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Telling the stories of startup founders and creators and their unique journey. Each episode features actionable tips, practical advice and inspirational insight.
Greg Moran (00:01.003)
Yeah, so we're talking about vouch fault. Yeah, I mean, it's a super interesting concept, right? And this is like the essence of the venture studio, I think concept when we start to look at this. And I think we all are sort of in that boat, right? As founders of, you become a founder because these things, like everything becomes a business opportunity, and you start to look at this and say, okay, who can go build this for me? And when the answer is no one, then the answer is, we'll do it ourselves.
Peter Dean (00:28.153)
is you. Yeah, I love this idea. Like I, you know, I used to race mountain bikes when I lived in California. And then I got into road bikes and I got out of mountain bikes for years and I got a mountain bike again. And then I found myself like lost a little lost, like I don't know what the cool stuff is. And I'm supposed to wear I don't know, like, you know, all the things that go around this industry I used to be at the core of and now I'm like outside.
Elijah (00:29.832)
Man, that's
Eric (00:51.341)
No.
Peter Dean (00:56.677)
And this would be a great place to connect and be like, hey, I'd be connecting with Greg's son, who's the one who told me to get the current mountain bike. I'm like, Jackson, what should I get? I don't even know what I should be looking for. And this fits that to a T.
Elijah (01:15.556)
Yeah, just to let you know, everybody's wearing thongs now on mountain bikes. Next. It's in my vouch vault. Next time you show up to a big group ride, just make sure you're wearing one. You'll fit right in. It's...
Greg Moran (01:20.655)
That's so true! But... That would be actually great if you guys had like a prank version of the list. It's like, yeah, no, what are you doing? No, you actually have to do it.
Peter Dean (01:21.019)
Awesome! Thank you so much!
Definitely, definitely.
Eric (01:35.918)
It's proof of account. Yeah.
Peter Dean (01:37.321)
No, send this one to Peter, right?
Elijah (01:37.612)
Oh, oh, we have, oh, we have more dumb ideas for marketing than we have time. Let me, let me, let me tell you. But, but.
Greg Moran (01:42.838)
HAHA
Greg Moran (01:46.459)
If you're, if you're, this is what, yeah, it's, it's thongs and thongs and headbands. They're actually what you'd maybe want to tell me.
Peter Dean (01:51.521)
Yeah, you should definitely wear a headband. No help. Don't wear an helmet. Not for you.
Elijah (01:56.605)
Totally. That use case you described though, that to me is probably the crux of why I wanted this product was that everybody's got an obsession. I know everybody I know has an obsession. And if I'm going to get into that thing, I just want to get the information from the person who's already obsessed about it. Right? Before we went live, we were talking about podcasting equipment.
Peter Dean (02:16.32)
Yeah.
Elijah (02:20.552)
and you've got mixing boxes and microphones and headphones and different software and everything else. The first episode I did on this most recent podcast was, this is very meta, it was a podcaster who's been podcasting for 13 years and it was her just dumping all of her recommendations for podcasting. And to me, that's what I want to do when I'm trying to figure out one of these recommendations as opposed to...
Peter Dean (02:39.849)
Yeah.
Elijah (02:47.812)
buying 100 things from Amazon and returning 99 after I test them all, right? Or reading through hundreds of reviews that I don't even know if they're real or not, or if they're paid for. Or when we were doing our market research, I read some banana stuff. There was something like 80% of all Bluetooth electronic items on Amazon have fake reviews at this point, right? They've somehow managed to game the system. And it's just also.
Peter Dean (02:51.037)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (02:58.815)
Yeah.
Elijah (03:15.912)
You're not only pouring through all these reviews, but even if you'd assume that everything that you're reading is real, what almost always would end up happening to us is we'd be like, okay, I found the thing that has 5,000 reviews and it's got a four and three quarters star average. Can't go wrong. I'm like, wow. But with that law of big numbers, somebody had to have brought that average down. And I look and I'm like, wow, it's still a couple hundred one star reviews. And you start reading those, right?
And it just gets in your head and you're like, Oh, that microphone. Wow. These are some really heartfelt stories about people that got electrocuted. Some awful like personal story. And then I'm like, and I'm back where I started. I don't know what to do. So the whole premise was follow somebody whose taste you trust, who's obsessed with the thing. And just tell me what to get. Tell me what to get. Tell me the taco to eat.
Peter Dean (03:48.193)
Totally.
Peter Dean (03:56.757)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (04:01.803)
Right.
Peter Dean (04:01.897)
Yeah? Aw man.
Elijah (04:12.004)
Tell me the microphone to buy, tell me the new bike chain to get, whatever it might be. That's what we really wanted to get out in the market.
Greg Moran (04:19.971)
Because these are actual trusted relationships that you're building it from.
Peter Dean (04:22.045)
Yeah, you know, cut corners and cut costs.
Eric (04:23.38)
It's word of mouth. Yeah.
Elijah (04:23.592)
Exactly. And hey, even if it's not a trusted relationship, the cool thing is that you can peek into somebody's profile and see all the things they've recommended. And let's just take media for example, you might spot two podcasts that you also love. And so then you go to the next line over on media and start looking at the books like, oh, wow, this person's into all these marketing podcasts. And oh, I love that book too. And then you see three pieces of media that you've never heard of.
Right. So there's this whole really cool discovery aspect to it that I love.
Greg Moran (04:50.828)
Yep.
Greg Moran (04:55.344)
That's awesome.
Peter Dean (04:56.245)
That's cool. So let me ask you, change gears a little bit. I think this business is really cool and how you built it up. And I actually have a very similar story with a similar timeline to you guys, or Elijah definitely. But so I really relate. Though I didn't have a co-founder, so you guys have this co-founder relationship. What do you think the keys to your success have been and how that has? I know I've had a co-founder in the past, in the last business.
It was challenging and he's still a really good friend of mine. And we, you know, we went through ups and downs in the relationship, but, uh, you know, I'm really interested to see what you guys think the success factors are there.
Eric (05:37.45)
Yeah, I mean, I'll speak to that first. Yeah. I mean, we did have a mutual respect and a friendship before getting into business together. And I think that goes with any relationship, whether it's a business or a romantic one. Like, if there's not a mutual respect.
Elijah (05:37.684)
Yeah, I mean, I've got some ideas. I'm sure Eric does too.
Eric (05:53.95)
I don't think there's a chance in hell that it's gonna be successful. Cause then every little thing is gonna eat away at that, from trust to work ethic to even just ideation, right? So if you don't respect the person, it's just gonna whittle away. And I think we've always had a mutual respect for each other. We've both been single parents, dads at one point or another in our lives. So we've kind of been through some stuff that we could relate to. And yeah,
So we're just so happy that we like each other. We talk, we have a daily stand up every weekday at least. And we have a good time and we are trying to support our families. We love entrepreneurism. We love marketing. We love all this stuff. And so we just want to make sure we're kind of both aligned and enjoying the journey. It is not about the destination. It's about the journey along the way. And I think we both really aligned with that. So.
Greg Moran (06:50.495)
Yeah, you like?
Peter Dean (06:50.625)
That's cool.
Greg Moran (06:53.952)
Thank you.
Peter Dean (06:53.973)
I was just gonna ask Elijah what you think, so.
Elijah (06:55.481)
Yeah, I was gonna also add that I think just entrepreneurship in general, it's hard. It's hard. Like people say, oh, well, if you just do this and this and this and follow this protocol, no, it's still gonna suck. It's gonna be tough. But you get to choose which kind of hard you want. Being a solopreneur is very difficult as well. Trying to manage a relationship with a co-founder.
is just hard in a different way, right? So you got to pick your heart. But I think that when you have a business partner, when you have a co-founder, this kind of organic balance starts to surface if it's going to work. And sometimes that means that one person is going to be just, you know, both guns blazing, heads down, hitting it really hard and life happens to the other one, and then it switches and then you're both running at it really hard.
And it's personally, I sleep better at night knowing that I have that counterpart there because nobody knows what the future holds. Nobody knows what tomorrow's going to bring. And to add to that, I think the commonality of being in similar places in life is really helpful. For example, I've spoken to people who, for example, their co-founder came out of some
Greg Moran (08:03.616)
Right.
Elijah (08:20.592)
they still wanted to do stuff, but work was kind of optional. They were a bit on the post-economic side, right? Whereas the other co-founder was super, super hungry, and their equal equity partners. And there's just a difference in energy there with how much heart and soul one of them was willing to put in versus the other. So you have the economic piece. And then with the lifestyle piece, I'm just going to go out and say this because I honestly believe this.
Peter Dean (08:26.538)
Mm-hmm.
Elijah (08:47.844)
This has been my experience and it's how I feel, even though it may not resonate with some people. When it comes to entrepreneurship, I really believe that there is this definitive line between the people who are trying to do it with kids and the people who aren't doing it with kids. And the people who aren't doing it with kids, like they're just not gonna get it. And it's not like I blame them for not getting it. But until you've been there and you're trying to do both and you have the added stress of not just providing for yourself and being like,
Peter Dean (09:08.703)
Yeah.
Elijah (09:16.34)
Well, if this all goes to hell, I'll sleep in a cardboard box. Whatever. I'm tough and resilient. I'll make it through and start something else. I'm not putting my kids in a cardboard box. Like it's just there, there's this kind of, I have to make this work mentality. And if you're having that shared experience with somebody who doesn't have that level of motivation of a family to support, it's really tough to see eye to eye, it just, it just really is. And I made it a, just kind of a personal.
Peter Dean (09:41.857)
Mm-hmm.
Elijah (09:47.128)
a mission for myself that, okay, if I'm going to have a partnership, there just has to be some kind of a common ground as far as what the motivations are.
Eric (09:56.458)
And I really wanted to be a part of Spark 6, so I immediately went and had kids. So then I- All of them. I didn't want any.
Greg Moran (09:56.652)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (10:01.122)
haha
Elijah (10:03.532)
And he adopted seven kids. He just went all in.
Greg Moran (10:08.013)
I got the job. I mean, I don't even need the kids anymore, but you know, whatever. That's right. It is a really great point though. I think that commonality of where you are in life and it's, it is that, you know, whether it's kids or whether it's kind of where you are in your career.
Eric (10:08.021)
Yeah.
I mean, we were in a cardboard box, but not anymore.
Peter Dean (10:10.633)
That was one of those bonus, like, unknown, you know, positives that you didn't realize until you-
Elijah (10:15.473)
Totally.
Peter Dean (10:27.333)
Economics. Yeah.
Greg Moran (10:28.491)
Yeah, and you're just an economic position, right? It's like, what is that statement? It is hard when you're coming at it. And I've had situations like this as well, where you're coming at it and people are two totally different places in life, right? And it doesn't mean they're not gonna give it their best, but it's just that there's gonna be that kind of lack of, that lack of common framework, right? Because you're,
Elijah (10:43.449)
Totally.
Elijah (10:53.988)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (10:56.395)
Your example there, Eli, I think is a brilliant one, right? Where, you know, it is easy for a founder. And I think, and I hate to say this, but I do think some of this is with age too. Like when you're a 20 year old founder, 21 year old founder coming straight out of college, you can do those things. You can go sleep on your buddy's floor for six months if you need to, right? You can, you kind of get to a later stage and if you have a kid.
Elijah (11:17.968)
Hey, you can do it as a 50 year old founder if you really want to, if you don't have a family. I mean, I've got some friends who are not above that at all and they're getting up there, you know? They'll risk it all. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's just not an option at this point in life with decisions that I've made, with decisions Eric's made. You know, I think another one that everybody can relate to if they embrace this aspect of their life.
Peter Dean (11:22.013)
Yeah. True.
Greg Moran (11:23.083)
That's right, yeah!
Greg Moran (11:26.595)
Totally. Yeah.
Peter Dean (11:27.833)
Yeah, I mean, and it's fair. I mean, if you have that advantage, you take it, right? Like that's fair, like you should do it, but yeah.
Elijah (11:47.092)
And for Eric and I, it's just a big part of our ethos is I'm not going to sacrifice my health and my physical wellbeing for whatever business endeavor is out there. I'm just not going to do it because it just doesn't make philosophical sense to me. Right. If I remove this substrate that gives me all of my energy, creativity, ability to work long hours when I need to, if I remove that, like as an example, a couple of years ago, everybody got COVID, I got hit pretty hard.
And I'm laying there in bed thinking like, wow, I can't do anything. I can't do anything. This is what it's like to be sick, like on your ass sick, not being on calls, you can't even like focus on the screen, you got a fever. And it's like, if you get sick, sick long term, this is what your life is gonna be. And nothing really else matters. You can't do anything. So when that crazy day comes and it's call after call and deliverable after deliverable, and I...
Greg Moran (12:25.876)
Yeah.
Elijah (12:46.288)
slack Eric and say, yeah, man, you know, that meeting we're going to have, not going to have it. So I'm going to go work out. It's just like, yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. That totally makes sense. There's no like discussion around it like that, that I am going to take care of myself so that I can keep playing this game just isn't a topic that we have to discuss ad nauseum. And with some people, it really is like that could get in the way. So I think that's, you know, like Eric mentioned, those, those commonalities, they're pretty far reaching.
Greg Moran (13:16.331)
And Eric, you're a daily surfer, right? I mean, you guys each have these kind of, have these passions, right? And I think having that mutual understanding is huge. You know, Peter, I remember-
Eric (13:21.602)
Yeah.
Elijah (13:29.733)
Totally.
Peter Dean (13:31.233)
And when it's a good day for surf, I'm sure you're like, Hey.
Eric (13:35.362)
I generally do it first thing in the morning. I mean, luckily it's like, that's when the winds are down. It's just like the least amount of crowd. And so like, I'm usually there at daybreak, you know, first light was changes with the seasons and so forth. But I'm usually in the water around 6 a.m. And, you know, I'm able to be back at my desk and, you know, journaled and meditate or whatever. I get my self care, my whole routine from like 5, 5.30 until about nine o'clock is like when I'm doing me and then I'm prepared and I'm excited for my day because I've already done all that work that I'm proud of.
Greg Moran (13:35.371)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (14:04.535)
Yeah, I was just going to say, man, this is one of those stories I shouldn't say publicly. But I had the perfect example of this, but not the anti-example of this. When I was starting my last company early on, Peter and I trained for Iron Man together. We've both done several Iron Man.
Peter Dean (14:04.585)
Is this- this sounds familiar, Greg?
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
Greg Moran (14:30.819)
We were training for our first one. We were training together and we were both starting our companies around the same time. And I actually had a co-founder by, we were joking about this before we, we came on the air here, but I had a co-founder who just decided to, you know, we, we were training and we were training from about six in the morning to nine in the morning every day. And when, right. When.
Peter Dean (14:50.517)
We were at the office at nine, just like ready to roll with a lot of energy and focus, let me tell you. Because we were at the gym at like 545 till nine, like straight, you know.
Elijah (14:58.57)
Yeah. Lots of energy.
Eric (15:00.398)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (15:00.619)
Right. So decided to, as co-founder decided to go to our board, our investors at the time, and kind of use this as a play to say, hey, he's not focused. He's, you know, he's out there doing these other things. And it was training for an Ironman in the morning. I mean, it didn't work out. It didn't work out well at all for that co-founder. I can tell you. And the business did go on to
work out really, really well and he was not a part of it as a result. But again, the commonality of values, right? And I think that's what you guys are really saying. You've got to have shared values, right? And we're joking about co-founded relationships. I have had other co-founded relationships that, and I have one today in my investment fund, my venture fund that is very much based on that sort of health and fitness and things we need to do for ourselves first, right? So it really is.
I think it really is a really big thing. So, if you guys look at it, I mean, if you think about, I mean, certainly that commonality of values, things like that is a really important part, but is this, I guess I would ask this question in two parts. Is this an advantage for most founders to have a co-founder? And are there situations where it's a disadvantage, do you think? Or is it never, is it always?
Elijah (16:25.344)
Yeah, I'd have to say that it really depends on the personality type of that founder. It's funny because I know people who have put their feet in both worlds alternating where they had a co-founder, then they did the solopreneur thing, then they had another co-founder and just went back and forth. And I've had a lot of discussions with both. And I think it's like anything. The answer is yes, they're both good. They both have trade-offs.
And I think based on your personality type, and if you are looking for that high level camaraderie and you want it at a very intimate day to day level, starting with somebody is going to be the move for you. If that's not something you need, and some of this comes to just being self-motivated as well, right? When you're being held accountable by somebody else, an equity holder who is not
just an investor, but somebody who's active in the business. It also really changes the dynamic of, uh, of the, why you're getting out of bed and doing this thing, which you may not want to be doing for that day or week or month, or however long that tough thing lasts, right? So it's just, it's, it's one of those personal preference things that I think you can kind of drill down into the personality type of that person as well, and their, and their work ethic.
Greg Moran (17:34.816)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (17:44.949)
Yeah.
Eric (17:44.97)
I'd also add, and I just add on top of that, the complimentary skill sets too. If you're redundant with your co-founder, I think there's gonna be a heck of a lot more opportunity for conflict and disagreement and just not at being a great thing. But if you guys have complimentary aspects of the business and you're really leaning on each other, I think that's probably set up more for success.
Greg Moran (18:07.967)
Yeah, dude, it's a good point, Eric. And I would ask you that like something that's kind of popped up, but what do you do when you disagree? Like when you guys, when Eli is just wrong, right? And you know he's just wrong. And you know, what do you do? How do you guys disagree?
Elijah (18:27.096)
Well, first of all, I'm never wrong.
Eric (18:27.246)
Word? Yeah. I've never heard that before.
Greg Moran (18:30.918)
okay so theoretically should Eli actually like do something that you don't agree with?
Eric (18:37.502)
We're both very, I would say, empathetic and just kind of over communicators. And we can both generally feel each other out, even before maybe that thing's been brought up. So one of us or the other will say, hey, let's hash it out. And we just talk very honestly. It's very raw. It's very real. We do so with sensitivity. We're not going to never we've raised our voice. In nine, 10 years, there's never been one moment where we fought, not once.
Greg Moran (19:06.977)
Yep.
Elijah (19:07.256)
That's crazy. I never thought about that. I just screamed at my 10 year old boy this morning and I've never yelled at you. It's wild.
Eric (19:07.347)
Um, yeah, I hadn't told you, I just said that.
Yeah, we've actually, yeah, I hadn't thought of that until I was just saying, like, we've never had a shout at each other. We just don't do it. We just talk, we're all coming from someplace, right? And we both have, our goals are 100% aligned. We might have different ways of how we see that happening, but we want the exact same thing. So as long as we can see eye to eye on that, and then we can talk through, like, where we're having a disconnect, and then we just get through it, and then we kind of come out of it, like, even better.
Peter Dean (19:26.497)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Moran (19:39.051)
Yeah, yeah, that's great advice.
Elijah (19:41.36)
I think another interesting approach is when you do have those things that maybe in your gut or your experience are like, this isn't the move and the other person really wants to do that. And this also comes from parenting as well, is that sometimes it's just okay to let the person do that. As long as it's not going to get your kid killed or kill your company or whatever it might be, very often just the value in the experience of going through something from start to finish.
even if you don't agree with that plan or path, it's going to turn out one of two ways. Like you were right and that was like not a great idea or you didn't really see it the same way that the person who had the idea was and you're like, oh, you're pleasantly surprised. Either way, value comes out of it. Value comes out of it from you learn something or they learn something and sometimes you just have to let that happen instead of really trying to put your
stake in the ground and say, no, this is the only way we're going to do this. Just let somebody have that experience if nothing really, really bad is going to come out of it.
Greg Moran (20:40.405)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (20:46.453)
So another random question that came up. So as an entrepreneur, I'm a solo entrepreneur right now. I've been for 14 years. I always gravitated to people like Greg and friends that are entrepreneurs that know what you're going through, that have shared values. Obviously, we train together. That's pretty much all we talked about. That's how we came up with the idea to do a podcast, walking on an Ironman, our run walk, mostly walking, finishing an Ironman together.
Um, do you have like mentors? Do you have other people that you talk to individually or together like that in, in your kind of community of entrepreneurs?
Elijah (21:17.392)
crawling.
Elijah (21:28.124)
Well, it's funny is Eric and I met in a community of entrepreneurs. That's how we first met. And it's funny you bring this up because I don't know when this is going to air, but this is the top of the year, right? Everybody's talking about resolutions and reflections and lessons and everything else. One of the things that I thought about a ton at the close of 2023, reflecting back on things that had gone right, like
Greg Moran (21:39.757)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (21:43.029)
Yeah.
Elijah (21:55.012)
pivotal moments in my career where successes were won. I could always trace it back to people. It always came down to people. If it was the job, it was through somebody I knew, if it was the big deal, it was through some relationship. And even if it didn't look like that on the surface, the more I drilled down, it always came down to people. And so I'd been thinking about that for a long time because I hadn't really been part of a group like that since Eric and I met.
And I recently joined another one, like a group of founders and entrepreneurs. And I'm super early in on it. So I can't really say like, if it's been mind blowing or not, but just the Slack community has been amazing because you're talking to people who are going through the same things that you are having the same challenges and man, as I, you know, as a solopreneur, I think it's even more valuable because sometimes just the exercise of talking something through with somebody.
who has experience and there's real context there is so valuable, even if you don't get the answer just from a therapeutic standpoint of getting it out of your head and like hearing yourself say it to another human is huge, it's huge. So, oh, I just, I'm like embarrassed to even think how long I went without even trying to get that back in my life. Because when Eric and I were doing it before,
Peter Dean (22:59.37)
Great.
Elijah (23:20.924)
It was a very informal, started off as a small group that got bigger. And every month we would have a Sunday brunch somewhere in Los Angeles, sit around a big table and just go around and say, hey, here's what's going well. Here's what's not going so well. Could be personal, could be business. Is there anybody that could help me with X? Oh man, it was awesome. Wasn't that awesome, Eric? Wasn't that just such a cool experience?
Eric (23:47.252)
It really was. Yeah.
Greg Moran (23:50.464)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (23:50.822)
Eric, are you still doing that or?
Eric (23:53.214)
No, it dissolved because at the time, you know, you and I were the only guys that had kids. I remember that being very well. And then everyone else started having them. And yeah, the group ended up dissolving. Yeah, we're still in touch, you know?
Peter Dean (23:57.554)
Yeah.
Elijah (23:59.746)
That's totally true, huh? We were, yeah.
Peter Dean (24:04.029)
It kinda changes, yeah.
Elijah (24:07.164)
I brought like my like three year old daughter to a bunch of these branches back then. This is going back a long time ago. But yeah, I guess that is what happened. Like a bunch of people started having kids and they're like, I'm not doing this Sunday morning nonsense thing. Like no way. Totally.
Greg Moran (24:11.095)
Yeah.
Eric (24:20.206)
Those Sundays became a little bit too difficult, yeah, for people to get out of.
Peter Dean (24:25.382)
Sunday's family time usually, yeah. Yeah.
Greg Moran (24:28.263)
And one of the most, I mean, there's no doubt about it, right? When you just, you look at that kind of journey that founders go through and trying to do this, I see, we see it all the time, right? Where founders are just like, you know, I know, I know the answers. I know. And it's all this ego fueled pile of mess, right? That these guys end up in. And I think, you know, early on for me and
actually multiple businesses ago. I mean, the biggest turning points in my career were, you know, were YEO at the time, which stood for Young Entrepreneurs Organization, which dates me, if you know anything about YEO, it's now called Young Entrepreneurs Organization. You know, it's a global organization of founders and I became then a member of YPO for, you know, for a long time, but the whole concept of both of those, the sort of the linchpin of both of those organizations, and you guys talking about
Elijah (25:04.568)
Yeah. Yep.
Greg Moran (25:24.223)
mastermind groups and stuff. This concept of forum, right? Where it's, these are big or global organizations, but this concept of a forum where it's like six, eight, 10 people that come together on a monthly basis or whatever the timeframe is, right? And those organizations, it's monthly where you can sit down and you can actually open up with, you know, in a completely confidential and vulnerable setting to say, you know, here's the shit I'm dealing with, right? This is.
Elijah (25:25.838)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Moran (25:53.675)
This is killing me. Like I need help with this, right? And it's this enormously powerful cathartic thing when you get six, eight, 10 brilliant minds all kind of focusing on your problem, right? How do we kind of give you the space to solve this problem that you're having together? You know, it blows me away today. And it's, I feel sorry for those founders who are trying to do it, you know, trying to do it without that kind of support group because...
Just the fear, the anxiety, the chaos of entrepreneurship and of what this really means, regardless of what stage you're at, it's insane. It's the same at 50 million that it was for me at 5,000 right in AR, right? It was no different. It's just compound, right? And having that group, having that community, whether it's a...
Elijah (26:35.193)
It's insane.
Greg Moran (26:51.327)
a co-founder that you can really trust, but even getting outside of that and expanding that circle a little bit more is just so, so critical.
Elijah (26:59.909)
It's huge. I don't know why. I've gone to a bunch of like EO meetings as a guest and Vistage meetings and I don't know, maybe like in Los Angeles, I had a really good network. I've been in Salt Lake City for four years now and I moved just before the pandemic started. Great time to buy a house, horrible time to meet people.
Greg Moran (27:22.195)
Right.
Elijah (27:23.428)
And it just never really came back, like just all these meetups and all the other stuff that was, you know, Silicon slopes was just on this upper trajectory, just like we saw in Los Angeles with the whole Silicon Beach phenomenon. And it's a very active scene, but just trying to get to all that in person stuff and make those connections, it really just with that reflection of this last year and going back even further, got on my radar of, I've got to do this again. Like I've...
Greg Moran (27:36.129)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (27:51.841)
Yeah.
Elijah (27:53.456)
I've got to do this again. But yeah, I mean, that's really cool to hear about your experience, Greg, with EO as well and YPO. One of my companies, we had investors and board members that all knew each other from YPO. And my co-founder back then, and we were like super poor living in these horrible apartments in Santa Monica, would listen to their stories about...
rubbing elbows with Navy SEALs and standing on the beaches and going through their training. And I'm like, oh man, suck it. Like I only hear about your powwows and ski trips and bonding sessions. And then it's like later on, it's like, oh wow, that is just, I'd give anything to be a part of that now.
Peter Dean (28:32.478)
Yeah
Greg Moran (28:43.011)
Totally. But the important part, right? And quite honestly, I think some of those, and I'm not talking about necessarily those two in particular, but some of those organizations do turn into more of a country club. But having that kind of mastermind group, right? That group of founders who actually understand the challenges is, regardless of the format, right? Whether it's a formal setting like those, or it's like you guys were doing, right? It's getting together with a group of guys, you know, I shouldn't say guys, a group of people.
Elijah (28:55.022)
Right.
Elijah (29:06.189)
Yeah.
Elijah (29:11.237)
Totally.
Greg Moran (29:12.683)
you know, over a beer once a month or over a cup of coffee once a week, it's all or that, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So Eli, you wrote a medium piece, I think pretty recently about a month ago on surviving the entrepreneurial marathon, right? Use this analogy of air in a container that I thought was really interesting. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Elijah (29:17.792)
Right. Or some overpriced Hollywood pancakes, which is what we used to do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Elijah (29:41.234)
Probably not because I think AI wrote that. I didn't even read it.
Greg Moran (29:46.874)
That's right. I'm not actually in this interview. I'm just an avatar of the...
Elijah (29:52.544)
No, I have been consistently writing every single week, which is just brutal. Writing is brutal. And AI is a cool creative companion, but it is a horrible writer still, which just kind of blows me away with how much it's doing, yet it still can't write something that doesn't sound like AI. It's pretty funny. But yeah, just conceptually, what I was trying to get across with that was that it really will just...
Greg Moran (30:08.928)
Yeah.
Elijah (30:21.404)
keep expanding, like you're in a container and fill up whatever space you give it. And if you don't put boundaries around that, if you don't put brackets on it, it'll just keep going and going and going like this hungry monster that will eat everything that you throw at it. It's really true. So personally, I am borderline obsessed with these mental models and frameworks
Greg Moran (30:37.579)
Yeah.
Elijah (30:50.328)
tame the worst of our human nature when put in the face of something like entrepreneurship, when put in the face of something that can easily consume your life. I'm also definitely borderline, maybe not borderline all the way like OCD where I'll just get into something and not be able to stop thinking about it to the detriment of other important things in my life. We talked about exercise or being a good dad and all that other stuff instead of like, I've just got to solve this problem and I'm just going to keep going at it.
finding ways to actually structure the day, put stops on things, it's a never ending work in progress for me, for sure.
Greg Moran (31:33.431)
Yeah. Eric, you find any of those, you find any mental models for you that you think kind of fit that, fit that bill to try to keep the boundaries around this, around kind of the ever expanding
Eric (31:43.693)
I mean...
It's a little on the nose and I'm sure if it reads backwards for but I wear this it says balance and I just had it Made, you know a year or so ago. I had another Person say well, maybe rather than balance that means things are equal parts He's he's in harmony, which I really resonated with so like I just take an extra amount of time to make sure that my life is in harmony is in balance and Can we already talked about the health and wellness aspect? But I make sure that I'm you know, I'm calling my mom I'm seeing my friends like it
Greg Moran (32:01.207)
Yeah.
Eric (32:14.668)
It doesn't matter if you're dying alone and desperate or in bad health. So collecting the friends, and it always comes back to like you and Eli said, his biggest moments in life were from relationships that he built. So it's like, that's all we really have. And I enjoy.
building relationships and like I recently took up surfing. It's like five years ago, I became obsessed with it. I have about 15 like brand new best friends. I mean, I see them every morning. If I needed anything, I could call any one of them and they would be there for me. So it's just like, you're never too old to make those connections and friends and guess what, business comes from it too. So it's kind of the cherry on top.
Greg Moran (32:43.01)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (32:54.253)
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, love that.
Peter Dean (32:58.985)
That's really cool. That's so cool. So, um, in all of, in all of your adventures in founding companies, what were, what would you pass on to another entrepreneur? Like what would be some of your pieces of advice you'd give them? I mean, obviously you've done a lot.
Eric (33:15.118)
Besides, don't do it. Run. Go get a job. No. I said, besides, don't do it. Run.
Greg Moran (33:17.591)
What's that? Say it again. I like it.
Peter Dean (33:19.498)
Run away? Okay, it's the same advice I would give. Alright. Stay away from this drug. It's addicting.
Elijah (33:27.86)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, kind of back to that different strokes for different folks. It isn't for everybody. But I think the overarching theme for me has just been the long game of it. It's weird looking at it now compared to when I started and where social media has gone and how it's not just one place where you're getting some messaging or like reading the
Eric (33:28.973)
I don't know Eli, what do you think?
Elijah (33:57.588)
It's everywhere. It's every media platform on your computer, on your phone, everywhere. This just hustle porn, right? The hustle culture, the grind, work until you're dead. Or, hey, look at my seven Lamborghinis and girls in bikinis and mansions and just the flashing stuff. And this is the dream. And it's, I think, as resilient as you are or able to see what's real and what's not real.
Peter Dean (34:08.914)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (34:23.999)
and cheers for your life.
Elijah (34:28.088)
that stuff still gets in your head. And if you're part of this scene and you're still trying to learn, that's just gonna be part of the culture, right? So kind of setting up the boundaries and finding out what your own rules are and really understanding that, yes, it's going to be hard work, but it's gonna be on your terms. And then you get to decide how you wanna approach that hard work.
and what guardrails you put in place for your own life so that you don't burn out. Like burnout is kind of like, hey, my character died in the video game type levels of things. And I've seen it happen to so many friends where it's not like, oh boy, I put in 80 hours this week and man, I'm going to have to just take the weekend off and recover. It's like, no, I'm going to just.
Greg Moran (35:06.157)
Right.
Elijah (35:19.696)
walk away from everything and put on a backpack and go to Europe for a couple months. That's a real story from a friend I have that just reached that implosion point. It's something that you don't always feel it coming. Sometimes it just blindsides people and they realize that they've been on this unsustainable trajectory and now it's too late. I'm always thinking about that. I'm always trying to take whatever I learn and works for me and that's the way I am.
Peter Dean (35:24.893)
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Elijah (35:49.436)
lead with that caveat, hey, works for me. I'm just going to share what works for me and just tell people about that. If I learn something new or from, even if I don't know if it's really going to work for me yet, but I'm like, oh, this seems good. This would work in theory, I think. I'm going to try this and then I'll just share that. And then my hope is that some other fool will jump along with me on that journey and I can see if it works for them as well. So always playing with stuff like that.
Peter Dean (36:02.881)
It is now.
Peter Dean (36:17.057)
Greg and I have never done that. We've never done that.
Peter Dean (36:23.241)
That's like a constant motion of that.
Elijah (36:24.299)
I can tell you about a super nerdy one that I'm experimenting with right now, where I had a breakfast with a friend in LA who's been in this game as long as I have, lots of different companies, has hit burnout before, and has always struggled with just the wellness part of it. So when we get together, she's always like, hey, should I be eating this? And should I be doing this? And yeah, that's where the conversation goes.
She said, hey, I'm trying this new thing where I have all the stuff to do with my business all the time. And then I find that when I just take the little bit of time for myself to do a workout or go to a yoga class or something, the whole time I'm thinking like, oh, I should be, you know, getting back to these people or replying to this email or recording this podcast, whatever it is. She said, so I decided that, you know, I have these different characters for myself. You know, this is my athlete time.
and nothing's going to interrupt my athlete time. And I decide how many hours a week that's going to be, and then that's my athlete time. I was just like, oh, I kind of love this because as the software nerd, I'm like, these are personas. These are user personas. I've got my athlete persona. I've got my dad persona. I've got my entrepreneur persona. And so I started to wonder, well, what does my time allocation look like?
Greg Moran (37:24.995)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Peter Dean (37:29.389)
Yeah, yeah.
Elijah (37:42.008)
or what do I want it to look like? So I just spun up this Google sheet with all the different personas I could think of, trying to keep it relatively high level, and then put in percentages, and then plotted that against my waking hours, and saw what those percentages look like against the actuals. And it was funny because something like wellness, where I'm like, oh, I'm all about wellness, and you gotta do this every day. And I'm like, well, what percentage of my waking time do I really focus on wellness? It's like nothing. It was like...
Greg Moran (38:09.504)
Right.
Elijah (38:09.784)
Like 3%, 4%, you know, it's nothing. And I'm like, wow, could I put a little more into that? So I took it, I took that to the next level and I was using a, uh, a Chrome extension called paver that plugs into your Google calendar and lets you color code these different, different calendar events and by doing so, we'll then give you these rollup analytics of what those events look like proportionally. So now at the end of every day, I'm trying to take 10 or 15 minutes to close out that day.
Peter Dean (38:10.101)
You think it's huge. Yeah, you think it's massive, but it's really not.
Elijah (38:38.848)
and look at my calendar plan versus the actual, shored up to the actuals, and then at the end of the month, look at the analytics and say, how close did I land to what I wanted to do in terms of how I'm spending my time? Am I being a good dad? Am I being an entrepreneur?
Eric (38:51.282)
And who says he's got OCD? Nobody says he's got OCD.
Peter Dean (38:51.553)
Greg right now is actually taking notes. Greg is taking notes and he's literally going to start doing this. And I know in like a week he'll be like, dude I got this, you gotta try this. And I'm gonna send you the thing. Like here, I got all set up, totally.
Greg Moran (38:56.575)
My mind's racing.
Elijah (39:06.712)
He's like, what was that Chrome extension? How could I? Yeah. Big time.
Greg Moran (39:09.19)
This is totally up the OCD alley. This is like, if you like, this is just OCD alley. It's like, what's happening?
Eric (39:13.614)
That becomes a time allocation is to do that though. That becomes a percentage of his day that he needs to account for.
Peter Dean (39:20.966)
Yeah!
Elijah (39:21.296)
Totally. Yeah. Right. This is this is not good for OCD. This is not this is not like recommended protocol by my therapist.
Greg Moran (39:25.535)
R-he
Peter Dean (39:28.909)
No, but Greg is, I guarantee you, I'm gonna email you and Greg's doing this. He's going to do this.
Greg Moran (39:35.94)
There's no doubt about it. My mind's racing. All right. Like what does this actually look like for me? Right? That's I love. I love that concept of the of the of the persona though. I mean it because we're not one person. Right? I mean we're not this sort of you know and I think that's what ends up happening. You talk about founders and I think that is what ends up happening with this founder persona.
Peter Dean (39:40.598)
Hmm
He's an analytics guy, man.
Greg Moran (40:03.203)
trow down everything else, right? Back to your Aaron the Conductor analogy. Just tries to own everything. And that's the thing, unless you do something to really try to understand that, that it is not, and it should not be your entire identity, right? Because that's where the real shit storm hits down the road, right? When it becomes, when you have literally sacrificed your entire life to that entrepreneurial journey, you get to the end of that.
Elijah (40:03.33)
Oh yeah.
Peter Dean (40:05.337)
Yeah, it tries to own everything. Yeah, yeah.
Greg Moran (40:31.659)
whatever it is, you guys are exiting Spark 6, I exit another, you know, like, whatever it is that the founder is exiting, suddenly when it has taken over that entire container, as you, you know, in your analogy, you're screwed, right? Because now you have no.
Elijah (40:46.797)
Right. Because that's what everybody thinks on their deathbed is. I wish I put some more hours into staring at this goddamn box of lights on my desk. I wish I did more of that.
Greg Moran (40:57.332)
That's right. But that becomes that founder identity, right? Where it takes over everything else and suddenly you exit because these things are ultimately like maybe they're 15 year runs, maybe they're 20 year, maybe they're three year, right? It doesn't make any difference. It's just you get to the end of that run and all of a sudden if that's your entire identity, you have no identity left. Right.
Elijah (41:01.752)
For sure, yeah, it does.
Elijah (41:15.384)
Right. Or if it doesn't go the way that you thought it was going to go. Ouch. That's really your ego just kind of splays open at that point. Like it's, it's brutal.
Greg Moran (41:18.315)
Break!
Peter Dean (41:18.805)
Then I've been there. Yeah.
Greg Moran (41:22.635)
Right? Yeah, because you're not, right, you're not Eric the Surfer, you're not Eli the Dad, you're not, you know, Peter the Iron Man Triathlete, you're, I was trying to think, I normally, I normally go by an info, but I try to keep it nice. The, but the, you know, that, but that's the thing, right? And then you lose that, you have none of that left, and you're just basically, you know,
Peter Dean (41:35.445)
I was waiting to hear what you were going to say.
Elijah (41:37.144)
Oh, I was like, this is going to get good.
Greg Moran (41:50.935)
Greg the founder and Greg the founder exits his company and now you're nobody, right? And in your mind, right? Not in reality, obviously, but...
Elijah (41:55.288)
For sure.
Peter Dean (41:57.266)
Yeah.
Elijah (41:58.264)
Yeah, you've heard this, you've heard this like how people are just inherently bad at trying to predict how much time is something going to take, right? Like there's like this, I don't know where I heard this, but this general rule of thumb of, oh, you think building out that Google sheet is going to take you two hours, add 50% onto that and you're going to get a little more accurate, right?
Greg Moran (42:06.252)
Thank you.
Peter Dean (42:06.388)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (42:20.192)
Right.
Elijah (42:20.32)
So make it three and you're gonna get closer. Whatever your brain says this is gonna take, add 50% onto it and it's gonna make your life a lot better. I think people are just as bad at reflecting and figuring out how they spent their time. It's almost like that whole thing with memory where you can ask two people who witnessed the same thing to then recount it in their memory and they're completely different experiences.
Greg Moran (42:26.243)
This has got to take action.
Greg Moran (42:37.547)
Yeah.
Elijah (42:48.212)
And we do that to ourselves with our own little split personas all the time of like, Oh yeah, I'm a good dad. I totally spent time with my kids. Like I did this and this and this and it had to be at least like 30% of my time. I want to know the numbers, you know, like I want to, I I'm spending just a little bit of time every single day going back and being like, Oh, this was the family time I allocated. Just kidding. This came up and I just had to finish it. And then I didn't get to do my workout in the morning. So now I'm going to do it at night. And then, so I didn't do that with my kid. And, uh,
Greg Moran (43:00.499)
Yeah.
Elijah (43:17.484)
I just ordered in food, I didn't make dinner, and it's like, oh, my family time just shrunk down to 20% of what I had planned. At the end of the month, I want to know what those numbers are because I don't trust myself to really have an accurate reflection of what they were, of what the actuals were.
Peter Dean (43:35.145)
And the purpose is to make a change in what you're doing and try to restructure yourself. Yeah.
Elijah (43:38.996)
Exactly. To just have like an honest reflection of what's happening instead of the perceived memory of what probably really didn't happen.
Greg Moran (43:40.)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (43:51.395)
We got to wrap it up. But just so you guys know, you've wrecked the rest of my week now, because I'm literally 100% of my week is going to be trying to quantify the first half of my week and last week and everything else. So.
Peter Dean (44:05.322)
Well...
Elijah (44:07.057)
I'm going to bust this all out on a massive blog post I'm working on, but I really wanted to have the screenshots and the data and just a fair trial run. I prototyped this whole thing the end of November last year and started working on it. And now it's really hitting a groove. So once I have the graphs and charts to reference just to make it look more cool and compelling, I'll send it to you.
Greg Moran (44:27.351)
Well, this podcast will go live in a few, in probably three weeks or so. So if you get in between now and then, we can get the screenshots in here. That would be awesome. So guys, just to wrap it up, I mean, this is literally, we could go on for three more hours. This is part of the thing that Peter and I love about doing this, it is like we talk about community and we talk about like building that sort of, and this is like, these kinds of interviews are, this is our community, right?
Peter Dean (44:27.681)
Throated?
Elijah (44:34.904)
There you go. Definitely have it by then.
Elijah (44:43.365)
For sure.
Peter Dean (44:57.021)
Yeah, exactly. One of the best parts of my day.
Greg Moran (44:57.955)
And that's what makes this so much fun. So this is, oh, no doubt, no doubt. So this is awesome and we could certainly go on and on. So how do people reach you guys if they want to connect with you about what you're doing at either Vouchable, if they want you to connect, you know, about Spark 6, and just want to learn more about it. What's the best way to contact you guys?
Eric (45:18.514)
Yeah, they can they can visit either of our websites at vouchvault.com or spark6 with the number 6.com and they can always reach out to me directly at either of those. I'm Eric, E-R-I-C at spark6.com or Eric at vouchvault. And yeah, that's the way to do it. They'd figure it out anyways.
Elijah (45:33.1)
Man, that's brave, Eric. No way am I giving out my email address, but. Um. Uh. But.
Peter Dean (45:39.553)
I'm sure you can't guess it now.
Greg Moran (45:39.642)
These are the things I love to do.
Elijah (45:43.516)
I have doubled down on LinkedIn. I ignored LinkedIn for like a decade and I'm publishing to LinkedIn every single day now and super active on it. So yeah, Elijah Sass, Elijah, E-L- I'm betting I'm the only one with that spelling on LinkedIn so you can find me easily. I'd be happy to connect with anybody.
Greg Moran (46:04.523)
Got it. Spell it one more time. S-Z-E.
Elijah (46:06.772)
It's S like Sam, Z like zebra, A like apple, S like Sam, and another Z, because those Hungarians love to throw random consonants into words that need a vowel.
Greg Moran (46:16.86)
I was going to say you are you are legitimately the first person I've ever met with two Z's in their name.
Elijah (46:21.804)
Right, my middle name's Zachary, technically three, so yeah.
Greg Moran (46:24.659)
That's not easy to accomplish. We'll put the links on the show notes. And guys, this is super fun. I think there's a huge amount of takeaways here for Founder. So really, really appreciate you guys being on. And the other thing is Vouchfall, you can download it, I think, also, if people want to play with it, right? The App Store. And then you can use it.
Elijah (46:30.698)
Awesome.
Eric (46:31.598)
Cool.
Elijah (46:48.884)
Yeah. Free in the Apple app store, free in Google play.
Eric (46:49.654)
Absolutely. Yep. Google Play and Apple Apps.
Greg Moran (46:54.643)
All right. We will get those links on there as well. But awesome to have you guys. Look forward to staying in touch and doing this again. So I'll see you on the next edition of Family Feud podcast.
Eric (47:03.15)
Thanks for having us.
Elijah (47:08.329)
Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it guys.
Eric (47:10.596)
Thanks for having us. Good to see you.