Walton Lawrence

[Music] Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the TrueGrip podcast where we believe that personal growth and helping each other solve important problems is the best way to make the world a better place. I'm your host Craig Kouch and every week it's my job to interview top performers and unlock the secrets of their success so that you and I can apply some of their thought patterns, daily rituals and strategies to our own missions. [Music] My next guest is a local enigma. No one is quite sure what he does and he kind of likes it that way. I've been friends with Walt Lawrence for 20 years and I've always been amazed and slightly mystified by his approach to business. He graduated from the University of Texas in 92 with an English literature degree. He spent seven years dedicated to the retail commercial real estate business culminating in becoming president of Woodmont's Brokers division by age 27. He called the mills corporation in the mid 90s and convinced them to come to Texas which is a huge deal. It resulted in exclusively representing them for both great vine mills mall here and Katie mills mall in Houston as well as representing Bass Pro Shops adjacent to each of these locations. And he's had over a billion dollars in real estate transactions to date. When he resigned from Woodmont in December of 1999 to pursue his self-described ADD business plan of numerous other adventures which has resulted in 20 different entrepreneurial endeavors over the past 20 years in a wide range of industries. Walt's most recent venture clear sky partners is a small business accelerator that forms close partnerships with uniquely differentiated organizations and a typically talented people striving to solve big business problems so they can more rapidly and efficiently expand into their target markets with proper execution. Walt's been married to Stephanie for 24 years and has three kids and the oldest one just turned 21 on Christmas day. And honestly I haven't been this excited about a podcast interview in a while. Walt, welcome to the true grit podcast. Thank you so much, Craig. I as I told you before I'm kind of torn between excited and nervous because of the predecessors that I've been. It's a pretty cool big headers between Ted Kitchens and Matthew McDonald Lee Long. Yeah, these are all people that I've tried to model certain aspects of my life after. In fact, last year when I had the honor of doing my father's eulogy my whole swing thought with what would Ted do? The whole thing start to finish and it was perfectly set up to be at his pulpit thankfully. And that kind of added to the nuance. A lot of a lot of guidance. And I don't think he knows that but that guy is amazed. Well, now he does. I bet he's going to listen to this. So I think I find myself over the years since he's you know I view him as a spiritual director for me. I found myself asking myself the same question. What would what would Ted do in the situation? Well, so you and I've been friends for most of your adventures. And I've always been amazed by this ADD fueled business shenanigans. And the fact that you've been involved in 20 different businesses. But I'm going to I'm going to veer off of the runway a little bit and ask you a pointed question. And that is what kind of advice would you give a newly married entrepreneur? Well, it's a very important aspect to everything. One, if they are already an entrepreneur when they get married, then you have to believe that she's on board for the wild ride that is going to exist. And so that is a very positive sign. I did it the other way. I became fairly successful, creative, really nice lifestyle, a whole lot of comfort. And then I ripped the rug out from under everybody and went off on what I call as my tumultuous and exciting path. And so I think you need to have alignment with your significant other. If you're going to do something that is risk oriented and this definitely would fall into that category. People inherently desire to mitigate risk. They're more inclined, in my opinion, to stick with something that works even if it's not optimal. And even if it's not even preferring, they'll do it just out of a desire not to fail. And that's just human nature at its finest. And I think that with a marriage, you need to ingrain that says not going to be anything normalized. Just like for sure. And you know, I have my wife is pretty risk averse. And she, one of the things she says is that I don't need to be adventurous because I'm married to you. That's awesome. So you guys, I don't have to wear a helmet because you wear the helmet and I get to stay home and worry about what you're doing next. You know, as you look at your relationship with Stephanie. And you've, I mean, it's just, it's so, it's just difficult. So it's a hard all around just to be married. First of all, without the drama and rollercoaster that surrounds entrepreneurship. How, how, how would you suggest sort of reassuring your significant other through the ups and downs that are, you know, typically, you know, I think you would probably agree that opposite to track. And usually there's a risky one and one that takes just loves risk and then one that doesn't in our case, it's our wives. What, what sort of ideas do you have around that? Well, you know, first off, let me take a step back and say that my wife is much more in tune with her spirituality and connection with God than I can profess to be. And I got lucky in that respect. But if she wasn't as resolute in her belief and faith that ultimately things are going to work out the way they're supposed to not necessarily in the way that it's the most enjoyable. But the way that they're supposed to some of godly perspective. Then if I hadn't had her, I have that alignment individually, then we would have ended a long time ago. Because that was just blind luck on my part that it turned out that she had such a great faith. And I have a great deal of respect for that. Now with that, what she's done is during the several, I mean numerous scary and low times. She has kind of gone quite more so than anything else. And just sent more time praying and more time connecting with God and hoping that that would bring her a peace she needed to endure. But the thing that instilled the most trust I think I heard was that I was tireless in my efforts. And then I was going to solve the problem. I wasn't going to talk about how I was going to do it a lot. I was working incessantly. I was doing what it took to get there irrespective of what circumstances were. And it wasn't letting fear get in the way. So I think the summary would be that I think she saw through my actions enough that when coupled with her faith, she was able to achieve some level of peace. Wow. Wow. That's a great description. What a what a strong woman to. You know, like that, the part that sticks out to me most is is, you know, almost the quieting and then shifting to prayer. Like because I could imagine the feeling of wanting to be really vocal about the ADD shenanigans, right, that entrepreneurs often have. Is there, and we're going to move on here in a second, but I just had one more question just kind of in the family realm. Is there anything you would have done differently in the grinding years with your three children? Now what I've done with them is I basically not burdened them with any of this aspect. I might believe this is imperative to preserve their innocence as long as you can, because the world and social media are going to run it sooner than you want to, have them experience that anyway. So thankfully, they're inherently happy kids, not predisposed to being worried, if you will. And on top of that, I've done what it takes to make sure that they've had a great quality of life irrespective of how much stress it has to meet, because they didn't choose this path. And so when you're just a passenger, you need to know how your driver is going to do fine. Right. So there's implicit trust that they don't know they had, but I believed it was necessary. Yeah. I think that's a healthy approach for sure. So an entrepreneurship has, I've watched it over the year, just kicked the crap out of you over the years, and it takes a toll on your body. I mean, I recall, and this is funny, but it's not. But I recall this time, this window of time, for you, where Texas wouldn't allow you to drive a car for a year. Can you tell? I remember, I remember you being on your bicycle and just going, wow, he is this guy never stops. Can you tell a brief version of that? Well, yeah. And what I'll do is I'll kind of back up a little bit. You know, out of the 18 or so, the ventures that I've outlined to you, which I remember, I thought there were 13 when we first spoke, is because I've formed a selective memory. It's a whole lot of the stuff that was really traumatic. So once I really had to give a dig back in, I found there was almost 50% more of these crazy ventures than I originally anticipated. But, you know, there've been two periods during this 20 year process where I've had three or more fails in a row. Sequential fails are the biggest problem. It's imperative to have fails if you're really trying on any level with anything. You learn a lot more, but you need to try to mitigate the number of times that you have three or more in a row. Especially once you've created a particular quality of life that warrants an extraordinary amount of income. So you've set the bar and three fails in a row, really sucks is what you're saying. So what you're referring to, you know, the two times that I have exceeded $500,000 from credit card debt in my life as a result of not being willing to work with bankers and wanting to be self-reliant and wanting to sustain the reality for everyone in my family. No matter what the cost to me. In the first one, since it was new to me, I actually had a grandmouse seizure and ended up flopping around like a fish on the floor, and ended up in hospital and it was a divine intervention is really what it was. It taught me that God wanted me to move away from pure self-reliance, which is what I've been trying to do for four years in a row after I left the real estate world. And I was isolated in a small office trying to do something new that nobody wanted and I believe they should have. And all the dynamics of trying to force things on people because you believe it makes sense add to a pressure when they ultimately tell you, "No, that's not, that's not of interest." And so when you overlay that with the fact that I have maintained my one goal financially has never to be missed, never ever to miss a minimum payment. And somehow I've managed to do it. So I have exteller credit. I can tell you I'm like 848. That's pretty good. Yeah. Because they're like, "I wish we could find more crazy people like this that will go all the way to the hills and somehow pay it back." I love it. And so I'm the perfect scenario. But that grandmothers easier actually came in the beginning of winter of 2004 and it was a big winner. And when I had that, I decided I needed to go to a co-mingled office environment where I had other people to have camaraderie with. So I formed a partnership with a group called Concussion and Ad Agency with a performance-based sales steel. The only problem was the office was about three blocks south of downtown. My house is about a mile and a half west of downtown. And so during the winter, I had to ride my really nice road bike on Lancaster Bridge with the wind up and those ice and cars going by at 60 miles per hour. And that almost killed me more times than anything else. The spread was killed me. I mean, literally that was the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life. But I would again wasn't willing to be an imposition on anyone else. So I would go and sign away to get there at that. And so that's what you were remembering. Yes. Well, I remember picking you up at times. But I do remember it's so interesting, this transition in your mind and your heart about self-reliance because it's something that I struggle with too on a lot of different fronts. But the imposition piece really is interesting because it requires quite a bit of vulnerability to impose on someone else. And I remember thinking that, you know, I guess 15 years ago, when you were in that window of time and I remember thinking as a fellow self-reliant person that I would have to foist myself on you and be at your utter disposal to even get you to agree to let me take you to work on a rainy day. Well, I mean, that's what great friends would be inclined to do. But the reality was, it was like a badge of honor to me and the experience of doing that was more exciting to me than not do it. And so when you talk about grit, the weird part for me is, grit's more enjoyable than anything else to me. I get kind of wound up and excited by extraordinary challenge and having to endure or having to overcome or things like co-calling the army, chasing them for two years to get something done that they've never heard of. You know, things like the middle school, that kind of, that's like my, that's like my endorphin generator. And so I don't hold it up as like a badge of honor. It's kind of like a mcco because I like it so much. I mean, I had to figure out my number one fear in life is boredom. That's probably, I can't think of anything else. It can hurt. Can I, so I know you really well. So I'm going to, I'm going to ask you a twist of that boredom piece because I run from, personally run from the same emotion. And could you also say that it's lack of momentum or is it, is it true boredom? Well, one thing that's evolved over the last 20 years is my, I used to be impatient and obsessed with being busy, irrespective of whether it's going in the right direction or not. As I've gotten older, I've become more patient and more discerning about which things I do undertake. And it's had a correlated increase of success. So momentum is an issue to me. If it's not something you genuinely believe in. So like I, I don't mind the starting process if I have complete conviction in something. And I don't, I don't really thrive off of just momentum per se. I, I believe the process is what results in success. I don't look at success as the end goal. I genuinely think that every day grind, the little things add up to something successful and big is kind of like that analogy I said where you know, don't change, don't charge for range balls. You know, when you go to a fancy golf club and they nickling, dime you for range balls, that, that model of, you know, trying to suck you in and just get every little thing that can is kind of like, anti-momential to me. Momentum in my world is having something I genuinely believe in, sticking with the plan long enough to where I start getting positive feedback and or enough negative. to feed back to finally let my lock job go. And then it means it's pivot time. And pivot time is is always hard, but it's sometimes self-imposed on me. Or forced on you. Yeah, like forced on you. Either you're through a positive scenario where we have a really nice sale, all of a sudden my toys are taken away or a negative scenario where the entities, maybe the two partners get sideways with each other and have to exercise their bicell and everything dissolves right in front of my eyes. So that just created incredible value with. And indoor, when there's those cataclysmic moments where someone finally just says, "Why are you doing this?" You know what? You may be right. Yeah. So there's all kinds of scenarios where pivot moments occur, but I've never struggled with momentum. It's kind of a scenario. I'm sorry. I couldn't link you to it. Yeah, it's great. Well, if we rewind one of the things I love to do on this podcast is talk about transitions. And these inflection points and these triggers that we tend to have, having that huge seizure, was a, you know, one of those lock job breaking points, as you called it, that forced a pivot on you. But then there's also sometimes these internal pivots that happen. And, you know, you're at Woodmont, you know, you're 27 years old. You're making three to four hundred thousand dollars a year. You're in the newspaper because I saw the articles. I mean, you're, I guess I want to know, what was it that triggered you specifically to walk away from something that came, apparently came so easy to you. There's two things. One, the neat thing about the commercial real estate world is you don't have to be in an embedded infrastructure, a big firm to still practice it. So I had a broker's license. So I'm able to do that. I have done it continuously over my whole life, professional life. And frankly, you know, unless you're trying to develop massive shopping centers, there's nothing you need. You can do all that on your own. So I knew I could still have that in my quiver. But the, the simple moment was that I kind of freaked out a little bit when I realized that my first child was going to be born in about a month. And that if in fact, I got further down the life path and got more and more entrenched and increased more and more obligation. And literally began binding myself to long-term obligations that would be outside of a professional career change that I would be too late. And then I would end up a tormented person. And so she was born, you know, Christmas day of 99. And I resigned on December 21st for that very reason. And I kind of blindsided on the main ceiling. Cosmic was a very important part of my teachings. He was my mentor there, in saintly bright, very, very adept at business, very hard on people. But he taught me more than probably anyone else from a business perspective. And I have a lot to thank him for. But I kind of blindsided on that day. And he understood, you know, there was no further I could go there. And he was very gracious about it. We were main friends today. But with this kid thing coming down, you know, ironically when I had that grand moral seizure, that was also two and a half months prior to my second child coming. So it seems like there's some correlation here. You know, my view of that, you know. Yeah, right. Oh my gosh. Well, so I'm sensing that there was this level of pain while you were at woodmont discomfort. What were the signs that let you know that you weren't happy with the work itself? Well, there were two things. One, it wasn't it wasn't anyone's fault. One, they sometimes correlate in business. This is something needs to be conveyed to a lot of MSIs. Top producers are not necessarily the best managers. So there was one mistake and pivot that we made where I became the president of the brokerage house because I was one of the top producers of a young age. And that took me out of the gang and it made me have to start dealing with a lot of what I call unimportant issues. Now, they're important to other people, but not to me. So I have managing 25 people and I was most of them were 10 years or more older than me. Most of them were a little pissed off that they were having to listen to me in first place because they knew the situation. And so it's important that companies never take the top producer out of that role and put an management role and kind of new to their capability to do what they love. So that was one thing that we did for a year and then I went back to them and said, "I can't do this." So he made me a partner in this development agreement. And then the problem there was it takes about a year and a half to get anything substantive done when you're building a big shopping center. And so that's a lot of downtime, a lot of boredom, a lot of city meetings, a lot of stuff that just it's like it's like being on a committee every day. And man, wow, no thanks. So it just wasn't fun. And so it wasn't them. It was me learning more about me and the fact that I need pace and I need to be like unbridled. Right. That's the opposite of a committee meeting. Yes. I mean, you know, we built one shopping center in Northern Pittsburgh. It took two years to give us approval just because we were Texas. They didn't want to give us. I mean, it was hilarious. But we got done, you know, but it was so anticlimactic once we were done. So it was just time for me to change. Yeah. I still enjoyed third week real estate transactions. I guess that all came down right before Christmas. And then you look at Q one or Q two of that next year when you're on your own. You still have your license to practice commercial real estate. Were there any surprises that you didn't expect in that first year of a big great question. I love that one. Well, one of the things that I the first big lesson I learned is even if I genuinely believe it's great for people, they may not agree. So I thought how wonderful would it be to create a performance based shared savings model? Expense reduction consulting firm that is willing to take all of their fixed costs, analyze it deeply, cross-referencing with all of the providers find the best deals, utilize aggregated buying to get better pricing from my clients, my face, all for free. Until they if they elected to move forward with something, then I would take a portion of the savings as it occurred for three months. Okay, so let me make sure I got this clear. So what you're basically saying and sort of more basic terms is you would go to companies and say, hey, I can save you some money and improve some efficiencies and you don't have to pay me to do it until I prove to you that I've done it. And once that happens, that's when I get paid. So you're not asking for any money at front. You're just you're just asking him for the opportunity to save the company money. What in the world? Why does that company not exist anymore? Well, my underlying premise was people are going to just love this. Yes. They're going to be so excited. So I had the time, the derailleur energy just begun, telecom had just become T1s were the big thing. You know, a lot of dramatic changes occurring in the fixed cost world of corporate America. And so I was thinking, this is going to be involved. Well, a couple of things I learned quickly. One, the larger the entity, the more people are going to be involved in the decision making process of change. The more inclined, there's going to be someone who doesn't want to be made to look stupid for not having found the thing that you're bringing to them in the first place. And the more inclined, they're going to be to subvert your efforts as a result because you may be bringing something that they were literally tasked with doing. And it either scares them and makes them think they're going to look foolish or might actually make them with foolish. And so they're going to I had a guy, I'll never forget this. I had a guy on my broad empty regulated contract for 600, thousands worth of buildings. He looked at me and he said, I think this is very well done. It's never going to leave this office. The savings exceed my annual salary and I'm supposed to have done this and I'm just telling you, I'm never showing it to anyone. And I was like that kind of clarity was like, whoa, this is not going to scale well. And so that's why you don't see a bunch of these types of entities thriving and flourishing across corporate America because they're that risk of earth and that's scared of change and even if it's wanted because they don't have anything on the line except downside risk. They're not going to realize any of the savings themselves but they could be castigated for having either not found it if it works or having elected to do it if it doesn't. And so they're inclined to say no. And just that's that's what I learned hard way about that business model, which was a wonderful lesson. Yeah. I mean, can you can you can you summarize the lesson in an sentence because I think I think there's a real real important goal. The biggest lesson for me personally is if you have something that genuinely warrants consideration, serious consideration by a large entity, you have to sell from top down. You have to find the person who achieved a high level sea level role as a result of them being open to disruption and improvement. And you've got to achieve connection with that person irrespective of how highly they are. Just for a minute, even if it means you just get them to say who they want you to delegate, they want to delegate to do the review. That's all you need. And so, you know, there are times when I have actually spoken to CEOs of public companies and press releases just asking who they want me to show something to. And then I can go and say, hey, you know, hey, Mark, Ms. Walt Lawrence, I was speaking with CEO the other day. He mentioned he would like you to take a few minutes just to look over this because, you know, it has a lot of merit. And it's great. And so, you know, you go top down more so than you two bottom up. It's very apparent in the oil field in particular because, you know, if you try to work through the field all the way up, and you're going to get a lot of reference. So. Well, and that's not a real easy thing to do. To work your way to the top, to get the ear of the real decision maker is really really one of the linchement pens to closing any deal, really. If you're trying to sell a service or something to a company, are there any particular strategies as you look at, you know, as you look at the phone numbers and the names on the list in front of you. And you're about to solicit this company. What are some of your particular mental, you know, sort of your, how do you frame your mind to do it? Because it's nerve-wracking for a lot of people to make these kind of calls. What is your strategy? What are the tactics you use when you're looking at that list? Well, the first and most important thing is whatever you're trying to accomplish needs to be a big line item. It needs to be solving a macro view problem, whether it's the market perception of the failing of the industry or something that is really causing pain within the organization or a large scale. You can't go top down if you're trying to do selling a thousand widgets that are going to have collectively an impact if they did all thousand. If you're going after a big concept that is genuinely a problem, then you can play on the sea level first. Because they're the ones that are having to deal with that subconsciously and consciously on a regular basis. So that's the first thing. And secondarily, you know, linked in is is an amazing resource. Linked in isn't just about learning about that person, it's about learning about their affiliates and who their right hand people are. It's figuring out who they trust. It's figuring out if there's any commonality between your network. Deep dive research of them as an individual can be very helpful, not just at linked in, but just doing your homework on such a deep dive level going down in rabbit holes, what I call it, where you can throw one little nuance in there. Of some commonality you have with them at my perk der years and may she not sound like your shell. Most people I've found are willing to give you two minutes irrespective of what role they have. If they believe that you are prepared, so what utilize those two minutes really well. That's my theory. And so you can convey that either through, you know, three or four bullet point emails that they may never see, where you see see their assistant and you call her or him and you say, listen, please just take two minutes to read these three bullet points and tell me if you believe he's going to be willing or she's going to be willing to hear me about this and endure yourself to them. Because they're the gatekeepers and they're humans and they kind of like it when somebody treats them as a peer as opposed to just a way that someone in a way. And so it all comes back at the end of the day to reverse engineering from human nature. These people are busy and that they also like people that are not going to waste their time and maybe to make a capitalism change for the better. There's kind of an inherent hope that they have subconsciously in my opinion that a new person may bring something to them that will improve their quality of life. That is some really, really high level sales advice right there. Incredible. Thank you for sharing that. You know, you and I have talked about this gap between, hey, here's my thing. And then the person on the other end saying, oh, I really love your thing. That thing looks interesting. That thing looks like it'd be helpful. That thing really might fit with what I'm doing. And actually closing the deal and getting paid. In other words, there's this gap a lot of times with people. They tell you what you want, what they want. And you listen to them and then you go create what they want. And then you say, ta ta, here it is. And there's there's something that goes on there a lot of times. Can you speak about the of the eight massive fails of the 18 that I sent you on that list. More than half of those were that very scenario where I was fulfilling a stated desire, but didn't realize that it really wasn't feasible thing to accomplish. So an example would be track water recycling was a big thing about eight years ago. I don't feel everybody was talking about it. That's all they were doing. They were talking about. Right. It was the it was the big rage. In other words, wow, this makes a lot of sense. Let's drive water down into the ground. Let's pull it out and let's drive it down again. Instead of getting new water. And everybody was like, Oh, man, we are going to do this. We are. And so, you know, I affiliated with the best in the industry, Greep Out of Austin, it's spent $13 million billion building out. This amazing 18 wheeler that could take slush and make it ultra pure. Like, you could make silicon wafer with this water. They're way over-engineered. No one knew they were doing exactly what they were requested. They didn't. It's genius. It was incredible. It's still being used today, but not for profit. And, you know, the problem was in order to pay for the advertised cost of this, it was actually at $3.3 million piece of equipment. We had to charge about, I don't know, 10 times when anyone else would need to charge. Admittedly, we could do three times more than anyone else could do with that water, but it was over-engineered. We didn't know at the time. It was just a genuinely, it was a great theory, but it didn't meet the, the rubber didn't meet the road. And so, I've had that same thing, you know, I've noticed it happens a lot of times in commodity-based world view. Like, there was a time when everyone believed the gas was always going to be $3 or more per gallon. Who would have known at last four or five years who would be where we are? Price is unleaded. Well, I can remember saying as I was working on my LPG propane conversion kit business where I was going to do on-site fuelings for companies with large fleets of mid-sized trucks. I can guarantee you they less than $1.50 cost per gallon from now and a longer life on your engine. And it amortizes over 15 months and you'll have on-site fuelings so your teams won't spend a lot of time at convenience stores. You know, there's a lot of reasons why this makes sense. Well, I was working off an assumption that I knew what oil was going to do. You can't. If anyone tells you they know what oil is going to do there, we're wrong. So, you know, that's another lesson that I learned through this. And that was a case of me trying to solve a problem that wasn't really a problem in the honest of people. It was when I thought they all disallowed and I believe they should do what they didn't care. Everybody got adjusted. They get frame of reference adjusted to certain things in life. Yeah. And then the other dimension that I think is super fascinating and that is you're solving a problem that would actually embarrass the leadership of the company. Well, you know, saving that back into time. I mean, and now I learned that one kind of earlier in my life cycle. You know, you always reverse engineer from the sea level guys perspectives. I don't know whether you're going to get in touch with him or not. Right. Because ultimately he's the one you need to make sure it's happy. Right. For sure. This is great. So, you've had 20 different ventures and you mentioned a second ago that that six or eight of them crapped out. What was your favorite failure? And when I say that, it's sort of like maybe it's favorite because it's funny, but also cringe worthy. Yeah. I mean, there's two. There's the different. The word favorite is kind of tricky on this. Probably the funniest but sickening the sickening one that actually led to me physically crying, which is not very rare. It's a very rare occasion. I spent two years getting the US Army convinced that this thing called Internet of things was going to be something. Say it again. The like in 2003. And on low point, I was able to call call the construction engineering and research laboratory and champagne Illinois, the US Army. And convinced them that I could utilize the internet to do real time adjustments to the thermostats at all of these end points on their worldwide on all their bases based on site specific variables like humidity levels, incoming weather. And we could reduce their energy costs by 10 to 12%. This was the first version of what is called the Internet of things today connected digital transformation. You know, you hear about it all the time. You hear about a lot. You don't see a lot of it. Still even 15, 18 years later. It's fascinating to me. But I got it done. They awarded me Fort Wichuca, Arizona, which is a massive 500,000 acre facility. And I got to go out there and wire that place or top pilot test. They loved it. It worked. And they said, All right, we're going to roll it out. And I had a evergreen contract with the company doing it. So in other words, the residual payments were never in until the revenue stream ended. And it was going to probably result in a seven figure residual within a year. Recurring forever long. The army would use well, army doesn't change things very often. So once you get in, you know, it's going to last well. Well, I wake up. I think it was maybe March 20th of the next about two months after they approved it for rollout and shocking all occurred. We invaded Iraq. And they canceled all non critical domestic contracts because of the Iraqi invasion to go get Southamers. Oh, my gosh. I didn't do anything wrong. It worked. And it all went away because of a new war. And I was like, and this is not imagine I'm about 350,000 in credit card debt, right? This happens. And I think I've finally gotten it. I've gotten the way out. And so it was a real sucker punch. I mean, and just talking about it today, I think, wow. I mean, I got chills right now telling you that just you can't control these sex. And there was a reason for it somewhere. I don't know what to this day was the reason. But, you know, that was probably the most dramatic and impactful loss that I've ever had in business. The company ended up going under, you know, a year later because, you know, things like that. So it had a lot of merit. Well, they did it now every day all over the place worldwide. So it had my ability. So I don't want to go too far down that one. But, you know, another one, the probably the most disappointing, genuinely disappointing thing that I've experienced in my professional career is a large group. Healthcare is broken. Corporations are paying dramatically more than they should have for less care than they deserve. And it is a problem that for some reason gets shoved under the road more so than anything that they were saying. So I spent full two years trying to refine, prove and figure out solutions that were economically feasible, risk mitigated, they had everything covered. And I spent, the second half of that two years trying to get someone to hear me. And I went over 100. I mean, two full years of dedicated, rational, spreadsheet based, everything was covered. There was no justifiable cost for not doing. And I went over 100 with CFOs, HR directors. I could send them an email and say, I know for a fact based on my due diligence that there are more than seven figures worth of savings with the comparable or improved service from a reputable, you know, great A company. If you'll just spend 15 minutes with me and hear me out, it's sitting right there like a bird's nest on the ground. And none of them, not one of them, ever took action. And so that was the most disheartening of my business experiences. And it made me very, I had to fight becoming jaded. I was finding myself angry more so that just disappointed. And it taught me that I need to live in the present a little more, be more aware when I do have this log job dynamic going. I should have stopped doing that long before I did. I mean, if people don't want it, it doesn't matter. That's the summary. That's the best quote of the podcast right there. If people don't want it, it just doesn't matter. And, you know, this saying that comes to mind is, you know, the secret to health is not to mourn the past and we'll worry about the future, but to live in the present moment wisely. Well, that third part I wasn't doing, living wisely in the present moment, accepting that people had this to this position. And so it was, it was in a lot of dynamics, and it was a big disappointment for me, but, you know, yet again, there's a reason for everything in my opinion. And I learned a lot through that. Well, you know, in our pre-interview, you mentioned, you said the words, you know, Craig, I've gotten really good at sloughing it off. Tell me you're sloughing it off process. When you go, one of the neat byproducts of that, Randall Seasier is it greatly decreased my mental capacity for memory. And, you know, I will tell you that I have several, I've had several reunions with high school friends where they talked to length about fun, crazy nights that we had. And I'm like, looking at them like, there's speaking, you know, some sort of different language. And they're like, what in the world? It's like my disc got cleaned so that I would have more RAM available for the future. And I've seen it as a blessing to take it the truth. So, you know, I, I have a deplorable memory. I have to re-explore everything except for certain things that I really am right there on top of it. And that's been a gift. I don't carry a lot of baggage around as a result. Now, also, I make that light of that, but I've also learned how to kind of come apart and analyze how to not become jaded or angered with other people because of their actions. I think I can, the best part is knowing how to not let people be your problem. Because situations you can't control sometimes, situations sometimes are there for a reason. And you know, there's a lot of times those are more pertinent teaching moments. But if you let every person who in some way offends you, wrongs you, does something that impede your progress, if you let that become a little chink in the armor and you let it, all of a sudden you look up and you'll be like paralyzed. Because people do a lot of that stuff in it, I mean, there's the concept of resting face, you know, which is a great analogy to me. Like a lot of people are perfectly happy and joy in their day. And for some reason, their facial structure looks like they're in a horrible mood and matter to hell at the world. And people will sometimes assume that that's their way, that's their life. When all they're doing is they're just sitting there thinking about what a great day it is outside and their kids are, you know, thriving them. And so the resting face analogy is a concept that kind of serves as an example of how you can become a subtitute. You can spend a lot more time thinking people are doing and thinking things than they are. Most people are too self-absorbed to really spend a lot of time focused on how they're going to mess you up. And that's a big, I mean, that's a big epiphany, you know, you can't get mad at a stone is my premise. So don't burden yourself with own proven realities about what people, how people may be burdening you. Don't let perception and/or reality of other people's actions get in your way. Find the right people. And that kind of segues a little bit into your favorite part of my business mantra. I know assholes close. So, you know, which I've always admired and actually applied, you know, when I come across an asshole, I often ask myself, what would Walt do? At first what I do in assholes is I have fun with them because I learned it's more enjoyable to get them wound up and see how far you can get them down the path just for kicks. So, you're really, you're actually playing them and they don't know it. And it also gives you a chance to fair it out whether they are or not really that. In other words, it lets you see if they're really true, if your assumptions are correct in other words. Yes, that's it. So, you know, you don't want to get too concrete in your assessments in my opinion when it comes to this topic. Without giving it a little run, you need to give it some times, some experiential size. You need to give everybody a chance to prove you wrong if that's your original premise. And it's not a decision that should be made like it because a lot of times those people are also extremely talented. And you may be foregoing a lot of upside potential by making a decision. Well, in my case, I decided to take a light heart approach to it and make it more enjoyable in-sign. And that may be a byproducts that haven't spent many years co-calling. And, you know, all of the fun experiences I've gotten to have through that. And so, I'm kind of sick when it comes to this stuff. But when you do, in fact, find someone who originally is an asshole, then you hypothetically break them down with some light hearted humor or, you know, they get a kind of a some sort of common ground. Well, sometimes it's like a little flower that blooms out of the rocks. Sometimes they'll turn out to be incredibly thankful that you were willing to endure that first couple of steps. And they're probably, on some levels, maybe them lonely, because some other people don't take the time to try to ferret it out. So that hadn't happened very often. And it ought to be cleared out pretty quickly, in my opinion. And so, if my original premise is proven after a fairly reasonable amount of time, then it's obvious though. I mean, I am no no go. I don't care what the upside. Because I am going to live an unfettered life with the people that I deal with on a regular basis. They have to have common interest, common goals and reciprocal benefit in mind when I'm working with them. And that's my thing. Yeah, that's a my quality of life dramatically better. Right. With aligned values. Well, you've got to just just this can't, it won't leave my mind. You got to give me a couple of your one liners. Because I know you have them readily available when you run across an asshole. Come on. You got to have some give me a couple. No, I can't do that. I mean, it's also a circumstance. I wish I could. I mean, if somebody hears that line after they listen to this podcast, so don't know you're trying to see if there's a flower in the rock. Yeah. You remember how we originally talked about me like being in a Migma. I think this falls into that category. And frankly, there's no way to recreate the right quickwoodish humor in my opinion. You know, it has to happen in real time with the circumstances being correct. And you got to have a glimmer in your eye when you're doing it that they can see. So there's a way. There's a way. It was a part of this. It's really hilarious. And another part that's sick. Yeah, I mean, it is something that has made my life much better. It's really it's colliding this mantle. And you know, this goes for liners too. If you really want to get down to it, there's two debilitating partners. If you have that partners, there's liners, vessels. Writers can be just as debilitating. They're always so self-absorbed with what's what's their problem that they're never worried about solving other people's problems. And it's something that becomes a habit to some people. They then they need to learn how they need to be called out for it in general fashion and a caring fashion and taught how to through cognitive therapy, whatever actually long, but they need to learn how to break the cycle of being a liner, where they are sweeping their own legs in my opinion every single day they wake up. Is there an element of the way you interact with a liner similar to an asshole? Like, are you do you play the water as much? We're hearing in general-hearted and try to be constructive and try to try to help them out. Because it's not something that I find a preaches. I think it's just a, I think it's a it's kind of a weakness in American society right now that it's okay to do that. Right. Right. It's been becoming more and more prevalent in the divisiveness of the political world. The poor leadership of what is construed as leaders in today's world. There's so much negative emotion that's permissible now. Yeah, permissible. And a lot of it is illustrated by wine. Yeah, for sure. Well, that's how it like manifests itself. Yeah. Well, so while I have you, because we're running a lot on time, I want to explore something that is or in a way extract something that's between your ears that I would love to personally know. And that is when you're looking at a new deal, a new venture, a new opportunity. What are the particular steps you take in your evaluation process? Because you've been involved in 20 companies, but that means that you've probably glanced at and said no to glance that and mold over then said no to maybe hundreds more. What is your process to to make a decision to make those next steps? Because I know there's got to be a process. Well, well, you know, the most concise and clearly correct answer to that is. In the last seven years or so, I have noticed in retrospect a review of all of my sales and my wins that the common thread on all the big wins is that I have affiliation with a ninja. With a ninja. A ninja. So what I now do is my first prerequisite. for anything I do is that I want to have a partner who is obsessively focused and insanely skilled at solving a big problem. It's almost so much so that they're almost on the spectrum. I mean, like I want them to be that kind of like rain-managed quality of intellect and focus and a lot of times that I've found is those same people don't have all of the other extra stuff they needed for successful commercialization. Wow, I'm talking about tech-wish around. Someone who is that and bring all of the other kind of the buck shop versus the rifle shop type analogy. If this guy could put two bullets through the bulls eye at a hundred yards, well I want to be the buck shop that circles around and it makes it where it kills whatever we're going at. This all-down shot gun. Yeah, the sawdust shot gun. This self-proclaimed. With a very high pattern. You know, so I don't want them to go too wide too fast. So, you know, that's my business model now. Yeah, they love it and I love it. Right. And I got a bunch of those going. I love that. So it's it's so the so the so the first step the first thing you're looking at is is this an ninja yes or no? What's the second step? Well, the first thing is is the problem they're they're attacking painful enough or big enough that it's upside to warrant the attention of seaweather people. So that's the first prerequisite. The second is that and the third is how are we going to fund it? Because all of the great ideas that have failed in my opinion in my world have had a common thread of being underfunded either by me not having enough money to pour enough into the marketing or for or the partnership not being able to procure the funds from investors that necessary. That's a leading indicator that your problem isn't big enough where you don't have the right team to warrant third party investment. And so if if nobody wants to fund you, there's a little bit of a romanticized version of that scenario. You always hear about the guy who overcomes that. Well, I don't really like that. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to wear that badge of honor anymore. I want to do things that attract money for investment without a whole lot of persuasion and effort. I want to speak clearly, not be salesy, be concise, and then have people say, you know what? That's got a lot of merit. Take my money. Yeah. And you know, they have I've also got a theory that almost everything in business is parallel to dating. And if you think about dating as an analogy, you know, this that that really solves a lot of problems. I mean, if you're just going out to the bar, trying to have a fling for a night, you're going to get what that brings. You know, if you're going to go after high quality women with that have clear visions and theories about life and God, you're going to have to take your time. You're going to have to be informed. You're going to have to be strategic. You're going to have to have the details managed. And you have to present well. Sounds like we both got real lucky then. That's the thing. I don't know. I guess I was just some sort of like fling for her. I don't know what she was thinking. I have no idea. And I'm very thankful for that. But it did take me a year from the first time I asked her out to the first date. And during that full year, there were about 20 to 25 conscious actions that took focused on her. But that's how much she didn't want to go out. I mean, that has illustrated. Which just literally don't I literally don't like. Well, we've got to wrap up. Well, I think we could, you know, we need to have around two in a year or so for sure. Because like you're the first podcast that I've done where I only got about halfway through my notes. I've always gotten through my notes, but not this one. So we have to do it another one sometime soon. So, but I want to end us with some rapid fire questions that are just fun. They can be one liners. Let's keep them short if possible. What as you look forward to 2021, because 2020 was a cluster mug. And today is at the time of this recording is New Year's Eve. What is on your not to do list for 2021? In other words, is there anything you're going to kick out of your life this year? No, you know, that the underlying one of the many things I said today was staying in the present is essential to me. And gratitude has become more and more important in these challenging times. And practicing, actually practicing the adherence to gratitude is a lot harder nowadays than it used to be. So it was kind of glossed over. I see last year, the last year as an incredible teaching moment for all of us. And it's kind of like every other thing we talked about today. I hate what's happened. I hate the way it's been managed. And I'm very hopeful for this coming year that people will not only have more gratitude, but even normalcy will be considered as an upside. So I think it's got a lot of opportunity. Yeah. What would you say your friends would call your superpower? How would they do that? Say again? Resilience. Yeah, that's my word actually. That's the word that came to my mind was resilience. For sure. What is the biggest thief of your time? Well, it used to be Carpool, but until about a month from now. But I don't have a thief of my time because I've created an autonomous lifestyle where I get to decide who and what I do things with. And that's in my opinion, that's the ultimate goal. It's not wealth. It's autonomy. Yes. Oh my gosh. You're speaking, you're preaching to the choir as it relates to autonomy. It's that it's also in the other side of that is the incredible cost of self-reliance. But that's been my personal experience with my desire for autonomy. But the upside, it's the crown jewel of entrepreneurship, I think. Yeah. So where do you get your news? I get my news from PBS, Bloomberg, and 60 minutes. I think they're collectively all you need. I try not to get real-time news, like NBC, CBS type stuff. I'm trying to seek longer term thinking, bigger horizon concepts. Yeah. And I'm trying to say now all the crap. So that's the hard part. That's a great way to do it for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Because 60 minutes is definitely, we take quite a bit of time to produce the story and really vet the story and that's a little bit more of a macro view. And they're not going to pick crappy topics. Yeah. It's 55th season or something like that. There's a lot of a lot of reason for that. What does the first hour of your day look like? It's usually there's a service called medium.com that you're able to go in and you pick about 20 different preferential topics that matter to you. And it scours the internet and brings back only the pertinent articles in magazine length reading time. And so they send you an aggregated list of the things that you're interested in. Dang, that is incredible. I've never heard of that. We We will link that to the show notes and I will be all over that. That sounds awesome. And so you can use only in the reading, you know, maybe 20% of what they send you, but you get what you want quickly without finding. Wow. So last one, this one's kind of fun. HP 12C or iPhone? Well, I have an HP 12C app on my iPhone. That's awesome. That's so awesome. I always remember every time I went to your office, you had a worn out 12C like the buttons were falling off. You couldn't even read the payment key anymore. That's the closest I've ever gotten to being an accountant is being able to do just amortizing value. Yes. Well, well, this has been a just a blast. Thank you. Thank you. So, I think it's a great job of painting a realistic picture of what the entrepreneurial life really looks like. And you definitely are a poster child for what it means to have true grit. Do you have any parting words? Well, one thing in particular, you know, everybody kind of, if they're inherently intrigued by improvement, they have a favorite book. And I do want to mention my favorite book from the standpoint of business. It's called Anti-Fratul. And it's, you know, the underlying premise is how to benefit from disorder volatility and turmoil. And it's one of the most intellectual, it's not an easy read. Who's the author? Got a Nassim, an SSIM, Talib, T-A-L-E-B, and it's called Anti-Fratul. And I could tell you that it was life-changing for me. It took a long time for me to get through it because it's so intense. Cool. And I think anyone who really wants to go off on this path needs to consider that, or at least the summary version of it. And then my final thing is that I think it's imperative that people understand that what you're doing with this podcast is a genuine gift of your heart. And as I told you when you first asked me if I wanted to be honest, I said, "I don't really feel like I'm the right guy for this," because I like to, I'm not really about trying to self-promote per se. But what made me change my mind is I started thinking about the intrinsic goodwill that you're trying to convey to so many people that will help them avoid pain and have more joy. And those are the same things I'm seeking for others. And so I just want to thank you for doing what you're doing. Thank you so much, Walter. I think it's amazing. Well, thank you very much. Well, thank you so much, amigo. I appreciate you coming on this show. And those words mean a lot to me and made my day for sure. Happy New Year to you. And we'll talk soon. Awesome, buddy. Thank you so much for including. Well folks, that wraps up our show for this week. If you found this interview helpful and would like to get pearls of wisdom that I've gathered along the way, go to trugritpodcast.com and subscribe to the TruGrit blog. You will get short, helpful emails written by yours truly. Included in these posts, you will also get the show notes with links to books, articles, and other cool things I run across. Thanks as always for listening to the TruGrit podcast, where we believe that personal growth and helping each other solve important problems is the best way to make the world a better place. And don't forget, building a company and a life of meaning takes a true grit.