2313 - Unconventional Entrepreneurial Lessons from the Ski Slopes with The Founders Office's Dr Thomas Powell

0:04Well, hey, Thoughtful Leader. Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur. On this show, I interview purpose-driven founders, experts, and change makers who are making a real impact in the world. Want to be a guest? Simple. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click podcast. I'd love to promote your story to our audience of over 100 ,000 and across over 2 ,300 daily episodes and counting. Want to get booked on other great shows like this? Simple. Go to podverified.com and get your free guest authority score. Thousands of hosts are looking for high quality guests and Podverified connects you the right way. Now let's dive into today's episode.

0:58With us right now, it's Dr. Thomas Powell. Thomas, it's great to have you. You are the co-founder of the Founders Office. You're found on the web at founders-office.com. Thomas, it's great to have you. Thanks, Josh. Pleased to be here. Before we start getting into your work with the Founders Office and what you do, you always love finding what our leaders do in their off time or are kind of into. And I understand that you live in a pretty beautiful part of the country. You live in Tahoe. What do you do for fun in Tahoe? Yeah, Josh, you know, what everything I've done in my life has been backed around being able to ski a lot of days.

1:39And I actually coach, have been doing that much of my life and ski on average between 100, 120 days a year. All over the world. What? That's a lot of ski days, my friend. That is a lot of ski days with a lot of really interesting people from for those of your listeners that are a little bit older. But, you know, Franz Klammer, Franz Weber, a bunch of World Cup skiers and such. We do some pretty interesting ski trips around the world at different times of the year and have a lot of fun. Yeah, well, I should hope so. That sounds delightful. Do you have a favorite ski destination in your area? Well, in my area, you know, I like getting up to Lake Louise up in northern Canada.

2:25I obviously am a big Jackson Hole skier if I'm getting out into resort skiing. Our backcountry skiing in Lake Tahoe is absolutely beautiful. I will tell you that I love our trips to Italy each year. The Olympics this year are going to be there, which are going to be an awful lot of fun to be in Cortina and see what's going on out of the Milan and watch our U.S. team, but other skiers as well. Wow. Very, very, very cool. Well, Thomas, really excited to talk about your work with the founder's office. Do you mind just giving us an overview of what you do? You bet. So I come out of Silicon Valley.

3:01That was my career. Got my start in banking back in the 80s. And one of the things that we've repeatedly found with our founders is they have ideas, they want to bring them to market, and they think that raising capital is a precursor to being able to have success. But it actually becomes part of the lifelong journey of being a founder. And many founders that we find, they aren't one-off founders. They become serial entrepreneurs. So that capital side and then focusing on what the founders do and how they manage the investment side of that business becomes a whole spectrum. And that's what we do at the founder's office is we help them with that.

3:38Well, I'm sure then that part of your work is kind of keeping up to date with what capital and those who are managing funds are interested in, I would love your take. What is trending right now? What is really important that maybe wasn't as important in years past? What are investors looking for? One of the interesting things that we see is that it's the boring businesses. They're not what's trending, but it really is trendy. So we're seeing a fair amount of people that are 50, 60, 70 years old, and they don't have an exit. They've basically looked at these ideas and said, oh, my kids will take over this business or I've built this myself and all of a sudden it's worth$10,$15,$20 million and I don't know what to do with it.

4:27That is a trend out there, Josh, is where you have people, the younger group, that are coming up and saying, I want a business. I don't know how to get started with one. And so we're seeing within that small private equity side of the business, it doesn't just have to be the private equity side. through SBA and other capital models, you can get into a business that's existing and is boring. It could be an auto repair shop. It could be, you know, it could be changing tires. It could be about how do you have the proper florists and everything that people think doesn't exist anymore. That's actually where business and creation of wealth is actually happening in the United States.

5:03It sounds like it's all AI. It sounds like it's all, you know, this multi-billion dollar scenario that you had to raise a bunch of capital in Silicon Valley and back you. But that's not it. And it's worldwide, worldwide phenomenon. Yeah. So in terms of like, here we are in the latter half of 2025, are there any other trends? I mean, again, I agree with you. I love boring. I think there's so much opportunity in boring. It's great. Like what we do, we end up working with a lot of people that do boring stuff. And it's, you know, just I feel like it's more mathematically sound. I don't think that's the right term I'm looking for.

5:48But to me, there is, I don't know, it seems to be a little bit more of a logic to it as opposed to hype. You know, so coming out again out of Silicon Valley in the 80s, we rode the first, my first downturn in economics was in 92, part of the dot-com 1.0 version in 99. We seem to be in a frothy market again where everybody thinks that they have to have some AI tied to something scenario. What it still comes back to, Josh, is being able to find a problem and how do you solve it. And when you can solve a problem for people, and then if you can articulate it that fast, you've got a business. And those problems can be anything from, you know, again, really boring stuff to what is somebody's passion.

6:37It's like watching you with your show. It's clearly a passion. And it's been a pleasure getting to know you and seeing how that does, because you've set up a system and a structure and it becomes a model and it attracts clients and that solves a problem for people out there. And that's a wonderful way to do it. And that's what we do at the founder's office is we actually, most founders are talking about the solution as opposed to actually the problem they solve. So when you can articulate the problem you solve and you go back to basically the odyssey, the hero's journey, it's not about the hero.

7:11It's about what problem are they solving? So the trendy thing is for people to be founders and entrepreneurs in today's world, find a problem that excites you that needs to be solved. And it can be whatever problem it is and help people get that solved. And you will make plenty of money and have a great life doing it. I see that collectively you've helped raise three billion, more than three billion dollars. Do you mind maybe just sharing a little bit about your background and the group's background? Sure. A little more than 500 founders over our lifetime,$3.2 billion in AUM deployed in capital across many various countries.

7:56I'm dual citizen with US and Ireland, so I have an EU citizenship worked in Asia and other places as well. So the biggest background has been helping founders, again, articulate that problem and then setting up the right capital match. So when capital doesn't match the actual founders' ideas that they're going with, you have this disparity, and that's where a lot of these problems end up happening. It could be timing of how that capital is. It could be the time to market. It could be the time to when they're going to exit. It could be the expectation even on the returns. So you can have someone that builds 10 rental properties, and that's a business, and that's a great business.

8:37It could be somebody that builds 10 ,000 rental properties, and that's also a great business. The fundamentals at the end of the day still come down to what do you do, and how do you build the systems and structure to actually do that? And it is really interesting in that over time, one, if you live long enough, you tend to do enough things if you're willing to get off the porch. So, you know, I've got some gray hair and that's helped a lot. But we've been around great people over the lifetime and being willing to get off the porch. So we've done everything from when fintech wasn't a term, when private equity wasn't a term, when VCs wasn't actually a term.

9:16these all become terms and it becomes, you know, what is the next thing? Well, right now, I think reg tech is probably, you asked me what's hot. Reg tech is probably going to be one of those hot technology spaces because as all these things are out there and you have chat tell you how you can do something and it gives you errors within there, you better have the right reg tech in place to be able to say, no, that's actually not compliant with XYZ. So, you know, those are some of the things that we're looking at presently. Yeah. If there is, let's say, a founder that's listening to us right now, maybe they've been at the helm for five years.

9:54They want to start a new product. And, you know, they're probably looking to, you know, either get their own funding, you know, SBA or whatever, or maybe they want to bring in an investor. You know, are there any maybe just kind of overall kind of pieces of advice or themes that you would say, you know, the world may be saying this? Here's kind of what I think would be good advice for you, especially as they're putting together a pitch deck and kind of putting together that presentation. Like, how are they going to present this to either lenders or investors? So it has been universal what we have found.

10:35The model for raising capital really starts with articulating the problem. So we have a formula that is bad guy, good guy, happy ending with a credibility and then a call to action. And ideally, if you can get a me too. So if you just thought in the most simplest manner and you took some of the highest grossing movies, take the Avengers for an example. You take a Stark, you know, as an example. well, he's a mess up until there's a problem to solve. So people don't really care about the founder. They care about the problem that they're solving. So that's why we start with the bad guy. So if you're going into the bank, you wanna be able to tell the banker what problem you're solving.

11:18Why does that make a difference? And then why are you and your team the right team to solve it? And that can be whether it's a founder looking for private capital or a founder looking for the SBA or the bank loan, whatever it is. And every time they're even going to put their own capital in there, it's like, this is the problem we're solving. This is why it matters. And this is why we are the right people to solve it. And then the last part of that is, this is what it actually sounds like when we solve that. So in capital markets, the happy ending is always, what's the profitability? It's not the hero gets the heroin type scenario.

11:55It's this is how we make money. And then the credibility is who else sells, who else says it besides yourself, meaning Wall Street Journal says this is the time to be in there because it's got all this data. Great. That's a credibility part. And here's the call to action. We're closing the round in September. We'd like you to be a part of it. It's that model. It's pretty simple. It's pretty boring. But overall, it's raised several billion dollars for us over the years. Yeah. So your website is founders-office.com. Do you mind just sharing a little bit more about what it's like when you work with your clients tactically?

12:36You bet. So, well, first for your clients, we're going to let them be able to send us their pitch deck and we will give them a no, you know, it's just a straightforward. here's what we found where you fit into the bad guy, good guy, happy ending model. And it's a very quick scenario. So they can do that through our system. And it takes maybe five minutes total to upload it and get some feedback on it. More importantly, what we do is we help those founders identify what we've said is or come up with as a term. And as you said, I'm a doctor. So, you know, I'm a doctor that doesn't help anybody, but I do an awful lot of research.

13:15so of course doctors have to name stuff and we've we've come up with his name that's the founders isolation paradox and what that is is when founders start something up and they're surrounded with all these other people with all the ideas but they're actually still in it by themselves and they have to be able to say what it is that they're doing and who can they trust and so we're really at the founder's office what we are josh is one thing we're a founder's advocate we're a founder's advocate that'll actually sometimes tell the founder that they're messing up, or we're the one that's saying, no, the team that's around you is not right, or here's how you need to look at this, you know, this legal standpoint or the capital stack standpoint.

13:55And what we find is that founders move so fast, a lot of times they forget to take care of themselves. So we are truly the founder's advocate, venture capital, private equity model, which is, it's founder-based because we want to see these founders survive and go on to do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. It's not just this one time. Yeah. Your website is founders-office. And do you mind maybe, I just want to make sure the folks know, they're like, wait a minute, you're going to look at my pitch deck? Like, do you mind explaining, just again, just make sure someone knows exactly what those next steps might be after they're listening to this conversation?

14:31So two steps. That's a great offer. Thank you so much for doing that. Absolutely. So two steps on our link, you're going to see a landing tab that'll say upload your pitch deck and we'll give you feedback. So you'll be able to drop that in there and it'll come in. It's not shared. It's feedback back to you. Right. So it's nowhere along the lines of that we're going to publicly take your idea and share it back out there to say, hey, this is a great idea. It's giving you feedback on your pitch deck relative to our model, and you will get a dashboard model. Along with that, for your listeners, they will get invited to have a 10-minute conversation with me or my team that'll be actually willing to chat with them about what they're doing and what their next steps are and if they want some guidance in there.

15:20So what we've put in there, I think we said up my influence 100 gives them$100 off or 100 % off the price to actually be able to talk with one of our founders that is in our organization, look at the deck and give feedback. And then just so we understand on the back end, are you also looking for companies to invest in or do you know investors, I suspect? Yes. No, we're always looking for deals to be able to be a part of. We are a family office. This is part of how we end up vetting deals and saying it's what we're looking for. Very rarely is it a transaction where somebody sends us a deck. I'm actually, I find it amazingly interesting on LinkedIn.

16:03How many people say the deck gets them an investment? Josh, I haven't one time found a deck that's gotten an investment or even an introduction to an investor. Okay. That's not what it's about. What a deck does is it can ruin the investment conversation. It's because it's not consistent. It doesn't match with what they're saying. It says way too much. It says way too little. It's, you know, it again, doesn't follow a flow. So it's the thing that can make a mess of what should be a great conversation. Amazing. Okay. Well, word to the wise friend that's listening right now. Again, the website is founders-office.

16:49And again, you'll look for the button that allows you to upload the deck. Is that right, Thomas? That's right. Yep. It'll be right on the front page. Excellent. Excellent. All right. Dr. Thomas Powell. Yes. Josh, just to close out on that again, upmyinfluence100 is for your listeners to be able to talk to us for 10 minutes at no charge. So lots of people send us the decks and then our people reach out to them. This actually lets them to speak to one of our leaders about the deck and what they're working on, which is, I think it's like a$500 call. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. All right.

17:27Thomas Paul, again, thank you so much. Co-founder of Founders Office. Thank you so much for joining us, Thomas. Thank you, Josh.

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