Latest / The Turn: Blue Collar to Billions / He Sold 40% of His Company but Never Gave Up Control

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He Sold 40% of His Company but Never Gave Up Control · The Turn: Blue Collar to Billions

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the turn.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Corey Mitchell of Iconic Founders.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: This week we're going to continue our interview with Brett Bigger.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: He's got such a powerful story of taking a business from zero to 300 million and ultimately taking on outside investors, but they only take a minority stake.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: The journey gets really interesting because he's able to learn from the people that join him in the boardroom.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they push him in a way that probably wouldn't be possible without taking on those investors.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: So tune in as we continue our discussion with Brett.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to The Turn.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Corey Mitchell of Iconic Founders.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: The Turn is where blue-collar founders talk about the businesses they've built, the value they've created, and what comes next after they sell.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, it's freaking awesome.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: It brings together several key things that I see in businesses that hit this wall.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I see it all the time.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the work that I do as like an outside operating board member, partner kind of person.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: It it takes this outside person that can look with a fresh set of eyes on the business, on the numbers, on the people to clearly diagnose what it is.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: What you did though, most people don't do.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Most people pay McKenzie 200K to give them the binder.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: The guy with the binder walks out the door and then the binder gets put in the drawer.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: You might have flipped through it and you don't do a thing with it.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, you know, you hired the guy who wrote the binder and he was actually capable of doing the work.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then it actually worked.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think the other thing that I love about this story, I find all the time small businesses in particular, they they they get bigger, 20, 30, 40 million in revenue, and they can never get that thing out of their mind of what it was like to start.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so they get pennywise and pound foolish about key hires.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that extra 50K or 20K or 100K, whatever the number was to get you there with this guy, it you know, it added 45 million a month or whatever the number was in revenue.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm sure there were lots of other things that that contributed, but he was a key part of that.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I so often see that a really key hire, whether it be a strategic CFO who can actually help you be a partner and help you do forecasting and really think about your business, or whether it's a strategic salesperson.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And those people, because they're great, because he knew what he was worth, which I also love because knowing what you're worth also shows how you sell your products, right?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because it that means you're you're also going to know the value of your products and you're doing value sales instead of commoditized sales, which drives profitability.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So so many things in that story drive home points I try to make to smaller businesses all the time on how you break through to become a business of scale, which is how you ultimately took it to a quarter billion dollars in revenue.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: There was a book that was, I think it was like Where Companies Go to Die, and it was in this$25 million to$75 million range.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the and the author of the book happened to be in Austin, and we went to go see him.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I took the management team and went to go see him.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: There wasn't a specific thing about what he said that really stuck with me, other than the fear that's that you can die between$25 and$75 million.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in my mind, starting from zero, I'm like, oh, well, if I got it to 25 or 75, like, are aren't I, didn't I, didn't I ring the bell?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Aren't I, aren't I there?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I made it there.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And his take was totally the opposite.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, hey man, when you go, when you get to this part of the ocean, 25 to 75, be careful because there's a lot of sharks in the water and they'll eat you.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that scared the shit out of me.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I remember like, we got to get to 75.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to get to 75 just to get it over the hump.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you know better than anybody that that's about sort of processes and scaling and all the things that it sort of takes to get to that point.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we sort of hustled a bunch to get over that hump and to the other side of that 75 because I was too scared that there were too many sharks in the water at 25 to 75.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that you sort of that's enough to sort of have had a taste of quote success that I don't want to give it back.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And like the idea of giving it back and going to zero, and all the all the fear of that was enough to sort of drive on and be like, we've got to get this thing to a reasonable, to a scale that it's it's got some staying power.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: You get this business built, you've made this key higher, which is you know, someone that had this powerful impact on your life, but now he's also had a powerful impact on your business.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Let's turn to this, you know, taking on investors.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: What why do that?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like you the business has grown nicely.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like it was profitable most of the time you had it.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's it sounds like it was working for you.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Were you able to take like distributions and stuff out?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we we sort of got we we I'd say we sort of got it to like a it was like 150 million sort of top line.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm gonna I'm assuming your question is what happened and why'd you do that?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like if the business is working for you and you're making money, you're taking money out, you know, if you got a$150 million revenue business, you're whatever your percentage of the bottom line was, it's it's a pretty big number.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you're cash flowing nicely.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why mess with success and take on an investor?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: The answer to that question is very similar to the experience I had with the guy that came on.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: We got it to 150 million and we're growing, and I'm definitely in an area that I've never been.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we have a good group of people.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we've built a good company, I feel like we've had some success, but I'm worried about what's around the next corner.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll I'll just tell you what happened.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a big private equity firm called me up one day, and we got solicited all the time, like every sort of big service business.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: But this one guy was very persistent.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: He was from a big private equity firm in Houston that I knew and had known for a long time, knew their name.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, this guy's calling me, which is, you know, a little business by comparison of a big multi-billion dollar fund.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So he's calling me, calls my assistant, calls the accounting department, blows up the phones, emailing me.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I finally met with him, and he sat on my couch right across from me over here, and he's a dear friend of mine today.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we had this conversation.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Now, listen, um, we have this big oil and gas sort of power private equity fund, and our investors are sick of the oil and gas play.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: They want something different.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're having to turn our investments from sort of a tiger to a leopard, which is to say, from going from traditional fossil fuel stuff to a renewable strategy.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been asking around, and it sounds like you're a great operator, and I keep hearing your name, and so that's why I'm here.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm interested in investing in the business.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Very smart guy, stand for business school, Wall Street, all the things, right?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so, very lovely guy.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, he's still a friend of mine.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so we sat on this couch and we go through a couple weeks of sort of negotiation.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: He gives me an LOI.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'd had no interest in really selling the business, but all of a sudden I'm sitting there with an LOI and I'm looking at it.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's very complicated.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's got a preferred equity piece, and the structure of it is very sort of complicated.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I called up my old mentor who owned a private equity firm, and I said, Hey, um, tell me about this firm.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think about these guys?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, why are you asking me?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, they may be partners of mine.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about selling the business to them.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, hold on a second.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna sell the whole business, sell it to those guys.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna sell part of the business, then get on a plane and come to Telluride tomorrow and meet me.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I jumped on a plane, flew to Telluride.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: The oversimplification is we worked out a deal that was much better than the deal I had in front of me for me and for the partners of the business.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up selling, so they were the lead private equity firm, and then there's a secondary private equity firm that came in as the second investor that was friends with the guys in the first.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's obviously an economic reason to take some chips off the table and be like, okay, we've made it this far, let's have some liquidity event.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I'll tell you that more than that, it was about expanding the gene pool, which is to say we'd sat around as an executive team for so long, it felt like we needed some a new perspective.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: In the deal that we did, I sold 40% of the business to two private equity firms, but I maintained control of the business and still have control today.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was a little bit different deal than some private equity deals, which are obviously control.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Those guys have been phenomenal partners.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the business has gone through, you know, the solar industry has had lots of ups and downs in that period, and they've been phenomenal partners.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, one thing I love about Brett's discussion is the fact that private equity in his case was actually a positive.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: So many people you talk to, they talk about private equity as sort of a four-letter word.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is it comes in every shape and size.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And in his case, he brought on a minority investor, which is also very unusual because typically PE wants a majority stake.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And they were actually able to really supercharge his business by being a sounding board for him.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so this theme recurs over and over in our discussion of people around him who push him in a new way, whether it his family or his sponsor in AA, all the way to the private equity guys in the boardroom.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just thought it was fascinating how he was able to reflect on his own weaknesses and challenges and then help push him to the next level.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have great partners, even when even when the market, even when the results were really bad, not what we wanted.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when you really get to tell who your partner is.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's great when you're distributing money and you're hitting the forecast and everything's cool and you're blowing out the budget and you're sending money back to investors.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's cool.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: They better be cool.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: But when things go sideways and they don't go as planned, and you run into a big headwind of the market and you're really struggling with things that are outside of the control of the business in particular, you really get to see who your partner is.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And those guys have been phenomenal.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's it's the ability to pick up the phone for me as a CEO.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's everything from therapy sessions to what do I do now?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: To um, hey, I've got this problem, maybe it's a personnel problem, I need this resource, I need this access to a customer base.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it's been about a five-year run with those guys so far.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been a pretty good amount of time.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: The market's been, it's it took off, you know, as they invested.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it went up to sort of 300 million top line and then sort of went down to 150.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And to go from zero to 300 to 150 and try to go back to 300, which is where I am today, one of my board members said to me, he was like, buddy, I was very impressed with the business when it was taking off.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was that was that was a very wild ride, and that was very cool and impressive.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm way more impressed with what's had to go on as it comes down because that is really hard.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: If I was to characterize it maybe, you know, today, it's like it's like you're in a band with your executive team, and you're in a band, and you cut an album and it's really good, you know, in the beginning, and then you cut a really good like hit record, and it goes to 300 million.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden the market goes sideways, and you sort of come out with a couple albums that flop is what it feels like.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then you gotta get back in the studio and you gotta be like, you gotta reinvent yourself again.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, okay, well, what did we learn and what was great about the hit record, and what did we learn, and that's sort of where we are today, which is very much feels like as an entrepreneur, sort of going back to the beginning in some ways and trying to find those things that motivated me to go pull into that parking lot and ask that guy, hey, why don't you have solar on this building?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And sort of have to refine that fire, if you will, and recut a new album.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: But man, it's um it's not for the faint at heart.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, uh, it's not.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I found for me, most I've ever learned in my working life occurred after I had sold and then after things went really south.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: The hardest months and you know, a couple years of my life were during that period.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's also what I bring to the table today when I sit down with a younger executive in a boardroom or a working whiteboard session to help them think through the challenges of a recovery plan.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working on a recovery plan next week in Chicago for a PE backed business that's having a having a tough go.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's those lessons that really um really teach you the hard lessons that you never forget.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Ask about a couple things.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, so one, you know, you're right.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: So many people think private equity is the devil.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had similar experiences.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I've had really great PE experiences that are amazing partners, and I've had really kind of crappy ones.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I tell this to people I work with all the time: like, don't paint PE all in one brush stroke because they come in every shape and size and color and um integrity.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: But the other piece that's really different about your story is you sold a minority stake, and that is very rare.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: You see that once in a while with family offices that are a little bit more creative, but PE rarely wants to put money in to a deal if they don't have control.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: But if you got a little bit of time to go over, well, let's start there.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: What are some of the things you said you you know you you brought this intelligence around the table that you didn't have before because you're kind of in your own little world where it's kind of like when you read your own essay and it all looks, you know, it all looks great.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Someone else reads it and shows you all the spelling errors and the and the grammar problems.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what are a couple of the things that you learned in those say months after they took an investment in your business?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most important sort of parts of the the business that we had to change was just this idea that we have to sit down as a group in person on a quarterly basis and talk about the results.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when that's done correctly, you get to look backwards in the rear view mirror and assess what happened.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And there is not one time that I've ever done prepared for a board meeting that I didn't get to the board meeting with a crazy aha moment.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, holy smokes, there was this monster issue.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And day to day, you're fighting all these fires and putting out things and trying to move down the but at the end of the but all of a sudden I didn't realize there was this one monster thing over here, call it customer acquisition cost, all of a sudden blew up, and I'm like, holy smokes, what the heck is going on?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like those moments of having to stop for a second and say, okay, what happened here and what are the trends and backing up, and then present that to a group of people who are going to ask very pointed strategic questions, that act in itself is sort of an institutionalized business, or at least for us.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And for that, that that always we always get to some big thing that we're like, oh, there's this monster trend, let's change directions.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Reporting on the business and thinking about the direction, and then having other people that are professional investors that look at big trends to say, hey, you guys know how to install this stuff, you guys know how to do the blocking tackling, but customer acquisition cost will eat your lunch.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: It'll blow this business up.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so that feedback to hear that from somebody else, because you sort of get into the little weeds and you're looking at all kinds of different things in the business and all kinds of problems, but like conversely, to be like, hey, just hang on, guys.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just stay in the saddle here.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: You get through this, this too shall pass.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It turns into a little bit of a therapy session sometimes, right?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Which is, hey, there's market forces against you.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Just hold on, don't take any big bets, don't get way over your skis, just hang and wait till the market switches.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And those things about headwinds and tailwinds, you know, in the market, I didn't know what that was for the first 10 years of running this business.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I because I had a tailwind.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what a headwind was.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: The last five years, I could write a book on headwinds.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing when you're in one or the other is really, really important.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think business is so much about timing and knowing when to sell, for example, or when to take on investors, or when to get the best valuation, or when to hang.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Don't take big bets, button down the hatchet, don't spend a bunch of dough, keep Ibadah on the black and focus on those things and wait because this too shall pass.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what it is, a headwind or a tailwind, it will change.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Recognizing those things, I think, is helpful with smart P guys.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: As a minority owner, I assume, but but I could be wrong here, that they still want some similar reporting that a you know a majority owner would take.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: What has changed about how you report out your results internally since the transaction?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I would I would say we've gone from a when you're little, you can be a gut feel business.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just to say you have an entrepreneur and maybe you have a CEO and you're driving the business and there's a lot of gut feel, at least this has been my experience.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you take on pee guys, um, gut feel is great.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: You need to have gut feel.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a super important thing.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's critical to driving the success of the business, but it needs to be backed by some level of data.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that our reporting in terms of putting in infrastructure, whether it's software, putting in financial reporting, and being able to make decisions that are data supported, have been the biggest change.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: So those are things that just help you become a grown-up business.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say the reporting that we do today, every week we sit down and do a forecast of plan meeting, and it's a spreadsheet that'll almost turn the electricity out.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's so long, it's painfully long, and look at every part of the business.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And are we on track?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, here's a here's an area, here's a market that's that's got an issue, and being able to drill, that's all the function of P guys that have sort of had us reporting in that sort of way that now we've adopted to sort of see and be able to try to see around the corner a little bit where there's problems and go put those problems out before they become big forest fires.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Another lesson I see over and over in business is this turn where people go from managing the company with a gut feel to managing it using data.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you hear about, you know, these bringing in new systems and adding an ERP implementation and using a CRM and things like that.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: He talks about it as being a really important piece after he brought on private equity investors because he had to learn how to report out the the uh the financials in a completely different way.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it helped really change the way he managed the business because he was able to do it using real data instead of just going with that gut feel the way he used to, and that helped him make management decisions in real time.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: I took it as one of the key things that really changed business for him and helped him take it to that next place of success, particularly when times got tough for him.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because as he says, you know, it's it's pretty easy to run a business that's just up and to the right.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's much harder when you start facing headwinds.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And when you can run a business back with data, you can make much quicker decisions about how to pivot when you need to.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: I love uh listening to this journey.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, first of all, it's incredibly inspiring.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: You turned a life that didn't sound very happy into like when I talk to you, I'm you know, I'm I I get pumped up and I get inspired.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: You, you know, exude a lot of optimism.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: I can only imagine, like your team around you feels the same way.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you've got a really good culture of openness.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're you know, you're going into your your your sales guy that was an incredibly important part of your life, and you're you're able to talk about business in a way that's that's exciting, and you've got partners around the table that push you in a way that you weren't pushed before and brought a level of intelligence around you that you just that you didn't have uh that raises the bar for you and for your team, and that can only help.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's like almost impossible for it to hurt.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're gonna be tailwinds and and headwinds, and those things are gonna come, but having the people and the culture of the business is what's gonna take you uh to the promised land.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I I really have have loved your openness and your honesty and your willingness to share some of the tough stuff because what the reality is is everybody that owns a business, and everybody, I mean we all go through tough stuff.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Most people don't want to talk about it.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: They want to talk about how badass they are because they made a lot of money.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what what you've what you've done is you've talked about a lot of really tough things that you know made you change your life and that ultimately created an opportunity in business, and it also probably, in my my my mind, it probably also really changed your relationship with your daughter, who was a key part of you know pushing you forward.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I leave the episode super inspired.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll I'll I'll maybe end with one thing that I think about a lot, which is the president of this business brought this quote to me, and I I think about it all the time.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the quote is a Billie Gene King quote, tennis player, pressure is a privilege.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think about that a lot, which is what a gift to have some pressure.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if I think about my life and where I came from, I should be grateful to be in a position to have pressure because that's a privilege, and not everybody gets that.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's a gift, but it's a different way of thinking about it.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can think about oh, the headwinds and the market's doing this, and uh, things aren't going our way, but like, really?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's just a gift to be able to show up every day and get to do what we do and work with a great group of people, and there's a lot of privilege in that.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's the same circumstance and a different perspective.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I think as an entrepreneur, you have to sort of you have to sort of keep that as a cornerstone because everybody's in a pressure cooker, you know, uh at various levels at various points in their life.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Usually those pressure cookers have something really positive on the other side, and so recognizing it as a privilege and not some sort of punishment or some sort of stress is like has been helpful, sort of changing my keeping keeping the right perspective on those things.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a perfect way to end the episode.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that I always say when we wrap up is let's win.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Coming out of this discussion today, I think all of us are gonna feel like winning winning and gonna be pumped to like go run through walls.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: So on that note, let's win.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us on this episode of the turn.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: I leave incredibly inspired by Brett.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you were too.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And until next time, let's win.