Latest / The Hannah Hammond Show / The Elevator Pitch That Saved His Company—Literally - Tyler Hall's Playbook

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The Elevator Pitch That Saved His Company—Literally - Tyler Hall's Playbook · The Hannah Hammond Show

0:00
But I also think the word fulfillment is intentionally
0:02
meant to be vague because I think if you ask 10 people what
0:06
their definition of fulfillment is, you'll get 10 different
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answers, you know? So for me, the way that I think
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about it is this. I think about our hearts, OK?
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And if our heart is fully filled, then we are fulfilled.
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Now what? What does the heart represent?
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I want you to take your heart. I want you to carve it up into a
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pie chart. Welcome to the show.
0:27
Thank you so much for being here, Tyler.
0:29
And you're actually the owner of this studio, so it's been great
0:32
to get to know you and I'm excited to hear your journey.
0:35
Thank you for having me on. It's been fun to watch you start
0:39
this thing and grow this thing and it's your future in this is
0:45
very bright, as I've told you from the day I met you so.
0:48
Thanks, Tyler. I wish.
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I wish I was good at an interviewer as you are.
0:52
You make people cry, like on the opening sentence.
0:55
So I'm not there yet, but anyway.
0:58
But yeah, So for those of you who don't know Tyler Hall, the
1:01
Tyler Hall, the man, the myth, the legend, he's just such an
1:05
amazing human. He's so kind and has such a big
1:08
heart and really exuberates empathy and love and compassion
1:13
just in just in your energy and your voice.
1:15
And you're such an accomplished entrepreneur.
1:17
I, I didn't know how successful you were because you don't talk
1:21
about it. You're just nice.
1:22
You're just a nice guy. And but you've, you know,
1:25
Tyler's built and sold multiple companies in the technology
1:29
space and was an executive for a large technology company that
1:33
was bought or or rather sold for a very large sum of money.
1:38
And then he went to found his own company called Drivably and
1:42
raised venture capital for that and sold that company just a few
1:46
years later. It it was a yeah, I'll let you
1:51
talk about it. But ultimately you're amazing.
1:53
Now you sit on the board of directors for multiple different
1:57
other tech companies. You run this media and podcast
2:00
studio and you're the host of the Roller Coaster Podcast,
2:03
which talks about the roller coaster of entrepreneurship and
2:06
of life and how we overcome all of the the highs and the lows.
2:11
So I'm super honored to have you.
2:13
Thank you. Yeah, excited to dig in.
2:15
Yeah. So obviously today you're very
2:19
successful. I'm somebody that wants to
2:21
build, scale, sell a large company.
2:24
So I'm selfishly excited to learn how you did that.
2:27
And I'd like to kind of go back to the beginning on your origin
2:30
story and some of those that journey that you know, LED you
2:34
on the path to entrepreneurship and then getting into
2:37
technology. You don't seem like a technology
2:39
tech person to me. And yeah, what what's that story
2:43
of what got you here today? Yeah, it's a good question.
2:46
So I think, you know, not to sidetrack the actual question
2:54
that you're asking, but, you know, I think one of the one of
2:56
the areas that I spent a lot of time on now that I care deeply
2:59
about is identity, right? So like who, who is this person
3:04
actually, right. So before I tell you about what
3:07
I've done or what I did or what I'm doing, you know, I would
3:13
describe myself as somebody who's a child of God, describe
3:16
myself as a husband and a father to four children, these these
3:22
little minions or everything to me.
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You know, I, I think about those things, you know, being a child
3:30
of God and a relationship with my family more than anything
3:34
professionally at this stage of my career.
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But it hasn't always been that way.
3:38
And so I'm excited to share some of the evolution that I've been
3:41
through where, you know, entrepreneurship and chasing the
3:44
next coin was really how I spent majority of my adult life up
3:48
until just a few years ago. And there was a experience that
3:52
my family went through that was the catalyst for me, you know,
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really changing a lot like not just my behaviors, but
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physiologically, I'm different now today than I was before.
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So excited to dig into that more with you and, and really help
4:08
you and the audience understand at my core who I am and what I
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care about above and beyond the name and the recognition and,
4:17
and the accolades. You know, my entrepreneur
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journey is I was one of those kids that from a super young age
4:24
was pretty fascinated by money, right?
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And so I would do pretty much whatever it took to make a few
4:31
bucks. And that when I was young was
4:33
lemonade stands and it was going to the grocery store and buying
4:37
candy and selling it to my friends at school, and it was
4:40
trading baseball cards and Pokémon cards when those came
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out and things like that. And so I think I've always just
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been hardwired as a entrepreneur, somebody that
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loved the exchange of value and being able to generate income
4:54
and work hard to make your money.
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And it was also raised by parents specific, specifically a
5:00
father who was pretty unwilling to do the handout thing, right?
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So he, while he was a successful man himself, you know, he was
5:10
pretty against like giving us handouts, right?
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So he always taught us the value of money and the value of hard
5:17
work and things like that. So that led to me, you know,
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spending the majority of my 20s went Stanford dropped out, which
5:27
was really controversial at the time because it's a institution
5:30
that's not particularly easy to get into.
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So I'm a junior, I drop out. I'm married at this point, by
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the way, got married at 21 to my high school sweetheart.
5:40
And, you know, I just knew that my ability as a person was going
5:48
to far surpass any piece of paper that was going to allow me
5:53
to do what I wanted to do in my career, right?
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So I think I had a pretty good understanding of my ability and
5:59
capabilities. And because I knew that, I said,
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you know, I think I'm going to be OK without wasting the next
6:07
few years of my life finishing school.
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So dropped out, joined the startup first company, you know,
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22 years old at this time was called Domo, was an early
6:16
employee there. We went on to raise $900 million
6:19
of venture capital, which was actually the highest funded SAS
6:23
company in history at that time. So this was 2010 thousand 11 and
6:30
that was a wild ride. When you have a billion dollars
6:32
on the balance sheet you do you can almost do whatever you want,
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right. So this was one of those
6:38
cultures early on in the tech culture, days of breakfast,
6:43
lunch and dinner were catered and huge parties and events all
6:46
the time and overspending on marketing and billboards and
6:50
everything you could to just create a name for yourself.
6:53
And that company went on to go public a few years later.
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Shortly after that, I joined another startup called Higher
7:03
View, which was AI for video interviewing before, you know,
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AI and facial recognition was really on the map.
7:12
And we have raised about 70 or 80 million of venture capital of
7:15
that company was a 2425 year old exec at this time, you know, had
7:20
a big role. And we grew that business to
7:22
about 65 million of revenue. And that one was acquired for
7:26
over a half a billion by a private equity group called The
7:28
Carlyle Group. And so, you know, in my 20s, I
7:32
just, I, I had these opportunities to go join two
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companies that happened to both be these rocket ships.
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And so I got to learn really, you know, got my master's and
7:42
PhD learning inside of companies versus going to traditional
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education route. And then at 27, I left higher
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view and I founded drivably. And that's a, you know, it's a
7:56
whole other roller coaster journey of, of entrepreneurship
8:01
when you go start your first one.
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So. And how did you get into tech?
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Was that inspired by your parents or did you just have an
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interest in it? Yeah, you know, I think I like
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in high school I took coding classes and was, you know, these
8:14
were some of the first online coding courses that you could
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take back in like 2006, 2007 and really just loved computer
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software. I studied on technology
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entrepreneurship and management, which TM program is what
8:28
Stanford calls it. And really just.
8:32
Yeah, I, I always loved it. You know, I, I was a kid that
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had the computer, one of the first kind of computers that you
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could play video games on when I was young was really into video
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games. So anything technology for me,
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while I was like on the surface, like a jock and an athlete and
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these sort of things, like deep down I'm a nerd.
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And you know, it was probably mostly inspired.
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The career path was probably mostly inspired by my older
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brother who saw this boom happening in Utah, which is now
9:03
they call the Silicon Slopes, right?
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Which is, you know, I think potentially the second biggest
9:11
now tech ecosystem outside of San Francisco is, is now in
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Utah. And I got to be a part of that
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early on. And so he introduced me to his
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friend Josh James, who founded Shadow.
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Josh founded Omniture that was acquired for 1.8 billion by
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Adobe, the biggest acquisition in Utah history.
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He went on to found Domo, so I met with Josh when we were new
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and on the spot. He offered me a job, so yeah.
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And is that what led to you dropping out of Stanford or did
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you already have that opportunity lined up?
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Yeah. So I I had that opportunity
9:42
lined up and it was, you know, it became pretty evident to me
9:46
that like a lot of the smartest people that I knew and that I
9:50
aspire to become like were not educated the traditional way,
9:56
right. And so, you know, you can look
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at a list of like the top sort of 100 founders by net worth,
10:03
and most of them don't have a traditional education
10:05
background. Many of them don't even have a
10:06
bachelor's degree, right. And so I think that was telling
10:09
to me. I also just, you know, felt like
10:12
at the rate at which technology was advancing, knowing that I
10:15
wanted to spend my career in tech, the advancement of
10:18
technology, even at that time and it's it's way different now
10:22
was so fast that curriculum cannot keep up, right?
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So it's like the things I was learning were already outdated.
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And so the best way to learn for me was through mentorship with
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really smart people was through my own research online was
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through things like YouTube, right?
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It's like every single day something new comes out,
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specifically with this AI revolution that's happening.
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And so I just realized that the the learning was always going to
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be dated and at that point is became a waste of time.
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So. That's awesome.
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And were you, were your parents very heavy on school and
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education, traditional education, growing up, or were
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you just an overachiever? Yes, I think they were.
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I mean, they both had their bachelor's degrees.
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I think my dad actually went on to do a, to do a master's as
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well. And they were, but they were
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also parents that I probably didn't realize it at the time,
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but that were just incredibly supportive.
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And so they were more like, and I think they also understood
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like I did my own capabilities. And so they were super
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supportive of like, yeah, we we know you're going to be
11:32
successful. So what, whatever you want to go
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and pursue, that's all good. I think my wife's parents
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candidly, were much more traditional in that sense.
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And so it was pretty shocking to them at that stage of my life to
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not pursue education, more traditional education.
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So the the battle I had to fight was more on proving to them that
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their daughter was going to be OK married to a college dropout,
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right? Yeah.
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And now, now they're, you know, now they're good.
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So I'm sure, yeah. And so are you still married to
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the same person, your high school sweetheart?
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That's amazing. Or kids later and 13 years of
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marriage. So I'll, I will want to dive
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into the relationship thing next because that's pretty incredible
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that you guys are high school sweethearts and still together.
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I can't seem to make it past 18 months in any of my
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relationships. But anyway, so when you exited,
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what was that transition into true entrepreneurship?
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I guess it sounds like, you know, as an executive, these
12:36
companies, you're, what do they call that when you're an
12:38
entrepreneur within a company? But then you left and you, you
12:41
know, the startup world is a whole different thing when
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you're just doing it on your own.
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So what was that transition for you?
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Was it as easy as you thought it would be?
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And, and what was your what do you believe was your key to
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success in starting a company from scratch and then having a
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successful exit in 3 1/2 years? Oh, yeah, it, I mean, it was the
13:03
hardest, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life for sure
13:05
was founding a tech startup. You know, outside looking in, it
13:13
looks pretty sexy, you know, because you're, if you're lucky
13:18
enough, if you're part of the 1%, you raise a bunch of money,
13:22
you know, you're spending a lot of time with venture
13:24
capitalists, which outside looking in as a sexy thing.
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You know, you're, you're, you have the ability to create
13:33
something from scratch that the world finds valuable.
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That's sexy. You've got autonomy, you've got
13:39
freedom. You know, you're like the, the
13:42
face of an organization, right? So all those things look sexy,
13:47
but they're not like most of these things are really not
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glamorous, right? Like behind, behind closed
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doors. And you know, I had to learn
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that pretty quickly. Where went out raised a couple
14:00
1,000,000 bucks pre product, pre revenue.
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This is like a precede round is what they call it in in the tech
14:06
ecosphere and tried to build the first version of the platform
14:11
and nine months later we'd burned through all of our cash
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and we had literally nothing to show for it.
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And so I had to I had a decision to make.
14:19
It was either shut the company down and go by this just isn't
14:23
me. I guess I can't hack it or it
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was go convince my investors to double down on me and convince
14:30
them that I'd learned some incredibly valuable lessons that
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I wouldn't repeat. Right.
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And fortunate enough, they did that and the same existing
14:39
investors put more money into the company.
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We started to figure some things out.
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And then and by the way, Hannah, like some of the things that
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happened in the first year, which I have realized since our
14:54
normal, but when you're in it, you're like I, I must be the
14:57
only person in the world that's going through this.
15:00
Like what? Like your best friend who's one
15:05
of your early team members who takes a company car with your
15:12
assistant out, drinks, who are both married and gets drunk and
15:18
proceeds to have sex with her in his truck.
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Then proceeds to get pulled over and arrested for a DUI and put
15:25
in jail with the company truck with open alcohol in the car and
15:30
lies to you about the entire situation.
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And you have to find out all the details in a really difficult
15:35
way and then have a conversation with them and move them out and
15:39
get security involved in the whole deal, right.
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So by the way, we had like four or five of those huge bombs that
15:48
that could cripple a business happen in our first year.
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And so for most people who ask me like, you know, hey, I'm an
15:56
aspiring entrepreneur, I want to start a company.
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My typical advice is don't do it like it's a bad idea
16:06
specifically in tech. Like, you know, people get
16:10
pretty mesmerized by tech because the valuations are so
16:13
insane, right? So if you go build like a $10
16:15
million a year company in tech, it's not uncommon that that
16:19
thing is worth 100 million plus top line revenue, right?
16:23
So like top line, top line revenue multiples or 10X in many
16:28
cases in tech. And so that's, that's sexy.
16:32
But gosh, are the odds against you, right?
16:35
Like the majority of companies that ever even raise venture
16:38
capital is like 3%. And then of the 3% that are
16:42
left, we have 100 companies to start, 3% of them get funded.
16:46
Out of those three companies, it's like 10% of those will get
16:51
to over 1,000,000 of ARR. And then out of those ones that
16:54
are left, it's like 10% of those will get to 10 million of error.
16:57
So it's like a one 100th of 1% of tech companies ever get to 10
17:02
million of ARR, which is a really important milestone right
17:05
in, in sort of our space. And for those of who don't know
17:09
what arr is. Annual recurring revenue.
17:12
Yeah. So it's like, it doesn't make
17:15
sense, right. It's like, first what you're
17:18
signing up for is. And.
17:20
And I would actually do this when I interviewed people that
17:23
wanted to join the company. Yeah, they'd go through a series
17:26
of interviews and then they'd get to me and I'd be like the
17:28
final gatekeeper and they'd come in and they'd be all excited.
17:32
Probably is amazing and the culture and I've heard so many
17:35
good things about you and the team and Porsche is an investor
17:39
and all this stuff. And by the time they got to me,
17:42
my role was to convince them not to join the company.
17:47
So be like, hey, I also hear you're amazing.
17:49
That's why we're sitting here together, right.
17:53
And I it would go something like this.
17:54
I'd be like, so Hannah, you want to join the company?
17:56
Yeah, great. Love your enthusiasm.
17:58
Do you have a you have friends today?
18:02
Like yeah, why would you like to spend time with them?
18:05
Yeah, I love it. You know, like, what are you
18:08
doing here? You know, I'm like, OK, do you,
18:10
what do you do on the weekends? Like, what do you do on Saturday
18:12
and Sunday for fun? Be like, oh, I'd love to go to
18:14
the lake. And I love to exercise and I
18:16
love to, you know, they'd name their list of things.
18:18
Say goodbye, Mother. And I'd be like, OK, cool.
18:21
Like do you, how's your financial situation?
18:24
Like are you pretty good right now?
18:25
Like you have money coming in every month, you know, like, is
18:28
it good? Yeah, yeah, it's good.
18:29
Like I make 150 grand a year. OK, great.
18:32
Do you, do you have quite a bit of freedom financially right
18:35
now? OK, cool.
18:36
What about your physical health? Like seem to take care of
18:39
yourself? Like, do you like to exercise,
18:40
go to the gym, you know, do you eat well?
18:42
The whole deal? Yeah.
18:44
What time do you get off work every day?
18:45
Oh, like 4 or 5:00 PM. OK, cool.
18:48
So I'd ask him all these questions about their life and
18:50
then I'd be like, are you prepared for your marriage or
18:54
relationship to potentially go to shit?
18:57
You prepared to never see your friends and not have a life like
19:00
you prepared for your physical and mental health to be like in
19:03
shambles. You know, and I'd sort of go
19:05
through the list of like what it's really like doing a
19:08
startup. And if there was any like body
19:13
language telling me like, oh, that one hurt, you know, then
19:16
I'd be like, you probably shouldn't do this.
19:17
Like this is going to be really hard.
19:20
But if you know, the few that were like, I get it.
19:24
IA 100% know what I'm signing up for and I'm here for it and I
19:27
want to do it. Those were the ones that I'd be
19:29
like, yeah, you probably make sense.
19:31
Like let's do this, you know. So again, it's it's a hardcore
19:36
example, but really the the idea there was doing a startup is is
19:43
not for everybody. In fact, I don't know what the
19:46
percentage, but 99% of people should never try to go do that
19:51
because it's there is a price that you pay that if you're not
19:57
careful can be catastrophic to your life and I would say
20:01
specifically in your health and in your relationships.
20:04
So. I agree.
20:06
And I know I'm actually listening to Cody Sanchez's book
20:08
right now, Main Street Millionaire, about acquiring
20:11
companies instead of building them.
20:14
And, you know, it's like, why not buy something that's already
20:17
been built? And there's so many baby boomers
20:19
that are retiring and they don't even know how to sell a company
20:22
and they don't think it's sellable and they're they're too
20:24
busy to even think about it. But if you know, most of them
20:27
had the right offer in terms, they'd probably sell in a lot of
20:30
times for very little money down and where they can keep their
20:33
cash flow. So it's interesting because I'm,
20:35
I'm a founder, you know, I, I've just been scrappy and
20:38
resourceful and I never had any money to buy a company or
20:41
resources to even know how to do that.
20:44
And so that's the first, this is the first time in my life I'm
20:46
like, Oh, I actually could buy a company.
20:50
Like should I go build this thing from scratch again,
20:52
because that's all I know. Or does it make more sense to
20:55
buy a small company and then scale it and you already have a
20:58
reputation, already have systems, already have staff,
21:00
already have all that. So it's a definitely a difficult
21:04
decision to make because you could also get really screwed
21:07
when you buy a company and, you know, lose it all.
21:11
But I guess it might be a little bit bigger of a loss, but it'll
21:16
happen faster most likely than, you know, working years to get
21:20
your company off the ground. I mean, would my debt fund that
21:23
I'm scaling, you know, building and scaling right now I'm a year
21:26
in and a couple 100,000 just an attorney fees for PPM and SEC
21:31
crap and I haven't even been able to launch.
21:34
I'm still waiting on licensing and I'm still waiting on all
21:36
these things and you know, I can still do loans in certain States
21:39
and all that stuff, but I haven't been able to launch it
21:42
on the level that my vision is to launch it.
21:44
So it's, it's a lot. And you could go and just buy
21:48
something that's already existing and could have saved
21:51
all that time and headache. So, so you people believe in you
22:00
enough to double down on their investment.
22:02
Was this one investor? Was this multiple small
22:04
investors? How many people were you dealing
22:06
with? Yeah.
22:08
So I had a friend write the initial check into the company
22:12
and after that high net worth came in.
22:17
It was all institutional capital.
22:19
So VCs, venture capitalists and there's like a high
22:23
concentration of venture capital in San Francisco on Sand Hill
22:26
Road, right. So San Francisco, Silicon Valley
22:29
is where the majority of these funds are.
22:34
So I went out and pitched 75 investors before I got my first.
22:40
Yes. And that's also like, you know,
22:44
that's part of the game. That's really difficult, right?
22:47
Like, have you ever, you know, think of like, people listening?
22:53
You think of like, a boy or a girl that you were interested in
22:56
and you pursued them and like, you had good, you know,
23:00
camaraderie and chemistry. Went on a first date, you like
23:02
each other and you're like, yeah, you want to go on another
23:05
date. And they're like, no.
23:07
And I'm like, damn, I'm like that, that hurts.
23:10
And then you do a second person and they're like, no, you do a
23:15
third and they're like no, right.
23:18
Like after like a few, you're just like, OK, I'm next person.
23:21
I'm not for this dating thing. Like I like at some point you're
23:24
just like, yeah, I'm never going to go on a date again because
23:28
nobody wants to talk to me after the first day.
23:30
Right? That's how it is like pitching
23:32
BC's on backing your company, right?
23:35
Like you sit down with them, you do your spiel.
23:38
The first like 10 or 15 are just horrible.
23:40
And so you're just kind of refining your pitch, right.
23:44
Then eventually you get really good at doing this pitch where
23:46
like with your arms tied behind your back and your eyes closed,
23:49
like you can do this pitch in your sleep sort of thing.
23:53
And then it's just no, no, no, no, 75 times.
23:59
And then all the sudden one of them goes, yeah, yeah, that does
24:05
make sense. And yeah, we're going to write a
24:07
check. And by the way, we're going to
24:08
do it fast because we don't want anybody else to get in here.
24:11
And we're going to wire the funds tomorrow.
24:14
And you just go. And by the way, when I got that,
24:16
yes. So it's three months into
24:18
fundraising, several trips back and forth from San Francisco.
24:22
I mean, you do these all day where you're you're bouncing
24:24
around downtown San Francisco between VCs.
24:28
You're doing all these meetings like they make it makes you
24:30
physically sick doing these trips because you're just like
24:33
you have to be on the whole time.
24:34
You're talking the whole time. OK, so several of those trips
24:39
and I have $40,000 in the bank and my payroll is 50 grand and
24:45
I'm, I'm days away from being out of money and it's my last
24:50
like book a flight, go to San Francisco.
24:52
I've got like 7 or 8 meetings and I sit down in front of this
24:56
VC who's like a dream VC, Streamlined Capital, Ulos,
25:01
Nikes. He's backed 400 companies, like
25:04
just one of the greatest early stage investors in history.
25:07
And I'm like, there's no way. Like all these other guys said
25:10
no, there's no way, right? So I meet with like one of his
25:13
partners and I have like the most atrocious pitch ever.
25:18
Like it went so bad. Like so bad that I was like
25:21
sweating, you know? And he had to tell me like, hey,
25:24
it's cool dude. Like calm down.
25:25
I can tell you're like frazzled. He's pressing me with all these
25:29
hard questions. I go through the pitch.
25:31
I'm like at the end I literally like apologized.
25:33
I'm like, dude, I'm sorry for wasting your time.
25:36
The girl. It's all good.
25:37
Like let me get back to you. And I'm like, OK, that's a no,
25:39
right? 30 minutes later, I'm in another
25:42
building right next door pitching another VC.
25:45
I get a text from him. He says, hey, who lost wants to
25:47
meet with you? Who's the GP, founder of the
25:49
fun, Just iconic guy, right? He's like, can you come back
25:53
over here like right away? He's leaving in 30 minutes.
25:56
I'm like, so I literally tell him, hey, I'm so sorry to do
26:00
this, but I've got to go. So like, I leave, go next door,
26:04
sit down again. Hundreds of hours of prep,
26:08
hundreds of hours of pitching up to this point.
26:11
No, no, no, no, no. I sit down.
26:13
I share my vision. Who lost?
26:16
Go, you know, doesn't really even ask many questions.
26:19
I'm there for 15 minutes. He goes, hey, will you step
26:21
outside, Tyler, just for a SEC? Step outside, comes out 30
26:24
seconds later. I walk in and he's like, hey, we
26:26
want to do this and we're going to write a check.
26:29
We're going to lead this round. We're going to help you get the
26:31
rest of your investor rest the investors on board and we're
26:34
going to wire funds tomorrow. And I was like, whoa.
26:37
And and I was, I was days away from shutting the company down.
26:41
So you know, I share that for a few reasons.
26:43
One again, like founding a company is not for the faint of
26:47
heart. It's really hard.
26:49
The Ulas later told me, I said, why did you back me?
26:54
And he goes, he goes because there's one thing that stood out
27:01
about you above everything else, because I don't think you're the
27:04
most technical. I don't think you're the most
27:07
strategic or the most savvy or the most educated.
27:10
He goes, you were clearly the most resilient.
27:13
Like you were the one that I knew when things got really
27:17
hard, when you were a week away from running out of money, like
27:21
you were going to be the one to figure it out.
27:23
And those are the kind of founders that we back, you know,
27:26
And so that's always stuck with me.
27:28
And when I look at investing in companies or I look at getting
27:31
involved in companies, might the biggest weighting of what am I
27:37
analyzing in this founder is like grit and resilience.
27:42
I get when things get really, really hard, like you're out of
27:46
money and you got to figure something out.
27:49
Are you going to go figure it out and fight or are you going
27:51
to fold, right? That would happen again.
27:55
Fast forward, you know we get this second round of money,
27:58
start building a product, it's going really well.
28:00
We go to this big National Automotive conference, 60,000
28:03
people there, this big coming out party.
28:05
This is early 2020 signing tons of customers.
28:09
Things are looking bright 2 weeks later, since February of
28:13
2020. COVID happens, boom, shuts the
28:16
whole industry down again. We at this time, we were, we had
28:21
a company that was so interested in our technology, they were
28:23
looking at acquiring us at that time, right?
28:26
Not for not, not for a lot of money, but like, it was hard and
28:29
I was open to it and joining this company would have been
28:33
super interesting. We're getting really close to
28:35
doing a deal. COVID happens, whole deal falls
28:37
apart. Oh, and by the way, I'm out of
28:38
money again. And so I have to, again,
28:42
basically fire my whole team, take us down to four people.
28:46
At that time, we were 20 people or so, and it wasn't clear that
28:51
we were going to make it through COVID.
28:52
And then all the sudden, the automotive industry took a turn
28:55
and it actually created a perfect storm for us for what we
28:59
did. Porsche came in in the middle of
29:02
COVID, 2 days after they shut down their German factory, their
29:05
main factory for the first time in history, OK, because of
29:09
COVID. 2 days later, they write a check into my company.
29:12
It was a miracle, like shouldn't have happened at all, but it did
29:16
because again, they, they just knew that like, I was going to
29:19
figure this out no matter what. Like if it wasn't you, I was
29:22
going to, I was going to find the money.
29:23
I was going to figure out to make the company live.
29:25
They came in and, and then the industry turned and we had
29:30
vertical growth for the next year.
29:32
And Fast forward to early 2021. We had several large companies,
29:38
many of them public companies coming after us because again,
29:42
we just became the hot ticket in automotive.
29:47
And what it is that we did is we helped car dealerships acquire
29:51
consumer vehicles as a source of sustainable supply for their
29:55
lots. And when you remember COVID, you
29:59
had an all time high demand, consumer demand for vehicle
30:02
purchases because the government was paying us, paying everybody
30:06
money. And you had an all time low
30:08
supply of inventory because manufacturers had shut down.
30:12
So like you had about 20% of new vehicles being produced as you
30:17
typically had. And so because that all time
30:20
high consumer demand, all time low supply, we came in and we
30:22
said to dealers, we said you can actually acquire vehicles that
30:25
no longer you could get from the OEMs, from the auctions, from
30:29
the fleet companies, you can acquire them from consumers.
30:33
And that worked incredibly well. And yeah, ran a process the next
30:39
year it was either go raise like 25,000,000 Series A funding or
30:45
it was or sell the whole company and we sold the whole company.
30:48
And so who I'm not in the venture capital space, but
30:53
actually one of my mentors is very, very, very successful
30:57
older multi centi millionaire guy and was telling me, well,
31:01
why don't you just go raise 10 million bucks, you know, for
31:04
your company? And I'm, I'm always like, that's
31:06
not, I've never done that. I've never, I've found it.
31:09
I've, you know, funded everything myself and finance
31:12
everything. Never had any debt on anything
31:15
as far as companies go. So how did you go out for
31:18
someone who's looking to raise venture capital?
31:21
How do they go out and find people to pitch?
31:24
And what are those structures normally look like?
31:27
Is it, you know, what's like a fair percent of equity that they
31:30
want? And like, I don't, that's not my
31:32
world. So I'd love to learn about that.
31:35
Yeah, Yeah. It's a good question and happy
31:38
to get a little more tactical here.
31:39
So there's a, you know, there's different types of funding
31:43
structures, right. So venture capital are typically
31:48
firm institutional firms that raise money from LP's, right?
31:53
So you could have $100 million fund, I've raised that from 100
31:57
LP's. They each put $1,000,000 in and
31:59
then I manage that as a fund and the VCs, venture capitalists
32:03
tend to invest in software businesses or high growth
32:09
businesses with high margins, which is an investment class
32:13
that's much riskier but has higher return opportunities than
32:20
say real estate, right? Where private equity, a lot of
32:23
private equity is focused on sort of profitable businesses,
32:27
real estate, lower growth, lower multiple businesses.
32:35
You know, you're seeing, you're seeing private equity play a lot
32:37
in home services right now. It's a really hot category.
32:42
So, so you know, for if you were going to go raise a debt fund in
32:46
this case, and you were going to sell some equity in the
32:49
business, venture capital is probably not the place you'd
32:53
want to go would be more family office or private equity, I
32:56
think are ones that would know this category well and and
32:59
invest in this in this type of category.
33:03
When it comes to valuation, the the earlier stage the company
33:08
is, the more art is involved in the valuation of the company,
33:14
right? Because you don't have years of
33:17
financial history. It's there's not much science to
33:20
it. A lot of it is like who are the
33:22
founders? Is it a really big market
33:24
category? Are they solving a really big
33:26
problem? You know, those tend to be like
33:30
the three. Do they have some sort of
33:31
competitive Moat against their competition?
33:36
Like these are more the questions that are asked at the
33:37
early stage. And then typically the valuation
33:41
is set by the lead investor. So lead investor says, you know,
33:45
and, and a lot of a lot of times early on, you're not actually
33:48
setting a real valuation. You're setting what's called a
33:51
cap on a convertible note or a safe, which are, you know, more
33:57
debt vehicles that convert into equity, right?
34:01
So for example, you'd say we're going to raise $1,000,000, OK.
34:06
The cap in this round is 10 million.
34:10
You get a, you get paid 8% interest on this note every year
34:15
at a 20% discount into the next round, anything above 10
34:19
million, OK. So what they're banking on is
34:22
it's a, it's a note, there's debt here.
34:25
I get paid back money, $80,000 a year and when they go raise the
34:30
Series A where they price this round at 30 million, then I get
34:35
a huge discount. My note now rolls into equity
34:38
and I get a huge discount from the next round as you raise.
34:41
So it's like sort of precede is the earliest stage seed Series
34:46
A, series B, series C, series D and keeps going up.
34:51
The later stage you get, the bigger the rounds are, the more
34:55
science is involved, right? It's really looking at your
34:58
financials like have you built a business that scales?
35:01
Now you just need to pour fuel on the fire, which also means
35:04
you're buying typically much less percentages of these
35:08
companies while deploying more capital.
35:13
And so it's it's a lot of this is stage specific and early on
35:18
the characteristics are founding team, market size, problem
35:21
you're solving and mote right. So that's the cursory
35:28
understanding of how venture capital works.
35:30
And then how did you what was the most effective way to find
35:35
the right talent as you start, you know, started and scaled the
35:38
company? Because that's same thing with
35:40
my startup right now is like your first hires are so critical
35:47
to the company. And because I've, I've struggled
35:49
with this, right? It's like, what's the right comp
35:51
plan? Do I give them equity?
35:52
Do I not get them equity? Do I pay a high salary or do I
35:55
bring in a partner or do I do a profit share of revenue?
35:57
She's like, there's so many ways to skin a cat.
35:59
I was talking about that yesterday.
36:01
And and it's I struggle with that.
36:03
I struggle with all so many options.
36:05
And, and then how do you find those right players?
36:07
And how did you know that those are the right players?
36:11
Like did you, what kind of testing did you do?
36:13
Like the guy my mentor was talking about, he does all the
36:17
personality tests, you know, culture index, disc assessment,
36:21
plum test, all of these things. QIQ, all of.
36:24
It yeah, to really make sure this is the specific person for
36:28
the role. But like, how did you go about
36:29
that? So the way that I went about,
36:32
it's probably not the way I would advise somebody goes about
36:35
it, right. So for me it was more who are
36:40
the smartest people that are crazy enough to come and do this
36:43
at this stage, right? So it was like that was my
36:47
analysis and it didn't go much deeper than that, right?
36:50
Because to convince somebody to come and do a really early stage
36:52
company and make virtually no money for a long period of time,
36:58
it's, you know, you got to have the right person.
37:00
So it takes a lot of swings to, you know, sort of identify the
37:03
right people there. How did you identify those
37:07
people? How did you find them?
37:09
Well, some of them it took so, so when I think about like a
37:16
really early founding team. So I was the founder basically a
37:20
year and I brought on a Co founder.
37:22
So I was like scrapping this together alone with contractors
37:27
and things like that for about the first year.
37:29
And one of the R&D projects I did around the site, she built a
37:32
car dealership and I built drivably our software company
37:37
inside of a car dealership because I knew the car
37:40
dealership was going to be our end customer.
37:42
And I wanted to know exactly what it was like to operate and
37:45
own a car dealership. And so this is like a unique
37:48
hack that we had that ended up paying dividends when we went to
37:52
raise capital because I could look the investor in the eye and
37:55
said, I know our customer intimately.
37:57
Well, I am one like I own a car dealership, right?
38:02
So about a year and I recruited a guy named Andrew sweet shout
38:06
out who's amazing, still with the parent company today.
38:11
And again, looking back and if he listens to this, I'm sorry,
38:18
but looking back, he is not the Co founder I would have brought
38:21
on board because the two of us were way too similar.
38:27
And I think if you're going to go give up a chunk of equity,
38:29
which is, again, I didn't notice at the time, but the most
38:32
valuable thing in your business to me is that equity, it's
38:37
precious. Like you can't just divvy it
38:39
out. Yeah.
38:41
Because it's gone immediate, it's gone so fast.
38:42
So even if you give 1% equity, that's 100 people and you're out
38:46
of equity, you know. Yeah.
38:48
I mean, yes and yes and no. Like, you know, the way that you
38:52
put equity structures together are on what's called vesting
38:58
schedules, right? And so people actually have to
39:00
earn that equity over a period of time.
39:03
And sometimes they're, they're, they're also attached to
39:05
performance and different milestones and things like that.
39:09
But it's really expensive, especially if you're planning on
39:11
building this thing to sell it for 50 or 100 million or 500
39:15
million. It's like, dude, every, every
39:16
percent of equity cost you a lot of money.
39:19
So my main advice would be like, cherish that as much as you can
39:24
for founders that don't have to go raise capital, Don't go raise
39:26
capital like VCs. Again, I love my venture Capital
39:32
Partners. I love my friends that are in
39:33
venture. They're not going to add that
39:37
much value to your business outside of writing a check.
39:40
OK, so you need, if you need to go raise money, then it's a
39:44
necessary evil. You got to do it if you don't
39:47
man, bootstrap that baby as long as you can and never take a
39:51
dollar of outside capital and hold on to that equity for dear
39:54
life. Because if and when you go build
39:57
something really valuable, it's, you know, it just ends up
40:02
costing you so much money to give up equity.
40:05
So I know we talked a lot about there, but but again for me
40:10
early on it was I don't think I did a lot of these things the
40:13
right way around talent acquisition.
40:16
I think I found people that I knew had grit that wouldn't give
40:21
up when things were hard. I set really clear boundaries
40:25
and expectations. So if and when we fired a lot of
40:29
people too, by the way, because pretty quickly, a month, two
40:33
months, three months in, we realized like this isn't, this
40:35
isn't the right fit for the business.
40:37
And so we had to move on. And again, I don't think you
40:42
want to have to do that, but you sort of have to do that, you
40:47
know, to protect the other shareholders and people inside
40:50
of the company, so. And how did you know, shifting
40:55
gears a little bit into your relationship and the sacrifices
40:58
that you had to make as a founder and as I know those are
41:01
great. I've sacrificed health,
41:03
relationships, sanity, you know, mental health, physical health,
41:06
all the things. How was that process for you?
41:10
And you know, I know you always talk about a rock bottom with
41:16
your guests in their life, what a rock bottom moment was in
41:18
their life and whether this was during that time or not.
41:22
During that time, what was a very pivotal or rock bottom
41:25
moment in your life that you had to overcome?
41:28
Yeah, it's a great question. So you know, we end up selling
41:31
the company October of 2021. So here I am 30 years old, rich,
41:37
3 kids, marriage was great. Like I sort of like overnight
41:43
woke up and was like, I can't believe this is my life.
41:46
Like I spent so much time just like facing the floor, running
41:50
out of money, no personal finance, like just like to
41:53
overnight it all being different.
41:55
And you know, it seems like God has a has a sense of humor and
42:00
just the way that he can pull us back down to earth.
42:03
And you know, for me, four months after the acquisition,
42:07
just to set up this story, I'm in Houston on business.
42:12
I'm staying at a Marriott Hotel. I jump on my elevator to go up
42:15
to my room as as the elevator doors are closing, a man sticks
42:18
his arm in the elevator to get on and he jumps on the elevator.
42:22
And I routinely, out of curty, out of courtesy, just say, hey,
42:26
man, how you doing? And you expect to get the same
42:33
response 100 times out of 100, which is I'm good.
42:36
How are you right? And then you move on with your
42:38
day. And this guy took that question
42:41
to heart. And he looked at me and he said
42:43
today has been the worst day of my life.
42:45
He said I had to bury my 26 year old son today.
42:49
And it's, it was really hard. And here I am speechless, like
42:56
literally don't know what to say.
42:58
And he says, you know, we start going up and we get to the 10th
43:02
floor and his door, the doors open up and he just looks at me
43:04
and he goes, man, I don't know you.
43:07
I don't know if you have a family kids, he goes, but if you
43:10
do, just hold them really, really close because you never
43:14
know when it's going to be their last day.
43:17
And I hugged the guy and turns around.
43:19
He leaves the doors closed. And I, you know, I'd at this
43:23
stage like, yeah, we had sort of made it financially, but I was
43:27
always traveling. I didn't see my kids a lot for
43:29
those my 20s, you know, 10 years of like startups and businesses.
43:35
And I remember I go up to my hotel room, I call my wife.
43:40
I'm like super emotional about it.
43:41
I'm like, Hey, I'm so sorry that I haven't been there more for
43:43
you and the kids. I just had this experience with
43:45
this man on on an elevator and and she's given me a ton of
43:49
grace, right. And this is like point number
43:51
one is man, choose the right partner.
43:53
If you're going to be an entrepreneurship, like you got
43:55
to have a ride or die. You got to have somebody that's
43:57
like totally supportive even when you have nothing late
44:03
nights, you're traveling all the time.
44:06
Your physical health is going to shit.
44:07
Like you want somebody that's just like, I get it and I'm here
44:10
for you. And I got I got this.
44:12
You go take care of that, you know, gives me a ton of grace.
44:15
And exactly one month later, I find myself again traveling.
44:18
I'm in New York City. We're doing a thing at NASDAQ.
44:22
So the parent company CEO and myself are going on CNBC to
44:25
present this acquisition. It's like a big deal, right?
44:27
Like founders dream of this. It's like ringing the bell or
44:32
going on CNBC and talking about your company being sold, right.
44:36
We do a dry run on a Monday, March 1st, 2022.
44:39
I wake up, it's a phone call from my mother-in-law and it's
44:42
5:00 AM Arizona time. And when I saw her name on my
44:45
phone, I knew something was wrong, right?
44:50
And so instead of saying hello when I answered the phone, I, I
44:54
picked it up and I said, hey, what happened?
44:57
And she said Brooklyn, which is my wife, her daughter,
45:00
something's happened and she's being rushed to the hospital.
45:03
Right now. We we don't know what's going
45:05
on, but you should probably get home.
45:08
So I text my assistant. I'm trying to frantically.
45:12
Yeah, I'm in the middle of New York City in the morning, right?
45:15
It's like 8:00 AM East Coast time.
45:18
And I'm like, I need the next plane out of here.
45:21
I got to get home. Something's happened to my wife.
45:23
So then I'm, you know, over the next several hours, I'm getting
45:27
text message updates from my father-in-law and I'm calling
45:31
him like every 5 minutes and he's not picking up, but he's
45:34
sending me these little text updates.
45:36
And, you know, they read, hey, I'm following the ambulance to
45:41
the hospital. Hey, just got to the hospital.
45:44
They checked her into triage. They're doing an ultrasound.
45:48
The next one says they found 2 liters of blood in her abdomen.
45:53
And by the way, the body has 5 liters.
45:56
So that's 40% of the blood in her body had blood out.
46:01
And the next text is a it's a photo of the dry erase board in
46:09
the hospital and it says ruptured ectopic pregnancy.
46:13
And it was what they had diagnosed had happened.
46:16
So I go to Google, I look this up and I find out that in the
46:20
majority of cases where this happens in the home, it's lethal
46:24
to the mother and the baby. And I thought, yeah, so I went
46:30
from, like, bad things happen all the time, and they just get
46:37
better. Like, life just has this
46:39
beautiful way of making hard situations better.
46:43
And in this case, it was it was the opposite.
46:46
It was like something really bad happened.
46:49
And I got this text and I was sure my wife was going to die.
46:53
And so I get on the plane, I can remember vividly.
46:59
I'm, I'm, I start taking notes on the plane, I'm documenting
47:04
just my feelings. I'm like flipping through these
47:07
stages of grief real time on the plane.
47:12
The guy sitting next to me several times was like, Hey, do
47:16
you want me to call like a flight attendant?
47:18
Are you OK? Because I, I would go from like
47:20
chatting with him to like, like quietly nervous to like crying
47:25
hysterically, right? And I wasn't really that aware
47:28
that I was doing that. But I'm just like going through
47:32
all these emotions and all these thoughts, thinking that my, the
47:35
love of my life is, is going to die and get a message that says,
47:42
hey, they rushed her in for an emergency surgery.
47:45
And then for the next almost 4 hours, still in surgery, still
47:49
in surgery, still in surgery, you know, we had delivered three
47:53
babies at this time. And that process, the OB is
47:58
typically in the room for five, 1030 minutes kind of thing.
48:03
So for her to be under the knife for that long was super
48:07
concerning knowing how much blood she lost.
48:09
And then I get a text message as the plane is descending from my
48:12
father-in-law. That basically says something to
48:14
the effect of brace yourself. She's she's not going to make
48:18
it. Just talk to the surgeon, you
48:24
know? And then it was like another
48:26
level of just grief, just like, just just disbelief like this
48:35
can't, this can't be happening to me.
48:37
Like, this must be some crazy dream that I'm in, Like, I've
48:40
got to wake up from this, right? And I read that message as she's
48:47
gone, but I'm going to wait till you get to the hospital to tell
48:51
you from her father, right? And so plane lands like you'd
48:56
see in the movies. I'm sprinting through the
48:58
airport. Everybody's probably like, what,
49:00
where is this guy going? You know what, what sort of
49:02
hurry is he in? I get in the Uber.
49:05
I'm like yelling at the Uber driver to just like, just go.
49:14
Just go as fast as you can, please.
49:17
Like my wife's dying, but I'm like hopeless.
49:20
Like I don't actually think she has a life.
49:23
So I don't know why I'm yelling, right?
49:26
And we get to the hospital and I run again.
49:29
Like I'm running past the reception desk.
49:32
The lady's like, wait, where are you going?
49:34
And I know what room she's in. So I, you know, I go up to the
49:37
second floor and remember walking in the room and the
49:42
first thing that I realized is that audibly the heart rate
49:45
monitor is still beeping. And so I just have this like
49:51
flood of gratitude come over me, which is like, just get one more
49:56
moment together, you know, before she's gone.
49:59
And I remember, I sit, I sit down at her bedside and look at
50:03
my father-in-law who man, like again, just so much like so much
50:14
guilt, you know, for he had, he had to go through what he had to
50:20
go through. It wasn't me, it was him.
50:23
And COVID restrictions at the time only allowed one person to
50:26
be in the hospital. So it was only him, right?
50:30
And I'd say, hey, how's she doing?
50:32
And not even like the I couldn't even get those words out by the
50:38
time my wife goes into this seizure like episode, super
50:41
scary. And again, like you'd see in the
50:44
movies, I'm running into the halls and I'm trying I'm yelling
50:46
for doctors and nurse to please come in and help.
50:48
Something's happening. So I come in and eventually they
50:52
get her calmed down and you know, it's, it's not a good
50:55
scene. I mean, double blood transfusion
50:57
and all kinds of wires and just lifeless looking body like the
51:03
love of my life. And you know, and so the next
51:10
that night, I just remember like I remember like being scared to
51:20
blink because I was so fixated on the heart rate monitor that I
51:25
felt like if I close my eyes, it would flatline.
51:29
And I like even was like hallucinating that night that
51:31
this thing had flatlined. But I'm just watching this heart
51:34
rate monitors thinking please God, like just.
51:41
Just just a little longer, you know, it wasn't it wasn't even
51:47
like saver at this point because I was convinced like she wasn't
51:50
going to make it. Doctors were telling us like
51:52
there's there's no way right. So I'm the whole night, I'm
51:59
staring the next day we get there and one night turns into a
52:04
second and a third. And you know, we actually on
52:07
this on the first or second day, we did this 24 hour, there's
52:12
only a second day, this 24 hour fast, which is like a Christian
52:18
ritual or, or ceremony where you give up food for 24 hours and
52:23
you show your sacrifice to the Lord, right.
52:27
And so I invited everybody who I could think of in my phone to
52:29
please just join us in this fast.
52:31
Like we need to call on heaven for some help here.
52:35
And but at the same time, Hannah, I had, I had, I really
52:39
think I had come to a place where I'd accepted whatever
52:44
God's will was going to be, it was going to be right.
52:46
So not even an hour after we ended that fast, my wife wakes
52:55
up from like this coma type thing and you slowly starts
53:03
communicating. And I remember asking her that
53:06
day, this is like the third or fourth day said, hey, do you
53:10
remember this seizure that you had a couple days ago?
53:14
Like what happened there? Do you remember that at all?
53:17
And she said yeah. When I heard your voice, it gave
53:19
me life. Wow.
53:24
So, you know, when it comes to relationships, it's man, I mean,
53:37
I just can't, I can't overemphasize how important that
53:42
dynamic is for somebody's life to find the person that they
53:46
want to spend the rest of their life and eternity with and, and
53:52
become so connected that you're almost one of that.
53:55
Just the, the words of your voice could actually bring them
53:58
back to life. I mean, that's, that's what you
54:00
want, right? And so anyways, the silver
54:06
lining here is not without a lot of complications, but she ends
54:09
up recovering fully. And Fast forward 18 months after
54:13
that, we end up having another child, which was against the
54:17
odds and she's so. She lost that baby.
54:22
Yeah, but she's perfectly healthy now.
54:27
And so, yeah, that's that is the the catalyst for I'll forever
54:36
describe my life as the 31 years before my wife's accident and
54:41
then everything after because just fundamentally I'm a
54:44
different person. What changed the most for you
54:48
moving forward once you had her back?
54:51
Yeah, it a lot of things. The number one for sure is how I
54:58
prioritize my life, right? What is truly most important
55:05
where if I look back before the accident, the most important
55:10
thing was company building and money and success, whatever that
55:14
even means, whatever I thought it meant.
55:18
And today that ranks really low on my list, You know, And I
55:23
think some people would be like, well, yeah, money guy, easy for
55:26
you to say. Like you have your bases
55:28
covered. And it's like, no, I I could
55:31
lose it all tomorrow. And if I still have certain
55:34
things, like a relationship with God, that's good, that's
55:39
aligned, a relationship with my wife, that's good, that's
55:42
aligned and good relationship with my kids and good health,
55:47
then I'd be good. I can say that confidently.
55:53
And how do you maintain balance, you know, as an entrepreneur, I
56:00
know me, I've tried to not be an entrepreneur, try to focus more
56:04
in this area, of this area, this area.
56:05
And I have to keep measures in place.
56:08
Otherwise I, you know, I dribble the ball out of bounds and I'm
56:13
back 90% and the business is my focus.
56:16
So like what? How do you kind of stay keep
56:19
yourself in check of health, family relationships over
56:23
financial wealth? Yeah, I, you know, I think I've
56:26
just, it's now hard coded in me that the work call can wait,
56:34
that nothing is that important as it pertains to my
56:37
professional life. Like nothing.
56:40
I I can't think of a meeting I could be in or if my wife called
56:46
I wouldn't answer it. Sorry.
56:50
Whoever's on the under end it like it can wait and and so, you
56:58
know, tactically it's still hard, but how do you do that
57:02
right, You you for some it might be scheduling time in for
57:08
working out. That's me.
57:10
For eating right, for your relationships, for self
57:17
improvement, whether it's physically or mentally or
57:21
otherwise. So I think for a lot of people,
57:24
you've got to schedule it in. And yeah, I just think it's,
57:34
again, one of the reasons you don't see me talking about
57:37
business online is I've in a lot of ways, I've just lost the.
57:42
I I just have this relationship now with it that it's so
57:46
unimportant that I almost just like, yeah, I still do it and I
57:50
still love it and I still get energy from it.
57:52
And I love the the pursuit of the game.
57:56
I love the game of wealth. That's fun.
57:59
But I'm not like, I don't take it too seriously because it's
58:03
not. It's all kind of like a game.
58:04
Yeah, that's good. That's, I think that's what we
58:08
all strive for, is to have that balance and fulfilment and still
58:12
have drive. And it's funny because I, I
58:16
always thought, and I think a lot of us, because we're taught
58:19
this, always thought that the pursuit of excellence feeds the
58:26
pursuit of fulfillment, right? It's like, I'm going to strive
58:29
to be excellent, so I feel fulfilled and then I'm going to
58:33
feel fulfilled, so I'm going to strive for more excellence.
58:35
And what it ends up being is you, your lack of fulfillment
58:41
pushes you to accomplishment. But then once you have
58:44
accomplishment and once you feel fulfilled, you're like, oh, this
58:48
feels pretty good. You know, I don't have such a
58:50
drive for this incessant need of more, more, more, more from the
58:55
standards of excellence. Like, it might be, you know,
58:59
watching your wife have a baby or watching your child take his
59:02
first steps or, and teaching your son how to throw a, you
59:06
know, hit a baseball. Like things that are fulfilling,
59:08
but they're not necessarily excellent.
59:10
Like, the world doesn't care about your baby's first steps or
59:13
your baby's first words, Right? And so realizing that fulfilment
59:17
and excellence are two separate pursuits, and they don't
59:20
actually drive each other at all.
59:22
And yeah, when I learned that when somebody was teaching a
59:26
class in one of my masterminds about that, it just clicked in
59:29
my head like, Oh my God, I am. The pursuit of excellence is
59:33
never going to fulfil me. That's a whole separate pursuit
59:37
that I've been starving. And that's when I started to
59:40
pursue that. And and you know, the success
59:43
was my own bucket of, of joy and, and fun and excellence and
59:48
whatever. But I started to focus my energy
59:50
on all the things that actually were fulfilling to me.
59:53
And that was a piece of it, but not all of it.
59:56
I think that framing is really nice.
1:00:01
I, I think the word that everybody should strive to
1:00:07
achieve is fulfillment for sure. But I also think the word
1:00:11
fulfillment is intentionally meant to be vague because I
1:00:15
think if you ask 10 people what their definition of fulfillment
1:00:18
is, you'll get 10 different answers.
1:00:20
And you know, so for me, the way that I think about it is this.
1:00:25
I think about our hearts, OK. And if our heart is fully
1:00:33
filled, then we are fulfilled. Now what?
1:00:35
What does the heart represent? I want you to take your heart
1:00:38
and I want you to carve it up into a pie chart.
1:00:42
OK. And in the pie chart, I want you
1:00:44
to ask the question, what are the, what are the areas of my
1:00:47
life that are most important or that matter the most?
1:00:52
They have the most meaning, right?
1:00:54
And some would say happiness is an area or health, mental
1:01:01
health, physical health, are relationships, spirituality,
1:01:05
business, finance, right, making money.
1:01:09
So I think you could you could sort of sit down and write down
1:01:11
here like the six or seven things that matter the most to
1:01:14
me and that makes up the pie in the heart.
1:01:18
And then you have to do an inventory regularly, let's call
1:01:21
it once a month, where you say how optimized are each of these
1:01:24
slivers of the pie? Because I'll tell you what,
1:01:27
Hannah, if you take, let's say that I won the money game and my
1:01:32
money game was maxed out. It was 100% in this pie.
1:01:35
But my relationships were at 20% and my physical health was at
1:01:39
30% and my my spirituality was at 10% and the list goes on.
1:01:44
How full is that heart going to be?
1:01:47
Not very full, but if you could get each of them to say 80%, how
1:01:52
full does that heart? Well, it looks pretty full.
1:01:54
There's not much left in there to fill in.
1:01:57
And so, you know, for me, it's about finding the right balance
1:02:00
between the things that matter the most in life and doing them
1:02:03
all the best that we can. They're not all going to be
1:02:07
maxed out, but you better believe with this kind of focus
1:02:10
then they're not all going to be empty as well.
1:02:13
That's such a great way of explaining it.
1:02:15
And it's, it's so true because it's all of those things.
1:02:19
I would say family health and wealth.
1:02:21
And you know, it just as a easy way to remember it.
1:02:23
But yeah. And even maintaining big
1:02:27
entrepreneurial goals now it's I want to continue to grow the
1:02:33
entrepreneurial part of the bucket, but or the pie chart
1:02:37
rather, while I'm growing all the other things.
1:02:40
And I won't grow this and sacrifice the other things.
1:02:43
And so as big as I can, as much as I can continue to grow
1:02:46
everything that's important to me, then I will continue to do
1:02:50
so, but not at the cost of something else.
1:02:53
Just keeping sight of that. But well, thank you, Tyler.
1:02:56
I appreciate you being here and thank you for sharing your
1:02:59
story. And hopefully I'll have you on
1:03:03
again and we could dive more into all of the good things.
1:03:06
Awesome. Thanks.
1:03:07
Yeah.