Art of Biz

The roles are reversed as guest Robert P. Miles interviews co-host Marty Schaffel and gets him to share what he believes are some of the traits that most successful entrepreneurs have in common. Marty shares the story of how he managed to land a contract with Disney and then dives into the importance of listening, not just when sitting down with potential clients, but also when meeting with employees and new-hires.

Marty Schaffel shares one of his scariest moments as an entrepreneur, in which he had 3 days to pay $100,000 or he would be out of business; he discusses how he navigated the situation and the lessons he learned from it. Marty then unveils a concept he coined 'Management Nirvana' and how he was able to achieve it with over 2,000 employees working under him while he served as the CEO of AVI-SPL, the company he founded in 1979.

Darin Cook, the Co-Founder of Infinite Energy, shares the story of how they launched the company in 1994, got profitable 4-months after launching and generated over $1m in revenue in year 1. He shares the story of how they started the company, how they made themselves appear a lot more established than they really were, and many of the challenges they faced early on. This episode was recorded on January 28th, 2019 at the Infinite Energy campus. Infinite Energy sold to Gas South for an undisclosed amount in December 2020.

Robert P. Miles interviews Marty Schaffel and gets him to open up about how he almost burnt out his top sales people by making a fruitless bet on a product he thought would be disruptive. Marty also discusses his criteria for investing in other startups, including two examples of startups he invested in, one failure and one success. Then Marty opens up about his class at the University of Florida, whether entrepreneurs should drop out of college or not, and he quickly covers a variety of other topics including podcasts he listens to, the importance of mentors, and his curiosity about business and entrepreneurship.