Anne Mahlum | $110M Founder on Betting It All, Turning Trauma Into Power, and Building Solidcore from Scratch

What did it feel like to make $90 million in one day? It felt earned, if I'm being honest. I think what really made it work is one, I went all in. And so when you do that, you kind of have this, I don't have a plan B, like I have to figure this out. Most boutique studios fail. You're going in there with all the money that you have in your savings. It's $175,000. Yeah, I was legitimately passing out flyers like at triathlons and marathons about Solid Core. It was all my money. You had a vision from day one to turn this into an empire. And it felt like I did a really good job. You don't think they should be putting their money in a bank. If you have all of your money sitting in a bank thinking you're being responsible because it's sitting in a savings account, they can go make 10% off your money and pay you a half a percent of interest. It's the biggest scam in the world. And if you had one more guiding principle for the younger generation, what would that be? What's going on, everyone? And welcome back to the School of Hard Knocks podcast. I'm James, and I'm here with Jack and Josh. And we've got an incredible guest for you guys today. We're out in Miami, Florida with one of the most influential fitness entrepreneurs, Anne Malam. Anne, you built one of the most recognizable, one of the most influential fitness brands of all time. You scaled up from zero to one to 50 to over 100 locations nationwide, and ended up selling for a nine-figure exit, which is incredible. Thank you for being with us today. Yeah, thanks for having me. So I wanna get things started out by asking, what did it feel like to make $90 million in one day? It felt earned, if I'm being honest. It didn't feel like, a lot of times people ask me, like, Anne, did you ever think that this would happen? And I think they forget who was driving the bus for all those years. Like, that was the plan from day one. I didn't wanna have one studio. This wasn't a hobby for me. Like, I wanted to build an empire from the very moment that I decided I was gonna do this. So it felt like I did a really good job. So let's go back to before SolidCorp. You were building a nonprofit. You were helping homeless people. Where did that come from? Where did that passion come from? Yeah, so my dad is an addict, and you'll ask my dad, like, what's his addiction? And he'll say, everything. And he's not wrong about that. He went through drug and alcohol recovery when I was really young. I never saw my dad engage in those activities. But he struggled for several years. And my mom went through that with him. And then when I was a teenager, gambling surfaced, and like all good addictions, they thrive in the dark. So my dad did a really good job of hiding that for a couple years. And then, you know, it all kind of blew up in his face. And the day that I found out, my mom found out, and she kicked him out of the house. And I was really upset and also took a lot of that out of my mom. I didn't understand why my parents couldn't figure out their marriage, but my mom just couldn't face another one of my dad's addictions. So I spent my teenage years trying to fix my dad, being upset with my mom. And then I became a runner, trying to figure out how to deal with my own emotions. And 10 years later of having nothing good come from my dad's addictions, I like connected with these group of guys outside a homeless shelter. And I was starved for purpose and fulfillment and like trying to make my life make sense. And running by them and like talking with them for a couple of weeks, I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna start a running club for these group of guys. And nobody got it. Nobody understood it. Even the director of the shelter was like, this doesn't make any sense. And I was like, but I see my dad in these guys and running helped me realize my potential. And I felt invincible when I was running. And I thought that it could help them think of themselves differently. And I sort of always understood the power of self-respect, self-worth, self-love. And if you like yourself and believe in yourself, you're gonna be more likely to make change. And so I felt like those guys needed that more than anything else. So a long story less long, I got the shelter to agree to start this running club, nine guys signed up. And in the first six weeks, I realized like, this was what I was supposed to do with my life. Like these guys were showing up every day on time. And I felt that I could get them to see themselves in a new light and then get them jobs and homes. What did you learn about people that fascinated you? Because you work very closely with people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, right? Working closely with the homeless people to then going and having to work and negotiate with and sell yourself to private equity firms and massive business sharks across everybody. What have you learned about people that's really stuck with you? Well, even take it a step like back to solid core clients. What I learned through the back of my feet guys, and what made me realize that could work is everybody wants the same thing. Everybody wants to be seen, respected, cheered for, loved, cared for, celebrated. And if you can create an environment that does that, people come back. And so these guys at the shelters kept showing up at 6 a.m., not because I was giving them food and clothes or food and shelter. And the solid core clients kept showing up because we make them seen and celebrated and that this was like part of their community. And so I just realized no matter what I was building, like that was my like magic ingredients that I had to a business is to create an environment that people felt really good about themselves. And if you do that, you can build a pretty big business. Yeah, there's so much true testament to that. So like even myself, like I've had some health complications like I've even had to like minor heart surgeries. And so when I, after that period of time and I felt comfortable running again, like I truly felt like my best, most powerful, invincible self when I was able to run and push the limits of that. Could you dive deeper on kind of like, because I feel like through that science about bringing them there, it's just if I could just get them to do something that's structured and run through like, as an entrepreneur, like setting up your mental to just be able to like dive deeper, stick to something, a habit, and just like push limits beyond yourself. Like, where did you realize that? And like, how could most entrepreneurs also have that same habit and effect? Yeah, I think two responses to that. One, I learned from my dad that you can't force anybody to change. Like he wasn't, my dad wasn't gonna change because I wanted him to. My dad had to change because he wanted to. And my dad didn't wanna change for a long time. He continued to struggle with gambling throughout my entire teenage years. And that was really challenging for me. And then two, realizing myself, if I continue to play this victim card and like my dad's an addict, my parents are divorced, you know, I'm allowed to get in any which trouble. You know, if you play the victim card about your life, you end up being the loser. Nobody else does, it's only you. And so when I met these guys living in this shelter, I made them sign this dedication contract when I first met them. And it said that if you wanna join the running club, you gotta show up every day, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You gotta be on time. You gotta come with a positive attitude and you have to respect your teammates. And everybody in that room sat up a little bit straighter as if they were waiting for someone to expect excellence from them. And I wasn't gonna do the work for them. They had to show up and they had to do like the work and the miles. But I think people want to feel good and I think that it feels good to have someone have expectations of you. And for a long time, no one had any expectations of these guys, right? They got reminded over and over again that you're homeless. I mean, you end up 40, 50 year old in a homeless shelter, like people in that community tend to remind you of that over and over again. And then here I was some young white blonde, you know, stranger from North Dakota, telling them that they can be so much more than anybody else ever saw than them. And so I think that that like, ooh, she sees something in me. Then they started to see maybe there's something I'm not seeing in myself. And then you start running and you start to be like, oh my God, I ran a mile today. And the endorphins and the serotonin and the dopamine all start to flow. And you realize I'm doing the hard work. What else am I capable of? So you had said that you had a vision from day one to turn this into a, like an empire. How did you go from the run club to opening up that first solid core location? What was the process like? So back on my feet scaled across the country also, I opened 12 markets in four and a half years. And so we had, you know, it kind of had a formula, right? Like it was like, great, we've figured out how to do this. I then felt like I wasn't as needed anymore. Like I set the infrastructure in place. So I felt like I was giving myself permission to say what's next for me. And that was really scary. As I think a lot of entrepreneurs who go on to their second thing, you worry about being a one-hit wonder. You worry about like, how do you top this? You know, did you get lucky? The self-doubt start to pour in and then you have to have the strategy to talk yourself through it again. And so when I opened myself up for what could be next for me, I was trying to figure out what's another game I can win. And when I walked by this Pilates studio in Los Angeles, I am an athlete. Like I'd done 11 marathons by then. I, you know, did every workout under the sun. And I'm like, oh, this will be a fun little thing to do in LA. I got crushed. I didn't understand how that could have been so hard. And I realized nobody knows about this. Nobody built a brand around this, a community around this. And that's what I know how to do. So I was like, this is my next thing. And it didn't take very long to, you know, step down from back on my feet and then get this. I think I had the studio open three months after I stepped down. Most boutique studios fail. So you're going in there with all the money that you have in your savings, $175,000. What did that initial business plan look like? And what allowed you guys to succeed in scale versus other boutiques? Yeah, so one, I had to make that money go far, you know, and I was playing with a little bit of financial fire. Like it costs more than that to get the studio open. I just had to negotiate with the contractors to be like, can I pay these bills in 60 days versus 30 days so I can get cashflow into the studios and, you know, things like that. But I think what really made it work is one, I went all in. And I had an offer for $75,000 for 30% of SolidCorp before I even had a studio open. It was from a board member who had been involved in back on my feet. And he was like, listen, Anne, if you can get a bunch of people who are homeless to run three days a week and raise millions of dollars for it, I think you're going to be able to figure this out. And I highly considered taking that offer until I realized if I take that offer, all I'm going to be doing is saying I doubt myself and that's going to come back to haunt me when things get really hard. So I went all in on my own, 100%. And so when you do that, you kind of have this, I don't have a plan B. Like, I have to figure this out. I was legitimately passing out flyers like at triathlons and marathons about SolidCorp. Like every waking moment was. You were doing some guerrilla marketing. Oh, anything I had to do to make sure this thing went well because I didn't have any other option, right? It was all my money. And then it was hiring the right people. When I hired our first five coaches, who I still talk with, I think all of them today, it was personality, personality, personality. Like, do people like you? Are you going to be funny? Are you going to be able to make people feel good? And that was really, really important because, as I said, the community aspect, I knew the workout was going to be something unique, but I needed them to feel like, oh, I really like being here. And one of the most important things that I instilled in that culture was you have to say everybody's name. When you go to a SolidCorp studio today, over and over again, you will hear your name in a positive association while you're taking that workout so that when you walk out of there, you say things like, oh, I don't know why, but I really like that place. And it's because we were saying your name again and again. So it was the uniqueness tied with the I will not fail and the hiring the right people to be stewards of the brand. I have a little bit of a two-part question here. You're allowed. But I'll kind of lead with it. We were having a conversation earlier before the podcast. And one of the things that fascinates me about you and a lot of very successful entrepreneurs is this idea that once you get momentum, you don't let up. And I think you had one year where you opened 30-something locations. What was the biggest? How many? Yeah, I think it was 32. Which is insane. How did you use momentum to your advantage? And I say that because I think more often than not, people will get maybe that one big win. And then they immediately take their foot off the gas. But that famous saying, Isaac Newton, that an object in motion stays in motion. How did you use momentum to your advantage and kind of build up on that? And then I'll follow up at the end. Yeah, well, exactly. Once you get going and start the flywheel, it's really easy to continue to just add another studio. You figure out the different departments and layers of what it took to grow this brick and mortar business. And it was like we have operations. We have real estate. We had marketing. We had the training team. And then we had HR for the most part. And so we used to have this huge chart on the big wall where we would be like, OK, we're going to open 15 studios this year. And we would work backwards from, OK, what does that mean for how many leases? How many LOIs do we have to have out in the real estate game right now? Meaning like if I have a lease with James, and you're like, we negotiate, and all of a sudden you pull out of the deal. If I have all my eggs in your basket, I'm kind of screwed, unless I'm also negotiating with Jake. So we learned really quickly. We have to have a lot of lines in the water here if we're going to get 15 studios open, because deals fall apart all the time. And then we learned that when we had an LOI, that we weren't putting enough of the meat and potatoes in the initial letter of intent. And that's just kind of the rent, the guarantee, all of the bigger stuff. And so we said put all of the big stuff in the LOI. And some landlords would be like, we'll worry about that with a lease. We're like, no, because we don't want to waste 45 days negotiating with you if we can't agree on this point. It's a breaking point for us. So we would front load all of the big parts like that. And as soon as the LOI was signed, we would then get the drawings on and go in for permit, so that by the time the lease was signed, we had our permit to start construction. So we would get these things open from lease signing to like 8 to 10 weeks after the Solid Core Studio would be open, where most people don't touch the drawings until after the lease is signed, where it already took you two to three months of negotiation. Now you have to pick an architect. So they were just going too slow, where we were betting that we were able to get the deal done. So again, we were just a step ahead of everybody else. And that momentum, again, once it started going, no one could catch us. We had so many studios open that when other people would open one or two, we're like, great. You're just not a threat to us, because we're moving so much faster than you. And I had to follow up with, because again, we were talking about this earlier, and I found this fascinating. You were talking about in Washington, DC, I think, was where you had a solid core here, and right around the corner, you put another solid core. What did you learn about that awareness? You kind of built a moat where people were trapped, and it's like they see it there and there. And again, I was telling you about how the Chipotle CEO, they're planning to open up 365 locations this year. And I asked him, how do you know where's the best place to put a Chipotle? And he's like, look, we've opened up Chipotles next to Chipotles, and they've done well. So what kind of went into that strategy when you're like, because some people were like, oh, we have one in Tampa, and then we'll put one in Miami, one in, you know, but that's not kind of. There's something to be said about brand equity, right? So when we early on discovered, we would not open a studio unless we could put five within that 15 to 20 mile radius. It just didn't make sense for us to put all of the effort into opening a new market for one studio. So for example, New York is our largest market right now. I think there's like 20 studios in Manhattan. When we open a 21st studio there, it's full with a wait list. It is a two to $3 million studio from day one because there is so much brand equity there. It's much harder to go to a brand new market where nobody really knows us. And so, you know, SolidCorp doesn't, still doesn't open that many new markets in a year. It will continue to infiltrate where we already have a footprint, and just like, you know, seep its way into the suburbs because somebody knows somebody who's taken that class before, and we just continue to promote to that group of audience. So it just becomes easier to scale and to get studios open. I've never heard someone mention, I won't open a studio there unless we can open five in that city. Are you like learning from someone? Is there a mentor or another franchise that you're kind of modeling or taking notes from throughout this process? Not really back then. I think you like learn of like, oh, Starbucks has so many open. And I think our mentality, I mean, if you look at a SolidCorp studio now, we have classes starting at like 4.30 in the morning. And you have classes at like 10 o'clock at night. And we also discovered that nobody else was catering to these people outside of the regular like fitness time, six, seven, 8 a.m., and then at night. But in a lot of these markets, especially after COVID, there was people with all different types of schedules, right, and so for SolidCorp, we were like, we only need 300 people to make a studio actually be profitable. Obviously, we want more than that, but like to make that work. And so picking studios or opening a studio didn't feel so scary when you looked at it that way. I'm like, find 300 people. And then when we would say, okay, what about having a class at two o'clock in the afternoon? Oh, nobody works out then. I'm like, you're telling me there's not 10 people in this city who work out at two o'clock? I just don't believe it. So we just like got rid of all of these things that people used to say about fitness and catered to the community that we were in. So like I said, in the financial district in New York, there's investment bankers, there's lawyers. They can't work out till 10 o'clock at night, so we have a class for them and nobody else does. How did you go about determining what markets you were gonna enter into? In the beginning, I was mentioning to James earlier, like we opened up in Atlanta because my boyfriend's family was from there. I just didn't, I think sometimes when you put so much emphasis on the paralysis analysis of like our second market has to be here, I take that as a red flag when I speak to entrepreneurs. I'm like, I don't know if you really have a scalable brand. I want to know that your second market could be like any one of these 20 cities because your client base is there. If you're telling me it has to be here, that makes me concerned that there's not as many people as you think that are gonna be interested in your brand. So I didn't have a big strategy. Like I kind of followed back on my feet's footprint. I'm like, I opened up in Atlanta. I know the city like a little bit and then I opened up in Philly. I know the city a little bit and I knew like the areas to look for. So it wasn't very strategic in the beginning. It's a little bit more, you know, formulated now, but you know, to your point earlier, you mentioned there was like when you were in Austin, a dry bar, what was the other one? A sweet green and then a solid core. Like we sort of know when we look at real estate, what other businesses to look for, where our audience is. Yeah, it's like if they're, you know, if they're so honed in on the second location, it's just like, well, what happens when you get to like market four, five and six? It's like, are those cities not good for you? Right. So there better be a bunch of options. Oh yeah. One of my favorite stories, I guess, about scaling is with the McDonald's brothers. When they first started McDonald's, they were so worried about doing the franchise model and scaling because they were worried about diminishing the quality of the product, as well as just the systems and everything in place. And then Ray Kroc came up with this like super straightforward system in order to, like taking the McDonald's brothers system in there. And then he was able to do it at scale. What were some of those things when you were scaling to those other markets and those locations to help you maintain like the level of quality that solid core maintain, even at like the early locations? Our training team was crucial. I was very close to our training team, our director of training for the first several years, Joe Gomez, who's still one of my very good friends. Her and I were very, very close because I needed her to make sure that she built a training team out because we trained our coaches corporately. So we would send the corporate team to Atlanta, to Philly, to North Dakota, to wherever to train them. So they knew what to look for. And it's like, do you embody the solid core brand? We took our tagline very seriously, which is create the strongest version of yourself. So we needed to see and feel that from you, that like there was some sort of authenticity around our tagline and how you live your life. And you just needed to be also be fun. If you were a very good coach technically and you had all this experience, but you didn't have the personality, we didn't hire you. As we had learned in DC, because that's where we expanded quickly the most, we only hired our clients. We would literally approach our clients and be like, will you coach for us? And they would be like, I don't, I'm not a fitness instructor. We're like, we don't care. We'll train you. We have a training program. And most of the people that work at solid core have full-time jobs. Like 99% of our coaches, they do this on the side. They coach six classes a week. They get a chance to perform, but they're super, super likable. And we had learned that our clients will forgive you if you make a technical mistake, but if you're not nice or funny or affable or like make them feel special, they don't wanna come back to your class. So we are really, really honed in on our coach base and that they were gonna make or break this brand. That's one of the, I mean, even what we've learned is, especially for like our community, a lot of the people that we've brought onto that team were actually members in the community themselves. And they were so like go giving and wanting to like participate, be part of the team, help out. They were like, hey, do you just, do you wanna come and just work with us? And I feel that, you know, somebody that's that bought into your brand is a lot stronger to bring onto the team than maybe somebody that has all the talent in the world, but they're not as like bought into the brand. Would you say that that is like kind of like your philosophy when it comes to hiring? Totally. I mean, if you didn't like the workout, right? It would be like, if I was like pitching solid core all the time and I don't do solid core, like that just feels weird. And I think people can smell that stuff. So anybody who wanted to ever come and coach for us, like you had to go take the workout and you like, some people hate it, you know? They still want to coach for us. We're like, that's just not going to work. So the reason we would go after our client base would be like, listen, you've taken 50 classes here. Everybody gravitates to you. You're really strong in class. You're an example. You're an inspiration. Can you come coach for us? So we pay the coaches really well. In New York, I have close friends there still. And one of them makes $40,000 a year coaching six classes a week. And it's just like he gets to perform, and he gets to work on his public speaking. And he also has a massive community of people that he has met there. And if he ever needed to look for another job, he's just got hundreds of clients who adore him. Now, you scaled this thing out to over 100 locations. You built an empire. But ultimately, you went down to the table, and you sold this thing for, it ended up selling for hundreds of millions of dollars. You made $90 million. Can you walk us through that process and any advice or lesson that you learned about exiting the right way? Because that's most entrepreneurs' dreams. Most don't exit. Talk to us about what that exit was like. Yeah, so you can't exit a business if you're not succession planning. At least, I don't think you can exit it successfully and with grace. So that was really, really important. So every step along the way, it was, am I putting the right people in place? Because when you're starting to deal with an exit, you're going to start to deal with private equity. And private equity just isn't interviewing me. They're interviewing my entire team to make sure that there is high-level talent around the table and that this thing isn't just going to fall apart if Amanda decides she doesn't want to do this anymore. So that was really, really key. Hiring people who are smart and let them speak and let them talk and let them do their job and give them bigger responsibility so that you can continue to be less involved in running the business. And the second one was, I raised three, four rounds of private equity. My first one was $18 million. I put 12 in the business. And this was going to be enough to get us to our exit. We put 12 in the business, and I took $6 million off the table. And a lot of times, private equity doesn't want you to take a dime off the table, but I just don't think it's very smart to be a starving founder. I knew that the numbers at SolidCorp were going to get really, really big. And I am a girl from North Dakota. My mom was a public school teacher. My dad never really made any money, right? So I wasn't really familiar with wealth and was smart enough to realize, if I don't start to get a little bit of a taste to this, if I never take any money off the table, when a big exit comes, I think I'm going to sell myself short because $10 million is going to feel like so much money. So it was taking some money off the table in every single round. That way, when my big exit came, James, and I had already taken 15 million off the table, there was no pressure. If they couldn't agree to my deal terms on what I wanted, which was a nine-figure exit, it was, you have to get me to $100 million. Otherwise, I'm not doing this. It was just like, they're like, well, Anne, your equity is only worth 90 million. And I'm like, yeah, but I don't care. And if that doesn't work for you, I understand. I'll just wait and sell the business six months later and I'll run a more competitive process and you can come back to the table and you can spend more money than you're going to have to spend today. So it was always keeping myself in a place of strength. I never sold controlling interest in my company, even though I only owned 30% of the business when I sold, I still remained the controlling party of the board and I could decide to sell the business when I wanted to, but they couldn't sell it without me. You said you raised four times. Yeah. Why did you raise each time and what were the things you were just looking to accomplish with those raises? One, I was only planning to raise once, but unfortunately COVID hit. So we hired bankers in February of 2020 and then everything shut down, which as an entrepreneur who loves to build and scale and has to go to zero, talk about a flywheel, we had opened 50 studios in the last 26 months and I had to let go all of my staff, all of the revenue went away and it was like, crap, right? Like, what are we going to do? And so when that war happened, right, we went to battle. We said, who's, what's going to kill this company? And it was the landlords. The landlords, if they wanted to force us to pay rent, sue us, legal battles, whatever, we knew we had to like get, and fortunately we had great relations with our landlords. We knew that we had to give them to get us rent abatement in exchange for a longer lease term or something down the road. Fortunately, our footprint, which was like 2,500 square feet wasn't that big of a hit to their portfolio. So our great negotiation skills allowed us to not have to get rid of our $2.5 million that we had in the bank. So we said, we got to raise money. We're not going to, I'm not selling this company at like a distressed company or discount. We're going to raise money and we're going to start playing offense. It was really clear that red States were being a lot more lenient with businesses in COVID than blue States were. So we raised another $50 million in COVID in 2021 and said, we're playing offense. We want to get back to opening. So we opened 11 new studios in red States in 2021 while most people were still playing defense, opening slowly, hiring slowly. And we were putting our capital to use so that we could be in a better position than anybody else after COVID hit. So that was two. And then I guess the third one for me was when I did my whole equity and then solid core just sold again to L Catterton in 20, last year, 2024. You mentioned that after exiting for an insane amount of money, you kind of took a step back from wealth creation mode and into wealth preservation mode. You gave me a masterclass out there in terms of what you and the top 1% do with their money, how they perceive money. Where are you investing your money right now and are seeing those opportunities? Because you're, again, you're in that top threshold. You have a different perspective than 99% of other people. Can you give us that perspective? Yeah, it does get a little strange. I won't like deny that. Like when you have, when you like look at your accounts and you see your net worth, I think our net worth right now is like $108 million or $110 million when you add everything up together. So I have about 50% of my money in the stock market invested in equities, both ETFs, as well as individual stocks. There's about 15% invested in real estate. Some of that's cash flowing. This is our primary house, but it's real estate. I've got about 5% in private equity deals that I do. Private equity is very risk averse. They only do deals that are gonna make them money. So I've experienced that. So I wanted to be an investor in that. I do about 5% to 10% of direct investments into startups myself in spaces that I understand and the founders that I believe in. So fitness and wellness space. I've got like 2% in crypto. And what am I missing here? And then probably like 5% to 10% in hedge funds. The secret to when you're wealthy is you don't really sell anything. You don't sell it because you pay taxes. You leverage your wealth and your net worth and then you borrow. Can you tell us about how one day it was down to like the 49 million and then up to- Yeah, totally. So listen, the market this year took a real big hit when all the tariffs came about, right? And if you guys are invested in the market, you may remember April 7th was like the bottom. And this doesn't happen very often, but my accounts dropped 20, 30%, right? I think it was over the course of a two-week period. Now it's not uncommon for the market to go down 20% over the course of a year, but it's a slow drip. So it doesn't feel as painful as that. And because I have a decent risk tolerance and have educated myself, that was a time to put in more money to the market, knowing that like the market has always come back, that Trump, like him or hate him, is he really measures himself based off of how well the stock market's doing. So like at some point, he's gonna figure this out. So put some more money in. And that account went from 49 million to when I checked yesterday on Friday, it was back up to 64 million. So it's just crazy the amount of wealth creation. Since I've sold SolidCore alone in April, 2023, I didn't put all my money in the market. It was invested over time, but I've made over $20 million just in the market in less than a two-year period. So in essence, I will make way more investing. I have all my spreadsheets. Like I'll be a billionaire by the time I'm 68, like with a 10% compounding interest in all my investments. Hopefully they do more than that. And I could be playing volleyball all day. I would put money that you're gonna get there way sooner though. Yeah, but the crazy thing is, and it does like mess with your mind. You're like, I could go play volleyball all day. And that money just wants to make more money. It just wants to compound. And you feel like you're cheating. But real quick, you don't think they should be putting their money in a bank? No, no. I mean, guys, the reason when you look at like, why do banks have so much money? Banks take your money and they invest it in the stock market. They're investing it in things because they're paying you nothing. They're paying you less than half a percent unless you specifically go tell them to put it in a high yield money market account, which is paying like 4% right now. They won't do that unless you ask them. You negotiated with them, right? Oh yeah, I negotiated with UBS on my margin rate and what that should look like. But you can do that with banks also. The more money you have, the more leverage that you have. But if you have all of your money sitting in a bank thinking you're being responsible because it's sitting in a savings account, the bank is giving you a big thank you and taking your money and investing it in the market so that they can go make 10% off your money and pay you a half a percent of interest on your money. Like it's the biggest scam in the world. Fellas, what do we say about that? They don't what? They don't teach that in school? No, they don't teach that in school. That's on purpose. I mean, I had to, you know, you think about college. I know you guys dropped out of college, but like I had to take like international geography in college and I had to memorize, you know, international capitals and I'm like, that's great. I like look fun at like a party or like a, you know, on trivia night, but are you kidding? Like there's nothing that really prepares you. They should be teaching you about communication, human psychology, marketing. I mean, these things should be the general requirements for college and people are starting to figure this out. So if colleges don't start to like really give people an education on how they can be successful in life, like they're going to be obsolete in the next 10-ish years. I have two questions. One, you'd brought up volleyball. And so when you'd said that like, oh, I get up and I play volleyball every single day. I love that. I think that's awesome. But my question is as a founder, when you were building your company, was it always like that? Were you doing that while you were building SolidCore? I know after you do that now, but like while you were building SolidCore, was that something that was like a pivotal part or do you recommend that like founders, it's like, no, you need to be locked in a hundred percent. So I can look you in the eye and tell you that I have slept eight hours a night building my business. Like I just was never one of those people. If I have a problem, I deal with it today. And I just seem to understand systems infrastructure and scalability. And so it doesn't mean I always hired the right people. I had to hire, fire, whatever. But I don't wanna say that I had balance. I worked on SolidCore all the time and that's because I wanted to work on it all the time. Like I got a lot of joy from it, but I wasn't working 20 hours around the clock. Also because in the back of my head, it's like, this isn't sustainable. Like this isn't how you build and scale a company. You can't expect other people to do this. So how do you delegate? What are the things that I need to focus on that have the highest ROI for the business? And what are other people better at you than doing? And get those off your plate immediately. So it was just like every day, that was my thought process. Do you need to be in this meeting? Does somebody else know more than you? And also, can you let them make a decision? And if they make a wrong decision, they need to make it because otherwise they're never gonna trust themselves. So a lot of CEOs, there's a great book called Multipliers. Liz, something, do you guys know this book? I've heard the title. Yeah, it's really, really great if you're in a CEO role because you will figure out how you're multiplying people and then how you're diminishing them. And a lot of times, CEOs and founders, I had this problem too, we have the great ideas. So in the meetings, when there's a problem to be solved, everybody turns and looks at the highest paid person in the room to solve the problem. If you keep doing that, you're not teaching people how to think for themselves. That should just never be happening. You should only be involved in things after it made it through all departments and nobody else could figure it out. And that's, again, how you build trust in your team to make big decisions and not be scared to make a mistake. There was a Reddit post that had gone viral from the CTO of Loom, I guess, when they sold. And their post was, I'm worth $60 million and I feel nothing. I feel you talked about you had a succession plan before you sold SolidCorp, but how did you feel after the exit? Because I'm sure a little bit of your identity was part of that. What was, how did you feel post? Because I feel like a lot of founders, they kind of lose their sense of identity after the exit. How did you deal with that? Yeah, I mean, listen, it's a great question. And if you don't have a plan afterward, I think that's really understandable how that can happen. Which is why it was nice when I promoted the CEO of SolidCorp, I went into the exec chair role for two years. So I was involved in the business in the appropriate manner, but I wasn't in all the meetings. Like when SolidCorp, when frankly I sold all my shares, I was only involved in the negotiation when the deal was done. So I wasn't involved, all the leadership team was involved because they needed to sell themselves to the next business because I wasn't gonna be there. And so that amazing period over those two years to realize like, great, I need some other things happening in my life. Like, how do I feel? How am I contributing? How am I feeling like I'm spending my time? Am I still proud of myself at night? And all of those things start to pop up. So as silly as it might sound to some people, like with volleyball, I get to be competitive. I'm moving my body, which is really important to me at this stage in my life. Like, I probably will start another company in my like 60s, I think. When, you know what I mean? Like, I just wanna be playing all day. I wanna be at the gym. I wanna be moving my body. I want to optimize and become the absolute best volleyball player that I can be. So I get the competitiveness. I get the new skill. I get the socialness. I get the working out. Like, it's just hitting so many boxes for me. So you feel like it's Christmas every day? It's really, I mean, honestly, and I fortunately found these group of women who like, I mean, no one's canceled. Like, not once. We've been doing this for months and everybody is just so committed to getting better in training and winning in tournaments as adult women. So it's really awesome. And then, you know, I started to say, okay, what else do I wanna do with my time? I do some advising, right? So I get on calls with other entrepreneurs who are working through problems and issues that I can help them see certain things that they're not seeing. That's fulfilling for me. I'm investing in some startups and some founders where I'm sitting on the board where I feel like I'm offering a ton of value. And it's like, I do feel like Jekyll and Hyde sometimes around the money piece because when you're like, money's making all this money, even though I don't need any more money, it's a game to play. And I'm trying to be really mindful about not just wanting more for the sake of more when you really start to figure out what does make you happy, you know? And I'm like, gosh, on a day-to-day, like probably the biggest expense we have is we fly private, you know? So we'll like drop a hundred grand a month on flying private, like pretty consistently. And to me, it's worth it. Like I don't have any qualms about that, but playing volleyball doesn't cost that much money. So it just doesn't take a lot to be happy. So I'm trying not to get caught up in the rat race of like making so much more money, even though it just happens because your money compounds, if that makes sense. Are you, you're working on another venture right now, aren't you? No, I mean, I'm drafting, I have a draft of my book, which is called How to Outsmart the Odds, pretty much using everything you got to get everything you want. So that's how I feel like my success has been made is figuring out what your talents are, just the same way you guys have. So I'm doing that and I'm advising and investing in playing volleyball, that's it. We love to end these off with two last questions to leave you with today. And if you had one more guiding principle for the younger generation, what would that be? You could leave them with one more message to take with them for their lives, what would that be? Um, gosh, I think I'll stick to the business thing. You have to figure out the things that you are an eight and a nine at and really, really perfect them as much as you can. The things that you are a one and a two and a three at, just let go. Even if you work so hard and you become a four, five and a six, no one cares. No one's gonna hire you to do those things anyway because someone else is gonna be way better than you. So I think the way for you to be the most successful is figure out what those special ingredients and talents and skill sets that you have and just continue to sharpen the ax every day. And I need you to drop the easy choices hard, like I need you to drop that for us and then break that one down for them. Well, listen, you know, like, especially at our stage, right, we have a lot of comforts in our life. And I think that's why the getting up at 6 a.m., getting ready to play volleyball, challenging myself, you know, going to the gym, you know, every day, still, you know, sprinting. And as you mentioned, I'm pregnant and I'm like, I'm not slowing down. Even doctors, oh, be careful. I'm like, I'm not slowing down until my body tells me to because I don't wanna feel like I'm taking the easy way out in things. And I think it's even more rewarding when you could, right? Oh, you made it, relax, blah, blah, blah. There's something really rewarding at the end of the day of knowing that you worked really hard on something that you're trying to get better at. So it's, my husband's the same way. It's why we have, you know, the marriage that we do. We have very similar values in that we wanna do the work. And what was the quote? Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life. And so, you know, you built an amazing company. You had an amazing, you know, nonprofit that was crushing it. And now you're enjoying that life and helping others. When it's all said and done, if it were to end tomorrow, how would you wanna be remembered? I think I'd wanna be remembered as somebody who spent her time to create things that made people's lives happier and healthier. And that's, yeah, that's like, whenever I build another business, it has to be something to do with that. Like, community is everything, especially as, you know, the loneliness epidemic and people on their phones more. I think it's even gonna be more and more crucial. I mean, Jake, it's why we have this house, right? You mentioned it when you walked in. We host a lot. We, like, do retreats here. We constantly have friends and family here because I wanna provide that experience and for people to be together. I love it. You got amazing advice. Thank you so much for this. Everybody watching right now, be sure to like and subscribe for amazing content we've got coming every week going all over the world to bring you guys incredible people just like Anne Malum. And we're gonna put all the links to her social media channels below. That way you guys can go follow her, keep on, you know, I know that you're posting some great content, helping some people out. And guys, go down to the link in the description of the video to join the number one community for business owners in the world today, the School of Mentors, because we give you guys direct access to the millionaires and billionaires we interview every week on this channel on live calls where you can ask your questions and get mentored every week directly from them. So we can't wait to see you on the inside. With that being said, we'll see you in the next video.