Tristan Palu, tell me about your vision.
So my vision, is it, do you mean my vision
as an entrepreneur, my vision as an advisor,
my vision as a teacher?
It's gonna be so strange.
You get absolute freedom.
Right now I'm looking at the cows
in the field across the street,
but that's my vision, but you are welcome
to share any vision that you want to.
Well, I have actually also a vision
of a clear blue sky from my terrace,
it's just out there.
No, I think, well, my vision for life
is that I want to, well, I've had this vision
for quite a few years, is that I want to enjoy what I do.
So I do lots of different things.
I'm a kind of an entrepreneur.
I have a couple of businesses that I'm developing.
I'm an advisor and a consultant to several other businesses.
I've been mentoring startups for 10 years.
I like to work with entrepreneurs.
I like to help them, because having a background
in business strategy and business planning,
I've realized that a lot of things are obvious for me,
but they're not obvious to many people.
So I like to help entrepreneurs kind of go
from that vision to an actual business.
And I love that.
I like all this process.
I want to put the ticker down here.
You wrote this.
So I'm gonna put this ticker down here
so people can see about your passion about that business
and the strategy and entrepreneurs
and guiding them from failing to executing the vision.
And I mean, I'm with you, man.
It is a shame when somebody does not know how to execute
and bring that to life.
So yeah, let's go down that vein for sure.
Yeah, I actually am writing a book about this.
And I wrote like a smaller, like 30 page essay
and I'm writing a longer book.
And I'm even contemplating writing a PhD thesis
on that topic.
So I do like this idea of going from an idea to business.
And because I think people fall in love with an idea
and there is also this mythical creature
that an entrepreneur will wake up one day
and yeah, he had an idea
and now he has a tremendous business.
And I'm like, hmm, this is not true.
It's like, this has never been true.
And it's just a very lazy approach to entrepreneurship.
So I like much more the process of being, you know,
methodical about executing and building a business
and scaling it and being ready to scale.
And I often tell people, you know,
where do you see yourself in one year?
Just to probe a bit, I'm gonna be a market leader.
I'm like, okay, this implies ABCD.
Are you ready for that?
It means next month you need 300 employees, your 20 people.
How are you gonna do this?
So it's always, you know, it's not crushing dreams,
but it's more bringing people to reality
and to the fact that grinding means, you know,
it's-
Wearing something down.
Yeah, consistency over motivation.
You know, it's like,
you're never gonna be motivated every day.
Anyway, this is my vision.
There's a balance there.
No, I love it.
There's a balance there,
but I love that you understand the base and the process
and the reality that exists
in order for a rocket launch to take place.
You're talking about that.
You're not talking about the rocket launch
and how it has to happen today and like, let's go, right?
You're talking about adding some,
like being pragmatic about it.
And you show that in your website.
You mind if I pull that up?
I'm gonna pull it up while we talk.
So strategy Y being the brand,
again, you mentioned this idea that,
no, it doesn't happen in one day.
You don't just plant a rocket on the ground and then,
you know, hey, let's send this up in space
and possibly blow up.
There's repercussions for people who rush it.
So talk to me about what elements of,
what are the elements of strategy or business growth
that entrepreneurs are often overlooking, you know,
and turning, turning and putting their blinders on
and saying, no, I don't need to look at that.
They should be considering in the process of launch.
Yeah, I see.
I love the passion of entrepreneurs and, you know,
what they come up with an idea.
And usually, you know, I tell people that,
you know more the market than I do.
You've probably done your homework
and you know what you want to do.
And I'm here to kind of try to bring that energy
into a plan, into something that actually works.
And where I see many people failing is that
they're saying the idea in itself
is what makes a great business.
Oh, well, I've identified this need for whatever.
And I'm like, yeah, sure.
First, you know, let's take a step back.
What is the market?
You know, how big is it?
Have you tested with customers?
Do we have paying customers?
No, no, no.
And then you're like, okay, well, you know,
let's refine a bit what you want to do.
So I think it's this boring part of business planning.
I'm not saying that you need to spend a million hours
on the plan.
It's write something simple, start executing,
test the ideas, test the plan, adjust,
but have something in writing because this is when
when you see that things are not gonna work.
What is the distribution?
What is the marketing?
You know, who are your customers?
Oh, maybe they are.
Okay, well, let's get back to the drawing board here.
And for me, it's just answering basic questions.
What are you selling?
Who are you selling it to?
How are you selling it to?
How much?
And then you realize many people can't answer
these basic questions about their business.
It's absolutely.
And, you know, in basketball,
there's this concept of fundamentals.
All sports have it, but in basketball,
because I'm from San Antonio, we had the big fundamental.
We had Tim Duncan on our team.
And Tim Duncan is notorious for being boring
in how he plays basketball and doing all the basic things.
And yet he has the most, the highest winning percentage
of any athlete of any sport of all time.
It has a lot to do with the fact that he's dedicated
to the principles.
Somebody fact-checked me on that, by the way.
I'd like to see if I'm wrong about him being number one
of all time in relation to win percentage.
But I wanna dive into a deeper question for you,
specifically.
So strategy, not many kids, you know,
at kindergarten when they ask, you know,
what are you gonna do for a living?
Probably answer like,
I'm gonna be a strategist for businesses.
So what's the story behind your why?
How did you, you know, I'm curious what your why is,
but the story behind it too.
How did you get to where you cared
about strategy for businesses?
Yeah, I think, I mean, as many people,
it's not totally random, but.
So I went to business school.
I did a master's degree in management
and I majored in finance.
So I wanted to work in finance.
You know, I had this image,
gonna work on Wall Street and make a lot of money
and it looked appealing.
So after I completed my master's degree,
I went to London to work in mergers and acquisitions,
investment banking.
And I realized that actually,
probably wasn't for me, like the hours were very long.
It was very, a bit frustrating
that you were looking at businesses,
looking at what they do, going to sell them, buy them,
but you were not going into the core of what they were doing.
So I ended up in the corporate strategy team of a bank.
So working on the strategy of the bank
and what they wanted to do.
And it was at the pivotal moment of that bank
because it was being carved out.
So being separated from the other,
the main company, which was in Australia
and it was being separated
and as an independent business in the UK.
So it was a super interesting moment
to work in business strategy within that organization.
And then it went through a few things.
So I ended up randomly in business strategy
and I found it like super appealing to work into planning,
into launching new businesses, new products.
And then I also like focused a lot
on developing new businesses with other companies.
And I spent a few years doing that
and it was super interesting.
And then I decided to leave the UK
and I started doing consulting and advisory
on the back of that experience working in business strategy.
But to answer your question, why I became,
well, I guess while working,
I found like strategy and innovation quite interesting.
And obviously coming from a finance background,
a lot of strategic decisions are linked to finance,
which is helping me now
because a lot of the time when you're saying
as you advise a company on how to grow,
there is an element of where do we get the money from
when you can't generate that revenue fast enough.
So obviously my background helps a lot
with the number of questions linked to
how do we grow?
Hey, well, we need money.
But yeah, this is the story behind my why.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned into Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.