Raising Capital: 'It’s a Ticking Time Bomb'

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Sean busy Liz picarazzi and Hans shy debate the merits and risks of taking outside Capital clearly it makes sense for some businesses but what are the right circumstances what are the Alternatives and what do you need to understand before going to the dance for example consider the Dynamics of the entrepreneur investor relationship are the entrepreneurs hoping to land an opportunity from the investor or is it actually the entrepreneurs who have an opportunity to offer and who pays for the coffee plus what do you do on those days when no one seems to be following your lead when it's easy to get discouraged and the entrepreneurial loneliness sets in most of us have been there even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which in back magazine recently named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Shan busy CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy Liz picarazzi who is CEO of City bin which is based in Brooklyn New York and makes trash enclosures and package bins and H try who is co-founder of Windex an e-commerce Bakery based in Austin Texas and please take a listen to my quick chat with Rob 11 co-founder of our sponsor work better now the episode is titled it's a ticking Time Bomb welcome Sean Liz and Hans it's great to have you all here Liz let's start with you what's going on last we heard you were winning a PR battle what are you focused on these days so partly as a result of that PR battle we've been really focused on product so the pr battle was that there were some criticism of our bins in Times Square they were dirty they were bulging they had some issues you know all of which are because they are in Times Square but some of the issues were addressable by us so we really have gone to work we've made Seven changes to the product in Times Square work working very closely with the sanitation and the cleaning workers there to get their feedback and then are going to be turning around those changes into future releases across New York city so it's exciting um for me because I love new product development I love customer research I love getting that close talking to people you know taking videos them talking about what they like and they don't like but the whole team has really been mobilized because some of the changes we made required very fast coordination with our Factory and they obliged um so you know that's been really fun to to identify needs come up with new prototypes roll them out get feedback and then just keep iterating and um that's one of the things I love about being an entrepreneur and um I've been able to do a lot of that lately has the publicity had any impact on your relationship with your client I know you were concerned you you didn't want to trash them so to speak uh for the upkeep of your bins how is that relationship going I mean it's going really well we together came up with an action plan following the Press uh we've been working on it together they've made their workers fully available to us for research essentially as guinea pigs and we meet monthly with them including with the president of Times Square himself um to talk about trash and rats in Time Square so it's an exciting thing we look forward to every month plenty to talk about there is there's a lot and just generally the city and how Department of Transportation and Department of Sanitation and officials like this is a very high-profile High V high visibility sort of initiative so there's always a lot to talk about besides the rats in the trash when we uh emailed before the show Liz you also mentioned that you're given some thought these days to investment capital what's on your mind with that so um we've been very lucky to be approached by a couple of investors um a couple of potential strategic Partners really since all of this publicity and you know have started conversations to see how they might support us whether it be through capital or through you know connections or subject matter expertise I have kind of been a bit up and down on on my feelings about it it's very flattering to be approached by investor usually it's the other way around so my ego gets a little engaged in that which is nice but then of course I think well if I really were were to want to get an investor wouldn't I go out and seek it like would I be stupid to just work with one investor who happened to approach me at the very beginning and you know I just think instead of spending so much time thinking about this and the wh ifs are in my head a lot now I have gotten to really look closely at what my business really needs and where are the gaps and do those gaps need to be filled by you know an investor or some sort of strategic partner or could they be actually F filled by existing team members pitching in with that or hiring an additional employee or two or three to cover the things you know I even workshopped it yesterday with my EO group of you know the value that an investor could bring or the trouble that a an investor could bring and in my group of nine in my entrepreneurs organization Forum eight of them were very anti me getting an investor for the typical reasons that one discusses of giving up control or anything that surprised you it was you know partly you know giving up Equity without knowing what you're getting for it so for me it's actually a little bit less about the money at this point and it's more about wow can this investor help me scale my sales operation Nationwide with the type of sales people I want you know to take my product to the West Coast you know an investor can come and say that they're going to do that and if I believe that and I give them Equity what if I'm wrong and they're wrong about that and instead I could have just hired someone to do that with my own money and so someone that was coaching me on this said like do you realize that your lack of confidence in this area to expand and to scale through sales could lead you to take money that you might not need that's like a forever decision why don't you just address your own like confidence with this issue in the various ways you can instead of taking on a long-term investor that was really confronting I mean this is I but I needed to hear it you know I mean I sat in a room and really talked about this with eight other people and it's not to say I'm not going to take an investor but I definitely more have the approach of I might know the answer or I know the gaps better than they do and they're going to say that they can fill those gaps but if I believe that and I'm wrong that's that's going to be miserable you know for everybody so I've gotten a little gunshi with the investors and I'm really looking at what will it take to help get me to the next level and I'm I'm seeing that it may be within me within my team or within my bank account to hire someone to do those things you know why go to an investor just because I feel weak in four areas right now Hans you've told us that you and your partner made the decision to pursue investment Capital did you go through a similar thought process yeah and for us it has been an an evolution of how we approach it because when we first start okay we need to get this much money and we and that's enough and then we started like having a lot of the conversations about what is it that we need and the answer was kind of similar to list in many ways that what I need is not money right now I mean I do need money but it's not just money and probably the worst mistake that you can do is if I don't need the money it's absolutely no good to give away the equity so actually we were looking for $5 million and we cut it down to one and a half and we're in the process but my perspective and I've talked to a insane amount of people because our industry is very let's say that there's a disconnect between what actually gets funded and the exess it's very interesting that Dy the Dynamics but H what do you mean by that oh this is a whole other past but there is a class bias to what gets funded in the early stages of food so you get a lot of funding for adaptogenic beverages or alternative proteins but the reality is that those are things that don't have mass adoption so I kind of understand the logic but there's a disconnect between what gets funded at the early stages and it has a lot to do with the tunnel vision that the founders and the investors have about what's scalable there's a lot of bi to their own prejudices so and their own ideas of what the market needs but back to funding what I've seen is like take the meeting and have the conversation and keep them offering the Sun the moon and the stars if you're not don't take it if you don't need it but what I have found is the money is the thing that needs to be good enough if you're willing to get for the money great if on top of that you get an strategic investor great but my experience has been and we had a very bad experience with this is that of course they can help you they are going to do this they're going to introduce you to that my network no one worth their salt is going to hold their network from you until after they have invested that has been my experience and we have really built a lot on top of people who are like not ready to invest but I would love to help you with your network what were you referring to when you said you had a bad experience was that um I'll leave it the this because it became kind of a lawyer thing but we had a bad experience with an investor there was a lot of unfulfilled promises let's that's as much as I can say so I don't get myself into trouble understood but yeah let's if you think that the money is worth it more because it's coming with all these other things it is not like you cannot make decisions based on ifs which is what a lot of them and I understand exactly what Liz is saying a lot of them will tell you this oh yeah but we come with this and this and that and the reality is that they can give you the introduction or they can give you the meeting but the one who's going to have to do the work and hire this person or go to the meeting and actually sell is still you so unless we're talking about kings and queens you can get the network and do it yourself so think about the money so Liz given that you're thinking you're leaning a little bit away from pursuing investment capital what's the biggest concern that that creates what does that mean that you have to figure out an alternative solution to I think maybe the best way to explain it for me is that I need to become comfortable with spending my own money on the things I know I need particularly in sales and a bit in product development and in legal those are my three big categories instead of thinking that I'm going to use as we call it OPM other people's money so my comfort level needs to be adjusted and I'm starting that process now but you know looking at the bank account we have some money still from the eidl loan and saying I didn't feel comfortable using that money cuz I wanted to have that as like a rainy day fund just in case and instead saying actually I know these are the three gaps in my business that I need to invest in and I am going to use my own money to do that and so that's something that Frank and I have been talking a lot about he's more conservative with money but he still does understand that if the alternative is giving away Equity to fill those three gaps that that is a really big um it's a risk you know anytime you take that investment it's a risk and also like let's say if we had a really large order which I could see coming and how are we going to finance that order like I actually do feel like if we had a a large order we would be able to get you know more of a line of credit whether it be from a bank probably unlikely or from a source like an investor that does see that we just need to finance a big inventory purchase that that's an easier conversation to have when it becomes that big can I ask you what is the risk that you see if you bring in an investor a give away control uh that if isn't worth it or um if they make my life miserable one of the potential investors I spoke with had such an irritable temperament that I thought oh yeah you're going to get a lot of that would I want to deal with this once a day once a week once once a month no I wouldn't even want to deal with that once a year so like it's not like a quarterly meeting of tolerating something like that it's like you're going to bed with these people if you don't like the guy that's is enough to say no because you are really having to deal with this person you're getting in bed with them for better and For Worse a lot of the time I have met wonderful people I have actually made friends who passed on our investment but they have become very good friends so it's been wonderful for us we have met a ton of as to as well but this is our big learning you are giving them the opportunity not the other way around yes what you're doing is so scalable the fact that you are in Time Square which is probably the most visible Street in the whole country doing this this is so scalable this is something that you can bring to any every single city in the US and a good investor will see that and say I want to get on that train if they don't see it then move to the next one but what I would say is keep that conversation in your back pocket because sounds like you don't need the investment right now Sean I've let you listen to this and I want to know uh are you feeling fomo or is this conversation making your skin crawl where are you oh man um well actually I think Hans brings up a really good point which is that for the vast majority of you know my business career the concept of outside investment has meant a uh diminution of control and and essentially a battle between the folks making the investment and the founder and in that Paradigm Founders always lose you know always and I think for Liz where I think part of your motivation Liz of getting out of corporate America is to have control of your destiny I mean I know you a little bit not a lot but my sense is like you really enjoy control you really enjoy creativity you really enjoy you know being the master of your domain and and in the old Paradigm or the majority Paradigm once you start taking money you lose that and that sets up a really uh contentious relationship that ends up being you being the loser which is I think why a lot of your EO colleagues were like no way no how don't take an investment what Hans is talking about which is sort of a more modern iteration of an of the investment framework which you see in the tech sector is where Founders take Investments but they're still the kings of their castle and so like you look at like Facebook for example you know Mark Zuckerberg is in control of that thing entirely there's no uh there's a board but it doesn't matter they have no control so yeah I think what Hans is saying if you could get that situation where you could get money but yet you are still in control maybe maybe but I mean in 2013 years of watching businesses and working with small businesses I have only seen an outside investment situation go happily maybe once and that one time was when a small business was bought by somebody who had owned another small business it was like an entrepreneur buying another entrepreneurs business and they actually made it better I think the founders of the original business wanted out that's another thing like if you just want out then there's a whole kind of set of uh things to do like don't rely on an earnout for example or if you have an earnout don't count on that as part of the money that you need there's just so many unhappy stories that I am just so negative on outside capital I it's just where I'm at on it um I just don't see it end happily especially for people who love their business if you don't love your business yeah take an investment and like make a bunch of money off of it but generally it just doesn't go well um in terms of the happiness for the founder and for the employees I just have seen that over and over Hans any thoughts about that um I was waiting if anyone had something else but I think the question in that case is what is it that you want out of the business because that is absolutely true if what you want to do you are really passionate about your business and your intent is to scale it to a point where you still control it still manage it and longterm your vision is that you are going to be operating your business business then absolutely because in that case you're getting literally married to whoever invests in you if your goal and so this is probably the the first question that I wish more Founders I I wish myself had asked when we are starting having the questions about Investors what is it that you want out of the business and what what is the expectation forget about for the size of the business but like your business plays a role in your life that is different than a job and different than a passive investment so if you're an opera and this is your intent I want to have this I want my kids to one day operate it which is perfectly valid yeah then yes because at the end of the day what you're going to be looking at is returns and you're going to be looking at I need to cut them a check every year so that's a very different situation that for instance what we are doing where our business doesn't really make sense if we keep it in the realm of our own possibility like a mainstream cookie brand only makes sense if we are able to take it nationally otherwise yes it can be successful but it's a very different picture so in that case we do need a lot of capital I would say that the first question you need to ask yourself is what is it that you want because if what you want is an exit in the next 10 years and you want to grow to bring National to have all of the things get the money and get out in the next 10 years you're going to still operate you're going to still be in control well yeah and actually she'll be exited in 5 years because what'll happen is if what happens in terms of what the investors want H to happen it'll scale super fast whether Liz is great at running it or not they will say you know this business is just reach the new level where we need to bring in a professional CEO and they will they will kick her out I mean I just see it over and over again and they'll bring in a quote unquote professional CEO who they know will get it to that next Echelon and essentially you know it'll become a very different organization so that's another thing Liz thoughts about that okay so you're going to be a little surprised by that but I am I would not be against someone kicking me out of my role and putting someone better in place seriously in terms of a CEO role if I got bumped over to be Chief creative officer I would be really happy with that they'd bump you out of that job too so as long as I could have the CCO role I would be okay with it they don't want you in there you're to to private Equity the founder becomes an anchor and getting the founder out of the organization is is their prerogative It's really rare that that they keep them in there there are places who specialize in doing that I mean it does happen and I have spoken to people who have successfully taken private Equity money or at least that's what they tell the world it is a taking time bomb like if you are taking private no realistically if you are taking private Equity money you are setting up the clock to get out like you need to be very aware of it and I and I understand what you're saying because you may want this other role and I'm getting that you're getting a ton of visibility so you may want the roll like the lady from glossier that I don't know if you saw she built glossier into like the DTC darling billion dollar company was insan growth and she just stepped down as CEO and now she is a chairman of the board and I think she's involved in something else creatively and in this case he's very visible so I don't think that you need to be strategic because yes you don't want the board to have the prerogative and one of the things that we have been forance people have been very purposeful and actually saved our next once and probably we'll do it again some point is that Luis and I are so visible such an entrenched part so we jump at speaking engagements we love them because we are very public so we want we want to be the face of the company because if we're the face of the company we get control because the brand doesn't exist without us and if it came to that and with have a mess of a private Equity situation down the road the last thing the private Equity wants is for us to go to the New York Times to tell them hey they did this to us yeah maybe it's a bit self arrising but that's a position you need to be in so I think that the problem is not whether private Equity is good or bad or busy or whatever and this is the distinction that even investors are not really clear on what their expectations are because if you are thinking this is a business that makes a ton of sense for private Equity it's a very different conversation if you're thinking of PC what we need to do is not demonize investors or private Equity but you you do need to understand the game and you need to be aware because yes what they want down the line is control if private Equity puts a single Dollar in you they want control and be it a fivey year or a 10y year or a horizon that is going to happen and you need to be okay with that but if you're comfortable with that with giving up control and cashing out because Sayes is a successful company and we're five years down the line you are looking at a $100 million valuation and you have 30% of the business and they want you out they want you out but they're going to take you out with $30 million in your pocket so I mean you will be fine you can go start another business doing Chief created officer for $30 million I mean you can build you can build a pretty good business with that you can do whatever you want the reality is this yes the second you money from an investor the investor is in a way sitting at the other side of the table they will tell you and they have beautiful websites with all of their teases and it so amazing they are lifting up under represent the talent yeah of course they they're salese I mean they're Sal that's the thing to remember they are really really good salese and so like to your point Liz like they are feeding your ego because they're like ah this is what she likes and whatever it is you know some people they're going to feed you're going to get rich you know others are going to feed their ego others they going to feed a vision of well we can consolidate the market and build this great thing and save the world right whatever it is they're going to feed that and that's okay but you got to be really like cleare eyed about it and what it's going to happen to you jul just h on something super important they are sales people they are the ones making the selling because their million dollars is exactly the same as the million dollars from the next guy so the mistake I think a lot of Founders make is that they think that they are doing the selling ABC that that that is true but realistically you have an opportunity for them and at the end of the day if PR your private Equity an investor their job is to Source Deals they are looking for you you're you are giving doing them the favor and everyone is like oh I got a meeting I'm so exciting no they are the one to get get to be excited like I got a VC we became very good friends and he told me you don't pay for a single drink or a single cup of coffee if they pick you off for coffee they pay for that they pay for dinner they are courting you not the other way around and you know it really no I know it sounds funny and I we were like oh can I get you coffee oh we brought you cookies and like no no but it's the thing they do they are selling because at the end of the day you are a unique proposition like your business is unique whether it's better or next time the worst one that's another discussion but yours is unique and their million dollars is identical and has just as many zeros as the million dollar from the guy next door yeah and also too Liz like there are like echelons you probably know this but like you know if you're under 5 million you have very little power very little ability to kind of negotiate that deal you hit five million things change you hit 10 it changes dramatically you get above 10 that then now it's like Hans is saying now you can set terms like hey you have no voting rights right right I saw someone make this horrible mistake and their company went under because they gave away 55% of the company at the early stages so they were't investable like no one wants that at the seate level they want you to be so they want you to be so invested in the company that you are going to stay there for a while in five years they may want you out that is absolutely true but right now they want you to live and die by this business the thing is that you don't necessarily have to give away control and as Sean was saying like the more modern version of investing they don't have the time realistically because their proposition is out of 10 companies nine are going to die and one is going to kill and I think that even that I think is changing right now in the current environment in Tech it's either sink or swim you kill it and you become a unicorn or you're nothing because distribution and adoption are so important in consumer products for instance is a more normaliz uh like the return curve is more normalized you can have unicorns and you can have a ton of good returns decent profitable companies you can you can spin off into private equity and you're going to have zeros but you don't expect nine to be zeros and one to be a winner so it's a different set of expectations and I'm guessing in industrial settings such as yours list is probably going to be something similar I have a question for Liz uh but let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor I'm here with Rob Levan co-founder of work better now which provides top remote Talent from Latin America and the Caribbean Rob we've all been through this remarkable labor 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mention 21 hats when they have their free consult you get $150 off the first 3 months and that's for each assistant that you hire where can we learn more work better now.com thanks Rob and we're back Liz uh this may or may not be relevant and related to the conversation we're having but in uh the emails we exchanged before this session you made a reference to feeling a sense of um something I think we're all familiar with sort of the the loneliness of Entrepreneurship and yet you also just told us today that you had this um EO session where you discussed your current situation with I think you said nine EO members and got what sounds like you know really helpful engaged feedback can you explain that to me what what were you referring to um in the email and how are you feeling about that so I mean it's a day after this wonderful EO meeting so I'm feeling really good which is what always always happens when I sit in a room of entrepreneurs same thing when I tape with you guys there's a feeling of connectedness that you just don't have with your team or your friends or your family like we understand each other's challenges and passions and you just connect on that level it's it's a precious time but you know maybe I just don't have enough of it maybe that like in between our monthly meetings I need to go to more events or you know have lunch with more entrepreneurs all of which is available to me I mean I live in Brooklyn New York there's a ton of entrepreneurs very creative people but if I don't make that effort to spend time with my entrepreneur peers I can very quickly become lonely and that also is something that can kind of come out with Frank and I because you know he's married to an entrepreneur he knows how quirky am and you know when I want to talk to him about new ideas new strategies you know new potential Partnerships that he never would have thought of you know he might just be like oh There She Goes Again like he may not say it but it's like I have my team working on a lot of stuff that keeps them busy so when I go off onto some new la la land or I'm chasing the next like bright shiny object if I don't have people excited in the way I am which is virtually impossible I can get discouraged and I can get lonely next week I'm actually going to Virginia Beach for 3 and a half days for the EO um Summit the Nationwide Summit and there's a ton of great speakers and I'll be meeting a lot of people from many many chapters and so for me I know that's going to be a great experience for me it's going to be one of the highlights of my year and I really look forward to it and and and so for me I need to have those those events like sometimes when I meet entrepreneurs that don't engage with other entrepreneurs I think oh my God how miserable you must be because it can be lonely and it you know something that most entrepreneurs will say so I guess the answer to it is Lauren when I wrote to you a couple weeks ago I was feeling lonely but now I'm not well I'm glad to hear that do you ever find yourself kind of having to choose between I've got this list of things to do for you know that are important to build the company and I also know that I need to reach out and spend more time with the kind of people who keep me feeling grounded and excited and energized is that choice part of the issue for you a little bit Yeah cuz I will have my running list of things that are not getting done and maybe leading up to an event or a meeting I'll think oh my God I shouldn't be doing this I have 17 things on my list but then after I do the event and I spend the time I realize well this was so valuable but then again if I get into myself with situations where I have been in other entrepreneur groups where it hasn't been worth my time I learn that very quickly and then I won't go back to that group again so you know without saying any names of groups there are entrepreneur groups that pop up all the time and I've tried a lot of them and if it's like it turns out to be a group of people where someone just wants to become an entrepreneur and the rest of us have to give them advice like I'm sorry but that isn't a good use of my time at this point in my career like I can't afford to spend time being a coach in a situation where I think I'm going to connect with peers and that's another learning I've gotten along the way with that sort of networking yeah that's a big thing like getting in the right Forum whether it's through an organization like EO or vistage or whatever it is it's more about the Forum than the entity itself um who's in that group with you yeah and their kind of level of Acumen I feel you is I'm I'm in a forum right now that not through EO through different through a different group that I'm the biggest business in the and and it's by by a lot and and I'm not a very big business so it's tough because the things that get talked about a lot are like things that I you know was challenged by five or 10 years ago and you know I want to give and that's why I'm in it but over time it's tough because there's just so many other things I need to be focused on Hans could you uh relate to what Liz said about kind of the loneliness of Entrepreneurship um you and Louise both made moves from working in Corporate America to being entrepreneurs on your own how does that hit you oh yeah I mean on top of everything we decided to move to another country no big deal that didn't help then the pandemic came so yeah you know it's been an evolution and this is what this is what we've learned we were just talking with Lou the other day that this has been the roughest year in our lives but also the most rewarding because we were coming out of that that loneliness and ferocity really settled in because you know you're doing this thing and you moved to another country and this is what you wanted and that's okay but it got because of the pandemic it very hard to make friends to get to know people so you layer that that there's not much in the way of a support system really and then you're doing this thing where okay we're fundraising and we're talking to these people and at the end of the day you're layering on top of the loneliness and on top of difficulties and T of rejection and at first we're taking it like that like oh this is just rejection this is something we not worth it and it really hit us really hard remember that when we got our first significant no I cried I it took me a long time to get over it but then we started learning well that everyone is kind of on the same boat that to begin with but we started learning that those conversations need not to be transactional and that that no is doesn't really Happ anything to do with you as a person or even as a business sometimes he's like this is just not a good fit and then we started like having those conversations not in the spirit of a transaction of oh I'm talking to this person because I want money or because I want them to invest but I want to share what I'm doing with them and hopefully it will be of interest to them and once we started making that switch a lot of that loneliness went away because it felt like instead of being self s people getting rejected we were business people sharing what each other was building so that little switch that we flipped allowed us to just say hey is this a person that we are interested in talking to yes what do we want to get out of them nothing we just want to listen to what they have to say or we want for them to listen to what we have to say and tell us how they feel and what value do they see here this is why you have I think such high rates of depression amongst entrepreneurs is there's two factors one is it's lonely and isolating two is that our society really wants to ascribe your personal worth as a human being to the business's success and if you look at it it's everywhere right you have these competitions that are like 40 under 40 fastest growing business and when they have the awards ceremony it isn't like the whole team goes up on stage right it's the founder so the founder goes up on stage that feels great oh my gosh look how a they are and then all the other businesses look at them and go gosh I want to be like that you know but it's it's like a ah it's it's a Fool's errand you know because essentially you're going to fall down like you're going to you're going to fail as a leader at some point the business is going to stumble and because you've tied your identity and Worth to that business now you start to feel depressed anxious sad and then you're isolated and lonely which is even worse is just a really tough road too and I really try to encourage owner operators to really separate their sense of worth from the business's success if they can do that then they're they're just a lot more mentally healthy and and then like Hans is saying like get a network of support and and learn how to be vulnerable that's the other that's the other trap is you know we always have to say when when asked the question how are you doing oh great right like that's like the reflex of answer and but that's rarely true that you're that great all the time so in this conversation we've established that uh taking investment capital is taking on a ticking time bomb and we've established that there are high rates of depression among entrepreneurs because it's such a a lonely Endeavor sunshine and rainbows yeah who's got a a positive thought for us toh to close on we're talking about this stuff right prior Generations you know you think about like Jay's business for example prior Generations never even to talk about this stuff never even got to say hey I'm not feeling like I'm winning here right and especially in a public environment and so I think the really great thing about being in business today is like there is support there is help it's okay to say yeah I'm going to go see a therapist that's a great point that didn't used to be acceptable you were seen as weak if you talked about that kind of stuff and I think organizations like EO you know even forums like this podcast what which you've done such great work on Lauren is to like expose what's actually happening and and and you know Paul DS's book you know boss life right it just like lays it out and says like hey it isn't all puppies and rainbows but that's part of being more authentic and real which it I think leads to much higher levels of happiness so I don't know that's me that's my take on it well said Sean all right we got to go my thanks to Shan busy Liz picarazzi and Hans shy as always thanks for sharing guys and also thanks to our sponsor work better now we'll see you next week wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren at21 hats.com that's l r n at21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21 hats.com this episode was produced by Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]