00:00:00:00 - 00:00:21:07
Scariest day you've had as a founder? Yeah. We need this. Yeah. All right. This is. This happens. Everyone. Yeah. No matter what. So, by nature, I'm. I'm motivated by being preventative. Right. So I work out so that I'm not out of shape. Not so I could have the beach. I like to have my back against the wall.

00:00:21:08 - 00:00:42:09
So anything I talk about in, like, the scariest moments are actually when I came out and did my best. And actually, it goes back to my baseball career. I was a closing pitcher. If the game wasn't closed. My era was horrible. When the game is close, I step into it just myself. Right. That being said, scary issues. My last company, we probably at that 35 full time, hundred and 60 part time around the country.

00:00:42:09 - 00:01:00:21
Mark. And we're running out of money quick. Live event business cash flow is yeah, up and down, right? Not only is it seasonal, but payments to vendors and things like that are tough. And so we're going into a holiday season and we are closing an investment round. And there's a 750 K check that was signed for by a family office down in Houston.

00:01:00:23 - 00:01:21:28
Not a known entity, but they had all the patterns of doing the right stuff and getting the right reputation signed on a Friday wire supposed to come in on a Monday right before the holiday season. Around Christmas wire never came. Everyone goes dark. Wire never comes, wire never comes. Meanwhile, we were pretty transparent about. We needed some checks to come in.

00:01:21:28 - 00:01:44:29
We were all celebrating when things got signed. I said, hey, by the way, you have a job here, right? To the team. Well, the worst time to not have money is during the holiday season, right? Right from the 15th of December through the end of January. And so no matter what we did, even our inside investors who loved us and chairs were on vacation, they couldn't get to a bank and wire us even if we wanted to.

00:01:45:03 - 00:02:02:10
Unknown
Plus, we were talking about good news, right? And everything was good. Back against the wall, we had to do layoffs. We had to ask people to take cuts. So these guys just ghosted you. They did. This isn't like. Oh, and then and showed up the next day. Oh no no no. There was no communication beyond this signed man.

00:02:02:17 - 00:02:21:01
That was it. Last time you talked to him. Yeah. Give us give us the thing to wire will wire Monday morning, 9 a.m.. I checked the bank account. Nothing. Okay. It may take a day or two. Nothing. Oh my God. Oh that's it. Greg, this is like. Yeah, like. All right. We've been in. I've been with Greg when this was going on.

00:02:21:03 - 00:02:41:08
We shared an office at one point, walking up the steps from the parking lot. He's walking down and he's going, we got to go to the local, which is a local pub, and this is like a we got to go drink because what I'm saying, it's like 830 in the morning whenever 9 a.m. and he's like, dude, we're running out of money.

00:02:41:11 - 00:03:04:07
Like, I mean, like tomorrow, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's. But his checks came in. Your check didn't come in like, it didn't freaking come in, come in. Holy crap. And, we weren't at zero yet, but we weren't two payrolls away, right? Yeah. The plan on paper is to cut two thirds of the people rebuild, ask people for forgiveness.

00:03:04:07 - 00:03:23:23
When we do get money and explain the situation, we best know how he's. By the way. Yeah. An employee is not going to understand. Right. Signed for wire. Never came through, right? Yeah. Right. You want to say he's a founder. It doesn't. It doesn't. Yeah. I barely understand it as a investor. Right? I mean, it's just it's like so it's just so rare.

00:03:23:23 - 00:03:40:01
Right. Something like that happens. Yeah. Right. And how do you build trust in a system again. Right. You build a company. It's great. You're expanding. You bring money in. This shouldn't happen for me I think two fold. One young and single at the time. Right. Not a big drag on rent. I could always move in with a friend.

00:03:40:04 - 00:04:00:17
No big expenses. So, Well, I couldn't float salaries for people. Personally, I was okay and had no worries, right? I had a bed to sleep and food to eat. Everything like that. The real way that it happened that we got out of this is my co-founder. That's the first person you go to revenues. It's it's not the wife, the spouse, the partner, the parents, any of that.

00:04:00:19 - 00:04:21:07
You go and you know, you have to figure it out. So well, I tend to be calm and focused and pressure moments, which is kind of a unique trait, but I actually do my best work in the situations. I sat down with my co-founder, we laid out a plan together because we're both business and can read the numbers, but he was the one that stepped up and said, I'm actually the one that's going to let people go.

00:04:21:09 - 00:04:39:07
I'm the one that's going to figure this out and talk to these people. And so there were certain things I was afraid of doing, right? Letting people down that you trust, that don't deserve that stuff, laying people off. Yeah. He took that off my plate and said, I'm doing it. Yeah. Dealing with suppliers and making sure that that people were treated right.

00:04:39:07 - 00:04:53:16
And the way out was something I was very comfortable with. If that's on my to do list, I'll take care of and go. But he took all the gut wrenching moments because I wanted to, I guess, feel it a little bit more. Yep. So that it wouldn't happen to us ever again. And so, you know how we get through it.

00:04:53:16 - 00:05:12:09
There's a lot of times in the pub maybe not as early as eight in the morning. It's underrated actually. I mean, early morning drinking is actually kind of an underrated thing, right? Yeah. Not saying I won't try it until about until about 10 a.m.. You make great decisions after 10 a.m.. Yeah. Keep the phone away. Right. And so we do the happy hours.

00:05:12:09 - 00:05:28:15
We do this stuff also not for nothing. But you hear it on sports teams in the military but dealing with adversity. Yeah. You have to have a strong team to do it. And the co-founder relationship right. Or the highest executive level that you trust to kind of figure this stuff out. You have to be strong enough so that adversity hits.

00:05:28:15 - 00:05:47:05
You're not going at each other. Yeah. And luckily we had that and we rebuilt and we were better on the other because all of this happened. And it's the toughest thing to get through because we're expanding and doing so well. The investment was coming in not as a safety bargain, the time just have that happen because we were getting new contracts and had to expand.

00:05:47:07 - 00:06:03:15
And so wrapping your minds around that and what makes us doesn't and it's great to have it over beer. Right? Because like, yeah. Hey, man, could you tell this going to happen? No, I was blindsided. Cool. Write a book one day. But now we got to get back to work. Right?