, which pretty much put me in a position to be the first generation for both sides of my family to go on and the university route and get a degree. Then from there, I went into corporate America. I worked for Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, and some companies like that, and I was able to gain a lot of experience there.

But over time, I just always had just that entrepreneurial bug. I always had a side hustle and always had something else I was working on. It was only natural for me to go in that direction. But some of the main things was, I really didn't like not feeling the impact of things that I was doing, because and in a lot of cases, with corporate America, especially these larger organizations, you can do a project and it could be a multimillion-dollar project. And that client can just throw it out the window, like, it's that simple. Like, it's not a big deal. You could spend years putting a lot of time and energy and thought into everything that you do, and they could just be done.

So I wanted to find a way to be a little bit more impactful, but still, use my skills. Because of the skill set that I developed, I did enjoy using it, but I just didn't feel I was getting enough from it. So that kind of led me down the direction of saying, hey, like, I need to do something a little bit bigger. And also try to figure out how I can get more piece of more of the slice of the pie. So that's 2010, Bleeding Bulb gets started and initially is more focused on development because my background is, is engineering.

So we had a lot of apps and websites and things like that, that we were pushing, which ended up being a good thing. And then later on, we transitioned into just focusing on growing a small business as a whole, because we found a lot of gaps. After we were passing off products, they were kind of just sitting there and people weren't really being successful with what we were delivering. So over time, you kind of feel like, yeah, you're not really serving a real purpose, because you're just delivering our product again, and then the impact goes away. So we just want to help throughout the whole spectrum. Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 3:40

Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate you, obviously, for being able to work for those big large companies. But I know that hurt my heart when I heard that sometimes if you work for something for a year, a couple of years, or even a day or a month and then decide not to do it a part of your creative genes died with that.

So I'm glad you decided to kind of shift and start to do your own thing. I wanted to hear a little bit more about what you're doing with Bleeding Bulb, but we kind of touched on the kind of like the website, the app, and the development part. But could you tell us I guess how exactly you serve your clients?

Frank Goodman 4:09

Yeah. So I actually believe in both our main focus is growth strategies were our core services, I should say, our core services, our growth strategies, websites, and apps, that's the core services. And as far as products, we have something called the Bob suite, which is a collection of six applications, all geared toward productivity. So it's everything is about making the small business owner more productive, while keeping costs low.

So you'll find that some of our applications it may seem you may think like say for instance, social media management, you can say, Well, we already have something that's for social media management, or we already have this than the other whole purpose why I want to hit and meet some of these applications is just to be able to control the costs, and also the features because I know some small businesses, they can't I mean, subscriptions are so easy for them to sack up and just go crazy.

So any way that I can take some of that burden off of them and say, like, Hey, you as a part of Bleeding Bulb, we can make sure that we can keep costs low, this is still, you know, satisfy your needs, we keep costs low. And as we need features as a community, we can make those decisions and start to just have that application evolve until everyone can just benefit as much as possible.

So right now, we're really just focused on you know, getting the products together. Another strong product is ball factory, where we focus on training, that's, that's really like an eight module journey, where we really focus on everything from my company, where you're trying to identify what your company is, what its personality is, what it stands for, what it stands against everything to kind of start to build that code into partnerships, how you can leverage partnerships, competition, how you can lower your costs by leveraging competition and research, then getting into different things like traffic website, and SEO, demystifying that whole thing, because that's a lot of time, a lot of times customers come to us, and they're asking for certain services or products without understanding how it allows them to go. And that's one of the main things we focus on looking at their business from a holistic view.

So you can sit here and say, like, okay, what are your goals, and then let's backtrack from that. Regardless, of whether we can provide the services or not, we have a lot of relationships also, that we don't have, it doesn't have to be a dead end, we can still, you know, hand you over to the right people, or we can find out ways that we can help you meet those goals. So that's what really everything is right now.

Gresham Harkless 6:31

Awesome. Oh, here that makes perfect sense. Especially, like you mentioned, like, you know, when you're doing some type of services, and then you realize that maybe their actual business infrastructure isn't put in place as well as it could be or should be, then it kind of is, like you mentioned before with Lockheed Martin and the companies you work for kind of all for not too some degree.

So it's great that you have that comprehensive like you mentioned, holistic kind of approach to making sure you sit down with clients and making sure from beginning to end, they're kind of taken care of. So I think that's pretty awesome. So that brought me to my next question, which is what I usually call your secret sauce, so to speak, or your kind of differentiator, what do you feel is Bleeding Bulb's secret sauce?

Frank Goodman 7:06

So I think we have a couple, one of them is the fact that we're process-based and technology-driven, since we have such a strong background in that when it comes to processes, which I have a strong background, and we can make our system more efficient, as well as you know, other people. So as far as us, like, we have our own internal application where we can manage different things. Anytime we think of an idea that makes sense, we can just start development, I think that's very important. When it comes to structuring your business, the scale, and making it more automated, we're able to just hit the ground running and make it happen, there isn't a whole lot of decisions outside of us just making the decision, collectively.

So I think that's definitely a big thing. I would just say like my experience, as far as every service, or offering that we have, I actually spent time doing it first, I presented the product, and I did the service before I brought on a team member. So I offered everything before we were able to expand, I have a team. So I think that also helps because the level of understanding from one product or service to the next, I can think it's important for the owner to understand the ins and outs of it,  instead of just a super high-level view.

Gresham Harkless 8:17

Exactly, yeah, it's a big huge thing where you can sit down and say, Hey, I actually use this or this provided this type of results for my actual business. So this is why I want to recommend it to you. I think that's a phenomenal differentiator secret sauce that you have.

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app, might be a book, or might be just a habit you have that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Frank Goodman 8:39

Yeah, for me, I will say, if I thought about a hack, I will probably say every day I make sure I take time out and figure out what could I have done. Yes. What can I do today? Or I guess the best better way to say it is from what I did yesterday, how could I've been more productive, if I were to do it all over again, basically, always looking back on my past day, and trying to find gaps or trying to find, you know, inefficiencies, so that I can kind of start to fill that gap and just become more and more efficient. And also, another tool is Audible. Like, that helps me multitask while still learning and making sure I carve out an hour for just thinking just general thoughts, not people's tasks, and an hour for education in some way, shape, or form.

Gresham Harkless 9:25

Yeah, I love those kinds of hacks. And it's all about kind of getting better and building upon yourself and looking at how you doing, what type of results that had, and then seeing how you can kind of improve that. And then making sure you're super efficient to be able to take in as much information as you can while you're doing other things. So Audible is definitely another phenomenal CEO hack. So now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice you might have for other entrepreneurs and business owners.

Frank Goodman 9:50

Yeah, the main thing I would always try to tell people in the thing that I always end up repeating is just don't get caught up in buzzwords and trends. Always focus on your goals and your audience's problems, because if you focus on your goals, then you can stay on track, right? But there are just so many distractions with all these different trends and buzzwords popping up daily. And as far as the problem focused on your audience problem that usually solves any of your problems within your business. So as long as you focus on their problems and solve them, that typically takes care of everything else within your business. Because I mean, the number one thing is usually cash flow. Right?

Gresham Harkless 10:24

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Frank Goodman 10:26

The issue with small businesses, yeah

Gresham Harkless 10:27

Absolutely. I think that even what you were talking about before, when you were saying that, a lot of times people will come to you and say, oh, I want to get SEO. Or do you do this or do that? It's because it's a buzzword, because it's in the noise, so to speak, and people hear it and when associated, but it's great that you know, that piece of advice aligns with what it is that you're doing, from your business standpoint, where you're saying, what's your goal, and that align with your goals. So

Frank Goodman 10:49

Absolutely. And one other thing, I would also say, enjoy the roller coaster I can learn to enjoy, it because it's almost inevitable, you will be lows and highs, and just like learning to appreciate the whole process, because it's gonna just keep going and you just keep adjusting. But once you get used to it, and you get comfortable with it, you understand you have the expectation, so you can plan and work around it a lot easier. Yeah,

Gresham Harkless 11:17

Yeah, that makes sense. You understand it becomes a new normal, so to speak, the roller coaster itself, you know, there's going to be highs, there's going to be lows, but you know that that's normal. So that's just part of being a CEO, so to speak.

Now I wanted to ask you my favorite question, which is a definition of what it means to be CEO. We're hoping to have different types of CEOs on the podcast. So I want to ask you, for you specifically, what it means to you to be a CEO.

Frank Goodman 11:38

For me to be a CEO, I look at a couple of different things, I think it's your responsibility to have a clear vision. First, you have to have a clear vision. And you also need to put people and processes in a place or in a position to grow. And I'm saying that to Matt, you shouldn't be the only the end all be all, you shouldn't just be that that person people go to with all questions, I think you should be empowering your people, and getting them to the point where you're encouraging them to have independent thinking and try to get them to think their own thoughts and be able to problem solve on their own.

So that way, when you can focus on your vision and other things. And you know, that you can hand things over. I mean, if you put people in a position where they understand your expectations, and understand how you think, you can start to mold them that way. I mean, it's empowering for them, because they know that there's trust there, right? Like they know that you're putting them in a position to where it's like, okay, I don't have to just listen to what Frank says, even if he hands me something, if I can improve it, like, I know, I have the liberty to improve it without being punished.

Now I need to make it make sense because I know there are consequences for that. But it's like, it's not a negative thing for something to not work out. But you should take that risk, you know, and that's something that I think all CEOs should really encourage and that be so to not make people afraid of failure. Like there are so many CEOs, I think that makes people feel like they can't mess up or they're gonna lose their job if they make the wrong decision. And that ends up, like, that's all the creativity and all the opportunity out the window because now they're thinking in this little small bubble. So you have to give people room to make mistakes, and allow it to happen, keep them on the right path, you know.

Gresham Harkless 13:17

I would absolutely agree with it. It definitely stifles your creativity from your teammates and the people that are on your team. But they're afraid to make mistakes, they're afraid to kind of color outside the lines, so to speak, from time to time. And that's really where a lot of the innovation happens, where people that are able to do that, and kind of creating a culture by which it's okay to do that. So I think that's a phenomenal kind of definition. So, Frank, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule, I wanted to pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and how best people can get a hold of you.

Frank Goodman 13:49

Yeah, so the way that you can get a hold of me is you can contact me at frank@bleedingbulb.com You can go to our website, www.bleedingbulb.com If you ever want to have a consultation there free, sign up for a 30 minute you can just click on the calendar and find a time that works for you. And basically just like keep pushing, you know we have both factories. We have some other apps check out both Bob sweet see the different applications, and see how they apply to you and if they can be beneficial to you. If you find areas for improvement, always let us know we always appreciate the feedback. And yeah, just keep pushing, man. Just keep pushing. Don't give up and focus on your goals.

Gresham Harkless 14:27

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Frank. I truly appreciate the time that you provide and all the great insight and all the awesome things that you're doing and I just hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Frank Goodman 14:36

Thanks, Gresh appreciate it.

Outro 14:38

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

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Thank you for listening

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