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Building a Business Without Losing Sight of Your Personal Finances with Michael Rangel · Marci talks money (and life)

• Marci (00:16) Hello, I am MoneyMarci. Welcome. I am thrilled to welcome today's guest, Michael Rangel. Michael is the founder of Novo, the banking platform built for small and independent businesses. He launched Novo in 2016 after seven years in the financial industry, where he saw firsthand how underserved small business owners were by traditional banks. Under his leadership, Novo raised more than one hundred and seventy million dollars, grew to one hundred and fifty employees, and began serving more than two hundred and fifty thousand small businesses across all 50 states, and has won awards from Forbes and Inc. Today, Michael is a small business and personal finance expert focused on entrepreneurship, fintech, and the evolving opportunities created by AI. Welcome Michael. Michael Rangel (01:13) Thank you. Excited to be here. Marci (01:15) Well, I am thrilled to have you. So I guess my question is, how did you get here? Michael Rangel (01:22) I've been working from a young age. I wouldn't necessarily say like I have a very linear background, which you know most entrepreneurs might not, which I love. I love being very nonlinear in nature. I think it also just provides for better stories. Like I went to school, worked all throughout high school and college. I started working in finance when I was 19 after doing a few years in retail just to get my customer service chops, which is definitely worth it, for sure. Started working in finance, but at the bottom, right? I started working in the mailroom at a private wealth manager, started working in the back office, moving money for people with a lot of it. That kind of gave me a view of the world. Right, a specific view of the world. Fast forward, went throughout college, did all my studies, but I never really liked the whole education game too much. I was way more interested in like real world application and like learning on the job. I just found it more challenging and more exciting. And so that's always where like I spent most of my like mental energy. When I graduated, I ended up working for like a large money manager that had just moved down to Miami from the New York area. And I quickly ended up becoming the lead trade administrator at the company at a decently young age. That was another really interesting path, but this path was different because this path, it was a large money manager by asset volume. However, by employee count, this was a small business, right? By employee count, there were just about a handful of employees, like 20, say at the top. And so what does that mean? That means like every single person there is wearing a number of different hats, no matter at what seniority level, right? And so my hand was in trading, it was in compliance, it was in customer service, it was all over the place. And one of, you know, the thousands of times that I had to do it of just like reconciling my trades, downloading from the trading platform, uploading it to somewhere else, whether the accounting platform or working with my accounting team so that everything tied out, right? One of those days I was just like, I actually took a step back and I'm like, man, this is really tedious. This is very tedious. And I myself, given my background, I can literally do almost anything in Excel. And basically like with my eyes closed, right? But like, what about everybody else? And that was like the question that like launched me down the rabbit hole of my life that ended up becoming Novo. Because what I ended up finding out was like obviously small business is a huge, huge, huge economic force in this country. However, they don't have the tools, at least back then. They had nothing and nowhere near the tools that you know they have today. And yet they're still producing a large amount of economic value. And I always found that like super admirable. And so I went deeper, deeper, deeper down the rabbit hole. Okay, well, what are the biggest problems that small businesses are facing? Right. What are the biggest problems that are putting small businesses out of business? And back then, just as it probably still is now. I haven't actually updated my research on that, but I'm sure it probably is now. Back then, I was like, the leading cause of business failure is poor cash management. And it's like, okay, I understand those words, it's like a very basic thing that there should be other things or other tools that help business owners manage their cash better. Marci (05:07) Right. Michael Rangel (05:07) Those things didn't exist. Poor cash management is a super easy equation, The money that is going out of your account is more than the money that is coming into your account equals poor cash management. It's unfortunate because a lot of business owners only find out too late, right? And then that puts them in really dire straits and they have to make really hard decisions or they just close up shop and say, cool, try again another day. Historically that has been the narrative. And like that really sucks because then a lot of the small business marketing or slogans of like whatever X percent of businesses fail after year one, two, three, five, ten, et cetera, right? It's all littered with these kinds of stories instead of actually like looking under the hood. But what is actually happening? Where did we actually mess up? Where could we have helped them do the thing better? I think starting a business, being an entrepreneur is like the most admirable thing a human can do, like on this planet, like professionally. I truly believe that. And I only think that's gonna like increase over time too. All business owners all have like this story in them where it's either something where it's like they went against all the forces in their life or against all of like the advice that they got. But there's this fire burning inside of them. And there's this passion that keeps them up at night. That is just like, I need to do this thing, whatever this thing is. And I just will not be able to sleep until I do the thing. And so doing the thing usually requires that they go against all the advice, the industry, quitting their jobs, what have you, to take the path like less traveled. That path is so scary. And I'm sure different parts of your journey, you have that same experience, just like I do. Just like every other like I like to joke with other business owners. And it's like, Marci, I see you. You and I have it. We've got those war stories that both of us know on a relative basis that like we've been through the thick of it. Right. There's like this different connection that business owners have with each other. And it's that like shared pain that like we all know we've been through some stuff. Like let's celebrate it together. And so like that's why I wanted to start Novo, because I'm like, man, small businesses in and of themselves, I believe, is super admirable. Imagine if that were made easier somehow. If like doing the thing, taking the dive into the deep end, if that was somehow easier and there were more entrepreneurs in the world, I honestly believe the world would be so much better off. Marci (07:57) Yeah, you go into business to do what it is you know how to do and oftentimes that's not managing money. That's not understanding how to prepare your books or the things that will impact what you think is your cash flow. Michael Rangel (08:13) It's both like a blessing and a curse. What you just described and I should probably come up with a name for it 'cause it'd probably be catchy and marketable and stuff. Yeah, I don't know. not going to some creative name now. That that would be wild. Marci (08:25) if you come up with a name then then we'll have to trademark it and copyright it or do whatever Michael Rangel (08:30) What you just mentioned is both the blessing and the curse. Because why? I, Michael and Co. wake up tomorrow and I have this fire and I had a dream, and that dream manifested in a way that makes me want to start a new business. I'm super energetic. I want to go do that thing. I'm super passionate about widgets. I want to be the biggest widget seller that has existed where I am, right? But guess what? The more successful that I then become at selling my widgets, the further and further away from widget selling that will take me. And that is just the nature of the beast because the more successful I become, the more other things that I have to deal with, whether it be HR, you know, the things that you brought up. Marci (09:19) Right. So what is it your banking platform does differently for the small business owner? Michael Rangel (09:28) The way that we started it, I mean, this is obviously, you know, eleven years ago. And that was a very, very different world back then. I actually just had this talk with someone last night at an event because they asked the same question. And I said, Listen, like 11 years ago, the world was very different. Eleven years ago, okay, it wasn't even typical for a bank to have a mobile application for a small business bank account. Most banks did not have mobile applications for their small business bank accounts. Right? They just focus on the consumer bank accounts. Marci (10:08) Right. Michael Rangel (10:09) And then they wouldn't have mobile applications for commercial bank accounts, right? That doesn't make sense. Small business didn't really fit in either of those camps. And as you mentioned in the beginning of the show, right? A lot of the modern small business owner nowadays is largely a single person, single owner operator. And so what does that mean? That means they're way more like an individual retail persona than they are a massive corporate enterprise. Right? They have those same tendencies, they have those same desires, they want simplicity just as they have in their personal life. And so that was really what we wanted to start out with. We said the checking account, what we believed is it provides the foundation of the financial stack for any small business, no matter who you were, no matter how mature your business was, no matter how many employees you had, or what industry you were in, or how long you've been around, like no matter what, you needed a checking account to operate, period. Like everything else kind of plugs on top of that. And so we said, okay, well, that's interesting. Like that then became our thesis of like, well, then that's what we build first. And then we build other things on top of that to make that core product smarter and better. And so that's what we did. And we focused on building it on mobile devices as kind of like the home. And back then it was very different. Even back then, when we launched, right, like the majority of banks didn't even offer online digital account opening for small business accounts. That includes even like banks of America of the world. Marci (11:47) You could use your account, but you couldn't create it unless you went into the building. Michael Rangel (11:51) Correct. And what changed that? Marci (11:54) Well, COVID changed the world. Michael Rangel (11:55) COVID, because then you had all of these people on the one hand getting laid off from their jobs. Everyone's scared senseless. Now that they're laid off from their jobs, they're like, I need to figure out how to retain my livelihood, right? I'm gonna build a business, that business that I've always been wanting to build. But guess what? It's a lockdown. You can't even go outside. And yet, you want a bank account? You're gonna have to go into the branch for that. And so there's this like massive like social disconnect that they were like, wait a second, like we can't. Right. And so it wasn't until after that when the big banks like Chase, Bank of America, et cetera, actually provided online account opening for small business accounts. And so during that same period, right, we saw this massive inflection growth in like account openings because we were already kind of built for that type of demographic itself and we were just able to kind of ride the wave. It was super interesting. Since then we've built like a whole lot of other different products and services onto the core checking account, like other lending products. We launch a credit card because the whole thesis was build the foundation of the financial stack, but then let's also be intentional about offering additional products so that we're able to grow with our customers themselves. Marci (13:11) You deal predominantly with small businesses. Michael Rangel (13:15) Yep, they're all small businesses. They're only small businesses. No. Marci (13:16) They're all small businesses. Okay, you don't have individuals, you don't have... Do you have like a cut off size as as okay, you're too big for us? Michael Rangel (13:24) I mean, we wouldn't necessarily turn people away. I think like our sweet spot, right, if you will, kind of caps out around ten employees, I would say. The lion share of our portfolio are like single owner operators or maybe a few other businesses with like two to three employees, simple operations, right? But the second you start building out a more intentional finance department, let's say, or accounting department, right? Novo might not be the best place for you because you're probably gonna need some more, some more tooling. Marci (14:00) Right. I was thinking more of, okay, I come to you 'cause I'm a sole practitioner, but over time, the next thing you know, I've got a dozen employees. I might start feeling that you're a little bit smaller or or don't have all the resources that I might want for my business at that point. Michael Rangel (14:17) I think kind of for the lion's share of our demographic, and I think especially now with where the mainstream is moving, the the solepreneur category is buzzing. But it's buzzing Marci (14:30) That is true. Michael Rangel (14:32) in a very different way. It's not buzzing in a way that was like when I first started Novo and I said, This is going to be the biggest thing I can possibly make it. And just let's see how far that goes. For the solo modern solopreneur, it's like, no, this is my lifestyle business. This is my job, and this is my life. Period. So, like, yes, I do want it to grow so that I'm able to increase my net worth and yada yada yada. But like, am I shooting for dozens of employees? Meh. Marci (15:11) Okay. Okay. So when you went to college is your degree in something financial? Michael Rangel (15:18) My degree is in finance, finance and entrepreneurship. Marci (15:21) And did you grow up in a family of entrepreneurs? Michael Rangel (15:25) No, but I guess you can say that they were kind of like tangential in nature. By that I mean they were immigrants. Marci (15:32) Okay. Michael Rangel (15:33) So they came to this country with nothing and then had to have the entrepreneurial mindset in order to obviously build something of that. Marci (15:41) And did you talk about money growing up? Was that conversations you had about what they were building? Michael Rangel (15:47) Not really. Like money was never like a conversation that was had at the dinner table, right? My parents hustled and worked super, super hard so that they were able to provide for their family. it's just myself and my brother. And, I would never say money was like a central topic of discussion per se, because we just saw more secondhand of like the sacrifices that they would make Marci (16:20) Right, the work ethic. Michael Rangel (16:22) exactly to provide for the family. And like it was never like a thing that we had questions about ever. So that was very deeply ingrained in me from a young age too. And I think that's where I get a lot of kind of like my grind and work ethic as well. Marci (16:40) and then you built your business from the ground up. What kind of financial lessons did you learn? What kind of things were you like, Wow, I'm so glad I knew this or I wish I'd have learned that sooner? Michael Rangel (16:52) There are a lot of those. but I think the main one that comes to mind for me, and so this comes from a VC backed founder. Marci (17:08) Let me interrupt. Could you tell our audience what a VC is? Michael Rangel (17:12) Let's take a few steps back. as I mentioned before, right? So like I started this startup with the anticipation of this was not going to be a lifestyle business. This was going to be a high growth business. And in order to be a high growth business, you need to raise funds in order to invest in building out a team and a product and all of the things in order to extend the product to customers, and the customers end up, you know, contributing revenue, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so typically how it works is fundraising happens in a few different phases. The initial story that happened for us is like in the very early days, I actually ended up betting my own personal MBA fund and betting it on building a company instead. I took that savings away from actually pursuing the credential and I said, you know what? Let's just see how it plays out. The way I kind of framed it was hopefully by the time this money goes to zero I will have built something with my team. And from that thing, whatever we've built, we will be able to raise more money from other additional outside investors. Then typically after like the bootstrapping phase, which took right, like I think it was two years before we raised like outside money, friends and family. We did a friends and family round. But we didn't pay ourselves, right? Like both myself and my co-founder Tyler, we didn't pay ourselves a single dollar. We were just living on our savings and trying to keep expenses down. We were sleeping in garages, sleeping on people's couches, like that whole Silicon Valley story is very real. We weren't paying ourselves, but we were paying our team overseas in India, and we were spending a bunch of time traveling back and forth to India to spend time with them actually building out the product. And then we we built kind of like a foundational product checked a few boxes, but it wasn't there yet. And so we needed to build more. That building more required more money, we needed to hire some more specialized people, we needed to like start building out different parts of the business that we had not previously done. In order to get that additional money, that's when we opened up the friends and family round. We raised a few hundred thousand dollars there from friends and family, from people close to my network, people that I've met, second degree connections. And then after that, right, that's when the institutional rounds of fundraising started And then we raised our seed round. Raising our seed round, that's when I first started talking to venture capitalists. That is the VC, the VC investor is a venture capitalist. These are the institutions that put big dollars into the innovative products of tomorrow in hopes that they will obviously scale, grow, and exit at one point, whether that exit is an IPO or you know, a potential acquisition. or something else that is like the bet. And so we've done a lot of that VC fundraising. And so one of my learnings to come kind of full circle because you asked me what were some of my financial learnings, this is a big backstory to get there. But one of my financial learnings is from that the rap song - Mo Money Mo Problems. Marci (20:49) yeah. Michael Rangel (20:50) This was my first rodeo. This is my first time being a startup founder, CEO, fundraising. All of these things were the first. And so, like the whole VC game and the whole high growth startup game is a pretty wild thing because like you just have to figure it all out in real time and you're doing all of these firsts, while you're getting all of this money or gaining all of this new attention, It expands your view of the universe and then more potential problem sets enter. And so that's why I said mo money, mo problem, because like the more money you raise, the more surface area for problems that you end up having to deal with, whether that's internal or external. Internal, kind of like created a lot of it, just managing people and all of that stuff, but external too. And so I would say that is definitely one of my biggest lessons. Marci (21:50) Do you think entrepreneurs when they come to you the financial literacy, are they coming in prepared for the steps they're gonna take? Is that something that a service you provide or an awareness? I know you do personal finance and small business work, but when they come to Novo, do you know their status? Do they ask the questions they need to ask? Michael Rangel (22:10) Our product is a checking account, just like most other checking account vehicles that are made available. The issue that's really hard, and yes, we do try to provide content. We do provide answers to millions of the different kind of like one on one questions and stuff. The issue is that it's really hard because it's all based on the eye of the beholder. Or the small business owner themselves. And each small business owner, is on their own individualized journey. They know what they know and they don't know what they don't know. Each one is wildly different than the next one. And so there isn't like a single playbook in order to kind of like coach everyone into the same way or on the same journey. We try to do it as best as we can. We try providing content to kind of like help people look around the corners based on the larger portfolio and stuff like that, or some of the good habits to do with your money. We've spent a lot of time, even me personally, like one of my favorite things to do is spending time having conversations with customers themselves. Usually that would take like a different route from just talking about financials. I typically just like speaking to business owners to learn about them and their stories and why they started the thing, how they got the courage to go against their whole world to, dive into the deep end. Right. I love hearing those stories because it's like their hero's journey, you know? Every small business owner is on like their own hero's journey. And so like giving them the spotlight, I thought was always like a really cool thing just to be able to live through that story. And so there were a bunch of learnings that even I took from those stories that we incorporated into the Novo product itself as well throughout the years, which is also really, really cool. Marci (23:56) How do you think that technology and AI are changing the way we manage money or even we learn about money? Michael Rangel (24:04) I think it's only going to be positive because I think one of the issues with money, and this is whether you're an individual or business owner, the money topic itself is typically a very sensitive topic. And it ties to people's insecurities, It might remind them of their deficiencies, where they made mistakes. Like there are a million different things, that I would never be able to pinpoint all of them. But because of, and this is also why to your previous question, right? Like why we couldn't necessarily give everyone all the answers. Cause like each person has a different problem with a different context, that always created an issue. But now I think as it relates to AI, though, I think that that almost makes it more approachable to have those conversations. It's not so intimidating of a topic for you as an individual or a business owner to have a conversation with an AI about your financial picture, about where you might have done better, right? Or hey, are there any recommendations that you have based on whatever the data set is that you have access to? I think that that is really interesting because people will be more open or can be more open in that world instead of leading with their kind of like defenses higher, right? To kind of shield themselves from the insecurities. I think it's more approachable to kind of share some of those things when they know that they might not be judged as a result of it. Marci (25:42) I've done a little bit of playing around with AI and it's certainly a lot different than talking to a person. Michael Rangel (25:49) For sure. And the other interesting thing is that like the AI over time is also able to personalize itself to you or to the end customer, which a customer service rep can't they always tried to, but like it's much harder. In order for that customer service rep to digest all of the context about an account and the transactions and all of this stuff, it's way harder for that to be done manually than it is, for a conversation with an AI to literally do all of your number crunching over the last three year period of all of your ins and outs into your account, and then based on that picture, then be able to answer your question more directly and more prescriptively. Like that is actually really realistic. So a much more clear, hopefully, concise and digestible response can be shared with that, business owner. And that could be way more effective than something else. And so like that is really exciting. Marci (26:50) That is true. How do you balance building a business with building personal financial security? Because obviously as a younger man you basically said, Okay, I'm taking all my savings and I'm putting it into the business so there wasn't a balance at that point in time. Things we can do younger that maybe we don't do when we're a little bit older, or without considering things. How do you balance those? Michael Rangel (27:14) I don't know if I would be the best person to speak about balance with, but that's just kind of like the way I've lived my life in general. I've always kind of taken the perspective of there are phases. Some phases are going to be very unbalanced, like the early days of Novo. Honest, not even the early days of Nova, just like all of the days of Nova were like super unbalanced. I put everything into the business, literally all of my time, all of my energy. But that's also the case for a lot of entrepreneurs. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that path for most, because it will consume you and spit you out, just like it did to me. But now that I'm coming back, I just came back after a year sabbatical. So there you go, there you have a little bit of balance there. Well, actually not balance, right? It's the opposite of balance. It's like I was very unbalanced for 10 years and then I took a year off with my family to then kind of like rebalance myself. I think that might be the better way to put it. And during that time I was able to just to reflect on what is important? What do I want my life to look like? Marci (28:29) As an entrepreneur, it's hard sometimes to be balanced and you know if you're building a business, especially if if it's a business that needs capital to be built, that you're going to be taking those financial risks. You can't stand with your foot on both shores. Michael Rangel (28:44) One hundred percent. Marci (28:46) so that said, the question I'm asking all my guests this season is what is wealth to you? Michael Rangel (28:51) I feel like that question is really great and it tells you a lot about a person, but it's also changing so much in real time nowadays. I'm sure like every generation could probably say that. But as it relates to me specifically, I actually had this conversation with my parents not too long ago. Wealth to me is just freedom. Wealth to me is I can choose what I want to do. I can choose where to spend my time. I can choose who to spend that time with. And so that has been like my biggest unlock and definitely came through like as I took my sabbatical. Before my sabbatical, I probably would have answered that in a weird way that I'm not even sure how I would have answered that. But now with like the time and space, wealth is freedom and time. I checked out your website, right? Like the fact that you were able to do your adventure through all fifty states, like true, true. Contiguous, contiguous, Marci (29:53) Forty eight. Forty eight. Michael Rangel (29:59) Very cool. But like that I think is amazing. Marci (30:03) it was done over the course of time. We didn't do it all at once. We didn't say, Okay, fifty states in fifty days. We just every summer or every winter break would take a week, a couple of weeks and get in the car and drive. So it was yeah, for me I've always been about finding the balance. Michael Rangel (30:22) Mm. Marci (30:22) My father was an entrepreneur, so I saw you know, a sole practitioner CPA. We didn't call it entrepreneurs back then. and so I saw the times he had to balance, okay, well, for this next period of time I'm gonna work a thousand hours a week and now I get to take this time. So the balance wasn't necessarily on a daily or weekly basis, but in the course of the year and I knew that was going to be important to me. Michael Rangel (30:49) There you go. The way that you just framed it there almost helps me rationalize my time scale. However, my time scale is even more exaggerated. Mine was like 10 years on, one year off. And that's how I see the last eleven years as balance. yeah. No, I totally hear that. Marci (31:11) Well, are you still married to the same person? Michael Rangel (31:14) Yes. Marci (31:14) And they still like you most of the time? Michael Rangel (31:17) Most of the time. Marci (31:18) And you can identify your kids if you walk by them somewhere you didn't expect to see them. Michael Rangel (31:23) I mean that's exactly why we ended up taking the sabbatical. My daughter is turning two in two weeks. So having her out there as we adventured was like one of the coolest experiences of my life because she was accomplishing milestone. She started crawling. She took her first, you know, climbed a f her first staircase and had no fear, right? Started walking out of nowhere. Like it was just incredible. Marci (31:48) It's amazing and it's a great time for you to be able to really spend that time. Do you think that there's something entrepreneurs tend to get wrong about their personal finances when they're building their business, when they're focused on their business? Michael Rangel (32:04) I speak for myself when I say this, obviously. Maybe there are a many cohorts of small businesses out there that I have not communicated with, but when I say this, I speak for myself more than anything. Like entrepreneurs mess up all the time. Probably more than most people, to be honest, whether you know, we'd like to admit it or not. I think one of the best characteristics of a successful entrepreneur is that they mess up but they get up and they keep going, right? And they learn from whatever the mess up was and they get smarter the next time. As it relates to like just general themes, I think the biggest thing that I've seen from all of my conversations with people is that Entrepreneurship, kind of like how you alluded to with your dad, right? Like entrepreneurship more recently, probably in the last like call it two decades, right, has largely been romanticized by the media, movies, whatever you want to call it, right? Like obviously we have super successful tech companies now kind of like controlling every aspect of our lives, right? So you're able like portray those founders and CEOs as characters of themselves. But the reason why I'm bringing that up is because it's been romanticized as this ultra luxurious romantic lifestyle that can get you anything and everything. It doesn't speak to the downsides of entrepreneurship though. And like the downsides are what usually most people don't take into consideration. They usually skip over those parts. And so usually when I speak to whether it's entrepreneurs or just people like before they actually take the plunge and they're still wondering whether they should or not. I actually remember like a specific conversation I had with someone that he told me his business idea and I looked at him and I just said, Can I ask you a question? And he goes, Yeah. I'm like, Okay, why are you doing this? That's it. Just why are you doing this? He was quiet for like a few minutes. He had no idea what to respond. He was super educated. I think he was getting like his second master's or something like that from an Ivy League school. Very, very, very smart person. And then I asked him, why are you doing this? Like, cool, the this you this pitch you gave me, interesting. Cool. Why are you doing it? His first answer was, well, I want to make money. I want to get rich. And I said, please don't take this the wrong way. But if that's the reason you want to do this, please do not become an entrepreneur. You're gonna save yourself a lot of pain. And if you just go the corporate ladder based on your background, you're gonna make a lot of money, anyways. If your sole goal in entrepreneurship is to do it for the money, you're gonna give up when it gets hard. And it always gets hard. And like getting a job and getting paid, obviously there are trade offs to be weighed, which is probably outside of the scope of this conversation. But like you can make money easier than entrepreneurship. That story really stuck with me from back then. And so I think that's like a big thing that a lot of people misunderstand of like, yeah, I'm just gonna pursue an idea and I'm gonna build it overnight and then I'm gonna be a millionaire. It's like maybe you will, but like the amount of grit and persistence required to be a business owner, cannot go understated. Ask any business owner, right? And I think that would be like my biggest word of caution or piece of advice to share with people, considering both kind of like jumping in, but then also one of my biggest learnings from my thousands of conversations at this point. Marci (36:02) That's really informative and something people don't think about. Because yeah, if you're becoming an entrepreneur you are going to be living and breathing and eating and sleeping what you're doing. If you're not passionate about it, if it's only the money. Michael Rangel (36:15) Yeah. Like you're gonna need to do it for way longer than what you have forecasted in the business plan. It's gonna be way more expensive to get there than you forecasted. You as the entrepreneur, you need to be comfortable with a high failure rate, because you're gonna make your own individual failures along the way and like whatever you're doing trying new things, learning new tools, whatever it may be. You have to, you know, fall down, get back up, fall down, get back up. And you're gonna have to do that a lot of times. And no one's gonna give you the playbook on exactly what to do. and that takes a specific kind of person to do that. Marci (36:57) It really does. Well, Michael, do you have anything else you'd like to mention that maybe we haven't covered? Michael Rangel (37:03) Kind of ties with what I was just mentioning, right? I think now is the most exciting time in history by far for the entrepreneur. For the right entrepreneur, For the person crazy enough to take the dive, for the person who's willing to put up with the uncertainty. Willing to put up with the financial pressures, the social pressures, the, you know, feeling like a beginner making all those mistakes. For that person, like this is the best time to do it. I think the next wave of entrepreneurship and just solopreneurship in general, is gonna be a force to be reckoned with the evolution of AI, right? Like it is incredible, even just what I'm able to do myself. And I'm a non-technical guy. The stuff that I'm able to do myself as a testament of like what others can do, it is unbelievable what can be done. and what is kind of at the ends of each of our own fingertips. And so I think now is just the most exciting time to be alive for people at the fork in the road of like, hey, should I dabble in the entrepreneurship game? Should I keep my job? Like for the people with that itch, that itch will never be satisfied. Right. It's just a matter of getting over the risk and becoming comfortable with that risk, but then you know, taking the dive. I think now is just the best time and I think you're gonna see a lot of really cool success stories in the weeks, months, and years to come, because I think the modern day entrepreneur is just gonna take a totally different shape. Marci (38:39) Okay, cool. Michael, thank you so much for being my guest today. We appreciate you taking the time to join us here. Michael Rangel (38:47) Of course. Thank you so much, Marci. This is really fun. Marci (38:50) And to my listeners, I will be sharing a link to Michael and Novo's information in the show notes. Please check it out. There's a lot of interesting information. And don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and stay tuned. I'll see you next time. This has been MoneyMarci on Marci Talks Money (and Life). You got this.