Advice on Building Better Businesses

0:00Like love, is that a good thing? Is it powerful? Does it matter? I mean, the shit that people do for love is everything, right? That's how I feel about brand. It's everything. But how to measure that? We think that there's an extreme underinvestment in creative, organic, and an overinvestment in media that is wasted on creative that could have been better. Money's expensive now. Don't own the building and see how great this concept really is. Use the location 11 minutes in, the bougie place. Treat it like your New York location and innovate on the idea. Smart. Oh my gosh. That's genius. Attention is the number one asset.

0:39I know we spoke a few months ago, so I figured I'd give you a quick recap just kind of where we're at. We started that hospitality group. We moved on to... Ace and Jamie, by the way. Yeah, Ace and Jamie. So we moved from New York to North Carolina in 2021. We bought three historic properties, converted them into boutique hotels, added some restaurants and an espresso bar and one and and there's a florida location right we were looking so we had we started the burger the burger concept that we were the franchise and start we actually step back on that now because the espresso bar has taken off so insanely uh i mean we're turning away 100 to 200 people a night on the weekend and we found the margins were really good so right now from an excitement standpoint from a profit standpoint the cocktail the coffee shop slash cocktail bar it's coffee by day cocktails by night um is we're doing about 350 000 a month last month we just did over 400 000 so yeah so we're gonna clear percent margins on that we're because there's no food involved it's all liquor um yeah so we're running just just just over 30 percent in that moment you're probably starting to realize like the maximizing of margin and liquor is an endless game like get really good really fast if you keep doing it yeah yeah so we were talking to the franchise company about doing the burger restaurant and realize that there's no one in the franchise space that's doing anything with the espresso uh coffee shop and cocktails by night and we've been getting a lot of emails and people asking are you franchising can we buy a franchise how do we do this in raleigh how do we have you two swallowed the concept of franchise or meaning like do you feel like you've exaggerated like like do you feel like you've fully thought through if you want to be a franchise or or do you think you're being intoxicated by the short-term value of it that's the blame that's That's one of the questions we wanted to ask you because we also own 90 % of the real estate of all the buildings.

2:53And we were in the middle of buying another building and opening a Concord espresso bar location on the other side of town. Should we stay private? Should we franchise? And do you know anything about the industry? And do you have connects? Yeah. So we wanted to pick your brain. On our minds, one side we're like, oh, speed before someone else tries to do the same thing we're doing. And then on the other side. By the way, I'm sure if you go to Google or ChatGPT, you'll see this. This is not the first time I've heard of coffee and cocktails. Yeah, I'm sure. Coffee and cocktails by night. There's like four places by me.

3:24I did it 10 years ago. It's all execution. Like Burger King and McDonald's and Wendy's, you have unlimited. Don't do it for that reason. Yeah. Look, I mean, the answer is both work. What I'd like you to do is spend like 100 hours of watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts from the perspective of franchisors who understand, like it's all fun and games until the first person, and they give you money and you're all pumped and then they're complaining to you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you like babysitting? No. Then you're going to hate being a franchisor. That's the whole point of franchising, right?

4:00But it's like a catch-22. Of course, but fast money is seductive but often leads to headaches. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's good insight on that. And then on the other side of the equation, right, because now franchising would become like a separate thing if we did franchise from the hospitality group. So us growing the hospitality group, and thanks for connecting us to Tony and David. We spoke to them. So much value. So much value from them. So much value. So we want to just pick your brain on maybe trying to duplicate what you're doing up north and the south, right, essentially. Yeah, I think you don't need to own every piece of real estate, obviously.

4:41Real estate's a great asset. But if you feel like you got something with the coffee and cocktail, my point of view is that keep your cash. Money's expensive now. So if you're borrowing, you're paying higher interest rates. And I'm kind of a fan of open another location in a great fucking location, like a great location. Pay the VIG. don't own the building and see how great this concept really is got it like if i was the third partner and we were having our meeting and i was like the elder statesman and you know like i was the older brother or whatever i'd be like let's the right way to test this is to go to the best fucking location that we can fucking afford pay the rent high big but we're paying the big because it's in the best fucking location in the state of north carolina yeah and let's see how good this concept really is so so you would recommend like also why i like that because yeah you context yeah yeah all of a sudden i'll give you an example why let's say we pay something like we get we do that uh instead of the down payment right on an asset of a building across town we now are using that cash to get like a real fucking killer spot yeah but what if that spot's doing a million a because you see the kind of location i'm talking about yeah yeah also we could see if it's doing 300 000 a month and everyone's like what the fuck gary well we have all these other competitors here yeah and but now we learned yeah yeah yeah and we didn't have to put all that cash down to buy the real estate to find out that lesson for this one exact lesson yeah so i'm going yeah Best location.

6:29I love it. I love it. That's what I would do if I was the partner right now. Because you've got something. Let's really understand if you've got something, got something. Got it. After hearing that from me, where would you go? Right now, we're looking for a spot. We're in Wilmington, downtown most of our business. And then there's Wrightsville Beach, which is the more bougier side of town. Landfall, that area. Yeah, Wrightsville Beach, I guess, would be like if we were looking at Long Island, like the Hamptons versus Jones Beach. Is it a seasonal? Except it's more populated and less seasonal. It's not seasonal.

7:07It's just that it's nonstop and it's grown. So we're looking for something there. And then we think two would be enough. And then we'd have to set our sights on Raleigh and Charlotte after that. Yeah, so let's talk about that area. You were thinking about buying a building there? yeah in uh wrightsville yeah wrightsville beach is that the good is that the hamptons one or the that's the good part of town it's the good part of town yeah are you able to get a better are you okay what about what's the best are there better locations than where you is if you were to rent there's not a lot available so it's kind of like you have to take what it is the the location where we we would be getting is on a main road it's very popular where it is so why would the building be for sale the it used to be a it used to be a brewery that went out of business multiple breweries that just didn't weren't a fit and now the building is up for sale for for that so why that math was not good yeah good spots to rent but here's a good spot to buy that we can afford as small entrepreneurs everything smells bad to me i know nothing i don't know yeah yeah you're But I know something.

8:16Do you know what I mean? Kind of thing. I don't want to talk you out of something that might be remarkable. I could be a hundred percent wrong. Yeah. But boy, does that make no sense to me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's seven minutes from the actual beach. It's 11 minutes from the biggest area that everyone in Wrightsville beach shops and dines. But talk to me about that area. Yeah. Does that 11 minutes literally have nothing, nothing? you know it's it's like available i mean for you to open yeah right now that's my concept yeah yeah go in that area skip the 11 11 minutes yeah go in there like directly of course you could buy 11 minutes out you can't buy in the heart of the heart because it's way more expensive and not available yeah you're right yeah if there was a spot there i would get off what i want for you which is to see if this is a 10 million dollar concept yeah yeah best location so that being said just because of the population here we have a ton of we we we just wilmington just doubled in the past two years so they went from 130 to 150 000 people to 300 plus is that because like all the northeast people are moving down northeast people moving a lot of new yorkers came down here for sure and um putting a location in wrightsville beach would still only put us 20 minutes away from our other location for coffee and cocktails that's like a century away yeah they don't really that side of town doesn't really come to the side and vice versa this concept because there's no food we are the before dinner spot and we're the after dinner spot and what about the breakfast spot what's that are you also a breakfast spot because of coffee yeah yeah the coffee so the call the call obviously the majority of money the chunk you know like 80 of the money is made at night obviously we only have an agriculture license so we actually we get uh pastry deliver and we don't really have breakfast there we have very limited it's people buy coffee right or no coffee croissants like some big good but if we're doing without like if on a good day we'll do a thousand dollars in coffee, but we're doing five,$6 ,000 in liquor.

10:34Makes sense. Yeah. So do you think that opening a location in Wrightsville beach 20 minutes away versus going to a bigger city for best location like Raleigh? I like, you know, you know, this your infrastructure right now, if you being able to drive back and forth 24 seven versus like two hours, like this is why I'm pushing you to something very specific yeah you're gonna be in a very competitive spot there's plenty of other fucking places in this 11 minute spot i'm sure as well yeah yeah there is right so like i assume your side of town there's less good like bar like less than what would be in the heart of the 11 or no actually there's a lot we're kind of because we're in the heart of downtown you can literally walk to everything downtown from where we are so people will literally make a reservation and we're reservation only, Gary.

11:31So people will make a reservation. Are your drinks really good? Did you nail it? They crush. They crush. Yeah, we have 20 different espresso martinis. It's a big menu. But we also have a signature cocktail list. So it's not just espresso. Yeah, we have like 40 different drinks on there. So it's a big variety. We do flights of espresso martinis and stuff. I just get really excited about staying very close, going to the heart of the competition. Yeah. Apex. I'll tell you why. if you go in crush against the most competitive best spot in your town and it's doing 700 ,000 a month. Well, that changes how you're going to look at Raleigh.

12:08Yeah. Yeah. This data is too valuable. It's almost like if you, even if you went out of, like if you, if we were on zoom, we opened and went out of business. I didn't fuck you. We now know that you it's true it's true yeah okay so the last the last little uh thing is in uh this concept we run natural gas lines and all of our tables are fire pits outside and that's part of the appeal people sit down at a fire pit table we make uh homemade marshmallows and our concept is really s'mores by the fire with espresso martini flights so cool yeah yeah and and that's that's what makes fun the after dinner right you become the dessert spot you become the dessert spot that's exactly what it is really cool the location that we found that we wanted to buy has a kitchen it has the outdoor space that we can turn into fire pits that's been our hardest thing is finding like a place that we can have indoor and outdoor area put natural gas lines down um and have the ideal outdoor space use the location 11 minutes in the bougie place as the preview to if you have to be in new york and innovate on the idea mark oh my gosh that's genius right like bring out the little thing in the middle of the table where people can do like, treat it like your New York location.

13:38It makes me like this spot more. Less capital expensive. Yeah. Going to answer so many fucking questions if you think you're onto something. Yeah. And it's so close to you that even if you guys are wrong, you'll will it to a decent outcome. I love it. And we do the tabletop fire pits inside. Well, then you just completely. Yeah. That just lines up. You're right. you're right so all right you're right we just have to be creative with it that's cool you're right because how would we expand it to major cities we're going to have the same problem how do we find the location yeah we're not going to find out gas lines yeah yep use location number two to answer all the questions i would have if we are on to something yeah yeah done that makes total sense freaking awesome all right cool i'm even more excited now one of the things that i told you was how I was building social curator.

14:33And one of the things that you had said at the time was something along the lines of, oh, we thought about building that too. And I told you, oh, I'm so glad you didn't build it because I don't want to be in the game of Gary Vaynerchuk. And then you said something that was a classic Gary Juke, which was abundance, abundance. I hope you have competitors because it makes you better. And I never forgot that piece of advice. And when I look back at that experience, the one question I didn't ask was, well, why didn't you build it? But that's not my question today. Because shame on me for not asking that question then.

15:08But presently, when I look at what you have built, and I didn't even know the word holding company existed until 2023. And in my mind, I had this idea of something that I wanted to build. And then I'm now realizing that that is the very thing that you have built. And so knowing what you know now, would you have built the holding company? And if so, if you can go back, what would you do differently? Great question. Yes, I would definitely build it. I'm very good at being wide open and changing my mind in micros, but holding to a strategy in macro. I knew that I wanted to build the best marketing communications company in the world that was global and that I was open to it being a series of companies or a company.

16:00And I was never going to be overly romantic about social media, right? We started this in 09. It's 24. We're 15 years in. I would have said in 15 years, if no one's doing social, then we're doing whatever that thing is. And I continue to do that. So I wasn't romantic about what services we did, how many companies were in the entity if it was one or a hundred and and more importantly not romantic about what we did but i was romantic about being always current right like as you know what's unique about my career is from 2006 to today there's not a lot of people who have 18 years of on the record publicly following the flows of innovation around attention and communication at the same level that i do and that's really humbling and good you know so what would you differently like now knowing what you know now i would have probably hired more people with more experience from the industry earlier i probably didn't need to i was so romantic.

17:16See how romance is a problem. I was so romantic of staying clean with my own intuitive ideas. I demonized people from the outside that did it the old way. And it probably wasted some time on simple things that I could have done by having people around. I def I mean, this is my biggest issue, period still to this day, I would have fired faster on people I knew weren't capable. it's a real disease of mine jazz i'm such a bleeding heart it's just not good for business and it's not good for them like because it leads to nepotism and resentment and it never ends up good anyway i fired them eventually anyway so that's a huge mistake of mine i remember the conversations that I had with Andrea when I was asking, how did you court her to come into Vayner?

18:13And I think that early on, like now looking at what Vayner is, it is a formidable force in the industry. But at the time, so when I look at myself and I know that I want to hire people with experience, but they have optionality. And so what was like a key factor? Could you go back and say, identify the pattern of - I think you and I have the same skill, which is like, I think you'll be able to convince people to do it. now you just can't be fixated on one boy

18:42but how did i do it by being okay with all the people that didn't see it

18:50in the same way i did it when i was a boy every girl that i thought was cute that didn't want to be with me in my mind i was like they're gonna be really sad one day and oh are they And so I think you need to take the same approach with this business. You're going to identify someone and you want Ricky Thompson and he's going to say no. And then literally you're like, cool, next. Oh, that feels good. That's it.

19:20Who should I be talking to? Who should I be aligning to? Not in regards to building a holding company that looks like VaynerX. Anybody with the idea of holding companies. Because what I want to do is I'm not the best at coming up with new ideas, but I'm really good at spotting patterns and then identifying for my strengths and building from there. So when you look at people who've successfully built holding companies inside or outside of your industry, who is the formidable leader? Who is somebody who's creating content? Who is the person that I can learn from in regards to learning? Well, just as a history lesson, from an M &A standpoint and the history of the game, you should definitely talk to James Orsini.

19:58I talked to James. He sent me up really well for this call. Thank you. I would say, that's an interesting question. Private equity firms is an industry you should look at. Talent agencies, CAA, UTA, WME. Those are, I would say, talent agencies and private equity conglomerates, apollo blackrock like dig into those two worlds private equity and talent representation they did they did a lot of mna they they did a they did a lot of um executive stuff they did a lot of building from a small base to a big base those are two good industries for you to focus on if you were building viner x again and you had nothing what would you be doing differently or the same that you did?

20:56You look back at yourself and you're like, damn, that was pretty incredible. Or even when I had nothing, I could have leveraged it in a different way. It's a good question. You know, that's a hard question in that what I would say is I would still want to build, if it was today, it's pretty easy for me to answer. I'd still want to build the same thing, which is in several years, I want this to be this huge conglomerate. What I would do is I would have different services, right? I would be focusing on AI right now. I'd be focused on things that are of the moment that people don't have figured out that I could build on top of So good When we were meeting in Vive and we had lunch You had said something that I am still trying to wrap my mind around and I was just like What you essentially said was are you going to pick up what i'm putting down?

21:46And you talked about acquiring a company like cracker tracks or snapple and taking it from like a 40 million dollar company that was once like a behemoth and then you turning into a$400 million company based on the principles of people who are actually getting what it is that you're trying to inculcate the current team with. So there's like, it felt like you were drawing a clear line in the sand of people who get it and then those who don't and the people who get it are gonna go on to this next iteration. And to me, I felt like, are you building the holding company specifically for that? Or would you just not start focusing on that acquisition?

22:15And does the team know that culturally? The team knows people like James and Andrea and other senior leaders, that my goal with VaynerX is to build a holding company that is the best marketing company in the world, then anoint an active CEO and stay on as chairman, and then go build a either private equity firm or a holding company of brands and build that company and then take the best players from VaynerX over to the owned and operated businesses from services to owned. And that's been very open in the organization? Yes. It's actually probably been very inspiring to the best players because they are like self-selecting, like I'm going to be the best and I'm going to go over to Snapple or Reebok when Gary buys it.

23:02That's one of the reasons. I do believe the 1 % of 1 % here, you know, are probably here because of that. Wow. Damn. so then how are we, how are you identifying your 1 %? I'm in the trenches every day. I'm in fricking, I live this life. That's why I'm in the trenches because I know that it's almost like my Navy seals, right? Like this is an army, but I'm going to need my Navy seals when I go and I'm not willing to guess.

23:43that is so and it's crazy because um when i hear that if i was working there i would self-select and be like it's boot camp like i'm going to boot camp and so i wonder if that is part of the culture because you know how you build like you build you attract more with honey and so i was like you come from this honey but then there's also like there's this really sharp edge to what it is that you're doing in the balance of the two as a leader has been really inspiring and so i I wasn't sure how transparent you were with your team being like, oh, we're a honeycomb, but make no mistake. Honey empire.

24:15You've heard it. You know, but within the empire, what you're saying is also as a leader is this this honeycomb is not going to be the honeycomb that I that is the next thing that I built. It's so empowering for me to see. And it's really invigorating because I want to be that transparent with my team. And so I don't want to have myself a false narrative. And I see you do it and it's positive and it's successful. And then you have somebody who's literally creeping on the call being like truth, facts, giving you an amen. That's exactly the culture. This has been so, so, so helpful. How are things?

24:49Good, good, man. Thank you so much for the time, obviously, and putting together James and Andrea for Vive. It's been nothing short of my expectations. I think it's, you know, like week two exceeded my expectations. Never mind. Here we are, like, re-forced the way through it. So thank you for doing that as well. That makes me so happy. We really have a lot of confidence in it. and it's not the easiest thing to deliver on given there's a real fee behind it. But man, we knew it. Yeah. So thank you for that. It's been awesome. Good. But yeah, anyways, little just quick context to catch you back up to speed.

25:33Franchisor of Get Up and Go Kayaking, we have 32 locations now, four different states. Most of them are in Florida, but Texas, Tennessee and North Carolina are the others. Really just focused on expansion, just took on a director of franchise operations to kind of help with some of the operational side of things, free up a little bit of my mental capacity to focus on growing the business. But one of the big questions I had is about turning a commodity like kayak tours into more of a community. Like, how do I turn my customers into super fans? What are things that you would do to make that happen?

26:14I think extending the story, meaning, you know, creating a digital infrastructure, whether it's on text, whether it's on a closed Facebook group, like, you know, a Discord. where can you put everyone digitally that they can interact with you and them is like a really big deal. Yeah. Yeah. We do, we do, um, the close Facebook and the text group and those have been great. I love just popping on the text group and talk to me a little bit more about that. So if you've done that, what's going on with that? And what hasn't allowed that to feel like a community to you? Yeah, I think it's mostly because I'm the one initiating the conversation and I want them to initiate the conversation.

27:10So how do I get them more engaged from that side of things? Similar to the way that you text your community, like I'll just show up randomly and say, hey, I hope you're having a good Tuesday, you know, and, and a lot of people reply being like, Oh my God, thanks so much. And it's amazing. But like, how do I get them to initiate that? You know, is, is I think the next level of community. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think you, and, and where, and do you have a discord or no, no discord? No, just the Facebook group and the texting group. And what's happening with the Facebook group, Facebook group. We typically like repurpose some of our content so that it's more facebook ish friendly you know not as um like we'll repurpose a lot of our blog content in shorter form just to deliver hey here's five restaurants we recommend in this area or here's some other things you can do while you're visiting this area and it's just been a lot of us kind of giving tips and and little like local knowledge things um in there but again it's it's a lot of us um being the ones that are initiating the the conversation yeah i mean i think um doing q a sessions doing this like google meet out like get more physical go to that text group and facebook group and put out a google url hangout and be like i'm here next wednesday the 14th from 7 to 10 answering questions i think that will take you to the next level.

28:44Cool. Yeah. It will work. And just build off of it. And then you record it and then you take a snippet from it and then you post it on social and you tell people how to sign up for the text to get into this. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Thanks. Next question I've got for you. So I've heard you say a few times, like reporting on brand is kind of like Santa Claus, right? Like it's, it's this thing that it's hard to put a I actually think it's more like love and God. I think it's like real. Okay. But impossible to measure. Yeah. Santa Claus is fake. Obviously love is probably the one I probably want to like love.

29:21I think you and I would sit here and say, cause with, even with God, you can get a little fluffy, but I think love. Yep. If you and I said, is that a good thing? Is it powerful? Does it matter? I mean, the shit that people do for love is everything, right? That's how I feel about brand. it's everything yeah but how to measure that who just who do you love uh my wife my mom start with that your wife what's what point what math are you like it's what yeah yeah that's brand brother yeah i can't i can't measure you know right now my brand right now i'm going to keep it humble but not like like not too humble right now there's a hundred conversations going on in the world about me where someone's saying something 87 probably positive which is going to be good so on the franchisor side of like selling my brand to people, you know, how do I, what do I focus on?

30:29Your efforts, who you like, that becomes about you, like the content, like how you do it. Like, like it, it just becomes like the demand they care about their perception on how much demand you can create. Right. Yeah. The franchisor, you know, is going to make a decision based on the demand you can create. So for example, I would focus a lot on your ability to be good at 20 miles social media marketing because if you're watching me and you're like, Hey, let me show you a screen. I'm going to do all this shit within a 20 mile radius of Manhattan for you. I'm like, Oh shit. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Yeah.

31:13That's the, that's it. Cause you're in a thing that people are passionate about. Like people actually like a lot of people would actually love to run this business. Right. Cause you're in a extreme passion point. Your issue is you've got to convince them that you can help them get customers. Yeah. Got it? Yeah. That's your biz. Yeah. And I guess I can just use the history of the business and the history of the other franchisees as that leverage, right? And I would always pitch them modern examples. Okay. Like if you spent an extra 30 minutes of like doing some screenshots of backend Facebook ads, like where do you sit on that skillset?

31:53Yeah, I feel like I'm above average with everything ad related. Yeah. So I would make an above average two minute video or 10 page deck per franchisor or like groups of franchisors. Like if you did an event just in Colorado, and there's 21 perspectives there on Zoom or in a room in that video or deck, you're showing seven miles from Boulder, this piece of content, why all the day trading attention shit, like to them you're a marketer yeah yeah this year we have uh you know thanks to day trading attention we have over probably 120 million organic views already so it's been has day trading has day trading attention helped yes yeah yeah yeah so i have a community manager also and and i i forced her to read it i was like gary's saying it's the you know it's his onboarding tool for his own employees like you've got to read it and uh so she's read it and she does a lot of our socials and we've just been crushing it say that like it really helped her yeah yeah it's awesome yeah it's great and i i enjoyed it too i'm not much of a reader so i listened to the audio version i love all the little tangents you take on there too which is fun yeah that's awesome yeah awesome um cool one other thing too um so manny is manny is actually helping us do a mascot and uh i really yeah we talked we talked uh at 4ds last year about you know how important mascots are you brought up the duolingo example and i kind of went down a rabbit hole of like and how'd you get to mind uh andrea and james uh hooked me up with manny so yeah it was perfect um but next step is like okay we've got the mascot like how do we introduce this to our community what are the ways that we actually leverage this mascot in a way that like i feel like we fall on more of the high-end luxury side of kayak tours we do you know uh clear kayaking and and the price point is higher than most kayak tours if not all kayak tours in our area like how do i introduce it in a way that's not like too childish and feels you know but still makes sense as a mascot you got to try different shit okay i would go to tiktok where you can get away with it yeah and try a bunch of different fucking shit okay consume all the duolingo stuff all the jake from state farm stuff geico just consume and then replicate and see what it does okay consume replicate with the interpretation of your world yeah yeah yeah yeah okay and do you think that's in the form of actually building a physical mascot like Duolingo has, or do you think you keep it digital?

34:38I think so. Okay. Or you go very AI. I mean, both could work. But I think with your product, I think just by nature, it's funny to see a big fucking character fall off. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Cool, cool. Last quick one for you. We had our call with Damon John a couple weeks ago, which was awesome. And he had brought up something that kind of stuck with me a little bit that something like it's 25 times more expensive to obtain new customers than it is to kind of like upsell current customers or just retain your current customers. Yeah. So like, how do I do a better job of this? This, get people into Google.

35:20This goes back to the first part. That's your community thing. Yeah. Just give a fuck. Yeah. Text all of them and ask them what their birthday is if you don't have it. Yeah. Like it's scaling unscalable behavior. Yeah. Cool. It's this. Yeah, literally. I mean, like this is beyond not ROI positive for me. Yeah. But like, I want the karma. I want the good, you know? Yeah. I started talking with Dr. Natasha. Yes. And she has been like working with me in more deep way to understand how I react in the past. And, you know, like be less judgmental with myself. Judgmental to yourself. I just got done doing a podcast literally 30 minutes ago where half of the conversation I had was about people being judgmental to others, which actually then leads to them being judgmental on themselves, even at a young age.

36:32And that being judgmental on yourself, and some people are not judgmental of others, but they are on themselves. And it is, I'm so happy to hear that. I would argue that all of my happiness comes from the fact that I'm not judgmental of myself. That I give myself a lot of grace. Yes. And I think most people do not. Yeah. And I don't know, Gary, when you're an entrepreneur, you are super hard with yourself, right? You're accountable because there's nowhere to hide. Correct. But for me, losing is a requirement. Okay. and most people try to avoid losing at all costs. Correct. I'm always ready to lose everything, let alone little things.