Meet the entrepreneur – Michael Sumner, ScoreDetect
Welcome to our series, 'Meet the entrepreneur', where we sit down with founders, CEOs and the like and get to know the person behind the business.
Welcome Michael Sumner, CEO of ScoreDetect, as we take a look into this entrepreneur and his business.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about the business?
Michael: ScoreDetect is a platform that uses blockchain to verify ownership and protect intellectual property of digital assets. It offers verification certificates for various content types and integrates with over 6000 apps via Zapier for enhanced copyright protection.
Q: What is your Monday morning routine to get you in the mood for a successful week?
Michael: I’m a big proponent of exercise as my “#1 business priority”. There has never been a day that I felt bad for not getting a good workout in. So I get up and out as soon as I wake up. As a father of our newborn, and married to my wife, routine is currently a challenge. But we attempt to get to sleep once the sun sets.
My Monday starts the night before, after the adage “failing to plan is planning to fail”. My calendar gets prepared in advance for the week ahead.
Q: What is your favourite podcast to listen to/book to read for business advice?
Michael: I’m currently listening to the “Modern Wisdom” podcast with Alex Hormozi on it, especially when I work out. As this gives real insight into life, wisdom, and business. There are several hours worth of content that allows me to focus on my thoughts and introspections. Otherwise, it helps with my critical thinking.
Q: How do you navigate the digital world as an entrepreneur?
Michael: Keeping up to date with technology helps at first. But when you start getting customers, you navigate your customers needs, and the “latest tech” takes a backseat. Once you begin to find out what starts working, it is boring but continue to do what works — and grow.
I found much of my entrepreneur productivity occurs once I disconnect from social media, the “latest tech”, and using my mobile phone. That gives me the game to focus on moving the needle.
Q: What is your best IT infrastructure advice to other entrepreneurs when getting their business started?
Michael: Start with modern technology and make sure you focus on cost-optimisations which come in many ways. Be creative with your infrastructure choices, and make sure it can scale when needed.
Make cybersecurity a priority. Focus on open-source technologies, and select infrastructure based on the level of support you will require (critical, non-critical components).
Q: What are your biggest pain points as an SME?
Michael: Starting a business. It requires assurance that your business plan (researched risks and assumptions) will work out. You need to experiment daily until something works. Get feedback from beta customers. Once you get your initial customers, you have to change your mindset completely. Focus on growth afterwards using one marketing channel until 1 million revenue.
Q: What helps you wind down at the end of the day?
Michael: You might have known this one! Spending time with my wife and our baby has been the single most valuable part of the day. It gets you looking into the “real priorities” of life. That, communication, healthy food, and a little activity. Helps wind me down towards the end of the day.
Q: What did you want to be when you were growing up? Did you always see yourself being a business owner?
Michael: I’ve always wanted to build something that could improve the world. I joined groups of people to make the world better on an enterprise-grade scale with several companies. Now, I have the opportunity to make an impact at scale using the internet.
Q: What do you see for the future of your business?
Michael: With the rise of AI and deep fakes, we can see fake documents, content, theft, and more. Blockchain timestamping will be a tool to get this solved as it is always publicly available, lasts indefinitely, and does not change.
Q: What do you do to stay ProActive when times are hard as a business owner?.
Michael: Operationalise your thoughts — with actions.
First, treat your actions as “experiments”. Be a scientist. Change the word “failure” to “lessons”. Once you know this, you can look at viable options to steer the business around. Look at your priorities and focus on the Eisenhower Matrix (Urgent and Important) tasks to complete, find out what they are and work through them.
Q: What song would you play on a Monday morning to get you through the Monday blues?
Michael: It’s funny you asked this! As I change depending on the project or season. I have three categories: One with lyrics for “mundane” admin tasks, two minimal lyrics for “small thinking tasks”, and three no lyrics or “dead silence with active-noise cancelling earphones” for deep work.
There isn’t one song, but I pick one song I like from a playlist and listen to it on repeat. For at least 4 hours. This has been the biggest productivity hack to get off the “Monday blues”.
Download and share
If you want to read this post offline, save it for later or share with a colleague, click the button below to download a PDF version.