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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 (02:28.486)
Cool. All right. Welcome back to the Founders Journey podcast. Actually, a rare live session today, becoming less rare, but these are always way more fun. With our guest today, Steve Gilman. Steve is...
CEO and founder of a company called One Range. We're down in New York City actually today. So based down here. I kid about Steve and you'll find this out in a second. If you remember, this probably dates me a little bit, but if you remember the old Dos Equis commercial, the most interesting man on the planet, that is Steve Gilman. You'll understand why. Great journey as a founder, really interesting stuff. So we're gonna get into that today on this episode. And Peter.
Welcome back. I know we've had a few recordings this week. You had to actually fly solo yesterday. So it was a big, it was a big day for Peter yesterday.
Peter Dean (03:30.734)
Yeah, I didn't do the intro like you do. I'm not practice like that. But I did have a great conversation yesterday while you were on a plane you weren't supposed to be on at the time.
Greg Moran (03:43.334)
I was on a plane I was supposed to be on, I just wasn't still supposed to be on it.
Peter Dean (03:47.406)
Right, exactly. You weren't supposed to be on the plane at that time. But it was fun. But I'm looking forward to this. And I am not in New York today, as you'll see if you're on YouTube.
Greg Moran (03:58.63)
Got it. So, Steve, just want to start off like this, CEO, founder of a company called OneRange, kind of take us back. You've had a real journey as a founder. Tell us about kind of how you got to where you are today. Take us back a little bit because I know there's been a few interesting stops along the way. Yeah, thanks. Excited to be here, Greg, Peter. Thanks for having me on the show. So I guess it starts with kind of a professional career that has a bit of...
some non -traditional winding paths to it. So I was a student athlete in college. I came out and my first role was professional baseball. I was a closing pitcher in the Tigers organization after being drafted right after graduation. You can argue I didn't have a job for the first three years because I was doing that. I was playing a game, but it was competitive. I did a couple odd jobs in off season. Worked mostly as a engineer with Johnson & Johnson as a contractor.
spent some time more or less in the corporate world where it was safe so that when I went back to the professional season, I had some money saved up because you certainly don't make any in the minors. After a few injuries and a little bit of boredom, I decided to go on to my next step in my career. So at the age of 24, 25, I went to the Department of Defense. I worked as an intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency and wanted to get involved in something larger than what was on the field or.
that I had studied for in college, spent about three, four years doing that, served overseas as a diplomat, had some really great experiences marrying my engineering background with kind of a passion for national security. and then I said, what's next? I went back to business school to get the tools and the trades I didn't have necessarily from undergrad. And I got addicted to hanging out with startups. So I went to school here in.
New York Columbia Business School and every Friday we have off. So Thursday is the big day before the weekend. Friday you get to explore or do group projects or what have you. Every Friday I spent my time with a group in New York. Early days of SeatGeek when they were inviting to the office, the early days of some really great companies and I just started getting more and more energy towards that. So throughout my business school career the two years I spent less time
Greg Moran (06:19.75)
interviewing for McKinsey, which is what I thought I wanted to do with my life and more time just getting the energy of engineers and passionate founders and people trying to do something a little bit different. Coming out of business school, day after graduation, I called up the corporate job that I had taken months earlier. I said, I'm not coming. And I started a company with a co -founder out of Texas and built that company. And that's where I started my entrepreneurial career. So the only thing that kind of satisfied my thirst for
creativity and continuous learning and making an impact on the world was entrepreneurship. I just didn't know it until I was about 30 years old. And at that point I had enough confidence with my skills that it wasn't a huge risk to start at that point in my life. And so built my first company Blockparty started in 2015. And since then I've been an entrepreneur. One range is about two, two and a half years old. And started that with my co -founder and CTO, Hutan, who had an equally interesting winding path of starting companies.
but we came together here in New York to build this one and we're proud of it. Before we get into one range, we're going to get there in a second. What block, just real quick, what did Block Party do? What was the outcome there? Yeah. So Block Party is... Sounds like a fun business, by the way. It is a fun business. It married my hobby. So I talked about this in the early days. I love tailgating.
Peter Dean (07:46.286)
Hahaha!
Greg Moran (07:46.95)
tailgating like division one footballs, not going to a big school. The tailgating for me was going out to Penn State and a lot of big schools that my friends went to. I just thought it was an incredibly genuine experience. It's here in 2024, it's one of the only places you put down your phone and just enjoy time with other people, right? Comradery around your team, the rival team, what's going to be happening. And so we actually built a live event business that elevated hospitality across.
Division one football tailgating ended up being professional as well. And then other live events, which includes live music. And it so happens that live music season, at least the outdoor season that you find in the amphitheaters is the exact season that the football schedule is not. And the football schedule is the exact season that the music is not. So our goal was to go in and elevate hospitality, make it turnkey for folks that love those pregame, postgame, pre -band experiences.
And we built that. You know, I mentioned I quit the corporate job I was getting out of. I actually accepted a job with IBM in their general management leadership development program, very corporate path, really good for the resume. And I told them I wasn't coming, but only after selling about half million dollars of contracts before I left school. So I'm an engineer by trade, pretty risk adverse. And I begged IBM to keep the job open for the next six months in case this startup didn't work out. It did work out.
Peter Dean (09:10.894)
How did that go? What did they say? What did they say when you asked that?
Greg Moran (09:14.918)
Business schools have an office that's in charge of helping with recruiting. It's a big matter. So I had to apologize. I sent a note to the CEO of IBM for near a meeting at that time. I had to apologize profusely to everyone that recruited me, gave me a job offer and had me accept it. And then I had to go and apologize to Columbia Business School, the Career Management Center and write another letter and say, sorry, you're reneging on an opportunity.
And what you did is you took someone else's spot, right? So in this program, there's 10 people globally. One comes from our school almost every year. And I took someone else's spot because I wasn't the only person. I took two spots.
Peter Dean (09:44.142)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (09:50.574)
You took the one spot. And then you said, yeah, you know what? I actually don't want to do this.
Greg Moran (09:59.174)
Now the trick of the trade, it doesn't happen often, but if you sign up with a consulting firm or accounting firm, you get your bonus upfront. IBM did not give me a bonus until I started, which was the next fall. Anyway, I was a diplomat in my past career, right? So I understood the implication and IBM was great. They actually said, look, it's not like you were looking for another job or interviewing after you took our job.
you were actually just chasing a passion. And the reason we recruited you is because we feel you're up, you're entrepreneur, right? Like we want our general managers head of a business line to be entrepreneurs. So they actually wrote an article. They said, sorry, we can't hold your spot, but like no harm, no foul. This is actually a good thing for everyone. And we wish you the best of luck. And I still hold those relationships today. That's awesome. Yeah.
Peter Dean (10:43.598)
Interesting. That's cool. So yeah, I won't get into it. What like are they really looking for an entrepreneur? Like really? They think they are like IBM. We want entrepreneurs like I don't know if that's what you want. Like really?
Greg Moran (10:51.43)
Laughter
Greg Moran (10:55.846)
Right. They, intrapreneur is the corporate thing. We want you to own a P and L and pretend to be an owner, but you only have so many options in the company. So you're never going to feel the rewards, especially a larger company. So while they take care of you, yeah, the, the, the folks that want to get out of the corporate world are steering clear of companies like IBM just.
Peter Dean (11:03.598)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (11:09.006)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (11:21.198)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (11:23.558)
Yeah, knowing there's something more out there. I love the term. I love the term entrepreneur, right? Because there's no bigger bullshit term on the planet. Like the it's it's it's just so funny. Like, OK, we want you to be an entrepreneur, but we're going to pay your benefits, your salary. You're like, you've got all of this stuff coming from this large company, right? But we want you to be entrepreneurial. Well, it's the that's exactly the definition of not entrepreneurial, right? But it is it's always common.
Peter Dean (11:25.886)
I know.
Peter Dean (11:36.494)
Yeah, you're good.
Greg Moran (11:51.142)
when your company's talking about. And I'm sure we'll get into it with some of the things that happen in startups, but when someone brands themselves as an intrapreneur, right? Like, what does that mean in a corporate world? I'm just not responding to my boss within the next three hours because I think there's something more important. Right. It's still showing up to a place of comfort and trying to do your best work, but there's no feeling. And I can confidently tell you this after eight years of being a startup founder.
There's no feeling like having your back against the wall or having complete ownership where you're the last person on this earth that cares as much as you do to build a business. Right. That just functionally can't happen.
Peter Dean (12:22.574)
I think we're definitely going to talk about that because there's a big difference. That's a good segue. What passion led you to OneRange? And just tell us what OneRange is too, but then go back to that passion because you just flashed how you use that to kind of get through all the hard things.
Greg Moran (12:48.294)
Yeah. So, one range is an intelligent upskilling marketplace. we basically help companies remove the barriers to invest in their employees. All right. And we do it through upskilling, building new skills, something that's very much demanded by employees that companies haven't had the software tools to get right. and so we work with a lot of tech companies, agencies, consultancies across the globe to make sure that every dollar they deploy to an employee's upskilling.
gets used as transparent and people get what they need so that they can help the company, the business, right? And it's a new age kind of platform. We'll get into it more, but it's a marketplace vice a bundled subscription, which has traditionally been used for professional development. The passion for this, and I'll tie a little bit of, right? Cause there's always, there's two of us that started the company, right? And so all the passions in the world come together, but when you find the right person, it kind of clicks. So.
Two things kind of happened in my past that when I was looking to start another company, put it together very clearly for me that this was a huge issue and something we could have a big impact on. The first is when I was with the Department of Defense, I was a really good employee, high potential, great marks, mission driven, all that stuff. So they wanted to invest in me. They had a great program, tuition reimbursement. They sent me to...
a part -time school over two years, at night, like two and a half years to get a master's in management. It was kind of like a project management degree, but you get some of the accounting corporate finance stuff that I, that I lacked. there was lots of issues with the program. Right. One, you didn't get to choose where you went to school. So they said, you're going here and you're doing it remote. Two, there was so many administration headaches where I had to front money.
Peter Dean (14:20.334)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (14:41.318)
where people that had it on paper would shift jobs and they wouldn't have records for it anymore. So every semester over the 10 semesters I was there was a fight to get it paid. And because it wasn't a school or a program of exactly my choice, I was kind of given two options. It wasn't something I was passionate enough to invest in myself. In other words, I would not pay for this degree. I don't list it on LinkedIn, by the way, because all it did was get me interested in learning.
Peter Dean (15:00.077)
Mm -hmm.
Peter Dean (15:08.974)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (15:09.702)
more about business elsewhere and investing in myself. So first thing I saw was as an employee, my company's trying to invest in me. They're going to spend a lot of money, but there's headaches. It was a turnoff and it wasn't what I wanted. Right. Cool. So there's issues with that. Next, I'm running my company Blockparty and we have probably 30, 40 full -time employees. And one of my best employees comes up to me. She was a marketing manager and said, Hey, I researched a school. I'd love to go to.
get, take this one class, completely related to her job. It was at SMU. We were down in Dallas. Fantastic. I'm a co -founder of the company, right? I can, I can do whatever I want. I think investing in your people's fantastic. So I say, message your manager, send him all the information, CC the controller, make sure there's enough money at the time of funding, get into the class, put it on your personal card. When you get an A or B, go ahead and send your boss. His name was Aaron. Right.
Peter Dean (15:40.91)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (16:08.71)
another note, CC me, I'll make sure it gets reimbursed right away. That was a company policy that I had seen before that I made up on the spot because I wanted her to get the course. That is a slog of administration. It's a four months of having a personal reimbursement out, which is not a small amount for someone. And guess what? She never took the course, right? She left that conversation saying, I appreciate it. I have a job to do. And she did get promoted and she was fantastic. But I go back to that day.
Peter Dean (16:13.23)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (16:21.422)
Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Moran (16:38.374)
Say like, what if I had a better answer? What if there was a tech solution that not only made it easy for me and for her. So as an operator and an owner, I saw that there was a burden and maybe the tuition reimbursement I experienced in the past is a function of not having the right technology in kind of a older industry. What if we could just layer that in that made sense? And you know, the capstone of it all when I decided I want to start a new company, I wanted to work with the best co -founder and CTO I know, Hutan.
And he had a similar experience with tuition reimbursement. He'd Martin paid for his Columbia masters. It's not a cheat. But they had that policy that I told Morgan about put it on your personal card. Right. Go ahead and we'll reimburse you. By the way, who tends never got less than an A computer science course. Right. So he was literally waiting for reimbursement through all this. And guess what? He left to become an entrepreneur because that's where you learn the most. Right. So we got together. We said, this is a huge issue. The technology and the data is now here for us to start building this the right way.
Peter Dean (17:07.726)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (17:36.166)
And if we can align companies, employees, and even providers, Holy cow. Like we're solving a lot of problems that people just didn't know they have. And we inherently don't believe there's a learning motivation issue. We believe there's a data and technology issue. And that's, so that's what we're solving. Right. And I think, you know, it's interesting, right? Because you look at like, one of the things you hear HR departments, this, this disconnect within a company. And then you hear the HR department, right? Of like employees, especially.
Peter Dean (17:41.39)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (18:04.966)
sort of younger generation employees will say, there's no development resources here. I'm not getting the support I need to advance my career. I'm not getting these things. Then you talk to an HR department and the HR department is saying, what are you talking about? There's all of these things. It's that misalignment. One, it's a perception misalignment. And two, it's because it's giant pain in the ass. You're sticking 50 grand on your credit card. You know, there's...
There's all of these things that just don't make any sense for a standard employee to be able to.
Peter Dean (18:33.55)
exactly what your parents told you not to do.
Greg Moran (18:40.422)
Right. Right. That's right. Run up a huge credit card. Hey, my company is paying for a degree, right? It's going to be $12 ,000 a semester. I'm going to put it on a card that I don't really have much more space on and then hope I get reimbursed. And is the company really investing in you? Especially if you're working there during that time, right? So not only do you have a financial burden, is that really an investment if they need to know that you have an A at the end of the class? So something else has to examine. Yeah. The thing I love about this,
Peter Dean (18:55.758)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (19:00.846)
Yeah, that's a lot of pressure.
Greg Moran (19:09.542)
And just as a, just kind of full disclosure, I'm an investor in one range. And the thing, the thing that I love about this and what really caught, caught my interest in, you know, at Evergreen Mountain, our, our venture fund is, I mean, it's, it's that problem is universal, right? That problem that you're trying to solve of just being able to put tools in the hands of an individual to say, own your own development, right?
Peter Dean (19:31.502)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (19:35.782)
The company will reimburse, but we're going to make it super easy to be able to do this. We'll get you paid upfront. You don't get to have companies funded upfront and do these things. But ultimately it's about the individual accountability for owning their own development. And I think that's a fundamental, especially fundamental when you start to see like move to freelancers and things like that. And the way that the, the way that the labor market is shifting at a global level. Inherently, you're going to find that top talent is always searching for new learning tools. Right. Right. And they may be trying to do it.
Peter Dean (19:50.798)
Mm -hmm.
Peter Dean (20:01.358)
Yep.
Greg Moran (20:03.75)
for free, right? Because the internet's out there, they may be paying for it themselves. They may be speaking up and asking their manager for it, where 95 % of people wouldn't at their company. There's two kind of things that we see don't hit the mark and we know it's an old industry. One, misalignment with HR, right? Here's all the tools you ever want, deploy it to employees and employees don't use it. So the KPIs are off from what they're being sold on and what's actually happening.
Peter Dean (20:20.43)
Mm -hmm.
Peter Dean (20:28.878)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (20:33.446)
The other thing is, tuition and reimbursement, especially in the eyes of the IRS or any kind of government regulation, the tax -free ability for a company to reimburse somebody for skills necessary to the job, no one needs to use the word tuition anymore. We do, because it's in policies. You don't need to go back to grad school to learn skills that you need in your job right now. So we specifically, yes, we had issues with going back to graduate programs. We specifically, business model -wise,
target on what is more professional development, short form courses that come with certificates, live coaching, cohort based learning, conferences. These are things that companies already do that aren't in the hands of HR. So imagine taking all the dollars flowing out to learn the skills that people get, but now making HR the hero so they can go back to the company and say, this is how we're actually doing it, right? We don't need all these subscriptions. We don't need to try to build it in -house. And with a soft provider market, it just makes it easy to make a tech platform.
Peter Dean (21:10.158)
Yep, exactly.
Greg Moran (21:31.238)
Yeah, but that's it. Like the employees matter and the HR folks and people are folks that know the employee matters who get us first. Yep, absolutely. So I want to go back to your entrepreneurial career for a second, right? So what? You've had multiple businesses now. Think about it reflecting back. What are the biggest mistakes you've made along the way they share with other founders? Yeah, I think. Every big mistake and I.
Peter Dean (21:36.142)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (22:02.278)
A lot of it has to go for recruiting and hiring, right? And you'll get tons of advice in this throughout the path from lawyers, from other professionals, from other founders. Recruiting is really hard. And you're able to spot it as someone who's not involved in it day to day, because there's so many emotions tied to it. So if a founder friend came up to me and said, this employee's not working out, here's the behavioral patterns, this is what it looks like, this is the drag on the company, you're able to spot it pretty quick.
Peter Dean (22:27.662)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (22:31.782)
If you're in the situation and you hire someone that you believe in or that you need at the moment, it's a tougher situation to get out of, to be fair to you and that person. So one of the bigger issues that we've had, maybe not business impact wise, but gut wrenching wise, right? It hasn't been about the money or the sale or losing a strategic opportunity. It has to do with the people management. And so I hired a really smart individual that was really close. Resume was off the charts.
I put this person in charge of a lot of people that I trusted and worked with for years and it didn't work out. He wasn't the right fit. That is my issue. But removing that person, getting someone else in that makes sense. I just waited too long. And too long, now I can sniff it out in like six weeks of someone being there. Too long was like six months. And the drag on six months for a company that's only around for five years before exit, that's a huge deal. Absolutely. Yeah.
Peter Dean (23:27.758)
Yeah, Greg, Greg, that that's really fast compared to what I know about you. Yeah, six months is quick, man.
Greg Moran (23:31.718)
I also love -
Greg Moran (23:37.254)
Wait, what's that? Yeah, I prefer to actually wait around for like six years before making decisions like that.
Peter Dean (23:40.493)
No, because this is super important. You had two things. I think one is it's so hard because you like the founders are passionate. You obviously are. You care about the people. You want them to be on your journey. You want to inspire them. They're inspired when they show up and then it doesn't work out. That's such a hard thing to deal with. Like that is not. It's not trivial. You know, it really isn't.
Greg Moran (24:11.43)
No, it's not. And you know, one of the things, and Peter's busting on me because I'm like horrible at ever.
Peter Dean (24:13.534)
Because he loves the people so much he can't deal with it.
Greg Moran (24:20.774)
You know the thing is and you just hit on a really important point It's so much easier when people outside the company are looking at it And what are you doing like that dude is right like that is just not working right, but when you're in it It's so easy to just make the excuses for now. No. No, it's not it's not them. It's me It's I haven't given the proper destruction instructions. I haven't trained. I haven't you know done whatever and you know, I
Peter Dean (24:25.006)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (24:50.342)
I'm a huge, obviously, proponent of learning and development and onboarding and training and doing all the things you're supposed to do. But the bottom line is, if I'm honest about it, I can probably sniff it out in six hours, but it will take me six years to do something. And I think that's a common thing among founders. We tend to be so optimistic in our sort of outlook toward the world and toward people. You have to be. It's hard to get in those situations.
Peter Dean (25:05.934)
Yeah, it's.
Peter Dean (25:14.51)
Yes.
Greg Moran (25:20.262)
Let's look at the dynamic of hiring someone and putting them in a place higher than a lot of people that you trust and work with for years. Right. So say this person's in charge of the marketing department. You've worked with these people for years. You trust them even if they have less experience in the world. You put that person in charge. No one from that marketing team is going to come up to you and say, hey, I think this is a bad fit. Right. You did a bad job interviewing. You're too close to this person to understand that it's not going to work out. Yeah. A co -founder will do that. So when I say six months,
Peter Dean (25:24.078)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (25:49.382)
That's after like, let's change out managers. Let's change roles. Let's talk to the clients to see if they have the right expectations. Let's try to talk to our team more to see if they'll divulge if things are going wrong. But it's always the co -founder that says, great, like it's a drag on the business. We need to look at this clearly and let me support you through getting rid of this person. Right? Because a lot of times it comes down to, you don't want that day to come where you have to let someone go.
Peter Dean (25:55.47)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (26:13.678)
Yeah.
Yep. It's like sleepless nights, man. It really is. Like...
Greg Moran (26:17.254)
even if you know for them, they need to move on too, right? They're not successful there. That's when you look at it. It's never about the finances and the traditional business stuff on paper. I think it's always about the people management. Right. Cause it's hard to align, but a co -founder with an equal level, equal incentive in the business should be able to step in and say, man, we should have done this three months ago. I'll support you and let's do this now. Yeah. And.
Peter Dean (26:40.846)
So Steve, just a question, was this a friend of yours, someone you knew before? Was this a friend or someone that you had known that...
Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Moran (26:50.534)
I went to business school with this individual. So we were friendly and a huge trust of people I went to business school with and he's doing well, but the role that we had and what we wanted to take charge of just wasn't a good fit. So he was excited because we were fast and growing. I was excited. He was a trusted ally and we had lots of friends, but it was interesting. A lot of the things that I didn't see came out after people
Peter Dean (27:03.15)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (27:17.606)
that I was closer to found out that he worked for us and didn't work out. And then they started saying, well, yeah, I can see that.
Peter Dean (27:19.47)
Is that not like the that happened and then the employees are like, well, you know, I mean, it's like after no one gives you the information. Why don't they give us the information? Like to your point, you made this point.
Greg Moran (27:28.454)
Yeah, that's a crazy one.
Yeah.
Because they can't, right? Because what are you really saying, right? Steve did a really crappy job of interviewing that guy. You really have bad decision -making skills. You may have just killed the company. I'm going to go over and blunch. That's right. And so this rings true entirely. And the team that we worked with for a while, I trust wholeheartedly, right? We're in the trenches with them.
Peter Dean (27:41.806)
Hahahaha
You were blind when you didn't see X.
Greg Moran (28:03.43)
Few things happened. Once we let this person go, everyone then came out and maybe over a drink or two or like a coffee chat, like, by the way, every time you left the room, his attitude changed. Right. Right. Cause he had, he had. So, and the other thing is the day of that we had worried about and we had talked to lawyers about and how to do this right. And the gut wrenching day, I co -founder went up to one of our employees and said, Hey, I'm going to give you a couple hundred bucks. Take everyone to Starbucks right now.
Peter Dean (28:05.07)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (28:10.894)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (28:33.19)
Right. And just keep them there for an hour. And this individual knew what was going to happen. It's we wanted a calm moment with the person that we had to tell on and they were excited. They grabbed like I thought it'd be like, we're going to lose a teammate. Like, right. Does it grab the card? Everybody let's go. We got a two hour break and we come back. Things are going to be different. And there was an air of like, thank God they're doing something. And that's what you feel like. Holy crap. I've been putting a team I trust in a bad situation for three to four months. Yeah.
Peter Dean (28:35.886)
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Dean (28:55.79)
Yeah. Yes. And it's not. Yeah, and I mean, it's not always the fault of this person, right? You know, and that's the hardest part that you have to bear as a as someone that hired him. You know, and you you actually said another thing that was really interesting. You said because I need them right now, I need this support right now. We've heard that before. Were you hire for this moment and you're not planning and then you're like, well,
Greg Moran (29:02.534)
my job, or even them of this. Yeah.
Peter Dean (29:24.846)
That moment's now gone. And this person's still here. Like, now what? Right?
Greg Moran (29:33.738)
Right, right. It's it's a you know, a while ago, I wrote a book this back a decade ago. And one of the things we talked about was what you know, it was the book is called Higher Fire and the Walking Dead. Somewhere there's probably a copy. So like somewhere that could be. But but we talked, you know, we talked in the book about this concept of like a desperation hire. Right. And nine times out of ten, that's where this comes. That's where all of these things come from.
Peter Dean (29:46.702)
I've got one for you.
Greg Moran (30:03.014)
It's that I needed this person, right? I needed this role filled. The worst hires I've ever made, the most catastrophic hires I've ever made have all resulted from that same thing. I need to fill the role. The person almost becomes secondary. You'd never articulate it like that, but that's what ends up happening. This was, I'll take it a step further and make it really tangible. We were doing a strategic deal.
Peter Dean (30:03.918)
right now.
Greg Moran (30:32.518)
with a large, large company. And so there had to be someone like a liaison in place that wasn't a co -founder. And we were a small team. And the idea was to act like little fish so that we're larger, right? So they feel like there's some stability there. And we actually flashed this person's resume in front of the coordinator for &A, like for that group. Here is the person that we're bringing in. Not only are we small and innovative, we have the ability to recruit great. This is the person that's coming on their onboarding in a month.
Peter Dean (30:42.35)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (31:02.182)
Yeah. And although we think the offer sign and all that stuff, that had to be done in our opinion to make that group feel comfortable. Now, when it comes to that person move on, there's also an essence of like, guess who's in charge of all the work that hasn't been going on or picking up the slack. Right now, 100 % percent of the time behind all the doors in my career, when we let someone go, there's a disappointing amount of work they haven't been doing. So it's actually not that hard.
Peter Dean (31:06.926)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (31:30.15)
Plus you get a cultural boost. When you remove someone like that, everybody steps into the role. But it is a fear. It says, man, if we could just get another month and then maybe situation will improve, we won't have to pick up the slack because we have tons of other stuff to do. So that's another thing that pushes along the line. You still think you need this person. It's not like they're not trying, right? It's very evident if someone's not trying. If someone's trying and they're just not filling the role, how much better could this be without them? Really hard to predict. So put yourself in that.
Peter Dean (31:34.446)
gonna break.
Peter Dean (31:41.038)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (31:44.782)
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Dean (31:54.254)
It's freaking hard, man. Yeah.
Greg Moran (31:59.846)
Absolutely. Put yourself in the role of the mentor advisor for a second, right? To another founder, another founder sitting here earlier in their career than you are. What's the advice you give them about this? Wow. Yeah. It's advice that one of my attorneys gave me early on from Dallas, which is hire slow and fire fast. Right? Use sounding boards. Use an attorney. Describe a situation.
Peter Dean (32:07.214)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (32:26.822)
and have them tell you, hey, I've seen this 400 times. This is what you need to do. And then bear the emotion. But hiring slow, one of the key portions of it. So you have to get ahead. You have to predict this stuff, not get in trouble with needing someone right now. And you'll see, there are ways to understand if someone's intrinsically motivated and has the skills before you hire them. Like they're going to invest all their time with you over the next few years and have options in the company.
Peter Dean (32:29.549)
Mm -hmm.
Peter Dean (32:37.518)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (32:53.318)
like they're going to be involved, you won't be able to get them away from projects or trying to give advice or asking for more updates before they're even interviewed or on board. So hiring slow is, is easy to say in practicality, you always have to be recruiting because chances are the next hire. Even if we haven't signaled it or interviewed for it, chances are we already know them because they're close to the company because they're motivated to do so. Yeah. Yeah. It's great advice. I mean, you've got to, and one of the things that I know I've talked about with founders a lot, I know Peter has done the same thing as you.
Peter Dean (32:56.398)
Mm -hmm.
Peter Dean (33:11.31)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (33:23.302)
You need to be recruiting that next level of talent, that next level of leadership well before you need them, right? If you're in that situation where you're trying to recruit the person because I need this person in here, I need this role filled, you're going to that desperation. Right? There's no... Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's it. You know, and that's... You're going to fall into that by having those conversations early, by...
Peter Dean (33:37.294)
You're desperate.
No matter what, you're desperate.
Greg Moran (33:53.734)
You know, we invest in early stage companies, right? So, you know, you think about like what the typical trajectory of a company, right? That zero to one million is one thing, one to five, five to, and you could argue with these numbers, but one to five, five to 10, 10 to 20 or 25 and so on. Each of those steps, this is a hard thing for a founder to get their head around usually. Each of those steps requires something completely different from leadership, which is why you often, when you get,
A company to say 10 million or certainly 20 million. You're very right. You very rarely see that original team still intact. Some of them.
Peter Dean (34:21.902)
Yeah, definitely 10. It'll start.
Peter Dean (34:28.526)
Like the skill set changes and this like jack of all trades person that can do all these things kind of loses a home sometimes. I've seen it multiple times.
Greg Moran (34:42.978)
I didn't have the wisdom in my first business and we're certainly not at the point where we're bringing on people that haven't been there early on to nude us for a while. But what I will say is that when it comes down to it,
You've heard of it, like when someone comes out of a corporate job. So if I took that job at IBM and then I was recruiting for a startup, I'm not a proven entity that I know what it's like to be an operator at a startup. Right. Right. A whole lot. So there's a lot of great talent that could be, but really hard to make the judgment call. Right. It's not like going from one corporation to another, where one startup to another, where you can talk to a founder and talk about that person, kind of the skill sets they have. The people that we recruit now usually have startup experience, startup from the beginning.
Peter Dean (35:11.278)
Yes.
Peter Dean (35:16.782)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (35:22.254)
Mm -hmm.
Peter Dean (35:30.862)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (35:34.406)
a failure if they weren't a founder, right? They're an operator. And they tend to understand that they're not going to be there through the longevity of a company. In other words, if you can have an honest conversation and say, Hey, you're great for this role. Here's how we think it's going to change, but we don't know everything. And by the way, our job's to scale ourselves so we can displace ourselves, but we're going to align your options and your compensation with that. Hopefully it's more open than like, Hey, when we're at 20 million, the job you're doing, you might not be a good fit. You may have to go find something else that makes sense.
Well, look, ideally, right, you get the person who, you know, says, hey, we're going to go do this. And, you know, we're going to take this thing to 20 million and then, you know, we're going to take it to IPO. And somebody's like, fuck that, dude. I don't like I'm here until 10. Right. And that's what I do. I'll get you to 10. I'm not the guy to get you, you know, beyond that point. I think that's that really ideal kind of fit to just know, here's what I do. Great. Right. Yeah.
Peter Dean (36:19.566)
Yeah, no.
Greg Moran (36:31.078)
You see it in founders too. You have great founders that go from zero to a dollar. Right. But they will have something set up at a dollar that will get that thing to a million. Right. Right. Or five or 10 or 25. But they have no interest in going beyond that. That's fantastic. Right. And you can't look at that. And I think it's easy to look from the outside as that's some kind of a failure. I didn't want to go beyond that. Or the person couldn't go beyond that point. Well, you know, first and...
Peter Dean (36:56.462)
It may not be a failure. Yeah. I mean, anyhow, you get good at it. You're good at that, you know, like, and if you know that, then that's a skill. And you're like, I'm here for the next one. And there's an ecosystem. We all know there's an ecosystem for people that are in this environment. They know, hey, that's a good person to help that situation out. And it'll be good to 10. And that may be three, four years, you know.
Greg Moran (37:00.71)
May not have won. You're right. And I'll say that. Yeah, go ahead Peter. Yeah. That's it.
Greg Moran (37:14.342)
That's right.
Greg Moran (37:27.334)
And by the way, this is why you have to trust mentors, advisor, and investors. Yeah. Because in my first business, we didn't know anything about ourselves. Right. You're just passionate. You're just running. Turns out after five years, my co -founder was the zero to one. Yeah. I mean, incredible everywhere beyond, but that's what he loved to live for. Yeah. And the company wouldn't be able to work without him and his passion and kind of sales. I was the person that really started to thrive when we started to build a team and a system. Yeah. Efficiency.
Peter Dean (37:29.198)
Yes.
Peter Dean (37:43.758)
Mm -hmm.
Peter Dean (37:47.726)
100%.
Peter Dean (37:52.462)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (37:57.126)
people management, some of these. But if you ask me, am I the best CEO for a company that's 250 people and above? I'd like to think so. I'll get an executive coach. I certainly have things on my resume that would indicate, but I don't honestly know. And so when we get to 250 and beyond, I'm going to look at people on close with that have seen this before to kind of get to it quicker. Like, Hey, this is going to be a fit or Hey, watch for the warning signs. If now look for a transition.
Peter Dean (38:16.462)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (38:24.774)
Only because I'm a second time founder, am I comfortable with that being a real scenario? Right. I wasn't in the beginning. In fact, most of the co -founders' strength we had in our first business was around letting go of a company when we were presented with a term sheet or holding onto it. And that is where we figured out in the flash of insight from the past five years came to like, we are these types that have these skills. Yep. And we weren't really looking forward to what was next. I'm going to just pivot a little bit because I think you're starting to go there a little bit.
Peter Dean (38:33.998)
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Dean (38:42.798)
Mm -hmm.
Peter Dean (38:52.942)
Yeah, we need this.
Greg Moran (38:54.95)
scariest day you've had as a family.
Peter Dean (38:56.526)
This happens to everyone, no matter what.
Greg Moran (38:58.438)
Yeah. All right.
Yep. So by nature, 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, right? I like to have my back against the wall. So anything I talk about in like the scariest moments are actually when I came out and did my best. And actually,
Peter Dean (39:26.446)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. You're good. Yeah.
Greg Moran (39:27.653)
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 up and do it myself. Right. That being said, scary issues. My last company, we were probably at that 35 full -time, 160 part -time around the country mark. And we were running out of money quick. Live event business cashflow is 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.
Peter Dean (39:46.766)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (39:56.966)
and we were closing an investment round and there was a 750K check that was signed for by a family office down in Houston. 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's 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,
Peter Dean (39:59.662)
Hmm?
Peter Dean (40:14.798)
Man.
Greg Moran (40:23.526)
We were pretty transparent about we needed some checks to come in. We were all celebrating when things got signed. We 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? 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 cherished, we're on vacation. They get to a bank and wire us even if we wanted to. Plus we were talking about good news.
Right? And everything we're good. So, back against the wall, we had to do layoffs. We had to ask people to take cuts. So these guys just ghosted you. They didn't, this isn't like, and then showed up the next day. no, no, no. There was no communication beyond this. Signed.
Peter Dean (41:00.462)
You didn't...
Peter Dean (41:05.198)
That was it, last time we talked to him.
Greg Moran (41:11.526)
Yeah, give us the thing to wire. We'll wire Monday morning, 9 a I check the bank account. Nothing. Okay, it may take a day or two. Nothing. that's it. Yeah.
Peter Dean (41:17.518)
my God, Greg, this is like, like, all right, we've been in, I've been with Greg when this was going on. 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 Wednesday at like eight 30 in the morning, whatever 9am. And he's like, dude, we're running out of money. Like,
Greg Moran (41:40.998)
We gotta go drink some water.
This is gonna hurt.
Peter Dean (41:46.798)
I mean, like tomorrow, and we have payroll. But his checks came in. Your check didn't come in. Like it didn't freaking come in. Holy crap.
Greg Moran (41:52.326)
Yeah. Yeah. It's.
Greg Moran (41:59.27)
It didn't come in. And we weren't at zero yet, but we weren't two payrolls away. And so the plan on paper is to cut two thirds of the people, rebuild, ask people for forgiveness when we do get money in, explain the situation we best know how. Cause by the way, an employee is not going to understand signed for wire never came through. Right. Right. You understand what I'm saying. Yeah, I barely understand it as an investor.
Peter Dean (42:02.318)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (42:07.886)
Cheers.
Peter Dean (42:12.494)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (42:18.83)
Yeah, yeah, no, how do you that doesn't doesn't process when they're thinking about their family?
Greg Moran (42:28.87)
Right, I mean, it's just so rare, something like that happens. Yeah, and so the after effects of when things like that happen and you don't have the strength, you don't have the strength to negotiate with suppliers, to ask forgiveness, signing contracts, stuff like that. So not only is most of the team gone and you're worried about anybody who's left not trusting you, we had a situation that January where like,
Peter Dean (42:37.486)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (42:40.942)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (42:46.062)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (42:53.894)
We were going out finding funds. Obviously I did not have fun that holiday season. My family could tell, right? And it just kind of left me alone. And there's no, I put so much effort into trying to raise those money, you know, a hundred hour weeks and like beating your head against the wall. But I come three months later, we could get funds in the door. And so it was just abstracted. But in January, for example, there was a staffing company in Missouri, because we had a big deal with,
Peter Dean (42:55.694)
Yeah, that sucks.
Peter Dean (43:13.646)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (43:21.71)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (43:23.526)
University of Missouri, the Tigers company that had one of my younger employees sign a contract for staffing, like getting people to show up to the event that had a little like fine writing that basically said personal guarantee. That boy $10 ,000 contract. They call me and they say, Hey, you owe us $10 ,000. I say, Hey, we need 30 days. We have investors, money's coming in.
Peter Dean (43:37.902)
yeah, I know about that one.
Greg Moran (43:52.838)
It's not an issue. What do they do? They go after this individual who's now at another company because we laid them off and they start saying, Hey, we're going to take this out of your fund. So not only are you trying to, yeah, you're trying to explain what happened to investors and employees. You're trying to raise more money by being optimistic and you're trying to get someone out of trouble that doesn't understand why is this group asking me for $10 ,000? You think you have an authority to assign a type of contract like this? And so it's.
Peter Dean (43:56.302)
Good lord.
They could put a lien on their house, you know?
Greg Moran (44:22.438)
Personal. And then, right, like, so that day I went, I paid it off, I made sure it was good personally, and waited for reimbursement until March to get some of that stuff done. That's where you're really tested when the mistakes happen. So that's, and that's it. And it's like, it is great for me and anybody that went out and met that money. And the, you know, so I think every founder has this moment, right? Where it's a story like that. It's the wire didn't show up. It's a customer contract and we couldn't deliver. It's whatever it is, right?
Peter Dean (44:30.446)
Yeah. So it's a scary three months. OK, so we got it. It's a three months. It wasn't a day.
Greg Moran (44:52.294)
Where their entire world is thrown into chaos not only the business right but their entire life is now this like spinning just whirlwind of insanity, right? Like won't cluster. What did you how did you stop it? And I don't mean necessarily like how did you fix that situation? But how did you stop yourself from letting it get?
Peter Dean (44:56.878)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (45:21.574)
out of control, right? Because I think so much of this is it's that it's that moment of chaos for a founder when all of a sudden everything's going crazy. And the first step is trying to stop your own crazy. Yeah. Right. How did you do it? Because it just that's where the character is built. 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 twofold. One young and single at the time.
Peter Dean (45:49.966)
Mm -hmm.
Greg Moran (45:51.494)
Right? Not a big drag on rent. I could always move in with a friend. No big expenses. So, while I couldn't float salaries for people, personally, I was okay and had no worries, right? I had a bed to sleep in, food to eat, everything like that. The real way that it happened that we got out of this is my co -founder. So, you know, that's the first person you go to. Good news. It's not the wife, the spouse, the partner, the parents, any of that.
you go and you know you have to figure it out. So while I tend to be calm and focused in pressured moments, which is kind of a unique trait, right? But I actually do my best work in those 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 gonna let people go. I'm the one that's gonna figure this out and talk to these people. And so there were certain things I was afraid of doing.
Peter Dean (46:47.342)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Greg Moran (46:48.486)
Right. Letting people down that you trust that don't deserve that stuff, people off. 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 on the way out was something I was very comfortable with. If that's on my to do list, I'll take care of it and go. But he took all the gut wrenching moments because he wanted to, I guess, feel it a little bit more. Yeah. So that it wouldn't happen to us ever again. And so, you know, how we get through it, there's a lot of times in the pub, maybe not as early as eight in the morning.
Peter Dean (46:52.334)
That's cool.
Peter Dean (47:13.934)
Hahaha!
Greg Moran (47:18.282)
Early morning drinking is actually kind of an underrated thing. Right. Yeah. I'm not saying I won't try it. Ten a you make the decision. After 10 a keep the phone away. Right. And so we get a happy hour to do this stuff. Also, not for nothing, but you hear it on sports teams in the military, but dealing with adversity, 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.
Peter Dean (47:18.99)
It wasn't open. We went there anyway.
Peter Dean (47:36.654)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (47:46.67)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (47:46.726)
you have to be strong enough so when that adversity hits, you're not going at each other. And luckily we had that and we rebuilt and we were better than the other because all of this happened and it's the toughest thing to get through because we were expanding and doing so well. The investment was coming in not as a safety bargain, the time and just have to happen because we were getting new contracts and had to expand. And so wrapping your minds around that and what makes us a dozen.
And it's great to have it over a beer, right? Because like, hey man, could you tell this wasn't gonna happen? No, I was blindsided. Cool, write a book one day, but now we gotta get back to work. That's kind of what it means to feel that. You know, it's funny because we, you see founders a lot who have co -founders, right? And you find out very quickly what a co -founder is in situations like that, right? In a situ, you know, in that moment, you've got somebody who clearly was a real co -founder. Like I'm in this, I'm a hundred percent in this with you.
Peter Dean (48:15.534)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Greg Moran (48:40.07)
I've had situations, and so many other founders have situations where you call somebody a co -founder, but then you're in that and they're like, yeah, Steve, what are you gonna do about this? I mean, that's a pretty crappy situation. You gotta go lay off all those people. I gotta go. Yeah. Right? And that's it. And you really want it. That's right.
Peter Dean (48:52.302)
This person totally stepped up for you. Like they obviously saw like, I need to do this. You tested your relationship and it was there. Like that's what you found out. Because it may, to Greg's point, it may not have been there. I mean, you obviously knew that, but like, believed it, but you never know. That could be the next surprise you get and you're like, shit.
Greg Moran (49:02.15)
That's right.
Greg Moran (49:05.766)
Yeah.
Great.
Greg Moran (49:18.054)
So back story of this, there was actually three co -founders to this business. And one I'm very, very close with, like through college, we're teammates. That person was not in the right moment to be a co -founder with us. And so we actually let that person go like 13 months in, which means they vested something. And before we got a big strategic deal, we had to do a cash payment to get them off the cap table and they bought their first house with it. Fantastic.
Peter Dean (49:29.198)
Yeah, yep.
Peter Dean (49:42.446)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (49:48.326)
13 months of understanding why three co -founders can work. So I had a lot of trust in who stuck with me and me sticking with them. But one of the first things we did is we didn't bring on the right co -founder to the beginning. Now, I think this person would be fantastic at it, but the timing, the person they met, the jobs that they were seeking out that were outside of what we were doing, wasn't the right time for her to start a company. And that was a breakup in the beginning.
If we let that go on for another year, we wouldn't have a company. If I didn't have the founder we did throughout the rest of it, there wouldn't be a company either. So it starts with the building blocks. The slowest hire that you could ever make is a co -founder because that's your spouse at work. There's no getting around it. Yep.
Peter Dean (50:28.15)
Yeah. See, so you're saying this is hard. Are you just, this whole thing you've just been telling us this is really hard to do. That's what you're telling us.
Greg Moran (50:36.134)
Yeah.
I've been networking in New York City since 2012, like when I went to business school, right? My co -founder now and I knew each other. We've been friends since 2014. I watched him grow two companies and sell his last and...
Luckily, he had enough trust in me as I did with him and we had different skill sets. So we were looking for two things. One is the founder relationship to where we're always there for each other and we're always in it and we're motivated by the right things. Right. So if you need to have a baby and you're never going to sell it, we're not going to be friends. Luckily we're motivated by that. The other thing is the disparity of skill sets. I do the business, he does the technology. It is a clear delineation. Is that hard? Like it's fortuitous. It was easy to make that decision.
Peter Dean (51:11.918)
Mm -hmm.
Peter Dean (51:22.734)
Mm -hmm.
Peter Dean (51:26.478)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (51:35.878)
never had a second of regret and I hope he doesn't either. But that he was the only person in the world that I could do that with right now. If I want to start a company and find a co -founder, I'm two years out from building the same amount of trust. Even if I know how to look for it. Peter, we should probably break the news to Steve now that we've got Hutan on as our next guest. And we're gonna add to actually all about how to like when relationships go bad, it's gonna be an awkward thing, but you know. Yeah.
Peter Dean (51:44.686)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Peter Dean (51:52.526)
yeah! We didn't tell him!
Greg Moran (52:04.39)
See what he thinks. That's right. We're just going to compare notes.
Peter Dean (52:05.646)
You know, this is super important because if you were an investor today, now I know what Greg sees in you for this investment. So if you're an investor today, what would be the most important thing when you look at a deal with two people involved? Yeah.
Greg Moran (52:13.126)
I'm out.
Greg Moran (52:27.214)
early stage. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just the co -founder relationship, right? The relationship, the motivations. No.
Peter Dean (52:30.638)
You say technology?
Did you say like marketing plan sales and all that?
Peter Dean (52:41.262)
No, no, I'm, I'm prompting. He just said that co -founder relationship. And if you're a new founder, you got to think about that. They are looking at you that way. Like this is someone who's done it before. He, he knows what can trip you up. Investors know what can trip you up. That's what they're looking at. Right.
Greg Moran (52:41.638)
I thought Peter Shar, I thought you couldn't hear. Yeah.
Greg Moran (52:50.502)
Right.
Greg Moran (53:09.414)
I think that throughout, and I'll just use it because I was there longer, throughout my first business, some of our favorite angel investors who gave advice or we went to to lean on in goods and bad moments, always started with, how's your co -founder relationship? Because Steve, you can come up with a new marketing plan and you can raise money, right? You're just figuring out the right vehicle. But how's that? Because five years in, $10 million in revenue,
Peter Dean (53:19.022)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (53:26.83)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (53:38.126)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (53:39.302)
that's what's going to break you still now, or it's going to make you stronger. And if you're good, and after a few beers, you still say you're good, and you are good, the investor says, cool, like, let me know, I have, you know, resources that you all can use and your team can go by, but you're hiring.
Peter Dean (53:51.822)
Yeah, we can fill the gaps in, but we can't fill the gaps in on that. Right? Yeah.
Greg Moran (53:59.366)
That's right. Yeah. That's great. That's a great insight, I think, around, I mean, just those immediate kind of relationships, right? Because that's what investing is. It's all about trying to assess the founder, the co -founder, the team, the extended team to a certain extent. But it's really the two principles, right? Teams will come and go, but the people starting this thing are not.
Peter Dean (54:21.998)
great.
Greg Moran (54:26.502)
And we look at that as an investor with them. I mean, these are now our business partners, right? We've got to have that same level of trust. We're running out of time here. I just want to kind of rapid fire sort of quick two things. Best resources you've found to... I mean, you're obviously in this business, so this is kind of an interesting question for you, but best resources that you would recommend a founder look at to help develop their skills. Yeah. Sales and negotiation skills. You can take...
classes, you can take executive education, two day seminar, knock it out, right? Executive education. There's also plenty of books like getting to yes. You need to sell it. You need to be able to negotiate and you need to understand that everything's negotiable. Every supplier timeline, every employee that asks for something, the goal of having a win -win and being able to do it with someone who also knows how to do it, it's fantastic. So any resource you want across coaching, executive education, or reading a book on vacation, sales and negotiation.
Awesome advice. Last thing, and this is just the opportunity for a call out person who's had the biggest influence on your, on your career to date. Yeah, that'd be my father. No kidding. Yeah. All right. my father was Mr. Gilman, Mr. Gilman. He was a student athlete. he paved the path being a captain of the baseball team, at Niagara where he went to school and met my mother. he's also taught me most things that I know about the business. And that's not a knock on, on business schools that I went to, but also,
just life experiences. When I have people issues or certain questions, he's the person I go to first. And funny enough, I learned more about his past. He wouldn't talk about this stuff at the dinner table. So there's a separation of business and family, right? And you're doing whatever you can for the family. But when I say, hey, I had to fire this person, he'll give me four examples of how he did it. Make me feel better, make me understand it, obviously someone I trust.
the thing that he never did was take the leap into the entrepreneurial role. He was always at a comfortable position, went through an acquisition, but as someone who went up through the run. And so I think he's into what I'm doing as much as I am, because it wasn't something that wasn't standardized for what you do at this time. But certainly as a business mentor and as someone I look up to that's paved a good path and raised a good family, my father, for sure. All right, well, shout out to Mr. Bowman. And...
Peter Dean (56:32.302)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (56:45.678)
Awesome.
Greg Moran (56:51.366)
And to the younger Mr. Gilman. That's right. Awesome to have you on. And great story. If you want to connect, Steve, what's the best way for people to reach out to you? If you want more information on OneRange or just connect with you personally. So we're at OneRange .co and I'm Steve at OneRange .co. Shoot me a note. Happy to talk about upskilling programs, company development, things like that. Cool. We'll put it in the show notes. And it's OneRange .co, not C -O That's right.
Cool. Put it in the show notes, LinkedIn, anything like that. You like people? I'm usually responsive. Okay. But I'm guaranteed I'm not going to miss you if you send me a work email. All right. Yeah. Got it. Well, this is awesome. Steve, thanks for being a guest. See you all next time. I always forget to do this part. If you liked it, share it, comment on it, all the other things. I forgot all the other good things, but with the podcast, help us get the word out there and keep spreading these stories about...
about founders and their own journey. So, so thanks. See you next time on the Founders Journey podcast.