Editor’s note: WRALTechWire launches a new series today: In-depth interviews with Triangle entrepreneurs, each of which will include multiple parts. Our first package focuses on Justin Miller, founder of fast-growing WedPicsin Raleigh. WRALTechWire Insider columnist and entrepreneur Joe Procopio will be having candid conversations over a beer with our profile subjects. Also included with each package will be a Q&A that goes beyond standard business (Miller talks entrepreneurship and life that is consumed by work) and video interviews with WRALTechWire Editor Rick Smith. (Watch the first of three with Miller.) Today’s package is offered to all readers.

A Beer with WedPics Founder Justin Miller

  • Site: Trophy Brewing Company, Raleigh NC
  • Miller ordered: Next Best in Show
  • Procopio ordered: Trophy Wife 2.0

Joe Procopio: OK, so here’s the concept. You and I sit here and drink one beer, and have a standard non-journalism, non-marketing, authentic conversation. That’s all it is. When the beer is gone, we’re done.

Justin Miller: Let’s go.

Procopio: So the last time I saw you was a couple weeks ago at the NCTA awards. I was in line at the bar — and by the way, I totally missed accepting the award Automated Insights won, because it was the first one of the night, the fastest intro ever, and the bar was like a mile away from the stage. But in the aftermath, that event turned out to have more impact than I would have assumed. We got a bunch of kudos for winning that award.

Miller: I always feel like those kinds of events — I wish that they were more channeled in terms of putting companies against each other, in categories that made sense. Maybe break them out into more tiers. There was such a broad spectrum. Also – try to pair up folks that would have more relevant conversations with one another.

Procopio: Who were you sitting with?

Miller: There were ad companies, and some individuals who were with a recruiter. It just seemed very much like, the first questions were: “Is your app available on an iPhone or Android?” I’m sure I came across as ** *******.

Procopio: Yeah – sitting with a telecom company. Once we told them what we did, we just answered questions for the next hour.

Miller: It’s like when you go back home over the holidays and you run into all the people you went to high school with, you have to tell the stories a thousand times. I joke about printing my life out on a card and handing it out to them

Procopio: Why not do that for business?

Miller: Exactly.

Procopio: Walk around with elevator pitches on notecards and just hand them out.

Miller: There’s an app idea – your elevator pitch on an app that goes out simultaneously to everyone in the room.

Seriously though, I’ve been to events in other cities that have bigger startup communities, like Silicon Valley. They’re more engaging. The types of folks that go to those events, it’s already a refined audience. Here in this area we don’t have that luxury. The dominant markets are more healthcare and, to be super cliché, big data, things like that. It’s tough to start engaging with folks that aren’t in the same realm as you.

The events aren’t as successful as they ultimately could be. There’s no reason why I should walk away from an event with 800 people and not have at least a dozen contacts in my pocket. I walked away from that event with one or two. It’s also too big. I try to approach those things looking at the value-add, what I can take away from it.

In San Francisco, I went to an event, there were people from Polaroid, Samsung, Google, but they were all there with the idea of content and photo sharing. We can’t get that granular here, there’s just not enough diversity within companies here yet.

Procopio: Yeah. I get that. That’s one of the reasons ExitEvent is as small and selective as it is. We don’t have enough companies here to make those kind of big splashy events worth attending for startups. So I stripped it down in terms of cost and audience. I don’t have to charge anyone and people walk away with a lot more information.

So in the questions I gave you, you said entrepreneurs are born not made. I’m calling you out on that one.

I think at some point you have people who aren’t entrepreneurs. It’s just not in their blood. But to me the wantrepreneur is — and maybe this is just me being overly forgiving — but they’re the entrepreneurs with no education or the wrong education.

Miller: See, I think… I just look at entrepreneurs and how I define it as different. How many people do you know work for some company and hate what they do every day and Friday is the best day of the week?

Procopio: Said the guy who came from IBM.

Miller: Right! There’s a blurb in the book I listed – when I went to bed on a Sunday night excited as I was on Friday night, I knew I was making the right decision. You have to have the balls to leave the job, stick your neck out there, lose the paycheck. You could come up with the next big idea or fall on your face. Who’s willing to do that?

I left an extremely cush big job at a corporation that had been very good to me. I didn’t know what I was doing but I knew I had one shot to do it.

Procopio: So you didn’t have dejaMi in mind when you left?

Miller: Oh, I did.

Procopio: Just not how to get there.

Miller: Right. I’ve got the idea but I don’t know what I’m doing. And ultimately that idea didn’t work. I had to take this thing that was failing and move it into something that gained traction – that was a whole other thing. That can’t be taught, to throw everything out and do something else, and not hold it too tight that you wind up sinking with it.

Procopio: So… you’re talking about risk tolerance, though.

Miller: Yeah, and what I do daily as an entrepreneur. I’m the face of the company and the sales of the company – you can’t teach people to have other people believe in them. Far too many people try to learn that and you can call ********.

Procopio: OK, I get it. Yeah, you can’t teach that with books. But can’t you learn that from experience? Learning from failure?

Miller: Yes, but I think prior to learning that, there has to be that initial leap. You can’t teach that.

Procopio: Maybe that’s learning how to cope with failure.

Miller: Yeah. And unfortunately, nothing prepares you to do that. The media portrays being an entrepreneur being much different than it is.

Procopio: Amen.

Miller: Yeah – you read stuff and think — 10 million in funding, three billion dollar offer for Snapchat. The fact of the matter is, the percentage is so small compared to the rest of us, it creates a very delusional mindset

Procopio: I call it lottery entrepreneurism.

Miller: Yes.

Procopio: A lot of times, when you listen to entrepreneurs tell their story, you get a lot of broad-stroke drama, but not a lot of detail. I use my first startup all the time in those kinds of stories – I built this thing, it had amazing initial success, then it flatlined.

Miller: In that I think what we’ve gone through is the most valuable lesson. Having this idea seeing early success, seeing it start to bleed a slow death, being able to recognize that early enough to be able to take the idea and cut it from us, throw it out the window and start with this new idea.

(Laughs) Then go back to our original investors — friends and family — and tell them it didn’t work. But we know how to make it work. And we need more money.

Procopio: That’s tough.

Miller: So many entrepreneurs, when you think of an idea, you think of a broad scale idea that can impact everyone, right? No one thinks of the super-focused idea.

Procopio: Home runs, not singles.

Miller: Right. But I think one of the most important lessons we learned was to refine the idea and scale it down to a very specific market, win that market, and then take it back out again. Get the execution down and then grow it back out again.

Procopio: Execution. You can’t teach execution. Or can you?

Miller: You can teach it in terms of the mechanical points to execute, but you either do it or you don’t do it. There will come a time when you learn if it’s fake or if it’s just natural. There’s no Rosetta Stone for entrepreneurship.

I became an entrepreneur at 30, and a lot of what I learned came out of my corporate gig. All of the engagement, how I interact, how I lead, I learned it along the way. Those are traits that aren’t taught.

Procopio: Not the same soft skill set as the corporate world

Miller: Those are very rigid skills. Powerpoints, and taking your team through SWOT analyses. I’d rather ******* die or walk into traffic than give my guys a SWOT analysis. That’s what I would attribute to a learned entrepreneur rather than a born entrepreneur.

If you go back to the whole notion of the lottery entrepreneur. An extremely miniscule portion of us that make it do so because they build something so unique that it takes off. The rest of us that become successful, there’s at least one people-person that can take the vision and sell it to investors, companies, and to the team you have, getting everybody on the same page, to have the same passion.

The deeper I get into what I’m doing, I realize this is not a forte my dad has but it’s 100% my grandfather. He was always telling stories about people and his engagements with them. I never knew the details of his business, but I knew the details of those interactions. I could see that just in terms of my behavior, being able to talk about the vision and get you excited about it. If I can talk to you long enough, you’ll believe in what we’re doing.

Editor’s note: Joe Procopio is a serial entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. He is VP of Product at Automated Insights and the founder of startup network and news resource ExitEvent. Follow him at @jproco or read him at http://joeprocopio.com