Matthew Johnson. Prolific Exited Entrepreneur on Work-Life Balance

0:00To me, I looked at that and wasn't like, oh, this is great. I've got a path to make a lot of money. I just felt like, all right, I'm locked into one thing. I'll be doing this one thing for the next 30 years. To me, that sounded incredibly boring. So I just felt the motivation to go do something very entrepreneurial and really take a lot more risk. Matthew Johnson. He sold his healthcare software company 11 years ago after leading it through three rounds of fundraising. In just three years, alongside his twin brother Nathan, he then acquired and transformed True Connect into a telecom powerhouse.

0:36Matthew also co-founded the technology investment bank Drake Star Partners, leveraging his early investment banking career in New York City. Balancing life between LA and Switzerland, he also leads a non-profit providing wheelchairs to disabled children. Today, we discuss Matthew's truly precious post-exit lessons on staying motivated through multiple ventures while fully enjoying life and raising entrepreneurial children. So Matthew, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. Very exciting to hear your story. Looking forward to talking about it. So Matthew, you had this really successful investment banking career in New York.

1:19then you suddenly stopped and moved to LA to join a healthcare software startup correct that's correct I'd love to know why similar to other people who are in finance who decided to do something different it was really about wanting to do something more entrepreneurial even though I was making very good money investment banking yeah and was getting great experience I just got to a point in my career where I said either I stay and I do this forever and that's just the way I thought back then of like I'm locked in to be investment banking for the rest of my life and the thought of that frankly terrified me so I was like I can't despite the money being as good as it was particularly back then I just couldn't bring myself to do that for the rest of my career it just wasn't to me I looked at that and wasn't like oh this is great I've got a path to make a lot of money I just felt like all right I'm locked into one thing I'll be doing this one thing for the next 30 years to me that sounded incredibly boring so I just felt a motivation to go do something very entrepreneurial and and really take a lot more risk so you wanted to explore you wanted a sense of adventure and see what else is out there correct what's this life is about interesting it is quite fascinating because most people I talked to they clearly had a financial motivator in there for startup by necessity or by other reasons usually you know thinking about financial freedom uh that was the reverse i had money and i said let me lose money exactly exact opposite exactly and things played out just that way so i started with some money lost the money going to a startup and basically started all over again after that so so i really want to hear all the details about that three-year relationship you had with the startup because you raised the money for them three times yes raised a fair amount of money for the company during the process of when I was there and then ultimately didn't see eye to eye with the owner of the business and finally just parted ways with the business after I think about three years and that's really my brother I have an identical twin brother as my partner and we we would both had discussions about hey let's do our own thing we were both both just happened to be in Los Angeles and so we made a decision to do something together at that point in time Yeah.

3:30And then you guys bought into what's now called True Connect. Correct. So tell me more about that. I like that expression bought in. Wow. I mean, it's been a journey of highs and lows is the only way I can describe it. But when we, my brother and I, interestingly enough, we had started our own kind of advisory investment banking firm in L.A. And when we did that, we really did it with the eye of, all right, this is something we know. let's do this but let's look for opportunities to buy a business invest in a business so we invested and invested in a variety of businesses over the next probably four or five years and that's when we ran across a telecommunications company originally called Telscape and the two of us thought interesting business not particularly well run what if we buy it and so we approached the board of directors we put the money together somehow and we made an offer by the company the board accepted it and we ended up buying the company I think in 2006 feels like forever ago now so a long time ago and really over the span of the next 15 years the two of us ended up acquiring three or four other companies merging them all together and then building up the company from there and I mean last year the company was the largest private company in this segment of telecommunications market in the United States yeah it's quite impressive so it took you like 14 years 14 years and we never raised outside capital so we did it with our own money our own really just driving profitability taking the profitability from the business and putting the money back into the company and thinking of ways how can we diversify revenues how can we streamline costs and so really took a very as I mentioned to you before I mean a very financial approach to the way we ran the business from the beginning and I mean make no mistake I I mean, we may be investment bankers and think we're super smart, but we made every mistake that every entrepreneur makes.

5:27I mean, bad hires, terrible decisions, not getting rid of divisions quickly enough, keeping people longer than you should keep them. I mean, every mistake you can think of we made. And so I think we wrote a lot of highs, a lot of lows. But certainly in the last two to three years, the business has just done better and better year after year. Yeah, it's really impressive what you've done to the company. So I've mentioned it to you in a different conversation that one of the reasons I found your story so fascinating and really wanted you on this podcast is because it's very unusual how you went from the financial industry into running a business, into entrepreneurship.

6:07And then we'll also be talking about the technology investment bank you're running now. But you basically went from the financial industry into entrepreneurship. You mentioned that you made all these different mistakes. most of the people I talk to do the opposite and they find investing really really hard in terms of the mindset how you how you think so differently so right if you do it the other way around did you find your mindset this change in the mindset is it was challenging for you that's a great question I think I've ever been asked a question before I think is we discussed a little bit before him, I think my, what was great was the background investment banking, I think really helped both because he was in investment banking as well.

6:55I think really helped the way we looked at companies and opportunities because we really looked at it financially first because we weren't, I mean, can't really, we weren't doing just a complete startup. We were looking at a company that effectively had a broken balance sheet and we understood financially what needed to be done to fix it. And so when we saw that, we saw a huge opportunity of, oh, this management team doesn't know how to fix it financially we know how to fix it let's buy it fix it bring a new management we then made all the typical startup mistakes after that yeah so we did a great job getting it financially structured and the business making money and then we made the classic mistakes of hiring wrong people and you know entering into markets you probably shouldn't have entered into um but i think that background i think was very very helpful and it has been since then as i mentioned before i think one of the things we take a tremendous amount of pride with this company is the fact that we've never raised outside capital yeah and I mean last year we did about half a billion in revenue and we haven't raised we have not raised equity from anyone in the company anyone outside the business other than myself and my brother so because you don't have to because we don't have to I mean there's you structured it you know cash flow first we did I mean there were three times we had to invest again not to sound like everything was perfect with this company because it almost went under in 2009, obviously because of the financial crisis.

8:14We had to reinvest then. We did a leverage buyout of another company. We had to reinvest again then. So it wasn't all just purely cash flow because we did invest several times. We just elected that we really didn't want to bring in outside investors because we knew the pitfalls of doing that because we'd both been at venture-backed companies. We both obviously work a lot with private equity investment banking and just had no desire to have someone tell us how to run the business. because we felt like we knew, even though I said we made mistakes. We learned, and I think in the long run it's been great because obviously we have complete control of business currently.

8:51So would you sell that company now? Would I? Yeah. I mean, if any buyers are listening, I'm selling. I mean, we've looked at selling. It is a highly regulated market we're in, which makes it more challenging. Obviously, as you mentioned, you're in software. I mean, that's the beauty of software. It's not regulated. and there's lots of buyers. Everyone knows the multiples. This industry is a little more challenged in that respect. So it really is more of niche buyers. And there's a couple issues we're dealing on the regulatory side right now. There's some wood I can knock on, and I'll knock on it now, that if we get through those issues that should be resolved this year, then it really opens up an opportunity to sell the business.

9:29And I think my brother and I, at this point, would be very open to that. Okay, interesting. So you have this amazing cash flow on the business. you have the control but you still wouldn't mind selling yeah i mean it's why is that yeah again a good question i think part of it's from this business my brother and i have started other businesses so we have uh we have a company in india we have a company in china we have a company in israel um different companies we've acquired with some of the cash flow others we've just been total startups um as i mentioned there's a fitness company i recently took over in los Angeles so we have other interests and I've been doing this so long I mean if I put my financial hat on no one's in a deal for 15 years I mean it's the exact example you don't do so I think for us we would welcome the opportunity to be able to actually exit the business and focus on other things so would you say you're spreading yourself too thin or you just have this itch again to see what else is out there well I think I think in the past we definitely spread ourselves is too thin because then we in the past we were doing as you mentioned before like we're part owners of an investment bank that's out of new york now i'm just on the board of that company i've pulled back from that i was trying to do that and run this business and run other companies we invested in all at the same time and i had a mentor of mine at the time say like you know i think you're spreading yourself too thin yeah and i was like i can do all of this yeah and he was right i mean 2009 happened and that really opened my eyes up all right i can't be trying to run an investment bank trying to run a small credit fund trying to invest in all these different companies and run this business as well so i think i learned a lot from that mistake and um really said about my brother and i in probably about 20 2012 where we just committed 100 of our time to this one business because at that point the size was getting to the point where it was yeah okay it's a big company now we really need to focus all of our time on this so you wouldn't consider hiring a CEO stepping down focusing on other things you would prefer to sell oh I don't know if I can answer this question my brother ever watches this he knows what I'm thinking right now um we did try twice okay and it was a miserable failure yeah so I'm sure many other people who live with might listen to this will have the exact same experience many people in my audience yes you get the resume you interview them you're like this and look one of my blind spots frankly um is hiring people like i have a blind spot i tend to trust people too much i tend to expect the best this person's going to come in and give it a hundred percent it doesn't dawn on the fact that someone could get a job and basically view that was the whole mission of getting the job and now they'll just kick back take this big salary tell everyone else what to do even though they don't really know what they're doing um and we we actually recently had a very bad experience with that in 2022 um if those individuals ever watch this you know who i'm talking about and it was uh it was a mess because i was so excited it was actually three executives that i brought on i was very excited and it was a mess so within 12 months they're all gone you don't want to go through that again no i just feel at this point i'm we brought in a bunch of new executives and the new team i have right now is great.

12:48Very, very happy with them. But my brother and I think are, I think similar to many natural owners, a little bit control freaks. We really want to be in control. I gave it a shot at letting someone else more or less run the company. And there was a path from president, the CEO for this individual that we laid out and it just didn't work. And I think, I think from my perspective, you know, at this point with where the business is now, I really want to shepherd it to its final destination and as you said I mean I don't have to sell I mean I could just cash flow the business for the next 10 15 20 years and never sell but I think from my perspective I think my brother I would love to be take an exit and we'll do other things because we have a lot of other interests so you also in parallel right run you you know private equity firm would that be the right name for it it's more than investment banking it's an investment banking firm that my brother and i are part owners of yeah we're minority owners of that business i'm on the board as an independent director now so it's really just a way to stay involved in that world but not actively i mean honestly i'm just at board meetings i try to help as the business is growing the firm is called drake start partners out of new york they've got a terrific ceo he's a good friend of mine running the business day to day so my involvement with that is very much just from a board level so the way i view that is we have drake star we have cloud mobile we have upverse we have true connect we have we fi we have these different businesses where we're either minority or majority owners of the business but we're not actively running any of the business other than true connect yeah we're spending kind of 100 of our time on that and if you sold true connect you would probably get more involved in in the other ones correct or i mean as i mentioned i just got involved in a fitness app that i really i personally use it and i love it it's called shred if anyone else likes to work out you can download it on you know obviously um you can download it both uh on ios as well as on um wow just totally blank right there for a second it's all right android yeah android thank you i was like i don't know why i'm blank on android because I deal with Android all day long.

15:02If you sold today, what would you do? Because you obviously had an exit from your healthcare software business. So you've been in this place. Now on a personal level, what would you do? Well, number one, I would control the exit. I think one of the advantages that you alluded to before is the fact that my brother and I do have an investment banking background. It's very unusual to have two executives, both in investment banking, both running a business of this size. So I know the game on how to sell a business. No banker is going to come to my office and trick me or convince me to do something I don't want to do because I understand exactly how it works.

15:42I think a lot of individuals who, I mean, obviously not private equity backed, but companies they've built without really bringing outside capital don't have that experience. And I've seen it firsthand as a banker, watching these people kind of struggle with like, what all this means? Like, what do multiples mean? How do I understand the leverage that they want to put on the business to buy it? And do I want them to do that? Whereas with me and my brother, I know how the game's played. I totally understand it. I know the type of exit I would like, which is probably just a strategic buyer. Obviously, all cash, I mentioned stock.

16:15So I think from that perspective, we have had some other smaller exits along the way, like smaller companies we bought and sold and things like that. But this exit would be a substantial one, just given the size of the business. so it would be very hard for me and my brother not to be very very actively involved in exactly how that exit occurred what i would do after that i mean i'm not totally sure i think i mean it'd probably be more of what i'm doing right now it's looking for kind of unique companies where we could buy into something um and own it because i really have no interest in being a minority shareholder in something um and i think the first thing i'd probably do is buy something that's not regulated okay because that's one of the big reasons i've exit this business is just so sick of working in a regulated market it's a barrier to enter for it is and it's a psychological abuse you have upon yourself i mean it's also being in health care or telecommunications or some of these industries that are so highly regulated or aerospace yeah we're dealing with these different things that are beyond your control in terms of how you're able to run the business without having to think about like oh what if this regulator decides they want to do something stupid and now suddenly I've got to run around try to like address that issue in the business this particular part of the telecommunications industry is very niche and very odd because the regulations are extensive and so from that perspective it gets really frustrating year after year and each state has their own rules as well as federal rules and we're very good about following all the rules, but I literally have an entire group dedicated just to following the rules of the industry.

17:54And I know if I were to do another business, I'm not doing that again. Yeah. So, for sure. I can understand that. I had a telecom business, actually, and at some point I caught myself thinking that I don't own it. I own it together with the government because the government was so involved in my business, almost like I had a partner, but that partner had the majority stake in my business because it could tell me what to do. Exactly. So maybe you had a similar feeling. And we are control freaks. and sharing control with the government is not necessarily... That's your worst partner. Exactly, the worst partner.

18:24Part to negotiate with. Yes, we always joke in our company. Like, it's a famous Ronald Reagan comment where he said, you know, I'm here from the government, I'm here to help. That's like the worst eight words you ever want to hear in your life. That was exactly eight words, I didn't add it up, but it's true. I mean, I hate to say it, but, you know, state regulators and federal regulators, they're there to regulate, but I think, you know, The problem is that you quite often deal with individuals who feel empowered because of regulators versus just doing their job. So it's really frustrating. So you're like, this shouldn't be this difficult.

18:58I'm trying to get a service. You're hiring me to get a service out to a certain population. That's what I'm doing. Just eliminate all the red tape so I can do what I'm supposed to do. So I think for sure I would not get in regulated business after this. So, Matthew, you and I had a conversation about angel investing. And I'd love you to share with my audience how you see angel investing versus the kind of private equity investing that you're doing. Interesting. Yeah, as we've commented a little bit before, I'm not a huge fan of angel investing. The interesting thing is, again, I did it in reverse.

19:32I did a lot of things in reverse. I was doing angel investing 20 years ago. So again, the classic angel investing in the West Coast of the United States is like$50 ,000,$100 ,000 in 10, 15, 20 different companies. And I don't enjoy it because it's just you have no control. It's all just a bet. I mean, quite often everyone, there's lots of good salespeople out there. You hear all kinds of great stories. I recently lost some money on another investment that my wife and I made. So I think we I learned my lessons a little bit, but not completely But I think from our perspective and mine and my brothers in particular the angel investing part Just doesn't excite me.

20:13It doesn't get me excited Having someone have a great idea. I think it's amazing and there's great angel investors many who are members of Tiger Some are in my group as well. I'm not one of them. I don't I don't think I made any money on my angel investments It was like over 15 So I was like yeah, I'm done with this yeah so i just i like i mean probably similar to you and other people who have built and grown a company really having and not just the control but having more ability to influence a business to me is way more exciting than oh let me put a little money here here here and here and let's hope this works so just not something i enjoy so we talked about how you do things differently from everybody else I talk to in the sense that you are an investor first and an entrepreneur second.

21:02So your motivation to start a company wasn't financial. It was more about exploring life. Would you say you've achieved what you were hoping for by starting a business and run or at least joining the business and running it successfully for 14 years? Yeah, I would say I had, but I had no idea I would take this path. So, I mean, I don't think my brother and I ever intended to be in this industry. This opportunity just found us. And then, I mean, candidly, originally as a financial person, our goal was to streamline costs and sell it. Buy it, streamline it, and as they used to call it, flip it. And that was really our whole goal.

21:46and I like to tell people at this point I'm 15 years into a five year plan which was to buy the company streamline, sell, move on to the next thing and I mean I think some of it has been out of just necessity and I think other part has been out of I think my desire the more my partner got more and more involved the more I really enjoyed building the company because I do think anyone who is an entrepreneur I like to think I'm more of an an entrepreneur person now that I'm a finance person. I feel like it flipped probably 12 years ago. Yeah. Where, like, I really enjoy building things. Like, I don't get as excited about being on the financial side of the business.

22:25I really like finding the right people, getting a team together, focusing on a strategic goal, executing that goal, and then getting the financial performance to follow that execution. To me, at this point in my career, that's way more interesting than just, like, oh, this business looks interesting. Let's find a way to structure a way to buy it. Yeah. So I think that's changed. Do you think that creative builders gene was always in you or developed over time? I mean, I think it was because I think that's the reason I left investment banking. I think I felt something pulling me. You were in the wrong place.

22:59Yeah, I was in the wrong place. And I really suck at working for other people. I mean, it's a fact. Asking the people I used to work for in New York. Like, I was terrible at working for other people. I just always felt like I couldn't fit in a box. and I'd have people I reported to being like, you're just supposed to do this. You don't need to go beyond that. I'm like, that's not the way I operate. So I think for me getting, I mean, for some people who have been wildly successful in that industry, hats off. Like it takes a real ability to deal with all the politics of that industry. Not only the hard work, but a lot of politics just wasn't something I could do well.

23:34And so I think that entrepreneurial bent in me finally just forced me to say, all right I'd rather like lose millions of dollars and leave this job and go do something making zero because the company I joined actually ended up effectively being bankrupt when I joined it so I got there and we didn't get paid for like I don't know 18 months or something like that so good experience not a good financial one but a good experience yeah we talked about it an expensive lesson an expensive lesson yes yeah it happens so on the personal side of things how does your wife feel about your uh change from the financial industry into into business were you married at the time um we were we've been married for 21 years i know the date i know the date's better than she does so this is always a joke we have but um no i think she i think she's always supported whatever she's seen me do that she knows motivates me um i think one of the things always people talk about like with good entrepreneurs this seems like a kind of classic comment everyone makes just like you have to have grit but it's true yeah like you have to have a certain kind of relentless drive to get things done and I think both my brother and I have that and I think my wife always knew I had that so even when I was investing banking I think she used to think like why are you doing this like this isn't you like she used to be kind of my biggest um proponent even when we were dating of like, why don't you go do something different?

25:03This clearly isn't your thing. And because I mean, even though I was doing it and I enjoyed it at times, I actually kind of deep down kind of hated it. And she was like, why are you doing this? You're working 100 hours a week. Go work for yourself. Yeah. And so I think when I made that move, she was very, very supportive. I mean, obviously she was nervous because when we did get married, I think, yeah, I mean, when we did get married, I mean, basically I was broke. So I was like, all right, now I have to make money. so yeah entrepreneurs have this crazy rate of divorces because you know often spouses don't don't understand um why somebody behaves that way yeah no i think actually i think she's a psychologist your wife so you're lucky you married yes she understands all my issues but i do think she has always been very supportive and i think she knows i mean she sees how hard I work and she jokes as well as some of her family members about kind of the relentlessness that I think every entrepreneur has it but I certainly have it as well just every day just kind of doing what you have to do to make things work and I think for her I mean obviously the lifestyle that we have now it's worked so like we're able to do I mean I think there's a comment that I always read about kind of, you know, what does entrepreneurship or running a business or exiting or whatever do for you?

26:25And I think it's true. It's not just about the money. It's not just about the control. It's not about the kind of feeling good about yourself. At the end of the day, I think it's the freedom. Yeah. I mean, because at the end of the day, the ability to say, I can do what I want to do. And if I want to live in Switzerland or I want to work in LA part-time, I can do that. And there's so many other people in this world that never are able to do that. Yeah. They're down to a desk or they've got some of the job or some of the commitments or other things are going on financially just to give them that freedom.

26:58Yeah. Though I have to say that at some point I felt that having too much freedom is actually very stressful after my first exit. And I then realized that freedom is such a beautiful thing, but it's only a resource like money, like energy, like everything else. We can have it, But then it doesn't translate into happiness necessarily right away. We still need to use that resource very wisely to get ourselves to a happy place. Right. So I wonder how you think about it. You have financial freedom. You can basically do whatever you want. I know you're running a business, but you could basically maybe tell your brother you don't want to do it anymore.

27:39Or try to hire someone else again. I'm thinking about that right now, Nathan. You got this. Okay, blame me, Nathan. if I seeded their own idea into your brother's head. But like if you, you basically have all this freedom. You can do whatever you want. You can live whatever you want. How do you feel about it in terms of how you can translate it into a more fulfilling life, a more purposeful life? We're getting philosophical now. And whether you're doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Challenge your thinking. a bit. I mean, it's an interesting question. I think you get over a certain age. I mean, I didn't have an exit young.

28:23So it wasn't like I had some exit like in my early 30s. I was like, oh, I've got all this freedom and all this money. And that might have been a disaster. So it took me and my brother a long time to get to this point where we do have the financial freedom to kind of do some things we want to do and live a lifestyle how we'd like to live. But I think from that perspective, I think it's really, you know, at the end of the day, for us, you know, ultimately my goal is to find a way to exit this business and then find a way to do other things that are fulfilling, whether it's like charitable work or, you know, my brother and I are fairly involved in a lot of different charities and donating money and things like that.

29:03But I think just spending more time doing things like that probably would be more fulfilling. But I'm not philosophically part of the issue for me is like even if i sold this business i don't know if it's going to be enough and it's just the way i'm built enough of what i don't know i don't know if it's going to be enough like i'll need to do something else like yeah even if it's a lot of money it won't be like enough money and maybe that's the wrong way to look at it but that's kind of the way i feel of like internally it's and maybe that's a bigger issue that i need a psychologist for but is it well you have one at home she doesn't know how to help me with that i expect you to be quite psychologically advanced well I mean she doesn't hate that answer probably she's like oh it's not enough okay keep going so okay but but would you say that if you don't feel satisfied if you don't feel you have enough that affects your level of happiness or you actually embrace that feeling you don't have enough because you feel this is the source of your drive yeah maybe maybe Maybe it's the driving source is not feeling like you're enough, so you have to keep doing more to be enough.

30:09I don't know. Maybe that's part of it. But I think for me, now that I've really discovered I like building things, I think it would be very hard for me to sell a company and go on a golf course. It's just not my thing. I enjoy golf. It's not fun for you. But after a week, I'd be bored out of my mind. So I think I need a challenge and the adrenaline of doing something. and I mean so much more is very I know a couple that are very happy they were tired in their early 50s and you know doing pretty much nothing and they're good and for me I just I look at that I'm like I could never do that I actually find that for most people it's just a temporary solution because you need to feel you're growing you need to feel you matter right you're contributing change something right that if you're getting recognition back from the society it's for something valuable i think we all need that on on some you know genetic level no it's true i mean i wish i had a better answer there because i mean it's actually i'm going to think about this question after this interview but um i i think at times i'm like all right like what would i do ever sold this business and like i don't know that i have a great answer all i know is like i don't think i could just say all right let me take like five years off and travel the world and do nothing I can do all that now I can travel as much as I want I can go where I want and still be involved in doing things with the business Yeah, and you like that I do like that, yes Talking about traveling So you now basically live between Lugano, Switzerland Correct And LA, which is very far You travel once a month back and forth How does that work as a lifestyle?

31:51I mean, it's not easy especially the first year was challenging as hell but I think over time I've you know I've grown to like and appreciate it the fact that I think I look at it more even though I'm tired and sometimes a little bit worn out by it I think I just have a grind mentality with a routine that I know what my routine is when I get to Los Angeles I know my routine when I'm in Switzerland and so I just stick to the routine get up early work out if I fly in the night before I'm up early the next day working out just doing my routine as if I never left and for me that's very helpful because it just gives me the mindset of all right I'm in LA I'm here to do this or I'm in Switzerland I'm here to do this and it's and it's a luxury to be able to say okay I can live in Switzerland and live in Los Angeles and have the ability to kind of go back and forth really whenever I want and so that's I think I think a luxury that while challenging I think I'm very lucky to have.

32:47So if you were to rate your level of fulfillment in life from zero to ten oh yeah I didn't know we're going to these questions no we're good very good next one we're getting marriage questions so yeah we're just warming up yeah so oh boy so so on a scale from zero to ten how fulfilled are you overall in life hmm I mean I would say pretty high I mean I think I would say probably I don't think anyone can say a 10 I mean so I'd say probably like an 8 yeah that's high yeah and I feel like I think when if the people specifically like around you are happy like I at the end of the day I've got my sister-in-law my my wife my kids um got a great lifestyle Lugano and everyone's very happy like I think at the end of the day you look at that and you basically get a sense of like all right like I helped make this happen yeah and so I think from that perspective that provides a lot of fulfillment of course yeah so you must be proud of your own achievement that you you could do that right you see the lifestyle you give people and and extends my wife and i support a large part of our families on both sides yeah so i think i think the ability to do that and kind of financial freedom and flexibility to be able to do that i think that provides i think a great sense of accomplishment like all right here's others who you're related to or maybe need help or need support and you don't always love giving it i'm not gonna lie at times they're like i'm done doing this but at the same time the ability to do it i think makes you feel like all right this is you know i think you can't you can't not help feel like all right this is great sense of accomplishment being able to do that of course of course and i can totally see how it also feeds into you know the sense of love love and belonging to them in the family and you you play such a crucial role in the family that makes a lot of sense um anything else that feeds that high level of fulfillment for you um i mean i would say obviously i mean i think the obvious things outside of the kind of contentment that's around you is obviously the i think having a really great marriage having three great kids we're all healthy smart doing well um and you see that you see kind of like the fortune that I have to have all those things.

35:32As you said, like quite often entrepreneurs' marriages don't work for different reasons. And I think I'm lucky in that regard that I've been married 21 years. She's been incredibly supportive throughout the entire process. My kids are great. And I think one of the things I didn't mention before is I think the fact that you get the opportunity, and at least I did as an entrepreneur, like spend a lot of time with my kids. That's brilliant given that you have to fly back and forth a lot. I mean this is obviously a little older now. When they were younger and I was like working at my company, I really made a point of spending a ton of time with my kids.

36:09So like I feel great that I was able to build something at the same time, not like always gone. If I had said investment banking, I mean that would have been traveling all the world, gone for weeks, months on end, on someone else's schedule. Yeah. And the ability to like have a company still spend a lot of time working on it, but then And also having the ability to say, all right, hey, I'm spending this weekend with my kids. And I'm going to coach Little League and do other things like that. And so I leaned into that pretty heavily when they were younger. And now you're saying that you feel happy that you avoided that very typical regret of people who stay, say, in investment banking.

36:50And never have that luxury. I hear that a lot from my, I have a lot of banker friends. So I hear a lot that I missed out on my kids growing up. I was working 100 hours a week. I'm on someone else's schedule. So my life is not my own. And I think in that regard, my kids have to back me up on this one. I spent a lot of time with them when they were growing up. So I was probably a little bit psycho because I very much wanted to be an active part of their life growing up. So it wasn't like, oh, I never saw dad. He was always traveling. He was always working. and so I think that's been great. I think I'd like to think I have a really good relationship with all of them.

37:29Would you like your kids to be entrepreneurs and not have a corporate job? Absolutely. Okay. Yeah, I would never. Do you tell them? No, I don't tell them anything. I really don't. I mean, my father didn't. My father was head of neurology at Johns Hopkins for 20 years, a very accomplished doctor, and he never once said go into medicine. So I think from that perspective, I would never tell them, you should be an entrepreneur, you should be a doctor, you should be a lawyer. Don't be a lawyer. You can hire those guys. I got lots of them. But I think from that perspective, I think I would never tell them what to do if they came to me and said, hey, Dad, I did this as an experience to work at this company and I want to quit and start my own company.

38:21be like great like let me help you with that but do you consciously realize that that you are a role model and you're probably affecting their thinking by doing what you do and that's how you deliver that idea to them well i think i mean some of the risk and i'm sure you experience this as well as i mean financially none of our children necessarily would have to work again if you really take a step back and be like all right my kids can do nothing if they wanted to i wouldn't be happy with that at all but um i think that's one of the challenges though trying to balance out of like how do i ingrain in them kind of a work ethic while also providing them with kind of a unique situation where like they have some financial stability at a very young age and so it's it's a difficult how do you go about it because there are two school schools of thought really give it all away like Warren Buffett or yeah either either either you bring the children in and you train them to manage wealth and you're very open about everything right or you're saying no you guys need to be hungry I'm not giving you anything so you make your own mistakes you you you're driven you need to build your your wealth yourself so in that spectrum where are you in your thinking um I think I mean I think I believe I'm probably in the middle because I think it's a little bit of both.

39:48I certainly think we're not the type of parents to like lavish things on our children. And yes, they've had unique opportunities to live in Switzerland, go to school in Switzerland and do things like that. But those are more experiential. They're not just about like, let's spend money on stupid things. So I think from that perspective, they've seen that. They know that we're not so frugal that there's like, why don't you spend any money? But at the same time, I think they've learned from that. And I think I learned that as well from my parents. My parents actually were very frugal. And I learned kind of like the value of money and kind of like, all right, well, it would be nice if I got older if I had more money that I could spend.

40:26So I think we have instilled in them that sense of the value of hard work and getting money. At the same time, we are starting that process of really introducing our two oldest because they're 16 and 17 to the concept of you will have money. and by most measures a substantial amount of money at a fairly young age, like how do you manage it? And so there's actually a lot of great firms out there. I've just moved to one of them on the wealth and management side that's helping. They actually put together courses specifically for children of business owners who have exited and things like that to really build a relationship with the money at a very early age so that you don't do dumb things with it, get an inheritance and go out and buy a Bugatti or something idiotic like that.