Why do you think leaders hide from funding their vision?
I think that there's a few different ways that we could answer that.
First is the time and effort that they put towards it.
So initially that's how you have to get anything off the ground.
Even if that's you're going out and trying to raise money from day one, you've got to
put time and effort into doing that and put risk behind it.
And that can be very confronting.
From the very start you're dealing with rejection and people turning down your vision.
But I think that's stage one.
Then stage two is there's a lot of people who start without funding in a traditional
sense at the beginning.
And they go out and they start building.
And I think that one thing that we see happen incredibly often is people get safe.
They get to a certain level of comfort and then their vision sort of takes a back seat
to that comfort.
And oftentimes as we work with many, many founders, we have founders that come to us
and they talk about how focused they are.
And we have to actually point out that that's not focus, that's fear.
You're so focused on doing things a certain way that you're not actually taking the risks
to attempt to see out what your vision truly could be.
If you're building a business and you're growing 10%, 20%, even 30% year over year, it may
sound great, but look at where your vision is and if you're actually in line with where
your vision really could go.
Now I think then when it comes to actually putting financial resources behind it, this
is a little bit of a double-edged sword because on one hand you've got people who are afraid
to go out and raise money, especially if they've built up sort of a bit of, again, comfort
around what it is that they were building, right?
Where they've reached a certain level of success because then if you go out and try to fund
it or even when people go try to sell their business, they realize that people don't see
the same value in what they're doing as they may see internally or what they're getting
from their staff or from their clients directly.
The other thing that happens is people go out and they fund, but what they end up doing
is they start what they think is building towards a vision, but it often allows them
to bypass many of the core steps that they need to build a solid foundation in the business.
This is one of the reasons why you see such high failure rates with people who do take
money because they take money and then it allows them to sort of, an easy example is
somebody who's been very successful selling in founder led sales, then they raise money
to build out a sales and marketing team and they see at best, hepid success in that because
they haven't laid the foundation for somebody to actually come in and sell on their behalf.
So I think funding, when we talk about it, it's sort of a double edged sword.
On one hand, you have to put in the effort.
On the other hand, there's more of an art than a science to understanding when to actually
bring in money to apply towards that vision.
Nice.
That's awesome.
Have you had any experiences, I'm sure you've had, where you're like, my gosh, maybe I funded
this, maybe I should have funded this more or maybe this was the wrong way to go.
I would love to hear more about that.
Yeah.
I've taken money from investors over the years.
In fact, I remember vividly getting cocktails after the very first hundred thousand dollar
check I ever got from an investor.
That seemed like one of the biggest sort of triumphs at that point that somebody bought
into my vision at that point.
This was in a company that when I started it, my parents, my family, everybody thought
I was insane.
I mean, to the point that they almost disowned me over it.
So having that level of support from someone who we went on to do millions of dollars of
business together and we're able to, in fact, there was one time where I called this guy
up and basically said, we need a little over a million dollars for a deal.
And he wired me the money without any contract or anything in place because we'd built up
that level of trust.
However, what I tend to find is like funding and putting money behind something comes down
to decisions.
And ultimately you have to just look at the quality of your decisions.
And I actually have gotten to a point where I enjoy figuring out how to build something
without taking outside funding because it causes a very different type of decision making.
It causes you to have to make harder decisions and the earlier that you start making those
hard decisions within a business, I guarantee you the faster that you're going to mature
as an entrepreneur and ultimately the farther you're going to get in business.
If you go out and try to fund your way through problems, it allows you to really just sort
of smooth over some of the challenges in your business rather than solve them fundamentally.
Wow, that's awesome.
That's very, very insightful information.
Thank you, Pashena.
But that being said, funding, you can't get away.
There's certain businesses and certain niches that you need to have funding.
So that comes with a disclaimer, guys.
Well there is and there isn't, right?
Just in the same way where if you look at where you are today and you say, okay, how
do I 2X, you're going to think about that decision in a certain way.
If you instead ask yourself, how do I 20X or 50X, you're going to think about that decision
in a completely different way.
So if you start looking at whatever business you're trying to build and take funding off
of the table, you're going to start thinking much more creatively about how to build that
business and it's going to open up opportunities to create a business structure that maybe
nobody has created before.
But if you go straight to funding, you're going to sort of fall in line and start building
things in a way that probably other people have built before.
Brian, that's a very intriguing point.
I would love to hear the story behind that point.
I mean I've done this with many, many businesses now.
When we work with clients, we tell them from the outset that funding is sort of a last
option outside funding.
And so that means that, for instance, if you're building software, which is one of the areas
that a lot of people go out and look for funding, how do you perhaps create a partnership with
someone to get to MVP and get that MVP cash flowing to where you can continue to fund
the growth of that software and understand that yes, there may come a point, but typically
if you can get that business up to a point where you're already doing eight figures,
then when you go out for funding, it's a completely different scenario and you have a lot of other
options on your plate.
When you're cash flowing, you're no longer looking at equity financing and you're not
looking at destroying your cap table early on.
Instead, what you're looking at is oftentimes debt financing and other ways to even just
cash out and take some money off of the table.
It's a very, very different process.
And honestly, the difference in a considerable change in your net worth as a result could
be as little as 12 to 24 months of work.
And so you have to decide, is it worth working with a client right now that the best offer
that they got, it was a sizeable amount, but they wanted 53% of their company.
So the question was, is it best to do that or is it best to continue, build up the cash
flow and get to a point where you could get likely within about 12 months, a similar amount
of money or about 10%.
And at that point, it puts him in a much, much different scenario where actually at
that point he wouldn't need the money any longer.
And this is a software driven company.
And so I think quite often this is a much longer conversation about how the VC world
works.
As soon as you start raising money, you cease to be building a business and now you're building
an investment vehicle.
And then you get on that train of having to raise money again and again and again.
But if you can get to a point where you're looking at options like debt financing, PE
financing, and so forth, you actually have a lot more options on the table and it can
put you in a much more advantageous space.
The challenge is the decisions that you have to make to get there.
And most people just don't really have the fortitude to do that.
And they love that, hey, I got funded by so and so.
That sounds great.
But the moment that you do that, you're no longer building for your success.
You're building in the vision of someone else.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's a very, very different way of putting it.
In a bad, it probably opens up entrepreneurs to some of the blind spots that they're not
seeing that you can see through your eyes, but they are not able to see it.
So yeah, thank you for sharing that.
That goes to my next question right next to what you just mentioned.
You talked about success.
What is success to you, Brian, if you could define that in a few sentences?
Success is ultimately freedom, right?
Freedom to do the things you want to do when you want to do them.
And that ends up looking very differently to different people.
So to some people, that may be living under a bridge and having absolutely no responsibilities
at all.
Other people, that success is the freedom to make a massive impact in the world.
And with that does come responsibilities, but those are responsibilities that you freely
choose.
So I think that fundamentally, success is freedom.
And that's why for me, that also aligns with the value of authenticity.
Because when you think about how you can show up and be completely free, if you can be 100%
authentic in every interaction that you have, that is ultimately the core expression of
freedom in our society as we know it today.
So I think the freedom of choice and the freedom of expression are ultimately what we're looking
for when all of us say what does success look like to you?
I think that where that starts to get misaligned is when you start using other people's versions
of success, where you start basing your success off of how expensive your watch is or your
car or where your house is located.
And that's why I think it's so important to develop and take time to understand your own
vision and how you see the world.
In fact, I've got it tattooed right there, see clearly, be clear.
As long as you show up in the world that way, that's going to give you the clarity of vision
to understand how you see things, show up, build towards that thing that you see.
And the moment that you start building on someone else's vision, you cease to make nearly
as big of an impact on the world as you possibly could because the most unique thing in the
world is you, your story, your experience.
And when you stop expressing that and adapting to someone else's, you cease to be able to
reach the levels of success you otherwise could.
Brian, what was the moment or what was the...could be a story, could be a moment when you realized
that this was success to you?
It's one of those things where there's a lot of events that you go through that then lead
up and then you look back and you expect there to be one particular inflection point.
But I lived...I went to grad school, I got a master's degree, I went into investment
banking, I got out of that.
I got into building businesses, initially in commercial real estate and money is huge
in that industry, right?
Like you can't do anything unless you've got money.
And so I was for quite some time very fixated on the idea of making money.
And I lived in Manhattan Beach, I drove the fancy cars, wore the Panerai and the Persoles
and all of that.
I even used to own loafers.
And I think for me, I've lost everything a couple of times and I think the last time
that I went through that I realized that at the end of the day, money is just energy.
It comes and goes and your capacity for money is also your capacity for making positive
change in the world because if you consider money to just be energy, if you can go out,
have somebody pay you and they then see a positive ROI on that, you actually are creating
positive energy, positive change in the world.
And as soon as I flipped that and realized that really what it comes down to is my ability
to make change in the world, that was I think the biggest shift in terms of how I see it.
How I saw success.
And I'll add two more quick stories.
When I was younger, I was really into the outdoors.
I still am.
I was a wilderness EMT.
I did search and rescue, back country guiding, all of that.
I prided myself on being able to be dropped anywhere in the world and I'd be able to survive.
And then through a series of events, I basically arrived in Baja California Sur in Mexico with
less than $7,000 of which most of that was actually spent on the trip down there as well
as rent and deposit for our house when we first arrived in Baja California Sur.
And our first few weeks living in Mexico, me and my family were eating bean and cheese
tacos.
We weren't going out and eating fish tacos and having fun and doing all of that because
literally just dead broke in a foreign country.
And the business I have today, I started from that position and learning that it doesn't
come down to money.
Money is going to come and go, but it's the ability to go out there and do it yourself
and not have any support.
We had zero support in doing that.
And once I recognized that it really is just about the challenge, it's about the journey
and enjoying that.
I enjoy the struggle.
I enjoy the discomfort.
I enjoy that painful side of building a business.
And as soon as I started to really embrace that, that's where my view of success completely
changed.
It's like hanging out with fishermen, right?
It's all about the stories.
If you don't get good stories out of it, both positive and negative, then it's just not
worth doing.
It doesn't matter how much money they give you.
And that switch, that really, I think was that sort of turning point for me for now.
Money is great.
I'm fortunate to have enough to take care of my family, live very well, but I'm 100%
okay losing it all because I know I'm going to come back and I'm going to have a hell
of a story doing it too.
Yeah.
Thank you for sharing that.
That was very authentic of you.
I love to hear it.
I have one more question for you, Brian.
That question is, is incomplete without who people are thinking of a great leader?
To you, what defines a great leader?
To me, a great leader is somebody who shows up so deeply in their own truth that people
can't help but be changed by just their mere presence.
We've all met people that the tone of a room changes when somebody walks in, where people
are inspired just by seeing how someone acts.
We oftentimes think about leadership as a role.
We think about it as a... We think of speeches.
We think of all of the great things that people do.
If we think of... One of my favorite stories is Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot.
If you think about that story, the Oracle had said, whoever released this ox cart would
go on to take over Asia.
There was many, many people, great soldiers, great leaders, philosophers.
They all came and they were pulling and trying to untie this knot.
Alexander walks up and what does he do?
He pulls out his sword and he slices through it.
While people were still arguing over whether or not he released that ox cart in the right
way by breaking the expected status quo, he went on to conquer Asia and become Alexander
the Great.
I think that when you understand what leadership is, it is the capacity to disrupt status quo.
If you're unable or unwilling to do that, you cannot lead.
That needs to be at every level of what you do.
That doesn't mean necessarily that you have to go out and on one end, there's just being
a punk just for the sake of being a punk.
There's different forms of disrupting status quo.
Somebody who stands up and yells fire in a movie theater is disrupting the status quo.
If there's actually a fire, that can be seen as great leadership.
If they're just doing it for the sake of disruption, then they're seen as a nuisance.
Understanding that fine line, that's why it goes back to that.
I think the last time we spoke, we talked about the saying, never give a sword to a
man who can't dance.
There's different dances, but if you follow the rules specifically and exactly, it doesn't
look like dancing.
You learn the rules and then you learn how to break them and which ones to break.
That's where great leadership comes from, is learning when and where to disrupt the
status quo.
One of the most fundamental ways that you can do that is in how you show up.
When you show up authentically, you invite other people to do the same.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
Thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.