Entrepreneurship is often seen through a glamorous lens, filled with stories of success and freedom. However, for Warren Miles-Pickup, the journey has been as much about personal growth and balance as it has been about business achievements. In a candid conversation, Warren shares the challenges and realizations that came with transitioning from a high-flying career in finance to leading multiple companies in the creative tech space. His previous life, marked by accolades and extensive travel, left him disconnected from his family, which prompted a profound reevaluation of his priorities. This shift led him to a small community on Vancouver Island, where he now focuses on building businesses that not only thrive financially but also allow him the flexibility to be present for his family. Warren emphasizes the importance of providing value and being a problem solver in business, a philosophy he applies to his personal life as well. By doing so, he has managed to create a fulfilling life that aligns more closely with his values.

Takeaways:

• Balancing personal and professional life is crucial for long-term happiness and fulfillment.
• Understanding your customer's journey is more important than focusing solely on product features.
• Building strong relationships and providing value first leads to natural reciprocation and success.
• Acquiring a business with potential problems can be more strategic than starting from scratch.
• The journey to success involves introspection, growth, and overcoming personal and professional challenges.
• Becoming a problem solver rather than just a service provider increases your chances of success.
• Recognizing the importance of mental health and family dynamics is vital for personal well-being.
• Being great is not necessary for success; being consistently good and balanced is key.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• UBC
• Designjoy
• Pixel True
• Pixel Copy
• Pixel Publishing
• Pixel Brands

If you're a solopreneur or small business owner who wants to achieve business success without sacrificing your relationships, well being, or happiness, you are in the right place.

This is the entrepreneur Breakthrough Lounge podcast where your host, certified business coach and media strategist RJ Parrish, and successful guest entrepreneurs share their experiences and insights to help you succeed without making the same mistakes they did.

Please enjoy the show.

So you got your start in finance.

Let's start there.

Take me back to the year that you started.

Sure.

Paint the picture.

What did life look like?

What were your hopes and dreams?

What did that look like for Warren?

That's a great question.

I was a new graduate from UBC, and my intention from university was to go into real estate development.

It was a family thing.

My dad had worked in finance.

He did real estate development, lending on a large, large scale, big commercial and large scale residential developments.

And it was something that I wanted to do, but I very quickly learned that you need capital to do that and I didn't have any.

And so I thought, okay, well, follow the bouncing ball.

Where do you find capital?

So I went into banking and new graduate, early twenties, was working for a large canadian bank and realized that the only people that wanted anything from a bank were the ones that can't get it right.

You want a loan?

Oh, guess what?

You can't have it because your credit isn't good enough.

You want to save for retirement?

Great.

But you don't have any money to do so.

And so you wind up just banging your head against a wall, constantly trying to provide and sell services to people that they're not going to be able to get.

And so I wound up going into high net worth financial planning and then into investment management, those sorts of things.

And I realized that my skill sets, because my degree was so multidisciplinary, you know, in learning about earth and ocean sciences, sociology, political science, human geography, the movement of peoples, all these different economics, all these things combined, is that I could talk about just about anything.

I could understand so many different topics and how they all related to economics and to markets and to human psychology, the way that people purchased all of these sorts of things.

And so I wound up spending the next 13 years working with financial advisors to help them to build portfolios, to make sure that they were providing the highest quality financial planning services to their clients.

It was incredibly rewarding.

And I got to travel all the time.

I was speaking to all kinds of big picture people and teaching them about how to do what was best for the canadian population.

Eventually I got to a point where the industry is now working against the advisor in terms of their ability to do what is right for the consumer.

And I came to realize that that was just, it was no longer fulfilling for me.

I was struggling to find meaning in doing what I was doing because there just wasn't progress.

There wasn't that aspect of altruism anymore.

And so I wound up after 17 years of doing that and working in this incredibly saturated marketplace, I decided to leave and follow my entrepreneurial journey and.

Make sure I'm tracking this in that position for 13 years.

So you're now early to mid thirties at the point that you start your business.

I was late thirties when I started my business.

Okay, paint a picture of where life is at that point.

You're starting out, going your own route.

Was it from a position of strength where you had some run rate and you felt confident that you could go out and make it on your own?

Did you not have that plan and just said, I'll figure it out, and worst case scenario, get another job?

What did that transition look like?

Fortunately, my finance career was very profitable because of the success that I had.

There was some capital to be able to lean on and we.

So we moved from Vancouver, larger city, to a very small town on Vancouver island.

This was all during COVID times as well.

When everything went digital, it allowed my wife and I to make some family decisions and career decisions that allowed us to completely reinvent the life that we wanted.

We have three daughters.

Life was essentially chaos during COVID We had a daughter that was suicidal because of bullying and mental health issues.

We had.

Our other two daughters were struggling with school and struggling with social aspects.

And so as much as the finance side was secure, the rest of our life was temperamental and we were just trying to figure things out.

And a part of the career change came with not only not feeling fulfilled and satisfied in what I was doing, but also recognizing that I needed something that allowed me to be available essentially 24 hours a day for when my daughter was going through an episode, when she was struggling with her mental health, to the point where that level of self loathing and self hatred took her to a very dark place.

I transitioned from my profession.

I had been on stress leave, dealing with my daughter's illness, and decided I'm not going to go back to the previous job because it's not going to work for what we need.

A friend of mine approached me and said, hey, im also interested in leaving finance.

Would you consider coming on board and acquiring this company with me?

At that point, it just made a lot of sense.

I had the ability to not have to pull an income while we built the business.

And eventually now it produces enough cash flow to pay us.

We have subsequently bought additional businesses and built other businesses.

It has led to a journey where we are utilizing this business as cash flow for us, but also going out and acquiring pieces of startups and launching new products, launching new businesses, all based on just building up a cash flow machine.

When you say acquire a business, I think the story of leaving corporate or more traditional career path in Covid is not uncommon.

And theres a lot of folks who went out and they became consultants, they became coaches, they started other small enterprises.

They built something from scratch.

And you went the approach of acquire an existing business.

What did that process look like?

I mean, we dont have to go deep into detail, but from a high level for someone who might be in that sort of position.

I dont want to be in this path forever.

Its not giving me the flexibility that I need from my family or for the life that I want to live.

I want to explore my options.

What did that look like for you?

There is a fantastic book called buy then build, which really breaks out the whole process of why you should consider buying a business, even if it's a very small one, versus trying to build it from scratch.

And for the two of us, we knew that we wanted to acquire something that had enough cash flow to cover off its operating expenses.

And so we went through a due diligence process of examining a series of different businesses, and we wound up selecting one that was small.

It had 13 global employees.

It had decent enough revenues that it covered its costs and allowed for us to reinvest that money into growing the business.

We had some capital that we could put into it from our previous careers.

We were able to move forward with acquiring it and then taking it from 13 employees to 70 employees and continuing to build up the clients.

We were very quickly able to recognize the reason that the business was staying small.

That is key in going through the underwriting and the analysis of a business that you were looking to buy.

You want to understand what are the problems in it and how can I fix these problems for this business?

It was a client retention challenge.

The average client was only staying on board for a month and a half to two months.

What we did is made some changes to the service model and to the way that the business works.

With clients in terms of finding new opportunities and were able to very quickly extend it from two months to nine months, which then just turned every client a four and a half x in terms of their profitability for the company, that allowed us to really grow.

And so that process of looking deep into a business, recognizing its problems and actually finding one with problems because you're going to pay less for it and problems that you can solve, is an incredible way to be able to make the most out of your capital when you're going to buy, then build.

Yeah.

So having the background that you did of being a numbers guy, and ultimately, regardless of how we might feel about it, the game of business is one of numbers.

Yes.

It comes down to understanding your margins, your cogs, your acquisition cost, your retention, your churn, your operating and overhead.

Is that why you think, I mean, when you first stepped in without having a real background in entrepreneurship per se, do you feel that's why over the last few years, it's had the growth that it did?

I think that's part of it.

But the quantitative aspect certainly gave us a leg up right off the bat in terms of an understanding of all of those principles.

But the qualitative aspect of what do you need to do in order to solve a.

And its not a problem that is numbers based, its a problem that is people based.

So understanding what type of an experience a customer or a client is looking to have with a particular brand or a particular service is what made the significant difference.

And so I would argue that even if you arent a numbers focused individual, if you can understand the customer journey, the customer issues, your ideal client profile and what it is that are the gaps in their life, the gaps in their business, the gaps in whatever aspect you're trying to solve, you are going to be significantly more likely to be successful because everybody is looking for a solution to a particular problem, not a product or service.

And as soon as you can get that through your head and become a problem solver versus a product or service provider, you're going to be significantly more successful in your entrepreneurial journey.

So how you mentioned to me you have a belief of providing value.

First, how do you approach that idea, offering value without expecting to receive it back?

And then how you think about reciprocation?

Yeah, so I have found in my life that whenever I have gone out of my way to drive value for others is when it has been reciprocated the most.

And so reciprocation is a natural social contract that we have in our lives in the majority of locations around the world.

When you are driving value for somebody else, there's not an obligation, but there's an expectation for reciprocation.

And when you stop expecting it is when it happens.

Because there's no transaction, they will apply it to themselves because of the natural desire to hold on to that social contract and the good just seems to flow out of it.

In addition to that, I just feel good when I drive value, when I make other people feel good, when I get off of a call or I get off of a meeting or leave an event and somebody texts me and says, hey, I really enjoyed that.

Thank you so much.

That just makes me feel fantastic because I've done something great for somebody else.

So what I have done is I have built this mantra within myself that I am going to find a way to be valuable for every person in every interaction.

Can I give them a recommendation to somebody else from somebody else?

Can I help them to solve a problem, connect them?

Whatever I can do that is going to make an impact in their lives.

I try to do that, and the positive response that I have gotten from the individuals where ive tried to help them is remarkable.

Having said that, I try to ensure that the value I'm giving them is something I can actually achieve.

Because if you over promise and under deliver, you wind up doing the exact opposite of what you're trying to accomplish.

Because now you have failed on your portion of that social contract and not only will the other person not reciprocate, but they're likely to hold a grudge because you told them you were going to do something that you've never done.

Yes.

So I think there's a nuance to providing value first in the hope that eventually it might not be from that individual that somehow you will receive value.

I think there's a lot of confusion on this, of the traditional thought is I'll scratch you are back, you scratch mine.

You're setting up upfront agreement of I will do this for you if you will do.

Why for me?

That's not what we're saying.

The reality is if you do this enough, if you just go out and help people in whatever context you're able to do that, if you're a consultant offer, just talk to people, help them fix problems.

Don't try and be like, oh, well, I'll do this one for free and you'll have to pay the next one.

Don't let people walk all over you and take advantage of you.

But if you're just interacting with people in a conversation.

Don't hoard what you have if it's something that will actually help them.

If you're a marketer, then go out and help people and talk to people about their marketing, answer their questions, educate, give them some ideas.

I promise you it's not going to replace the work that you could do for them if what you do is comprehensive.

Exactly.

And it feels a little bit like the guy in the bar saying, oh, I'm a nice guy.

If you have to try and convince someone of it, if you're defending yourself from it, like, are you though?

The best way to do it is just go interact with people and give what you've got.

Yeah.

And eventually, if it's good, it should come back around.

And if it's not, don't get bitter about it, just improve.

There's a reason that you see success in podcasts, in YouTube channels, in all of these things where the content is the value that you are driving for somebody else and the success that happens along with those people that are truly aligned to giving value to their audience.

That audience is going to be naturally attracted to that and people are going to share it.

So as an example for consultants, giving away your value, or a small amount of it, is an incredibly successful way to drive potential new business.

And if nothing else, you're going to feel good about helping other people and helping them to solve problems.

That's what we get into these professions for in the first place.

Yeah, agreed.

So looking at your jury as an entrepreneur, you've been really fully in the seat of entrepreneur for four years now, correct?

I over the course of that, what would you say is the lowest point along that journey?

Because up to this point, Weve said you came in, you identified an opportunity, you had all the money without any worry, no stress, just bought a business and it took off and its all been great.

Preston.

No.

So you step into this new opportunity, you relocate your family wherever.

At what point did you think, maybe did I make a mistake here?

Yeah.

So we had this massive uptick, both in terms of employees and in terms of clients and all the success.

Then we got too big too fast and problems started to come out of it.

The relationship with clients started to break down.

The success we were having and what we were doing for clients started to break down and problems reared their ugly head.

We had a huge drop off in some of our biggest clients and revenues were dropping and we had made commitments to invest in other companies and all of a sudden we were cash flow poor.

That is incredibly stressful when you have all these staff to pay, and you've got obligations, and you've got companies that are relying on you to provide them with cash so that they continue to fund their growth and all of that.

My business partner and I were basically best friends.

We're fraternity brothers from university.

So we have known each other for I want to do, and I own the majority of the shares, so I'm not going to do that.

And so, you know, there were issues there that we had to work through.

But because we've known each other for so long and because we had an understanding of each other's positions, how far we could push each other, what our biases were, we were able to get past that and able to look, okay, whats a compromise between our two positions?

And then put that into place.

And thats where I would say, having worked with a lot of businesses, a lot of financial advisory businesses, these sorts of things, thats where I would say the majority of the businesses fail is when the partnership can't see from the other person's perspective and they start to take that other person's expertise and perspective for granted for the two of us, because we both recognized our fallibility, because we both recognized our biases, we were able to come together and say, here's a potential solution that we could use that is going to meet both of our desires.

And that helped us to move forward and start to regrow the business and get back into a position where we could meet all of our obligations and start to grow the staff and marketing again.

And it's felt great to get through that with somebody that I consider a partner.

Right.

Not just a business partner, but this is somebody who will be with me for the rest of my life, you know, in the same way that my wife is.

Conventional wisdom steers most people away from entering into business partnerships with close friends.

I think most those who have entertained it or gone through with it, with either family or with friends, often regret it.

Or those who have similar situations where there's tension, maybe differences in opinion on where the company should go, different goals, different lifestyles that might be competing.

Yeah.

Any nuggets of wisdom or advice for how to navigate it?

That's a very difficult question.

I would say that my perspective of value first has been a big aspect of the success, because he is also somebody that I want to drive value for.

Recognizing that the opportunities I have came out of my relationship with him makes me incredibly grateful for both the relationship I have with him, but also the opportunity to do what we are doing right now.

He was the one who approached me with the idea to do this, to move away from the career in finance and made it possible for my family and I to live the life that we are now.

He is also incredibly patient and understanding with me when my biases are showing through, and so I owe him the same respect when his biases are showing through.

I would say as long as you maintain an attitude of gratitude towards your business partner for what they have put into the business, what they may put in in the future, and the position that they have allowed you to be in, then it's much easier to maintain that relationship.

Our relationship has changed because of the business.

Our conversations are not as casual and as free as they were before, because now every conversation we have is structured around, okay, these multiple businesses that we own.

What are the things we need to do for them?

But we both kind of understood that that was the direction we were going, and it was a direction we were both happy to do, because even in our conversations before we started the businesses, there was a lot of business oriented conversation to it.

We would be talking to each other about what was going on in finance, what was going on in our careers, those sorts of things.

So it was a bit more of a natural progression for us.

If we had just been best friends and we never talked about work or anything like that, that would be a much more difficult transition versus the transition that we had.

Yeah.

Your note of focusing on gratitude and likely realizing that just because you have a difference of opinions, it doesn't mean that they're doing it to you, trying to compete with you or anything like that.

But also, what I heard is kind of a temperance of ego, of realizing that it is a partnership.

And each, if you both have the opinion that your way is the way, without any compromise or room for the other's opinions to fit, then naturally you're inviting conflict.

But because you had the perspective that you.

I think that flexibility in any relationship, whether it's business, whether that's marital, whether that's just interpersonal relationships or with a mentor or a boss, anything.

Having room where you are not forcing your perspective and your desires and your needs over someone else's, when you're supposed to be cooperating, not competing.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's true in any relationship in your life.

So over the last four years, you've had a partner, which is tremendous.

A lot of people go it alone when they first step in.

They have a lot to figure out on their own.

How have you had to grow as a person over these past four years?

Yeah, it's been a significant amount of change.

Introspection and self reflection.

The ego part was definitely something that took time to work on, and that was, you know, success of my previous career and winning all kinds of awards.

You know, your head gets a little inflated, at least minded.

And, you know, moving into a new entrepreneurial journey, having a new business partner, and realizing all of the things I didn't know because I'd had my blinders on for 17 years in finance, was a big ego check.

And so that's been a significant personal change.

Along with going through the challenges with my daughter and her mental health, there was a lot of therapy that took place and a lot of learning to relax, reduce my expectations, not go into every situation believing that I know what's in the best interest for everybody that surrounds me, but still being willing to stand up for those situations where I do believe that I know what's in the best interest.

So it was a temperance of ego and attitude.

Additionally, I have also learned to let a lot of things slide off my back, you know, water off a duck's back sort of thing.

Whether that be negative reviews about the business work that's been done, whether it is criticism of the way that I present myself publicly in a career in finance, you are so narrowly defined by what you put out there, and a single word can result in termination of your career.

Whether you have said the wrong word from a compliance perspective, or you have been canceled, or whatever it may be.

Your profession is so tightly controlled, and your public Persona is so tightly controlled that you can't afford any negativity because it just smears you everywhere.

Whereas once you leave that profession, I very quickly learned that if somebody doesn't like you, that's okay.

You know, it actually can be a benefit.

I look at, there's a gentleman in the design industry.

His name's Brett, and he runs a company called Designjoy, and it is a massive organization.

It's a one man agency.

And he's done something like $2 million in revenue in the last year.

It's incredible.

And his marketing technique is self promotion of how much money he's making as a designer on Twitter.

And it infuriates people.

Every time he does it, he gets this massive list of messages and posts from people hating on him for doing this, but it also gets him clients.

And so he has learned that that confrontation and the being disliked by a portion of the population is almost a necessity to success, because you cannot please everybody.

And when you try to please everybody, you please nobody.

And so I learned through this that I don't have to have everybody like me.

I don't have to be the most likable guy in the room.

I just have to do what I believe in, stand behind it.

And if I can continue to drive value for those people that are interested in interacting with me, I will be rewarded because those people will enjoy interacting with me.

Polarity marketing is tremendous, especially when you realize the subset of your market that will work with you, and you don't have to worry about pleasing those, that we're never going to hire you in the first place.

So if someone has an opinion, it's not a tremendous deal.

Yeah, but I think something that you mentioned having to learn how to let things go as it relates to business and with your family.

And I think there is a lot of pressure for men in the workplace.

And as a father and a provider, you tend to carry a lot of pressure, even if it's self imposed feeling that I must be the one to like.

This is my burden to bear.

And you can.

Sometimes we can be dramatic about it.

We can pack it on more heavily than really anyone else is forcing us to.

But have you had to kind of navigate that as the dynamic in your family has changed?

Let's talk about that, because I think it's very common and I think we make life harder than it needs to be on ourselves.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree.

I definitely wore that hero badge for a long time, that I was going to be the provider, that I was going to be the model father figure, that I was going to be this large business success and all these sorts of things.

And the pressure that I put on myself was extremely detrimental.

It restrained me from doing the things that I really wanted to do, and it certainly damaged the relationship between myself and my wife, myself and my kids, all those sorts of things, and releasing that, and I still would say that I have not fully released it.

It is a work in progress.

But starting to release that has been an incredible benefit for the relationships around me in combination with the removal of the expectation that everything I do for them is going to be perfect, because nothing is ever perfect.

We want to have the perfect interaction with our kids.

We want to have the perfect relationship.

I came to the realization that if you talk to anybody about the way they grew up, they will find some source of trauma.

There is something that happened in their life that is traumatic for them, and we can't insulate our kids from everything that they believe is traumatic.

We also can't protect our clients from everything that is traumatic, right?

Because mistakes are inevitable.

To err is human.

And as long as we are working in a world where humans are doing the work, those mistakes are going to happen.

And everybody needs to realize that.

And that the best thing you can do is try to fix it as fast as possible.

Do you need support?

Whether it's from loved ones, whether it's from colleagues, whether it's from clients, you have to have that community there that is lifting you up in order to be successful.

Just, it doesn't work otherwise.

I agree.

I think perfection is this sort of, is a false standard.

There's no.

When you force someone to define it, what does that actually look like?

Want the perfect fam, be the perfect father or the perfect boss or whatever that is.

What is that?

And by making it a goal, something external of yourself, it just means that you don't have it now, versus, like, just acknowledging that I am being the best that I can be, and that will be a moving target of tomorrow might be better or worse by some percentage, and that is just the way that life will be.

And eventually, if you continue to strive to get better, as with anything, it will improve, but you'll never just reach perfect.

And it's this constant evolution of effort.

And we put so much distance between what we want it to be and what it is that it creates so much unhappiness.

Like, I want to be making a million dollars, even though I'm making half that or a 10th of that, and like, well, okay, that's fine, but don't make it so far away from where you are.

That unbalances your happiness and your satisfaction of self worth.

So over your process, have you had someone as a mentor or someone that has helped you kind of navigate that?

I've had a few people.

My father would be the most influential person in my life by far.

I idolize my father.

I'm very fortunate to have an incredibly intelligent, incredibly compassionate, very well spoken and very successful father who has always been there to bounce ideas off of, to ask questions of as much as sometimes I absolutely detest the answers that I get back from him.

They are always good and well thought out answers.

So hes been a guiding light for me.

I would say that my wife as well, has been incredibly instrumental in helping me to break down a lot of the psychological barriers and walls that I had built for myself and these expectations that I held for myself, and start to realize that I dont have to be perfect, my kids dont have to be perfect.

The perfect career doesnt exist because theres always trade offs and that balance is a much more important thing than just being successful in any one particular area.

I've had some incredible business partners and leaders in my life that have made substantial impacts.

And I worked with a coach.

Working with a coach was fantastic.

I worked with a gentleman named Randy Bellum out of Montreal and he had a huge impact on the way that I was doing things while I was going through stress leave and not really understanding what my next steps were and how I was going to get through this and how to take all of these issues that seemed like business issues for me, but were actually internal psychological issues that I was facing.

And the two were happening in the same manner, but I could get past one, but I couldnt get past the other.

And so by helping to understand it and unravel it, it really helped me to move forward and to be able to find and appreciate the success that ive had even when I didn't feel like I was being successful.

That's always a fun realization.

Get to look at actually you're doing quite well versus your expectations are misaligned and you're actually doing better than you think.

In some area of your life.

If you feel like you're not living up to your own standard, you're probably doing better than you think.

Yeah, I think that ties a lot to the idea of loss aversion in human psychology.

Like, we feel pain twice as much as we feel pleasure.

And so if we are going through something rough at that moment, it feels twice as bad as it really is.

And so we just hone in on that and we focus on it and we don't allow ourselves to move past it.

The reality is, if you take a step back and remove those biases and those feelings, you will actually be in a much better situation than you feel like you're in.

Yeah.

And sometimes you need an outside perspective to help you get to that point, which is why working with a coach, a mentor and an advisor, someone who's not like a friend or someone who just wants to preserve your, like, prevent you from taking risks, someone who can look objectively with some lens of expertise and help you make a good decision, kind of unravel what's going on.

I would recommend it to anybody who's considering it.

What is something that you used to believe about business or success or life in general to be true that you dont anymore?

I would say that the aspiration of being the best at what you do is core to being successful.

And I dont think thats the case anymore.

I was always an advocate for the idea of being great and that you had to be great in order to be constantly growing.

The company that I used to work for in finance, I would always accuse of just wanting to be good.

They never wanted to be great because great was too risky.

So they were happy just being good.

And I would say over time I've realized that being great, while it is aspirational and fantastic, it's not necessary for success.

Being good at something and doing it consistently is likely far more rewarding than trying to be great and constantly failing at trying to reach all these new highs and all that sort of thing.

That good will lead to a significantly more balanced life and that is much more enjoyable both for you and all of the other stakeholders that are in your life.

I think there's a romance associated with trying to be like this high achiever, to be at a pinnacle of an industry, because you get all the sexy attention, you get interviews, you get featured on Forbes or that kind of.

If you're really playing at a high bar, you get recognition.

40 under 40, 30 under 30.

You get invited to conferences and all this glamour, which most of entrepreneurship isn't.

Most of life isn't a how much recognition do you get as a parent?

You occasionally get something like twice a year from your spouse.

That's right.

When you're like, oh, yeah, I should probably mention they've been doing a great job, just maybe like send them for a massage or something.

But I think there's this natural tendency to want to, if I'm going to do this, I need to do it at such a level that it will be this extreme success versus most successful people live fairly boring lives.

There are some very, very well paid people that live in ridiculous neighborhoods and you would never guess what they do.

And they just do it well.

That's it.

Do a good job with a focus on solving a problem for somebody that they care about.

That's it.

I think that is the key.

Key to success in entrepreneurship is just do a good job for people that you care about.

I would agree.

We like to complicate things.

And it is simple realizations like that that usually take a couple of years of banging your head against, like what CRM do I use?

Or like, how do I do lead generation?

All this complicated stuff.

When the reality is if you can fix a problem that people have in an industry or a market that you are at least a little interested in, the rest kind of is just details and it does matter.

Don't get me wrong, it does matter, but it matters later.

Yeah.

Those are the tweaks that you make when you're already doing good.

Those are the little things you can look at to say, hey, this is an area that is clearly requiring improvement in order to continue to do something good, and that's when you can change it.

But otherwise, if you're focused on, hey, I care about these people because I care about what they're doing or what the result is or anything like that, I can solve their problem and they're going to recognize that from me.

Then do it.

Providing people with value or providing value to people that you care about.

You mentioned something to me in the first conversation regarding your family time that you were doing a lot of travel.

Yeah.

You mentioned earlier from one point of view, it was this really exciting time where you got to go and do all of these things.

You got to go all of these places.

You got a little bit of that glamour for a stretch of life.

So for you, in one hand, that could have been seen as like, that was success, but then you also used the words absentee parenthood.

Yeah.

So these are very opposing emotions about this time of your life.

Can you just tell me about that?

Yeah.

It felt great at the time.

It was exactly what you were talking about.

The glamour, the accolades, the recognition, getting to go to awards ceremonies and standing up on a stage and that sort of stuff, it felt fantastic.

It felt like I was achieving greatness, that I could do anything.

But it took a massive toll on the relationship that I had with my wife and kids because balance didn't exist.

I was staying in hotels 120 nights a year, and then on the days where I was actually in town, I was out entertaining and taking people out and schmoozing.

So I was probably gone two thirds of the year.

My wife resented it.

My kids resented it.

I missed a huge portion of the opportunity to be there while they grew up, and the person that they saw was this person who came home late at night, was gone early in the morning, was constantly grumpy because I was overtired, sleeping 4 hours a night.

They would come and join me on a vacation, and I thought, hey, this is fantastic.

You know, we're.

I'm giving a speech in Miami.

They can come down with me, and then we'll go up to Orlando.

By the time we were done with, I'm exhausted.

I don't want to hear them yelling and screaming.

I'm bitter.

I'm upset.

I'm feeling like, hey, this is time.

I could be doing work.

There was this equal resentment between my family and myself because we both felt like we weren't getting what we needed out of the relationship.

I had a friend say to me, one of my clients said to me, he said, you know, you have to be the man that she would leave you for.

And it kind of just struck me that my relationship with my wife was at a point where I didn't know if I was that person.

And so I went home that night and I'm laying in bed talking to my wife, and I just said, if you and I were to meet today, would you marry me?

And she said, no.

And from that point there, I knew that I had to make a change, that there was career change, that my personality needed to change, that everything needed to change, because I was not the person that this other person had given their life to be with, had given up all their dreams and everything to be with as an individual, as a partner.

And I wasn't holding up my side of the bargain.

And so that was the trigger to a lot of the changes that then took place, because I needed to be more introspective and realized the damage that I was doing to the relationships around me.

Even though I was feeling all of this incredible success and these accolades and all the glamour and the expense account, it didn't equal out, was so much heavier in terms of the loss on the family side than the benefits I was getting.

And maybe that's that loss aversion principle again, but it really hit me.

And so I knew that I needed to make changes from that point forward.

Mentioned the tendency to wear the hero badge.

I think there's a twisted rationalization sometimes, whether it's man or woman, whoever the breadwinner is, if you're a sole provider, you're providing for a family, you can get sucked into the vortex of the I'm doing this for them.

It's to provide this quality of life or stability.

Maybe you came from a situation where you didnt have a lot, or maybe you have gotten used to a certain standard of living where you had a successful career prior.

So maybe you had some sort of expectation of, this is what life needs to look like, and this is what I need to do to maintain that.

And I think that theres so much conflict around, like, well, I want to have the cake and eat it too.

Of course I want to spend time with my kids or my spouse, but I need to put in the work to do this thing.

And it becomes a game of sacrifice.

You can't give either one a hundred percent.

But I think there needs to come an awareness and a mutual agreement with the people in our lives of this is what I need to do for a specific window of time.

And if I need to adjust, we need to have that conversation.

Yeah, I totally agree.

And I was in a position where I was definitely making that decision, and it just had to come to a head where the course correct was necessary.

So now that you have and you've had some of those talks, and hopefully shrunk that gap a little bit, how have the relationships improved between you and your kids, your spouse?

How has that changed substantially with a priority?

I mean, there's still a lot of work to do.

I have a lot of making up for those times, but I'm home all the time.

I'm able to be there for their events and that sort of thing.

I don't book meetings during times when I need to be with them.

I have a positive social life now, rather than one that has focused around schmoozing and accolades, those sorts of things.

And I took the mantra of providing value to my relationship with them as well.

How can I provide them with something in every interaction I have with them?

Can I teach them something?

Can I show them how much I love them?

Whatever it may be, I'm looking to drive value with them so that they see their interactions with me in a positive light.

It doesn't always happen because you're still a parent and you can't always be their best friend, but some of those situations, you have an opportunity to provide value as well.

Daughter failed a math test yesterday, so there was a conversation around, well, why do you think you failed it?

Because I didn't put in the work.

Okay, well, is there an opportunity to put in more work in order to improve this?

You know, do you see where the fault was?

And so even when there is a negative situation, still trying to turn it around to provide value to somebody I love is just what you do.

And it's been remarkable in terms of the impact that it's had.

And their willingness and desire to engage and to interact is way better than it was four years ago.

I found that sometimes our hindsight, which is often much clearer than it was in the moment, can be someone else's foresight.

Looking back at your process, your development, whether in your career, in your family, in your kind of entrepreneurial journey, if there was anything that you could do for the second time and fix or prevent a mistake that you made, what would that be?

Ooh, that's a good question.

I don't know if there is, because I'm very happy with where I am at the moment.

And I would love to go back and second guess things and say, okay, well, maybe if things were different, my daughter wouldn't have these mental health issues or anything like that.

But I just.

I don't see a point in going back.

It's like the meme with the squirrel who says, I don't look back because I'm not going that way.

I don't think there is anything that I would go back and do differently, because what I have gone through today has given me the opportunity to be where I am right now and to see all the things that I can do better and to improve the relationships that I have with my wife and my daughters and to drive value for those people that do business with me and to smile and be happy.

I love my life.

I've got two large dogs here beside me.

I live on an acreage in the countryside.

I go for a run with them in the woods.

I have everything that I could possibly want.

And I think that if I were to go back and change things, things may be very different in a way that I don't want them to be.

I think the path that I'm on is one that I would like to continue on.

Changing the path that I took to get here would likely put me on a completely different path.

I like that answer because it takes a level of ownership of what you have chosen thus far, and it puts the control and the onus more on using those lessons to affect the decisions you make now based on what you've already experienced.

So I think where we can sometimes fall into a pattern of mistakes is when we look back and say, I wish I could have done that differently, and then we do the same thing a year from now.

Looking back on today, I wish I would have done that differently.

But apply it to where you want to go.

Focus on letting yourself become the individual you want to be.

It's all in aggregate.

Yeah, completely agree.

So, for those who are maybe just getting started in business, or maybe they've been at it for a while and they haven't figured out how to dial things back, to focus on what they actually want in life, what would be your homework for them of something they can do today in the coming weeks that they can start moving more towards what they would actually like out of life?

That's a really good question.

I would say, find the people in your life that can help you, that you can look up to, that you feel like, are going to be a great support network for you.

Lean on them and just be valuable to the people that you really care about.

And that will inevitably lead to success because people are attracted to valuable people.

Everybody can see those individuals that are valuable and they're going to gravitate towards those individuals.

And so if you can find a something that you really care about or a group of people that you really care about and do something that solves a problem in that area, you will enjoy what you're doing.

You will get that altruistic boost out of it while also drawing.

You'll be magnetic in terms of other people wanting to come towards you.

My dad always taught me life is a perpetual struggle to find balance.

I would say that that is one of the most important aspects that you can realize that youre going to be out of balance, but that by moving, constantly shifting to move towards it will lead to a lot more happiness and fulfillment in your life.

Thank you for joining us in the entrepreneur breakthrough lounge.

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