Chris Hornbecker | VC and Advisor

Chris Hornbecker — What Comes Next: Founders, Exits, and the Future of AI

In this episode of Amplified CEO, Richard Stroupe sits down with Chris Hornbecker, a serial founder and former tech CEO with multiple successful exits, including companies like Xgility and Solutions Developers.

Together, they explore what life looks like after building and selling a business — from identity shifts to the search for purpose beyond the exit. They talk candidly about the realities many founders face but rarely discuss, including self-doubt and the drive to “do it again.”

They also dig into the rise of AI and what it means for the future of leadership and innovation. Chris offers an optimistic view on how technology is evolving — and why those who choose to adapt can thrive in the years ahead.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishornbecker/

Co-Produced by Topsail Insider and Cape Fear Ventures
Edited by Coastal Carolina Network

To learn more about Amplified CEO, visit www.topsailinsider.com/aceo
To learn more about Topsail Insider, visit www.topsailinsider.com.
To learn more about Richard Stroupe, or Cape Fear Ventures, please contact Christa at (910) 800-0111 or christa@topsailinsider.com.

Transcript

ACEO S1 E13 | Chris Hornbecker

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Amplified CEO with VC and serial entrepreneur, Richard Stroupe. With today's guest, Chris Hornbecker, a serial founder and tech CEO. With multiple successful exits and cloud and software services, including Xgility and Solutions Developers, he now invests in future leaders through ventures like Stronghorn and Right Seat with a focus on AI and mentorship.

Chris Hornbecker, welcome. Thank you. Appreciate you having me. 

No, man, the pleasure's all mine. I appreciate you making the trip down to not only participate here in this podcast, but also our upcoming conference at, uh, with Cape Fear Ventures. So 

yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. It should be a great time.

Yeah. How was your drive down yesterday? 

Drive down was easy. left dash burn, probably seven in the morning. Was down here by two, three o'clock. Yeah, it was 

pretty 

easy. 

 it was a great trip down and, uh, we stayed in your saltwater resort last night. [00:01:00] It was amazing. Yeah, amazing evening. Thank you. Yeah. Um, got up, had coffee, looked at the beach this morning, finished a few emails and, uh, did that all from the desk and, you know, watched the ocean.

It was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. So you have a really neat place there. 

I appreciate it. Yeah, it's been, been a journey for sure. 

Yeah. Tell me about that a little bit. How did you, uh, end up building that place? 

It's a very long story. Uh, originally I bought the Loggerhead in and started renovating that, you know, kind of a long-term plan to, you know, slowly renovate, but we had a few mishaps with hurricanes and leaks and so forth, and we ended up accelerating the renovation plan.

One thing led to another, and we had to rebuild the whole unit itself. 

So you rebuilt the whole whole place on Loggerhead. Mm-hmm. And then from Loggerhead, you moved to Saltwater? 

Yeah. So after we got a team together to renovate Loggerhead, I decided to buy property two blocks down to build the concept of saltwater suites, which was the 700 square foot [00:02:00] suites with washer and dryers and full kitchen.

We had one of the rooms in Loggerhead was a prototype, um, because it had, was these pier fishermen would, would stay at Loggerhead, uh, a lot. So they had like this big wash room where they would bring their fish and clean them. And so during the renovation, we decided to incorporate that into a full kitchen.

Oh, wow. In one of the suites. And once we did that, like people went crazy. Like, oh my God, there's a, it's like a one bedroom unit with a full kitchen, you know? So I'm like, oh, we all we're into something here. So then we took that model and went to an architect. Developed a floor plan layout, you know, using a full kitchen and washer dryers and sorted from the ground up to build saltwater.

Wow. Yeah, it's an amazing facility. We, uh, you know, I was blessed enough to bring my son with me and we had a great time last night, 

so, yeah. Yeah. So he, he went to the gym this morning, right? 

He did, yeah. 

Yeah. Is he at Clemson? 

He's at Clemson. I have a daughter at Clemson and then, uh, another daughter still in high school.

Is she also gonna go to [00:03:00] Clemson? 

I think she wants to go to Clemson, yeah. So we'll see. 

So you went, you went to West Virginia, right? I did go to West Virginia, yeah. What was the appeal from Clemson? Know, 

I, I think, you know, that we're both mountaineers just from different places in different states.

Upstate versus from West Virginia. That's Virginia, right? That's right. Same mascot. Why did your, why did your son choose, uh, Clemson? 

It was really kind of a last minute decision. You know, he was playing hockey as you know, you know, I used to travel over the country. He was playing a lot of hockey, and, uh, the last minute he decided he wanted to go to college, and, uh, he.

We took a trip to Clemson after he got there. He just liked the culture, the atmosphere, and right when we got there he said, you know, this is the place. And then, uh, my, uh, first daughter she decided to follow and she's down there, just completed her first year. And, uh, you know, maybe we'll have one more down there.

We'll see. That's great. There's a bunch of tigers in the family. Tigers and mountaineers, I guess. 

That's right. I've been to Clemson one time for a concert long, long, long time ago. 

And who did you go see down there? 

Um, U2. Okay. But Rage Against the [00:04:00] Machine opened up for U2. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was kind of a crazy, I.

Crazy set, but um, but it worked. 

So did you really go for you two or did you go to see Rage? I 

went to see for Rage. 

That's what I thought. 

Yeah. Yeah. Went to see Rage. 

Very cool. 

Yeah. Speaking of you, how you went to Metallica this weekend, right? 

I, I did this past week, uh, my son and I went to Metallica. He's a huge Metallica fan.

It's kind of cool that we can do that and share and uh, yeah, for Christmas, uh, my wife and I got him snake pit tickets, so Okay. And, uh, it was really cool 'cause I got him snake pit tickets for two of 'em. I thought he was gonna take his girlfriend or somebody else and he took, he chose to take good old dad, so.

Oh, that's awesome. That was pretty cool. 

Was that his first concert? 

No, we've been to see them a couple times now. 

Okay. 

So last year we, uh, flew to Chicago and went to Soldier Field and saw mm-hmm. It's pretty neat. 

Yeah. So that's amazing, 

you know, it's, it's kind of, uh, interesting as your kids get older, you know, we used to travel so much for sports and uh, now we get to go travel and see concerts every once in a while.

Yeah. So it's kind [00:05:00] of a good father-son thing and. You know, I know that, uh, you're a Metallica fan as well and a couple other places, but I also have been to see Taylor Swift and some other things with the girls. So you cover the base. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Well, we've been to a few shows together.

Yeah, for sure. 

What was the first one we went to? 

Um, I believe three 11 in Sublime. 

Three 11 in Sublime? Mm-hmm. 

Yeah, 

the new Sublime. Can I even not the old can, can I tell 

those stories here? 

Of course. 

So I I'll never forget that. You're like, Hey, come on, come on, horns. We got this, this, uh, we got first row seats to go see three 11.

Yeah. 

And, uh, I recall we're sitting there and I'm, we're watching the band and three 11 comes on the mosh pit forms and the next thing I recall is you jumping the rail and jumping around in, in the pit. 

I, okay. So yes, I am a huge mosh pit guy. I am. It's, it's, it's, it's a little bit of a therapy. That's session for me.

We actually took, uh, my nephew Chas, to [00:06:00] that show we did. Yeah. Yeah. That was his first mosh pit experience, I believe. 

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, he, I think he was young just starting his career and it's, it's been good to see him excel Yeah. In his career now as well. So yeah. 

I was at the same Metallica show with you.

Yeah. 

How did you 

enjoy 

it? We actually had stadium seats, so, um, I took my son to see Deftones earlier this year where we had basically like a snake pit experience up front, but we ended up standing, you know, the whole time for like eight hours during, you know, all three sets. So this time he's like, alright, if I want to go, you know, let's sit down.

I'm like, you're not gonna sit down. But we were on basically the 50 yard line, six rows back. Wow. So it was really good. Sounds like really good seats. It was close enough, right? Yeah, it was good. But of course the rain kind of damped the whole thing. It settled down 

by the time the concert started, so it was kind of nice.

Yeah. Well other than going to concerts and. Chasing your kids around, you know, what else is keeping you busy [00:07:00] these days? 

Well, as you know, uh, I exited my third venture in, well, crazy enough, April Fool's Day, uh, 2022. Mm-hmm. And, uh, did some transition work for about a year, and then, uh, officially retired.

But, uh, you know, you can only do that for so long. You don't really 

retire. You can't really retire. You may, you may say you retire, but you're, yeah, it was 

fun. You know, I gotta spend a lot of time with the kids and the family and do, do some family things. But, uh, you know, as you know, I mean, you built several companies and very successful companies, uh, kind.

When it's in you, it's in you, I guess, right? Mm-hmm. And, uh, you sit around and you think, wow, you, you know, growing up in the situations, I know we've talked about before, you know, um, you know, I started my first career working on farms and you learn that hard work is kind of becomes a self worth and self value.

And, you know, when you take a break after. Building companies for so long, you start to think, you know, what am I really doing here? Mm-hmm. [00:08:00] And, uh, 

you grew up in West Virginia, right? I grew 

up in Western Maryland, but western Maryland into West Virginia. 

Okay. 

Okay. And, uh, how 

big was the farm that you grew up on?

Um, it was, it was, uh, I didn't grow up on the farm. I worked on farms. Okay. For, for my, my father's friends and other things. And I did have a grandfather that had a cattle and a cattle farm. 

So, by the way, Western Maryland is beautiful. Yeah. It's a, it's a beautiful part of the country. We, you know, we, we drive through there, like when I go, well, when I did take my son to Purdue, back and forth, um, it's beautiful.

I think a lot of people, when they think of Maryland, they think of Annapolis or Baltimore, but like, there's this whole other part of the state that is just rolling Beautiful farmlands, lush cows. Yeah. You know, it's, it's really, really 

nice. Maryland has a lot to offer that, you know, you get down near the shore, they have the beaches, they have, uh, like you said, Annapolis, and then they have Western Maryland, which is the mountains.

Mm-hmm. Sure. If you were traveling out to Purdue, you made that trip on 68 plenty of times. That's a beautiful road to travel on. [00:09:00] So Yeah. You 

pass, uh, camp David, right? 

You do. That's, uh, closer this way, but a little bit further west. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I grew, I grew up in a place called Smithsburg, Maryland.

Okay. Which wasn't too far from Camp David. 

So you grew up working on farms and So grew up working on farms, kind of. We 

kind of got sidetracked a little bit, but you know, it's a, it's a little bit difficult as you exit a company and you go to doing not as much as you used to do. Mm-hmm. And, uh, when you were growing up and your values are kind of in, built in your values around hard work, and that's kind of your self-worth.

Mm-hmm. You start to struggle if you're sitting around doing nothing for very long and, uh mm-hmm. I guess I really tried to examine, you know, I'm a big fan of Simon Sinek and, you know, determining your why and, uh, as I thought about it, I was like, the thing that really, I. It gets me o obviously, you know, we've talked about achievement and other things, but it's also about multiplying others.

Mm-hmm. Right. And I thought about, wow, you know, I have this skill set. I love building the future leaders. I think our [00:10:00] world, our economy, everything needs great companies. Mm-hmm. For us to all succeed. And, uh, I was very blessed to have some good mentors early in my career. And I think that, um, I guess my purpose now is to try to be that to some others.

Mm-hmm. So with my son at Clemson working on a finance and accounting degree, I know he wants to come out and he's got some entrepreneurial desires and, you know, I hope to help shape the next generation and kind of teach them how to build companies with great cultures and mm-hmm. Maybe, uh, not make some of the mistakes I did.

Well, that's great you brought 'em with you. 

Yeah. No, I appreciate you, you know, letting him bring him down to the conference where he's really psyched about the conference. Yeah. I'm, I'm excited to see, um, this, uh, I guess this is the inaugural. Elevate Conference, right? Yes. So yeah, elevate. Tell me about that.

How did you come up with this concept idea? Obviously you have this great resort and facility to do it at, and sounds like maybe some things can all play on, uh, you know, some of the other successes you've had. [00:11:00] 

Honestly. Um, you know, I come here usually one week a month to record podcasts and check on properties here.

And I also have two companies now in Wilmington that I invested in. So I meet with the CEOs on a regular basis. Um, but the idea for the conference, actually I heard on another podcast, um, Mel Robbins podcast. Yeah. I listen to her sometimes. Okay. Yeah. And she was talking about how her husband, who was in his fifties, um, was in this reinvention part, like, you know, called a midlife crisis or whatever.

But you know, he. She was bragging on him and saying, oh, he, he reinvented himself and he even started this, this, uh, retreat, you know, for, I can't remember exactly the specifics, but then it kind of hit me like, wait a minute. Like, I work with CEOs, you know, I dabble in investments. We have this [00:12:00] property. Why not put it all together and string it and figure out what we can do?

So we, we come up with a concept and mold over it for a few days and, uh, put it together. It's, I mean, basically it was like three, four weeks ago. 

Oh, wow. That's pretty, that's a pretty quick cycle to uh, yeah. Actually fill seats too. That's pretty impressive. 

We, we sold out like in a week. 

Wow. That's unbelievable.

Yeah. So 

it took me about a week to flesh out the layout design and then another week and a half to put a marketing plan together. And then we started going out with it, and then next thing I know, it was sold out. Wow. And then I had all this content. Um, from my LinkedIn post and blogs and other courses that I've done in the fast, you know, it's, it's normal stuff that you do with companies.

Like you're sit on a board and you go through some of these processes of how to build a system. Sure. How to build a business, how to automate, and here's the things you think about. Um, it's, you start documenting that stuff and put it together and [00:13:00] next thing you know, got a field manual, 150 pages. It, it, it was actually, I I, I had to parse it back a little bit.

I had way more content 'cause it was only for a two day seminar. Okay. So I was worried that it wasn't content rich enough, and ended up having to cut more content back because I'm like, it's just too much. 

Wow. I, I mean, I think it's amazing, you know, and I'm excited to be part of it. I appreciate you inviting me.

'cause, uh, are you kidding? Really fits into life's purpose of, uh, you're, 

you're the whole reason, man. It's like, 

no, I, I do appreciate it because I think it's a, it's a great opportunity. There's so many people out there that. Want to build and do things in the economy, build companies. Right. And you know, I look at, you know, I started my first company when I was 23 and I had no idea what I was doing.

And you really don't know what you don't know. Mm. Until you go out and seek and build mentors and other things. And that's why, you know, I'm excited to be here. 'cause I feel like, well you're, we can give back and also, you know Yeah. Share some of these stories with other people. Well, it's 

inspirational.

I mean, it's one [00:14:00] thing to talk about theory about how to build business and what is entrepreneurship and how do you process and, you know, just all the different things you do about putting together systems and automation and, and your business plan. But to actually talk to somebody that's been there and done that, you know, and have good examples.

Sure. I'm a, I'm a big believer in learning from others case studies, podcast, autobiographies, what, whatever the median is, it's, you need to absorb these things and figure out like what worked, what didn't work, what do they do? I tell my kids, I tell. The classes that I, I'm, you know, am able to go and guess lecture in the same thing, like learn from others that have been there before.

Like, don't take advice from people that have never been there. Sure. Like, go to the ones that have been successful, figure out what did they do, what path did they take, what, what risks did they have and how do they become successful? And start documenting those things and figure out how I could put that to work.

Yeah. No, I only laugh when you [00:15:00] said learn from others and, you know, I, I joke 'cause you know, you have those conversations with your kids all the time. Well, I'd like you to learn from my mistakes. Not from not from your own. Right. Right. But, uh, no, I think that's extremely, extremely valuable. And, you know, there's a lot of people out there that are on the professional circuit that speak for a living, but haven't done it.

Mm-hmm. And I think that's what's so valuable about what you put together is, you know. You get to tell people all your experiences that you've done and you've been tremendously successful and, uh, you know, yeah, I'm sure you're on here interviewing people tons, but have you ever told the story of how you started TRS?

I'm curious. No. Are you willing to? 

Not today. Okay. This is about you. All right. But you're, you're right. I mean, there's a lot of folks that are preaching the benefits of starting a business and entrepreneurship, like even in the university setting, all these professors that are promoting entrepreneurship, like, how many businesses have you started, right?

Have you exited? Did you pivot? You know, what were the, did you have you [00:16:00] run payroll? You know, did you, did you put a loan on your house to run the business? Did you cash you finance payroll on 

your credit card? 

Did you cash out your 401k early to do whatever, you know, some of these crazy antics that you have to do, but it's like part of the model.

Um, but yeah, it's, it's very, very interesting. And what I've found is it's rare. You know, to find somebody that's actually built and, you know, levered a company up and got ex successful, whether it's an exit or scaling, it's extremely rare. There's, there's, I think the statistics, like 80% of all businesses fail after the first year.

Yeah. It might even be higher than that in the whole scheme of things. Right? 

Yeah. It's, it's very risky proposition. And, and it's not meant for everybody, but for those few that decide like it, once it gets in you, it's in you. Like you just want to get after it and, uh, it's hard to let it go. Sure. And I know we're gonna talk about that later, but, um, with multiple [00:17:00] businesses.

Okay. Um, but, but tell me a little bit, so you started your first company at 23? 

I did. 

What were you doing before that time? 

So, I went to school in Morgantown. I got a, uh, industrial and management systems degree. Mm-hmm. After I guess really trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I started in engineering, computer electrical.

Changed to biology for a year, realized that that wasn't, you know, gonna be the plan. Mm-hmm. And, uh, got an industrial management systems degree and then went to work for Anderson Consulting in, geez, a long time ago. How about that? Anderson's 

the Accenture. 

It's now Accenture. That's right. And, uh, I went to work in Pittsburgh and flew to DC every week.

That was where your customers were at in DC 

Yeah. I worked, uh, for, during the Atlantic nine X merger, which became Verizon. Mm-hmm. Uh, and, uh, worked at, in 1996, the Telecom Dereg Act caused a lot of software to be built. 

Mm-hmm. 

So, uh, I was fortunate enough to get on a project here in dc, which got me a little closer to home, [00:18:00] but I flew outta Pittsburgh every week and flew to DC.

Mm-hmm. And, uh, I have nothing, nothing bad to say. It was a tremendous experience, you know, working at one of the big firms back then. Got. A lot of experience. You, you worked really hard, you know, I think there's times where I worked like 37 straight hours. 

I'm sure. Yeah. I had a similar experience at Oracle when they put me on a project in Atlanta.

Oh, 

hey, 

what happened? It was like 80 hours a week. Yeah, well it was in between, um, my clearance, you know, when I switched companies. 'cause I was, um, with uh, BAE systems at the time. Okay. And I took a job at Oracle and they were waiting on my clearance to transfer. 'cause you know, it takes a while sometimes.

Um, so they decided to send me to Atlanta, to Bell South. 

Okay. 

They were implementing the 11 eye application suite, which is the CRM. Sure. Right. I remember that. Which basically had 24 CDs that you, you had to install 'em all together and then there's work to do after you [00:19:00] put the data together to, to make sure it all sinks together.

And it still was a big system, but then it was all, all this maintenance and patching. They had a lot of folks from India that were on work visas. I would say 90% of the team was over on work visas. Wow. And, and for some reason they popped me there and I was working from nine in the morning until two in the morning the next day.

And that was the normal shift of that group. They were very, very hardworking and, uh, they wouldn't leave. So of course they didn't leave. I didn't leave. 'cause it's a challenge. Of course, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna roll out here at five o'clock. I know you well enough to now know that, you know, that's you're gonna win.

I'm gonna be here as long as they are. That's right. And yeah, they were there a long time. It was enough to go have a nap, take a shower, and get back at it. Wow. Um, and I did that for two months. 

How far too is, and then you crossed paths [00:20:00] and that's when you started doing Oracle? I could take it. Before, well, I was doing before 

I joined Oracle.

Okay, alright. Yeah. I started actually doing Oracle in my first job at SASE, 

I guess you probably do, do, do you promote or tell people that you actually wrote the book on Oracle? 'cause I know you did. I wrote a book on Oracle. I was a co-author 

with two other guys. I remember those days. Yeah. Well it was one of my goals to get published.

Yeah. Very cool. You know, so whatcha gonna do. That's a pretty cool accomplishment though. Yeah. I, I think it took six months to write my six chapters. 'cause one, one chapter took one month. Wow. And I made $4,000 for six months of work and I probably would've made more money if I put that six months of working at McDonald's for sure.

Um, but it's not the money. It's, you know, it's a check. But you know, that also, 

that also puts you on the level of being the Oracle expert back then, didn't it? 

For a short period of 

time. 

Yeah. Okay. That was the go-to guy. All right. Yeah. Very cool. Oh, he wrote a book. Nice. He must know what he is talking about.

Very. [00:21:00] See there you did it again. This is, I turned it around and this isn't about, this is, that's okay. Well, 

I'll finish my story of 37 straight hours, huh? Yeah. Uh, so I was, I was working at, at Anderson at time and, uh, we had an outage and, uh, I think I worked for about, it was definitely 37 straight hours.

And it was funny because after the outage finished, the partner had a big meeting, uh, on site and I fell asleep. And, uh, after I fell asleep I thought, oh man, I'm gonna be in trouble here. And, uh, partner came up to me at the end and he is like, Mr. Hornbecker, he is like, I hope, you know, if uh, you don't find things that I'm saying very exciting, we could have a further discussion about that.

And I thought, oh man, I'm in trouble. And, uh, it was probably my first lesson of having a really great manager that stood, stood up for me. Mm-hmm. I had this manager that a lot of people didn't like, 'cause he was kind of tough on, on people, but he, you know, was only at the manager level and he stood at the partners like, listen.

He's like, this guy just worked [00:22:00] 37 straight hours for you to help get this outage ended. And he is like, I would, you know, he's like, I'd appreciate if you thank him versus give him a hard time for falling asleep. 'cause he probably deserves a nap here and there. Yeah. And I thought, oh boy. Yeah. He'd let 

me off the hook.

Yeah. It wasn't a Bill Longberg type manager Yeah. From office space, right? 

That's right. No, he was great. And he, he stood up for us and, uh, took up for his team and, uh, I think it was a good lesson. That's good. Yeah. So after Accenture, I had an opportunity to start an industrial automation company. And that company was a company called Powerlink Technologies.

And we built some really crazy solutions that were robotics, um, logistical management. But we basically, at the time, as you know, databases were coming really hot. Mm-hmm. Um, I was doing work not on the Oracle side, but on the Cybase and, you know, micro, which then became Microsoft SQL Server. And in the industry, they started hooking up computers to run factories and warehouses.

Mm-hmm. And so we ended up doing a [00:23:00] lot of robotics, a lot of logistics managements, you know, even before the days of Amazon, we were scanning packages in factories and making 'em route directly to, uh, you know, trucks. But did you launch this yourself? I did with a friend from high school. So you co-founded this?

I co-founded it. We, we were very fortunate that his father worked in the electrical controls business. Okay. And he basically called and said, Hey, I know you guys know a lot about computers. The industry's moving this way. I don't have anybody to do this. Would you guys consider starting a company and, you know, I can help, help launch you and feed some of the first pieces of work to you.

Oh, that's good. Um, which was, it was really great, you know? Mm-hmm. It got us started and got us, uh, off the ground. But you quickly learned that that only gets you started, then you gotta learn to sell and do other things, so. Right. Um, we ended up selling, we had great customers. We, we learned to sell to Fortune five hundreds.

We had, uh. Customers like CVS Pharmacy, Elizabeth Arden, uh, we built a quick prototype. I know that you're gonna talk about quick prototypes in your, in your seminar [00:24:00] mm-hmm. And MVPs. And we built one for a nuclear reactor. And, uh, it's kind of funny how the life comes through, you know, full circle. Uh, I'm taking Chase and driving 'em down to Clemson and we drive by the reactor that we automated Clear back in the late nineties.

Oh, wow. Which is, you know, was a reactor on one of the lakes. Yeah. Down, down at Clemson, so, mm-hmm. 

That's cool. Um, yeah, it was pretty, 

but, uh, did that, what I didn't think about in that business was I was so excited to start a business and get out of the Anderson model. 'cause you look at that model and, you know, you're, you're probably billing out, you know, the time, hundreds and hundreds of dollars an hour.

And you know, back in those days we were making about 30,000. You're like, oh, something's not right with this model. And, uh. Again, great experience. I don't have anything bad to say about it. I was like, I want to get out here and try to do something on my own. So we started this industrial automation company 'cause we had a really good opportunity.

And, uh, the lesson I, the biggest lesson I think I learned there was that you have to be a little bit more intentional about your [00:25:00] life and lifestyle. So when you're automating a factory or a warehouse, you're not hanging out in New York, Miami, la you know, you're, you're traveling to remote areas of the country living out of a suitcase three months.

Three weeks outta the month. Mm-hmm. And you know, that's not really the, that best, uh, model for later having a family. Mm-hmm. So, you know, it was a lot of travel. And the second lesson was that I didn't think about scale. You know, when you're moving, uh, material over top of people's heads, you know, with bridge cranes and automating them, it's really hard to build a scalable company.

Mm-hmm. 

Because it's hard to trust somebody else is gonna develop computer programs, algorithms, or move material without making mistakes. 

Mm-hmm. 

So, and finding people that wanna travel that much and be in remote areas. Right. You know? Yeah. One of, one of the interesting things, when you're starting up a new facility or a factory, you're part of a huge team and it's, it's pretty cool that team, how everything's coordinated to build a new maybe [00:26:00] warehouse or whatever.

Mm-hmm. But um, in the end, typically there's performance bonds for things starting up and running and making sure that a start date hit. Because if start dates not hit for a major corporation in their factory, you know they're gonna lose money. Mm-hmm. And what happens is everybody else, all the equipment manufacturers get the first priority of the schedule.

The software guys get the very last piece. And typically we were supposed to have the last, you know, seven, eight weeks to test. Very often we would get the system two, three days before it's time to go live. So it was working through around the clock. You know, and it, it just wasn't a very good business to, to go build and scale.

Did you find it, were you working too much in the business and not on the business at this point? Oh, 100%. Yeah. How big was your team? 

We grew that one to seven figures, um, pretty quickly. Team wasn't huge. It was, you know, around 10, something like that. Okay. Um, but it was really hard to find people and keep good people that would wanna travel [00:27:00] that much.

Right. Work in that environment. Um, again, great experience, you know, never turn the clock back and not do it. 'cause it was a great experience to learn those things. Mm-hmm. But I think, uh, you know, as we moved into the 2000, we realized we had all these developers and programmers, and at the time the web and e-commerce became very hot.

Mm-hmm. And we realized, hey, we could, you know, sell off some of the technologies, which, which we did to customers. And then start a company. We started coming called the Solutions Developers Corporation, which was mainly e-commerce web commerce. Um, using the same talent, but staying local into the DC region.

So before you started solution developers mm-hmm. What, what year was that? Around 1999. 2000. Okay. 2000. Okay. What happened to the old company? Did you fold it into solution developers? We, 

we used some of the employees and moved them over to the new company. Okay. And sold off some of the technology. We had a couple proprietary technologies that some customers ended up buying, but it wasn't retirement type money.

It was more enough money to [00:28:00] help fund the next venture. Got it. 

Okay. So you, you, you got a lot of really good experience, great experience, you know, working and scaling a business. I 

joke that that's, you know, that was the MBA right? You're, uh, learning. Mm-hmm. And I think that one of the most fortunate, um, experience I had when building that was to get involved with a couple CEO clubs.

And not really see clubs, you know? 'cause I was always like, mostly typically the youngest guy in the room. It was more like, you know, I was joining another club of a bunch of mentors, 

like a peer group, 

like a peer group. Mm-hmm. But they weren't really peer, you know, I have had the smallest company in the group and it was great to learn from people who had built and scaled companies before.

Mm-hmm. And, uh, you know, I still have some of those people who are still really good friends and, uh, you know, I'm very blessed and thankful that I've had them as people, as advisors. So, 

being a young man who was exposed to some really interesting technologies and customer methodologies and processes with Anderson Consulting at the [00:29:00] time, what, what was the spark that created this ambition to go on your own, to do your more of an entrepreneurial type model?

Because that, that's not common. 

That's a good question. As I was younger, you know, um, growing up in small town, Hagerstown, Smithsburg, Maryland, I saw people who had built their own businesses and become very successful, and it seemed like they had more freedom and control of their own lives and destiny.

Right. And, uh, I think one of the things that I thought was, wow, you go create your own business. You have a little bit more control, um, and, and freedom to do what you want. And, and that's kind of a, I guess, a little bit of a fallacy in the beginning. Mm-hmm. Because then, you know, if you don't put the right systems in place, the business can easily control you.

Right. Is, uh, you know, we've talked about before, but I, I think it comes down to, as I look at some of, like my big core values is, [00:30:00] um, being a little bit independent, but also like, I'm trying to think of what the right word is. It's having the freedom to do what you want when you want. 

Did anybody in your family sort of business or were they entrepreneurs?

I, I didn't, you know, have anybody in the family, but I had, you know, I had parents, friends of parents that had businesses. Okay. Was that a motivating factor for you? I think that was probably a partial, a motivating factor, of course. Yeah. Maybe, you know, seeing, seeing that, uh, some of them had some great successes in their businesses.

Um, but I think, again, like you said, there's a lot of people who have those businesses and it, it becomes a lifestyle business and they don't learn to scale or ever get out of it. 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Just coming from a small rural town, you know, there usually we see people that have family members. Sure. You know, because there's a lot of small businesses in small towns, right.

That's what they do. Um, and it, you kind of catch the entrepreneurial bug that way. [00:31:00] Or maybe there's a motivating factor if somebody told you you can't do it or you won't, you know, do something or, 

you know, we could probably get into a lot of stuff about that. So, you know, I grew up, uh. So a single mom and who remarried when I was eight and you know, my biological father wasn't around.

But, you know, my, my, you've met my stepfather, I believe. Mm-hmm. Who I consider my dad. Um, you know, I have his name obviously. Um, I do remember as a kid saying, somebody saying, oh yeah. You know, he'll never be able to do it. You know, I think that some of those type type of things spark you to, um, have some sort of drive that maybe is mm-hmm.

Healthy, but unhealthy. Right. 

Getting a chip on your shoulder. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Kevin was here, he was also from a small town near Houston, and you have a similar experience. Okay. Yeah. You know, so have I, so it's kind of a shared experience that way, but when somebody, when somebody puts a bug in you, it says, [00:32:00] you're not worthy.

You won't. You won't amount to anything or you can't do something, all it does is just fire you up to, to do more of it. Like, oh, okay, I'll show you kind of thing. 100%. Yeah. 

But I think as leaders and entrepreneurs, we also have to put that and be healthy about putting that in check. Right. Because it can create, drive that 

there's a dark side for sure.

You know, you, you probably saw last night my, my son challenged me to lose 10 pounds and I said, you know, there's no way I'm gonna lose this bet. So he said, came home. I said, we're ready, let's go. 

You're a Max's pizza and you That's right. You know, you had a full menu chose, you put that 

incredible pizza in front of me and I said, Nope, can't do it.

You get a salad. What 

were you thinking? 

That's right. You know what I was thinking about that I had to be able to win on that. Right? 

Yeah. Well, your son's fit. He's, that's right. He's, yeah, 

he's, uh, done an amazing job 

and like I, I saw him as a small kid. I haven't seen him in a while. Like, what is he like 6 4, 6 5?

He's about six three and Yeah, well I think he told me last night he [00:33:00] what? Benches about three 10 and squats 4 54 60. He can almost 

lift what I can, which is incredible. There you go. Look at you. 

You know what, I'm gonna stick you guys in the gym and let you compete. See who can live more. That'll challenge you.

I actually thought about that. Yeah. Since 

he's going to the gym, I'm like, you know, maybe he, and I'll sneak off to the gym. Two zero Wednesday. There you go. You should do it. How many reps of 2 25? We could do. You should do it.

So taking this unique exposure that you had, um. Into solution developers. This is where you and I met, I think this is about the time we did, we originally met, it was around 2000. 

Yeah, that's great. Because I think that's pretty crazy if you think it's been that long. 

I started TRS in 2001 right after nine 11, which had nothing to do.

Well, it had some impact, but, um, but I, I believe that's when you and I first met. 

We did. So that was the year Chase was born. 

That's right. So yeah. Trey was born in oh two. Okay. [00:34:00] Yeah. I remember. Yeah. We were pregnant with him when nine 11 happened. Wow. And it was pretty shocking 'cause that was actually at a government facility.

Okay. 

When, when these planes were hitting and I'm thinking, you know what? I think I'm gonna go home. That had to be pretty scary. It was scary. Yeah. It was scary. Then, then later come to find out that one of the. Planes that crashed in, um, Pennsylvania was probably heading to where I was, so 

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Yeah. It's amazing. It's been 20 years, 

has it been? Yeah. I guess it's been 20 years. Yeah. It's crazy. So, getting into solution developers. Sure. So what was the, what was the catalyst from there? 

Um, so the catalyst there was really just trying to take, you know, we had, it was starting to look at a couple more systems and we looked at, you know, starting to look at financials and we had all these people who were pretty much at the time, Microsoft programmers.

Mm-hmm. And, you know, we're traveling all over the country, were living outta suitcases and, [00:35:00] you know, it's really hard. You, you couldn't ignore the e-commerce boom at the time. Mm-hmm. Right. That became pretty hot. So we got into, involved with some e-commerce systems, started doing a lot of work for associations and nonprofits in the DC area where they were building, funny enough online bookstores, online membership systems.

Mm-hmm. And, uh, you know, most of the technology is kind of. Translated so, 

so have you always been focused on Microsoft technologies? 

Most of my career, yeah. Um, each company's been at the, you know, Microsoft Gold level partner. Right. Um, have grown, grown them, but, uh, I think as I've matured and gotten older, you realize that you don't always have to build a technical solution mm-hmm.

To build a company. You can solve problems, you know, as, as the third business I'm sure we'll talk about in a little bit, got into really strategy and consulting around the cloud. Right. So, yeah. So, um, you know, after, after solutions developers, uh, we grew that business for 10 straight years. We grew it through, uh, you know, even the recession [00:36:00] 2007, um, was a great business and, uh, finally just decided to exit.

'cause uh, my partner and I wanted to do some different things. 

Remind me again, you had 50 employees at the time, or? 

No, we were probably in the twenties at 

that point. Twenties, yeah. Okay. Because I, I remember. Us going out for wings and beer. Yep. Talking about your idea of exiting. And I was, we were, because we were in the same boat, you know, I was at a point where, you know, I was making myself sick and run, running 80 hours a week and thinking of an exit too, but we're like, what the hell?

It's like in the middle of this economic calamity. Yeah. I, 

I probably haven't ever given you credit, but I can hear publicly for, for probably talking me and swaying me into going in and starting one completely on my own and, uh, mm-hmm. You know, obviously that ended up being a, a pretty good success, so thank you for that advice, probably.

Sure. 15 years ago, I don't remember, but that's awesome. That's right. [00:37:00] Well, you know, um, I had a great partnership and I think that's a, a good lesson actually for people is, uh. Culture. And you know, I I, I saw on your agenda, you had something out there about talking about making sure that you do the legal groundwork when you're starting a company.

Mm-hmm. And, uh, you know, I had a great partner for Solutions Developer. We were really good friends and, uh, it's just we wanted different things outta life, toward the end, you know? Mm-hmm. And, uh, I saw an opportunity to create something else. He had an opportunity to do something differently, and it was, it was time, you know, while we were younger, we all had exact same values and timelines and things that we wanted to do.

As you grow through life, that changes, and you need to make sure that you think about your partnership agreements mm-hmm. When you're first setting up a company to make sure that you're ready for that. And maybe don't make it quite as stressful in a hassle Right. When the time comes. Mm-hmm. You know, I know you went through some similar, similar things, right?

Mm-hmm. Um, but, you know, it all worked out in the end and, uh. [00:38:00] The last one. You know, I'm, I'm been very blessed to have an amazing staff and mm-hmm. The crew and build a great management team. And, uh, they did some amazing things over a decade. 

Yeah. You, I mean, we as individuals evolve, you know, for sure over time and, and our needs and desires change and, you know, sometimes you wanna do something different and it's, it's okay.

Right. And that's why you have partnership agreements and shareholder agreements and talk about strategy and you can figure out all types of different exit strategies or bringing in other people to run your business, to allow you to go do other things, uh, because you know, you don't have so much amount of time.

That's right. You know, and, and, and working in technology, if it teaches you anything, it can basically say, you know, you could be replaced in a short amount of time if you don't. Keep up with trends and we, you know, the future is, is, is heading towards, just like with AI [00:39:00] today For sure. I know we're gonna talk about that, but we can talk 

about 

that a little bit 

here.

You know, 

AI was a joke, right? 20 years ago. Yeah. Oh no. You need a human being in the middle. Are you crazy? Computer can't make decisions that's right 

now. Well, you know, it, it sound, you know, talking about that previous topic, it sounds cheesy. You know, you think of the Stephen Covey begin with the end of the mind.

Mm-hmm. But you as an entrepreneur, somebody trying to build value in an organization, you really have to start to think, you know, I think we all think we might know at the end game, and that's gonna change, but you really do need to at least have some target that you're thinking about. Hey, here's how I'm gonna start it and here's how I might, I may think about getting out of it one day.

It may be a couple options. Mm-hmm. But at least, especially in a partnership talking about what that looks like. 'cause the beginning can all seem very exciting about starting the company. Right. And then you get in the grind together and then you're doing things and then real life starts happening. Right, exactly.

And as we both know, life can turn on a dime. That's right. Yeah. Which is interesting. But also suppressing it's fun can be the fun part. Right. So I guess, [00:40:00] 

um, you know, I'm a big believer that it's always, you know, different opportunities. Right, right. You gotta look at the opportunities. 

So when you decided to sell solutions developers mm-hmm.

You said you had 20 some employees. That's right. Um, so I'm factoring, is that about 8 million revenue? 7 million? Yeah. 

I think we were right around there somewhere. Right, right around the five ish or something. We're right in that. I don't remember the exact details as long as it was. But 

did you, did you hire a broker to help you sell a business?

I did not. I 

actually sold it to my partner. Okay. So that's what I said at the time. He wanted to do a little bit different things. He wanted to build a products business outta something that we did. And, uh, you know, I think for, so he bought you out for me. So yeah. So I ended up, um, getting bought out and then I kept a couple customers and Yeah.

Um, related Is, is that business still around today? Is he still It is, it's a different, different name now though. Okay. So, 

and he's still doing 

the 

Microsoft 

support? Uh, I believe they're doing that work, but they do, we, we got into doing a lot of accreditation and [00:41:00] compliance software. Mm-hmm. And, uh, they moved on to build that.

And, you know, obviously I moved on in the collaboration space with SharePoint at the time that was super hot. And, uh, you know, we were, we were blessed that, you know, industry and some things took along the Microsoft 365 path and SharePoint became one of those components. And, uh, you know, we're at kind of the right place, right time, hard work, you know, there's an old saying.

Right, right. Or luck is the intersection of hard work and opportunity. So we, we had, we had some good breaks. Right. And that was a fun business to run. And what I learned during that one was it's all about culture. Mm-hmm. It wasn't always about the technology solution, it was about building culture even before strategy and as we built culture.

Mm-hmm. And you hired people for culture, you grew people and grew leaders, those people could do great things. 

Mm-hmm. Was it an amicable split between you and your co-founder? 

Uh, yeah. I think in the end it was, I mean, there's obviously, when you're negotiating any type of monetary deal, it can [00:42:00] be somewhat contentious.

Mm-hmm. Right. So, and that's why I say, you know, get those, get those agreements in earlier because right then you know exactly what the split's gonna look like. And you know, I think that it's very easily, it's very easy for people to place different values on things. Mm-hmm. And what the value is intrinsically to you than if you have a formula or you've already developed that, you know, begin with the end in mind plan.

Right. Right. 

Exactly. I. So after your second company. Sure. So now, now you're ready to launch Ex Ility, ex Agility. That's right. Yeah. So what year was this? 

That was, we launched Ility in 2011. 

So from 99 2000 to 2011. 11 years running solution developers. Yeah. And now here you are again starting from the ground floor.

That's right. Part three. You got it. So what, what, what made you wanna push forward? 'cause uh, it sounded like the [00:43:00] first experience was a lot of work and maybe it was more than what you had thought, and then you decided to kind of roll it into the solution developers model with other people. And then after running this model for over 10 years, um, it sounded like the business was evolving and changing and perhaps the expectations and desires of the co-founders were also kind of diverging at the time.

A lot of folks maybe would've said, you know what, maybe I'll go work at Microsoft, you know, maybe I'll get a corporate job, make you know, some good, good salary and kind of do what you do. But, but you decided to go back again. What was, uh, what was your motivating factor for that? 

So as we grew solutions developers over 10 years, we had developed a, a small little product that we, um, had built in a framework for, for developing certain systems, but we also were doing a lot of work in the collaboration space.

Mm-hmm. 

And I think the [00:44:00] motivator for me was, um, I didn't want to get into product development and, you know, we were already writing some pretty significant checks for investing in our own product. And as Microsoft released Tahoe, which eventually became SharePoint mm-hmm. I saw, wow, we don't need to build everything.

Um, I had a really great CEO consultant that, you know, told me there are. Things that you can only, you can fix as a CEO and the leader of a company. And there are things that money fixes. And just like back in the days of the Oracle or the Sybase, I saw, wow, there's this platform SharePoint coming out. I really believed it was gonna change the landscape for people working on documents and processes together.

Mm-hmm. And, uh, you know, maybe made a right pick there. At the time the collaboration became really, really big. We built a, a bunch of SharePoint customers out. We had developed some government agency contracts, which at the time I had no idea how to really even do business with the federal government. Um, that was a [00:45:00] really good journey to learn how to do.

And, uh, we built staff up and we were doing work. And then all of a sudden we had that government shutdown, if you remember. I 

do 

remember for six weeks. For six weeks. Mm-hmm. And, uh, we didn't lay a single person off. Um, which as you know, is a startup company. It's super hard because of cash. And, uh, we just went out and we started grinding the phones to sell some commercial deals and, uh, you know, it was hot enough that the people were really needed, obviously in the industry.

Mm-hmm. Um, who had experience with it. And Microsoft Office 3 6 5 had just come along and put SharePoint into their one online tools. So now we had a commercial business selling 365 and, and SharePoint and all these other technologies and, uh, moved to our staff over that. We were fortunate. You know, we, we definitely, you know, took it on the chin a little bit.

Um, but I was a big believer that, you know, not doing layoffs was something that helped with culture. Mm-hmm. I mean, it helps you track people in the [00:46:00] future, helps you build that internal teamwork atmosphere. Mm-hmm. And uh, so we went out and we got people put on some commercial commercial work. So, uh, everybody was still gainfully employed and then the government opened to back up.

So now we got dual lines of business and we need more people really quickly. Right. Yeah. Um, but it, it ended up being a great strategy and philosophy for de-risking the business. 'cause you have, you have commercial where you can build new products and new innovation and then you can bring those over to the federal side.

Mm-hmm. So, uh, I think it was a great lesson learned there for being able to take technology from one area to the, the next. Right. Um, 

did you bootstrap your businesses or did you raise 

any funds? I did not raise funds for any single one of them. Okay. So you're 

bootstrap all the 

way. It was all bootstrap.

Uh, first one rolled money into the second one. Second one used some of that money to start the third one. Mm-hmm. And then, uh. As you know, I was able to exit that [00:47:00] business in 2022. 

Yeah, a lot of people don't understand. It's like when you bootstrap, like you're going out without a paycheck for a while. 

Oh, for sure.

You're the last to get paid, right? Yeah, if, if you get paid, but 

even if you're working in the business, you could bill, like, you could work your first month for sure and then submit your invoice. And then most of them now are net 45. They used to be net 30, but traditionally they're net 45 or net 60. So theoretically you could go three months without a paycheck.

So I tell entrepreneurs all the time, you know, be prepared. To not eat for three months or at least have three to six months of, of savings. Just to, so you could pay your bills. That's right. Well, in, in the consulting business, like you had 

just mentioned, you know, you may hire three people, five people, 10 people, whatever it is.

Mm-hmm. They bill for the first month, you send out your invoices. Right. You're still cutting payroll every 15 days. Exactly. Yeah. And uh, you know, I think that was one of the, the big, uh, [00:48:00] things that finally hit me when I decided to exit was everybody's like, oh man, you must be killing it. You got a hundred and some employees, or maybe it was 120 with contractors, and really all you're doing is you become a big bank in that business.

Exactly. You're cash flowing the business. And, you know, I said, well, we make more money when things even out and we stop growing. Mm-hmm. But as long as we're growing. It's still, you know, feeding your profits back into the business. So, 

sounds like a Ponzi scheme. Yeah. That's 

funny. And then, you know, and then in the end that really the end is if you're not paying attention.

I think this is a good lesson for your listeners or, um, new entrepreneurs that are starting. If, if you don't pay attention, all of your net worth is wrapped up in one place. 

Exactly. 

And you have to be very careful. And, and when I decided, you know, to finally, um, merge with another company, it was really about trying to get some of the capital back off the table and limit risk a little 

bit.

Mm-hmm. So, [00:49:00] just kind of winding the back a little bit, so you, you started Xgility? Mm-hmm. This was 2011? 

Yeah, 2010, 11 ish. 10 11, okay. We, we incorporated Xgility in 2011, but we were working on the plans Yeah. Before that. Yeah. 

And then you exited in 22? No, in 22. In 22, yeah. So it was about 11 years. Okay. I remember.

That journey. 'cause we would get together about every two months or so on average. Mm-hmm. Um, you were at 30 employees and then you went 50. And it seems like when you hit 50 employees for some odd reason, you kind of hang there in the fifties and it gets frustrating because it does, there's people leaving at the same time that you're, you're hiring And a lot of people, they don't understand that model either.

Like it's a people business and in people business you have people leaving and people joining all the time to turnover roughly is about eight to 10% a year. Sometimes it can be [00:50:00] higher 

for sure. 

Uh, you know, people get laid off, people switch jobs, lose their contracts. I mean, there's something going on all the time.

Um, but then like, I can't remember, one, one time I talked to you, oh, I met 80 employees. I'm like, wait, what happened? It's like, did you win a contract? And you did. We did, right? Yeah. It was a couple. Yeah. Yeah. It was a major contract. That's right. So. You were, were you priming at that time or, or still sub subconscious?

We did 

win our prime at that time, so we weren't, we were doing mostly sub work. Yeah. I won a couple pretty small primes, you know? Mm-hmm. In the government business, you know, every, everything's about your past performance. So, you know, I, if there's a strategy, it's get in, you do some sub work, you do great work, you develop relationships.

Mm. Maybe you can get something, um, that's a little bit smaller and then use those smaller ones as you expand to, as your past performances to keep getting larger pieces of work. 

Right. I was really impressed that you want a prime contract. 'cause that's like the holy grail [00:51:00] in government contracting. He is like, if you can win a prime contract, doesn't matter if it's full and open or sole sourced.

You won a prime contract, that's like, yeah, it was pretty, pretty cool. It was a gold medal. It was, 

it was very exciting. And there was a lot of great energy at the company built around that. So. 

So that was a major catalyst. That was a major catalyst. 

And it was, it wasn't winning the bigger one that we won.

It was winning the first one. That's right. You control knowing your destiny. 'cause you know, I'm sure as you know, like in the government world when you're a subcontractor, it becomes very difficult to manage the end game. Yeah. You have less control if you may have special Yeah. You have a lot less control, right?

Mm-hmm. And if there's any budget cuts or whatever, you're usually, you're the first to go. The first to go. So 

unless you're specialized and you know, one of the MVP players on the team, there's definitely some 

strategies and tactics that you may wanna play. Like, you know, trying to make sure you're working on, uh, projects that are, uh, can't be shut down when the government are shut down.

But yeah, we probably can't talk about a lot of those things 

[00:52:00] and we were fortunate enough to be on several of those. Sure. You know, with that major shut down, I remember. Uh, we had 26 employees at the time of the shutdown and we had 15 that were still working. Right, because even you have a government shutdown, there's, there's things the government needs to still operate.

That's right. Even in the shut it's critical services that 

just can't stop. So, 

yeah, a lot of people don't understand government contracting itself. 'cause you get, you know, you kind of get a, a black eye like, oh you're in the machine. You know, like all the government contractors. And that's the reasons why the budget's so large.

And a, a buddy of mine who works in pharmaceuticals, he's a sales guy. I say the same thing 'cause he starts complaining about, oh, you fat cat government contractors are the reason my taxes are so high. I'm like, oh really? You and your buddies on the pharmaceutical sales side are a reason, right. That's, you know, these drugs are so expensive, 

this, maybe it's just a little too easy to point the finger somewhere else, right?

Yeah. Right. But, uh, you know, [00:53:00] being in that business, it's not like that. I mean, I can, you know, I know that there's a lot of stuff we see in the news today about, you know, contracts stopping or whatever, but there's a lot of great government contracts out there that do really amazing things that 

Mm.

Support our military or support certain missions. And it is a needed service where there's certain things that have to be built and they're not gonna be built internally, um mm-hmm. To start to serve government constituent needs. Right. Um, you know, and I know that even government employees have kind of been under fire with some of the recent news and, you know, I've been in agencies where I've seen some things that you wouldn't be happy as a taxpayer, but I've also been in places where there's some really, really amazing people trying to make a difference.

Mm-hmm. 

So, uh, it's a challenging time we're in right now. 

Always is. So you sold in 22. In 22 and you had 170 employees, about 120 employees and contractors? Yeah. Okay. So if I'm using my math correctly, that's about what? [00:54:00] 35, 40 million? 

Not quite, no. 

No. 30 million. Not quite there either. 25, 

we were about a little over 20 million running right at that point.

Okay. 

That's very healthy. Um, so what was the deciding factor? Why did you say now's the time to go sell? 

Saw an opportunity with a good partner to create an even, you know, greater impact and greater business. And I think as I, you know, I talked to you, it was about looking and I had, I had really good CEO coaches and a couple groups I was involved with.

And the opportunity came, it, it presented itself. Funny enough, it didn't actually work out the first time 'cause we didn't quite have the revenue that that company had wanted. And then we went out and won some more work. And, uh, it's a long term friend, longtime friend, still very good friends with the CEO.

Um, and, uh, we kind of put this concept and ideas together and as I look back on it, I think it was a, it's a tough decision. It's hard when you're running and building a culture and people and all of a sudden you merge it into [00:55:00] someone else and you're not really running it anymore, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, but, uh, no, it was a great, it was a great run at that time.

Um, I think that personally as I started looking, I was, you know, I did the examination of, you know, I have to start thinking of this as an investment, not just my baby in creation. Mm-hmm. Right? And as you look at that and you're like, oh, almost all of your net worth is tied up in one place. Right. And it was a challenge.

'cause, you know, I looked at the, that business and I thought, wow, can I build this into a 50? And I thought, yeah, I probably, I probably could. Right? Maybe I'm delusional and maybe whatever else, but you know, right. I hear sometimes, you know, they say a lot of really good entrepreneurs are business start are a little delusional or you wouldn't probably go through that hassle.

Right. 

Yeah. And you know, I, I felt similar when I sold my first company, uh, Uhhuh. There were other reasons why I needed to sell or was looking to sell, but one of them was, Hey, you're in [00:56:00] your thirties, you're still a young person. Sure. You can do this again, if you really wanted to like, try to remove emotion from the situation and make the best decisions and take care of things like you mentioned of, of all your net worth is wrapped up into one asset.

That's right. You know, you have to diversify at some point. 

And, and I think that's smart. You know, all of the good coaches tell you you gotta take emotion out of it. Mm-hmm. Um, and then there's, you know, the people out there say, Hey, this is business not personal. And I don't believe in that saying like. It is personal.

It's all, it's all personal. You live it. Yeah. You spend as much time with those people and your team as you do your spouse, you're not a robot or whatever else. Right. You know, and it's, uh, it is hard to take the emotion out of it. Um, and you know, I think that's probably some of our challenges is when we do that and finally do exit.

Mm-hmm. 

Right. But, uh, you know, like you, uh, [00:57:00] start to think about you could go do this again. 

Mm-hmm. 

For me, I didn't think I was going to, I had decided to retire at 49 and mm-hmm. Um, spend a lot of time with my kids. Uh, I became a cheer dad. And I don't mean just a cheer dad. I mean, I was the. Team parent for a cheer team, which was, is almost unheard of in the cheer world.

But, uh, me and my buddy Greg, uh, who's a Marine, we, uh, decided we would do it and we'd dress up in the suits and blue hair and it was cool 'cause I got, you know, I spent so much time with Chase and hockey in the business, it was good to get to go do that with the girls for a couple years. Right. That's important.

Um, so it was really fun. Yeah. Like it's a fun time but then you, you sit and you realize well, um, I don't want it to not sound humble because I think, like, I think my reason for being is to try to help magnify others. And I know I said that probably earlier in the beginning, but as I looked and I sat, what am I gonna do?

I have this opportunity to maybe now go coach and help other entrepreneurs not [00:58:00] make some of the mistakes I made. Mm-hmm. And I was very blessed to have some good mentors early in my career. And um, ultimately that's why I appreciate you having me here 'cause I get to do some of that. So. Absolutely. Yeah.

So it'd be fun today. 

Well, as I mentioned, it's, it's a very inspirational story and others need to understand and listen and hear and take, take your lessons forward. 

Yeah, so, so my son and I now have, uh, and it was all him. We get in the AI space in a while, 'cause I saw you smiling in the eyes Glisten when we talk ai.

But, uh, last summer we decided, you know, he's studying accounting and finance and uh, hopefully I'm, I'll be able to get my girls involved as well as they get more interested in business as they get a little older. Um, started a venture capital company, formed a company called Strong Horn. It was all his brand.

He created the brand using AI technologies. Oh, that's cool. Uh, and, uh, we got that role and I think that the, the interest there is there's gonna be a lot of, uh, future in things where AI can make a difference. 

Mm-hmm. 

And I think that we also gotta think about some of these other [00:59:00] solid businesses where AI won't change them and there's a lot of growth opportunity.

I. Uh, in this country for people that maybe don't wanna go to college, but wanna do some of the trade businesses and other things. Mm-hmm. And, and learn leadership and still be great community citizens and do awesome things in the communities. 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. AI is interesting. Um, we were talking about this last night at dinner.

The philanthropic CEO recently put a blog post out. It was end of last week and I'm actually writing a response to it. Okay. Did you see 

his video? 

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Saw a video. Effectively he is saying that AI is going to replace more than 50% of all entry-level jobs and in the next five years, and I believe he said 80% in 10 years.

So it's gonna make a major dent in the workforce. 

I think he said a pretty significant, and it was almost like a [01:00:00] 10% increase in. 10 to 20% increase in, um, unemployment. 

Yeah. Unemployment would skyrocket to 10 to 20. And 

I think that's the big news right now. But, you know, and I think from an AI standpoint that AI can do a lot of good things, but I'm a big believer of you gotta keep, you know, there's a philosophy of keeping human in the loop.

Mm-hmm. And I think that we gotta look at AI and how can it amplify what we do and what we do better. Um, side note, it drives me crazy when I saw these schools and you know, my kids and they're saying, oh, you're not allowed to use chat GPT, or you can't use AI in any of your projects. And personally, I believe we should just be setting the bar for the delivery of the project should be better and higher, but teaching the kids how to use these because it is gonna be the future.

Well, I mean, you can't tell them, don't use this cool technology that'll make your work more productive and improve efficiency. You would think not. Right? You know, so it it goes to where you're swimming [01:01:00] upstream. It's, it's like this concept where the academics, the government, politicians, in my opinion, uh, they're afraid.

Like I fear, I, I I feel as if like this, this monster technology is gonna come and erode the current structure of how education is delivered and how businesses are run. But it's gonna happen, right? I mean, you see big tech leading the way with like Waymo for example. You know, Google with the Waymo, the self-driving cars.

Sure. Um, a lot of companies I was at Microsoft said that most or large percentage of their development now is using AI tools. Oh, I believe it. And every one of these companies were laying off developers and, and you know, I'm even asking kids, like when I was at Purdue a couple months ago, I was in two different classes and I asked both classes, how many here are seniors?

You [01:02:00] know, and about I'd say half the class raise their hand. And I'm like, okay, how many you have jobs? And it was like, less than half of those graduating had jobs. Wow. And of course I asked him, what job do you have? Like, where are you going? Who hired you? And then I asked the other, other section, I'm like, okay, what are, what is your plan?

Like, you don't have a job. What are you gonna do? And I got, I don't knows to, I'm going to grad school, so they're gonna keep going down the academic route because they have nothing better to do. Sure. But it is a clear sign of the times that companies, large companies are developing more. Use cases of AI tools and that is starting to replace human beings, specifically those that are white collar at the moment, like writing code, doing engineering, um, you know, basic stuff like that.

Yeah. I, I think it's something that we [01:03:00] have to take into consideration. Mm-hmm. But I think if we, let's step back and look a little about history. Right. And we've seen this cycle happen multiple times. Right. I've seen it happen for every one of the businesses that I've been in. And it, it made me think about, um, something last night.

'cause we were talking about, uh, the new bowling alley being built. 

Mm-hmm. 

You know, years ago there used to be a job called a pin setter. 

Mm-hmm. 

There's a person that went down and set up all the pins before you go to the bowling alley. Does anybody miss that job being out there right now? 

No. I. Yeah. 

And so, you know, if you look at those type of things, I think it was, maybe it was sa, Sam Altman was talking about the lamplighters.

Mm-hmm. Nobody light goes around. Lights, lamps. And, you know, and us, you know, being around the telecom industry, remember there used to be a switchboard operator that take a plugin, plug a right phone in every time you make a phone call. Mm-hmm. We don't miss any of that. Right. That was way before our time though, but Yes, I know, but yeah.

But I'm saying like all that type of, we're not that. Yeah. So, so were [01:04:00] lamplighters, I hope. Right. But, um, as you think about that, like our GDP and our output as a country has still grown over just from the, you know, the nineties what? 200, 300%. And if you look at, you know, the first business I started was industrial automation.

You know what? Everybody told me, oh, you're putting people outta work. 

Mm-hmm. 

It's like, well, you know, there, there is a part where we have to do something to remain competitive because other countries are gonna do it. 

Mm-hmm. 

But I guess, you know, and maybe it's the. The sickness of being an entrepreneur that'll have this abundance personality.

And I think that, hey, there's gonna be opportunity out there for everybody. Yeah. But you have to maybe rethink and change and transform the way you think about things. Right. And you also have to transform faster. 

Mm-hmm. 

The scale of which we have to transform and retrain what we're doing is much faster.

But if you think about industrial automation, it was all, you're gonna take the factory jobs away. Well, you're not, maybe you're retraining those people to not do a dangerous job [01:05:00] anymore. 

Mm-hmm. 

And maybe if they're willing and wanna learn something more, they can now learn more about, you know, if you think about, uh, automation of a material handlings or a distribution center, now there's, there's nobody carrying boxes around, but there's tons of logistics work.

Mm-hmm. 

You know, I have a, a, a bunch of, you know, uh, quote nieces and nephews and friends that are going to Tennessee to study their logistics program, you know, to Right. Learn how to move things around those businesses or jobs weren't here. And then we go to commerce, right? Like we got into e-commerce.

Everybody said, oh, that's gonna re destroy all of the stores. 

But are the new jobs that are being created, are they quality? 'cause I mean, if you read the BLS statistics, the non-farm payroll jobs, sure. For the longest time, a lot of government jobs, government was leading the way. Right? Right. Because they were doing a lot of the job creation.

But if you look into the private sector, a lot of these new jobs are like [01:06:00] $25 an hour or less. You know, like working at retail, working at restaurants and coffee shops and you know, breweries. You know, I mean, if you're trying to build generational wealth or if you're trying to break into something more high end like software development or Sure.

Engineering or working at SpaceX, it's really, really hard to have that kind of degree and background. But, but. You know, I'm just saying like over time, yeah. Their job is being created, but I think they're being replaced by less desirable jobs. I don't know. We'll see. It's a scary thing. It is 

scary. I can understand like why there is such a fear around it and I think that the news amplifies that a little bit.

Mm-hmm. Um, I think that

the message out there is to be prepared to transform, continue learning, learn it at a faster pace. Right. 

[01:07:00] Growth mindset. 

It's a growth mindset. That's why I said it's abundance and growth mindset. It's a, you know, it's the Carol Dweck's work of right of growth that there's gonna be opportunity out there, but it's gonna be different.

Mm-hmm. 

And I think the challenge that we have now as a society and schools and everything else is can we change quick enough to match what the future's gonna Right. hold 

I mean, a lot of people in AI discipline will say, we don't believe AI is gonna replace people, but those that don't adopt tools will be replaced by those that do 

well, and that's, that's where I was going with going back to the industrial automation.

Yeah. The, those factory jobs that might've been dangerous or other things got replaced by some robots, but there's other industries that get created by some of that. When we entered e-commerce, everybody thought, oh, there's never, there's gonna be no more retail stores or, you know, whatever. But think of the whole industries that that created, that that web and e-commerce created.

Um, analytics data and bi 'cause [01:08:00] everybody's trying to figure out how can we market and sell. Mm-hmm. More so there's other jobs that got created around those industries. When we went to cloud, I remember doing cloud and somebody being like, oh, you're no longer gonna have any IT administrators around those jobs are all gonna be gone.

Well the, the jobs that are gone are the jobs where somebody used to go change the mm-hmm. The tape backup machine every Monday morning or Sunday night. Right. But those people now became enablers in the IT industry. Mm-hmm. Learn, you know, an IT job administrator moved to like, now how do I enable Right.

The business with cloud technology. Yeah. So the problem with that I see in AI is there's a lot of those, like you said, those lower end jobs that can be replaced pretty quickly with ai. 

Mm-hmm. 

And it's happening probably at a scale that's unprecedented right now. Right. And that scale and that change, can we adapt as a society and people and schools and everything else fast enough 

to 

match?

Yeah. The cloud analogy is a good [01:09:00] example. 'cause I remember before cloud we had client server architectures where you had a database administrator running the database. That's right. You had a network administrator running the network in the comms. You had a systems administrator who was running the operating systems of where all their applications are, and typically you had an application level administrator who was responsible for all the applications sitting on top of the stack, for sure.

All that got combined into one labor cat called DevOps. That's right. Whenever AWS rolled out its architecture. So the architecture itself inherently redesigned the work required to deliver application layer to data layer, right? So, um, I believe AI is gonna do the same thing. So if I know, I tell kids all the time, Hey, listen, if you don't wanna be replaced, then you need to evolve and become part of the AI movement.

[01:10:00] Meaning learn AI tools, get certified in AI tools, learn the commands, learn the prompts, um, learn how to interact and tell stories and get data out of the system. 'cause those people are gonna be, I believe in, in, in high demand at some point in the future. 

100%. And you know, you spoke like a true former GovCon with the old labor cap word, but Yeah.

That dev DevOps labor category. Right. Yeah. You can't get it out. That's funny. Yeah. 

How do you, how do you think AI is gonna shape GovCon? 

Well, so, you know, we've seen some new OMB directives and presidential directives already, and, uh, AI can do a lot of really cool things. Mm-hmm. Um, I think that I, I, I wanna come back to one other thought I just thought about First.

I think that there will be new jobs created around AI and even in the GovCon world. Um, if you think about ai, we need to make sure that the AI is trustworthy. Is it doing what it's supposed [01:11:00] to do? In the old world, we used to call this all accreditation certification of systems. You remember that before?

We'd put systems in play. Right. But now we need to make sure if we're putting an agent in to do a particular task, is it returning the data that we want it to return? Mm-hmm. Is it returning the decision that it should be returning? Right. And I think there'll be a lot of work that's not, not building LLMs, you know, stuff's gonna happen obviously, but there'll be a lot of other job and quality control and other types of work.

Mm-hmm. That have to make sure your systems aren't hallucinating. Make sure they're not doing, make sure there's no bias. Right, right. A lot of other things come along with that, that are, that are gonna be GovCon type work in, in my opinion. 

Yeah, it's, it's interesting you raise the bias point, which is valid, but you know, it's all based on data.

You know, you got raw data. Sure. That's pumped into a system and it produces result results or suggestions or output. And you know, then people can say, oh, the data's biased. Of course if the data's biased, then the results will be biased. Um, but to counter that, [01:12:00] you know, there's this big problem called insider threat That's right.

With human beings. So if you're working on sensitive government projects, given how the political climate is, is moving today with everything around the world, there's, you know, in the, the, I guess the polarization of politics with the left and the right, you definitely see people now. Matter of fact, it was in the news last week, some guy got busted for selling secrets.

He thought he thought he was selling secrets to foreign adversary. Turned out to be the FBI. Sure. 

Yikes. 

Um, but that insider threat is a huge, huge problem. And I think, you know, government is now using Claude, you know, philanthropic, Palantir, um, all these companies, Andro, I. Um, and that's more hardware instead of software, right?

But, but all these newer technologies companies that are, you know, modeling AI or using ai, they're [01:13:00] moving in and I think, you know, over the next five or 10 years, you know, it's gonna reshape GovCon and matter of fact, sure. I had lunch with CIO of S-A-I-C-A couple weeks ago, and I asked her, I said, what is your thoughts about GovCon and how the future looks?

And she was telling me that they see a world of less bodies and more about delivering solutions. So they were creating a role called Venture Partner, where all these traditional GovCon companies are gonna move into the venture capital side and either create or buy or invest. In a portfolio of technologies and then use that technology delivering service.

Sure. 

That, that's an interesting you say that 'cause one of the companies that we're investing and helping launch right now is a company around AI strategy. Mm-hmm. And it's about which portfolio companies should you put together to accomplish the goals. And it's thinking about those high [01:14:00] level things.

Um, you know, we're using a model that came from partially Harvard, um, MIT, that was about how do you build a business strategy and incorporate all of the things. That you need to think about in AI and bias, you know? Mm-hmm. In the hallucination, in testing for trustworthiness, doing all these things, and then what are the portfolio companies that you wanna use to build that solution?

Mm-hmm. Um, again, that's probably a whole new industry that will be, you know, built out there doing those things. Right. So hopefully there'll be, you know, a lot of opportunity and work in that, that arena. 

I, I mean, I'm excited, you know, I mean, a lot of the thesis that we're providing behind Cape Pure Ventures is automation, ai Sure.

You know, space exploration, you know, data science. So it's, it's a very hot area and there's a lot of new tools being developed every single day. 

Yeah. And, and, and it is, it is a tough situation when we're thinking about replacing people. But you know, if you think about in our federal government space right now, we [01:15:00] have, we still have a, you know, budget issue, it massive.

And it doesn't matter, you know, what side you're on, 'cause. Some people wanna spend money on something, some people wanna spend money on other things. If we can figure out how to use AI to make things more efficient, serve the government constituents better mm-hmm. And produce better outcomes, everybody wins.

Yeah. Two biggest pro issues I see in the government. Um, obviously they spend a lot of money mm-hmm. On foreign policy, so that's money, dollars going to foreign countries For whatever purpose. So there's a lot of that happening. And of course inside the country it's payroll, you know, government effectively is a jobs program, we put a lot of people to work and sometimes they're not very utilized.

I remember a project manager, this is when I first joined Oracle, and when I got my first assignment [01:16:00] outside of the one we talked about in Atlanta, uh, that was temporary. But the project manager, it was a government manager. He would asleep at his desk every afternoon. Um, and it became comical, you know, sort of like, uh, it's just normal.

That's just the way things are. And it goes to culture. Yes. And the culture in the government is based on complacency. It's based on nine to five. Let's just get through the day, do what you have to do the bare minimum, and then we'll, we'll get to it later, kind of thing. And it's sad. Yeah. 

I, I wish I could tell you that I haven't seen that exact scenario.

Right. But I have, but I also want to be careful because I've also seen some people who are just Tremendously passionate about what they do and they work so hard they may overcompensate or make for some of the others and you know. Right. Hopefully those are the people that we have in those positions in the future.

Um, yeah. [01:17:00] AI's gonna be here, whether people like it or not. I think we gotta figure out how do we make us the most competitive and best nation in, in the world doing it? Well, and 

there's an argument, you know, there's a severe population problem Happening, like, for example, in China and Russia and some of these other countries.

And that's one of the reasons we're pushing a lot of these robotics automation. Sure. You know, the use of ai. Whereas our country, we're still attracting a lot of people and there's a lot of people around the world still moving in. I mean, obviously we're having the population issue as well to some degree, but we're also importing a lot of people and, um, we have to put 'em to work for sure.

Right. Otherwise, if you don't put people to work, you have problems. Um, and I, there's still a serious problem that we we're gonna face in the future. If, if we don't create enough jobs, there's 

something that has to be addressed. But I, I just wanna believe that there's gonna be opportunity. It's just gonna look very different.

[01:18:00] Yeah. This is why I don't enter politics. 

That's right. Likewise. 

It's too restrictive and most people don't wanna hear the truth. It's like, well, you know, somebody once told me is like you, no 

matter what you say, if you, if you say one way or the other, 50% of the people hate you, so we'll just avoid that.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So what's next for you? So you're really investing, 

so doing some investment in, um, a little bit of real estate here and there. Um, also some other technology companies. We, uh, have one investment that we're working to launch a company called Right Seat. Mm-hmm. And, uh, the whole premise around that is, you know, in 2023, generative AI technology became very, very mm-hmm.

Popular. And, uh, we came up with all these things called co-pilots and assistants and mm-hmm. All these other, uh, things to help a worker and, you know. We think back to 1984, they call 'em copilots and assistants 'cause they don't want people thinking they're taking your job. Mm-hmm. Can we go [01:19:00] back to that whole concept of, of human in the loop and uh, uh, from some of the CEO groups I'm in, people were coming to me and like, Hey, you know, what should we be doing about ai?

And I realized there's this huge gap of people not knowing where to get started. Mm-hmm. And it's not about using any specific technology or any specific, but it's about thinking about all of the policy things that you might have to think about in the government world related to ai Right. About before you start taking on a project.

Mm-hmm. Thinking about in commercially, what must we be thinking about or what platforms do we use? How would we consider implementing, you know, our first MVPs and getting some wins. And, uh, the whole concept about Right, right seat is because Right seat is where your co-pilot or your navigator sits.

Mm-hmm. So that's the, uh, the name and the, the idea and it's really around helping people find talent in. Um, the AI arena. Mm-hmm. And then helping just with the general strategy. How's that going so far? It's very exciting. It's fun to be part of something that at, at the ground stages again. Yeah. So, [01:20:00] 

so there's this, this concept called imposter syndrome, 

right?

Did that play into your mindset on why you had to keep pushing forward? 'cause you said you were tired, but then you kept moving forward, 

deep down, psychology wise, I don't know that I can answer that. That's probably something I have to do a little bit more thinking about, but, uh, I think there's always the challenge of, Hey, can I do it again?

Can I do it bigger? Can I do it greater? Can I create more impact? Um, what's my purpose in the world? Right? And I think for me it was just sitting around thinking it's like, wow, I have this skill that I've learned a lot of stuff and I wanna transfer it to the next generation for them to teach and learn.

Mm-hmm. And I have a pretty good network and. You know, right now I'm 52 and there's prob Well, God willing, there's a lot of good years left. Oh, there's plenty of good years. Right. So, yeah. You know, but, uh, I think [01:21:00] that if we have the ability to, to do it and teach, and you know, we just talked about the world's gonna be, it should look a lot different in 10 years, right?

Mm-hmm. With all this ai, if we have a, if a, if we have the ability to teach and share some of our lessons, I think we need to do that. 

Yeah. 

And imposter syndrome, I don't know. You know, I've done it a couple times, so I've proven that it's, it's possible with the right mentors, the right help and the right team, the right culture, um, the right processes, like, you know, you're about to talk about it at your conference.

It's not as magical as some people think. But when you, or I wanna believe that at least. Right. 

But when you decided to exit mm-hmm. To officially exit, not roll forward like you did twice. Right. But when you exited that, that third company, did you have something in mind that you wanted to do? And you were, like, spending time with your kids obviously is one thing that's a [01:22:00] no-brainer.

But, um, but did you find a purpose? Like were you, were you satisfied for a period of time? 

I think for a period of time I was, because, um, I got to do a lot of stuff that I wasn't doing for a while. Like Right. You know, all that time is spending more time with the kids. You never, you'll never regret any minute that you do that, of course.

Right. Um, I don't think I intended to do anything else. I thought maybe I would make some more passive investments, um, until friends and industry started asking like, Hey, what about this? Are we gonna do this? And there's a lot of questions around this and. Then I thought, well, maybe, maybe we can give it one more, one more run at a different level as Right.

As you know, now it's more of a, a little bit more passive mode of coaching others to do Right. And sharing knowledge. And, um, I dunno. I think for me it's solely about [01:23:00] trying to pass that along a little bit. 

Yeah. 

Um, I was very blessed early in my career to have some good mentors. I would never be sitting in this seat talking to you.

You know, I, I remember growing up and thinking, wow, you know, if I just got an engineering job somewhere, that would be like complete set success in life. Mm-hmm. And, uh, there's nothing wrong with that. 'cause I think there's a lot of great jobs to do that you can contribute to society, but Right. You know, without a couple CEO mentors being at the right place at the right time a couple times and having people that were willing to teach me and learn that I, that I could learn from.

Mm-hmm. Um, you know, they changed, changed my life, my family's life. Probably, and I hope we changed a lot of lives around us and people that worked at fun company to work at. 

Yeah, that's, that's awesome. So I think there is a psychological switch that happens like after you sell a company, cause you're part of a system, it's sort of like, you know, I work out with a bunch of ex NFL players back in [01:24:00] Ashburn and they tell similar problem or, or sim similar stories where when you're part of a system that's very disciplined, very consistent, you're part of a wolf pack, a group of people all united around a cause or purpose, and then all of a sudden you're on the sideline, you're cut, you're not part of the team, you're not traveling with the team, you're not in the game, on the field, participating on the wins, whether it's a win or loss, doesn't matter.

The fact is, is you're together working towards a common goal. And when you don't have that camaraderie, when you don't have that purpose. It can be very dark and depressing for sure. And I think that's where the imposter syndrome kind of comes through, where maybe it was a fluke, maybe it was just pure luck.

You didn't, you didn't deserve to go through that experience and you kind of forget the 80-hour work weeks and the missed opportunities and staying up [01:25:00] and, you know, running payroll till three in the morning. You know, the, some of those things you don't really remember, but what you do remember is the guilt and the doubt and the depression and the darkness that comes with it.

It's like, wait, okay fine, I'll do it again. I'm gonna show myself that I can do it again. So you're, you're highly competitive with yourself. For sure. And you know, some, in some ways, you know, I kind of deal with that. And it's, it's interesting. 

There was a, I saw something on, it might have been Instagram or LinkedIn of a, a young kid's valedictorian speech.

Like a day or two ago, and it was talking about all he did was wanna be valedictorian and then, uh, for 15 seconds he reveled in it. And at the 16th second it was almost like a so what moment? Mm-hmm. And his pitch, his pitch to his, his fellow classmates was, make sure whatever you're doing that you're still gonna be excited in the 16th second.

Right. And it's [01:26:00] kind of, it's kind like that, you know, you've been through multiple exits and, um, it's interesting when you do have a very high performing group and you're achiever and that the team is building, you're having a lot of fun, getting lots of wins together. Mm-hmm. You know, you build momentum, getting a lot of small wins, and when that ends, there is probably something missing.

And, you know, I never really dealt or kind of delve into the psychology about it, but I know imposter syndrome's real and people are like, oh no, I, I'm gonna prove to everybody that wasn't a fluke. We're gonna go do it again. Um. I didn't think about that intentionally, but you never know. There could, there could be some underlying in that.

Yeah. I mean, especially if you're like a highly competitive Sure. Like insanely competitive person. Right. Which I'm guilty of. Yeah. And you just, once it gets into you, you just, you really can't stop. You just, it's good thing 

we're not playing tennis or golf this afternoon. 'cause I won't let you win. 

We can go 

to the gym.

Okay. I think you're gonna take [01:27:00] me there. 

No, it's, it's a real thing and, but it's motivating, you know? For sure. Trying to have a purpose and live a, a, a good life and, um, give back. And like you said, mentorship is, is very important to folks like us. 

Yeah. I think that's a, you know, you just mentioned something that triggered, uh, a thought and early in your career, I think when you're building companies, you're so driven and so achievement oriented.

That you think about, nothing's gonna get in my way. Mm-hmm. Right. As we get older and we mature a little bit, I read a great book, uh, Daniel, Daniel Goldman has a book called What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Mm-hmm. And it talks about going and transferring from being that achievement mindset. You can still be achievement mindset, but it's achievement of I can do anything I want if I put my mind to it, versus now I gotta build a team, learn to be a little bit more empathetic and get things done through others and help them build.

Mm-hmm. And I think that's a huge piece for, a huge lesson for young [01:28:00] entrepreneurs is they're going out there and putting all that drive in is also making sure they think about, Hey, how are they building the future of the people around them? Mm-hmm. And the other people, you know, um. Maybe it was jobs or one of, one of, one of the top tech execs once said is like, I know I'm successful when I'm the dumbest person in the room.

Mm-hmm. That's, and there's some huge truth about the truth about that. 

Right. That's one of the things we talk about. It's like your, your environment will either be an anchor or you know, will lift you up. That's right. The people that you hang out with every day, that's what it's all about. It's the network you build and Sure.

What you learn from them. So I'm glad you had that peer group experience. Yeah. 

Like I said, I wouldn't be sitting here if it weren't for other people that have been there, done that and shared it. 

Absolutely. Well this has been a great discussion. I appreciate you agreeing to do the podcast and obviously.

Stepping in to be the guest speaker on Wednesday. I, at, I'm super 

looking forward to it. And, uh, I'm, I feel honored that you've selected me as one of your speakers for your [01:29:00] inaugural event. The first, 

the first speaker. You're the only speaker. There we go. Alright. 

Well, are you, are you gonna try to go to the beach while you're here?

I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. I'll try to wander down the beach, man. Yeah, you have to, you, your place is so close. We'll wander down and, uh, check it out and yeah. Get ready for, uh, and amped up for tomorrow. 

Sounds good. So 

thank you again for having me and, uh, you know, being an unbelievable and gracious host and, uh, still pretty excited about saltwater.

That's such a cool concept and, uh, a really neat place to, to stay. So ask everybody else to check it out. Well, I 

hope this isn't the last time you come. 

Likewise,

Amplified CEO is produced by Topsail Insider, edited by Jim Mendes-Pouget, and sponsored by Cape Fear Ventures. For more information about Amplified CEO, Richard Stroupe or Cape Fear Ventures, please contact Christa at (910) 800-0111 or [01:30:00] christa@topsailinsider.com.