0:00 [Music] 0:08 Hi, this is Scaling Founders, a show about how startup founders grow as their startups scale. 0:16 I'm Amy Beekler and I was Wycee's first batch director and before I joined WyCombinator, 0:23 I was a psychotherapist and that was kind of my side gig 0:26 and I realized pretty early on at my role in Y-C that founders are people too. I wasn't in tech before I joined Y-C 0:35 so the only idea is I had about startup founders were what I saw in the media that they're all brilliant geniuses who are absolutely 0:47 breath-blendless will not stop until their idea is built. 0:51 And you know we're going straight to the moon. 0:54 But my experience of being NYC and building a program to support the world's 1:00 best startup founders was really surprising. The founders that I see funded were really afraid of screwing up or building the wrong 1:12 thing. 1:13 There's a huge amount of fear and despair and hopelessness and confusion when stuff 1:20 isn't working. 1:23 And what I was really surprised to find was that founders were really afraid even 1:27 when things were working because the challenges just 1:31 get bigger and the expectations raise for everyone. 1:35 And so my experience at founders actually 1:37 was that a lot of them were failing 1:40 to execute on their dream envision 1:42 because of a lack of psychological awareness and tooling. 1:47 They didn't have anyone or anything that could help them manage their fear. 1:50 And so I just randomly happened to be a therapist. 1:55 And so I kind of did a OnePlus OnePlus 2 situation and started coaching them in-house. 2:03 What that meant was that I helped founders scale themselves as their companies grow. 2:09 I helped them build emotional resilience and I helped them build strong relationships with themselves, 2:15 their co-founders, their exact teams, their boards, 2:18 and the rest of their companies as they grew. 2:21 While I was at YC, I supported just over a thousand early-stage YC founders, and 2:28 after leaving YC in 2019 to open my own coaching practice, I've supported almost a thousand 2:33 later-stage companies as well. 2:37 And my company now called Scale Yourself offers coaching and content that helps founders 2:42 scale as quickly as their startups. It's the result of everything I've learned over the last decade of coaching and supporting 2:51 and working directly with thousands of the world's best startup founders. 2:55 So I won't say that I've seen it all but I've seen some shit when it comes to 3:00 what it's really like for founders to build their companies. 3:03 what it's really like for founders to build their companies. 3:08 This show is as much for me as it is for anyone else, because I'm tired of repeating myself. 3:12 And I'm really tired of founders like not knowing 3:15 that what they're experiencing is shared by other founders. 3:19 And the stories of growth, 3:21 they feel very individual to them. 3:24 And they are unique and 3:25 authentic in that way but the themes they have of feeling alone uncertain being 3:31 in despair, not having any idea what to do. Those are universal and I have 3:37 different versions of the same conversation over and over and over again and 3:41 this is a way for founders. I hope to feel like they are normal. 3:47 And that is often pretty gritty and painful to run a startup, but it doesn't have to be. 3:52 You can scale your way out of that. 3:57 So on this episode, I'm joined by one of my former clients, Tom Brunns, 4:01 Gail, the CEO and founder of Forage. Forage built online job simulations for companies like JP Morgan, Golden Sachs, and Verizon to train and hire students right out of college. 4:12 Tom went through YC in winter 19, raised a series A in 2020, skilled revenue to $10 million ARR and was acquired in 2024. So that's who Tom is on paper. And when you hear that, you might 4:28 think to yourself, Tom must have a lot of stuff figured out. And that's true. But the experience 4:36 of Tom achieving that was pretty different. Tom's story is one of growth. It's a story of the seed of self confidence that every 4:47 founder just operates a lot more fluidly from when they have it. And in a 4:52 world in which there are almost infinite places and people that founders can 4:57 put their time, energy and effort when you don't have that seed of self-confidence 5:02 within you, you're so much more vulnerable to kind 5:06 of getting tossed in the waves of what other people want or need from you. 5:11 And you can't build a billion dollar company if you're just doing it for someone else. 5:16 If you don't really trust and believe that what you have in who you are is like deeply 5:20 good. 5:21 It took him a while. 5:22 His story is one of recognizing the goodness, recognizing the strength 5:27 and recognizing the points of leverage as he went along because he didn't start out from that. 5:32 And I think that's more common than not in founders and in building a startup is like, you know, 5:38 Billion Dollar founders don't come out of the womb. They're built to decision by decision and moment by moment. 5:45 I think Tom would be the first person to tell you that he was not naturally inclined 5:50 to start a company. 5:51 He sort of fell into a lot of our opportunities and he was smart enough to take them and 5:55 see them for what they were. 5:57 You hear all those like founder stories about, you know, I had a limb and AIDS stand when 6:00 I was five years old and I figured out what the gross margins were and I was charging 6:04 80% margins in the next minute I'm an entrepreneur. 6:08 That certainly was not my story. 6:09 I was merely trying to get out of law 6:12 while also being equally passionate 6:14 about the problem that courage was solving. 6:17 So in 2017 I left my job because of a really unique 6:22 opportunity to get a tiny bit of seed funding in Australia. 6:27 I moved to the US, I'm often asked, "Oh, so you moved to the US to build the business 6:32 here?" 6:33 That's not actually the case. 6:34 My wife is a technology attorney. 6:36 She took a job over here. 6:38 I followed her much to the dismay. 6:40 My early investors, they said this was far too premature. 6:44 They actually called me moving over here 6:46 entering the Pacific graveyard 6:47 'cause like so many Australian companies 6:49 try to move to the US too early and die. 6:53 And then I applied to YC three times 6:58 and then got in on the third time 7:00 for the 12 months previous. 7:02 I had been working in my kitchen in parallel 7:04 so trying to beg 7:07 borrow still a customer to use our product. 7:10 And then why say was really the inflection point for the business, the context between 7:16 the company being founded in 2017 and 2019, I'd raised the equivalent of $150,000 US dollars. 7:24 So that was like what we lived off for like two, two and a half years. 7:27 And then it changed very quickly after that. 7:29 So we did a $1.6 million seed round. 7:32 12 months later we did a series A, which was a nine and a half million dollar round. 7:38 And then we were acquired in April of 2024. 7:43 What a whirlwind. Founders like have those same sequence of events over the 7:48 course of a decade and you did it in just a few years. So we started working together later on 7:55 in 2019 and what led you to reaching out to me in the first place? I'd gone through two years leading up to YC, which was incredibly scrappy, not earning 8:07 any money, you're living in a kitchen by yourself. 8:11 I always felt people underestimated me at that point. 8:15 And then when YC happened and we raised a seed round, that pressure dial changed from 8:20 people underestimating me to people overestimating me. 8:24 I felt people assumed I was like much more competent 8:27 than I actually was. 8:29 And that's when I really actually started feeling lonely, 8:32 which is ironic because you might look at those events 8:35 and think you would have felt more lonely pre 2019, 8:38 but I actually felt more lonely post 2019. 8:42 I felt like I was under tremendous pressure 8:44 to like start growing the business aggressively. 8:47 And it really did consume my life and my whole identity was entwined with the success 8:54 of failure of the business and my wife was like, you should go speak to someone. And yeah, 9:01 eventually it got to like a tipping point where you had like a little form on your website and 9:08 I I filled it out for like an initial kind of consultation and that was just immediately pre-COVID so 9:15 you still had an office. I remember like walking into your office and I remember being very nervous 9:21 but also very skeptical. I cringe when I think back to that first session 9:29 because I remember asking you how do I measure whether this is successful or not? 9:38 And you said to me like there's not a measure this isn't a dashboard that you're looking at 9:44 and you're kind of tracking the performance. 9:46 - I love that you brought that in. 9:48 That question, how will I know that I'm getting 9:51 the value out of that, which is such a common founder 9:55 or first session question, by the way, 9:56 and I always internally roll my eyes 9:59 into my mind, actually have that. 10:00 - I think you externally did it. 10:02 - Yeah, right. 10:03 - One of the aspects of your experience when we first started working together was alone 10:10 and one was uncertain. 10:11 And let's go a little bit deeper into your experience of feeling and being uncertain at 10:17 that point in time in your company. 10:19 This is late 2019 now. 10:21 What do you recall as being your experience of being alone? Yes. So I was inherently a people pleaser, which was I had, I was like in this position, 10:32 unless it's like the position that any founder finds themselves in this didn't change over the 10:36 years, where you are like the intermediary between so many different stakeholders. And like, 10:42 you are the center of that. So you have your investors want to see growth 10:48 and want to see outcomes 10:50 and customers want to see a great product 10:51 and employees want to feel supported 10:53 until actually stimulated. 10:55 And you feel responsible for making all those things happen 10:59 and that is lonely. 11:01 - Yeah, so it sounds like at this moment in time 11:04 part of your world and there is also the story of 11:08 Your startup was working like things were really working so we don't want to forget that but your experience of that at the time 11:15 Like it sounds quite overwhelming 11:17 You had all of these people in your world who needed something slightly different from you and who called on your time, your 11:27 energy, your attention, right? 11:30 And so your psychology at that moment, your operating principle was, I have to, people, 11:36 please, I have to meet everyone else's needs. 11:38 Those are the things that I organize around. 11:40 And that's my purpose in life to be totally dramatic. 11:43 Like, I have to make sure everyone around me is really happy. 11:48 How could that have helped you at that moment in time? 11:52 Because it probably wasn't all bad, right? 11:56 - So, I mean, it's obviously helpful in the sense 11:58 that I think most people in my orbit 12:02 could see I was trying to, in good faith, do the things that 12:09 they were asking me to do. But to use a really poor and maybe 12:15 indelicate analogy, it's almost a Ponzi scheme because what you're doing in the process 12:22 of trying to please everyone is you're kicking the inevitable 12:26 collateral down the road that it exacerbates what that collateral and harm is going to be to 12:34 other people but you're delaying it. You're compounding it but you're delaying it. So in the 12:39 same sense, there's like a pondis game. It's like it's like fine in the short term, but it's not like a sustainable, long term way 12:47 of operating when you have so many invested interests. 12:51 So I remember I didn't have much conflict at the time 12:55 and that's a good thing. 12:57 And if you compare it to later in the company's journey 13:01 when I took a very different tack, 13:04 there was a lot more conflict, there was a lot more conflict. 13:06 There was a lot more confrontation and intense conversation. 13:11 But I feel much more comfortable and I sleep much better at night around the way that 13:17 I handled the tail end of the company's existence at least as it was an independent company, then I felt at the 13:26 start of the company's existence. 13:30 So there are two things on my mind at once. 13:35 The first one is yeah, everything that we do has a function. 13:42 There's a reason why people, people please please people. 13:46 You know, like it serves a helpful function 13:48 that can serve the function of eliminating conflict 13:51 who likes to fight with the people 13:53 that they're close with, right? 13:55 And one of the other things that I'm thinking about 13:57 is very early stage founders 13:59 who have to be totally obsessed with their user 14:02 and who need to bend over backwards 14:04 in order to build something their users love. 14:06 That's like not not people pleasing, right? 14:09 It's a situation that early stage founders find themselves in. 14:12 And if you're people, please eat that's really going to help you build an incredible product, right? 14:18 And so yeah, and so mindsets like that are exist for a reason and then founders as they grow and things change and often when the company and product grows around them. 14:31 What used to work doesn't work anymore because when we are focused so much on pleasing other people making them happy making things feel easy for them just taking care of them. 14:44 making them happy, making things feel easy for them, just taking care of them. 14:52 We often disconnect from our own needs and our own experience, our own opinions, our own sense of what's right to do and what's not to do. 14:55 Right? That's the downside of people pleasing. 15:00 And that means that we create an experience for ourselves in which we're alone 15:05 within ourselves. And that means that we create an experience for ourselves in which we're alone within 15:05 ourselves. 15:07 So let's take these as themes that came up very early on in our work together and zoom 15:15 ahead to the series A, which was maybe like nine months after we started working together and talk a little bit about how they showed up over the course of your series A. 15:30 Yeah so for context around the series A we had raised our seed round March April 2019 15:38 and then COVID hit February March 2020 and given that we are a virtual recruitment software, companies 15:49 that were doing on-campus recruitment really quickly switched to find digital solutions. 15:53 And so HR Tech and Ed Tech was in its golden era. 15:56 It was a very specific period of time. 15:59 I remember going for a run and with five enterprise deals would be signed over the course 16:04 of the run deals 16:05 that I didn't even know were like in the pipeline. So when I looked back at it, it feels 16:09 like it was a real product market fit. But I still felt I wasn't capable or able to raise 16:18 a series eight. And I was still grappling and dealing with the imposter syndrome. Like, 16:22 am I really equipped to be this founder? And I had this one seed investor, 16:28 the most exceptional kind of mentor, supporter, advocate, 16:31 stuff through us through thick and thin. 16:34 I'll give him a shout out. 16:35 It was a Boris Silver from Funders Club. 16:38 He had said to me at this time, 16:40 you should start thinking about a series, 16:43 like your numbers are popping. 16:44 And I was like, 16:45 "No, I don't know." 16:47 I don't think where it really came from. 16:50 What are you talking about? 16:51 You didn't say mate, he's American. 16:53 But how about this? 16:55 How about I introduced you to a couple of firms and you start having conversations with those firms 17:01 and just see what happens. 17:03 And I was like, sure. So he starts introducing me to all these firms. and deep end with some of the most iconic funds and investors that you watch and read about. 17:27 So you could imagine what that asymmetry felt 17:30 between where my imposter syndrome was at that point 17:33 and walking into those meetings. 17:35 And if you're speaking to a VC, 17:36 they assume you're raising money. 17:39 So they're under the impression 17:40 I was doing in a series A. 17:41 So they'd be like, okay, so what are you raising 17:44 and when are you raising it by? 17:46 And I was like, I'm just like throwing a number out. 17:50 And I was like, I'm raising like, I don't know, eight, nine million 17:53 dollars around. 17:55 And they'd be like, cool, okay, we'll move you on to the next stage. 17:59 And so I like unintentionally ended up in this fundraising process without feeling like I had the capability 18:09 or the credibility in order to do that. 18:14 And that's where those limiting beliefs didn't produce the best outcome for the company. 18:21 And then had I had the tools that I have now, I would have navigated that entire scenario very differently. 18:29 Yeah, so at this moment in time, Boris has 18:33 heated you into some of the most rare-bodied air in Silicon Valley. 18:39 You've mentioned Imposter syndrome a few times and so I'll break that down. 18:44 I conceptualize it as a cognitive distortion. 18:47 Imposter syndrome is the experience 18:49 of being in a room with incredible, accomplished, 18:53 smart, successful people. 18:56 And the experience is, I do not belong in here at all. 19:02 Who am I to be rubbing elbows with these people? And I think of it as a cognitive 19:08 distortion because it distorts the fact that you yourself are in that room with all of those people 19:15 and that there are reasons for that. You yourself are incredible accomplished, smart, 19:27 incredible accomplished, smart, and successful in your own way. The distortion is that those facts of reality are hidden from your awareness. 19:37 Let's have you complete the story of how you're serious. 19:39 I turned out because it wasn't all doom and gloom. 19:40 No, it wasn't. 19:41 It wasn't. 19:42 And so let's zoom into the moment that it was very dim and gloom 19:45 that's coming to my mind. 19:47 I remember the timing was because it was a beautiful day. 19:51 The sun was shining. 19:52 There was no cloud in the sky. 19:54 And this was like early enough in the pandemic 19:57 that it wasn't safe to like be outside 20:01 without wearing a mask. 20:02 'Cause I couldn't go out running comfortably. 20:04 And so I was that basic girlie in pack heights on a peloton in a bay window with a peloton desk. 20:13 And that's how I took my phone. 20:15 There'll be an amusement one day when we get back at it. 20:18 I was like three, I think when we got to have a, it was like a three month wait. 20:23 Now you can buy them for like $200 on Facebook. 20:26 I just sold my Valentine's like earlier this year 20:29 for about that much of a reason. 20:30 But one of the reasons why I remember you and I had a call 20:33 and I don't think it was scheduled, 20:35 but it was just a phone call because I was so embarrassed 20:38 to show you on a Zoom call that I was peddling on a call 20:41 of time as we were speaking. 20:42 And I was like, oh, thank God. 20:43 But one of the reasons I remember it 20:46 was actually because it was such a beautiful day. 20:48 And my body was pumped full of all the happy exercise hormones. 20:52 And I was just having a blast. 20:54 And you called in such a state of undone. 20:59 And in my AirPods, I could hear the thunder storm 21:03 of your life. 21:04 And by the way, I will also say part of my 21:07 contracts as a coach is that I offer once weekly sessions and time-acing so my clients can text me, 21:14 call me, email me anytime like I'm in their back pocket and you know maybe contacted me twice total 21:22 over like outside of our sessions in the five or whatever years 21:25 that we worked together. 21:26 And so the fact that you reached out to me for a call, I already knew like something is 21:33 happening here. 21:34 It's so outside of your. 21:36 There's probably you're right. 21:37 I mean, it's three times that I did that and they were like highly dramatic at least 21:41 in my mind. 21:42 They felt like very dramatic events. 21:44 I think that's also part of my 21:46 people pleasing. Like I don't like to disturb people off schedule. So the context was that one 21:52 of the earliest funds had put a term sheet in front of us. I couldn't believe it. I was like 21:57 in shock initially. I was like this is incredible. And then came the bare hug as I found out what it was called, which was they could sense, 22:08 I'm sure, that they were ahead of the rest of the other processes. 22:13 They put a term sheet in front of me and they were putting on-relington pressure on me 22:18 to sign it. 22:20 But all the other funds, because I didn't set the process up, they were slightly delayed. 22:27 And it was, I think it was like a Thursday night, we got to the point with this fund where 22:33 like essentially they're like, you know, we created this, we're going to pull the thing 22:36 and I had one bird in hand. And that was like very stressful because I remember I didn't even 22:41 think I was going to get one so I didn't want to lose that. But I had other funds being like, 22:44 if you can just wait a Monday, we're going to have 22:47 the term sheet in front of you. 22:48 We've got the partner meeting happening over the weekend. 22:51 Don't fall for the bluff just like wait till after the weekend. 22:56 And part of my people pleasing was I'm just going to sign this. 23:00 And this was on I think the Thursday night. 23:04 And I had a couple of friends over. 23:06 We bought some bottles of wine. 23:08 We were literally waiting for our lawyer 23:10 to sign off on it so that I could sign it. 23:13 And I missed the email coming from the lawyer 23:16 to be like, it's right to sign. 23:19 In that intervening 60 minute period 23:21 that I missed the email that I was gonna sign, 23:24 the term sheet, another fund that I'd spoken to weeks before and I 23:29 hadn't heard from the two weeks sent me an email being like we've 23:33 done our investor committee and we're really happy to put this 23:36 term sheet in front of you. And it was at a, I honestly had like a 23:40 30-40% increase on the price. So it was not an immaterial 23:45 amount. And I then communicated to 23:48 that first fund, I was going to sign a term sheet that night. And they were very angry. 23:53 And maybe this they had bad experiences elsewhere that they felt like I was like playing them 23:57 and shopping their term sheet around. And there was like a lot of emailing me, phone calling me, 24:03 texting me. Like you choose the medium, I was receiving it. 24:07 And so I turned my phone onto airplane modes 24:11 'cause I was like, I can't. 24:13 I spoke to them and I was like, 24:14 "Look, this is a situation. 24:15 "I'm not comfortable signing it." 24:17 And then next morning I rang you and was like, 24:22 "Here's the situation." 24:23 Like, "What have I done? 24:25 "What are we gonna do, "What have I done? 24:25 What are we gonna do? 24:26 I have to sign it." 24:28 I'd already agreed to this. 24:29 You said to me, Tom, you do not need to sign it. 24:34 Like, you can, but you do not have to sign it. 24:37 I'll tell you what I was doing in that moment. 24:40 I was reflecting back what was true. 24:42 And what I was doing was challenging the thought and the belief that you had in your mind 24:46 that wasn't helping, that was making you feel totally 24:49 overwhelmed. 24:50 And that belief in that thought was, 24:52 I owe this person something. 24:54 And that spoke to the social obligations 24:56 that you've perceived. 24:57 - And the people pleasing. 24:58 - And the people pleasing. 24:59 And so I was thinking, 25:00 I was directly challenging that thought 25:02 in that belief system because you were in the upside down. And I was saying you don't have to and pointing out to you what was real, which was 25:11 you had agency, you had options and you had a job to do, which was to do the best you possibly 25:18 could for your company in that moment. Yes. So basically that firm said to me, okay, you name the price and I will go off and 25:29 see if I can get approval for it. But what they said to me, which was really interesting, is 25:34 they said, but you sign the term sheet first because they won't go off to the term sheet, 25:40 send it to me and wait for me to sign it. They were like, "You sign it and you put the price in." 25:46 And then I will see if I can go get approval for it, which is a really interesting tactic 25:50 because it means that I have lost agency in that moment. And so I did it. I actually put the price 25:59 that the other subject confirmed had put. So I didn't actually put any higher, which again 26:05 was part of the impossibility. I think in retrospect, I would have been like, "Okay, had the other subsequent firm had put. So I didn't actually put any higher, which again was 26:05 like part of the impossibility, you know, I think in retrospect, I would have been like, 26:08 okay, you can pay a premium on top of this firm, but like I just did not do that. 26:13 I put the price in it, I said it, and then I would say three minutes, five minutes later, 26:19 he came back to sign, which told me that he didn't necessarily need to get approval for the increase in fair play in that situation. 26:27 So the coaching and the all bit of support 26:31 I had in that moment meant that I got like a, say, 26:35 a 30%, 40% premium life on the price. 26:40 But it was still a case study on how 26:44 not to do a fundraiser process. 26:46 And I still would have had a much better outcome. 26:49 Had I gone into it with more intentionality, 26:52 had more control over the process, more belief in my ability to execute, 26:56 be better prepared as a consequence of that intentionality. 27:00 And I say that because I got a little bit lucky that that firm, I got two partners from 27:07 that firm who kind of shared responsibility. 27:10 One of those partners to this day, I would consider a friend that are mental and has been 27:15 one of the most impactful people in my career. 27:19 That crazy day when you just had a sign of like term sheet and sent it off to your series A lead. 27:31 What were you afraid would have happened if you had written some insane number and negotiated higher than what you thought was possible? I would have primarily feared that I would 27:36 really piss this person off even more than I already had. And you know it was going to like 27:42 really see your partners. So maybe I was over indexing that was like, 27:46 well, I should I care if I piss this person off? 27:50 That's not my job to keep this person happy. 27:54 But I guess another extension of that would be 27:58 that the term sheet would be pulled. 28:00 I had this fantastic opportunity to bring on 28:03 company changing money, an incredible 28:07 partner, where I had the opportunity to learn so much. 28:12 And I had another firm, but that other firm didn't make as much strategic sense because 28:20 they were a foreign firm. 28:21 So they weren't American. 28:22 I really needed American signals. 28:25 So yeah, my fear was 28:26 like I would piss them off and I could risk the one genuine perfect bird in hand if I overshot 28:35 on the valuation. Yeah and your answer I think really highlights the dilemma for founders who 28:41 have that disconnection from themselves mindset because the fear was you'd cause conflict 28:48 You'd make that person angry and that's the last thing a people pleaser is ever gonna want to do 28:53 There's have any interpersonal friction and you would lose everything 28:58 Yeah, right and that is and like what a black and white 29:03 is and like what a black and white upside down fear based belief 29:07 like the underlying psychological mindset is like 29:11 I can't be connected to what works for me 29:16 and what I need and what I know 29:19 because I could lose everything if I were. 29:22 That's the underlying logic. 29:24 And so that's the worst parts of you. 29:29 It captured it in this moment of your life and you successfully landed as you said, 29:35 a great deal with great investors and got exactly what you needed for your company. 29:39 And could it have been better in a different world? Sure. But was it an incredible deal for you and your company? Also, yes. 29:46 And so let's take that version of you 29:48 and then move you forward a couple of years in time 29:52 and talk to us about how you experienced the acquisition process. 29:58 Can you bring us into a moment in which some of these threads 30:01 were still alive for you 30:03 but you were experiencing them differently. 30:05 - Yes, so the context around the M&A process 30:10 was the market started to become 30:13 a lot more difficult for us at the start of 2023. 30:16 And I could start to see that there were some genuine headwinds 30:20 that the business was going to face. 30:22 And so I had like this thesis around the 30:25 ordering strategic partnerships with companies 30:28 that I thought would be a creative to our business in itself. 30:31 So however the product integration worked, 30:35 that would be super valuable to the company. 30:37 But in the event that we would decide to go down 30:41 an acquisition route in the future, 30:43 it was like a way for us to have 30:46 like solid ground already with those companies. So like they will work with us, we would work 30:52 with them, we would know their team, they would know our team, they would know our product, 30:56 and they could already see the value of like connecting the two pieces together because they're 31:01 already connected. So I went and started doing that at the start of 2023. 31:06 There was like five or six companies that fit the bill there. And then I never mentioned 31:12 M&A in any of those conversations, product integrations. I never once spoke about M&A, 31:18 but I was definitely having conversations with the board around M&A as being a potential path that we go down. 31:26 And then one of those companies being AAB during that integration 31:33 said, "Look, we love your team, we love your product." 31:37 This is like a 1+1=3 situation, which would be open to an acquisition. 31:42 So that was what ultimately became the acquisition, 31:46 but there was a good nine month period, 31:49 say from that first conversation to the deal, 31:54 actually closing. 31:56 - What was the moment you decided to move 32:00 into the acquisition process? 32:02 - So I remember a very distinct conversation 32:05 that you and I had and you were asking me 32:08 what I was up to and I was saying, 32:10 oh, kind of like speaking to this company 32:12 and you know, if I integrated the product 32:15 and they're like actually doing some 32:17 like preliminary diligence on our business 32:20 and you're like, what are you doing? 32:22 What are you up to? 32:23 - Let me tell you a story from my perspective. 32:27 Okay, so we had Ben speaking weekly for many years 32:31 at this point. 32:32 So I was familiar with your patterns 32:35 and I was familiar with the way that you brought things up 32:37 and it was almost like playing a game of shells, 32:41 like cups and shells, you know? 32:43 And we had a couple moments where you would say something 32:46 about like these partnership deals. 32:48 When it was like you showed me a shell 32:50 some bigger thought you were having about it. 32:52 And then you covered up the shell 32:53 and like moved it else wise. 32:55 And we didn't talk about it. 32:56 I didn't ask. 32:57 And for a couple of months, 32:58 I felt like you were playing a little game of shells 33:00 with me and yourself about thinking about an acquisition. 33:04 And so there was one meeting in which you were 33:07 doing the Cup of Shells and you like revealed something about a potential bigger decision or 33:12 a shift to your strategy without actually talking about it. And I was like, what are you up to? 33:18 So if I look back at it, if I look at it, it's making like really openly and honestly, if I 33:23 think about the shelves, I really liked that analogy. 33:26 I had constructed this plan, integrate with the products, make sure that those integrations 33:32 were accreted to the business. 33:33 And if we ever went down the route of M&A, we would have some really viable relationships 33:38 to pull on. 33:39 And the context here is in 2023, I'd gone through a year of the business not working the way that I wanted it to work. 33:46 So I was like getting a little bit down on myself. I was so used to like my plans not really working 33:52 at at that point, the way that I wanted them to work out, that that one worked out and worked out 33:58 so much more quickly than I could possibly have imagined. I never thought that the conversation would happen 34:05 five months into executing on this plan. 34:09 So that's why I escalated so much more quickly 34:12 because I had some of those same beliefs around 34:15 am I able to pull this off? 34:17 I love my plans out working. 34:19 But if I look back at it, 34:20 it's like one of the things I'm most proud of 34:22 is I had this plan. 34:25 I was very intentional 34:26 about how I was going to do it and it worked much better than I could possibly have ever 34:31 anticipated it to have worked. So that's my perspective around the show moving. Is it 34:36 just moved much more quickly than I could have possibly anticipated? 34:41 I wonder if there was more to it too. You had allowed all of those doors to remain open and all of those were beneficial for 34:51 your company's long-term future, however long it lasted. 34:55 And I think one of those doors was a potential acquisition and that held I think a meaning 35:00 for you. 35:01 It means something to a founder when they walk through that door and for you 35:08 forage at the moment really was your life's work. It was so everything about it was so important 35:15 to the relationships the customers the mission the vision everything that you had and you had 35:21 a sense within yourself that acquisition could have been the completion of it. 35:27 And I think the shell game was because you weren't ready 35:32 to throw in the towel. 35:33 Those are actually your words 35:34 from one of our sessions around that time. 35:36 And so at that moment, I asked you that question, 35:38 it felt like things in every room were still moving. 35:42 Like you were knocking those partners out of the park. 35:45 Revenue was growing, right? 35:47 And so many other things were going well, and yet there was still a question about the 35:52 long term viability, right? 35:55 I mean, so when you walk through that door for an M&A process, the hard part is having 36:03 to leave as a founder, your ego at that door when you walk through it. 36:06 In some senses, as a founder, you look at it as a very deep personal failing on top, 36:12 compounded by the fact that you know that you love the people you work with, 36:17 you love your job, you love what you're building and why you're building it. 36:21 And that's never going to be the same again when you walk through that door. 36:24 And so you have to separate what's right for you personally versus what's right for the company 36:30 and that really became my guiding principle. You know me pretty well. I don't feel like I get 36:35 angry or upset that often. The most upset I ever got through the everyday process was one of my 36:51 process was one of my investors inferred that I was making the decision purely for personal reasons and selfish reasons, which was the antithesis of how I felt at the moment because 36:57 I was like, God, I really got to swallow my pride here and like, believe me, there you go 37:02 at the door because I'm losing so much of what I love. 37:06 And while I felt like I was landing the plane as gently as I possibly could, it was not 37:11 the ambition that I initially had. 37:13 And we had a ton of runway, like we still had three or four years run away. 37:17 So it wasn't like I could like go back and have another crack at it. 37:21 And that was like the moment that I felt so indignant and upset and alone in that moment, 37:27 because I was like, oh my gosh, can this person not see 37:32 how much pride I've had to swallow to make this decision? 37:36 And not only that, 37:38 they're actually inferring that I'm making the decision 37:40 on personal selfish reasons. 37:41 Like, yeah, that was quite an intense moment for me. 37:45 - If only they knew how much of you up to that point 37:48 was also in service of other people, right? 37:52 So I think that moment in which you decided 37:56 to walk through the door of acquisition 37:59 and close the other doors behind you 38:03 was such a good shift. 38:06 It speaks to the personal and professional development 38:10 that you've done over the course of the years 38:11 because that decision was a judgment call 38:16 about the perspective that you as the founder 38:19 of the company held that no one else does. 38:21 You know everything. 38:23 You're across almost everything in the company and 38:26 the market, including market changes, short-medium and long-term. 38:30 And so you had to make a judgment call that spoke to your opinion and it could have caused 38:38 conflict. And the fact that you could make that decision speaks to the growth that you've done about not pleasing everyone, not doing 38:46 what everyone wanted you to do. So where my decision making calculus changed compared to that 38:53 series A was what if I imagine we should do this exercise like the company is this individual living 39:00 being. I have the recording. We have the recording from this moment pulled up. 39:05 That is crazy. 39:07 This is a snippet from our session in late December 2023 when you were in the middle of your acquisition process. 39:14 I felt something like a different energy from you a little bit more stable and strong as how it ran to me when you said my responsibilities are to the 39:27 company and the shareholders. That's kind of true. You know, like everybody's individual needs 39:34 are secondary. That's what I can't come back to and like part of me you also only so 39:39 that's great and good. But being purely in the best interest of the company as an individual 39:46 like an individual. 39:47 I mean, like there's going to be a tool that way of choosing between the two you're choosing 39:53 the company and that's certainly greater good. 39:57 That's what it was like the majority of your staff, the majority of your investors, 40:03 the majority of your customers, the majority of your investors, the majority of your customers, your mission, yourself. 40:07 - My sense is that as you live out 40:10 interpreting what your fiduciary duty means, 40:13 these are literally your words, Tom. 40:16 I am acting in service of the greater good, 40:22 like I'm acting purely in the best interests 40:25 of the company as an organism 40:27 as like an ecosystem with all the different players. 40:30 And you also said there will be associated collateral, which I will do everything I possibly 40:38 can do to minimize. 40:40 I fucking ugly. That is like a rather that is yeah, I'm gonna write that down. 40:47 Kind of captures like what is my reference point for decision-making here? 40:54 I have nothing to articulate that. 40:56 They were your words. 40:59 I think I'm gonna figure this out. 41:03 What do you think I'm ever typing over here? That's just very good. 41:06 I think that you're right. 41:08 What do you remember about that moment of time? 41:13 I mean, that is one of the more cringe things. 41:16 I have to listen back to-- 41:19 Oh my gosh. 41:21 That is also just like a really good example 41:23 of I think the value of coaching and what I 41:26 extracted from it with that last interaction where you're like, "They were your words." 41:30 And you have this profound gift to be able to allow people to get clarity with what's 41:39 deep inside them, what they feel to be right. 41:42 And then to figure out how to go and bring that into the world and make decisions. That became such an orienting conversation for me because every single 41:50 interaction I had and I had so many intense conversations, so much intense conflict, 41:56 so many intense decisions to make. But I kept coming back to that decision-making 42:00 calculus, which is what is in the best interest of the company? Look at that company as an individual. 42:06 What's in my best interest? 42:08 And then where there was collateral, 42:10 'cause there was collateral, 42:11 what can I do to minimize that collateral? 42:14 Yeah, it is definitely intense like listening to that, 42:18 but it became such an orienting, comforting calculus 42:23 for making decisions that meant 42:25 that I could sleep like a little bit easier at night and the audience, and the audience, and the audience, 42:26 and the audience, 42:28 and the audience, 42:30 and the audience, 42:32 and the audience, 42:34 and the audience, 42:36 and the audience, 42:38 and the audience, 42:40 and the audience, 42:42 and the audience, 42:44 and the audience, and the audience, and the audience, and the audience, and all reality back to you, I'll read what my notes to myself became. I had these bolded at the top of my notes to remember 42:47 before I stepped into session with you. 42:49 He knows he's a master, 42:52 ask him open questions, 42:54 pull on his knowing, 42:55 I can take a back seat. 42:57 It's time for it to come out. 42:59 And that excerpt from that session, 43:01 I think really emphasizes the change in you 43:04 that allowed me to change 43:05 myself because I reflected back nuts something from external reality or an idea that I 43:11 had. I reflected your own words back to you to make sure that you heard yourself from 43:19 the before time series A-ish. You needed some sort of external anchor to stabilize yourself and that had changed 43:27 where you just needed to hold on to yourself and your own knowing and lead from there. So the theme 43:36 and the arc that we decided would be the topic of your conversation was from alone and uncertain to 43:49 from alone and uncertain to, and how might you finish that sentence? I would say without being too corny, like internal peace with like a small 43:56 asterisk next to it, which is I'm comfortable, Like I've got my integrity intact. 44:06 I sleep well at night knowing that the decisions I made 44:11 were truly based on the information I had available. 44:13 And I maybe I was like 90% convicted on that 44:16 at the acquisition. 44:17 Now I'm like 100% convicted that I made the right decision. 44:21 It gives me peace because I know 44:22 that there are people out there 44:24 that are connected to me, 44:25 that vehemently disagree with some of the decisions that I made, and that's their prerogative. 44:31 And in an old world that would nore away at me, and I want to address that and convince them 44:37 to change their mind. But I'm now at peace. I'm like, you can have that perspective. That's fine. 44:43 But I know you used to always say to me, 44:46 like, "No one knows my business better than I do." 44:49 And so rather than feeling like alone, 44:52 I feel at peace with myself at night. 44:56 Those other things that don't know 44:58 are a way at me the way that they made three or four years ago. 45:02 Yeah. 45:04 Thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you for having me. 45:14 So that was Tom. I love when we're both laughing listening to the recording of his session from 45:22 December and just like I still probably don't trust that he thinks I just repeated back his words his moral ability to do what is right or wrong. I'm thinking about it from the perspective of his psychology. Our psychology is a system that's made up of a couple different parts. 45:51 Thoughts, feelings, beliefs are ego as our personality, our values. And we operate in integrity 45:59 when each of those pieces is on the same page. And when we operate in integrity, we generate trust and confidence. And 46:08 when founders execute from that place of integrity, they find peace like Tom did. Like they 46:16 can sleep at night because even if other people disagree that all you should have done this or 46:24 you should have done that, the 46:26 founder knows I did what my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values and personality all knew 46:32 was right for me and for the company. 46:35 So if you're listening to this, I imagine that you might have a lot of different people's 46:40 advice for what you should do at this moment. 46:43 And like it's cool to get other people's advice for what you should do at this moment. And it's cool to get other people's take, 46:46 but if you're feeling quite scattered 46:48 about who's advice to listen to, 46:50 take a moment and really check in with yourself. 46:52 Like, slow down time, pause, 46:56 and like, check in with yourself. 46:59 What do your bones want you to do? 47:03 What do you deeply know is right for you to do? That doesn't 47:10 always mean automatically you should, but at least that gives you a sense of 47:16 what you know that you can then compare against other people's paths, right? 47:21 That should be a really important voice in the mix of other people's opinions as you execute. I would love to hear what you think about this 47:32 episode. Email me at amy@scaleyourself.com and let me know what you found was 47:38 helpful and if you learned something cool or interesting or new please share 47:43 this conversation with a friend or your co-founder. 47:46 Anyone that you think would find it interesting too. Thanks so much for listening. 47:51 This show was produced by Mickey Kapper and Kathleen Quillian. The music is by my good pal, 47:58 Scott Bell, and I'm Amy Beakler. [MUSIC]
