Mike Wystrach | He Had $15 Left… 10 Years Later He Sold His Company For $1.5 Billion

0:00You're 46 now. 46 now. 35 year old Mike had how much money in his bank account? At$15. $15 bank account, negative million dollar judgment. I swear it was. And that was only 10 years ago. 10 years. It's crazy what could happen in 10 years. In 2020, business mogul Mike Wystrach sold his company for$1.5 billion. Can you confirm that? I can confirm that. And I like the sound of business mogul. I haven't been called that before, but I like the ringtone. Mike, you are a mogul. You are most definitely a mogul. You sell a company for a billion dollars. You get the mogul. Nice. I always tell people there's two types of people in the world of SysSuppols.

0:29people who think the world happens to them and people who think they happen to the world it's a mindset what's something that's expensive that's completely worth the money i would say this is the best investment i ever made and i tell every founder this is like it's getting if you can do that that's huge i don't think i've ever heard that before that's that's a really fascinating concept i love this this is great like this was an incredible conversation if everyone at this table were to die tomorrow but you could leave one more guiding principle with the younger generation with everyone who didn't right now what would that be uh stop giving a

0:59what's going on everyone welcome back to the school of hard knocks podcast i'm james and i'm here with jack and josh and we have an incredible guest for you all today we're out in new york city with business mogul mike wisetrack mike in 2020 sold his company for 1.5 billion dollars can you confirm that i can confirm that and i like the sound of business mogul i haven't been called that before but i like the ring you are a mogul you are you're most definitely you sold a company for a billion dollars. You get the mogul. Yeah, I'll take it. I'll take it. But what I love too though is that this was the, what, second or third fastest growing food company of all time?

1:32It's the third fastest growing business to 500 million of all time. That's incredible, man. Where I want to get started is I want to talk about 35-year-old Mike. 35-year-old, you're 46 now. 46 now. 35-year-old Mike had how much money in his bank account? So I had$15. I'd just had my home. I did a short sell, which is kind of a pseudo-foreclosure process on my home. So I'd had no home. My business had gone bankrupt. And in the process of that, I had a long-term lease on it. And I got sued by the landlord. So I lost the judgment for a million dollars on that. So$15 a bank account, negative million dollar judgment.

2:06That's where I was. And that was only 10 years ago. 10 years ago, yeah. It's crazy what can happen in 10 years. But I think what's also important to note about that is you started your first company, what, 24 years old after investment banking? Yeah, so I did two years of investment banking, 24, 25. I left and started doing my own businesses. in real estate. My parents are entrepreneurs, so I started doing a lot of things they were doing, real estate, side hustles, kind of trying to figure out, could I do a tech company? It's kind of dabbling in a lot of different things. Ultimately, ended up doing a restaurant, which I don't recommend.

2:41Well, that one didn't work. It works for a lot of people. It didn't work for me. But I like to say that was my most expensive MBA. I learned more. I think you do sometimes you learn a lot more through success, but you learn a lot in failure if you pay attention. And I learned a lot in that experience while it was painful and very expensive. I learned a lot. And what was the greatest lesson you learned through bankruptcy, through the 10 years of that first phase of your life as an entrepreneur, before you started freshly, before the billion dollar companies talked to us, like, let's collapse time right here for everybody watching right now.

3:14Those 10 years, what's the greatest lesson you learned? What did that failure teach you? Yeah, I think, well, I mean, the tactical, the first thing is never sign a personal guarantee. That is less than number one. For those of you out there, don't sign personal guarantees if you can avoid it. I think the number one thing I realized is that you have to get in the game. And I think you, I say this all the time. You got to stop wishing and you got to decide. And that means you get in the game. And it's the only way to learn. I think you can listen to podcasts like this, which are phenomenal, and they'll get you excited.

3:46And you can listen to advice. But like the only way you actually can learn is to do. And that's messy. It always is. I don't care who you are. It's messy. You know, you can look at someone like me who's been through that and say, OK, I want to get there. Like you're just going to it's going to be messy along the way. And you just got to you got to enjoy that process. And but you got to do it. And it never gets easier. So like there's if you want to if you want to do a startup, if you want to do your own business, you got to you got to do it. today's the day. You're listening to this podcast. Today is the day.

4:16Do something. Stop wishing you had your own business and just decide, I'm going to have my own business and start going. Mike, why did you initially make that jump when you were like 24 or 25? Obviously, your parents are a little bit entrepreneurial, but I feel like a lot of people, kind of like what you're alluding to, just make that jump. What gave you the courage to be able to do that? Why did you want to go into that entrepreneurship? Yeah, I think for me, is I had a great experience with great people doing investment banking, but I realized I hate working for people. And I decided early, I just didn't see a life where I wanted to work for people.

4:49And I wanted to be my own boss. And I had the hubris of a 24 year old to think that I was so smart. But I think people neglect to understand that you, you manufacture your life. You are control. I always tell people there's two types of people in the world. It's this simple. It's And it's that simple. It's a mindset. And and people say, oh, well, that's easy for you to say now. Well, I said it when I was 24. I said it when I was 35 and had 15 in the bank account. And it wasn't easy then. But life is about mindset. It's a life about what kind of life do you want? Now, there also is no right or wrong life.

5:24Right. What is right for you is maybe, you know, what's right for you is not right for me. So you have to decide what do you want for some people working, having security, being able to spend time with work life balance is the life they want. and there's nothing wrong with that. And so I think it's just choosing what life do you want. So, and I think the number one thing people don't do enough is actually spend a lot of time thinking about what do you want in 10 years? And it's like, the analogy I always give is like, you get in a car and you just start driving. Well, guess what? You're gonna show up somewhere, you have no idea.

5:55Like, life is not, should not be done accidentally. Like, you should spend the time to focus on what do you want? What does that actually mean? And not unpack it into, I think sometimes people, I want a Ferrari. It's like, well, okay, you're going to get the Ferrari and then it's going to be, it's not going to matter that much. What do you really want life to be about? Do you want family? Do you want, do you want, you were talking about like, do you want religion to be a part of your life? What do you want? And then manufacture that life. And I know it sounds, but you can manifest your life. If you try to get there accidentally, you're never going to get there.

6:27Mike Wystrach: How the hell does an investment banker end up in the restaurant industry? Well, a lot of poor decisions. No, my parents are restauranteurs. I think the thesis was we had my parents had built an amazing restaurant. And I think the idea was like, you know, which is a logical thesis. Let's let's transpose it. I think this is a great example of doing a business that I didn't actually like. And successful rent for restauranteurs love being in the restaurant. They love they love being in in that. They love more the social scene of that. That's what successful restaurant. I hated that. I hated being at the restaurant.

7:02I love the back end stuff. I loved all of the bookkeeping, the finance. I loved all of the aspects of it, but I didn't like the personal service aspect. So what did I do? I realized, well, wait a minute. I don't like this having front of house, but I love the back of house. I love the complexities of a busy night. I loved how do you move food through? How do you think about prep to processing? How do you think about inventory, cogs, labor margins? How do you increase utilization? That stuff was where my mind was. So what I ultimately did is said, well, you're really good at that. You love doing that.

7:35We should create a company where you get rid of the front of the house and you get you only have the back house, which was what Freshly was. So Freshly was a restaurant. We served fully prepared meals. We just didn't have a front of house. We shipped the meals directly to you. And I think so the point is, is you got to I you got to understand who you are and and then and then build on your strengths. And I think people always are focusing on like, well, you know, fix your weaknesses. You can you can certainly try to improve your weaknesses. And I have plenty of those that I work on all the time.

8:03But the easiest thing is do what's working. Lean into where you naturally have energy, passion. And and and I think that's where I just spent a lot of time with people is like, what do you like doing? What what gets you fired up? Like, you know, I'm 46. six, I sold my business. Money hit the bank, stayed for a year. I had a job the second, literally the second I left, I left Nestle where Freshly was. I was, I was in the next business. I love what I'm doing. I wake up every day, fired up, jacked up what I'm doing because I get to create a life. Now, do I work a lot? I work a ton, but it feels like fun for me.

8:38And I think this is always like work-life balance. Like, I don't know anyone who finds balance between, you know, family and, and these things, what I think is you can find balance in like, I love every part of my life. I love work. I love hanging with my family. I love hanging with my friends. I love golfing. And so I find passion and energy at everything I do in my life. And I think that's like the life I want to live. I don't want to balance between being hating my life and loving my life. And I think this is what a lot of people think about when they say, Oh, I want work life balance. Like, yeah, I hate work.

9:05So I don't want too much of that. And I want the fun stuff. It's like, I want the fun stuff everywhere I go. I always like to talk to people in their low points and in particular the mindset that got them out of there. You know, I asked you earlier what you think that separates middle class from wealthy people and you said it's mindset. So when you were 35 years old, when you were broke, what was that kind of winning mindset that you adopted? Because you had one of two options. You kind of, you could have given up, could have gone up, played it safe, done something more comfortable. But really when you're down to$50, what do you, you can't do anything with that.

9:30So this is, so this is, I think this is, this is the most powerful pack. Because I think it's easy and it's somewhat is easy when you've, you know, now to retroactively tell this, you could tell it with rose colored glasses. So I have these series of just massive failures. Right. And it's like, you know, it's it's for it's just like continuously getting punched. And so what that does to you is it just it erodes your confidence, erodes your ability. You start getting negative. And so I ended up I went I went I randomly got turned on to Tony Robbins wrote a finance book. I don't have the name of it.

10:01And I know this is back before Tony Robbins is who he is now. And he's a guru. But this is back kind of when he was doing infomercials. And and he was kind of viewed as more of like, you know, like a kind of a fake charlatan. And and that was kind of my mindset, at least. And I read this finance book and it was like super smart. And I'm a finance guy. So I'm like, wow, maybe Tony Robbins is like he's got something going. So I'm like at the lowest point of my life. Right. I've got no money. I've got bankruptcy. I just gone through a divorce retrospectively. It was like a bad breakup, but it was an early.

10:31And so I'm like, fuck, I cannot win at anything. And I'm miserable. And I do. And I and and so I read and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to do the the 30 day seminar. And this is a it's a recorded it's literally he says in there, flip the tape. Right. So it's 30 years old. It's Tony Robbins, 30 days. And I spent 30 days doing this. And it completely changed my mindset. It was all about mind. It was all about gratitude. It's all about getting yourself prepped. I remember. And I said, you know what? I've got nothing to lose. And I think that's you know, he talks about that. And he's like, when you're at your lowest, you got nothing to lose.

11:06Right. You're like, fuck it. Like, what am I going to go to? I'm already at negative a million. I go. Yeah. So so you're willing to take. And so for me, it's like I got into this and a lot of things converge at the same time. Sometimes, you know, life is funny. It like attracts. And I'm a big believer. Like I read the book, The Secret, which, again, is a little hocus pocus. But I believe law and attraction. I believe what you put out, you get. And so I just I just relentlessly said, I'm going to do this. And I remember I sat in front of a in front of a mirror in a dark room every day, every morning I get up.

11:38I was an early riser. And I would just say for 10 minutes, I would I would manifest what I was going to create. It's going to create the largest food business, going to be a millionaire, going to do all. And there was no you know, I wrote down all my goals and I still do this today. And I had my goals that I was I was going to have one hundred thousand dollars in my bank account. Right. And and so so, you know, there was no plan to get there. I'm like, so, so my big thing is you change that mindset. You know, for those of you out there, like it starts with, it starts with your mind. If you can't change your mind, like nothing else is going to get there.

12:10If you see yourself as a victim, as you see the world as being, the world is being unfair. If you think it's a zero sum game and everything, every success you get, I can't get. If you live in a world of envy, again, I like, you know, it's the reason that every religion says, you know, don't covet thy neighbor's wife, right? It's like envy is a horrible thing because it's a negative thing. And so I think when you look at these things, it's like you got to remove yourself from that. You got to put yourself in a position of gratitude. You got to be thankful for all the things you have. And we were talking about this earlier, but like I think people, you know, this podcast is certainly on business and business.

12:41The measuring scorecard is wealth or money. Right. But you're like, well, you know, that's not the measuring scorecard. I like, you know, hate to drop the secret, but like it's family. It's, you know, some degree of religion or perspective on life. It's your relationship with your friends. And all these things are a level of wealth. And I think your health, for sure. You know, there's a great story is that if you went to Warren Buffett, he said Warren Buffett today, and any one of us, right? He said, Warren, I gotta make you a deal, right? And we'll make a deal, we get to make a deal with Warren Buffett.

13:11Warren, you get all of Warren's money, but you have to become his age. He gives you all of his money and he gets to be your age. You think he's gonna take that trade? He is. 100%, he's taking that trade. Would you take that trade? Hell no. Hell no. So the number one thing we have, the number one thing, and there's, you know, I got this. It's five different wells, and I'm going blank in the name, but it's a great book. You guys could, I'll send it. We'll put in the links. But he talks about, he talks about we're all billionaires and we're time billionaires. So if you're 20 years old, you're time billionaires, meaning you have a billion, you have a billion minutes that you got to live.

13:42And so like, this is like, we were so wealthy in ways that we don't appreciate. And we spend so much time being like, oh, well, you know, if I was Warren Buffett, I would all of a sudden be happy. Well, Warren Buffett would trade everything he has for most of the people listening to this. So it's a good idea to kind of always like triangulate like what is truly wealth. If you're willing to give up all your money for age, then I would say age is more valuable than money. Right. I always like to say that, you know, if somebody came and offered you$10 billion, would you take it? And of course, everybody I asked that to, they're always like, yes.

14:13But I said, the catch is you don't get to wake up tomorrow. And then they always say, well, I don't want the$10 billion. And so theoretically what you're saying there is that the date you waking up today is worth more than$10 billion or any amount of money that you put there. It's so valuable. And I love what you said about the envy thing because I think especially a lot of people in our generation, they're coming up. They see the flashy car. They see the house on the hill. And maybe they're not where they want to be yet. And so they envy things or they're putting so much pressure on themselves when they don't realize that, like, everyone's on their own timeline.

14:47You know, you kind of have to be like a horse in the races and you have the blinders on and you don't need to see what the other person's necessarily. Don't worry about what they're doing next to you and just play your own game. What I want to ask you, Mike, is obviously sold freshly for over a billion dollars to Nestle. And you said is the third fastest growing company of all time to five to five hundred million dollars. What was the juggernaut of that growth? what do you think were like the key contributing factors that allowed you to grow freshly that quickly? Yeah, I gotta say, I gotta add the caveat, food company, third fastest growing food company.

15:22And this is a great thing about you realize as a founder, you get really good at you can filter to make yourself the fastest at anything. You just put enough filters in front of it. For sure. So I'm really good at that. But so I think at the end of the day, there's a few things that I think we did exceptionally well. So one is, there's an old Gary Player's quote, the harder I worked, the luckier I got. Life is a little bit of putting yourself in the right spot at the right time to capture whatever's going on. So we were at the perfect spot at the perfect time and the perfect idea. And, you know, it'd be absolute hubris to say, like, we didn't just strike, you know, we were there in California with our picks and someone found gold.

15:59So like, we were just at that point. What converged, what converged, the magical things that converge. So two years before Amazon made this thing called Prime. So what did Amazon do? Amazon said, we're going to deliver in two days. So what did that force? It forced UPS and FedEx to extend their ground network. So they extended their ground network. By extending their ground network, it meant that guys like us could now ship products that required refrigeration in two days to a broader reach of people. So we had nothing to do with that. Thank you, Amazon, for that. Additionally, what happened at the same time, you had this convergence of Facebook, now meta, but at the time this was pre-Instagram.

16:34Facebook was now all of a sudden turning the ad engine. right and and so what you see is like if you see this in every channel so it's like if you're a marketer out there whenever a new channel comes on go and it starts getting traction get all over it because because it's like before that it was google and if you really knew google and you knew how to do sem and seo you would win so facebook was new it was brand new we were there we were at the forefront of it um we we figured out facebook as well if not better than anyone else we were just absolute machines we stayed laser focused on one channel i i would say 90 percent of our growth was because of facebook we focused on that so we were the biggest brand that no one knew about because we weren't doing pr we weren't doing stuff so we were just we were laser focused on this channel and we figured out on facebook give us some sauce on facebook let's you gotta we gotta so the algos changed now so now it's all about content so you know this is why like we're all in a content universe you got to create a ton of content it's throwing spaghetti at a wall right it's literally like the black boxes are so refined now that all you can do is just throw up 200 pieces of content, test it, and then you start, you quickly see what's working, you ramp it.

17:39And then you can try to build lookalike content on that. But it's a little bit of like just craziness on, and you guys see this and even like on social influencers. But so it's content engine. So now it's the content. Back then, it was a little less of a dark box algo. So what you would do is you basically could warm up ads in like the Philippines. And so what we would do is we would warm up ads in the Philippines. The Philippines was super cheap to pay for ads. So you'd go and you'd pay like a penny a click for an ad and it would tell the algo that this was working. Right. And then then you would then open that up to the U.S.

18:13market once you got the algo kind of firing on it. So we did a bunch of these different hacks that you could kind of you could you could fire. You could do then we do a lot of layering, a lot of different stuff. So, you know, as any good marketer should know is you're kind of it's a funnel. right so you got brand awareness intent and then at the bottom is kind of that like where you really want to spend money they're they're you know they've so you you're doing a lot on that a lot of data and then we just looked at it as i looked at it i still look at marketing as day trading we had daily goals for the team we did benchmarks we treated like a sales organization if we hit this month we'd all go out to dinner had the team every every week you know every month tell me the restaurant you pick any restaurant and then i'd come back with the number so they get all fired up and then they'd realize oh every time the more expensive restaurant the number would go up but and then we look at it every day and i'm a big believer i tell people all the day is is like years get made by by quarters quarters by month months by by weeks we live by days and and so we're going to hit our days and we were really relentless on that and and then we were like you know we were always on and and you know our our team was you know seven days a week if you're a marketer to this day and you work for me you're you're somewhat almost always on because i'm always looking i'm always re you know and you know i had we we use looker and they ran my cto was like you have more refreshes on your screen because i would refresh my screen non-stop how many customers i would look every five seconds it was you know not a good compulsive habit but that's where you have to be in this if you want you just have to be obsessed warming up the audiences overseas or warming up the ads by going after the overseas audiences that are cheap i don't think i've ever heard that before that's that's a really unfortunately that one got solved by meta so you That one's no longer available.

19:52So what I wanted to ask you, though, and I know that you're an advocate of this and how big of an impact it's had on you. You did not do this alone, though. You weren't afraid to take on investors into the company. How important was that decision to let other people come in and get a slice of the pie? Well, I think the first thing I did, and I recommend this for so many people, and you guys are a great example, is the first thing I did is recruited a co-founder. And I can't stress, if it's your first time, get a co-founder. It is a very lonely journey, especially in the early days. and no one understands.

20:20Your wife won't, your girlfriend won't, your parents won't. The person in the room with you will understand the stress, the anxiety, all those things. And so my co-founder, Carter Comstock, joined the journey very early and we built this together. And we laugh today, but we cried together back in the days, right? So not covering payroll, not like all those things that it's kind of funny stories now. They weren't funny at the time. So first advice is get a co-founder. And then second one that I think we did, and I was like, you know, my, my vision was always like, I want to build this big. So we were always like, we want to get venture and, and we got amazing partners.

20:58And I think, you know, starting with we, and, you know, and, and people are always like, oh, well you, you had it easy. I was like, dude, we, we cold called, we sent out emails to a hundred people. We sent out a hundred, we got a hundred no's. I pitched, I mean, cold call. He never responded. I pitched Tim Ferriss. We pitched every, we, we found an email. We'd pitch you. Now, these people never responded, and I know why now, because our pitches were dog crap. But we pitch, we pitch, we pitch. We got no, no, no. Finally, literally, this is like our 103rd pitch. We find this company brand project, and we pitch them.

21:29And so we sent them food, and just serendipitous. Our bottle fixed exactly what they were doing. Andrew Bridge, Andrew Black, Jay Boddy, Jackie Loken was the team. And so they invested in us, and they basically became our team. And so we got to learn directly with them. We got to build with them. Andrew Black, who's the CEO of Brand Project. Literally, we went on the road together to pitch the Series A. You know, he was in there doing the deck. And and so so he was a first our Series A was led by Bob Davis at Highland Capital Partners. Bob, on our first call post-invested, he said, if anything happens bad, I want to be the first call.

22:07And he said, not because I'm telling you this, but because you want to call me because you trust that I'm going to give you good advice. And that was the formation of that bond from there. I still call Bob. I think, you know, Bob is a hard drive. And he's, you know, if you want a tough coach, Bob is that tough coach. He's not going to pull any punches. But I talked to Bob three, four times a week. Then we brought on Jason Finger, who's the founder of Seamless. Seamless, you know, was the New York, the first, the early food tech guy. And Jason was a different level of insight. Then we brought on Insight, Harley Miller, who now went off and did his own fund left lane.

22:41and Jeff Lieberman who's are there. So all of these people around and we had like all these different skills and all this different mindset. And it was just amazing. And you just you need great people around the table because that's what's going to that's what's going to drive. That's what's just going to drive the economic value. And, you know, at the end of it, I owned a little over 10 percent, a little right at 10 percent. So people would say, oh, my God, you gave up so much. I was like, I would have done it the exact same way. But you still put a hundred billion dollars. And I got the win.

23:07And, but more importantly is, is all these people made money. And it's like, I was like, look, if the worst thing you do in your life is make people a bunch of money, uh, trust me, life is going to go because those guys follow you to the next one. They follow you to do the same thing. And it was a great journey and they added a ton of value as well.

23:21Mike Wystrach: When I look at Freshly, I don't see a food company. I see a food company disguised as a logistics company because you're, you're delivering food all over the country. How does that work? Is it one kitchen? Is it multiple ghost kitchens around the country? could you kind of break down how the operation actually works? Because if we're being honest, scaling up the ad spend on Facebook is easy. You know, it's the click of a button. But scaling food across the country is not so easy. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, everything's complicated. So I'd say within this is everything. So we were, when we sold the business, we were doing 1.1 million meals a week, a week.

24:00And we were doing it across four different facilities, a little over a million square feet of manufacturing and distribution facilities. We were running, I think, 15 of our own first mile truck semis that were running 24 hour shifts. We didn't do last mile logistics, so we'd hand that box. But we had twenty five and twenty five hundred employees. So everything was just this this very synchronized machine. And but, you know, the way we got there is just we hired a bunch of people who signed up for crazy. and they wanted aggressive challenges. And it didn't matter what role you were in, whether you were finance, whether you were HR, whether you were in our operations, everything was just nuts all the time.

24:43But we just got better every week. And that was our mindset, is basis points. We always think about things as percentage points or the imaginary basis points actually matter. And what I mean by that is it's fractions of percentage points. But we get better every day. Every day we get a little better. You can make them, our old saying, and this is my saying, is you can make any mistake you want, you just got to make it once. And so that was the thing. There's so many new mistakes to make that we just couldn't afford to make the same mistake. So no one gets yelled at for making a mistake. You do get yelled at for the second mistake.

25:09For the category that Freshly was in, like delivering meals to people within two days, I feel like when I look at that category today, there's a lot of competitors in that space, whether it's like Cook Unity or HelloFresh and things like that. Back then, were there that many competitors in this space? And if there was, how did you guys differentiate yourselves? Yeah. So we were so back then there was like when we started, there was Blue Apron, HelloFresh and Plated. They were all send food to your house and you cook. Right. So so I was like, I don't want that product. And so I wanted to I built the product because I wanted it, which is I didn't want to do any of the work.

25:44Now, if you want to cook, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I didn't want that. So what I wanted, I just wanted to heat the food and have healthy meals. So we made the product for ourselves, which is like I wanted to eat healthy. I just didn't I didn't want to become a nutritionist and I certainly didn't want to become a chef. But I wanted the benefit of that. And so ours was very differentiated from the early days. Now, it turns out ours was way harder to do. So plated, blue apron, not to knock, theirs was still very difficult. But ours was 10x harder. Manufacturing, doing the meals, doing the whole thing is way harder at scale.

26:14So a little bit of this is like, you know, any good founder has got to have a ton of hubris. Like, oh, we'll figure it out. And we had a lot of that, right? And so we just, we did that approach. Now, then success creates copycats. So now that, you know, there was factor and, but when we sold, we were 10 X bigger than our nearest competitor. So there was, there was us and then there was everyone else. Now, ultimately when we went to Nestle, um, you know, things didn't go perfect and then that ultimately went away and then there, you know, big gap to fill. So it was great for a lot of those other businesses that were, were there.

26:45And, and, you know, we had really, I mean, we were doing, you know, over a half billion dollars in sales. So there was a lot of happy customers out there who needed a new solution. When I think about manufacturing and delivering food to people's houses, one of the things that comes to my mind is that in some way, I'm sure that this had to be regulated. And in particular, was there any like legislation that whether it be the FDA had passed in some of these different states that you were going in? Right. Because you had facilities all over the country, you know, that were kind of doing this. Was that ever like an issue that you had to come across as time went on?

27:15A ton. So the interesting thing is, is that this this had never. So the food codes are all very legacy based upon going to a grocery store. Right. So everything's built for that. And so there becomes all this crazy nuance. So like USDA versus FDA. So so we were kind of writing the law. And the benefit was is we got to write the law. And in our writing a law or kind of like because we wrote opinion pieces, because that's just kind of how these things work. You have to write, hey, this is who we think our regulatory agency is. And we chose the FDA because FDA is a little easier to work with on that.

27:46And that so far has been kind of the stance. but we kind of helped say that we believe the FDA is the right person to regulate this. Now, what that meant is because when you choose the FDA, you then are actually have to operate under the local jurisdiction health code. So we then had to operate under the local jurisdiction health code. So which was, you know, again, not rocket science. Everyone has their own thing. But yeah, you kind of had to manage that. I'd say in the early days, it was really hard because you want someone to tell you, like, go, it's plan A or B. And like, everyone's like, we've never seen this.

28:17So even like talking ahead, you know, pretty high up in the state of Arizona, FDA and USDA. And they're like, we don't know. Yeah. And so you're kind of like, well, and then we think the good thing we were like, well, if no one knows, then we should just say. And that's kind of that's been great, I think, for the industry. What month in 2020 did you sell the company? We sold in October of 2020. But I can imagine I can imagine, though, like throughout that year while you were going through negotiating the sale, that I'm sure that you were like that could have been the worst time for COVID to happen, but especially with how much that that had impacted the mailing and whatnot.

28:47So the great thing, and again, it goes to show, but I always tell people it really did take a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic for us to sell the business because the pandemic was amazing for us because we're shipping food directly to your house. Wow, that's true. And people weren't going outside. So guess what? If you could get meals shipped directly to your house. So overnight, we went up 30%. We were max capacity. When we sold, we couldn't squeeze another meal out. I mean, now it was also crazy because the the number one thing that was was absolutely just nuts is we're operating twenty five hundred employees and we're asking every regulatory agent, what do you want us to do?

29:23And none of them were doing it. So so we started getting and we were significantly ahead of the curve because I was following what was going on in China. And, you know, a lot of this ends up being like not very productive either. But at the time, it was like we started doing temperature screens. We started wearing masks. we were already are we led our whole thing was food safety so we were we were absolutely the best in food safety so we already had i mean we we had all the food the protective food safety protective you know ppe which now everyone knows but it's like protective all that equipment we had a ton of it and so we so when there was all these gaps we were already backstopped because we we believed so adamantly so we were in a great position that like we were just able to to really aggressively go.

30:06But like, I always tell this is the thing is like, it all worked. Like, had that pandemic not happened, had things not happen perfectly, like, you know, we definitely don't get the same eggs that we got. And I think, you know, everything came together perfectly for us. But it was it was pretty serendipitous. Is that why you decided to sell the business at the time because of the pandemic going on? Was that like the main motivation or what kind of led you guys. So, no, I mean, I think hindsight, we can look and say we did a perfect timing to sell. I mean, at the time we we were we were very bullish on the business.

30:40I think the challenge I had as a CEO is we'd sprinted so hard. And and and then the pandemic was just like with all the things, there's all the social unrest. And I think just as as being a CEO is just it was so taxing. And I was just kind of like, I can't go another. And I pretty much told and, you know, my board again, it's like, I think people are so negative on boards. My board was absolutely amazing. They actually wanted to keep going and they wanted, they were really trying to incentivize us to keep going. But I had a conversation with, with Bob Davis and he said, Mike, he said, look, we're, we want to keep going.

31:15We think this business is great. We will reinvest and do this. But if you don't want to, we're fully supportive and let's sell the business because we're investing in you. We're investing in what you want to do. Um, take 24 hours, think on it and whatever you do, you You don't need to call me. Whatever you do, we're supportive of it. So that to me was a phenomenal board. And I think there was a lot of trust in there, a lot of loyalty. But ultimately, I think at the end of the day, they had to listen to me at the front. And my tanks were on reserves. Was there a number two that you had in mind that you were like, when this company sells, I want to make this much off the sale?

31:48Was that a factor as well? I mean, not as much. I think at that point, we sold great. I mean, like I wanted to sell even. And so I didn't think this was going to be my last like my last rodeo. I was going to get back at it. So I didn't look at this as like whatever. And I always tell people, people are like, well, you know, what's the number? What's your so like, first of all, I'm going to be in this game forever. So my you know, I'd love to hit the hit the billion dollar mark, but it's fully ego. There's nothing I'll solely say it's like it's an ego. It's a number, you know, like like the number that matters the most.

32:21And I tell every founder of this is like, you know, it's plus minus, but it's it's getting 10 million. and everyone says well you know that's that's i was like look that should be your first watermark and if you get to 10 million that kind of sets you on and if you're young you can keep going you know after that i think the next big big big watermark is like you know two to three it kind of depends on your lifestyle but like at i runaway wealth is like 300 million so once you get to 300 million your lifestyle doesn't change like you're flying private you're doing the odds you're doing everything but i just think like for me i love the game and like the money's a byproduct and it certainly is fun.

32:55You know, we're, you know, we're very, I think, smart with our money. And I say we might meet my wife, you know, the stupid thing. I'm a pilot and I love flying private. I love planes. I love jets. It is a huge waste of money. I know it's you know, it sells well on Instagram, but it's an absolute waste of money. Homes is amazing. So like spending money on your home is like the absolute smartest thing you can do. If you look at utility that you're probably your first home, buying a gorgeous house. It should be everyone's mission. Full stop. Because you live there. So 24, you're there all the time.

33:29The asset goes up in value, right? So on average, your asset's going to go up in value. So real estate's a no-brainer. Cars, I debate. I'm not a big car guy. I bought this watch. It was 6 ,000. It's a Rolex. I always wanted a Rolex. I said, when I hit a million dollars, I'm going to get a Rolex. I got this. I love this watch. It means the most to me. I've set a goal. When you see me wearing gold, that's because I got a billion. So, so, but for me, they're trophies. Trophies are only important if like there's value to them. So, you know, I got trophies in, in, in my room that, you know, I got a, I wanted the member member at my golf club.

34:00It's probably a$10 trophy. It means a lot to me. Right. So this is kind of like, to me, these are like, those things are trophies. Real estate's a great investment. If you make money, invest in real estate.

34:10Mike Wystrach: You took the question out of my mouth. I was going to ask you, what's the, what's something that's expensive that you purchased after the sale that's completely worth the money? And it sounds like it's the house. The house. Our primary house is, and when we bought that, I mean, me and my wife, it's our dream house. Now we want to dream bigger. So we're going to do some work on that house. But we love where we're at. We love the city. And so I think, but your house is like, we have four kids. Our kids are there. I wake up and that is a good saying is like, you know, you're going to only sleep in one bed every night.

34:44No matter how rich you are, you wake up and you can only sleep in one bed. Like that's just like so your primary house is your number one utility value. It'll add so much. And you want to just wake up and be like, I love this house. And every day I wake up and I love the house. I'd say that was the smartest. If you want to ask the next question should be what's the dumbest investment. It's flying private. But but it is, you know, it's a little bit like at what at what rate do you think it's affordable to do that? So I so when we did it, when we I tell you my story, because like I was like I was running all the numbers and I was like, what?

35:14you know how how am i so we were like okay we're gonna go like we're gonna buy like a flex jet and it did a great job and we bought 75 hours and first of all we didn't use we didn't have 75 hours but then i was looking i was like god i'm too young to just be torching money like that and that you know that equation equated into like 700 000 a year and i was like man i was like i was like that is just a like i'm too young to like i should just i need to reinvest that so i would generally say for me at least and this is always personal is like i think first of all it depends on your cash flow. Like me, I was going back into like reinvesting everything.

35:47So I had a cash kind of negative. Like, and then the other thing is like total, I think over, you know, if you're flying a lot, I'd say you want to be, you know, liquid wealth over 100, I would say. But you can charter. We still charter occasionally. You know, I'd say our budget's like closer to like, you know, in the years, like 100 to like 150. Like, but, and then actually the best, I would say this is the best investment I ever made. maybe tied to the house. We have 17 niece and nephew. We set up 529s, 100 ,000 in each one of their 529s. So that was 1.7. And then we later had 18. So 1.8 all in.

36:26That's an absolute no brainer. I wanted my niece and nephews to graduate. My parents, I was so fortunate. My parents let, you know, got us to graduate college with no debt. So I think that's, that's a tremendous, tremendous thing that, you know, we were really happy to do. That's one of the things he always talks about, wanted to do right there. I said, that's the biggest flex right there. It's the biggest flex. And so now one of my nieces is working for me, handling my social stuff and doing all my stuff. So you're not just the rich uncle, you're the cool uncle. No, but she's making me cool. I'm very uncool.

36:56But you pay it back and there's nothing more exciting than helping your family out. I think if you can do that, that's obviously huge. You know, we very quickly, I told my wife we were going to massively redeploy back in. So we've redeployed back into, you know, I like investing in myself. So we immediately started Petfolk. I've invested a ton of money in that. We started Cutting Horse, which is a venture capital firm. I'm our largest investor there. So I just redeployed back in. And again, to me, it's like, I like doing stuff. And so it's just so much fun doing those things, getting stuff. So I look at it as an investment, but I also look at it just having a lot of fun.

37:34So in one world, you were an investment banker. In another world, you were a food match. you were a food manufacturer and now you're a veterinarian yes well no i will be very cautious i have no veterinary knowledge my sister's a 30-year practicing vet again what i do really good is i'm the widget guy i'm the behind the scenes guy so that's what i got to do here she's the front of the house person so that's really fun look and and so now i've started and i love like because now you know i'm 46 which is is i still think young but relatively much older than you guys. And so now I was like, you know, I wasn't in the social game.

38:08I just, I was seeing so much and I hate being on like Instagram and stuff like that. But I was like, I got to be part of the conversation. And really the thing that I, I got so excited is like, for me, like every single thing in my life is because I made the jump to do my own business and, and everything. I mean, I mean, everything that's happened great for me, my, my passion, my energy, my excitement, it's all because I did that. And so I was like, you know what my next journey is going to be is It's all about helping and sharing the idea of, of, cause I think the hard thing for people is like, like everything looks so distant.

38:39Right. And like, so like, yeah, I may look distant and hard, but like I was, I had$15. This is the no shit. I had$15. So my bank account, I went to a state school. So like, you know, I'm very, I'm below average on a lot of things. Like there's like, most people listening to this are starting from a higher level. It's just achievable. And I think like my big goal now, and I started the advantage, we're doing a podcast and we're doing. But my whole goal is I want to help start 10 ,000 businesses over the next 10 years. I want to inspire people and I want to be part of directly connected and we're going to try to track it.

39:07We'll see how we do it. But I want to help start 10 ,000 businesses because I think this is the massive unlock. And again, I'm a advocate. I'm a huge fan of America. I'm a huge fan of capitalism. And I think this is what we need to be promoting is that like upward mobility is real. You know, it's not like beat up the rich. It's looking at those and say like, again, you know, I have no aspirations to be a Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. I love the fact that those guys are doing what they're doing. I love the fact that they're as motivated as they are. My journey is going to look different than theirs.

39:40But but where where I'm saying is, like, if you get out, if you don't want to start a business, go join a business, go join startups in these different aspects. But it is the energy passion. Build the life you want. America is about upward mobility. I promise it still exists. I'm I'm just a great example of it. And I think, you know, so many people I know in the startup world are that. So, you know, I just wanted to share this journey. I love what you guys are doing because I think this is, this is the thing is, is like, you know, the journey is about doing the journeys about getting inspiring.

40:08I think what you guys are doing is, is just bringing a lot of people on. And I'll say like, there's, you know, for me is like, there's serendipitous moments. You can hear something 10 times. And on the 11th, it hits in a way that you're like, okay, this is the one, but it is repetition. You know, you got to hear this story on your podcast, my pod. Yeah. And so I just think it's, it's a really exciting time. you know my advice to people is like go do find energy find passion um don't just judge your life on on monetary success judge it on on building the life you want and and you're gonna just you're gonna you know you're gonna wake you should wake up and love the life you've created for yourself i gotta get some game right here so you said what was the exact thing that you you're setting up for your nieces and nephews because like i think about when i have kids i want to set up uh something very similar.

40:52So what is it? The 529 account is an account specifically set up by the government. So you can grow that with no taxes and then you can draw down on it with no taxes as long as it's going to educational purposes. So if you have a kid, if you have an Eastern F, set up a 529, put some dollars in it right away. You don't need to do$100 ,000. If you want to give$100 ,000, if you want to give$10 ,000, just setting it up for them is great. I think it also gets... But, you know, I just wanted all of my niece and nephew to see like colleges and college is a decision. I think now you know, I'd argue some people shouldn't be going to college as many people should.

41:30But I'd argue for most people that are taking debt, you should absolutely not go to college unless you're getting a STEM degree. Just doesn't make sense. And so but what I wanted is that optionality for my niece and nephews. I want to show now my my oldest niece, who is also working for us at Pet Folk and absolutely killing it. She'd already graduated. it. So I made a deal with her that like, I'm going to give you, uh, and I gifted her max we could gift is like 33 ,000 a year. So we gifted 33. So she got that, um, because she'd already figured out and paid for her stuff. And the same deal goes to anyone else.

41:58If they get scholarships, it's their money, but I wanted them to have the optionality. I think education is really important if you want it. Um, but I also think like, I, I would not, I, I am a huge, do not go into student loan debt. If you, if you're getting a STEM degree, I would, that's the one thing I'd say. But life is about, you can figure out, I think especially now, you can figure out so many journeys and opportunities that don't go to, and I went to a state school, don't come out$200 ,000 in debt because you got a state degree. It's not worth it. ROI is horrible. So what's the name of the company that you're currently building, the veterinary one?

42:35Petfolk. Petfolk. Petfolk. We are, and we are the fastest growing DeNovo clinic. And again, I'm going to filter this in the Southeast. but this is so that's great you can just keep on adding filters you can get yeah it's like on it's like you look at like espn they they drop like a stat to be like this is the first player in the last like 120 years to do on a tuesday to do that to go four for four with three rbis i think in that you can get like the great thing i'm at least no i've i've played the game now so now now just show the cards it doesn't it's great but so that one was was a ton of fun so here's the goods and bads.

43:09And we were talking about this. You sell your business. It's great. Obviously, outcome, strong proponent for people to get liquidity early because it matters a lot, changes direction your life. But now all of a sudden you got to reinvest. And so the next business I did, I was like, I want to build a business for 30 years. I don't want to sell it. And so I ended up my sister who really had the concept of the platform we're building. But I was a pet parent. So I just got a puppy in New York. And, you know, this is 2015. New York has anything, you know, anything you want New York has and it's usually got the best of the best and so I get a puppy I'm like this is insane how bad that vet vet is how confusing it is how like antiquated it is so my sister tells me her pitch I'd had some liquidity so I was like Audrey let's do it like I'm gonna back you let's do it so it so once I left uh freshly I joined as a full-time kind of co-CEOs so she could do what she's a superstar and she's an absolutely she's I think the world's greatest vet she's a superstar She loves veterinary medicine.

44:06She she wanted to become a vet when she was seven years old. This is her passion. She believes adamantly that like she wants to put the joy back into vet med. The last 20 years in vet med has been about private equity coming in and kind of making. Yeah, I don't want to paint too broad of strokes, but just making it not a joyous thing. And so she was really like, I want to make this great. And it's a service industry. Right. So as a pet parent, well, you want a happy vet. Right. So happy vets give the best service. She wants smiles on that. So for me, as I always came, you know, I've, I generally have gone into businesses that I'm the first consumer.

44:36And so that was when I was like, yeah, I want this, like I want 24. So we're now 42 clinics. That business is growing exceptionally fast. Um, and we, but we want to build that for, for, for a long time. So it's built by vets for vets. Uh, we, we want, you know, we want to be the best platform for vets because we believe if you can hire and get the best vets and you can deliver the best service. And, um, and we want to create a platform built that way. We plan on owning this business and both of us are aligned. We want to own this business for 30, 40 years. We don't ever want to sell it. It's one of the few veterinary platforms out there that you have two co-founders that are still managing.

45:10And one of them happens to be what I, again, I argue that one of the best vets out there. You mentioned, obviously, for this business, you're not really looking to sell it. You're wanting to have it for the long run. What's something that you're going to do in this business that you learned from running Freshly that you didn't know at the time when you were first running Freshly that you're able to now take into this, this company? Yeah. So I think, I mean, a few things and, and, and, and these are the great things is like the things that I said, like, God, I wish we did this earlier. I wish we, I wish I didn't, you know, little, little bad habits grow and compound, especially as you're scaling.

45:38So the first, the first one is, is customer obsession. And, and, and, and we, we just didn't have, and that was our fault because we were growing so quick and it's easy to make excuses and be like, Oh, the customer's wrong. We're right. And, and so, and, but the problem is, is as that scales, it doesn't, it scales, it scales not the way you want it to be. And I, what, what we were always is like explaining our misses, right? First being like, no, no miss is acceptable, none. And so, so with, with pet folk, we set an insanely high NPS. NPS is how net promoter score. It's how you generally, it's like industry of how you, you measure customer satisfaction.

46:12And we said, we're going to be an 80. There's, there's like apples, like a 73, like no one's at 80. It's like, it's a very hard number to have. And, and so we said, we're going to be at 80 where every single day we're going to be above 80 and we measure it. We measure it religiously. We're at an 87 right now. We are very fanatical on it, which means you have to be just obsessed with customer means one bad, one bad review one. And I'm talking like, you know, last, you know, we saw several thousand appointments and one bad review will take you below that 80. Right. So you just got to be absolutely laser obsessed.

46:42So that was one, two was defining who you are from the get go. And, and I think what we, what you can try to do early is you want to be like founders and, and, and, And like you want to be right for everyone. And so the mistake there is like is like you want to be right for the right person. And you want you want people to self-select out if it's not the right thing. So we defined what our culture was and we defined it early that this is, you know, we defined our first culture was around sweat, which is because we wanted to tell people this is hard work. And if you're looking for like an easy because it was hard and we wanted to encourage.

47:14And then now it's best and best first and foremost starts with best medicine. So our B is best medicine. We make every decision. Best medicine. we expect that uh e uh efficient uh we we like we believe in like we really are data focused we are highly focused on that um as stronger as a team so everything's about teamwork right uh and so so e sorry excellence not efficient excellence and and it's just like self-accountability everyone's got to be excellent as stronger as a team so even though we're a team it's kind of like we want to be a we want to be a pro sports team we wanted to win well everyone's got to do their job we all got to be excellent, but then we got to be excellent together.

47:53And then T was transparency. And so for us, what we do is we state who we are. That's who we are. Every day we expect excellence. We measure ourself. We try to get a little better every day. And if that's not you, that's okay. But this isn't going to be the right culture for you. If you really do want to get better every day, if you want to get challenged, no matter what your role is, but then the B is best medicine. So everyone in the organization, whether you're a marketer, whether you're finance, everyone knows that our mission is best medicine. So don't ever make a decision that's not going to come out for the best medical outcome.

48:21And so by defining who you are, it really says this is how we're going to show up. Now, do we show up perfectly? No. Every day we show up and we make mistakes, but we hold ourselves accountable to that. And I think that's those are the things I always tell young founders is like spend the time and define your culture. Again, there's there's I always like to use the radical examples. There's you know, there's Patagonia, right? Very successful brand done. Absolutely amazing. There's there's SpaceX or Tesla, right? Very different, different cultures, what it's going to take to succeed there is very different.

48:51No one's right or wrong, but the person who should join, who wants to join Patagonia should definitely not join Tesla. And the person who wants to join Tesla should definitely not join Patagonia. They're going to be a fish out of water. And so it's like choose. And that's what when founders do that, they say, this is who we are and then live by it. Cause I also think people will create these fancy, like words that feel good. You know, we're accepting. And it's like, well, what does accepting mean? Like, I don't like, what does that mean? Cause like, so we try to just be like, Here's who we are and to live by.

49:18Those are the two biggest things I would say. You were speaking our language on the way over here today. In particular, we were talking about the city and its importance where the entrepreneur decides to live. I argue that what I think is more important than a college degree is the actual city that you decide to live in after high school. In our case, moving from the D.C. area to Austin, I always preach is one of the best decisions that we ever made. So when you look at the landscape of business in today's world, obviously you live in New York City. You're from Arizona. where do you think are some of the best cities that if you're if you're a young entrepreneur in today's world that you would immediately get to well so i think it's it's different for the industry you want to be in so if you were more of looking at like you're an influencer you want to be around that crypto those things 100 miami you got to be down in miami that's where that's popping you like miami's growing in different aspects but that's kind of the core there maybe la is well there you can get a little offshoot there but i think miami's going to be the net grower there.

50:10I think people are going to continue to move their CPG consumer products services. I think you could kind of be Austin, LA, New York are all good hubs there. Austin definitely has a buzz going. There's a lot of stuff going there. If you tech, you got to be in San Francisco still. I mean, New York can be a, you could still be successful as a number two. It's like, you know, 70 % San Francisco, 29 % New York, the rest of the country is 1%. So like, Like, and I think the whole thing about life is that, you know, and this is this is so many things is like life is about the 10 people you put around you.

50:44Right. And so you so you and you can create these subcategories of different aspects of your life. Right. So you can talk about your friends and your family and your wife and and what those people look like, because that's going to be how you show up in that occasion. And you think about business and and if you have 10 of the best people in an industry, you are going to get better at that industry because you just you're going to be challenged. you're going to see. And so what I love about New York, and I think still New York is, is just the general catch all of highly motivated, highly talented people there, you know, from, from all over the world, people are coming here to make their mark.

51:14And so I was, when I first moved to New York, like I grew up in a small town, South of Tucson, Arizona, a tiny little town called Sonoyta. Um, and then Tucson for college. And I moved to New York and it was like, Oh my God, like these guys are reading books. Like no one fucking reads books for them. Like, so I was just getting constantly challenged, like the running marathon. So I was just constantly challenged to like do better. And I think like that for me was really inspiring. I think it's always good to get out of like, get out of your comfort zone too. So like, you know, if you're in LA, move to New York, if you're in Austin, you know, cause like shaking it up, but like, yeah, being in that area, being around people that are motivated, excited.

51:51Um, and, and I think, you know, that's what I think you guys do a phenomenal job, you know, copying you guys is like, you know, you've created a world where you get to interact with people that are doing different things. It's like you just like stealing free information. Right. And so so that's just kind of the game in life is like just get people around you and proximity is king. Right. So you still like, you know, you guys are are flying all around the world to meet people and it's awesome. But like if they're in your backyard, it's a lot easier. Right. So so you guys are in Austin. It's a lot easier for you to connect with founders in Austin and you do it on a regular basis.

52:24and then life just about reps right so i just believe like life's more basic than people give it credit but it's like get a lot of great people around you get a lot of reps around them um learn from them borrow and you're going to do great things absolutely mike we like to end these podcasts off with two questions for our guests i'll start and jack will finish this off here so mike if everyone at this table were to die tomorrow but you could leave one more guiding principle with the younger generation with everyone tuned in right now what would that be uh stop giving a fuck i really think you guys are the generation of caring too much uh no one gives a shit like stop so stop caring as much just kind of like release the pressure on yourself and you'll find that life's a lot more enjoyable and and you know it's just like and then and then do hard the last thing is do hard work and i know a lot of people are saying this but like hard work is the most fulfilling thing doing hard work doing things that like god I didn't even have a time to think about how unhappy I was because I was just, you know, it's like you find that rewarding.

53:22So I do hard work. Stop giving a fuck. Absolutely. And Mike, with the life and career that you've led so far, how do you want to be remembered? The only people I care if they remember that I want to be remembered is my wife, my kids. And I would say a small asterisk, my friends. Everything else is going to have fun. I hope my wife, my kids think I'm a great husband, a great father. I hope my friends think I showed up when they needed me to. And if I check those boxes, I'm going to die a happy man. I probably will die a happy man regardless because I generally just a happy person. But I think that's all that matters.

53:53Your legacy doesn't matter. I'll be under the ground. I want my wife and kids to just absolutely be like he worked his ass off to try to be a good dad and be a good husband. And if I do that, I was lucky my parents did that. And if I can do that as successfully as they did, I'll be pretty happy. And you're a Christian as well. Has that faith helped you out? Yeah, I think I mean, look, I think for everyone, I think religion just gives you perspective on on on life. I generally think like religious is a personal thing, but I think everyone should have some degree of religion because I think it gives you perspective.

54:24And I think to some degree it's humility and then discipline. And I think all all of those things are really important for people. You're not the most important thing. There is something more important than you. the world. You know, there is some craziness that we don't know what's going on, but it does feel like there is some kind of master plan out there. And then spend a little time to reflect. So again, I grew up a Catholic, you know, and so what I love about Catholic Catholicism is that like it's repetition. It also works in my mind, but it's, and I think like going, I take my kids to mass, I say prayers with my daughter every night, and I think it's reflection.

54:58And I think that's just a thing that's being missed on life now is like principle, reflection, discipline. And again, you can get it a lot of places, but religion does a great job. Shared bonds, you know, you go in there and, you know, Christianity, but all sorts of religions, you have those shared bonds. And yeah, so I think it's hugely important. It also gets you through the tough times, right? And I do, you know, one of my, and I'm going to probably bash that quote, but we'll leave it on this. But I think like, you know, it's like the story coming back and the guy talking to Jesus and he's looking at his path and he says, you know, Jesus, you know, at all the times, all the tough times in my life, you know, you, you know, you were, you, you were, we had two footprints and then, and then it became one and you left me.

55:37Why did you leave me at those toughest times? And he says, you know, I didn't leave you. I was carrying you. And I do think that's what religion does do. It's an, it's something you can fall back on during those tough times to get you through. And, and I think, you know, that's, that's just generally, I think it's, it's important period. I think it's makes for a better society as well. If you've got some, you know, people anchored in something. Yeah. Mike, this was an incredible conversation. We appreciate you coming on the podcast. I love this. I love what you guys are doing. You guys are rocking it too.

56:02And I look, I'm so inspired. I think, you know, I think this kind of like influencer kind of like ecosystem is so massive. It's, it's the future. The old way. And I was saying this to someone that was like, the old way was you'd create the product, then you'd have to market it. Now you create the marketing engine. Then you have so many products. So, you know, I love what you guys are doing. I love what others like you're doing. Congratulations. I'm learning a lot from you guys. Follow all you guys. You guys are doing an awesome job. Thank you, my friend. And for everybody tuned in right now. Be sure to like and subscribe for amazing content, amazing episodes coming every week with the incredible entrepreneurs on the Hard Knocks podcast.

56:35We're going to put the links down in the description to go follow along with all of Mike's social media. That way you can stay tuned with his journey and building his next billion dollar company. Lastly, we're going to put a link down in the description to join the number one entrepreneur community in the entire world, the School of Mentors, where every single week we host live calls with the eight, nine, and 10, and 11 figure entrepreneurs we interview on this podcast. Would you do a live call and mentor our audience at some point? I'd love to. I'd love to. We're going to get that book. If you guys want to get access to live calls every single week, waste no more time.

57:03Go down, click the link in the description to join our school community. We can't wait to see you on the inside. And with that being said, we'll see you in the next episode.