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The Best Ever Podcast with Scott Eblin is your insider’s guide to what it takes to lead at the highest level at work, at home, and in your community. Each week, Scott sits down with remarkable leaders for real, revealing conversations about the mindset shifts, self-management habits, and everyday routines that fuel extraordinary leadership impact. Drawing on his 25 years of experience as a top executive coach, Scott brings a coach’s lens to every episode to help you bridge the gap between intention and action.
Scott Eblin - 00:00:10:
Welcome to Best Ever, the show where we explore how effective self-management creates the foundation for positive leadership outcomes. I'm Scott Eblin, and in every episode, I sit down with notable leaders to uncover the routines, mindset shifts, and strategies that have helped them lead at the highest level. And the difference that's made for their organizations, families, and communities. Today, I'm excited to talk with Scot Wingo, a serial entrepreneur with a wide range and a cornerstone of North Carolina's Research Triangle Park. Scot's entrepreneurial journey includes founding and exiting three successful companies, Stingray Software, AuctionRover.com, and ChannelAdvisor. From there, he co-founded on-demand car care service Get Spiffy that operates in more than 30 major metros around the U.S., His newest venture is an AI-driven e-commerce solution called ReFiBuy. Beyond building companies, Scot has become a pivotal mentor and investor in the startup ecosystem, notably through the Triangle Tweener Fund, where he supports early-stage tech companies in the Triangle area. He also shares insights as the host of the Triangle Tweener Fund Talks podcast, engaging in conversations with Triangle area founders about their startup journeys. Scot, welcome to Best Ever.
Scot Wingo - 00:01:28:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Congrats to you for launching a podcast, and I'm excited to be one of your early guests.
Scott Eblin - 00:01:34:
I really appreciate you, the boat of confidence in doing so, so thanks. So, did some heavy research before this conversation. And in researching your origin story, I learned that you grew up in Aiken, South Carolina. And I've heard a rumor that your family had a mainframe computer at home when you were a kid. So two-part question, is that true? And if it is, how the heck did that happen?
Scot Wingo - 00:02:00:
It is true. My dad was an entrepreneur. We didn't know what to call him that. That's a fancy word for Aiken. So he basically said he was self-employed. Aiken's a weird town. It's near Augusta, Georgia, which is kind of one of its claims of fame. So if you've ever gone to the Masters, a lot of people go through Aiken or stay in Aiken for the Masters. The other thing that's interesting about Aiken is if you remember your Oppenheimer movie, there was a nuclear arms race and they actually moved to town and built a facility near Aiken called the Savannah River Site. And they would breed uranium and then it would go up to Knoxville to be purified and then out to Los Alamos to be whatever they did with it to put it in the devices. So most of the people in Aiken are the kids of PhD physicists. So it's really, and I am not one of those. So my dad was self-employed, which is weird because literally everyone else in the town is employed by the Spinner site. So, and what he did was he was a computer programmer. This is in the, this is COBOL. So this is like a very old language that's actually still, you know, there's a lot of these mainframes still doing work out there. And we had a digital electronics corporation also known as DEC PDP-11 in my house. And this is after cards, you know, the punch cards, but it was mostly tape drives. So we had a couple of the spinny things. Like if you see war games is maybe the one movie that people will see that has that. And it did have, he ultimately did buy a hard drive and it had like, you know, a ridiculously low, like a thumb drive would have, you know, a million times more memory than it did. But it was one megabyte and it was very exciting to have a hard drive back in the day.
Scott Eblin - 00:03:41:
How big is a mainframe computer in your house back then?
Scot Wingo - 00:03:45:
Well, my house was small. So it was like, imagine a sub-2,000-square-foot house. Half of it had a room for the computer that kind of like took up a big part of the house. And then he had to put in this floors that had a special air conditioner.
Scott Eblin - 00:04:01:
Right, right. So it's a data center, basically, that you're running in your house.
Scot Wingo - 00:04:05:
20 to 30 feet of refrigerator-sized machines lined up.
Scott Eblin - 00:04:10:
That's incredible. So what difference does that make in the life of young Scot Wingo to have all that going on in your house?
Scot Wingo - 00:04:18:
Well, today this isn't weird, but from five on, I had a computer. And that was unusual in our era because computers weren't – personal computers didn't come along. I didn't have a personal computer like the PC until I was – freshman in college. So, you know, that gave me a, call it a 15-year head start on a lot of my peers by having a computer and just like understanding the basics of, okay, there's a screen and a keyboard and that's how, I played mostly little games with it. There was these text games. A lot of the stuff is referenced in the modern movie Ready Player One. So that really resonated for me. So, yeah, so it, you know, it was the source of my nerdy upbringing, if you will.
Scott Eblin - 00:05:02:
It reminds me a lot of the Bill Gates origin story about him and Paul Allen having access to a mainframe at their school back in the day. Bill Gates, obviously, older than you, but kind of a parallel track there, really, between the two of you.
Scot Wingo - 00:05:16:
Yeah, and my dad got very excited when BASIC came out, and it was Microsoft BASIC, and he could run it on an emulator on the PDP-11. And then we got a very early PC, and we're running BASIC on it and stuff like that. It was pretty wild.
Scott Eblin - 00:05:31:
That's awesome.
Scot Wingo - 00:05:31:
He also got an Apple, not an Apple I. Those are pretty rare, but a very early Apple II.
Scott Eblin - 00:05:37:
2, yeah. Yeah, my wife had a IIe back in the day when she was like her senior year of college. She had an Apple IIe. So, like I said, in the open, if my math and my research is correct, I think you founded five companies. Is that the correct number?
Scot Wingo - 00:05:52:
That's correct.
Scott Eblin - 00:05:53:
Okay. Pretty sure, correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, you've successively exited from three of those companies. True? Okay.
Scot Wingo - 00:06:02:
Yep. Facts.
Scott Eblin - 00:06:03:
Serving on the board of at least two of those five and are the CEO of your newest venture, which is an AI-driven e-commerce company called ReFiBuy. So I've got like so many questions related to all that. There's two that I want to start with. Where do all those ideas come from? All these companies and what keeps the creative flame burning, you know, over several decades of doing this.
Scot Wingo - 00:06:27:
Yeah, the way I come up with ideas has changed over kind of 30 years of doing this. My first idea was basically just driven by curiosity. So early on, my first company, Stingray Software, it was really kind of exploring Object-Oriented Programming and seeing if we could come up with basically objects we could sell to people. So it's what we would call DevTech. So our customers were developers, and we came up with class libraries we would sell.
Scott Eblin - 00:06:53:
I want to interrupt you for just a second because for people like me who may or may not know because I'm not a tech guy, what's an object in the context of Object-Oriented Programming?
Scot Wingo - 00:07:04:
Yeah, early programming was very linear, meaning like you would say, all right, I'm going to take this 10-step process, and the algorithm, that's how the code would work. And then we had Object-Oriented Programming where you said, well, there's this database object, and there's a user object, and this object, and then they interact in a certain way, and you could solve harder problems that way. Basically. And it kept in the linear programming world, the non-object-oriented, your code started to get all gobbledygooked together and hard to kind of like, as the complexity went up, it became increasingly hard to manage the software. So Object-Oriented Programming gave you a metaphor for separating it into what we call anamorphic. So the objects that tended to be in the real world.
Scott Eblin - 00:07:44:
Okay.
Scot Wingo - 00:07:44:
If you will.
Scott Eblin - 00:07:45:
Yeah. Got it. Thank you. So I got you off track there with the, where the, where the ideas come from was really the core question.
Scot Wingo - 00:07:51:
Yeah, so that first company was basically, I loved this whole new way of doing things. And it was basically like, how can I, I think there's an opportunity to get in front of that and sell things to other developers. And because I knew developers, that was like a good first company because it was kind of training wheels because I knew we would use this language today. ICP is a startup thing, so ideal customer profile. I knew the target audience really well, which was basically me. That was kind of like building stuff I would use.
Scott Eblin - 00:08:20:
Okay.
Scot Wingo - 00:08:21:
Yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:08:21:
Yeah. There's an old rule. If you want to write a book, write what you know. So I guess that was the same thing for you, right? You know, you programmed what you knew or what you've programmed for people like you.
Scot Wingo - 00:08:32:
Yeah. A lot of people, Rick Rubin, Rick Rubin, sorry, has been making the rounds. He's got this music producer that's produced everybody.
Scott Eblin - 00:08:41:
Yeah, he's fascinating.
Scot Wingo - 00:08:41:
And he looks really squirrely, but everyone's like, what's your secret? He's just like, I make stuff I like. And that was like my first company. So, yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:08:48:
Awesome. And so what's kept you motivated through all this over the years? A lot of people would have stopped by now with all the success you've had.
Scot Wingo - 00:08:56:
Yeah. So a couple of things. My dad always said, find something you're good at and do more of that thing. So this is the one thing I'm good at. I've tried a bunch of other stuff and this is basically it. And there's something magical. As a software person, I love the magic of coming up with an idea, building a team and executing on the idea and turning. In software, we can literally turn, create value out of nothing. Electrons and ideas. And as a software person, that's kind of like what it's all about. And I love that.
Scott Eblin - 00:09:25:
Yeah, it's awesome. So you just mentioned the team. I definitely wanted to talk about Get Get Spiffy, which is such a cool company name. Give us the tweet-length description of Get Spiffy, what it's all about.
Scot Wingo - 00:09:40:
The tweet length would be car care that comes to you on your terms.
Scott Eblin - 00:09:45:
Love it.
Scot Wingo - 00:09:46:
So car wash, detail, tires, whatever you want done to your car, we can do that. But it's… It's really kind of expanding on, I do a lot in e-commerce, and e-commerce is the traditional product-driven world going digital, retail going digital. And I think services are going to go digital. So this was kind of a big macro meta trend. This kind of goes back to the idea. The idea there was, what's a huge meta trend that I can try to build a company in a bigger kind of thing that I've done before? And this trend of once products have gone digital, now once you can have a digital experience, Uber really kicked this off. And really changing how I think about transportation. But what does that look like? And that was the idea of Spiffy.
Scott Eblin - 00:10:33:
That's awesome. So again, just doing the research and the homework, I found this great phrase that you use. You've got really highly trained employees that are doing the detailing, right? And your goal is to have the customer do a happy dance when they come out to their driveway and see their really sparkling, clean car. Maybe looks better than it did in the showroom. That takes, from my experience as a leadership coach and an executive myself a long time ago, that takes a vision and a lot of consistency and training to deliver that kind of experience in 30 metros around the country. I mean, you're literally coast to coast with this business. So you were the founder for many years. You were the CEO. What's the role of leadership in bringing that kind of vision of consistency to life? How does leadership play into that?
Scot Wingo - 00:11:25:
Yeah, well, first of all, you have to plant the flag, right? So saying that is the flag, like what should the goal be? So the outcome we're all gearing towards, and this is like everyone in the company from, the technician is the tip of the spear because they're doing the service. But the whole, the customer's using an app, they're talking to customer service. All those things are being built by our engineering team. The van, we have a lot of hardware in our van that was built by a team. So you want to make sure that customer has a perfect experience. And then you work back from there. And if you can get everyone to buy into that, then it becomes a systems problem. And I've learned a lot of this from really studying Amazon and Jeff Bezos. He's a systems engineer. And Amazon and I would put Starbucks kind of in this of companies I admire and that can do the things you said. And consistently delivering on a very high customer expectation that they themselves set. So a lot of it has been studying that and building the systems necessary to go do that.
Scott Eblin - 00:12:28:
Hmm. What about the people part of it? I mean, systems are key, obviously, and people are part of the system in some fashion, right? So. How do you get people excited about that? How do you find the right people? How do you, again, I'm just fascinated by how do you do that from market to market and make it work? With the people part.
Scot Wingo - 00:12:50:
Yeah, it's kind of a confirmation bias in a way because when you put that out there that that's what you want to do, the people that tend to work for you want to do that. So people are already kind of like signed on. All right. And Spiffy has this interesting world where we have our skilled labor and then our headquarter type people. So the headquarter people are a bit easier. The skilled labor is harder. But what you find, our core technician, and they are our employees, this is not a 1099 model, which we decided if we're going to deliver this awesome service, we have to like own it, right? Um, So what we found is they're typically, they skew male. This is typically an outdoor job. You kind of like, you want to love cars. There's a bunch of women that love cars. But, so we're like 85 male, 15% female. Interestingly, our females tend to score a little bit better because they're more detail-oriented than the fellas.
Scott Eblin - 00:13:42:
Oh, that's true. Yeah.
Scot Wingo - 00:13:43:
So the pipeline is less, but we would love to have, you know, I would love for it to be like 60, 40. The data says 80, like flip it around, but that's, we can't control the pipeline. But it's really interesting. This was like an unexpected part of this because I've never had anything with that skilled labor component. The skilled labor world is kind of a mess and really rough on people in that world. So they end up in most of the jobs are dead-end jobs. So a lot of the people we would find, most of them did not complete high school because they were, you know, in, they were underrepresented type of categories of folks, usually Hispanic or black. They didn't value the education system. They dropped out for whatever reason. It wasn't, it didn't adapt to what they needed. They had lots of family stuff going on. But then by the time, but the ones that would come to us that would buy into this, something had happened in their life. And usually it was, they had a child. Yeah. So there was a wake up moment where like, I've got to be an adult. Suddenly I've kind of goofed off, you know, from my teens to usually. And I think the median age is like 27, 26, somewhere in there. So they're kind of like suddenly awake. And then the trick for us was then giving them a career path that looked like corporate America because no one else does that except Starbucks. Even Amazon, to some extent, they give a little bit of that. But if you're an Amazon Fulfillment Center, it's largely. Moving boxes. And there's not a huge career path there. Fast food seems like there's a career path, but it's pretty locked. It's hard because you're in a franchise system and you can't go across McDonald's like you can Starbucks, which is corporate owned, so forth. So they don't really have a lot of career options. They have Starbucks or they basically, that's about it. So that was the one thing we did that really engaged a lot of people. And they could, just like corporate America, they had an individual contributor path and then they also had a manager path. And so the individual contributor path was you start as a traditional detailer, you go through training, you would start as a, you had a mentor, so you'd tag team, then you came off of that. Now you're on your own. Then if your scores were such, then we would, then you would get the juicier details, which everyone wants. Then you would work into oil change, tires, and then repair. And so we would walk you into being a mechanic. And a lot of them wanted to be on that path. This is where the skilled labor thing kind of falls apart. They would have to quit a job for a year to go get, to become a mechanic. And they can't afford that because they've got to mouth the feed usually. So we would kind of solve that and give them a career path. On the manager side, we would, they could be a shift supervisor all the way up to running a small city. And these folks tend to be relatively mobile, even though they have a small family, the family can move around. So, you know, we opened up Atlanta with a supervisor that was 28 and he still runs it today. So of our 30 markets, more than half are run by these, you know, super young people that we trained, buffed them up and taught them a bunch of management, our process and things. And they run relatively large cities. So I'm really proud that we were able to offer that. That was kind of a nice, nice benefit that I didn't really see going into that.
Scott Eblin - 00:16:52:
That's awesome. The phrase that comes to mind is you're changing lives.
Scot Wingo - 00:16:57:
Yeah, we've had people that are pretty emotional about it, and they're very, very thankful that they've had the opportunity.
Scott Eblin - 00:17:05:
That's awesome. That must feel great.
Scot Wingo - 00:17:07:
It does. Yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:17:08:
I'd have to do. So your latest venture is ReFiBuy, which I read on your company website began with an idea that was planted in your head several decades ago, I guess, by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. I'd love to hear that story. First of all, how did you connect with Pierre Omidyar in the first place? But what did he say to you that stuck with you for 20-plus years and eventually found ReFiBuy?
Scot Wingo - 00:17:36:
So I kind of idolized him because he had started eBay and we had started a company. I'd started a company, the one you'd mentioned, my second one AuctionRover, which was a search engine right after eBay was started. And we searched eBay. They had their first, what would become eBay Live, which was a trade show for sellers. And they invited us out there, even though we weren't a seller, but we had a lot of sellers use software we had for selling on eBay. And it wasn't really Bill that he was going to be there speaking or anything. They just had like a little cocktail hour. And I'm sitting there. And you know how it is when you've idolized someone and you've seen all their content? This is before YouTube, so I couldn't watch his YouTubes. But I'd seen him, you know. I had seen his picture and read enough of his content that I recognized him. He was smaller, shorter than I was imagining. And I was literally at one of those little tall tables eating a shrimp or something. And he walked up and he had a drink too and was eating a shrimp. I was like. You're Pierre, right? He's like, yeah. How'd you know? I was like, I've seen you in magazines. I don't think it had hit him yet that he was kind of famous.
Scott Eblin - 00:18:38:
It reminds me of this sketch Chris Farley used to do on Saturday Night Live where he used to like with Paul McCartney. You know that time when you played with The Beatles?
Scot Wingo - 00:18:47:
Yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:18:48:
Yeah. I was meeting your hero, right?
Scot Wingo - 00:18:51:
Yeah. And then I was like, you know, just a huge fan of what you built at eBay. And, you know, where do you see the future of eBay going? And he said, as long as we can help people continue to research what they want to buy, find it and buy it, we'll be in good shape. And, you know, I thought, you know, that was a very simple way of saying that that is the cycle people go through when they shop online, which today seems obvious. But this was like, again, this is like in 98, 99, like, you know, really early. Amazon hadn't gone, was just on the cusp of going public when we kind of had this conversation. So I'd never even thought about that aspect of everything. So, yeah, so that kind of stuck with me and was the first time I'd heard that phrase and it stuck with me.
Scott Eblin - 00:19:34:
So how do you apply that? First, it stuck with you, obviously. And now in 2025 or 2024, I guess, you probably started putting this company together. What's the value proposition of ReFiBuy?
Scot Wingo - 00:19:49:
Well, it's interesting. E-commerce has slowed down dramatically. And if you look at other countries, they're way ahead of us in adoption of e-commerce. So if you look at countries in Asia, they're at like 95, 98 percent of e-commerce. Out there, they call it O2O, online and offline. There's a total harmony between a store and online. And here, we're at 17%. And we've almost flatlined. It's growing very slowly now. It used to be growing three times retail, e-commerce versus retail. Now, they're growing in line. So that means our adoption rate has slowed dramatically. Even if you look at Europe, most of the countries there are at 30%, 35%, and we're at 17%. And I think the reason why is it's gotten harder to find products. There's all this data coming out that there's so much out there and so many venues and so many things. It's hard to find what you're looking for. And we haven't revealed exactly what we're working on, but we think we have a clever way of using some of these new AI technologies to help retailers with that and have a better buying experience. It's kind of inverted. So right now, people will find a product. In fact, let's take – you're new to podcasting. So let's say you were looking for a mic. You probably found one you thought was interesting, and then maybe you saw a bad review. Then you went on to a next one. So you didn't – there wasn't this ability for you to kind of like research and then find three SKUs and then buy based on attributes. Like educate yourself on attributes. Pick two that – so because it's so broken, we kind of like have to go backwards. And we don't even realize we're doing that. So we're actually going find, research, buy, which is kind of weird. So I think we can kind of help fix that with – I think the whole world is going to have more agent kind of ways of buying things where you'll chat verbally or textually with some kind of a – and we're not going to build that. That will probably be the Facebooks and the Googles of the world and everything. But I think we can help with the plumbing. So that's what we're exploring.
Scott Eblin - 00:21:48:
What's your target timing for the big reveal?
Scot Wingo - 00:21:52:
Uh, so late summer, fall.
Scott Eblin - 00:21:56:
Awesome. Sure.
Scot Wingo - 00:21:57:
We have the engineers are vibe coding right now.
Scott Eblin - 00:22:00:
Vibe coding. Tell me what that means.
Scot Wingo - 00:22:03:
These AI tools, so usually when you're coding, you're kind of the coder is determining the direction. And vibe coding is where you and the AI kind of chart the course together where the AI will say, hey, I think you should go work on this next. You're like, all right. So it's kind of you and the AI assistant getting into a vibe with each other.
Scott Eblin - 00:22:23:
I'm doing that with AI for my writing, honestly.
Scot Wingo - 00:22:26:
Your writing, yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:22:28:
Yeah, totally. I mean, it's like this amazing brainstorming partner. And I don't like, you know, publish stuff that ChatGPT is writing for me, but like, here's an idea. What do you think about this idea? And it just, it sparks more thinking on my end. It's pretty cool.
Scot Wingo - 00:22:42:
Yeah, I think that's the metaphor. I don't think a lot of people, I get a lot of people, I go to a lot of these AI things, and there's always someone that's like, we should stop this now. I'm freaked out. It's Terminator. I'm kind of like, I don't think so. I think it's more GPS. It's just kind of, you know, it's there to help you and be a companion. And it's not going to Skynet us, hopefully.
Scott Eblin - 00:23:00:
Yeah. I want to shift gears a little bit from some of the specific companies that you've been working in to the Triangle tweener Fund Fund, which we talked about in the intro. A couple of things around that for the uninitiated. First, tell us what a tweener is. What's a Tweener?
Scot Wingo - 00:23:18:
Yeah. So in my mind, I kind of, I have two work streams, if you will. So there's my being an entrepreneur is one path and that's where I spend the bulk of my time. But, you know, entrepreneurship has been good for me. And I'm here in the North Carolina area, you are too. And I went to NC State and also my undergrad was South Carolina. So I try to give back to those institutions. I think they're an important part of everything. So, and then I also, I would not have been successful if it weren't for a mentor that took a fair amount of time and risk on me. And I tried to pay him and he basically said, no, here in the Triangle, we have more of a pay forward mindset where you go help someone else in the next 10 or 20 years. I was like, you know, 25 and he was, you know, 35, 40. And so that's my other work stream is giving back. In the first 20 years of that, it was really going around and evangelizing being in startups because we had a lack of entrepreneurs in the Triangle. We'd have a meetup and it'd be like myself and four other well-known entrepreneurs in the area, which is fine. But we were all kind of on the same level and there wasn't really too much to learn from. We couldn't really mentor each other because we're both right on the, all on the edge of figuring it out. But then between ChannelAdvisor and Spiffy, I looked around and that problem, the pipeline problem was solved. But we had another problem. We had maybe, you know, at the top of the funnel, we had like a thousand companies. And then we all knew there was like five or six that would be really successful, like Pendo or something like that. But we didn't know what was in the middle. And you kind of need to, it's a BASIC pattern in helping other startups that you need. A funnel can't be a lead and customer. You need like a, you know, something in the middle. Someone that's kind of like, you know, in the middle. So I decided I would create that. And it's kind of like a Goldilocks list, but I didn't like that brand. At the time, I had a 12-year-old, which is what they would call a tweener kind of phase of development. So they're not teenagers. And then she had two older siblings. So she was a super tweener because she felt like she was basically 30 because she was hanging out with 20-year-olds. That's what tweeners are. And it was really appropriate for companies at that phase too, kind of in this middle. So a Tweener, a Triangle Tweener is a company headquartered in the Triangle that has a million in annualized revenue. So 80K a month or 10 people all the way up to 80 million in revenue or 500 people is the definition. So when I started this, so then I had to go create a whole system here, systems again. So I built a system for detecting these on LinkedIn primarily because I wanted to use, I didn't want to go buy data because this is just a passion project. And so I published this Tweener list, which was the start in 2015. And at that time we had 50 tweeners in the Triangle and now we have 300 here in 2000. Yeah, the list will actually come out in two weeks. And I don't know, I actually don't know what the new count is, but as of 2024, we're at 300.
Scott Eblin - 00:26:10:
So my liberal arts major math, that's six times growth, right? Between 2015 and today, 10 years. What's driving that?
Scot Wingo - 00:26:19:
So at the foundation, we have the universities. So we're fortunate in this area, we have three tier one universities in NC State, UNC and Duke. Then we have a lot of other universities that are great too, but those are the biggies that have research associated with them. So they're kind of IP factories and smart people factories. And so that's part of it. And then the quality of living here has been accentuated since COVID. So we have had a huge influx of people from around everywhere since COVID.
Scott Eblin - 00:26:49:
Me too. We included.
Scot Wingo - 00:26:51:
Yeah, a lot are entrepreneurs that bring their companies. Some of them are coaches.
Scott Eblin - 00:26:57:
How do you define the impact and what are you proudest of with the tweener Fund over the last 10 years?
Scot Wingo - 00:27:03:
Yeah, so to complete the story, so the fund, the list was out there doing its thing. And then people started saying, you know, I really wish I could like invest in that bucket of companies. And I thought that was an interesting thought experiment. Right around COVID, I started getting requests and it took a couple of years to figure it out. But in 2022, we launched the tweener Fund. And what we do is the analogy would be if you're familiar with stock market investing, you know, Warren Buffett would say, don't pick stocks like I do. It's my full-time job. You should invest in an index. Well, in the private company, so you could go get a mutual fund, which is where someone picks the companies for you or an index where an algorithm picks it. So the S&P 500 Vanguard is kind of like one of the gold standards. Low fees just gives you a really good instant diversification. In the private company world, you have venture capitalists and they're kind of like the Fidelity mutual funds. They're trying to pick winners, right? And I thought, well, wouldn't it be fun to have a Vanguard? And, you know, so this is kind of a – the Tweener list is like the S&P 500. The Tweener Fund is the fund that invests in that algorithm. So its job is to try to cover as much of that list as possible. Now, unlike public markets, we can't just put money into a private company. They have to agree to it and have a round going on and that kind of thing. But right now, we're actually – we're pretty close to having half of that list covered. So we're in about 150 companies now and there's 300 on the Tweener list. So. Yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:28:30:
That's amazing. Do you know of any other comparable investment funds like that around the country that are geographically specific that are kind of providing an ETF, if you will, for the startup ecosystem in a community? Is that unique or are there others out there with a similar model?
Scot Wingo - 00:28:49:
Yeah, if you think about our attributes of being kind of early stage, you know, to your point, an index or an ETF, and then... The geographic piece, the answer is no. There are some that do the index strategy. One's called Correlation Ventures. And there's another one called Alumni Ventures. But different models, and they don't have the geographic focus we do.
Scott Eblin - 00:29:12:
So I'm really curious about the creative. Process that in your mind or conversations that you had? I mean, how did you come up with that idea? There's not really anything like, oh yeah, they're doing that over there. We could do that here or something like that. How did, I mean, this is a unique idea that you came up with. How does that happen for you? Like what's the process that, and you've had so many other examples that we've already even talked about and there's probably, you know, two dozen more that we haven't talked about. What's the creative process like for you to come up with something entirely different or new?
Scot Wingo - 00:29:45:
I would say it's like a combination. I mentioned curiosity before. That's still a big factor. But the other one is listening. So I'm sure you coach people on this. We live in a world where people are bombarded with messages all the time. And if they take the energy to take something I'm putting out and inbound to me and want to meet with me, and I can see they get very excited. And so I take a lot of these meetings, and people are like, I have a great idea. You should create. So it wasn't really my idea. It was basically like six people meeting with me and me kind of realizing, all right, if there's this much demand for this thing, and people are energized enough to take an hour out of their busy time, there's something here. So then I started exploring and asking people. The part I knew, it's kind of a two-part equation. Part number one is, are there enough companies where you can build an index? And I knew the answer to that because I kind of cheated on it and had the tweener Fund list. So I knew there was a lot of companies. The part I didn't know is, where am I going to get investors? So then I met a lot of people and said, would you invest in something like this? And within the first four minutes of the pitch, they're like, you can stop. Where do I sign up? And I was like, okay, I think I'm on to something.
Scott Eblin - 00:30:55:
That's awesome.
Scot Wingo - 00:30:56:
Yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:30:56:
Really cool.
Scot Wingo - 00:30:56:
It's kind of a post-COVID psychological thing where… It's like you, you're new to this area, but you chose it for a reason. You probably don't plan to move soon. And people want to support the area and this community. So it's like, I think COVID accentuated people's need for a community and a desire to support it. A lot of times philanthropy is good, but it's not circular. It's like a one-way kind of direction. So this kind of has a circular element to it. So you can benefit the community and show that you're supporting it and then maybe make a return.
Scott Eblin - 00:31:38:
I love that. I mean, we moved here after eight and a half years living in Los Angeles. And... Loved it in Los Angeles. Neither one of us are Angelenos, but we had a lot of fun out there and learned a lot and met some cool people. But, you know, pandemic perspective shift, people always asked us when we first moved here, like, why did you move to Durham from L.A.. And it was a two-word answer we wanted, or two-idea answer. We wanted a place that was easier to connect with people than L.A. was and then easier to contribute in the community. I think both of those words kind of apply to... The way you're approaching everything really is connection and contribution, it sounds like. Talking about mentoring, you mentioned you had a mentor early when you were 25 and you had a 35 or 40-year-old mentor. Without naming names, you can if you want to, but... Who was the best mentor you ever had and what made them such a great guide to you? I'm really more interested in the characteristics of that person than I am the specific person. What did they do for you that made such a difference?
Scot Wingo - 00:32:45:
Yeah, he's still around. His name is Richard Holcomb, and he's still active in the community. Part of it was just taking the time. So he would meet with me for like an hour every month or so. And I would share, when you're a CEO of something, and you probably have this being a coach, but for people that haven't thought about this, let's say you're in a venture-backed company. So you're the CEO and you have your people that report to you. And you may have some other co-founders and things. And then you have a board. You can't really have a super honest discussion. Like, let's say there's something that's really worrying you. You can't, a founder, you can, but sometimes it may actually be better to have an independent third party. You can. Have a totally separate conversation with that isn't involved in the whole thing. And that's what a mentor provides, if you find the right one. So first of all, it has to be in the cloak of confidentiality. And then sometimes you just need someone to listen. But what's nice about Richard is he would listen, and then he would actually present some ideas for how to deal with certain situations.
Scott Eblin - 00:33:51:
Right.
Scot Wingo - 00:33:52:
Yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:33:52:
Right.
Scot Wingo - 00:33:53:
And it wasn't just like a do this, that, or the other. He's like, well, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?
Scott Eblin - 00:33:58:
Give you options to consider.
Scot Wingo - 00:34:01:
Yeah. And then maybe a little word of encouragement. I know it sounds tough right now, but let's say you're going to lay off someone or you have to fire someone, and it was the first time I'd done that. It seems like this cataclysmic thing, right? And it is. I mean, it is serious. It's a serious thing, and you should take it very seriously. But you're going to get through it. The person impacted will get through it. Everyone's going to get through it. A lot of times, and I've been at this long enough, the people impacted, I would say 90% of the time I've done something like that, they knew. And they actually wanted- Something else themselves. So if that's not the case, then either they're in this world where they're like totally not reading the signs, which is its own thing, or you've been a terrible manager because you've been giving them great performance reviews and they're shocked that suddenly this is happening.
Scott Eblin - 00:34:47:
I used to go to a Methodist church where the pastor... Who was a friend of mine, would talk about... A bishop that he worked under one time. And if there was a minister that wasn't working out in a church, the way the bishop would frame the need to move that person on was, we need to find God's next opportunity for you.
Scot Wingo - 00:35:07:
That's exactly right.
Scott Eblin - 00:35:09:
That's one way to frame it, right? How many founders would you guess you've mentored by now? Like what's you got to keep in track or have a ballpark number?
Scot Wingo - 00:35:19:
Uh, it's hard to know. I don't really keep track. Yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:35:24:
Okay.
Scot Wingo - 00:35:24:
More than 10, less than 100.
Scott Eblin - 00:35:26:
Okay. So dozens in at least are scores maybe. Patterns, pattern recognition, what would you say are the best practices of the people that you've mentored that have really just hit some home runs? And what are some common pitfalls you've observed with folks that maybe they hit home runs, but they stumbled here and there along the way? Probably everybody does. So, best practices and most common pitfalls you've seen as a mentor to other founders.
Scot Wingo - 00:35:58:
Yeah, I don't know if it's a best practice, but like at the foundation, the folks that tend to do well in this space the best. They have... They have grit, and this is hard to measure. I had an investor one time say, well, how do you evaluate these early founders when there's not that? I said, I look for grit, and they're like, how do you see grit? And I was like. That's a good question. You can kind of tell. It's like one of those things, like you know it when you see it. So to unpack grid, it's like this high clock speed. So someone that's like, just like really at an executional pace that you wouldn't see in corporate America, for example. Someone that can change their opinion relatively rapidly when data emerges is important for a founder because you're constantly having to navigate through complex waters. And if you get, there's a fair amount of technical founders to get like locked in on something and they won't course correct? I don't know if those are character attributes or best practices, but that's kind of a foundational thing. And then as far as best practices, and there's all these accelerators and incubators and things, but it. A lot of this depends on the cycle of the company, but most of the companies we're dealing with are, there's this product-market fit concept where you've got an idea and you're just trying to figure out who is my customer and how do I build the thing to meet their needs. This is like the Darwinistic part of startups, the super primordial suit. People that are in there, they spend a lot of time talking to customers and listening and course correcting based on the data. Once you're out of there, then it's a different skill set. This is the other thing that's hard and why a lot of founders don't because once you're through product-market fit, in product product-market fit aperture is wide open. You're just taking in all this stuff and everything's available. But once you get through, you now need to go into hyper-focus mode and kind of just like pound the more button and say, all right, I'm at a million in revenue. How do I get to 5 million? And the answer is not. Another product, go international. And we're inherently a little ADHD as founders. We like shiny bulbs and we'll be like, you know, squirrel. So then someone has to be able to flip that bit and go into like grind mode and say, all right, I'm going to bear down and I'm going to sell more of this thing I know is working. And I may make tiny course corrections, but I'm not going to like go all over the place. Have a strategy that's just totally crazy. So that's another best practice for this kind of what we'd call pre-seed and seed phase that I'm heavily involved in.
Scott Eblin - 00:38:25:
I want to pick up on the million to five million transition that you talked about, the more, more, more button. So you're scaling your company. A premise that I have is as you scale the company, you need to scale yourself. You know, that you're eventually going to hit, you're going to become the bottleneck. You're going to become the... Cap on growth. I guess the first question is, do you agree with that? And if you do, or if you don't, I want to hear that too, but... What do the better ones do around scaling themselves as their company grows?
Scot Wingo - 00:39:04:
If you do the math in my software world, 10 people, the average revenue per employee is 100K, right? So 10 people is a million and to get to 5 million, you need 50. So that's a different managing a team of 10 people who are total aligned and, you know. We could use, there's a lot of different metaphors. There's the bullets and barrels metaphor that's kind of big in my world right now. There's VCUs, this one. And then there's like the mercenaries and missionaries kind of thing. But in a 10 person company, everyone is like 100% bought in and they're not there for the money. They're there for the mission. So they're missionaries. And then, you know, once you get to 40 or 50, you're going to have a smattering of people. You also need to go from everyone does everything to everyone's focused. And those are the things that were, especially first-time founders struggle. So some of them may come from big companies and they overmanage the 10-person piece. Some of them are individual contributors learning how to manage and they undermanage the growth from 10 to 50 people. The one characteristic I would say is they kind of, if they can know they're in over their skis and ask for help, then everything will be okay. So that's where, you know, I'm sure you get a lot of those phone calls, but that's where people kind of make it through is they kind of realize they need help and they're willing to take it.
Scott Eblin - 00:40:23:
Mm-hmm. So what's the first sign in your own experience or your observational experience? What are the first few signs that you need help and you need to ask for it?
Scot Wingo - 00:40:32:
Yeah, if they're burning out, they're working 80, 100-hour weeks, and that's usually a symptom that something's going wrong. They have a relatively good-sized team. Now, if they're a one-person shop, then that's not it. But they start to miss some numbers. They really hit a hiccup in that growth. Getting to a million is – and it's a different skill, too. The first million is hard. The next million – It's not as hard, but then like somewhere between there and five, it gets hard again. And then you'll see a little bit of a stumble in there. A little bit of a chasm that they can fall into. Usually, the other data point we would look for is a spike in churn because to get to a million, you're getting good at like this first muscle or motion, we would call it, which is how do you sign up customers or go to market? We call it go to market motion. And then to get from one to five, you have to keep those customers and keep adding them on top. If they're churning out, then that will be what happens is that growth will fall in on itself because those customers aren't stacking. They're being replaced and that will ultimately catch up to you. Those are symptoms that something is not being built right in the company and it's usually, it's always the CEO that's accountable for that.
Scott Eblin - 00:41:55:
And I wrote a book called The Next Level, and it's about the behaviors and mindsets that you either need to pick up or that you need to let go of. As you're taking on bigger and bigger jobs in your career. It's kind of a corporate book. And. I've asked a lot of people which is harder, picking up or letting go. What would your answer be between the two, picking up or letting go? Which one's harder?
Scot Wingo - 00:42:20:
Picking up. Or letting go. Delegation is hard because, and that's, you know. That's where people that come from corporate America don't do great in startups because they're used to hiring people that are a big delta between them. Because in corporate America, if you hire someone at or above your level, they can be a threat. So they're trained to have a bit of a gap in their capability. But in a startup, you want, you know, I want to hire people that are smarter than me because, yeah, especially, especially like, you know, I don't code. So by or have a different vastly, they're smart and they have a different skill set than I do. And if I'm not delegating to them, I hired the wrong ones. That's the BASIC mentoring that I'm sure you've given a million times. It's either you or you don't have faith in that person. So therefore, if you have the wrong person in the seat, you might as well, why are you paying them if you're doing all the work?
Scott Eblin - 00:43:15:
Yeah, totally. The way I frame it. If I've got an audience full of 100 leaders, I'll ask them to raise their hand. How many of you have ever been called a go-to person? Everybody raises their hand, right? What do go-to people do? They get stuff done. That's the number one answer. And I always joke, it's a great thing to be until it's no longer a great thing to be.
Scot Wingo - 00:43:37:
Until you're rebooting the printer.
Scott Eblin - 00:43:38:
And it ceases to be a great thing because it doesn't scale, right? And so they need a team of go-to people. That's the shift from being the go-to person to building a team of go-to people, which is kind of what I hear you saying. Hire people that are smarter than you. How do you convince an ambitious, super smart... Entrepreneurial founder who's working 80 to 100 hours a week to let go of that lifestyle? And what do you want them doing with some of the time that they're not dedicating to working 80 to 100 hours a week?
Scot Wingo - 00:44:10:
So we're kind of competing with a Silicon Valley mindset, right? And, you know, it's like blitz scaling and you just, you know, you throw your whole life into this. I think in North Carolina, I think to be sustainable, you should be able to have the balance of a family and a family life and do this startup thing as well. And I've done that. You know, I would argue I'm not perfect at it. But a big benefit of being your own boss is you get to determine your hours. And, you know, so I haven't missed, I have $2 at volleyball and a son that did baseball. I maybe missed one or two volleyball things and maybe a baseball game due to like a trade show I kind of had to go to. But, you know, I haven't missed any of those important life events. And, you know, so I've tried to do like... Because I have control of my schedule, I can carve off 4 to 9 p.m., for family time, and then I can work around that. Now, it means I have to do a crazy schedule. That's okay because I get to, it's worth it because I get to do that stuff.
Scott Eblin - 00:45:11:
So how long ago did you figure that out, that four to nine is going to be family time?
Scot Wingo - 00:45:17:
Uh, when I was 30. Yeah. So right, right around when I had little kids and they kind of got out of, you know, out of toddler mode.
Scott Eblin - 00:45:25:
And I don't know exactly how old you are. I'm going to guess over 50.
Scot Wingo - 00:45:30:
56, yep.
Scott Eblin - 00:45:31:
56. Okay, so 26 years later, you're still doing the four to nine family time thing? Your kids are a lot older, right? So what do you guys do together as a family between four and nine?
Scot Wingo - 00:45:44:
So I have two out of the nest and one in. Yeah, we usually try to have a family dinner. So that's kind of a good time to be around the table and talk about the day. Usually watch a sporting event. My daughter loves to do puzzles, so we do a lot of puzzles, board games. More nerdy stuff.
Scott Eblin - 00:46:06:
I love that. Yeah. So then you're going to go back to work at nine and stay up until what time?
Scot Wingo - 00:46:13:
Depends, usually 11, 12. If I'm kind of under some kind of a serious deadline, I'll kind of, I can go for pretty long periods. And I know this isn't healthy, so this is part of the trade-off without a lot of sleep. So, yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:46:29:
Yeah, so that raises the word stamina in my mind, and it sounds like you've got a lot of it. What kind of routines help you sustain that stamina, both physically and mentally? That you need to get so much done because, you know, you're just doing so much across such a range of spaces. Like how do you where does your stamina come from what are you doing to keep that at a high level?
Scot Wingo - 00:46:55:
Yeah, I don't... I don't know the answer to that. Like my dad worked crazier than I do. So I feel like he was nuts. And then I've been able to just kind of keep plugging away.
Scott Eblin - 00:47:06:
Yeah.
Scot Wingo - 00:47:07:
I don't know. I just seem to have a lot of energy.
Scott Eblin - 00:47:09:
It's a genetic advantage for you, it sounds like.
Scot Wingo - 00:47:12:
There is coffee. And yeah, so caffeine definitely plays a role.
Scott Eblin - 00:47:15:
So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Any routines that you follow? And I'm particularly interested in the mental domain with you. Physical, mental, relational, spiritual routines that you follow that you think have helped you? A better entrepreneur, a better dad, a better spouse. Just better friend. I mean, just any routines that have been particularly important to you over the years and showing up at your best in any particular arena.
Scot Wingo - 00:47:45:
Yeah, because I can control my schedule. I do make time for if a friend has something they need or something, I'll just go do that thing. I don't really work weekends, so that's kind of a pretty gated off time. So that's a good decompress. I've always loved podcasts, so I'll use that as a time. I'll be putzing around in the backyard and have a... And I try to keep that stuff at a pretty high level kind of thing. So something that's kind of thought-provoking. Usually in one of the areas I'm interested in right now, a lot of AI podcasts and that kind of stuff. But I'll also mix in podcasts like yours. So I'm always trying to think about different leadership things, company organizations. I find that interesting. So I just try to keep myself. I'm definitely on this lifelong learning path. So I feel like if I don't learn two or three things a day, I haven't compounded that. So I need to, even on the weekends, I'll do a fair amount of that.
Scott Eblin - 00:48:37:
Yeah, the word that has come to my mind in talking with you, Scot, is polymath. Familiar with that word? I mean, it's like somebody who's just like got a lot of horsepower in a lot of different areas. That seems to be you.
Scot Wingo - 00:48:51:
Yeah. This is kind of part of the fun, you know. For a while, I was very myopic, so I'm very good at going deep on a company, but then it was hard to go into other things. That is where I've been challenging myself to do the tweener Fund and do operational stuff at the same time. And it was very, very hard at first to do the context shift because I was so used to kind of like, in my mind, everything's a computer. Like I had all the information like loaded and then like I'd have to load in another set. But I've gotten better at that context switch. That's been hard to kind of work. That was a whole new thing
Scott Eblin - 00:49:20:
I've worked on for a while. That's a really great point. I mean, I usually say it's like shifting gears, but the context shift. What's your trick on that? How do you flip the switch to make the context shift? Cleanly.
Scot Wingo - 00:49:33:
Because I've taken a lot of computer engineering classes, I use that metaphor. So I clear the memory and I'm like, all right. I'm not thinking about ReFiBuy or Tweener, right now. Now I'm going to talk to an entrepreneur. I just talked to one that, you know, and I kind of like remind myself of everything I know about that company. And then when I get in the conversation, I'm kind of warmed up about it. I used to go into it cold and I felt like I was always kind of behind the eight ball and be like, wait, what are we talking about here?
Scott Eblin - 00:49:58:
Yeah, yeah.
Scot Wingo - 00:49:58:
So, and maybe I'll do like a quick little reading of my notes on it or something, or just push around, just like a way to like load the memory into my brain and like switch into that mode.
Scott Eblin - 00:50:11:
What are you doing to clear the memory? I'm fascinated by that.
Scot Wingo - 00:50:16:
In my mind, I just like clear it.
Scott Eblin - 00:50:18:
Yeah.
Scot Wingo - 00:50:19:
I pull a lever. I'm like flush.
Scott Eblin - 00:50:21:
It's not like severance where you're on a special elevator. It is like that. Your enemy comes out. Yeah.
Scot Wingo - 00:50:27:
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Eblin - 00:50:28:
Okay. A couple of questions as we wrap. I'm really struck. The way you've framed things like the four to nine thing. I love, I love that, you know, that you've been so intentional about carving out that five hours a day for family. And You sound to me like you've got what I call an operating rhythm. A lot of people talk about work-life balance, which I actually hate that term because it's like this ephemeral goal. Like, okay, now I'm balanced, then you get hit and you're not balanced anymore. Operating rhythm kind of flows a little bit easier. What's your one best piece of advice for... Any aspiring founder or business leader in general about how to find that operating rhythm that enables them to build their company while still having a life. Generating positive outcomes elsewhere at home. You know, you've given great examples at home. You've really invested in this Triangle tweener Fund and the Research Triangle. What's your one key piece of advice about developing a personal operating rhythm that allows you to play across? Successfully across so many arenas.
Scot Wingo - 00:51:36:
Yeah, I don't know how I started this, but I always take that period between Christmas and New Year's. It's like a quiet period. It's the only quiet period in Startup Plan. And I use it for a lot of reflection and planning the next year. And then, you know, so I've been doing that for 30 years. So there's a, and then there is when I think about how I'm using my time, what I can do better. A new, I always try to like make an adjustment so I can be more efficient. So I'm always trying to like challenge myself to be more efficient with my time. And then, you know, the other thing I would tell founders and folks that are younger is if you do that over, and you've probably got some habits like this too, these habits compound just like interest. And, you know, every year for 30 years, I've been trying to like turn the dial like a little tiny bit, but it starts to have a logarithmic approach to it.
Scott Eblin - 00:52:28:
Yeah.
Scot Wingo - 00:52:28:
So, at some point, I have all these tools and little systems in place where I can do a lot of work compared to, you know, what I could do 30 years ago.
Scott Eblin - 00:52:37:
Totally.
Scot Wingo - 00:52:37:
Now, technology has been a super, you know, so like you, I'm keeping up. And that makes me obsessed with, all right, I need to learn what these AI things are because that could be, you know, that could be my thought partner on this. And that could make me better at writing and this, that, and the other. So, yeah. You probably have something somewhere,
Scott Eblin - 00:52:53:
I would imagine. A routine of planning like that, yeah. My wife and I have this framework that I've shared with tons of clients and have written a lot about in my books, the Life GPS. A one pager that, you ask and answer three questions for yourself. How am I at my best? Like what are the words that describe me at that state? What are the routines? I mentioned those already. Physical, mental, relational, and spiritual that enable me to be at my best. And then what outcomes would I hope or expect to see in three big arenas, which we've also talked about here, home, work, and community. We've been having an annual retreat usually in October or November. For 25 plus years now.
Scot Wingo - 00:53:31:
Nice.
Scott Eblin - 00:53:32:
Where we, you know, we don't spend the entire weekend doing it because we're not that nerdy, but, you know, we dedicate some serious time to re... Revisiting that every year and adjusting it as we go. And it's, like you said, it's... It's logarithmic, right? One of my favorite ideas is progress comes incrementally then suddenly. You know, it's like... If you keep at it, sometimes you don't see that you're actually making progress because it's just like infinitesimal. But it's the consistency over time. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, wow, how did I get to here? Well, it's because you were consistent and working. Week in and week out, right? So my last question, kind of fun, and you mentioned podcast a minute ago. You're a podcast guy. I am too. What's been in your ears lately? Like what are you listening to that's energizing you or inspiring you or shaping your thinking?
Scot Wingo - 00:54:23:
I kind of zip around by the guests, and I really like Perplexity. Have you played around with Perplexity? It's another AI search tool. It's kind of like Google meets ChatGPT. ChatGPT now has a web search, but their CEO is really good at framing things. So I've been kind of like digesting his back catalog right now. His name is Aravind.
Scott Eblin - 00:54:47:
What's his name if people want to search for him? What's his name?
Scot Wingo - 00:54:50:
I'm probably going to get this wrong. Aravind Srinivas. So an Indian fellow.
Scott Eblin - 00:54:54:
Well, I'm going to have a hard time spelling that.
Scot Wingo - 00:54:56:
I'll email it to you.
Scott Eblin - 00:54:58:
Okay, we'll put it in the show notes. Awesome.
Scot Wingo - 00:54:59:
Yeah, Perplexity. That's all they have to search for.
Scott Eblin - 00:55:02:
Awesome. Yeah. So, okay, we'll listen to Aravind from Perplexity. I'll check that out. And speaking of podcasts, we haven't really mentioned yours specifically. Plug your podcast, please.
Scot Wingo - 00:55:15:
Yeah, so if you're interested in this topic of the Triangle Tweeners, we talk about various startup topics on Triangle Tweener Fund talks. So we do deep interviews with founders and talk about topical information.
Scott Eblin - 00:55:28:
Awesome. Check it out then. Scot Wingo, thank you for being such a fabulous early guest on Best Ever. I really appreciate it. And I've learned so much from you just in this 46 minutes that we've been talking. As advertised, you are a brilliant person and just have accomplished so much. So thank you for sharing. Your experience and your wisdom with me and with the folks listening.
Scot Wingo - 00:55:53:
Thanks Scott, I always use a little, it's a humbling thing to be a founder. So I just can use a little boost to the ego. So I appreciate that. And I look forward to listening to your catalog when it drops.
Scott Eblin - 00:56:04:
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Look forward to the next conversation with you. Thanks, Scot.
Scot Wingo - 00:56:08:
All right. Bye.
Scott Eblin - 00:56:15:
So, coachable moments that land with me from Scot Wingo that I think are worth thinking about and hopefully putting to work in your world. Three things. First thing, the value of listening. Scot said several times, both in relation to himself and in relation to the founders that he mentors and coaches through his work at the Triangle Tweener Fund. How important it is to listen. You know, his learning strategy over the years, and you don't have to listen yourself for very long to that interview to understand just how bright and intellectually quick Scot is. There's a lot of brainpower with Scot, right? But he has enhanced that enormously through his curiosity, and that curiosity is fueled by his... Interest in listening, you know? So that's one thing. And the founders that he works with, listening kind of in the broadest sense, like listening to advice from others, listening in some fashion to the data, you know, to the information that's coming in that may conflict with their original point of view. And the best ones he reminded us are the ones that have their ego in a healthy enough place. That they're willing to change their mind when the data tells them they need to change their mind. That relates to listening because listening at the end of the day is really about having your ego in a healthy enough place that you can keep an open mind, that you're curious enough to say, what am I missing? Please talk with me about this and then take that information and put it to work. So maybe, in the put-it-the-practice space on listening, think a little bit about... What's the quality of your listening? How curious are you really? And what would it take to be 10% more curious this week in the way you listen? Second big topic for Scot that I think is so important to any leader who wants to grow their organization and grow themselves at the same time, whether you're the founder of a startup or a senior executive in a large corporation. Is surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you, because that's the only way you build what I referred to in the interview. As a team of go-to people. And that's the only way you scale yourself and scale your organization is making that shift from being the go-to person, the person has to do it all and know it all, to... Building, recruiting, coaching, developing. A team of people who ideally are smarter than you and become your team of go-to people. That's how you scale it. And then finally, the third big theme in the coachable moment space for me from Scot. Is the word would be intention. And the level of intention he has around his own personal operating rhythm And how really, frankly, mature he was at roughly age 30 to say, okay, I've got young kids. I want to be there for the big events in their life. I want to get to know them. I want them to know me. And therefore, I'm going to not work from 4 p.m. When my kids get out of school to 9 p.m., probably when they go to bed when they're young. Five hours a day, I'm not working. If I need to go back to work after 9 o'clock, I'm going to do that. But he's continued that practice well into his kids. I guess, 20s at this point and well into his own 50s. He's been doing that for at least 20 years, 25 years, if you do the math. So that level of intention, his intentionality around not working on the weekends and leaving that space free. And this is a guy who, as we talked about, has started and sold three different companies. He's on the board of two of the five companies he's founded. He's got a new thing in the works. He's been a very successful guy by anybody's definition, any standard you want to use. Scot Wingo has been very successful. And I think, honestly, it kind of puts the lie to the big idea or the big falsity, I think. And he referenced Silicon Valley. That you've got to be in founder mode all the time and working 80 to 100 hours a week. And if you're not doing that, not in beast mode, then you're not like the real deal. He's clearly the real deal, and he chose a different way to do it. And it all comes down to intention. Around what do I want for my life, not just my work life, but my life at home and my life in my broader community. And what... Do I need to do to set up an operating rhythm? That enables me check all the boxes and all the arenas of my life and not just my life at work. So we're thinking about what do you need to be intentional about? And, uh, What kind of big rocks do you need to have in your calendar schedule-wise to honor those intentions? If you found today's conversation valuable, be sure to follow Best Ever on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review and a comment on this episode. I want to know what's landing with you and your engagement really helps others discover the show. And if you're looking for more on how self-management fuels lasting leadership impact, connect with me through eblingroup.com. I've learned it takes a village to make a podcast. Thanks to executive producer Cee Cee Huffman and editor Mark Meyer, both of Wavestream Media. And thanks to my other team members, Lindsay Russell, Mary Motes, Sophia Shum, and Diane Eblin. Best Ever is a production of the Eblin Group. Thanks for listening to Best Ever. And until next time, keep taking those small steps that lead to your Best Ever outcomes.