00:00:00:00 - 00:00:32:22
I made a horrible mistake that cost legitimately $4 million. Like a single mistake cost Lyla and I $4 million. And when I told Lyla, she said, I'm so sorry that happened to you. She's like. Like, really? That's it. That's it. You know? Yeah. I mean, like, you can't ask for more than that. It goes into buying a company that had a related party, kind of, a buyer who then disappeared at post transaction so that $4 million just evaporated.

00:00:32:22 - 00:00:54:12
But, you know, it's a totally different, horrible story, but, yeah, you know, like, I know that there are wives out there who feel like, you idiot, you know? Right. And what are you doing? Yeah. And she's just like, I know you're sad. I'm sorry that happened to you. And that's. I mean, I can't tell you what a blessing it is to have a partner like that right?

00:00:54:12 - 00:01:12:02
In life for everything. One of the things that you said that struck me out when we first got started, it is like trying to figure out how to buy food. And Peter and I both have our own, you know, stories like this, right? And I remember starting my my first company was around the same time as you were starting yours.

00:01:12:02 - 00:01:33:18
This was 97, 98. And I remember buying a P.C. my and my wife was a schoolteacher who was off for the summer, thought she was getting paid for the summer, but turns out she was only getting paychecks like your paycheck had been divided by how many pay periods during man. So anyway, we thought we had this money that we didn't have.

00:01:33:23 - 00:02:00:16
We literally spent every penny that we had buying a PC. It was a it was a gateway PC. So yeah, a real big man al boxes. Right. So you know, and this thing was like $3,000 and that's literally every single penny that we had. And we would have parties like have friends over to our apartment, because if we had friends over, they would bring beer, bring stuff.

00:02:00:18 - 00:02:24:09
Yeah, but it wasn't about drinking beer, right? They would bring beer, but then they would leave the empties, the cans, so we could take the cans and back, get the at the time it was probably more than that, but it was like a nickel on these cans and be able to buy, like, bread and peanut butter. Wow. Like when you come from that place, right?

00:02:24:09 - 00:02:57:22
Like when you come from that kind of, sort of that real poverty mindset. Right? It really, truly does make things easier. Way. Right. It's I gotta tell you, it's one of those things where I'm so glad we met when we both were destitute. Right. There was no like, well, I'm bringing some funds into this marriage, and, you know, it's just like, yeah, which, you know, people that are when they're older and they get married, like there's kind of a wealth imbalance, maybe like we were both less than zero.

00:02:58:01 - 00:03:16:01
So we signed a prenup or like, what do we do? Do we, like, split the loaf of bread in the middle and like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do get, like, what? Yeah. My net worth is negative. Your net worth is negative. Yeah. How would you do it? Well, they say that most marriages end because people are disagreeing about money, right?

00:03:16:01 - 00:03:47:06
I mean, they're they're fighting about, you know, we need to make more money. You're not making enough money. We're we're spending too much money. I feel like there has to be an understanding amongst the married couple that this is going to be hard, and we're not going to have the money that our friends do, and they're going to we're going to appear to be driving pieces of crap cars when they have like a nice car and we're, you know, and it it's a, it's a level of sacrifice where I feel like if one or the other isn't in, I don't know if you do it.

00:03:47:11 - 00:04:17:23
We were so fortunate in that we were both exactly aligned to this day. We are right. I mean, we're just we're aligned on kind of valuing kind of experiences over physical stuff and not, not, you know, buying kind of for status and, and we were that way at the beginning. And I had 100% trust. Yeah. And it was kind of like a business partner that you could talk to 100% honestly about anything going on in the business, good or bad.

00:04:17:23 - 00:04:37:07
And you knew that they would be kind of understanding. Right? What was your wife's situation at this point? Was she in the same that kind of level of anxiety and everything that you were, or was she like more of a balance to where you were much more balanced? And one of the things that happened to is, you know, we had three kids.

00:04:37:07 - 00:04:55:04
And so, you know, she was working just as hard, but she would also be like, hey, you know, I have to take care of this, crying baby, right? So and by the way, we brought all our kids to the office every day was like a daycare, right? It's just like. Right. We're walking into a meeting, like holding a baby.

00:04:55:04 - 00:05:12:01
And she was just set up better. I think it's weird if if I said, hey, Lila, like, let's go sit in this park. But the park says, like, it closes at 6 p.m. and it's like 615. She'll start to get, like really nervous, right? Like, hey, we're breaking the law. And I'll be like, I don't care, right? We have certain different tolerances.

00:05:12:01 - 00:05:33:17
But when it comes to like, like if we don't do this, like we could lose this customer, she would kind of be like, is that the end of the world? Then be like, yes, it is. And she be like, yeah, we'll be okay, you know? So yeah, I think much more balanced. A partnership works really well. I've generally seen in other people that not necessarily married but just business partners.

00:05:33:19 - 00:05:45:00
You typically have that kind of difference in temperament. Like if there were two of me's, the business would have just like explode.