Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Embracing Diverse Interests: How Curiosity Fueled Jason Todd’s Multiple Business Exits

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Embracing Diverse Interests: How Curiosity Fueled Jason Todd’s Multiple Business Exits · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:04
  Fascinated me that I could work with a computer, write code and have it do whatever I wanted it to do.
• 0:15
  All right, Jason Todd, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 0:18
  So happy to be here, Dave.
• 0:20
  Absolutely.
• 0:21
  We're happy you could take the time.
• 0:23
  So Jason, you've had a long, successful, diverse entrepreneurial career so we'll get into a whole bunch of it there.
• 0:34
  But you've, you founded the first direct to consumer H vac company.
• 0:41
  You've, you're an author, a podcaster, you've done a lot of live streams, you consulting, all sorts of other stuff.
• 0:49
  And from as far back as you can remember, you've always had this entrepreneurial bug.
• 0:56
  From being a techie early on in your, in your middle school days and coding and all sorts of stuff.
• 1:03
  Can you just kind of talk about those early days and what drew you to want to be an entrepreneur for sure.
• 1:10
  So I grew up in a family owned business.
• 1:13
  My parents have owned a regional trucking company for 50 something years.
• 1:18
  And so I remember going to the office, sitting behind my mother's desk as she paid the bills or walking through the warehouse, going on rides with my dad as we delivered things, eventually mowing the lawn there and at
• 1:33
  some point in time in the future.
• 1:36
  Writing software for them.
• 1:38
  But the entrepreneurial bug, I wouldn't say to me was anything different from normal life.
• 1:46
  I was always a creator, I was always experimenting, I was always pushing the envelope.
• 1:51
  And you bring up this idea of technology.
• 1:55
  I'm a self taught programmer back in my early days because they didn't have classes for computers in our high schools or our grade schools.
• 2:06
  And so I would, by the virtue of my mother being so wonderful, she'd take me to the library after school and I would check out these big reference books for how to write code.
• 2:18
  And I, and so I.
• 2:21
  It fascinated me that I could work with a computer, write code and have it do whatever I wanted it to do.
• 2:28
  I don't know why that was so influential for me, but I got my start very young.
• 2:34
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• 2:39
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• 2:42
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• 2:50
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• 2:56
  And 10,000 orders per month.
• 2:58
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• 3:06
  Our central Kentucky location gives you nationwide reach, turning logistics into a competitive advantage.
• 3:12
  So if you're ready to partner with a 3PL that actually gets your brand, visit EasyDC3PL.com and I think that's as.
• 3:22
  I would term it today.
• 3:24
  There are kind of two different paths that people take in their brains.
• 3:29
  One where they look at a system or a process they're a part of and they're like, well, that's just what has to happen.
• 3:34
  This is just the way it's done.
• 3:35
  And then there are other people who are just like, well, somebody made that system or that process and doesn't mean they were right or that should be used in all cases.
• 3:42
  So some people obey all the rules and complain about them, or some people know all the rules are made up and there are certain ones you shouldn't break, but most of them are just made up and they were
• 3:53
  made up by people like you and me.
• 3:54
  And so I've been the person who, when I come to a opportunity, I look for opportunity instead of obstacle.
• 4:03
  There's all sorts of obstacles, I get that.
• 4:05
  But there are all sorts of ways through them and around them.
• 4:07
  And what if we just looked at things a different way?
• 4:10
  And so that's how my brain was wired from a very young age.
• 4:14
  So by virtue of nature or nurture, a combination of the two, it's, it's in my blood to create.
• 4:22
  And that, you know, people might look at that as being an entrepreneur, but that, that creative energy in many different interests has created or helped me create the things that I've done personally and professionally.
• 4:42
  Yeah, no, and that's great awareness to really harness that at such a young age too.
• 4:46
  And like you said, you would, you would go and you would get these big coding books from the library and just read them and teach yourself how to do stuff.
• 4:54
  And then you were, you were selling software in high school, right?
• 4:58
  And.
• 4:58
  Well, yeah, I think it was, I, I want to say it was sixth grade maybe.
• 5:03
  And these are great memories to, to relive.
• 5:05
  I love it.
• 5:09
  I had this friend, I think his name is Mark, go over to his house and he had a fish pond.
• 5:15
  He really liked fish and he had a pond.
• 5:18
  And so I wrote an old IBM.
• 5:20
  This one makes sense to everybody, but I think it's like a 386 or 486 IBM, which is think green screen, everything's in text.
• 5:30
  Code was not what you think code is now.
• 5:33
  And I wrote a order processing system for fish.
• 5:39
  Now we had no customers.
• 5:41
  He had a love for fish and he didn't have that many fish.
• 5:44
  He's a tiny little pond in his backyard.
• 5:46
  But I Was like, man, I could write an order processing system for this.
• 5:49
  And so I did just because I could.
• 5:51
  And I wanted to.
• 5:52
  Now a sixth grader who does that, why?
• 5:56
  I just wanted to.
• 5:57
  Why not?
• 5:57
  And nothing is stopping me.
• 5:59
  So that, that's.
• 6:02
  Yeah.
• 6:02
  From a, from a very young age I was always interested in how could I just bring things that other people could use.
• 6:10
  And that did lead to then, you know, selling software.
• 6:15
  To various folks and consulting with them on their computer systems and, and whatnot.
• 6:20
  And I think maybe by virtue of my personality a bit, I was able to speak confidently in those areas.
• 6:29
  And so people trusted me and, and I got the job done.
• 6:34
  Okay.
• 6:35
  All right, so let's talk about this.
• 6:37
  This H Vac company that you had a tremendous run with.
• 6:40
  So it was the first direct to consumer H Vac company that there was.
• 6:45
  E Commerce.
• 6:46
  E Commerce.
• 6:46
  I'm sorry.
• 6:47
  Yeah, direct to consumer E Commerce H Vac company or I guess E Commerce H Vac company rather.
• 6:54
  But so you founded that in 2002, which is.
• 6:58
  Right.
• 6:58
  Kind of at the dawn of E commerce as we know it.
• 7:01
  I mean talk about that time and how the company got started and why you decided to do that.
• 7:06
  Great question.
• 7:07
  So I was working as a technical account executive for.
• 7:12
  I think they build themselves as a cross media company which just really meant, hey, we do print, we do web, we do all sorts of stuff.
• 7:18
  And the web was new.
• 7:19
  Some people didn't even have email addresses.
• 7:21
  You know, people were still faxing things.
• 7:24
  And when I was working there, I was working by being a technical account executive with companies that were entering, entering the web based market or using that technology.
• 7:38
  And so I worked with a farm parts manufacturer and architected their first E commerce site.
• 7:45
  How do we sell these things online instead of printing these expensive to print and expensive to mail massive catalogs.
• 7:53
  Also how could we leverage putting all these things in a database to not only deliver on the web, but how could we highly format.
• 7:59
  And this was an old technology called XML Fo.
• 8:02
  How could we format that whole catalog so we could just press a button and boom, all of my products and details and photos and all sorts of stuff, tables of parts and how they work together and stuff could
• 8:16
  automatically be printed out.
• 8:18
  So you know, you get 80% there and then somebody comes through and you know, prettifies it.
• 8:22
  Now that that sort of work, launching E Commerce, you know, sales for, for new companies and also telling people, listen, E commerce is the future.
• 8:35
  You're going to have to get a website, you're going to have to.
• 8:37
  You're you're eventually going to be selling online and hearing people say, no, that's not gonna happen.
• 8:42
  We don't need that.
• 8:43
  That won't.
• 8:44
  We're not.
• 8:45
  That's not our industry.
• 8:46
  And I'd be like, yeah, but I know more about this than you do.
• 8:49
  You're not even qualified to tell me that's not the industry.
• 8:51
  I know a lot about this, right?
• 8:53
  So that was always going in my mind.
• 8:54
  And then I'd work with.
• 8:56
  There was a larger company that, that we, I helped architect with was called their E Business System.
• 9:02
  So.
• 9:05
  They'Re in the aircraft engine business.
• 9:11
  They would receive parts from suppliers and then do qa, work on it and figure out, you know, what are your error rates and that type of stuff and are your parts intolerance, yada yada, which would help determine whether
• 9:22
  they're going to get, whether they're going to get any pushback through production or through sourcing.
• 9:31
  They helped, they wanted to expose this information and let people sign on so they could get instant updates about their parts as they were received.
• 9:39
  And so working with them to take their massive mainframe data.
• 9:44
  How do we securely present that on the Web?
• 9:46
  I was doing those types of things.
• 9:48
  Now.
• 9:49
  There was a gentleman there who was in sales, so he was simply, he was in business development.
• 9:54
  So he's setting up meetings, but he didn't know how any of the work was going to get done.
• 9:57
  And so oftentimes after he set up a meeting, he'd take me along and I would listen and it was honestly a great time.
• 10:06
  So I would not only tell that potential customer, you know what, how we were actually going to get the work done.
• 10:12
  But we would have a lot of fun in the process.
• 10:16
  In fact, we go into these sales calls and just for sport, because we're both pretty good talkers, we would, we would cue the other person up and it's so, so much fun.
• 10:25
  We'd, you know, I'd say, well, you know, here's what we're going to do, blah, blah, blah.
• 10:27
  And you know, Andrew, what do you, what do you think about that?
• 10:31
  And then he'd have to, on the spot, just come up with something.
• 10:34
  And so we had this good rapport that we were building.
• 10:37
  Now it was around drinks in the beginning of October 2002 that we thought, you know what?
• 10:44
  I'm tired of selling people on these great ideas that they don't understand.
• 10:47
  Why don't I do this for myself?
• 10:48
  But I don't know what I would sell.
• 10:50
  And he then came and said, you know, I think heating and air conditioning products would be a good product to start with.
• 10:56
  So let's, let's look at humidifiers.
• 10:58
  A humidifier at the time, the retail that we've ended up selling, it was like 140 bucks for a basic humidifier.
• 11:07
  Now that included a free installation video and free unlimited technical support.
• 11:12
  And you paid almost nothing for shipping.
• 11:17
  That was the first product we started with from that discussion.
• 11:20
  And then air cleaners and air purifiers, all these simple products.
• 11:24
  Now a humidifier sale is interesting because if you're going to put a whole house humidifier in your home, you could pay 140 bucks and get our free installation video and our free unlimited technical support or you could have
• 11:35
  paid $600 to a dealer.
• 11:38
  Right now no one was doing this because that supply chain is pretty closed.
• 11:42
  Supply chain dealers don't want to let you know.
• 11:44
  This is actually a pretty straightforward, simple thing.
• 11:46
  And if you get yourself some tin cutters, like you can do this.
• 11:49
  Now.
• 11:51
  We always knew that starting with humidifiers, air cleaners, air purifiers, from that initial conversation the beginning of October 2002.
• 11:58
  We took our first sale at the end of October.
• 12:01
  I think it was Halloween.
• 12:02
  In fact.
• 12:04
  We were ecstatic that whole month.
• 12:06
  I spent every night writing code, doing the branding, adjusting images while my business partner was going off making pictures and entering all the stuff into my computer system that I was writing from the beginning of October 2002 to
• 12:21
  the end.
• 12:22
  Wrote a whole the basics of an e commerce of a dropship E commerce system with fulfillment directly from our distributor.
• 12:30
  It would just send an order over to them and it would print off on their, I think maybe their fax machine, I can't remember exactly.
• 12:37
  And then a copy of the order because I was like, I don't know, a copy of the order would print off in my basement.
• 12:41
  And I was super excited and I was like, oh my gosh, there's an order.
• 12:45
  Now we knew that that was going to lead to other heating and air conditioning products, air conditioners, furnaces, and we charted that course and I think we did about 50 grand in humidifiers, air cleaners and air purifiers.
• 12:58
  There's a lot of humidifiers, air cleaners for air purifiers.
• 13:01
  That First December of 2002, we were still working full time jobs.
• 13:04
  We'd get together on Saturdays and Sunday afternoons sometimes to do task lists and figure out how this is all working.
• 13:12
  And I would code all night, adding more, more systems, more processes, automating as much as we could.
• 13:18
  So that really, this was a big easy button.
• 13:20
  I used that methodology as this company grew to automate as much as we possibly could, writing eventually an entire ERP system from the point of tracking whether you were online and then you gave us a phone call and
• 13:34
  what quote did you send and what did you look at to having that phone call recorded and whether our person said the right things on, you know, during that call to how orders were processed, how shipping was calculated,
• 13:48
  fulfillment systems, projection systems.
• 13:50
  I mean, amazing things over the course of those years to the point where I sold that in 2011.
• 13:56
  But that whole, that whole start startup with him was a person with some domain knowledge coming to a person with executional knowledge to join together to bring a new product delivery and open up, expose this closed distribution system,
• 14:16
  make it available to consumers.
• 14:19
  That's how it got started.
• 14:21
  And then it took on a life of its own, as anything does.
• 14:25
  And we continued to grow that up.
• 14:28
  And we would often meet on.
• 14:30
  We had a sort of the cadence.
• 14:31
  We'd often meet at a.
• 14:34
  A place with great Swedish pancakes, which, near.
• 14:37
  Which was nearby one of our offices, and we'd meet there.
• 14:39
  And then I concepted things on the back of a.
• 14:43
  Back of a.
• 14:43
  Not a menu, a placemat.
• 14:45
  They had paper place mats with ads on the front.
• 14:48
  I'd flip it over and I'd.
• 14:50
  Sometimes we'd sit there three quarters of the day until we made it back into the office.
• 14:54
  And I was just writing code and concepting things and having meetings and working with suppliers and all sorts of stuff.
• 15:00
  So it was the.
• 15:03
  Working at this.
• 15:06
  Service provider to then say, listen, we should do this ourselves.
• 15:10
  What should we do?
• 15:11
  Where's the opportunity?
• 15:13
  And that knowledge had to come from somebody in the industry to then say, we can blow this industry open.
• 15:18
  And we did and made some significant waves.
• 15:23
  In fact, we had a competitor at one point in time we called, didn't call, sent an email like, hey, you know, we're really doing great.
• 15:29
  We, we think you, you know, we, you, we might want to.
• 15:35
  I think they wanted to buy us or something like that.
• 15:38
  I don't know.
• 15:39
  And I was like, sure, send me your data.
• 15:41
  So they did.
• 15:42
  They sent me their, their sales data and their traffic and all sorts of stuff.
• 15:44
  And I was like, man, we are killing you.
• 15:46
  And you have no idea.
• 15:49
  Wow, okay, so such a great story and so many lessons to unpack there.
• 15:54
  So I mean, let's just start from the beginning, right?
• 15:58
  So you, you're in this job, right, and you're dealing at the Advent of the Internet.
• 16:03
  And it sounds like clearly you were bullish on E Commerce from the start.
• 16:07
  Like you knew this was the future.
• 16:09
  And just like anything, right, people are saying, nah, I don't know, and kind of sticking with the status quo.
• 16:13
  So you knew already and you were getting frustrated by having to convince people that this would work and, you know, whatnot.
• 16:20
  So you had that urge to start something on your own.
• 16:23
  And then, as you put it right, there was this fusion of executional knowledge and domain knowledge between the two partners.
• 16:32
  So I mean, how.
• 16:33
  Let's just start there with partnership.
• 16:35
  How important do you think that was for those two skill sets to come together in terms of creating a successful partnership where you could really grow that business?
• 16:45
  Yeah, extremely important.
• 16:46
  And in fact, it's broken down in all sorts of, you know, business books.
• 16:50
  So traction, eos, all these, all these methodologies, right?
• 16:55
  You think about, like, who are the types of people that you need in your business?
• 16:58
  You need some sort of visionary who understands where this thing is headed, whatever it is.
• 17:02
  And then you need somebody who will spin themselves crazy just doing the work.
• 17:06
  I am not the person who will spin myself crazy.
• 17:08
  That's just not where my sweet spot is.
• 17:11
  I had a business partner who would spin himself crazy.
• 17:13
  And through all the businesses that I've owned, the most successful ones have been where I can set the vision.
• 17:18
  I can figure out how the whole puzzle comes together and bring technology.
• 17:25
  So my, you know, let's say this trifecta in my brain is business strategy, technology and communications, where the three of those things meet.
• 17:32
  I'm your guy.
• 17:33
  Now, in each of those businesses, there needs to be somebody who has significant domain knowledge and loves to just do the work.
• 17:41
  They just want to spin on that work.
• 17:42
  And they don't need to have that vision down the line because that might be confusing for them.
• 17:48
  Or.
• 17:50
  I look at it this way, you put in three effort, you get eight results.
• 17:53
  That's something you should spend your time in.
• 17:55
  If you put in eight effort and you get three results, don't spend your time on that.
• 17:59
  Find somebody who will.
• 18:00
  And that's where this idea of having some sort of visionary, somebody who says, here's where the market's headed, here's how these parts come together.
• 18:07
  You need that.
• 18:09
  Otherwise the person who's managing the work will just continue to manage the work while the industry moves on.
• 18:14
  They can't see it and they're not moving to it.
• 18:17
  Likewise, that person who can see where the market's headed and where that.
• 18:21
  How all the pieces fit.
• 18:21
  Together is not going to spin as fast.
• 18:24
  Just putting, just doing the actual labor of getting this thing done.
• 18:29
  And that's why when I dug into code at the time, that first month was so important, we'd meet on Saturdays.
• 18:36
  I even wrote a task list management system in database so that we could share it.
• 18:41
  Because you didn't have these types of things like people didn't we take it for granted that I can just, I can do a Google search and there's 100 different task management programs.
• 18:49
  Not in 2001 or 2002 there were not.
• 18:54
  So what were we doing?
• 18:55
  I wrote my own and I built it all part of the system because we needed to work in a distributed environment.
• 19:00
  I wanted to live that life and I knew that's what this technology enabled.
• 19:04
  I'm going to do it.
• 19:04
  Nobody can tell me different.
• 19:05
  It's my company and even if it was my company, I'm going to just do it for myself.
• 19:10
  So I was this visionary who said, okay, I got all these parts but I have this skill set to bring the technology together.
• 19:15
  But if somebody's not going to take the photos, write the descriptions, figure out the pricing, all these things, which is just busy work, doesn't require any particular smarts.
• 19:24
  You don't even know how an industry comes together to do that stuff.
• 19:27
  That is mind numbing for me and it always has been.
• 19:30
  I just don't like busy work.
• 19:32
  I don't like, you know, I've got 10 things to do today.
• 19:35
  I checked 10 things off this afternoon.
• 19:36
  Ta da.
• 19:37
  I'm, I'm, I'm fulfilled.
• 19:40
  I'm not.
• 19:40
  If this, if I don't know where this is going, I'm probably going to figure out somebody else to do that.
• 19:45
  And that's where those two skill sets, not only in that business was instrumental, but also I think in every business it's instrumental.
• 19:55
  I have been the least successful when this, that, that, that doing the work piece is missing.
• 20:02
  And it has to be somebody who likes that.
• 20:03
  They have to thrive off of that.
• 20:05
  Those short wins, if they don't, they're gonna get frustrated.
• 20:09
  They won't do it well just simply because they don't want to.
• 20:12
  You gotta find somebody who wants to do that and will dig in with it.
• 20:15
  And that's what, that's the magic that he and I had.
• 20:18
  Plus he again like he brought up, he brought that domain knowledge, he knew.
• 20:24
  Those products and how they all fit together and then you know, how do we scale that?
• 20:29
  You know, Then I was like, okay, well you're gonna Teach me.
• 20:32
  And then we're going to do videos and then we're going to train people.
• 20:34
  Right.
• 20:34
  So we, I brought all that sort of process execution and big, big thinking which can be learned.
• 20:42
  Right.
• 20:42
  But you, but everybody brings those things together in different ways.
• 20:47
  And it was the virtue of my kind of, you know, back to the idea of nature.
• 20:51
  Maybe it was nurture.
• 20:52
  But like we were talking before the podcast, you know my, when I got into college.
• 20:59
  Well, when I first went away for college, because I had done college before, but I went away for college for a semester and I was a double major in computer engineering and musical theater.
• 21:08
  That you cannot get more different.
• 21:10
  And why are those two things sandwiched?
• 21:12
  In my mind that's just me and that, that makes me highly effective in certain areas.
• 21:17
  It also means that I'm not effective in other areas.
• 21:22
  And I've just over the years just been like, that's the way it is.
• 21:25
  And I just moved towards the things I am affected, which happens to be.
• 21:29
  Helping people see opportunity instead of obstacle, being the puzzle master.
• 21:33
  How do all of these things come together?
• 21:35
  How do they work together?
• 21:36
  Where is this headed?
• 21:37
  And I did happen to know a lot about technology at the time and where, where, where it was all headed.
• 21:44
  But it does for me.
• 21:45
  It goes back to business strategy, communications and technology.
• 21:48
  I can bring those things together whereas somebody else might exist in those areas independently which you might need at scale.
• 21:56
  But that's not what you need for a startup.
• 21:58
  You need those things all coming together.
• 22:01
  Okay, and how long did it take?
• 22:03
  Because you mentioned you're both working full time when this got started, it was a lot of late nights in the beginning, just getting everything going.
• 22:09
  How long did it take before you guys quit your full time jobs and.
• 22:13
  Went all in with the business?
• 22:14
  He was single and super flexible with his money and time and I was not, I was raising at the time, two children, married and.
• 22:29
  Interested church and community and all sorts of stuff, doing a lot of stuff.
• 22:33
  And so I needed stability.
• 22:35
  But you know, we went from zero dollar sales in October to fifty grand in December, all while working full time.
• 22:43
  And in fact we had a telephone number set up and we set that number up with press one for sales which went to mailbox, press two for technical support, press three for customer service.
• 22:55
  They all went to mailboxes.
• 22:56
  Then we call people back at lunch and after work and before work.
• 23:01
  That was the life.
• 23:02
  And so we knew that was not sustainable.
• 23:05
  Also we saw a precipitous drop in some of our sales in the spring in these, in the winter time, but it was kind of.
• 23:13
  It dropped a little bit, but then we kind of saw it go back up again.
• 23:16
  We didn't understand seasonality at the time, certainly not national seasonality.
• 23:20
  We knew seasonality in our area, kind of, but we were new to this.
• 23:24
  But we were.
• 23:25
  We were making good money each of those months.
• 23:28
  And he went full time in, I want to say, maybe Juneish or May of that next year, 2003.
• 23:36
  So it could have been five, six months, and we were making plenty of money.
• 23:40
  It could have paid me, too.
• 23:43
  But we decided to.
• 23:44
  To put that money back into the business.
• 23:46
  So we brought him on full time.
• 23:48
  He quit his other job, where, again, we had been.
• 23:50
  He had been selling and I had been selling with him as a technical account executive, and he gives him business development.
• 23:56
  He quit that job.
• 23:57
  He hadn't sold anything in the time that he was there, which, you know, so they were happy to.
• 24:03
  To not have him there and pay his.
• 24:05
  His salary either.
• 24:06
  But.
• 24:07
  But yeah, it was only probably six months that we.
• 24:10
  Well, maybe a little bit longer than that that we went full time.
• 24:12
  And then it was several months after that I went full time and gave myself a raise.
• 24:19
  All right, all right.
• 24:20
  And so as you mentioned, you had a very successful run there.
• 24:24
  You exited that business in 2011.
• 24:27
  Let's talk about your career after that, because you've done just a wide variety of different things where, you know, you wrote a book, you started a podcast, you've.
• 24:38
  You got into coaching.
• 24:39
  Can you just talk about kind of your journey after that and.
• 24:42
  And how all these different activities really, like why you did that and what's been so fulfilling about it?
• 24:51
  The fulfilling part is I've gotten to indulge my interests.
• 24:58
  Which is a.
• 25:02
  Asset and liability.
• 25:04
  Right.
• 25:06
  The.
• 25:07
  The several years after I sold this business, I retired.
• 25:10
  For all intents and purposes, I took at least a year off and did almost nothing.
• 25:15
  Played video games and took kids to school, which.
• 25:19
  Which I needed that rest.
• 25:22
  I did.
• 25:22
  I just needed to do nothing and answer to no one except my family.
• 25:28
  And we traveled.
• 25:29
  We took summers and we traveled around the country and bought a camper and traveled around and went on vacation whenever we want.
• 25:37
  Took a lot of time off from, you know, took kids out of school and whatnot.
• 25:42
  The.
• 25:44
  That was super beneficial, but I had the itch to do more, and so I got into all sorts of things.
• 25:49
  I started day trading.
• 25:51
  I wrote a system to.
• 25:52
  To automatically day trademark.
• 25:55
  Um, I wrote a training program for that.
• 25:57
  I started doing consulting work because it was interesting and people would ask me questions and I didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 26:03
  That that's part of it.
• 26:04
  Like I had so many diverse interests, I didn't know what, where it settled.
• 26:09
  And it, and it started to concern me a bit because I felt like, man, I'm a bit unfocused now.
• 26:14
  I don't know what I'm doing.
• 26:15
  And it was true.
• 26:16
  I didn't, I had no plan.
• 26:18
  I didn't in fact intend to sell that business.
• 26:21
  I thought I was going to buy the business and it turned around in the final hours and, and, and so I was a little, I was caught a little off guard.
• 26:29
  So while I had a lot of flexibility, I had not prepared for that.
• 26:33
  And I did have a plan if I was going to buy that business from my business partner.
• 26:38
  I had a plan to, to run that business.
• 26:41
  I knew where that business was headed.
• 26:42
  But anything else I was like, I don't know what I'm doing.
• 26:45
  And so I did.
• 26:46
  I just followed interest and I had too much money and too much time which to, to the benefit of that is I've done a lot of stuff.
• 26:56
  So because people would ask me about, you know, being an entrepreneur, I've had the ability to go teach and travel and work with Google for entrepreneur or Google for entrepreneurs and tech stars and do startup weekends and Purdue
• 27:09
  University and University of Wisconsin.
• 27:11
  I've traveled the world.
• 27:11
  I worked with the Italian trade agency to help Italian companies do business in the United States.
• 27:17
  I've taught storytelling and marketing in Albania.
• 27:19
  So I've had the ability to cast a really broad net.
• 27:26
  Just saying like, hey, how can I be of value to you?
• 27:29
  How can you use my unique.
• 27:32
  And I think it is a pretty unique skill set and along with unique interests, how can I use those for the moment?
• 27:39
  And then it was probably in.
• 27:41
  I started what I call a business development company.
• 27:44
  If I knew the business strategy, communications technology were my skill sets, what if I could build a company around that and we could keep those, those disciplines in house to work with other companies?
• 27:55
  Out of that company I started other things.
• 27:58
  So a guy came to me out of men's small group I was in.
• 28:01
  He's like, I want to start a lighting company.
• 28:02
  And I was like, okay, I don't know, tell me about it.
• 28:05
  And there was a, maybe a two or three year window where I was like, I can make a serious difference in this.
• 28:09
  And I did.
• 28:10
  I helped him start an electric lighting company doing high efficiency lighting upgrades.
• 28:14
  I knew that the lifespan on that was about two to three years.
• 28:17
  And I wanted to be out because after lighting, you're an electrical contracting company.
• 28:21
  And I didn't know what I was going to do with electrical contracting company, but it did know what I was going to do with lighting.
• 28:25
  And so I again back to this idea of I'm going to bring the whole vision together.
• 28:30
  You're going to do the execution in the areas that you really know.
• 28:35
  We combined forces and did a million bucks the first year in high efficiency lighting upgrades and that, that sort of rinse and repeat cycle became effective.
• 28:46
  Then I started again, not, I would suggest, pretty unadvisedly.
• 28:52
  So started things just because I was like, I could do this with no real thought on what's the plan, what's the business model behind this and how does this really work, how does this really make money, how does
• 29:05
  this really increase the value of the organization itself?
• 29:09
  And so, you know, fast forward through fits and starts, you know, to today where I've got a private equity firm where we, where we work with companies to increase their valuation and also offer them exit opportunities.
• 29:21
  It's all about, you know, in fact is people come to me, talk about their startups.
• 29:26
  So with their startup, right, it's now the.
• 29:29
  I'm, I'm like, what's the value of the enterprise three or five years from now?
• 29:34
  You have an idea.
• 29:35
  I would normally chase ideas.
• 29:37
  At the time I chased ideas.
• 29:39
  I can make this, I can turn this into something.
• 29:41
  You sure can.
• 29:42
  Should you though?
• 29:43
  Maybe not.
• 29:44
  What's the enterprise value and how does, what's, what's the, the, the path to get there and how does the money work?
• 29:52
  That's where, that's where my brain is at now, having learned some lessons that don't chase things, you know, just because you can.
• 30:01
  That's not very smart you.
• 30:02
  And that's where, you know, I've got a lot of experience in a lot of different areas and done a lot of things across the nation in the world.
• 30:09
  But.
• 30:11
  There, there has to be.
• 30:14
  I'm learning and maybe have learned in some certain circumstances, I'm learning to refine that process a bit more.
• 30:22
  And I'm not even 50.
• 30:26
  Yeah.
• 30:27
  Wow.
• 30:28
  Okay.
• 30:29
  So through all this, through, you know, pursuing your diverse interests and following your ambition to become an entrepreneur and successful business exits and all these different things, what would you say, Jason, has been the best part of your
• 30:46
  entrepreneurial journey?
• 30:51
  I think the best part for me and I, and I have a hard time with ranking things because everything's additive.
• 30:58
  You can't have a best without everything else that made that thing a standout.
• 31:05
  I look at my.
• 31:07
  What would not have happened, and I'll call that the best.
• 31:12
  Right?
• 31:13
  The things that don't come naturally to me.
• 31:15
  I am.
• 31:16
  I'm.
• 31:18
  I'm an ambivert, but I'm introverted.
• 31:21
  So I can back to, you know, this idea of computer engineering and musical theater.
• 31:26
  I can go on stage and do that, but not for forever.
• 31:31
  I'm much more comfortable.
• 31:32
  I could write code at the time, I wouldn't ever do it now, but I could sit at home and talk to the handful of people that I know indefinitely, which is a risk.
• 31:44
  It's not a good idea.
• 31:46
  The best thing is because.
• 31:50
  I've followed my own things that I would do anyhow, just because I like it.
• 31:55
  I'd like to play around and discover new things and learn as much as I can about it until I feel like, all right, I got enough here for.
• 32:00
  It's a usable level of knowledge and maybe I'll become an expert someday.
• 32:04
  That's.
• 32:05
  That's where I exist.
• 32:06
  That has enabled me to come in contact with people that I never would have known had I not just followed those interests and then used them in some way.
• 32:17
  All.
• 32:18
  So I would say that the.
• 32:19
  The best thing have.
• 32:21
  Have been the global connections to people who I've come to know in.
• 32:27
  In some regard and been able to influence and been able to work in their businesses.
• 32:33
  And that has been reciprocal.
• 32:35
  Reciprocal to now.
• 32:36
  I've learned about all sorts of things simply because I didn't niche down into.
• 32:43
  Well, but I have to become a.
• 32:46
  Call it whatever you want.
• 32:47
  Like I'm.
• 32:49
  Am I a musician?
• 32:50
  No, but I produced songs and I've sold them.
• 32:54
  Am I a public speaker?
• 32:56
  Well, not for.
• 32:57
  I mean, not all the time, but I've given keynotes to the Better Business Bureau, and I've been on many stages nationally, a little bit internationally.
• 33:07
  Am I a podcaster?
• 33:08
  Well, I've done 500 some more live streams.
• 33:12
  I've facilitated live streams for other people.
• 33:15
  All right, am I a computer guy?
• 33:17
  Well, yeah, I can write code.
• 33:18
  I've written a million and a half or more lines of code.
• 33:21
  All right, am I an artist?
• 33:22
  I don't know.
• 33:23
  I've made art.
• 33:24
  I do sometimes marketing stuff for folks, and I'll get it done, you know, and then I'll figure out how to delegate it off.
• 33:30
  So I've got all of these interests in different areas.
• 33:35
  And I learned.
• 33:36
  I've learned so much about so many industries that.
• 33:39
  That really, I think is the best.
• 33:42
  That's really the best.
• 33:43
  Part I've followed my interests and then been, in some cases, forced myself, aligned myself with people and situations that forced me to get out to meet people, connect with them, much like this.
• 33:57
  Right?
• 33:57
  Connect with them while respecting my energy levels so I'm not wearing myself out, which then helps me learn more.
• 34:06
  And that's the best part.
• 34:08
  It's recognizing, I think, the reciprocal nature of the things that I would do anyhow and then meeting people and connecting with them because that's.
• 34:20
  You know, ultimately we're just people.
• 34:22
  We express ourselves in different ways in our work or our relationships, but we're just people.
• 34:27
  And we're very similar.
• 34:28
  We're vastly more similar than we are different.
• 34:30
  And that's.
• 34:31
  That, I think, has been the best part.
• 34:34
  All right, well said.
• 34:36
  All right.
• 34:37
  So, Jason, if entrepreneurs are out here listening to this and they want to learn more about your private equity, that that helps people get ready to exit increases their valuation, or they're hearing your story and they just want
• 34:48
  to connect and learn more and maybe collaborate in some other way.
• 34:51
  What's the best way that people can find you online?
• 34:54
  I would go to my personal website@therealj.todd.com that's where you'll find a bit about me.
• 35:01
  There's an about section on there which is.
• 35:03
  It's not totally exhaustive, but it's a reasonably exhaustive list of the things that I've done.
• 35:09
  But not to brag, but be.
• 35:10
  There was a time when, when I needed to be reminded.
• 35:13
  I needed to remind myself that I wasn't a total hack.
• 35:16
  And I did.
• 35:17
  I've done some cool things and I've know what I'm talking about.
• 35:21
  I had lost sight of that for a period of time.
• 35:22
  And so I made that list for me, which I thought might be beneficial when I'm, when people like, what do you do?
• 35:28
  I don't like to talk about myself.
• 35:30
  I do it because it might add value so people can go to that list.
• 35:33
  There's also a media and appearances thing if you want to see me and I'll in.
• 35:37
  In some of the places that I've been, I generally keep track of it on there, which again, those, those things might add value for folks as well.
• 35:46
  So therealjtodd.com and you can always email me@jasonthereal j.
• 35:49
  Todd.com all right.
• 35:51
  And we'll link all that in the show.
• 35:52
  Notes for everyone.
• 35:53
  Great.
• 35:54
  Jason, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today and sharing all this valuable wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 36:00
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 36:01
  Thanks for having me, Dave.
• 36:02
  Sam.