#215 David Heacock: Managing and Marketing a $250M Business

0:00:02 I like to think about,
0:00:04 what am I going to be thinking about on my deathbed?
0:00:06 And I know for me,
0:00:10 the things I will regret are things that I did not try
0:00:12 or that I knew I could have done
0:00:13 or thought I could have done
0:00:15 if only I put in more effort
0:00:18 or things that I didn’t do because I was fearful.
0:00:20 Those are the things that I’m going to regret.
0:00:22 It’s not going to be the times where I make a mistake.
0:00:25 And so for me, there is no other option
0:00:27 but to see how big of an impact I can have.
0:00:29 I’m on a mission to build the world’s leading indoor air quality
0:00:30 company.
0:00:33 I’ve scaled from zero to $250 million a year.
0:00:35 And in the next five to 10 years,
0:00:37 I intend to take that to a billion dollars plus.
0:00:41 And I wake up every single day,
0:00:43 working on my business and thinking about
0:00:45 how I’m going to grow it
0:00:48 and ultimately build out my vision.
0:00:58 Welcome to The Knowledge Project.
0:01:01 I’m your host, Shane Parrish.
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0:01:30 Today, I’m talking with David Heacock,
0:01:31 who left his Wall Street career
0:01:34 to build a business selling air filters.
0:01:38 What sounds like an unlikely bet has become filtered by
0:01:42 a $250 million manufacturing company,
0:01:45 producing over 100,000 filters daily
0:01:48 and serving more than 7 million customers.
0:01:51 David shares the real story behind his empire,
0:01:52 walking away from Wall Street,
0:01:55 constructing his first plant, navigating Amazon
0:01:57 and even the freight decision,
0:01:59 he now calls his biggest mistake.
0:02:01 No startup platitudes,
0:02:03 just hard-earned lessons from someone
0:02:05 who’s been in the trenches.
0:02:08 We dig into what actually matters in building a business,
0:02:11 hiring, managing its scale, branding versus marketing,
0:02:14 why many direct-to-consumer brands
0:02:16 aren’t really direct-to-consumer at all.
0:02:20 David talks candidly about balancing between obsession
0:02:23 that you need for success and with family life at home.
0:02:25 And importantly, throughout the podcast,
0:02:28 you’ll see the mindset of a founder in real time.
0:02:30 Whether you’re starting a business, scaling one
0:02:34 or simply curious about turning a bold idea into reality,
0:02:37 this conversation is packed with actionable insights
0:02:40 from someone who’s done it and is doing it.
0:02:42 It’s time to listen and learn.
0:02:49 – You said you felt like an outsider at Goldman.
0:02:50 Why did you stay so long?
0:02:54 – Well, I’m stubborn and honestly,
0:02:57 I had manifested my job at Goldman in a way.
0:03:00 Like, I really, it’s something that for years,
0:03:03 I had idolized and it made happen in my life.
0:03:04 You know, I didn’t go to an Ivy League school.
0:03:08 I didn’t come from a rich Northeastern-type family
0:03:10 that had, you know, family and private equity
0:03:12 and all the traditional feeders
0:03:15 that lead to a finance career normally.
0:03:18 I went to the George Washington University.
0:03:20 And about my sophomore or junior year,
0:03:22 I really decided I wanted to go into finance
0:03:25 and the premier place to work was Goldman Sachs.
0:03:30 And so I became very obsessed with working at Goldman Sachs.
0:03:34 And there’s no pathway from the George Washington University
0:03:36 to Goldman Sachs, at least not at the time.
0:03:39 You know, it’s just not how they hired and recruited.
0:03:42 And I studied economics and statistics in college
0:03:45 and, you know, I was in Washington, D.C.
0:03:48 and I just happened to be really close
0:03:50 with like the economics professors
0:03:52 because I was probably the top, you know,
0:03:55 kind of economic student in college
0:03:59 and did a paper on predicting currency crises
0:04:02 using a diffusion index kind of geeky thing.
0:04:04 And my professors were really impressed by it
0:04:07 and kind of ended up forwarding it to somebody
0:04:09 within Goldman that saw it.
0:04:10 And then I ended up interviewing
0:04:12 within the economics research department.
0:04:13 So I ended up coming to New York
0:04:17 and doing seven or eight interviews and they hired me.
0:04:19 It was less formal of a hiring process
0:04:22 than, you know, the traditional Goldman process.
0:04:26 So I kind of got in through the backdoor that way.
0:04:26 And it was great for me.
0:04:29 I mean, I loved it.
0:04:30 It was such a challenge.
0:04:33 And honestly, I would not be where I am today
0:04:36 without the skills that I honed in that.
0:04:37 So–
0:04:38 – What did you learn there?
0:04:40 Like what specifically, what lessons
0:04:41 did you take away from that?
0:04:44 – It’s really the ability to make a decision quickly
0:04:45 and then own that decision
0:04:48 and manage the risk of that decision.
0:04:51 And so when it fast forward to my business career,
0:04:54 like one of the things that I think that I sell at
0:04:58 is making decisions quickly and owning those decisions
0:05:01 and not, you know, second guessing or not kind of,
0:05:02 like once I make a decision,
0:05:04 I make a decision and I move on.
0:05:07 But I also am very aware of my risk.
0:05:09 And like if it’s a decision
0:05:11 that has a lot of risk associated with it,
0:05:13 it’s something that I, you know,
0:05:15 make sure that I’m taking that into account.
0:05:18 And so, you know, Jeff Bezos has this concept
0:05:20 of one-way doors versus two-way doors.
0:05:22 You know, so you have to be like,
0:05:24 but with two-way doors where you know
0:05:26 that you can always get out of it very quickly,
0:05:28 like I make decisions quicker than anybody
0:05:31 and then manage that and don’t pray so much about it.
0:05:33 But I’m also hyper aware of those one-way doors
0:05:36 where you need to be super careful doing something
0:05:39 that, you know, was irrevocable more or less.
0:05:43 And so I think the hyper-awareness around that
0:05:45 and living that on a day-to-day basis
0:05:49 really accelerated the learning curve for me later on.
0:05:50 – Well, let’s double click on that for a second.
0:05:55 You said growing quickly at Filter by was a one-way door.
0:05:57 How did you think about that decision?
0:05:59 – Well, I don’t know that I said that explicitly,
0:06:02 but I don’t know that that would be untrue.
0:06:07 You know, I committed to my entrepreneurial journey fully
0:06:09 when I made that decision.
0:06:13 And so for me, it’s ultimately a decision
0:06:17 that I knew that I was going to own completely
0:06:18 and there was no failing.
0:06:20 And so, you know, if I was going to frame it
0:06:23 in the one-way door world, it would be around that.
0:06:25 It’s like, I’m burning all the boats
0:06:28 and I’m all in on my vision.
0:06:32 And, you know, there was a long common-looded story
0:06:35 about how I ultimately got into that business.
0:06:38 But when I left my job at Goldman and, you know,
0:06:41 I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do,
0:06:44 but I was determined to make it successful
0:06:45 and to make it something big.
0:06:49 And, you know, a big motivation for me going so public
0:06:52 with my personal brand in the last couple of months
0:06:55 is really about burning the boats behind me
0:06:57 because, you know, I’m on a mission
0:06:59 to build the world’s leading indoor air quality company.
0:07:02 And, you know, I don’t want there to be
0:07:04 any other option for me.
0:07:07 And I know if I come here and I tell you that
0:07:09 and I tell the people that are watching that,
0:07:11 that I’ve effectively burned all the boats
0:07:13 and I’m fully committed to that
0:07:15 because I’m going to wake up every day
0:07:18 and work towards that bigger vision.
0:07:22 And so that was a very calculated one-way door,
0:07:24 as you put it, because I don’t want to give myself
0:07:26 any other alternative.
0:07:27 – I love that.
0:07:29 You mentioned the word “obsessed” earlier.
0:07:32 That seems to take a negative connotation in culture,
0:07:34 but I think you embrace it.
0:07:36 – Yeah, I mean, I think if you want to do anything big,
0:07:37 you have to be obsessed.
0:07:39 Because if not, you’re competing with somebody who is.
0:07:42 And, you know, it’s completely okay not to be obsessed.
0:07:45 I mean, there’s, and not to be super driven
0:07:48 or like there’s no, there’s nothing wrong
0:07:49 with not having that.
0:07:51 But if you want to be the best at something
0:07:55 or if you want to have a disproportionate outcome in life,
0:07:57 then you have to be, we have to recognize
0:08:01 that you’re competing with other people that are obsessed.
0:08:04 And so I think that you’re being quite naive
0:08:06 to believe that you can achieve anything big,
0:08:08 competing with the world’s marketplace
0:08:10 without being obsessed.
0:08:13 And so, you know, I think that, you know,
0:08:15 it just depends on what you want out of life.
0:08:16 – Take me up close.
0:08:17 What does obsession look like?
0:08:20 What does it look like on a day-to-day basis?
0:08:24 And what are the tolls or the costs that people don’t see?
0:08:27 – I have on filter by for 12 years, more or less.
0:08:29 And there’s not a day I don’t wake up.
0:08:32 And it’s the first thing I’m thinking about.
0:08:35 Seven days a week, you know, if I go on vacation,
0:08:38 there’s no, you know, not checking in
0:08:39 or no, I’m not thinking about it.
0:08:41 I actually view vacation as a great time
0:08:43 for me to mentally reset.
0:08:46 But that reset comes around framing about,
0:08:48 hey, what is my next move going to be, right?
0:08:53 So there is no other part of my business life outside of that.
0:08:57 I mean, I’m fortunate that I do have a great family.
0:09:01 And I think it’s possible to have good personal relationships
0:09:04 and, you know, be a good father and whatnot.
0:09:07 Like I don’t think that those things are mutually exclusive,
0:09:08 but I don’t have any hobbies.
0:09:11 It’s my family and my business.
0:09:13 And that is my life.
0:09:16 And I wake up every single day, you know,
0:09:18 working on my business and thinking
0:09:20 about how I’m going to grow it
0:09:23 and ultimately build out my vision.
0:09:26 And that is what obsession is.
0:09:28 I mean, there is no, like I saw,
0:09:31 there was some controversial post a few days ago
0:09:33 about how people shouldn’t work on weekends.
0:09:35 And, you know, talking about the importance
0:09:36 of work-life balance and stuff.
0:09:38 And, you know, everybody’s different
0:09:40 and that’s completely fine.
0:09:44 But for me, my lived experience is if I want to do something
0:09:47 in a big way, then I have to be all in on that.
0:09:50 And, you know, for me, that’s, you know,
0:09:52 burning all the boats and, you know,
0:09:56 waking up every day, working towards one vision.
0:09:58 And that’s what it looks like for me.
0:10:01 – After you had the first plant up and running,
0:10:03 how did you decide what next?
0:10:05 Walk me through sort of like, how do you go from that?
0:10:08 How do you determine what the next step is?
0:10:11 – Well, I think that people like to look back
0:10:15 and, you know, kind of idolize it as if there’s, you know,
0:10:17 there was a plan, it was a plan all along.
0:10:22 When oftentimes it’s, you know, evolution of skills
0:10:24 and an evolution of your thinking.
0:10:27 And, you know, honestly, you know, for the first eight years,
0:10:29 we only operated in Talladega, Alabama,
0:10:31 where I’m originally from.
0:10:34 And I knew it was important for us
0:10:36 to diversify geographically,
0:10:38 but I was too scared to do it
0:10:40 because it felt like such a big risk
0:10:42 and such a big undertaking.
0:10:46 And I didn’t have the guts, quite frankly,
0:10:47 to go in and to do it.
0:10:51 And then COVID happened and I worked with the team
0:10:52 to figure out how we were gonna work through it.
0:10:55 And we were getting so slammed
0:10:57 and about two to three weeks into that process
0:10:58 of working with it,
0:11:01 Amazon stopped third-party sellers
0:11:04 from sending products into their warehouses.
0:11:07 And at the exact same time, FedEx made the decision
0:11:09 to cap the number of trailers
0:11:12 that we were able to ship from our Talladega location
0:11:14 because they were getting overloaded.
0:11:15 It’s basically saying, you know,
0:11:17 we can’t take any more business.
0:11:20 And I was faced with the decision,
0:11:23 do I either expand my geographic footprint
0:11:25 and I made the deal with FedEx
0:11:27 to allow me additional capacity
0:11:29 if I would expand it out
0:11:32 and not overload just their Southeast network
0:11:35 or do I just raise my prices like a lot of our competitors
0:11:37 did and milk this for what it’s worth
0:11:40 and, you know, stay as we are.
0:11:44 And I made the decision to open our Ogden Utah plant
0:11:49 in May of 2020 because after those discussions
0:11:53 and by July of 2020, we were shipping products out of there.
0:11:55 And that was, you know,
0:11:58 when I made the decision to really go all in
0:12:01 and kind of stop being scared about it to an extent
0:12:04 and was really kind of the point
0:12:06 that led us from where we are today.
0:12:09 In 2019, we did about $70 million of revenue.
0:12:11 So we had gotten to some size just grinding,
0:12:13 but it was not super profitable
0:12:16 and it was still just really difficult.
0:12:17 And, you know, now in 2024,
0:12:20 we’ll do about $250 million of revenue.
0:12:22 And so it was COVID,
0:12:24 COVID was a big tailwind for that.
0:12:27 But because we’re in a consumable product
0:12:30 where customers need to come back after they find you
0:12:34 and COVID was such a good customer acquisition time for us
0:12:36 that my decision to actually lean in
0:12:40 and figure out a way to service those customers at scale
0:12:43 is really a key point that allowed me
0:12:45 to get to where I am today.
0:12:48 – Walk me through building the first plant
0:12:51 and the problems and challenges that you had to overcome.
0:12:53 – You know, it’s one of these things
0:12:55 that’s extremely difficult to articulate
0:12:59 because it almost sounds far-fetched so much of it.
0:13:01 And it’s hard for me to even believe I lived it, you know,
0:13:05 in retrospect and being a bit more mature now,
0:13:06 when I look back on it,
0:13:09 it was a very much a hubristic move to say,
0:13:11 I’m going to go out,
0:13:14 I have zero experience in manufacturing,
0:13:17 zero experience in manufacturing an air filter,
0:13:21 never been in an air filter manufacturing plant,
0:13:24 but I’m going to start the process
0:13:27 of manufacturing air filters at scale.
0:13:31 So, you know, when I look back at it with, you know,
0:13:34 kind of more mature eyes, it seems quite crazy,
0:13:37 but, you know, I was younger
0:13:41 and I guess I was very self-confident
0:13:44 and I knew just had the self-belief
0:13:47 that I was going to figure it out.
0:13:51 But it really took me three to four years
0:13:54 to get to the point where we could manufacture
0:13:56 a product profitably.
0:14:00 And what I mean by that is until that three
0:14:02 or four year period, it would have been cheaper
0:14:05 for me to buy the product we were selling
0:14:08 from a large manufacturer of air filters.
0:14:10 – And just repackage it. – And repackage it.
0:14:13 And so, you know, we weren’t actually losing money
0:14:15 in that, you know, our business model was different
0:14:17 and we were lucky that I was good
0:14:20 with the online marketing piece of it.
0:14:22 And it was, you know, I brought a lot of those skills
0:14:24 that allowed us to kind of get through that period
0:14:26 that I did it myself.
0:14:30 But, you know, I, any time in that, you know,
0:14:31 first four years, if you had looked at it,
0:14:35 you would have said that this manufacturing makes no sense
0:14:38 because, you know, we weren’t making any money.
0:14:41 In fact, we were losing potential money by doing it
0:14:44 and it was taking up so much of my energy
0:14:46 and we had so many employees in that
0:14:50 and it was constantly bringing problems.
0:14:52 But I knew that to do it at real scale
0:14:55 that I needed to have that manufacturing.
0:14:56 So I stuck with it.
0:15:01 And, you know, I was living in New York City at the time.
0:15:05 My wife was, or still is a radiologist at NYU.
0:15:10 And we were living here and I would travel
0:15:12 every Monday morning to Alabama.
0:15:15 I actually kept a car in Atlanta at the, you know,
0:15:19 parking go where I would go there a Monday morning
0:15:21 and then drive from Atlanta to Talladega.
0:15:23 It’s about a two hour drive.
0:15:26 And I would stay there Monday through Friday and come back.
0:15:28 And so for the first three years,
0:15:31 I did that essentially every week, you know,
0:15:34 building the manufacturing during the day
0:15:37 and doing all of my programming work
0:15:41 or marketing work or whatever you need at night
0:15:43 for, you know, that first three years.
0:15:45 I mean, and I still did a lot of those functions
0:15:47 for the first eight years of the business.
0:15:51 And, you know, because I couldn’t afford to actually hire
0:15:54 anybody else to do any of those things.
0:15:57 So I did all the finance, all the management
0:16:00 of our development team, all the marketing, you know,
0:16:03 and that’s what the reality of bootstrapping a business
0:16:04 actually looks like.
0:16:06 – You were doing the manufacturing during the day
0:16:07 and trying to figure that out at night.
0:16:11 You were doing all the admin work, all the marketing.
0:16:13 That’s often, my friend Brent Beshore
0:16:15 calls this the ceiling of brute force.
0:16:18 And it’s where a lot of businesses get stuck,
0:16:19 a lot of small businesses.
0:16:23 It’s the limitation on the entrepreneur.
0:16:25 And how did you decide when to hire people,
0:16:28 when to go big, when to take the next step?
0:16:31 – You as an entrepreneur have to really understand
0:16:33 your business if you want to be able to scale
0:16:34 and do anything big.
0:16:38 And it’s almost impossible, in my opinion,
0:16:41 especially when you’re smaller, to hire somebody
0:16:43 that’s going to build the systems that you need
0:16:45 to really do something big.
0:16:47 And you kind of have to do it yourself.
0:16:49 And at least that has been my experience.
0:16:52 And, you know, I think that it sounds great to say,
0:16:54 “Hey, I’m just going to go and hire somebody
0:16:56 “to do all of these things.”
0:16:58 But the reality is that if you really want
0:17:00 to do something big, and if you want to do something
0:17:03 different that there’s not an established playbook for,
0:17:05 which is what we have done,
0:17:10 then it’s your responsibility as the entrepreneur
0:17:12 to go and figure all of that out.
0:17:16 And, you know, we have a mutual friend and Dr. Garner,
0:17:17 and I actually have been working with her
0:17:22 for about two years now, and I’ve really enjoyed that.
0:17:25 But the one thing that she and I have been talking
0:17:29 about a lot lately is that, you know,
0:17:33 I think that I’m at my best when I’m out there,
0:17:36 you know, building new systems, new frameworks,
0:17:39 and getting them started to the point
0:17:40 that, and solidified to the point
0:17:42 that then I can bring in other people
0:17:47 to actually manage them and improve them going forward.
0:17:50 And so that’s the framework that I like to think about it.
0:17:52 And, you know, I only know my lived experience.
0:17:55 I don’t know how other people live this stuff.
0:17:57 But I think the fact that I understand
0:18:00 our finance function, I understand our marketing function,
0:18:02 I understand our manufacturing and operations function,
0:18:05 I understand our shipping function,
0:18:09 all with a great level of detail puts me in a position
0:18:11 that if you want to go and hire all of that out
0:18:14 for your business, and you want to compete with me,
0:18:15 you’re gonna struggle.
0:18:18 But it doesn’t mean I do all of those things now.
0:18:22 And I have a great team, and I’ve really worked hard
0:18:25 at building a management team in the last couple of years
0:18:28 to allow me to build, you know,
0:18:31 to grow and build this business.
0:18:33 But I think as an entrepreneur,
0:18:35 if you really want to grow a business,
0:18:37 then it ultimately is your responsibility
0:18:40 to go and figure out the systems and processes
0:18:41 you need to grow.
0:18:42 If you just want to maintain a business,
0:18:44 that’s a very different calculus.
0:18:45 But if you really want to grow,
0:18:47 then I think you as an entrepreneur
0:18:48 have to take on that responsibility.
0:18:50 – Well, let’s walk through a particular example.
0:18:52 So you’re doing all the functions,
0:18:55 and then what was the key role you hired first?
0:18:57 And I want to walk through how you hired them.
0:18:59 Did you hire somebody who’s done this at scale before?
0:19:00 Did you hire somebody who,
0:19:03 like what were you looking for?
0:19:05 Maybe it’s a COO, maybe it’s a CFO.
0:19:07 What was that first role?
0:19:08 And how did you decide,
0:19:10 I want somebody who’s done this at 100 minutes,
0:19:12 ’cause you’re trying to build a billion dollar business.
0:19:14 – Am I trying, I want to do it.
0:19:16 But I just, I hate the word trying.
0:19:17 It’s a pet peeve of mine.
0:19:19 But yes, I intend to build a–
0:19:20 – I love that you corrected me.
0:19:23 – I intend to build more than a billion dollar business.
0:19:24 Honestly, I think, you know,
0:19:26 I intend to build the roles leading
0:19:27 into our air quality company,
0:19:29 which I think is a $10 billion plus opportunity
0:19:30 for a business easily.
0:19:33 I’ve scaled from zero to $250 million a year.
0:19:36 And, you know, in the next five to 10 years,
0:19:38 I intend to take that to a billion dollars plus.
0:19:40 You know, I don’t like putting any exact timeline on it
0:19:42 because I don’t believe that, you know,
0:19:44 that is even that helpful,
0:19:46 but that is the trajectory that we’re on.
0:19:48 And, you know, like,
0:19:49 I think we need to have an honest discussion
0:19:51 about what you’re talking about,
0:19:54 because I am not the poster child you’re gonna put up
0:19:58 for great hiring practices for management teams.
0:20:00 – I don’t want the poster child, I want the raw role.
0:20:02 – You know, the reality is,
0:20:04 I’ve been in this business for 12 years.
0:20:06 And basically there’s one person there
0:20:08 that I hired four years ago
0:20:09 and they were my first marketing hire.
0:20:12 So like I’d had some people
0:20:14 that had kind of helped along the way.
0:20:16 So like, you know, somebody’s watching this.
0:20:19 Like there were a few other people that came in and out,
0:20:21 but I effectively did all of the marketing
0:20:23 for the first eight years.
0:20:27 And, you know, so then the last four years,
0:20:29 you know, I’ve slowly been offloading pieces
0:20:30 and pieces of it,
0:20:32 but I’m still heavily involved
0:20:35 in our marketing function as an example.
0:20:38 But, you know, now, like 18 months ago,
0:20:42 I hired a CMO to be our chief marketing officer
0:20:45 that oversees our marketing team.
0:20:49 And she was probably the first of the higher level hires
0:20:53 that I actually made, and she’s still with us today.
0:20:56 And, you know, late last year and early this year,
0:21:01 I really focused on recruiting and learning
0:21:02 how to build management teams.
0:21:05 I studied a lot of, you know,
0:21:08 the operating systems that you hear people talk about,
0:21:10 like traction or the Rockefeller habits,
0:21:13 you know, which have a lot of similarities and overlap.
0:21:16 And really, you know, did a lot of soul searching
0:21:20 about like, how am I going to put together
0:21:22 the management team for me going forward?
0:21:26 And I worked with a couple of recruiters
0:21:31 and hired a CFO and a VP of ops
0:21:35 to handle both the finance and the operations function
0:21:40 that have been with me for, you know, six to eight months now.
0:21:43 And I’m very happy with how we’re, you know,
0:21:46 how that’s progressing, but it’s really very recently
0:21:50 that I’ve really started to figure out
0:21:53 how to do what I would call management level hiring.
0:21:56 You know, over the years, like I have people
0:21:58 that are in charge of manufacturing facilities
0:21:59 when that’s where a lot of our people are.
0:22:02 So like it’s more hiring and then training
0:22:04 rather than hiring people that have experience
0:22:05 because nobody has experience doing
0:22:07 exactly what we’re doing.
0:22:10 So I’ve done it, but you know, I’ve had people
0:22:12 that have been in place in each of our manufacturing facilities
0:22:15 that have been important to keeping our operational piece
0:22:18 of our business in check.
0:22:20 And that’s really where I spent most of my time and energy.
0:22:24 And until recently, I largely did all the higher level
0:22:25 management functions.
0:22:30 I built all of the systems that do our finance and accounting.
0:22:31 – I wanna come back to the systems,
0:22:33 but I really wanna get specific on like,
0:22:36 how did you identify you’re building a huge company?
0:22:38 How do you identify the talent?
0:22:40 Is it somebody who’s done this before
0:22:43 at a different scale, the scale you’re trying to reach?
0:22:47 Or is it somebody that has different traits
0:22:49 that you’re looking for or?
0:22:51 – I think that it evolves over time,
0:22:54 but you, how I think about it now
0:22:55 and where I found success.
0:22:57 And I’ve worked with a lot with Dr. Garner about this,
0:23:02 actually, but I realized you need to find people
0:23:04 that have done the task that you’re looking
0:23:07 to get done today or before.
0:23:09 At least maybe it rhymes, maybe it’s not exactly.
0:23:12 But like, if you want to hire a CFO, for example,
0:23:16 I want to find somebody that has done the things
0:23:18 that I know we are lacking before.
0:23:20 And so like in my example, I hired a CFO
0:23:22 that came from U.S. foods
0:23:24 that has a lot of distribution,
0:23:27 managing distribution centers experience
0:23:28 and really cost accounting
0:23:32 and understanding, zero base budgeting
0:23:33 and this kind of stuff.
0:23:35 That’s what we were lacking, that’s what we needed.
0:23:37 And so I went out and I searched for somebody
0:23:39 that had done exactly that before.
0:23:43 And that is how I chose him
0:23:47 and he’s been successful in his role with us so far.
0:23:51 So I do think that historically I have made the mistake
0:23:55 of hiring aspirationally because if I like somebody
0:23:57 or I think, oh, they’ve got a lot of good energy
0:24:00 and a lot of potential, then I have been burned
0:24:04 by that so many times in my career.
0:24:06 And I really had to take a step back a bit.
0:24:08 And I think it’s, for me at least,
0:24:13 hiring somebody that’s done what I’m looking to solve
0:24:17 before is really kind of an important factor for me.
0:24:22 But that doesn’t mean that you cannot then grow those people
0:24:25 or mentor those people or bring them up into other things.
0:24:27 And I’ve had some success with that,
0:24:29 but I think that I’ve made the mistake historically
0:24:32 of hiring aspirationally when I think
0:24:35 that you’re much better off or at least I’m much better off
0:24:37 hiring somebody that’s already solved the problem
0:24:39 that I’ve already noticed I need to solve.
0:24:41 – And is it important that they’ve solved that recently
0:24:44 or is it just that they’ve solved it before?
0:24:46 Is there a nuance there?
0:24:51 – I gravitate towards people that are high energy
0:24:55 and really looking to grow and build something big.
0:24:59 I mean, I’m a big believer in culture fit
0:25:01 being super important because part of the reason
0:25:03 why I do all these videos, I want people to know who I am
0:25:07 and know that I’m looking to grow quickly
0:25:09 and looking to do big things.
0:25:11 And I need people that are excited by that.
0:25:16 And so generally what I found is people that fit that mold,
0:25:20 you know, have had some type of recent experience
0:25:22 of doing something similar to what I’m doing.
0:25:25 And then they are, you know, they gravitate towards us
0:25:27 because they feel a little bit stuck
0:25:31 and they want to be able to grow and do more.
0:25:34 And that’s really the type of person that I think
0:25:38 I’ve found to be most successful in working with me at least.
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0:25:46 Defeating your monthly payments.
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0:26:37 – We’re down like eight levels in the inception here.
0:26:38 I want to come back to marketing in a second,
0:26:40 but what have you worked with Dr. Garner?
0:26:42 What are the lessons that you’ve learned
0:26:45 in terms of management level hiring?
0:26:48 – The most important thing that I get from her,
0:26:52 and I would recommend for anybody to consider,
0:26:56 is first of all, I’m a bootstrapped entrepreneur.
0:26:58 I own my old business, I don’t have a board of directors,
0:27:02 and so I don’t have accountability that’s baked in, right?
0:27:04 And I ultimately have the power
0:27:06 to make effectively any decision within my business,
0:27:10 and that’s great, super important for me,
0:27:13 but also accountability is very important,
0:27:17 and having her in my life was me forcing that accountability,
0:27:19 or one of the ways that I was forcing that accountability,
0:27:22 because I know if I tell her in a week
0:27:25 that I’m going to focus on X, Y, or Z next week,
0:27:27 that she’s going to be asking about it
0:27:29 the next week or asking for an update,
0:27:32 and I want to be able to deliver on that,
0:27:34 because that’s just how I’m built.
0:27:38 And so for me, the most important thing with her
0:27:40 has been building that accountability.
0:27:44 But then the second part of it is having somebody
0:27:48 to bounce around things that are maybe going on in my head,
0:27:52 and help me to become self-aware about what I deep down know
0:27:55 the right answer is, because I think so often,
0:27:59 we know in our gut the actions that we need to be taking,
0:28:03 and they say that the easiest person to fool is yourself
0:28:05 at the end of the day, and so it’s so easy
0:28:09 to talk yourself into believing things
0:28:12 that you want to believe, but maybe that’s a little bit
0:28:14 different than what you know the truth actually is,
0:28:18 and by talking it out with her every week,
0:28:21 then it allows me to get to that truth,
0:28:23 and make those decisions quicker, I think.
0:28:26 And so when you talk about management-level hiring,
0:28:30 she’s been super important for me in figuring that out,
0:28:33 and part of the reason why I feel so comfortable
0:28:35 going public with everything is I feel like
0:28:37 I’m really getting better at that,
0:28:39 and really have a solid team around me
0:28:43 that can help me to achieve these bigger goals.
0:28:46 But I think the biggest thing that she brought to that
0:28:49 was forcing me to be honest with myself
0:28:54 in conversation every week about what really the root cause
0:28:57 of maybe a problem is, or what I’ve maybe overlooked
0:29:00 in the past in examples where this has gone poorly,
0:29:02 and we examine those, and she forces me
0:29:05 to articulate those, and oftentimes by the end
0:29:10 of an hour-long conversation, I’ve come to the conclusion
0:29:13 myself just because I have somebody to talk about it with,
0:29:15 and because I don’t really have anybody else
0:29:19 to talk about those types of problems, or with,
0:29:24 or in a detailed way, and she’s been very key
0:29:30 in allowing me to kind of have that self-exploration
0:29:32 in a very thoughtful way.
0:29:34 – I want to come back up one level here you mentioned earlier
0:29:36 that you’ve been studying how to build
0:29:38 operating systems for companies.
0:29:40 Walk me through some of the different models
0:29:42 and what you think about them.
0:29:44 – Oh, that’s a good question.
0:29:48 I don’t know that I’m the right guy to exactly walk you
0:29:51 through how attraction works, or how Rockefeller habits work,
0:29:56 but my general sense, or my takeaway from them
0:29:59 is you have some that are way more rigid,
0:30:03 and others that are more pushing responsibility
0:30:08 down through your teams, you have some that are
0:30:13 very rigid about recommending only X number of people
0:30:18 can report up to one person, and they hold them closely,
0:30:22 and then I look at it in the context of a business
0:30:25 like ours, where we do so many different things
0:30:27 that it really actually makes no sense.
0:30:30 How I look at it is like I look at everybody
0:30:33 has a different opinion on how you structure meetings,
0:30:35 how many meetings you should have,
0:30:38 how formal you should be around those meetings.
0:30:39 – So where did you land on this?
0:30:41 What’s your business operating system?
0:30:44 – For me, it’s different based off departments,
0:30:46 because like every department is different,
0:30:48 and that was kind of the nuanced thing that I found.
0:30:50 So like how we operate within our marketing department
0:30:52 is very different than how we operate
0:30:55 in our manufacturing facilities, for instance.
0:30:58 And so I have one person who I should mention
0:31:00 is I have a chief of staff named Karan,
0:31:05 who actually gave me COVID on her second day of the job,
0:31:10 when I had hired her here in New York just before COVID,
0:31:11 just before the COVID lockdowns,
0:31:13 and we always laugh because she gave me COVID,
0:31:16 and she was my executive assistant at the time,
0:31:19 and then was very instrumental in helping me manage
0:31:23 the people part of our business through COVID up to now.
0:31:26 And so now she has the title of chief of staff.
0:31:30 And so she’s the one that would kind of be responsible
0:31:33 for helping me in this organizational structure, more or less.
0:31:37 And so we really in the last couple of years
0:31:40 have started to outline
0:31:43 how we expect different departments
0:31:44 to operate and behave.
0:31:46 And it’s like in our manufacturing,
0:31:48 where like some of our manufacturing plants
0:31:51 have 350 people or whatnot there
0:31:54 that do various functions from shipping
0:31:57 to actually manufacturing to material management
0:31:58 and this kind of stuff.
0:32:02 We actually built out a model for that specifically
0:32:06 that works for us with the performance reviews
0:32:10 and they’re geared towards that type of employee,
0:32:12 but then we actually have a different
0:32:16 kind of more traditional traction-like framework
0:32:18 for some of our other departments,
0:32:19 like our marketing department,
0:32:21 where we’re really working on,
0:32:23 I guess they call them rocks and traction,
0:32:26 but like we have certain goals and objectives
0:32:30 that we are looking to meet on a quarterly basis
0:32:31 and on a yearly basis.
0:32:33 And we have a three to five year plan
0:32:35 and we operate within those departments
0:32:37 more on that type of model.
0:32:39 But the thing that I think is actually most important
0:32:41 or the thing that was most impactful for me
0:32:44 that I took away from all of these operating systems
0:32:47 was it all starts with a clear vision
0:32:50 and a clear mission for the business
0:32:53 that then has to roll down to all of the people
0:32:56 that are working for that business.
0:32:58 And I think one of the things that we lacked
0:33:01 as a business, and my big takeaway
0:33:02 from doing all of the research
0:33:04 around these operating systems
0:33:06 was ultimately the operating system doesn’t matter
0:33:09 as much as like what are you looking to accomplish.
0:33:12 And I think that we had not done a great job
0:33:15 of articulating that to our employees
0:33:16 and to maybe to our customers
0:33:18 or even to myself prior to this year
0:33:21 because it’s like, okay, we’re an air filter company,
0:33:24 we’re an air filter brand, what is our mission?
0:33:26 Or is it just to manufacture air filters
0:33:29 and ship them well and do that at scale?
0:33:32 Is that your vision or is it more than that, right?
0:33:36 And we had never, I never really put any thought into that.
0:33:41 And so the first step for me after doing this research
0:33:44 was really building out a mission statement
0:33:45 and our values.
0:33:49 And I spent two or three months
0:33:51 really soul searching on that
0:33:55 and thinking through like, what matters
0:33:56 and like what do I want to accomplish
0:33:59 and what do we as a company stand for
0:34:02 and what type of people do we want to attract
0:34:05 and how do we want to judge our people,
0:34:08 rate our employees and whatnot.
0:34:10 And I ultimately built out our mission statement
0:34:13 which to build the world’s leading
0:34:14 into air quality company more or less
0:34:17 and we define what that means
0:34:19 as well as the company values.
0:34:22 And from operating system perspective,
0:34:26 the thing that I’ve realized is the most important
0:34:30 across all of them is your values are what allow you
0:34:35 to coach your employees to behave in the way
0:34:38 that you as a business value and want to stand for.
0:34:42 And what that means is like bias to action
0:34:44 is one of our core values
0:34:46 and it’s a core value that I have in my life.
0:34:50 And sometimes like if an employee makes a mistake
0:34:54 like that it’s like, oh, Joe didn’t call me back
0:34:57 so I therefore I couldn’t do this thing, right?
0:34:59 Like, you know, that would be an excuse
0:35:01 that somebody may come and give you
0:35:02 but then you’re like, okay,
0:35:04 how do I actually coach you on this?
0:35:06 Because, you know, what am I supposed to say?
0:35:10 Like he didn’t call you back so you failed, right?
0:35:11 Oh, it’s not your fault.
0:35:13 That would be one way of approaching it.
0:35:14 It’s a hard thing to refute.
0:35:16 But if you have a core principle
0:35:18 or of core value of bias to action,
0:35:20 then you can say, well, you know,
0:35:22 we at Filterby have a bias to action.
0:35:26 And like, and what that would mean is in this example,
0:35:28 you need to call him if he didn’t call you back
0:35:29 or you need to make sure you’re following up with him
0:35:31 and doing everything you can to get that fixed
0:35:32 because that’s just what we do.
0:35:34 And we use that as an example.
0:35:36 And so the reason the values are so important
0:35:38 and this goes across the department
0:35:41 is that that is what allows you to frame
0:35:44 all of your discussions with employees
0:35:46 or with partners or whatever the case might be
0:35:49 in the way that you as a company
0:35:52 or you as an organization expect.
0:35:54 And that is why the value piece
0:35:56 of an organizational structure
0:35:57 or the operational structure is really,
0:35:59 ironically, the most important.
0:36:01 And two years ago, if you had told me that,
0:36:03 I would have said, oh, that’s just a waste of time.
0:36:06 Or like, why am I gonna waste my time going through this?
0:36:09 Right, I mean, like I would not have thought much of it
0:36:11 because I always, you know, figured,
0:36:13 oh, I own the whole business.
0:36:16 I’m gonna go just kind of figure it out as I go.
0:36:19 I don’t need to be so rigid.
0:36:21 And I think that that was a real mistake.
0:36:23 – I think a lot of our listeners would think
0:36:26 when you say vision statement, mission statement values,
0:36:28 that they have the exact same skepticism
0:36:30 that you might have had.
0:36:32 How do you use the vision and the mission statement?
0:36:34 Often there are things on a website or on a wall
0:36:37 and people just like, whatever, doesn’t matter.
0:36:40 I loved how the example of how you actually took the values
0:36:42 and you use them to coach people
0:36:45 and you use them to make a difference in the company.
0:36:48 – Well, that was the big kind of aha moment for me,
0:36:50 actually, was realizing we actually had a problem
0:36:52 with a particular person when I was doing,
0:36:54 when I was building these values
0:36:56 and just kind of, you know, going through the motions
0:37:00 with it, we had a problem with an employee that,
0:37:02 you know, on the surface, you would say,
0:37:05 well, you know, was there really anything
0:37:07 they could have done?
0:37:09 But like, I knew like there were actions
0:37:11 that they could have taken that, you know,
0:37:14 would have taken a little more effort
0:37:16 to get it done, not that, well, you know,
0:37:18 this is the great example where, you know,
0:37:21 if we have a biased action in this example
0:37:23 as a core value, it’s a coaching moment
0:37:25 where we can say, hey, you know, this is what we stand for.
0:37:27 This is what is important.
0:37:32 You’re going to be reviewed on these values that we have.
0:37:35 And we take them seriously, then all of a sudden
0:37:39 that gives you a way to frame it with an employee.
0:37:42 But the reality is that in my example,
0:37:45 like, they’re so personal to me.
0:37:47 And so like, I’ve been able to build this business
0:37:49 on my own and, you know, I think that’s unique
0:37:51 and I would not recommend it for most people.
0:37:52 I actually think for most people,
0:37:54 or I don’t know what’s right for most people.
0:37:56 I only know what’s right for me.
0:37:59 And so once I realized that, you know,
0:38:03 I could kind of personalize it and then get buy-in
0:38:05 from the people around me that,
0:38:08 because they saw how these values that we exhibited
0:38:11 were the differentiator for us in growing this business.
0:38:14 And we have tangible examples around each of those.
0:38:15 Once I got the buy-in from that,
0:38:18 then it’s much easier to articulate and show
0:38:20 to everybody within the company
0:38:22 that, hey, we actually take these seriously.
0:38:26 And we give out an employee of the month award now
0:38:28 that we started earlier this year,
0:38:29 where we highlight somebody
0:38:32 that actually exhibited one of our core values.
0:38:34 We pick a different core value every month
0:38:36 and we find somebody that actually exhibited that
0:38:39 and use that as a kind of coaching mechanism
0:38:41 or as a way just to reward somebody
0:38:44 who is living up to our values.
0:38:48 And so like, once I realized how powerful that could be,
0:38:52 then I really became, I really bought into it.
0:38:55 But the key is they have to really be true.
0:38:57 Like, you can’t just make them up.
0:38:59 I think that so many people go through the exercise
0:39:02 and it’s aspirational and it’s great to be aspirational,
0:39:05 but if you’re not willing to actually live by that,
0:39:08 you yourself first, but then also,
0:39:11 if you have somebody that maybe is a high performer,
0:39:14 but is clearly not consistent with your values,
0:39:16 you have to be willing to part ways with them,
0:39:18 even if that’s going to be tough for a while
0:39:19 for your company.
0:39:22 And we take it to that level of extreme
0:39:25 because it’s, to me, it’s extremely important.
0:39:27 And I think if you want to be successful with this,
0:39:30 that you have to have that level of commitment.
0:39:32 – I want to rewind a little bit back to when you were doing
0:39:34 all the jobs you were traveling,
0:39:36 you were spending all week in the factory,
0:39:39 and then at night, you’re sort of doing the other stuff.
0:39:40 You did, you came from Goldman.
0:39:43 You didn’t know anything about DTC marketing.
0:39:45 How did you, how did you learn marketing?
0:39:49 – It’s not 100% true in that I’ve been an entrepreneur
0:39:51 since I was probably 10 years old.
0:39:56 And I was born in 1983 and really came of age in the ’90s
0:39:58 when the internet was just starting to come up.
0:40:01 And so I always had side hustles
0:40:03 and things that I was working on.
0:40:07 And in my teenage years, I was basically assembling computers
0:40:09 and selling them on eBay.
0:40:13 And my eBay screen name was Momentum Corp.
0:40:16 And I’ve always been a believer in momentum,
0:40:17 I guess, from the early days.
0:40:21 And I just think momentum in life and in businesses
0:40:26 is so important and I fight to maintain momentum always.
0:40:28 And at any time I lose momentum, I hate it,
0:40:30 but then I remember I got to go in
0:40:32 and create that momentum again.
0:40:34 We can maybe dig into that later.
0:40:38 But I always was kind of tinkering around
0:40:41 with online businesses.
0:40:46 And actually in 2007, I had just moved to the trading desk
0:40:51 from my economics research desk.
0:40:54 And that was the beginning of the financial crisis.
0:40:57 And I saw a lot of turmoil
0:41:01 and saw a lot of people around me starting to get fired.
0:41:04 And I was convinced I was gonna lose my job.
0:41:07 And my wife was in medical school at the time.
0:41:10 And we had not taken on any debt for her medical school
0:41:11 because I was paying for it.
0:41:15 And I was determined not to take on any debt.
0:41:18 And I started a side hustle
0:41:22 where I was effectively an affiliate for StubHub.
0:41:24 And it was quite scammy what I was doing.
0:41:27 I was using Craigslist as a traffic source
0:41:29 where I had a team of guys in Vietnam
0:41:32 who were helping me to basically spam Craigslist
0:41:34 to get traffic to a site
0:41:36 that then ultimately would lead them to StubHub.
0:41:38 And I would get a commission.
0:41:42 But in 2008, I made about half a million dollars that year.
0:41:46 Just on the side hustle, doing affiliate marketing.
0:41:48 And at the time, I realized
0:41:51 that there’s obviously a lot of money to be made
0:41:52 in this kind of world.
0:41:54 Wouldn’t it be great if I owned the whole offer?
0:41:56 Like rather than being an affiliate,
0:41:58 if I owned my own product, so to speak.
0:42:01 And I started a company called My Office Delivered
0:42:05 where we were effectively drop shipping office supplies.
0:42:10 And in 2009, sold six and a half million dollars or so
0:42:13 of office supplies primarily on Amazon.
0:42:16 And when I looked at the actual underlying data of it,
0:42:21 about 60% of that was either air filters
0:42:24 from a small company in Creole, Alabama called Filters Now
0:42:26 or in cartridges.
0:42:27 Those were the two big markets
0:42:30 or the two big things that drove a large portion
0:42:32 of our revenue.
0:42:34 So then fast forward into 2009,
0:42:37 like my, the financial crisis ended up being great for me
0:42:39 from a career perspective.
0:42:42 And I got promoted and my career really took off
0:42:43 and I ended up shutting down that business
0:42:48 because I didn’t have the energy to continue to do both.
0:42:50 So I shut it down.
0:42:53 But the reason I give you that answer
0:42:57 and it’s something I talk about a lot with people is,
0:42:59 you know, people always talk about money
0:43:02 being the limiting factor in starting a business
0:43:03 or doing something new.
0:43:06 And I think that the reality is the limiting factor
0:43:09 for most people is the skills and the curiosity.
0:43:14 And I, from an early age, was building those skills,
0:43:16 building the online marketing skills,
0:43:18 building the entrepreneurial skills
0:43:21 that ultimately I’m still honing today.
0:43:23 And it’s just been an evolution
0:43:24 over that long period of time.
0:43:29 So it was something I was curious about from an early age
0:43:33 and, you know, kept tinkering and figuring it out.
0:43:36 And so like by the time I actually started the business,
0:43:39 it was just a culmination of me,
0:43:41 of all of those skills that I had already started to build.
0:43:43 And then I just continued to build them
0:43:46 and I see opportunity and I lean into that opportunity.
0:43:49 And I think that that is the reality
0:43:52 of how most successful people operate.
0:43:54 And I think that, you know,
0:43:56 people are always looking for that cheat code
0:43:59 or, you know, that, that aha moment
0:44:02 that’s going to then change their life forever.
0:44:04 And, you know, if that happens for people,
0:44:07 I’ve certainly never experienced it.
0:44:10 For me, it’s more of a slow evolution
0:44:13 and a compounding of skills
0:44:17 and a compounding of knowledge over a long period of time.
0:44:21 But with a consistent focus
0:44:23 that’s long-term that is immutable.
0:44:25 And I think it’s so hard for people
0:44:27 to hold both of those things to be true.
0:44:28 I know it’s been hard for me in the past,
0:44:31 but it takes a long time to compound
0:44:34 to something meaningful and for skills to compound.
0:44:37 And, you know, it’s easy to get impatient,
0:44:40 but if you do it over a long period of time,
0:44:42 you’ll be shocked how far you can go.
0:44:44 But it would not be fair to say,
0:44:46 oh, I just woke up and learned marketing skills on this day.
0:44:49 It was something that I had been interested in
0:44:52 and kind of toyed around with for years
0:44:54 and ultimately honed them more and more.
0:44:57 I still am homing them today.
0:45:00 You know, it’s a never-ending process.
0:45:02 – So let’s talk about marketing.
0:45:02 What does that look like?
0:45:04 Is it Amazon, Google?
0:45:06 I mean, I would assume people have intent
0:45:07 when they’re buying a filter.
0:45:10 How do you think about marketing and branding?
0:45:11 – Yeah, so branding and marketing
0:45:13 are two very different things to me.
0:45:16 And, you know, we can go as deep as you’d like on it.
0:45:19 But I actually would like to start with the brand
0:45:23 a little bit in that I, from the very beginning,
0:45:25 was focused on building a brand.
0:45:28 To me, like if you look at any big company
0:45:31 that stands the test of time or has, you know,
0:45:34 real value is really the brand.
0:45:37 You know, nobody is searching for or,
0:45:39 there are people that are searching for shoes
0:45:41 and there are people that are searching for Nike.
0:45:44 You want to own the company that is Nike
0:45:46 because then people, you have no competition
0:45:47 if somebody is searching for Nike.
0:45:49 They’re only looking for you.
0:45:50 If there’s somebody searching for shoes
0:45:52 and you have to compete with all those people
0:45:56 that are selling shoes, that’s a much harder game
0:45:59 and not likely to be to stand the test of time.
0:46:02 And so I recognized that early on
0:46:05 and it was important to me to build a brand.
0:46:08 But you don’t build a brand overnight.
0:46:09 It’s much like a reputation.
0:46:10 It takes a lifetime to build
0:46:13 and it takes a second to ruin, you know?
0:46:15 And that’s just true.
0:46:18 But from the beginning, you know, we really focused on,
0:46:22 I really focused on branding and, you know,
0:46:24 there’s lots of nuances that go into that
0:46:27 but as simple things like how we package
0:46:30 all of our products and a lot of our competitors,
0:46:33 especially early on, didn’t do any packaging at all.
0:46:36 They were just putting generic filters into a box
0:46:39 and we’ve really gotten more and more,
0:46:41 much better over the years.
0:46:43 I really differentiating within our brand
0:46:45 and we’ve actually rolled out some new media
0:46:48 with Kimberley Clark to do it
0:46:52 and we really kind of innovated and worked to make sure
0:46:55 that we have a best in class product
0:46:59 that people see, they resonate with it
0:47:01 and ultimately led us to launching a Walmart
0:47:04 two and a half months ago, which retail I think
0:47:06 is something you may want to double click on later.
0:47:11 Anyways, you know, branding was extremely important
0:47:13 to me from the beginning.
0:47:18 And, you know, marketing to me is anything
0:47:21 to raise awareness about that brand.
0:47:23 But marketing without a good product
0:47:27 or without a good experience is completely wasteful
0:47:32 because especially if you’re in a high customer acquisition
0:47:35 you know, type business that you need that recurring revenue
0:47:38 or that repeat revenue in order to be able to make it
0:47:41 into a business, you have to have a good product
0:47:42 and a good customer experience.
0:47:46 So a brand all starts with that, just like a reputation.
0:47:48 It’s like, you know, building that over a long period
0:47:51 of time and all the elements that go into that.
0:47:54 But then, you know, from a marketing perspective
0:47:57 the business originally was built almost exclusively
0:48:00 on what I would call intent based marketing.
0:48:04 And so, you know, basically if you search for air filter
0:48:06 or any iteration of an air filter like 20 by 20
0:48:10 by one air filter or 20 by 25 by five air filter
0:48:14 or furnace filter or AC filter, HVAC filter on Google
0:48:19 or Amazon or Bing, then, you know, you’re going to see us.
0:48:21 And that’s been the case for about a decade.
0:48:25 Early on my strategy was I wanted to suck all the oxygen
0:48:27 out of the market in that, you know,
0:48:29 I knew we were vertically integrated
0:48:34 and that means that our cost of delivering a product
0:48:36 to a customer is as cheap or cheaper
0:48:38 than anybody else’s possibly could be.
0:48:41 That’s part of the nuance of our business model
0:48:44 because, you know, we are completely vertically integrated
0:48:46 and, you know, we’re really in the logistics business
0:48:47 not the air filter business.
0:48:50 If you manufacture an air filter for about $2
0:48:53 and sell it on average for 12, you know,
0:48:57 unfortunately that’s not all just profit between the two.
0:48:59 There’s a lot of logistics involved
0:49:01 in getting that product to the end customer.
0:49:04 But because we’ve optimized all of that, you know,
0:49:06 I know that there’s basically nobody
0:49:09 that can compete with us on price
0:49:11 if that was a deciding factor
0:49:13 that I wanted to go on and compete on.
0:49:15 We don’t compete on price, it’s just not something,
0:49:16 you don’t build a brand that way.
0:49:19 But I knew that because of that,
0:49:23 I had the kind of staying power from a marketing perspective
0:49:25 and an intent-based marketing perspective
0:49:28 to suck all the oxygen out of the rest of the market.
0:49:32 And I did that even when it was hard early on,
0:49:35 but I knew that if you were searching for an air filter
0:49:40 or something related that we needed to be the obvious choice
0:49:44 based off of the, you know, taking over all the ad spots
0:49:47 that would be related to that.
0:49:51 And so that was effectively the marketing strategy
0:49:56 that got us to where we are today, more or less, right?
0:49:59 I mean, that combined with great product, quick delivery,
0:50:02 great branding, great quality, you know,
0:50:06 all of those things combined with the sucking all the oxygen
0:50:09 out of that intent-based marketing world
0:50:11 is how we built the brand we have today.
0:50:14 I mean, you fast forward now, you know, on Amazon,
0:50:17 we know because, you know, we have access to the data
0:50:18 that’s pretty public.
0:50:22 Between one and four and one and three filters purchased
0:50:24 in the furnace filter category on Amazon is one of ours.
0:50:28 So like we’ve really taken a ton of market share
0:50:30 in that specific category,
0:50:32 just off of that long-term marketing strategy.
0:50:35 – How do you think about turning an Amazon customer
0:50:37 where you don’t get the data yourself or do you?
0:50:38 Are you shipping?
0:50:39 Are you doing all the logistics?
0:50:42 – We fulfill 100% of our orders on Amazon.
0:50:44 – So you get all the customer data.
0:50:46 – I mean, we get their address,
0:50:48 I mean, we have to ship it to them.
0:50:49 – Do you get their email address and stuff?
0:50:51 – No, you don’t get their email address.
0:50:52 But I know the question you’re asking
0:50:55 and I think it’s the wrong question and I’ll tell you why.
0:51:01 If you are a brand, if you’re a CPG brand,
0:51:03 your goal should be to sell and be
0:51:05 wherever your customers are.
0:51:09 And I shouldn’t care where you buy my product.
0:51:11 I just want you to be buying my product.
0:51:15 And so like 60% of product searches start on Amazon.
0:51:16 That’s just a fact.
0:51:21 So like if you are selling a product that you,
0:51:23 for whatever reason say,
0:51:25 oh, I don’t want to sell on Amazon,
0:51:29 then you are basically ignoring 60% of your potential buyers.
0:51:33 And so like from the beginning and a big motivation for me
0:51:35 starting this business and the way that I did
0:51:39 is I wanted to build a brand and a product
0:51:41 that I could work with companies like Amazon
0:51:44 rather than trying to compete with them.
0:51:47 And when you own a brand and you own all of your manufacturing,
0:51:50 then we’re in a unique position to be able to do that.
0:51:53 And it goes back to that earlier experience I had.
0:51:56 I told you in 2009, a long time ago,
0:51:58 we sold six and a half or I sold six and a half million
0:52:03 dollars of office supplies on, primarily on Amazon.
0:52:05 Like that was where I saw all these people were buying stuff.
0:52:08 And so to me, the opportunity was,
0:52:12 I want to find a product that I can sustainably sell
0:52:13 on Amazon as a channel
0:52:15 because I know that that’s where the customers are.
0:52:19 And so I think anybody that kids themselves and says,
0:52:21 oh, you know, I’m too good to sell on Amazon
0:52:24 or I want to ignore it, it’s just incredibly naive.
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0:52:49 – A lot of people spend a lot of time going,
0:52:51 yes, I want to be on the Amazon channel,
0:52:54 but then I want to take that person that buys on Amazon
0:52:56 and convert them into a direct relationship
0:52:59 because with Amazon, I don’t own the relationship
0:53:00 with the customer.
0:53:02 Amazon is the middle person.
0:53:04 And for better or worse, and I don’t have an opinion
0:53:07 on this because I don’t sell on Amazon at all.
0:53:09 They want to take that and have a direct relationship
0:53:10 with that consumer.
0:53:12 How do you think about that?
0:53:15 – Early on I would spend some time thinking about that.
0:53:19 And honestly, I realized at least in our case,
0:53:21 and maybe everybody’s different, it’s a fool’s errand.
0:53:24 I mean, it’s like, there’s a reason why customers choose
0:53:25 to buy on Amazon.
0:53:27 I mean, there’s a funny story.
0:53:29 She’ll maybe get mad at me for telling it,
0:53:31 but I will about two years ago,
0:53:33 we needed some air filters at our house
0:53:36 and my wife actually ordered our air filters on Amazon.
0:53:38 And it really irritated me at the time
0:53:40 because I said, how in the world, why in the world
0:53:43 would you go on Amazon and buy our air filters?
0:53:46 But for her, she was just doing a chore
0:53:49 and she was looking for the easiest way to,
0:53:50 she wanted to solve that problem
0:53:53 and we buy a lot of stuff on Amazon.
0:53:55 And so she just went and clicked order on Amazon.
0:53:58 And so that’s my wife that made the decision
0:54:00 to go and buy our product on Amazon.
0:54:05 So I quite frankly gave up on spending any energy
0:54:08 and worrying about it.
0:54:10 I’m focused on building our brand
0:54:13 and making the best products we can
0:54:15 and giving the best customer experience we can.
0:54:19 And if people choose to buy on Amazon, then that’s great.
0:54:20 I don’t care where people buy us.
0:54:22 Early on, I thought I would never get into retail
0:54:23 to be honest with you.
0:54:26 And here I am, we just launched in 505 Walmart’s
0:54:30 and really have a big retail strategy going forward.
0:54:34 84% of retail transactions still happen in store.
0:54:36 So I can sit here and say,
0:54:39 oh, I’m just going to sell online
0:54:42 because I want to be a pure direct to consumer company.
0:54:43 And that’s fine.
0:54:47 But to me, that is very short-sighted
0:54:50 and you’re losing a lot of potential customers
0:54:51 in that process.
0:54:52 And I mean, that’s the decision that you’re making
0:54:54 but you’d have to at least know
0:54:55 that you are making that decision.
0:54:58 So that’s really how I think about that
0:55:01 is I’ve really stopped thinking about it.
0:55:02 – I love all the detail.
0:55:03 Thank you for this.
0:55:04 Keep going with us.
0:55:06 Do you outsource the marketing to somebody else
0:55:08 or do you have it all internally
0:55:10 and is that important and why?
0:55:11 – It’s mostly internal.
0:55:14 We do have an agency that we work with
0:55:16 that I hired a few years ago
0:55:19 that does manage some of our ad accounts
0:55:20 that are more on autopilot
0:55:22 but it’s just keeping best practices
0:55:24 and keeping things together.
0:55:26 Like I built out all of our,
0:55:28 like all of our intent-based ad campaigns.
0:55:30 Our budget next year is $42 million
0:55:31 for our marketing in general.
0:55:32 So like we’ve spent about,
0:55:34 it’s a $42 million line item for us,
0:55:35 at least going to next year.
0:55:38 I think it was $38 million this year.
0:55:39 So it’s a big line item for us
0:55:41 and we manage most of it internally
0:55:43 but so interesting still to me,
0:55:45 my marketing team may not like,
0:55:46 they let me say it,
0:55:48 but it’s like most of that money is still built
0:55:53 on ad campaigns that I effectively launched
0:55:56 12 years ago when honed over that period
0:55:58 or 10 years ago, in Amazon’s case,
0:56:00 they wrote out their advertising a bit later
0:56:02 but it’s not like those things
0:56:04 have shifted all that much.
0:56:07 One of my big goals personally,
0:56:11 you know, like I really am going all in on brand
0:56:13 and on building the Rosalind Indoor Air Quality Company
0:56:15 and we’re getting into the service business
0:56:16 and doing some other things.
0:56:19 And so for me, the next kind of step of marketing
0:56:24 is building top of the funnel brand awareness.
0:56:27 And it’s part of the reason why I’m going so public now
0:56:29 and then we’re going to start alongside me,
0:56:32 I’m going to have people doing the same thing
0:56:34 for the core filter by brand
0:56:36 that may appeal to different demographics
0:56:37 that I would appeal to.
0:56:41 And we’re really kind of going all in on,
0:56:43 you know, that top of funnel brand awareness.
0:56:45 You know, we gave a Jeep away last year,
0:56:47 we’re doing big giveaways every month
0:56:49 and we’re doing things that are,
0:56:51 you know, not related to air filters
0:56:54 but that get us into a customer’s mind.
0:56:56 That’s kind of where our marketing is going
0:56:58 and almost all of that’s done in-house.
0:57:01 – You mentioned retail earlier, why retail?
0:57:02 – Well, like I just said,
0:57:06 you know, 84% of transactions still happen in a store
0:57:08 whether you like it or not.
0:57:12 And I just realized that, you know,
0:57:13 I know I keep coming back to it
0:57:16 but I truly am mission driven, I really live that.
0:57:18 And I just know if I want to achieve my mission
0:57:20 that I need to be where the customers are
0:57:23 and a lot of those customers are in retail.
0:57:25 And as I tell the retailers, you know,
0:57:28 they offer a very different value proposition
0:57:28 than we do.
0:57:30 And I think it actually, it makes sense
0:57:33 that they exist and we exist in that, you know,
0:57:37 for us to get our shipping economics down,
0:57:39 we incentivize customers to buy, you know,
0:57:41 a four or six pack at a time
0:57:44 because that’s where you really get the best value
0:57:46 or we can deliver the best value to a customer.
0:57:49 So online, on average, we ship five and a half filters
0:57:52 to a customer and any one transaction.
0:57:55 But in retail, because it costs us the same
0:57:56 to ship every single filter,
0:57:58 whether it’s wrapped in four or one,
0:58:00 it still takes up the same amount of truck space.
0:58:04 We can give them one packs and they can compete in retail
0:58:07 with our four pack per unit price
0:58:09 on the one pack on the shelf.
0:58:12 And so they’re offering a different value proposition
0:58:13 to the customer.
0:58:15 The customer obviously has to go then pick it up
0:58:17 and they have to do that extra work themselves.
0:58:18 But if they’re already there,
0:58:21 maybe it’s something that they would like to take.
0:58:24 But for me, also as a brand,
0:58:28 we now are selling between 10 and 20,000 units a week
0:58:29 in Walmart.
0:58:34 And that’s 10 to 20,000 potential new to brand customers
0:58:36 a week that we are reaching
0:58:38 just in our kind of trial,
0:58:40 505 store period in Walmart.
0:58:42 And so as for a brand, you know,
0:58:47 that’s a huge potential future customer acquisition channel
0:58:48 for us, right?
0:58:50 Because you have all these people
0:58:53 that are now being exposed to our brand
0:58:55 that maybe weren’t being exposed to it before.
0:58:57 And so that’s really the motivation
0:58:59 for going into retail.
0:59:01 – Why do people buy air filters?
0:59:04 Like, what makes them buy your filter over 3M?
0:59:04 Is it price?
0:59:05 Is it convenience?
0:59:06 Is it…
0:59:08 – Like how you put in versus 3M,
0:59:10 our arch enemy, at least they think so,
0:59:12 although we’re actually very different games.
0:59:14 You know, there are a lot of factors
0:59:18 and it’s a simple question that is a little more complex.
0:59:21 Take a little bit of a step back.
0:59:23 You know, one of the things
0:59:26 that makes us the most unique, I think,
0:59:30 is that we sell to both the residential
0:59:32 and to the business to business market.
0:59:33 So like business to business
0:59:36 is actually our fastest growing segment now
0:59:39 where we sell, you know, direct to hospitals, hotels,
0:59:41 you know, gyms, you know, you name it.
0:59:45 And, you know, all of our product that we manufacture
0:59:48 is geared towards that commercial customer.
0:59:52 And so it’s, you know, a, you know, higher quality
0:59:56 beverage board and, you know, a double-sided frame
0:59:58 and like little nuanced type things
1:00:01 that really make it a quality product
1:00:02 that can stand up, you know,
1:00:04 even if it was put on an outside, you know,
1:00:07 air handler unit, but that’s the exact same product
1:00:12 that we’re selling to residential and to consumers.
1:00:15 And we’re able to do that at a comparable
1:00:18 and oftentimes cheaper price than 3M,
1:00:20 you know, I’m not knocking them at all
1:00:22 and not looking for a fight with it, it’s just,
1:00:25 but they’re just, they and a lot of the other companies
1:00:28 that sell into the residential world
1:00:31 only sell like residential grade or filters
1:00:34 that are not really made for that commercial use.
1:00:38 And so when they’re putting them in stores
1:00:42 they’re basically limiting themselves to residents,
1:00:43 to homes, same way with online,
1:00:46 they’re basically limiting themselves to homes.
1:00:49 When 70% of air filtration is actually commercial.
1:00:52 And so 70% of air filters that are purchased
1:00:55 are purchased for a commercial setting.
1:00:58 And so I think online, one of the reasons
1:01:01 why we have been able to gain so much market share
1:01:04 is because, you know, a lot of those commercial people
1:01:07 see that and end up purchasing our product.
1:01:09 But you combine that with the fact that, you know,
1:01:13 we manufacture 300 different sizes as standard
1:01:16 and we have a team, you know, an aggregate of 50 or 70 people
1:01:19 that make custom filters all day every day.
1:01:21 So like if you have a crazy size filter
1:01:23 which in the US is quite common, you know,
1:01:26 that you don’t have a, you can’t go to the store and buy.
1:01:30 And if it’s not one of even the 300 sizes that we have
1:01:34 then we will make it for you and still ship it same day.
1:01:37 So you get it next day or two days depending on where you are.
1:01:40 And so we have the infrastructure to do all of that.
1:01:42 Whereas like the typical brands that are selling
1:01:45 into places like Walmart may have a total
1:01:47 of 20 different sizes that they sell
1:01:48 and they only sell through retail
1:01:50 and they don’t do all the rest.
1:01:53 And the reality is that there are a lot of homes
1:01:54 that have multiple sizes.
1:01:57 And so if you have one odd size
1:01:59 and you have all these other standard sizes
1:02:00 then we ultimately get your business
1:02:02 because we have the whole catalog
1:02:04 and we can get it to you quicker.
1:02:06 So there are a lot of little factors like that
1:02:07 that make a huge difference.
1:02:09 – Is that what you mean when you’re in a different business
1:02:12 than 3M or is there another nuance to that?
1:02:13 When it comes to air filters?
1:02:16 – Yeah, so 3M best I can tell
1:02:19 and they can refute it if they want
1:02:23 but they mostly sell through retail
1:02:27 so places like Walmart, Costco and whatnot.
1:02:29 And that is their major distribution channel.
1:02:33 And until this year we did literally zero retail.
1:02:35 So they did that and they sell online
1:02:37 but that’s basically the extent
1:02:39 and when they sell online they’re basically doing it
1:02:43 through Amazon and Walmart and other retailers
1:02:46 which means they’re effectively trucking in product
1:02:47 to a distribution center.
1:02:50 Then that distribution is taking it off the truck,
1:02:54 taking it out of the case packed boxes likely,
1:02:55 then moving it around the country
1:02:57 to their distribution network,
1:02:58 then putting it back on a shelf
1:03:01 and then picking it again and putting it in another box
1:03:02 and sending it to an end user.
1:03:05 All of those are steps that we do not have
1:03:06 in our supply chain
1:03:11 which means that the cost structure for us
1:03:15 versus them through that network is very different.
1:03:20 And my opinion and in my opinion
1:03:21 that a lot of these big companies
1:03:24 actually subsidized companies like 3M
1:03:28 maybe unknowingly to compete on price,
1:03:31 on online on some of these products
1:03:33 because the economics of shipping them
1:03:35 and putting them through their distribution networks
1:03:36 just would not make sense.
1:03:38 Again, that’s my opinion
1:03:40 but I’ve studied the market pretty closely
1:03:43 but their market is mostly retail
1:03:48 whereas we’re traditionally directing consumer
1:03:50 but more and more direct to businesses.
1:03:53 And so we sell, we have school systems
1:03:57 where we may sell $500,000 a year of filters too
1:04:00 and we have other types of non-pleted air filter products
1:04:04 like the V-sale HEPA filters and ring panels
1:04:06 and other things that we don’t actually market online
1:04:09 but we’re able to, but we manufacture
1:04:11 to sell into B2B businesses.
1:04:14 And so like basically the filtration market
1:04:16 is mostly you’re either commercial
1:04:18 and you focus on that and a lot of brands
1:04:19 you’ve probably never heard of
1:04:23 or you’re 100% residential which is 3M
1:04:26 is by far the biggest in that but there are a few others.
1:04:28 And we’re unique in that we play in both
1:04:31 and our distribution allows us to play in both
1:04:35 and that’s really the kind of nuance difference
1:04:37 between us and them.
1:04:38 – Is that what you mean when you say
1:04:41 that you’re a logistics business?
1:04:43 – Correct, we’re a logistics business
1:04:46 because the reason why we exist is because
1:04:50 we’re able to move, we’re able to deliver an air filter
1:04:55 to an end user as cheap if not cheaper than anybody else.
1:04:57 So I mean, that’s my belief.
1:04:59 There’s basically no other company that’s set up
1:05:02 that’s purpose built just to do what we do.
1:05:04 There are a lot of manufacturers of air filters.
1:05:06 There are a lot of retailers and distributors
1:05:10 of air filters but there’s nobody at least at our scale
1:05:14 that does the whole thing from raw material
1:05:16 to effectively in delivery.
1:05:19 And we’ve optimized that over the years
1:05:21 and we’ve also aggregated a lot of customers
1:05:24 that give us the economies of scale to be able to do that.
1:05:27 – You mentioned a lot of companies
1:05:29 that think they’re D2C brands
1:05:32 aren’t actually D2C brands, walk me through that.
1:05:35 – Yeah, so when I started Filterbuy,
1:05:39 it was really at the time where you had a lot
1:05:41 of direct-to-consumer brands coming to market.
1:05:45 Companies like Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s
1:05:47 were really big at the time.
1:05:49 And you’ve seen a lot that have come out
1:05:50 over the last decade or so.
1:05:53 And my pet peeve is they call themselves
1:05:55 direct-to-consumer and I’m not talking about
1:05:57 any one specific company in this case.
1:06:00 I don’t know all of the details of how they do things
1:06:03 but for the most part, when I observe them,
1:06:05 they’re brands but they’re not really direct-to-consumer
1:06:08 because they are manufacturing their product in Asia
1:06:13 and using third-party fulfillment to fulfill their orders.
1:06:18 They’re really just brands that are using e-commerce
1:06:19 as a sales channel.
1:06:21 And which is actually quite limiting, right?
1:06:24 Because we just haven’t talked about retail and B2V
1:06:25 and all these other potential sales channels.
1:06:29 It’s like, why would you be so proud of the fact
1:06:32 that you’re a brand that is limiting yourself to one channel?
1:06:37 And I just find it to be one of these kind of mind games
1:06:41 that is quite interesting if you actually think about it
1:06:44 because what is direct-to-consumer at the end of the day?
1:06:46 What it meant to me and what it still means to me
1:06:49 is if you actually are vertically integrated,
1:06:51 you do all of your own manufacturing
1:06:54 and you sell that product to the end user.
1:06:56 Like that’s how I would always describe my business
1:06:58 early on when we were just an air filter business.
1:07:01 I would say we are completely vertically integrated,
1:07:03 we manufacture all of our own product
1:07:06 and we sell it direct to the person who’s installing it.
1:07:09 That is what direct-to-consumer means to me.
1:07:11 But basically every direct-to-consumer quote unquote brand
1:07:15 that I’m aware of is effectively manufacturing their product
1:07:19 with an overseas contract manufacturer
1:07:21 putting their name on it.
1:07:23 And maybe they’re doing some innovation
1:07:24 in the product itself, I don’t know,
1:07:27 but they’re putting their name on it
1:07:29 and then they’re bringing it into the U.S.
1:07:31 and using third-party fulfillment to sell it.
1:07:34 And that’s not direct-to-consumer,
1:07:36 that’s just a brand using e-commerce
1:07:38 as a primary sales channel.
1:07:43 And I think that that’s how it should be spoken about.
1:07:47 And I actually have no interest in being any more,
1:07:50 I do not want to be considered a direct-to-consumer brand.
1:07:52 I want to be an indoor air quality brand.
1:07:55 I mean, that’s really what I wanna be
1:07:58 because I think direct-to-consumer is so limiting
1:08:01 and I think words and categorization matters.
1:08:03 And so you need to be really thoughtful
1:08:07 about what it means if that’s what you’re pursuing.
1:08:09 – Speaking about words that matter,
1:08:11 one word we lingered on earlier,
1:08:13 we’re still in this rabbit hole here a little bit,
1:08:15 was momentum.
1:08:19 Talk to me about what it is, why it’s important.
1:08:20 – Momentum is everything.
1:08:23 And it’s such an intangible thing at the same time.
1:08:27 In life, in and anything,
1:08:30 you’re either progressing or you’re regressing.
1:08:34 There’s really no steady state in reality.
1:08:38 I mean, our bodies deteriorate over time with no activity.
1:08:41 There are just so many examples of this throughout life.
1:08:46 And in business and in personal life or in health,
1:08:48 I think it’s very much the same.
1:08:52 It’s like you either are improving
1:08:54 and building on something day in, day out
1:08:57 or you’re declining.
1:08:59 And the reality is, is that once you go through
1:09:01 these periods of decline,
1:09:04 even if it’s micro periods of decline,
1:09:08 it’s oftentimes so hard to get your positive momentum
1:09:11 to get to that improving again.
1:09:16 And I’ve actually experienced it some of this year
1:09:21 in that in a business, you kind of ebb and flow.
1:09:22 Like I feel like you go through times
1:09:24 or at least I experienced times of kind of growth
1:09:25 and you’re pushing forward
1:09:28 and you feel all this positive momentum
1:09:28 you’re doing things.
1:09:31 And then for whatever reason,
1:09:32 things kind of settle in a little bit
1:09:34 and then it gets a little bit harder
1:09:37 and then you have to reignite that momentum again.
1:09:40 And we had a lot of technical issues over the summer,
1:09:42 including on prime day,
1:09:44 I actually did a short about this,
1:09:47 but we had a big prime deal that was running
1:09:49 and by some glitch of the system,
1:09:52 I got a call at three o’clock in the morning
1:09:55 from someone at Amazon that our deal was not running
1:09:58 and they were looking at fixing it.
1:10:00 I got up, started monitoring it
1:10:02 and by nine o’clock in the morning,
1:10:05 like still nobody could purchase any of our product
1:10:06 that was on a deal on Amazon.
1:10:09 And I had to kill that deal
1:10:11 just so we could go back to being viable.
1:10:15 And normally we would have expected an incremental $2 million
1:10:16 or something of revenue
1:10:20 on that deal that we didn’t get.
1:10:22 But I use that as an example
1:10:25 because we had a few things like that that happened
1:10:28 that just, stuff happens when you’re in business
1:10:32 and we had a much slower kind of few months in the summer
1:10:33 than we were expecting.
1:10:35 And I hated it,
1:10:38 but I’d actually just hired a new CFO
1:10:39 a couple of months before
1:10:40 and he really took it personally
1:10:45 and he was, I think maybe even a little bit worried.
1:10:48 He was like, wow, like, you know,
1:10:50 we had all these kind of problems stack up and like,
1:10:53 but for me, I’ve been through that kind of situation
1:10:55 so many times, it didn’t even bother me.
1:10:58 And like, we’ve actually now as a business
1:11:00 like gained a lot of momentum
1:11:03 and like we’re really kind of over indexing now
1:11:08 from what we would have expected a few months ago.
1:11:11 And that came from a conscious effort
1:11:13 to really build momentum
1:11:16 and like, you know, build like all the building blocks
1:11:19 that you know you need in order to get that momentum
1:11:20 from, you know, from marketing
1:11:23 and from, you know, sales
1:11:25 and all the things that go into that.
1:11:27 And it’s just day in, day out grinding
1:11:30 and pushing all of those things forward.
1:11:31 And then you wake up one day
1:11:33 and you’re like, wow, we’re over indexing again.
1:11:36 And it’s because you built that momentum in your system
1:11:38 to allow that to happen.
1:11:40 And I’ve done it so many times
1:11:41 in so many aspects of my life
1:11:43 that I know like inherently
1:11:45 when I’ve kind of lost momentum
1:11:47 or maybe I’ve lost focus on something that’s important
1:11:48 and I need to regain it
1:11:51 and I can consciously, you know
1:11:52 push that momentum forward
1:11:56 or do the fundamental things that I know I need to do
1:11:59 in order to regain that momentum
1:12:02 if I repeat that consistently over some period of time.
1:12:05 So it’s definitely a muscle that you build
1:12:07 but that’s how I feel about it.
1:12:09 And I think so many people have bad things
1:12:10 that happen to them
1:12:12 and like rather than going back to the fundamentals
1:12:15 and like, hey, how am I going to start to dig out
1:12:19 and regain that positive momentum in this?
1:12:21 They, you know, linger on it for too long
1:12:23 and let it atrophy
1:12:26 and then it’s much harder to get that momentum.
1:12:28 So anytime I see things
1:12:32 whether it be in my health, a relationship or business
1:12:34 so anytime I see things that are like starting
1:12:37 to show some cracks and starting to slow down a bit
1:12:39 then I’m very conscious of that.
1:12:42 I say, oh, what do I need to do to get back to fundamentals
1:12:44 to be able to put myself back on the path
1:12:45 that I want to be on.
1:12:48 – What are the core fundamentals you use personally?
1:12:50 – Well, you know, in doing this YouTube series
1:12:52 I’ve actually thought about this a lot.
1:12:55 And so I do have a few traits that I can speak about
1:12:56 that are important to me.
1:12:59 But the very first one which I recommend for everyone
1:13:01 but whenever I say these things
1:13:04 is really a reminder to myself more than it is advice
1:13:07 although I think it is great advice, but it’s focus.
1:13:10 Time and again in my life or really as an entrepreneur
1:13:14 I should say is I’ve had the tendency
1:13:16 to get distracted by a shiny object
1:13:18 or by potentially another new business model
1:13:21 that sounds interesting or would be fun to pursue.
1:13:25 And every time I’ve started one of those things
1:13:28 realized it’s a lot harder than it probably looks
1:13:30 and I end up shutting it down
1:13:33 or refocusing on my core activity
1:13:35 and I’m always better for it.
1:13:38 And, you know, like I started a freight business during COVID
1:13:41 and that I could kind of squint and say made sense
1:13:44 because I had been the logistics business after all, right?
1:13:46 But it ended up being a big mistake
1:13:48 and I have a lot of examples like that.
1:13:52 And every time that I’ve like really refined my focus
1:13:54 and I kind of just kind of come back
1:13:56 to the fundamentals as we talked about,
1:13:57 I’ve been better off.
1:13:59 And so that’s why, you know, having the focus
1:14:02 around my mission and why you hear me talk about it
1:14:03 all the time because I’m reminding myself
1:14:05 I gotta stay focused on that.
1:14:07 Like either every activity that I’m doing
1:14:09 has to be towards that singular focus
1:14:11 or I should not be doing it.
1:14:13 And that’s what focus means to me
1:14:15 and why the mission part of it is so critical.
1:14:20 And I think, you know, people would be better suited
1:14:21 to really be self-aware with themselves
1:14:23 about what it is they really want out of life
1:14:25 and be focused on, you know,
1:14:29 building the becoming the person that gets them that.
1:14:33 And so all those things are wrapped up in focus for me.
1:14:37 Second kind of principle for me is persistence.
1:14:41 And, you know, what I mean by that when I say it
1:14:45 is that things take time, it’s not easy, you know,
1:14:48 but like you’ve got to, when you’re focused on something
1:14:50 then you’re obsessed with it.
1:14:54 You’re gonna be persistently working towards that thing.
1:14:58 And time and again, like I start off something thinking,
1:14:59 oh, how hard can it be?
1:15:01 Or I’ll get this done in a few months
1:15:05 and it, you know, you know, takes a lot longer to get it done.
1:15:08 I mean, wrapped up with that persistence is really patience.
1:15:09 I would say persistence and patience
1:15:12 or I sometimes talk about them separately,
1:15:15 but they’re really the same in that, for me,
1:15:19 in that things take longer than you want.
1:15:20 You know, you consistently overestimate
1:15:21 what you can achieve in a year
1:15:23 and underestimate what you can do in a decade.
1:15:26 I say that often and I’ve lived it so often.
1:15:28 And that’s just a reminder to myself
1:15:32 that it takes time to really build anything
1:15:34 that’s meaningful and so you have to be persistent
1:15:36 and on that journey.
1:15:40 Then resilience, because, you know, bad things happen,
1:15:42 like we talked about with momentum
1:15:45 or like that prime day example, bad stuff happens,
1:15:48 but resilience is the muscle to know that,
1:15:49 hey, I’m gonna be able to solve it.
1:15:52 There’s no problem that is not solvable
1:15:55 and within business, I fundamentally believe that.
1:15:59 Your responsibility is the entrepreneur
1:16:01 or the business owner to solve them
1:16:03 and that’s where resilience comes in.
1:16:04 And so when bad things happen,
1:16:05 you just have to remind yourself
1:16:08 that that’s just part of the game
1:16:11 and you gotta step up to make it happen.
1:16:15 And then the last thing that I really live by
1:16:18 is accountability and building accountability into my life
1:16:22 and being accountable first and foremost to myself,
1:16:25 but then having the self-awareness to know
1:16:27 the areas where I’m weak and to build in
1:16:30 the accountability structures
1:16:33 in order to hold me accountable.
1:16:35 And so like Dr. Grunner would be a good example.
1:16:39 I realized I needed accountability within my business
1:16:40 in a way that I didn’t have.
1:16:44 And so I put in the guardrail by working with her.
1:16:47 I also work with a personal trainer six days a week,
1:16:50 you know, religiously and because I’m accountable
1:16:52 I’m accountable to him at six 30, six days a week.
1:16:55 Even if I’m traveling, when I’m traveling we do Zoom
1:16:57 and I’m in person, we do it in person
1:16:59 and we do that religiously.
1:17:01 And I’ve done that for three and a half years
1:17:04 and I really decided to take my health seriously.
1:17:07 And I knew that if I just relied on myself
1:17:09 and my own willpower to make that happen
1:17:12 that it was something that wouldn’t happen for me
1:17:13 because I am obsessed with my business
1:17:14 and I’m all in on that.
1:17:17 And I’m always going to find excuses not to do it.
1:17:20 But I created that accountability with the trainer.
1:17:22 And so I look for ways when I know that I’m weak
1:17:25 at something to create the accountability
1:17:28 to force myself to do it.
1:17:32 So those would be like the general kind of self principles
1:17:36 that I live by and remind myself of every day.
1:17:40 – Eventually everybody loses the battle with willpower.
1:17:41 – Willpower is not a strategy.
1:17:45 You know, that’s why kind of going back to your obsession
1:17:49 point, the people that are really successful are obsessed
1:17:51 because when you’re obsessed with something
1:17:53 you’re not like, you don’t need willpower
1:17:57 because it’s all consuming for you and that’s what you do.
1:18:02 And I think that that’s really why people need
1:18:06 to lean into things that are more natural for them
1:18:07 or interesting for them.
1:18:09 It’s not that, oh, follow your dreams
1:18:10 and everything’s gonna be great.
1:18:11 I think that’s awful advice.
1:18:15 But you do need to lean into the things that you enjoy
1:18:17 and are genuinely curious about.
1:18:20 It’s not like I enjoy air filters in and of themselves
1:18:24 but I love business and I love the puzzle of that
1:18:25 and there are lots of pieces of that
1:18:28 that I can easily become obsessed with
1:18:29 that are wrapped up in it.
1:18:32 And so I think that figuring out
1:18:34 where your natural curiosity is is super important
1:18:37 because that obsession wins
1:18:42 whereas willpower will break inevitably time and time again.
1:18:45 – I like that obsession wins willpower breaks.
1:18:49 Describe the hardest moment that you went through.
1:18:52 Was there a moment when you wanted to quit and give up?
1:18:53 – Yeah, I told this story a few times
1:18:55 and I’ll give you the short version
1:18:57 but it’s a bit tricky to articulate
1:19:00 but I had been working on manufacturing air filters
1:19:03 for about three years, maybe two and a half years.
1:19:06 And there’s a part of the manufacturing process
1:19:09 which is the beginning where you basically laminate
1:19:12 or put glue onto like this chicken wire
1:19:14 that goes onto the media to give it the media
1:19:17 the rigidity in the air filter.
1:19:19 So it’s called the laminator.
1:19:23 And when I bought the initial machines
1:19:25 I bought what’s called a cold glue laminator
1:19:29 which means like Elmer’s glue type consistency
1:19:32 that goes on and then it dries
1:19:34 and it’s supposed to dry before it gets rolled up
1:19:36 into this roll that then goes into the next part
1:19:38 of the manufacturing process.
1:19:40 Well, there was a May in Alabama
1:19:42 when it was super humid
1:19:44 and it was super humid in our manufacturing facility
1:19:46 and the glue was not drying.
1:19:48 It was not drying in the way it was supposed to be.
1:19:50 There was so much water in the air.
1:19:52 And so we were making all of these components
1:19:55 or all of this raw material that’s supposed to, you know
1:19:57 feed our whole manufacturing process
1:20:01 and the glue was, the rolls were ultimately getting stuck
1:20:03 to each other because it hadn’t dried properly
1:20:05 and it became unusable.
1:20:08 And so we were wasting about half of our raw material
1:20:11 any given day, which was extraordinarily expensive
1:20:13 and also was keeping us from being able to manufacture
1:20:15 the product that we needed for our customers.
1:20:16 And I was panicking
1:20:18 because I didn’t know how to solve this problem.
1:20:21 What am I supposed to do differently?
1:20:24 And I started calling around like desperately
1:20:29 and found a company in Indiana that had what’s called
1:20:31 but a hot glue version of this laminator
1:20:33 where you use hot glue rather than cold glue to do it
1:20:35 which I did not even know existed.
1:20:38 And by some act of God, they had one on the floor
1:20:42 that I’ve never had that happen since
1:20:45 where I’m able to find a machine that was built to order
1:20:49 but for some reason they had one on the floor
1:20:54 and I spent like $55,000 probably close
1:20:59 to the last 55 grand I had to buy that hot glue laminator.
1:21:04 I drove up on a, I rented a 20 foot Pinsky truck
1:21:09 in Anniston, Alabama, I drove to New Albany, Indiana
1:21:13 got there about two o’clock in the morning, woke up,
1:21:18 got trained on that laminator all day that Friday
1:21:22 then drove through the night back to Alabama
1:21:24 and early Saturday morning trained the team
1:21:26 on that hot glue laminator
1:21:29 and that solved all of our laminating problems.
1:21:33 And if they had not had that piece of machinery in stock,
1:21:35 I do not know that I would have been able
1:21:37 to continue manufacturing air filters
1:21:39 because that was my breaking point
1:21:41 and I really didn’t know how to solve it
1:21:45 but I ultimately found that solution
1:21:46 and went and figured it out.
1:21:48 And actually, you won’t be able to see it here
1:21:50 but I actually have a scar on my finger
1:21:54 where I almost cut off my finger on that machine
1:21:57 when I was training them as I made a mistake
1:21:59 and I literally almost cut off my finger
1:22:00 that Saturday morning when I got back.
1:22:04 So I have the scar to remind myself of that experience
1:22:07 but that was really the turning point for us
1:22:10 because after that, things started really coming together
1:22:14 but that was two and a half years into my entrepreneurial journey
1:22:18 and I would not have had the financial
1:22:21 or quite frankly, mental staying power
1:22:25 to continue to do it if I had not been able
1:22:26 to find that solution.
1:22:28 But it’s also very formative for me
1:22:31 in that ever since then, I’ve been hit with a lot of problems
1:22:33 some of them seem seemingly bigger than that.
1:22:35 I mean, and that’s just life
1:22:37 and that’s certainly life in business
1:22:40 but I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older
1:22:43 that I’ve built the muscle of dealing with those problems
1:22:48 and actually almost thriving in those situations
1:22:51 because I get hit with something that it’s always annoying
1:22:54 but you say, but I have the confidence
1:22:58 that I’m gonna go and figure out a solution to it
1:23:00 and that’s definitely one of my superpowers
1:23:03 and I think that you have to embrace that
1:23:04 if you wanna do something big.
1:23:06 – Where does that confidence come from?
1:23:09 – You know, some of it is, you’re born with it probably
1:23:13 if I’m honest, I mean, I don’t know the alternative.
1:23:15 I’m just uniquely determined in a lot of ways
1:23:19 and I see that and that’s why I always hate giving advice
1:23:21 to people because I know what works for me
1:23:23 is different than what would work for somebody else
1:23:25 and what I want is very different
1:23:27 than what somebody else might want
1:23:32 and I think I was blessed with a lot of unique skills
1:23:34 that allowed me to do what I do
1:23:36 and I don’t think that most people would be happy
1:23:39 in the living the life that I’ve chosen to lead
1:23:42 and I think that people need to have self-awareness
1:23:47 around that but I had two loving, wonderful parents
1:23:52 that I think were very helpful for that
1:23:57 and so they definitely helped to instill that in me
1:24:00 and I think that without having to be remiss
1:24:03 if I didn’t give them some credit for that.
1:24:06 – I have a theory, maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong
1:24:08 but people who are obsessive
1:24:11 and information gathering all the time
1:24:15 and are hands on tend to have a lot more confidence
1:24:17 do you think that they have the confidence
1:24:18 because they have the information?
1:24:21 – Yeah, the more you know how things work
1:24:23 the more confident you become
1:24:26 that you’re able to kind of turn the system
1:24:28 in your favor I guess, you know?
1:24:31 So I think that there’s a lot of truth in that.
1:24:34 I mean like I definitely have proven that
1:24:35 to myself time and time again.
1:24:41 I think that there are people that are doers
1:24:45 and then there are people that just let life happen to them
1:24:50 I guess and I think that because I’ve been able to
1:24:54 over time build more and more skills,
1:24:58 more and more resources or like you know
1:25:00 just compound things positively
1:25:03 that you get more and more confidence as time goes on
1:25:05 and that comes from experimenting
1:25:09 and going down rabbit holes and that kind of stuff
1:25:12 and I think that that lends itself ultimately to confidence.
1:25:15 I mean, you know, I see so many people
1:25:19 so many friends even like that from my finance days
1:25:21 that you know, you look at and make
1:25:24 they made a lot of money on a relative basis
1:25:28 and some of them, you know, still make a lot of money
1:25:30 but don’t have the confidence
1:25:32 and I think it’s because when you’re working
1:25:36 for somebody else or relying on other people to, you know
1:25:39 pay you or validate you that you never really get
1:25:41 the confidence that you can build as an entrepreneur
1:25:43 when you’re kind of out there making things happen
1:25:48 on your own and I think that for me at least
1:25:49 that’s been super important.
1:25:51 And part of the reason why I wanted to leave Goldman
1:25:54 when I did is I wanted to go out and like build my own life
1:25:58 and I knew that I would find freedom in that.
1:25:59 You know, as I sit here today, it’s like
1:26:03 if I lost everything tomorrow, I have the confidence
1:26:05 that I have the skills and the knowledge
1:26:07 and the ability to, you know
1:26:09 go out and do something else that’s big
1:26:13 and you know, that is where I have found real freedom
1:26:15 and where I think real freedom lies
1:26:18 and that’s why I always push back so much on people
1:26:22 that think that money in and of itself gives freedom.
1:26:26 I’ve seen so many examples where it’s actually
1:26:28 quite the opposite and you know,
1:26:31 a corollary to that that I think is important
1:26:35 is when people get money that they maybe didn’t deserve
1:26:38 or they didn’t earn, then they’re forever living
1:26:41 in a scarcity mindset because they’re afraid of losing it
1:26:43 because if you have something that you covet
1:26:45 that you have no way of getting back if you lose it
1:26:47 then you have to hold on to it so tight
1:26:51 and that is not conducive to living a happy life
1:26:54 or accomplishing big things.
1:26:56 You need to have in my opinion an expansive mindset
1:26:59 and the way you can build that expansive mindset
1:27:03 is to have the, you know, confidence
1:27:06 that you can go out and build something
1:27:08 or get that money again, you’re not afraid of losing it
1:27:10 because you know you’re gonna be able to go out
1:27:12 and make it happen again
1:27:14 and that’s really the mindset that it takes
1:27:18 to do something big I think and you know,
1:27:20 that just comes from building the confidence
1:27:22 and that muscle over time
1:27:25 that you get more and more confidence as you build
1:27:26 and you know I’m certainly more confident
1:27:29 than I was a decade ago and I think decade ago
1:27:31 I was more confident than I was a decade before that
1:27:34 but it’s all about building the momentum towards that.
1:27:36 – I love that.
1:27:38 Talk to me about the freight decision.
1:27:40 What went into that?
1:27:42 How did you realize it wasn’t working?
1:27:45 What did you do when you realized it wasn’t working?
1:27:48 – Oh, you wanna rub some salt in my wounds.
1:27:51 You know, I could actually give you a couple
1:27:53 of other examples too but freight,
1:27:58 long story short in COVID, sorry in 2020,
1:28:02 freight became very hard to source
1:28:03 and it was very expensive
1:28:07 because there was just so much demand to move this stuff
1:28:09 and again, a bit hubristic I would argue
1:28:11 if I was looking back at it.
1:28:14 I thought, well, you know, I’m so good
1:28:15 at this business thing, right?
1:28:18 How hard could running a freight business be?
1:28:21 And I have a lot of demand for freight
1:28:22 so I can just do my own freight
1:28:25 and then sell the excess to other people
1:28:30 and also in US tax code, there’s a bit of an aside.
1:28:33 There is a section that basically allows
1:28:37 for accelerated depreciation and what that means
1:28:41 is that if you bought a million dollars of equipment
1:28:43 like trucks, then you could ride off that million dollars
1:28:46 against your taxes in that year.
1:28:47 – Oh, wow.
1:28:49 – And it’s actually still exists currently this year.
1:28:51 You can only do 60% with Trump back in office,
1:28:53 my guess is it’ll go back up to 100%.
1:28:58 But it’s for something that you don’t see talked about a lot
1:29:02 but like if I bought a million dollars of trucks,
1:29:05 I could effectively borrow a million dollars from a bank
1:29:09 because they love to finance against trucks
1:29:12 and you could also, if you had a million dollars of income,
1:29:14 you could then take that income effectively to zero
1:29:16 and pay zero income tax.
1:29:18 That’s how accelerated depreciation works.
1:29:19 So that’s another part of the reason
1:29:21 I got sucked into this whole thing.
1:29:23 But I thought, oh, if I can do this
1:29:24 and operate a freight business,
1:29:27 then I found a cheat code here.
1:29:31 So that was out of the origin for me getting into it.
1:29:36 And between 2020 and 2021,
1:29:39 I bought 50 tractor trailers.
1:29:42 So I bought 50 trucks and actually probably 60 trailers
1:29:43 to go along with it.
1:29:45 So I don’t do things in a small way
1:29:46 or I don’t make small mistakes.
1:29:48 If I make them, I make them big.
1:29:53 So, it’s probably six or $7 million worth of equipment
1:29:55 more or less in that neighborhood.
1:29:58 And we operated them and never once
1:30:00 to be operating them profitably,
1:30:01 even in the beginning,
1:30:06 it was an example where the freight business
1:30:08 is very cyclical and I knew that going in.
1:30:09 It wasn’t like I knew it.
1:30:14 I decided I was smart enough to be able to mitigate it,
1:30:17 which is wrong, but it’s very cyclical.
1:30:22 And you saw freight rates start to come down pretty quickly
1:30:26 in 2022, at the end of 2022 and really into 2023.
1:30:27 But even when they were higher,
1:30:31 the managing of that business was both a distraction
1:30:33 because that’s a lot of people to manage.
1:30:35 We did not have the right infrastructure to manage it
1:30:37 and the right teams to manage it.
1:30:40 I really bit off more than we as a company could chew
1:30:42 while still we’re still growing our business
1:30:43 at a really rapid rate, right?
1:30:47 And I’m trying to do this as a side.
1:30:53 And so ultimately, I liquidated all of those trucks
1:30:55 at the end of 2023.
1:31:00 All in that probably was a $3 or $4 million mistake
1:31:03 on my side, but the money is one thing.
1:31:07 The biggest mistake was the lack of focus
1:31:11 or the energy that it took in distraction away
1:31:14 from the core business, both for me and for people around me
1:31:16 that were helping me to manage it.
1:31:19 So it cost you $3 to $4 million in actual money,
1:31:21 but it cost you a lot more in loss of focus.
1:31:23 Oh, a lot more in opportunity cost, in my opinion.
1:31:25 And I mean, that’s why I remind myself number one focus
1:31:28 because that’s just an example.
1:31:33 And I have others where I got off track a little bit
1:31:37 and I convinced myself that it was consistent
1:31:39 with what I was doing because you’re always the easiest
1:31:42 person to fool is yourself, always.
1:31:44 And I convinced myself, fooled myself
1:31:47 into thinking it was a good idea.
1:31:50 What’s another example that comes to mind where you did that?
1:31:52 Well, we actually did a video about it,
1:31:57 but I effectively in 2021 with a partner from Goldman
1:32:02 bought an HVAC service business in Hollywood, Florida,
1:32:04 which is outside of Miami.
1:32:05 You’re still operating this, though.
1:32:07 Well, we, it’s different now,
1:32:09 but we can talk about what that is.
1:32:12 It’s a big part of what I intend to do in the future.
1:32:17 But long story short, we bought this business
1:32:21 and when we started operating it, it became clear to us
1:32:25 that it was not the business that we were sold.
1:32:28 And what scale was it when you bought it?
1:32:29 How much revenue?
1:32:32 It was doing about $5 million of revenue
1:32:37 and supposedly making $1.2 million of EBITDA at the time.
1:32:39 That’s a pretty good margin.
1:32:41 And yeah, well they, I mean,
1:32:43 a typical HVAC service business operates
1:32:46 at about a 15 to 20% net margin is what you’d find
1:32:50 most good HVAC services business, businesses operate at.
1:32:53 The business we bought was different
1:32:54 than the business that was represented.
1:32:58 But I did that with a partner who still works with me today
1:33:01 and he’s the guy that runs our HVAC solutions business.
1:33:06 But I realized that we did that too quickly.
1:33:12 And we, again, it was an arrogant decision
1:33:15 that as I have this belief
1:33:18 that any business problem is solvable.
1:33:21 And I still stand by that very clearly,
1:33:26 but I was not as close to that specific transaction
1:33:27 as I probably should have been.
1:33:32 And going into a new industry as I was more or less
1:33:36 with that, I should have been a lot more careful,
1:33:38 even though I knew it was consistent
1:33:41 with my longer term vision, I rushed into it.
1:33:44 And that basically, we ended up having to shut down
1:33:47 that business and it cost us a total of $4.5 million.
1:33:50 And I’ve taken the learning from that
1:33:53 and now doing it right and we’re building out
1:33:56 filtered by HVAC solutions where we operate now
1:33:59 in South Florida and we intend to take that nationwide.
1:34:02 But I’m doing it on my own terms
1:34:07 and really methodically building out our systems
1:34:10 and processes, customer acquisition funnels,
1:34:11 all of those types of things
1:34:13 that I think are really important to be able to scale it.
1:34:16 And so I really took a big step back
1:34:19 to get it right this time around.
1:34:22 – Talk to me about building that from the ground up.
1:34:23 How are you thinking about it?
1:34:24 Sounds like you’re thinking about it
1:34:27 as a much larger business than it already is.
1:34:29 – So my intention is to build a nationwide
1:34:32 HVAC service business, which in the US
1:34:33 does not currently exist.
1:34:36 And so my benchmark for that is could I,
1:34:38 if I wanted to run a Super Bowl ad
1:34:42 and have it be effective because it touches everybody
1:34:43 that would be watching it, right?
1:34:46 That’s what a nationwide HVAC service business is.
1:34:48 And right now that’s a very fragmented market.
1:34:51 There are lots of mom and pop type businesses
1:34:53 that have been around for a long time
1:34:55 to serve specific geographic areas.
1:34:59 But there’s no nationwide HVAC service business,
1:35:00 at least I’m aware of that.
1:35:02 And there’s been a lot of private equity interest in it
1:35:04 because as you noted that there are good margins
1:35:05 in that business.
1:35:08 And so the private equity players end up rolling up
1:35:10 businesses of different brands,
1:35:13 but they can’t consolidate them under one brand
1:35:16 because they would lose all that goodwill
1:35:18 or that brand equity, right?
1:35:23 I’m in a unique position in that we have sold
1:35:27 to somewhere around eight million unique residences
1:35:28 across the country.
1:35:33 All those customers by definition have an HVAC unit
1:35:35 that needs to be serviced.
1:35:37 So I call the air filter our Trojan horse
1:35:38 into somebody’s home.
1:35:43 And so I think when somebody’s riding my biography
1:35:45 in 30 years, I hope that that’s what they’re talking about
1:35:49 is like that was the start of this much bigger
1:35:51 indoor air quality company that was ultimately built
1:35:54 because that air filter was the Trojan horse
1:35:56 that got us that customer’s relationship.
1:36:00 So we already have a relationship with customers
1:36:02 and like the customer acquisition costs
1:36:05 and the brand is actually the hardest thing to build
1:36:08 from scratch.
1:36:11 And so like we already have that as a starting point.
1:36:16 But you know, my belief is that the way that millennials
1:36:21 and younger are want to interact with their service people
1:36:23 is very different than how the older generation did.
1:36:28 Like generally now people do not want to haggle on price.
1:36:31 They want transparent pricing.
1:36:33 They don’t want opaque pricing.
1:36:35 Lots of factors like that, that you know,
1:36:38 the HVAC service business is actually operates
1:36:40 in kind of an old school way.
1:36:43 And I think that there’s room for a, you know,
1:36:46 national brand that, you know, has the trust
1:36:49 and the reputation backing behind it.
1:36:53 And that’s something that the younger generations
1:36:57 are actually looking for that does not currently exist.
1:37:00 And we’re in a unique position to build that.
1:37:03 But, you know, I’d be remiss not to say that, you know,
1:37:05 part of the reason I’m going so public
1:37:07 with my personal brand is like I actually think the way
1:37:09 I’m going to be able to execute against that
1:37:13 is ironically ultimately buying and partnering
1:37:18 with other HVAC businesses that maybe are struggling
1:37:21 or are struggling to grow or maybe have or working
1:37:24 in a niche market and want to be a part of something bigger.
1:37:29 I want to bring the brand and the kind of operational
1:37:32 playbook and expertise to, you know,
1:37:33 partner with them potentially, you know,
1:37:37 maybe buy a majority stake and partner with them
1:37:39 to really grow that business.
1:37:43 Kind of a model is what I ultimately intend to do
1:37:46 with my personal brand and why I’m, you know,
1:37:48 starting to be public about it.
1:37:51 And the difference between like when I bought
1:37:55 that first HVAC business that failed is I had not built
1:37:57 my own operational playbook yet
1:38:00 that I was comfortable with going out and doing at scale.
1:38:03 I hadn’t really done the work to deserve that yet.
1:38:05 I was just trying to buy somebody else’s.
1:38:08 And for me, at least that just doesn’t work.
1:38:11 And, you know, so now I’m really going through the process
1:38:14 of building out that, you know, operational playbook
1:38:16 that can scale.
1:38:19 And then I’m going to hopefully scale that by acquisition
1:38:23 and by partnering with businesses to do it quickly.
1:38:26 – What goes into that playbook for HVAC?
1:38:28 – Well, I mean, it’s really for any business,
1:38:29 it would be the same.
1:38:32 It’s like, how am I going to deliver a product
1:38:34 or service consistently?
1:38:36 So having the infrastructure to do that
1:38:39 and, you know, hiring experts, in this case,
1:38:41 now I’m far enough along, I can really hire experts
1:38:45 to help me to build that, make sure that we’re, you know,
1:38:47 operating in the most efficient way possible,
1:38:49 offering the best service possible,
1:38:52 doing that consistently, doing that repeatedly.
1:38:53 So that’s one.
1:38:56 And the second, and arguably the trickiest,
1:38:59 although they’re both tricky, is the marketing and branding,
1:38:59 right?
1:39:02 And, you know, customer acquisition costs
1:39:04 in the HVAC service space is very high.
1:39:09 I mean, you may be paying $500 for a new customer
1:39:11 on average, if you’re looking for a replacement
1:39:13 or whatnot of an HC unit.
1:39:16 But that’s an area where we at Filter by Excel
1:39:18 is something that I’m obsessed with.
1:39:22 And a big reason why I’m doing all this personal branding
1:39:26 is I’m learning, you know, how to market a, you know,
1:39:29 HVAC service business at scale through social media
1:39:32 or through wherever the eyeballs are.
1:39:35 And so really for me, it comes down to that marketing
1:39:37 and that operations.
1:39:40 And I have some really strong people in the operations piece
1:39:41 that are taking ownership of that.
1:39:44 And then I’m really focused on building the marketing engine
1:39:47 to be able to drive that for the brand as a whole.
1:39:50 – There’s a popular narrative in sort of like the VC
1:39:54 and private equity world that you can buy these low tech
1:39:57 businesses at, you know, very small multiples
1:40:00 and add technology magically somehow
1:40:02 and all of a sudden sell them for more.
1:40:04 Talk to me about that.
1:40:06 – Yeah, I kind of positioned myself
1:40:09 as the opposite of private equity in that.
1:40:12 And I went like anybody that may partner with me
1:40:15 or partner with us to know that and to believe that
1:40:17 because I believe in adding long-term value.
1:40:20 And, you know, I have no intention to sell my businesses.
1:40:22 I think there’s a world in which we make a public one day
1:40:23 way down the road.
1:40:26 But other than that, like I’m in it for the long haul
1:40:28 and I don’t have any intention to buy it
1:40:31 and, you know, flip it, which is what the mindset
1:40:34 of so many of these private equity firms have.
1:40:37 And so I just think that’s first thing
1:40:39 that’s important to know, you know,
1:40:43 I think that the smaller HVAC service space
1:40:45 or any service space is incredibly tough.
1:40:49 And it’s a lot tougher than, I mean, there are a lot of,
1:40:53 you know, big social media people currently
1:40:57 that are, you know, are big proponents
1:41:00 of that type of a model than doing it on small scale.
1:41:04 And like, all I can tell you is that, you know,
1:41:06 I have a lot of resources and have done
1:41:09 and I think I’m a pretty established and good entrepreneur
1:41:12 and my first acquisition, I lost four and a half million
1:41:16 dollars and, you know, that, and that was on a, you know,
1:41:18 three and a half million dollar purchase price.
1:41:22 So we managed to lose more than we paid for the business,
1:41:25 you know, in trying to fix it.
1:41:28 And so there are risk involved in doing this stuff
1:41:31 and the operational risk are huge.
1:41:36 And so I’m quite skeptical as to,
1:41:39 especially on a small scale, people’s ability to do it.
1:41:39 Well, it doesn’t mean you can’t.
1:41:42 I mean, I think there’s huge opportunity if you can,
1:41:44 but I think it’s a lot more difficult
1:41:47 than most people are articulating.
1:41:50 And I think it’s maybe because they don’t really understand
1:41:52 the risks that are associated with these.
1:41:56 – But to answer your question more specifically,
1:41:57 there are certainly private equity companies
1:42:02 that do this type of thing well and in all types of spaces.
1:42:06 And the ones that do it well,
1:42:08 understand the business that they’re in really well
1:42:12 and do build the operations that give you economies of scale
1:42:15 for the smaller people or smaller entities
1:42:16 that they’re running.
1:42:18 So like if you can consolidate, you know,
1:42:22 the ERP system that you’re using across all your companies.
1:42:24 So you have one expert that understands, you know,
1:42:27 service titan or whatever that might be,
1:42:30 or you consolidate your, you know, recruiting practices
1:42:35 and, you know, really have like the playbooks down
1:42:36 for all of those things.
1:42:38 There are some private equity companies
1:42:40 that are great operators that are able to do that
1:42:43 and can go out and roll these things up very well.
1:42:46 You know, but I think that there are a lot of kind of
1:42:49 medium and smaller, particularly quote unquote,
1:42:50 private equity companies,
1:42:52 which means they just went out and raised private capital
1:42:54 to go and run these playbooks
1:42:56 that don’t have the operational expertise
1:42:59 that they need to really run these businesses well.
1:43:03 And I think that it creates a lot of problems both for them
1:43:06 and for the employees of the companies that they hire.
1:43:11 And I can tell you, you know, almost every major person
1:43:15 that I’ve hired at management level
1:43:18 has come from a company that was owned
1:43:20 by a private equity company
1:43:21 and they absolutely hated it
1:43:24 and they were looking for, you know, a different path.
1:43:27 I mean, like when I interview for CFOs
1:43:30 or for any of these positions, you know,
1:43:32 most of what we see are people that are working
1:43:35 for a private equity-based company that are miserable
1:43:38 because, you know, there really is no clear vision,
1:43:40 no clear direction.
1:43:42 You know, they’re just looking to optimize
1:43:45 to financial engineer to be able to sell it
1:43:47 to the next person up.
1:43:49 I mean, like, I’m not gonna say that’s all private equity,
1:43:51 but that’s a lot of private equity
1:43:54 and the people that are working for them
1:43:55 are miserable oftentimes.
1:43:59 And that’s why I consider myself anti-private equity.
1:44:01 – Why do you think we’re attracted
1:44:03 to strong missions and visions?
1:44:07 – I think that we, as human beings,
1:44:10 need to have a purpose in life
1:44:12 and have a reason to wake up every day.
1:44:14 And I’ve seen that, you know,
1:44:18 both at high level executive type people
1:44:20 all the way down to people
1:44:22 that work on manufacturing lines
1:44:24 that really take their job seriously
1:44:26 and really find meaning and fulfillment
1:44:31 and, you know, working for a company that, you know,
1:44:33 has a mission and a purpose.
1:44:36 And I think that it’s the X factor
1:44:41 that gets people excited to come to work
1:44:45 and to go the extra mile any given day.
1:44:46 But I just think it’s how we’re wired.
1:44:50 I mean, I think that we’re not wired to get money.
1:44:52 I mean, I think that like money
1:44:54 is something that’s important for everyone.
1:44:59 And, you know, obviously is an important factor
1:45:00 in anybody’s life.
1:45:04 But, you know, that’s not enough to, you know,
1:45:05 solve people’s problems
1:45:07 or to give them fulfillment most importantly.
1:45:09 Like there’s so many people oftentimes
1:45:13 that were given money that are actually miserable.
1:45:15 And I’ve seen that so many times in my life
1:45:20 and I’m so, I tried to avoid that so much
1:45:23 because I just see people that have so much money
1:45:26 that are so miserable because they don’t have any fulfillment.
1:45:28 They have no reason actually for existing
1:45:29 or waking up every day and they know that.
1:45:31 Like deep down, like when you’re in that situation,
1:45:34 you know it, that you don’t have a purpose in life
1:45:38 is you don’t have a reason to really wake up
1:45:39 and exist every day.
1:45:43 And I think that when that’s you, you’re miserable.
1:45:47 And, you know, but when you know, like, hey, I’m here,
1:45:49 I’m working on this, it can be the most inane problem.
1:45:53 But like if you have a reason for existing on a purpose,
1:45:57 then it’s something that ultimately can allow you
1:45:58 to have fulfillment.
1:46:00 And it’s just how we’re wired.
1:46:02 And that’s why it is something
1:46:04 I don’t think we talk enough about
1:46:07 because we all, you know, focus on the material.
1:46:08 And the material stuff is important.
1:46:09 Don’t get me wrong.
1:46:12 I mean, I think material stuff is very important,
1:46:13 but that’s not enough.
1:46:16 Just take a little step back about it.
1:46:18 You know, about two years ago,
1:46:20 and really when I started working with Dr. Gurner,
1:46:24 I was, you know, having a little bit of a crisis of self
1:46:27 in that, you know, what do I want out of life?
1:46:30 I could sell the business and, you know,
1:46:32 have more money than I could ever spend
1:46:34 or my children could ever spend.
1:46:37 And I would have been 40 years old
1:46:38 or just about to turn 40,
1:46:40 could have hundreds of millions of dollars.
1:46:43 And, you know, then just retire to the sunset.
1:46:46 Like, is that what I should want out of life?
1:46:49 You know, we’re like, what should I do?
1:46:49 What should I do?
1:46:52 And then I ultimately went through that journey
1:46:56 and decided that, you know, I wanted to have a mission
1:46:58 and a reason to wake up every day
1:46:59 and a reason for existing.
1:47:01 And I knew that I was not going to be happy
1:47:05 if I just became another, you know,
1:47:08 rich guy that, you know, spent all of his time
1:47:10 at the beach and on the yacht all day long.
1:47:13 I knew I would be miserable in that.
1:47:15 Or with the foundation even that I just, you know,
1:47:18 pretended to give a little bit of money away
1:47:21 so I had something to do.
1:47:23 You know, I just knew that for me,
1:47:25 I would only find misery in that.
1:47:30 And so that’s what ultimately led to me, you know,
1:47:33 creating my mission of building the world’s leading
1:47:34 indoor air quality company.
1:47:35 Because that’s something I know I can work on
1:47:36 for the rest of my life.
1:47:39 And be excited about and be proud about
1:47:42 and hopefully rally people around me
1:47:45 to work on and achieve that together.
1:47:47 And that’s a purpose, that’s my purpose.
1:47:50 And I would encourage anyone to go out
1:47:51 and find their own unique purpose.
1:47:54 It doesn’t need to be that or it doesn’t need to be as big.
1:47:56 You can be way bigger.
1:47:57 It can be anything that you want.
1:48:00 But like that’s the driver, that’s the fuel
1:48:03 that gets you out of bed every day,
1:48:03 gets me out of bed every day.
1:48:06 And I think that that’s how human beings are wired.
1:48:09 And the most miserable people I know are the people
1:48:11 that don’t have any purpose.
1:48:13 – Talk to me about the balance is probably the wrong word,
1:48:15 but I’m gonna use it anyway between
1:48:17 your obsession and your family.
1:48:20 – I was incredibly lucky.
1:48:24 I have great parents and you know,
1:48:26 I actually married my high school sweetheart.
1:48:29 We’ve been together since we were 17 years old.
1:48:31 Actually, she was 16, I was 17.
1:48:33 And we’ve been together that whole time.
1:48:39 And you know, 24 years now, I guess.
1:48:42 And you know, I’ve got three young children
1:48:46 and I have a great relationship with them.
1:48:50 And you know, my wife understands who I am at a deep level.
1:48:53 And you know, it never would try to change me
1:48:55 and she trusts me completely, you know.
1:49:00 And so I’ve been very fortunate for that.
1:49:03 And I think that having a stable good partner
1:49:06 is a cheat code in life.
1:49:09 And you know, I really prioritize it.
1:49:13 You know, I work really hard and I travel a lot,
1:49:18 but I’m at home for 6.30 for dinner almost every night.
1:49:23 When I travel, you know, I now have a plane
1:49:25 and I go all over the country,
1:49:28 but I do my best to minimize myself to one night
1:49:32 gone a week, worst case, I’m gone two nights.
1:49:36 And the rest of the time, I’m at home by 6.30
1:49:40 and I see them in the morning before they go off to school.
1:49:43 And you know, I have a great relationship with them.
1:49:46 And you know, I think that, you know,
1:49:50 people use it as an excuse often times to say,
1:49:53 oh, I need balance or I can’t have it all
1:49:54 or can’t be above that.
1:49:55 I don’t think you can have it all.
1:50:00 But it’s like, you know, there’s so much time in the day.
1:50:03 And, you know, you just have to prioritize
1:50:04 the things that are important to you.
1:50:07 And for me, it’s my business and my family.
1:50:09 And, you know, there are a lot of things I don’t get to do
1:50:12 that other people may do.
1:50:15 I don’t get to play tennis and I enjoy playing tennis
1:50:17 or, you know, I don’t golf.
1:50:22 And, you know, I, my, you know, friendships
1:50:23 have probably suffered in that,
1:50:25 like I don’t have, you know,
1:50:27 friends I hang out with every weekend
1:50:28 and that kind of stuff.
1:50:32 I mean, those are the things that are the cost of that,
1:50:36 but I have such a fulfilling life with my family
1:50:37 and my business.
1:50:42 And so I find real purpose in my work
1:50:47 and I have a family that supports me completely
1:50:51 and understands and, you know, it’s thankful for that.
1:50:53 And, but I also get to spend a lot of time with them.
1:50:57 I mean, more than, you know, I think people might think.
1:50:59 And I think I spend more time with my kids
1:51:02 and a lot of people that work way less probably.
1:51:04 And, but it’s because I prioritize that
1:51:05 is important to me.
1:51:06 – I’m the same way.
1:51:10 You mentioned a stable partner being a cheat code for life.
1:51:11 What are the other cheat codes?
1:51:13 What would you tell me?
1:51:14 – I don’t want to sound like a broken record,
1:51:17 but ultimately really self-awareness
1:51:21 and knowing like what you need out of life
1:51:23 is a huge cheat code.
1:51:25 I think a lot of people are trying to live
1:51:27 somebody else’s life.
1:51:31 And I think, and then then wondering why they’re unhappy.
1:51:34 And it’s because they’re trying to live somebody else’s life.
1:51:37 And that’s what’s so dangerous about the modern influencer
1:51:40 culture because it’s so easy to want to live
1:51:41 somebody else’s life.
1:51:42 We all fall into it.
1:51:45 You know, Charlie Munger, probably my greatest
1:51:47 virtual mentor has a saying that, you know,
1:51:52 the thing that drives the world isn’t greed, it’s envy.
1:51:58 Envy is the real problem because people always want
1:52:01 what somebody else’s has.
1:52:03 And I think that it’s very easy for us to fall
1:52:06 into that trap that ultimately leaves to misery
1:52:10 because, you know, what works for you is going to look
1:52:11 very different than works for me.
1:52:13 And that’s what’s beautiful about it.
1:52:15 But if I tried to be you or you tried to be me,
1:52:16 we would both be miserable,
1:52:19 even if we were financially successful, right?
1:52:20 At least that’s my belief.
1:52:23 And I think that that self-awareness of knowing like,
1:52:27 really, who are you and like what do you,
1:52:29 but what really gets you going and what do you really need
1:52:33 out of life to have a fulfilled life is the biggest
1:52:34 cheat code of all.
1:52:37 And I think it’s the thing that most people don’t spend
1:52:39 any time actually thinking about.
1:52:41 – There’s a lot of people who get to a certain level
1:52:44 of success, be it whatever it is, 5 million, 10 million,
1:52:47 100 million, and they take their foot off the gas
1:52:49 and they start living a lifestyle.
1:52:53 And maybe or maybe not that lifestyle sort of becomes
1:52:55 too expensive and they have to go back to work.
1:52:58 A lot of people, I know a lot of people that’s happened to you.
1:53:00 What keeps you going?
1:53:03 – My mission, I mean, as I told you, I mean,
1:53:06 I had a bit of a crisis of self.
1:53:07 I wanted to know like,
1:53:09 I wanted to answer that question myself, right?
1:53:12 And for me, I like to think about,
1:53:15 what am I going to be thinking about on my deathbed?
1:53:19 And I know for me, the things I will regret are things
1:53:24 that I did not try or that I knew I could have done
1:53:27 or thought I could have done if only I put in more effort
1:53:31 or things that I didn’t do because I was fearful.
1:53:33 Those are the things that I’m going to regret.
1:53:36 It’s not going to be the times where I make a mistake.
1:53:41 And I know that I am uniquely gifted in a number of ways.
1:53:47 And I feel a tremendous responsibility
1:53:50 to those people I touch and the people around me
1:53:53 to have a positive impact.
1:53:55 And that sounds corny to say,
1:53:58 but it’s really a big driver for me.
1:54:02 And I know that if I just gave up now
1:54:04 and sold to a private equity company
1:54:07 or took a big check from somebody
1:54:09 and then just kind of went to the sunset,
1:54:12 that I’m not fulfilling my full potential.
1:54:15 And I know in my deathbed that I would regret that.
1:54:19 And so for me, there is no other option,
1:54:23 but to see how big of an impact I can have.
1:54:27 And what exactly that means is maybe somewhat nebulous,
1:54:29 but I intend to have a very big impact
1:54:32 on the people that I touch.
1:54:37 And I think I have a duty to do that.
1:54:39 And that really drives me and what ultimately led to me
1:54:42 building this mission to give me a framework
1:54:43 for thinking about it.
1:54:45 – Talk to me about the lifestyle creep you mentioned.
1:54:47 You’ve seen this before with people.
1:54:49 Is there, without mentioning names or anything,
1:54:51 is there an example that stands out to you
1:54:52 that other people might be able to learn from
1:54:54 who are listening to this?
1:54:57 A lot of incredibly successful people listen to this.
1:54:59 – Yeah, well, the examples that I’ve seen come back
1:55:02 to something we spoke about earlier in the conversation,
1:55:06 but when you’re relying on other people or a paycheck
1:55:10 or one income stream to pay your bills,
1:55:12 and then it may be like if you’re working in finance
1:55:14 and you’re making a few million dollars a year,
1:55:16 then your lifestyle creeps up to that.
1:55:21 And then you wake up one day and maybe you’re not
1:55:23 as marketable as you were before,
1:55:25 and you don’t have any other skills,
1:55:30 and you don’t have the muscle of building those new skills,
1:55:32 and then you’re in trouble.
1:55:35 And I know a number of people that have lived that
1:55:36 because it’s easy to think,
1:55:38 oh, this is gonna go on forever,
1:55:40 and then it inevitably doesn’t.
1:55:42 And even if you have a lot of money,
1:55:44 it goes back to that scarcity mindset.
1:55:46 Because you’re so afraid of losing it,
1:55:48 you can’t spend it, you can’t invest it,
1:55:50 you can’t take the risk that you need
1:55:53 in order to be able to go out and build that lifestyle
1:55:54 again, so to speak.
1:55:56 And so most of the people that I’ve seen
1:55:58 that have been impacted have come from the finance world
1:56:03 that is now declining as a share of GDP.
1:56:05 And so it’s just contracting,
1:56:08 there’s not as much money as there was before.
1:56:10 And then a lot of those people get to a point
1:56:13 where then they’re not employable at the same level,
1:56:15 but they still have that same lifestyle.
1:56:18 And even if they have a decent amount of assets,
1:56:21 they’re then ironically taking less risk with them
1:56:23 because they’re afraid of losing it,
1:56:27 which creates this whole negative kind of spiral with that.
1:56:30 So that’s what I have seen.
1:56:32 I think it’s easy to have lifestyle creep.
1:56:35 I mean, I look at my, I always talk to my wife,
1:56:38 it’s like, when I travel or go out,
1:56:40 it’s mostly work related.
1:56:42 So when I look at our personal expenses,
1:56:44 my wife is not a big spender,
1:56:46 and I’m very thankful for that.
1:56:49 But I look at it and these things add up so much.
1:56:52 And you’re like, how do regular people do this?
1:56:55 It’s easy for that to happen.
1:56:57 And the more successful you are, ironically,
1:56:59 the more people take advantage of you.
1:57:01 And it’s in subtle ways,
1:57:05 but it’s definitely one of those things that happens.
1:57:09 So I understand how things creep up,
1:57:12 but I come at all of these things from a place of abundance.
1:57:16 And I have the confidence to go out,
1:57:18 that I know I can go out and build what I’ve got to build.
1:57:21 And I earn more than I spend.
1:57:25 And I really do that through the business
1:57:28 and compounding it, so I’m certainly fortunate.
1:57:32 But I think the way that you ultimately combat it
1:57:35 is to build the skills to be undeniable.
1:57:37 And then you have the confidence
1:57:39 that you can go out and earn what you want.
1:57:43 I mean, I’m so adverse to the thinking of,
1:57:47 oh, I need to cut my expenses and live.
1:57:51 To me, the answer isn’t living a lower lifestyle
1:57:52 in those cases.
1:57:55 The answer is going out and figuring out a way to add value
1:57:58 to be able to deserve that lifestyle.
1:58:00 And that’s not great advice for everybody.
1:58:02 I mean, everybody’s different,
1:58:03 but that’s just how I’m built
1:58:04 and how I have to frame it
1:58:06 and how I have to think about it.
1:58:07 – We always end on the same question,
1:58:10 which is what does success look like for you?
1:58:11 – What does success look like for me?
1:58:12 – You’re on your deathbed.
1:58:17 – Is to not have any regrets of not doing something
1:58:20 that I knew I should have done.
1:58:22 Or not have tried something that where I’m saying,
1:58:27 only if, that is the thing that I think about that every day.
1:58:30 You know, like when I’m making a decision
1:58:32 or deciding to go into something,
1:58:35 like am I gonna regret not trying it?
1:58:36 And so like, that’s why this personal brand thing,
1:58:38 I was private for so long
1:58:42 and I really was scared of going out and being so public.
1:58:45 And especially in the way that I am now
1:58:48 or to telling the world I’m going to do something so big.
1:58:49 It’s really scared me.
1:58:54 But ultimately, I know that if I didn’t do it
1:58:56 on my deathbed, I would say to myself,
1:58:57 “Oh, I wonder only if.”
1:59:01 And that is just not acceptable to me.
1:59:03 (upbeat music)
1:59:10 – Thanks for listening and learning with us.
1:59:12 The Furnham Street blog is where you can learn more
1:59:13 about my new book, “Clear Thinking,”
1:59:17 turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results.
1:59:19 It’s a transformative guide
1:59:21 that hands you the tools to master your fate,
1:59:23 sharpen your decision-making
1:59:27 and set yourself up for unparalleled success.
1:59:30 Learn more at fs.blog/clear.
1:59:31 Until next time.
1:59:34 (upbeat music)
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