The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations

EP 187: Being Honest with Yourself and Moving from a Hero to Builder Mindset

• James Mackey: Recruiting, Talent Acquisition, Hiring, SaaS, Tech, Startups, growth-stage, RPO, James Mackey, Diversity and Inclusion, HR, Human Resources, business, Retention Strategies, Onboarding Process, Recruitment Metrics, Job Boards, Social Media Re

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Joe Wilson, Chief Evangelist at Bunq, examines how real startups are built through honest problem definition, relentless iteration, and a builder’s mindset instead of one-off heroic moments. Joe Wilson traces his path from a dorm-room company started to pay for college to a career of stacking small wins into durable results, sharing why most founders oversell themselves and how five hard questions can pressure-test any idea.

Book mentioned: Razors Edge by Somerset Maugham


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SPEAKER_00:

Hey everyone, we got Joe Wilson with us today. Joe is a serial entrepreneur and investor, and he's done all sorts of really cool things personally and professionally. Joe, I really enjoyed our prep call and getting to know you a little bit. So definitely looking forward to today.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, good morning, James. Yeah, look, um, and as everybody can see this big, beautiful rainbow logo behind me in case you missed it. So, in addition to the the aforementioned wonderful stuff, I guess I'm also the chief evangelist at Bunk. Um, and we'll talk a little bit about Bunk as we go along. But look, uh it's honor, pleasure. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so let's do it. To start us off, where are you from?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that's a great question. Let's put it this way uh I'm an American, you can tell by my accent, although sometimes people can't tell. I'm from the deep south in the U.S., actually. Like I was born in Alabama and raised in Mississippi and Tennessee. And that's from, you know, if you want that short story, it was a family of modest means, and you had to kind of work your way through everything. So I think the work ethic starts all the way back then. But that's that's the core places. Like I'm from the South in the US.

SPEAKER_00:

Alabama. So how long did you live there? Was it like your entire childhood or?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, man. Yeah. So all the way through to like I went to university in Memphis, Tennessee, home of the blues and all that. Made my way west to uh Colorado. That's where I met and married my wife and did our first few startups. So I did five of my own company. So the first two were out of Tennessee. The last three were out of Colorado. That was awesome.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice. What were you like as a kid?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, what was I like? Um, let's ask my mom. I think she'd be the best answer. And she she does it through stories. I was incredibly restless. I was one of those kids that drove parents crazy. And I'm sure I was on a spectrum of any sort you can imagine, and that like I had more energy, and I like to say brain power, but that's more self-effacing is maybe reality. So, like, my mom tells lots of stories of like she's my mom was the manager of a donut shop, right? So she was running a donut shop and she would be there kind of doing her review with her boss and find me climbing in the shelves where all they store all the flour and stuff like that. So that's me as a kid. I think it's a summary of me as a kid, is like more energy than common sense.

SPEAKER_00:

So, is it did that mean you were like the most popular kid in school since your mom worked at a uh managing a donut shop?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, man, one would think, right? But no, no, it wasn't like that. I was kind of a uh a music nerd, a small set of friends, and just I was really into both music to listen, but also I was learning to play and different instruments, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice, nice. So what what instruments did you play?

SPEAKER_03:

So I played uh guitar and I played the trumpet, and which led me towards the blues coronet, which would take us into the nuances of playing the horn section, but we probably don't have time for that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, okay, gotcha. That's great. So were you in a band or anything like that?

SPEAKER_03:

Or so there was always bands at school, but yeah, we had a couple things on the side. We believed ourselves to be brilliant. Let's just say that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. I was kind of born with an extra set of batteries and a little more confidence than common sense. So those things have served me well.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice, nice. And um, so when you were in in school growing up, what did you like studying the most? It sounds like music was a big deal.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I mean, so I had this fascination with literature. I think I was as, you know, I don't know if I was an escapist in in stories took you somewhere. Like you hear these stuff, you know, if you go back to read anybody who likes to write, they always talk about their love of literature. But I always loved stories. So I found myself, weirdly enough, like paying attention to grammar because it was kind of unlocking your ability to understand stories and phrasings and things like that. So I found English as a topic really fascinating. But then, you know, frankly, mathematics as well. So I had this weird right brain, left brain thing where I was in love with anything that was fiction and then anything that had an absolute resolute answer. So both of those things were my my favorite. That actually continued up to university. Like I I ended and double majored in uh creative writing and calculus.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, well, weird also.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, weird, weird can be awesome.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that's true. I think for me, I love characters, I love people that are just kind of who they are in their own skin. And I think that's this I've tried to sort of live that too.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I love that, man. Yeah, it's so when you were growing up, did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

SPEAKER_03:

Um, no, I think entrepreneur, I was maybe I'm a reluctant entrepreneur in a way, like it was born out of necessity rather than um, you know, this great beautiful dream. Uh so like again, I mentioned we were sort of modest means. So I was like the first kid out of my family in my side of the family to be able to go to university, meaning qualified and could go because the family could never assume they could do it. I mean, nobody could pay for it. So then it was up to me. I had to pay for it myself. So I had to find a way if I wanted to do that. Most of our guys are like, go to the factory, work in the factory 10 years, and you'll have a good life or something, right? And I was like, no, I gotta do something different. So I was kind of like the one of the breakout kids in the family that way. I say that as if we had a lot of kids in our family. We don't, it was just me and my sister. But yeah, so to do it, I had to find a way. So I started my first company when I was in high school, uh, doing home repairs and improvements so that I could pay for for college, so that I could afford to go. Um, I had to find a way to make a revenue, make money so I could pay for it. And that's that's kind of how it all started, out of necessity.

SPEAKER_00:

That's that's great. And so, did you end up trying to grow that business?

SPEAKER_03:

So was that one more of contracting or yeah, I think if you talk about you, you know, people have their stories, right? And then you should be careful that your stories don't become the ones you tell yourself versus the ones that existed in the reality. But I'd say this one tends to stay in the reality, which is it's probably the most important company that I've ever run. I've run a few now, and I think this was one that fundamentally, and I hope every anybody listens to this, anybody who's thinking about being an entrepreneur, like you're gonna have this moment where can I do this? Is it possible? And sitting in a dorm room with a cell phone, like booking jobs to do home repairs and improvements, became this thing that told me, hey, maybe this is possible. Maybe I'm not like gonna work in a factory and I'm not limited to just whatever this degree is gonna give me, but I could kind of do anything. And it was the ceiling breaker, right? That was the thing that broke, like it's literally. I say this because I had this visualization where I felt like there was a stopping point and suddenly there wasn't. So this company is the most important because it cracked open my brain and it said, hey man, just keep going. Like you don't know what's possible unless you just get out there and try it. I ran this for the entire time I was in university. I sold it for about 300K, which sounds like an amazing success story, except I at the time my business acumen was modest as well. So I probably owed 290,000. Uh, you know, and then of the 10K profit, like 5K paid for me and a bunch of friends to go to Florida. So it was one of those stories where the most important part of it was where your brain ends up and what your possibilities are.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's uh it sounds like it was yeah, it's open these doors of possibilities. It's like also this confidence builder where you're like, Well, wait a second, maybe I can do this, right? Test I mean, everybody has to have their moment, right?

SPEAKER_03:

You had to have your moment. You had to go through this at some point where you're like, Oh, maybe I'll do this thing rather than that traditional path. And you don't know if you can do it. And and you realize maybe taking a chance is okay. And then at some point, if it starts to work out, you're like, Oh, maybe okay. Yeah, and then if I could do that, oh well, maybe the next well, so you just keep being able to dream up, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, exactly. I think for me it was uh getting out of high school, moving out on my own, is really where I started to, I guess, start to believe more in my potential, believe it or not, at a at a boxing gym.

SPEAKER_02:

Nice. No, I but you do mue thai, right? I thought I saw that in your background.

SPEAKER_00:

So I yeah, it's literally how I made a living for many years. Uh yeah, and it was also to do like personal training, so teaching people, and I got I was really hustling. I was at one point literally living in the gym. Yeah, of course. Uh it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, I say that because it makes common sense to me. Like, you probably had a couch in that gym, and life was 24-7, and you were gonna make that thing work.

SPEAKER_00:

There is there was like a little office off to the side, and I would ridiculous at hindsight. I would take the cushions off the couch when the gym was closed at night and put them in the little office and create like a makeshift bed.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh man, I could, you know, my wife would tell you stories about when we first got married and you were running our companies. You know, we started the company, and we have like you can't get anything on credit because you don't have it, and so you have to assign your bank account to payroll, right? And she calls me up and she's like, We have no money. I'm like, what do you mean? Well, we didn't make sales that month, and the rollover happened and it wiped out everything we had personally. So we're living off credit cards for like four months in order to get it all back on top, because that's what entrepreneurs have to do. You're sleeping on the office in the storage room, I mean on the floor of the storage room.

SPEAKER_00:

Storage room, the storage room was taken by one of the other coaches. So he turned that it was hilarious. And like they, I don't know how the the owner of the I mean, he he was a cool guy, uh, the the owner. Um, but he my buddy who was like my first coach, actually. This was the guy that signed my principal signature so I could start fighting at 17.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um so uh but he so he took over the storage closet. So like it was funny though, because he would he would walk in and out of there and close the door behind him like during gym hours when people were there. So they'd be like, Why why is this guy? Why does he keep going back there and shutting the door?

SPEAKER_03:

It's like he's like the strange, the strange, weird guy that lives in the storage room, and you're like, just don't pay attention, man, focus on your finding. Yeah, man. Yeah, I mean, we all have these stories, right? We all have these origin stories where somewhere, somehow, somebody rolled the dice. And I think that's how this company was called Fix It. That's how fix it was for me. And it led to many other things, but it was instrumentally, I think. And I talk about like to this day, I still think if I hadn't done that, I never would have done anything, yeah, like like this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So so you were like in the earlier days, so you and your wife started a company together.

SPEAKER_03:

This was later. The first company was fix it was on my own. That was during university. Um, and then later she would be involved in a way not necessarily we did a company later together, but she was we were married while some of the other startups were going on.

SPEAKER_01:

That's how I referenced the no money thing because I had to put my money on it um in order to do it. So that's how that comes to comes to probably a little less interesting, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, no, I'm so curious, though, like so just kind of talking about the psychology at that point, right? Where I mean, look at where you are today and like everything that you've accomplished, and and there's those formative experiences too, where particularly in the early days, where sometimes you have to fully leverage yourself, take big risks, and you have to be able to manage that one way or another. And sometimes it's not as pretty as we hope it will be. It's really challenging and hard. I'm curious, like, what was your I want to get into like reflecting what it means to you, but at the time, what what was your state of mind? What did you think about what you were going through and how'd you get through it?

SPEAKER_03:

So I'd say there's two kind of interesting stories or so that would illustrate this. Um, in the earliest days, where you're kind of in survival mode. Like you think, you know, I guess I don't know if I had the like we have a world right now where we everybody has this in their head, like a bunch of tech guys get together and they come up with an idea and they go get a bunch of money out of Silicon Valley, and that becomes something, and they're billionaires at some point, and that's this kind of dream. But the majority, 90%, 99% of all actual startups, they land somewhere at the bottom or somewhere in the middle, right? They don't all land in the super story. I I had two out of the five that landed on the upper side, but not at the super. Now, I'm not a multi-billionaire from that, but you know, multimillionaire out exits, and people got paid back and people made money. Those are crazy great success stories. But the mindset at the time is that you're like, this is what I do. This is, you know, I invent things, I create things, I find a way to make things happen. My energy and ability was in formulating an idea, taking it down to its granular level of like, what could we do with it? And then stacking little tiny pebbles on top of it until it became kind of a small rock that you could go throw at something. So that was sort of my mindset was whatever I'm gonna work on, whatever I'm gonna do, had to have a worth in the world. And I don't know I'm not trying to say hard string save the world, but like it had to have a reason to exist, it had to be useful. And so normally I'm like trying to solve a problem, something that irritates me, right? So there's this thing. One of the companies I was involved with did uh 3D on the web, right? And and the idea then was like we had this wonderful, incredible visual 2D world, but why couldn't we do 3D? The technology was there. Long story short, we were ahead of our time, but like it was an irritation. So my mindset was often in frustration, irritation, and the fact that something should exist that doesn't, or problem should be fixed that's not getting fixed. All right, I'm gonna do it. That's kind of the way the mind's long story short, long story to get around to like that's the mindset. It's like I gotta fix this, I gotta make it, I have to will it to live.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's it's when you're going through those really challenging times, it sounds like that really the the standout is like you're kind of immediately going into problem solving mode, right? You're just yeah, I mean obsessive and yeah, finding that solution.

SPEAKER_03:

It's like a warm coat, right? You can fall back on fixing something. If when the world falls down around you in the entrepreneur space, you can go down to the problem you set out to solve and feel pretty good that you're still doing okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, for real. And I like asking people, it's like when you're when you're going through those times you're stretching yourself, like yeah, and and you it can be overwhelming. It's like, how do you navigate that? I was actually speaking with the um VP of town acquisition over at Zapier, and the very first thing is just diving into the solution, just attaching to taking steps and also just accepting the uncertainty, right? But focusing on despite uncertainty, coming up with a plan and just tackling it, taking action, like strong uh bias for action. I think to me, I I suppose that that makes sense because it's when you're in those chapters, if you're idle and your brain isn't actively focused on the solution, your brain wanders and it almost gets harder to those times.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, if you're not in that kind of solution zone. I mean, we're we're talking quite we're kind of abstract in a sense, right? If you're not in like solution zone, you're probably in the weight of the problem zone, right? So you're trying to go into the other piece. And I would say, like, I do agree with one thing you said, which is the action component. I forget who said this. Um, it was a quote that kind of landed with me a long time ago, which was action carries with it its own authority. So the movement, the thing, the doing of something actually will carry an authority with it to like try and get things done. And I always found that super useful. Like, I'm inaction feels like idiocy. And so I always wanted to be like, you know, something had to happen. So doing something was always better than doing nothing. Um, but if we come out of the abstract, because I think sometimes you have to be careful, like people will look back on their careers and they'll have these lovely nostalgic views of how cool it was when we couldn't eat or something, right? But most of that's not cool, most of it's like pain and difficulty, and you're frustrated. But when it works out or it solves the food, you're like, you're happy about it. And I think of five different companies I started and ran, um three of them failed miserably. I could probably look back now and figure out whether to get in or not get out. Two of them had exits which would sort of set us up for everything else we wanted to do. And you know, the problem is as an entrepreneur, when you have a success, you're like, look what I can do with this money. I can start another company. I think it's just important to keep that reality-based view. Um, I know a lot of people go on talk shows and they do these things and they just like always have these lovely memories. My memories were wonderful and they made me who I am, but I'm not gonna pretend they weren't hard. And I'm not gonna pretend that they weren't real, and I'm not gonna pretend that I didn't screw up 80% of what I was trying to do. And I got lucky sometimes, but I also maybe had a 10% smart streak where I could get through.

SPEAKER_00:

So when you're like in a position now where you're clearly in your prime, you've had a lot of success. When you're like mentoring people uh more so starting out, starting your own company or or really trying to accomplish any kind of big dreams or something that's really hard, right? Yeah, yeah. What advice do you share?

SPEAKER_03:

I think the the starting point is always like, what are you trying to solve? This is the old what's the problem? What's the problem you're trying to solve? Does anybody care? Like there's kind of research problems out there where we're trying to advance a field of study, and those are, I think, admirable and noble and things that need to be done, and they should will should and will sit in academia for a long time. And then there's just problems in the world that need to be solved, and I don't necessarily mean again, world hunger, as much as like high speed, the next level speed internet or something, right? Something very tactical. And I just want to make sure that everybody that they understand the problem that they're trying to solve and they have a general understanding of who who needs it. Those are the most important questions for anybody for me. And I know it's so basic, right? But the basic is what is it? What's it do? Who wants it? How would you convince them they did to try it? And will they actually pay for it? Get through those like on a solid ground foundation of facts, and you can probably build almost anything off of those. And then it all becomes operations, right? Which we can talk about that at some point because I have a deep view on the role of operations in a company. But my advice is always to get into those questions in a super hard way. The biggest problem I run into is most first-time entrepreneurs, you know, we we lie to ourselves a lot. Like we are self-selling, like we convince ourselves how great something is. We won't see, you know, how how ugly the baby is, if you know what I mean. We won't look at it and be like, oh, yeah, well, I know it's my baby, but probably not going to be a model. You know, we won't, we won't do that. Uh and and the what I find is that my technical friends, my people who grow up as engineers, and then they tend to be far more honest about this stuff and the business development entrepreneurs. So they tend to go look at those things in an honest way. And I think that's a skill you better have from day one, is to just be frankly brutally honest about something.

SPEAKER_00:

So to develop these insights, right? I'd be curious to dive into a couple some breakthrough moments in your career. Like you've been around for a little bit and some just perspective altering experiences that stand out to you.

SPEAKER_03:

There's a couple, like we're together in a company called Anarch uh back in the early 2000s, and we're doing this 3D thing. And so it's me and a few other people, and they're super smart. And um, you know, we're going at this thing where we are convinced, right, that the world needs 3D. Like we have the technology we can run. And for anybody who's technical, uh, 3D graphics are fundamentally at a mathematical level far more complicated than vector-based graphics for all my graphic nerds that are turning tuning in right now. Like um, this is you know, it's really interesting how much different it is. So we were able to build like a plug-in on a web browser that's only a couple megabytes that would give you the quality that you might see in the movies, just to give you a sense. And it's interactive, like fully interactive. It's this is super cool, like gaming, but you could do it on the web and you could do it for advertising and everything else. Um and what happens, weirdly enough, is that we're going after this thing. We're raised money. I think we're up to like 65 million that we've raised, which is really big back then. And The market somewhere along the way just sort of goes, I don't I don't I don't need this. Like I don't, I I 2D will be okay for a long time. And you don't realize it, right? You think, oh, uh your plan is still good, but you're not listening. And you realize at some point you come to the realization that the market has decided it doesn't need you and you're still doing the same thing. And when you do that, you sort of like someone has stolen all your dreams, right? And you have to have this super hard conversation. That company ultimately pivoted into the CAD CAM space. So if you understand where I'm going, that's 3D. But the way you go from glamorous ad-based web advertising agencies, every design agency in the world, over to let me build you a washing machine or a building 3D, is that you go back to the fundamental question of who's going to pay for this? So when the world came down to the question who's going to pay for 3D, it was in a different place than when we were selling. And that was hard. And it was probably one of the most difficult pivot conversations I've ever seen, but it had to be done or you would be dead. You know, and if you rewind that same company, there was a whole platform decision where we had to lay off half the company and things like that. So those are like big moments where you learn to be honest with yourself. Um, so that's an example. Like, I don't know if that's a breakthrough, like, oh wow, look how successful it is. But it's a moment where you become fundamentally smarter because of something that you're experiencing. So that's that's an example, maybe as as one.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's a questioning potential biases or questioning your line of thinking. And it's like uh one of the, I don't know, just little quotes that's always stuck with me. And I I can't even remember exactly where I heard it. But in order to prove yourself right, try to prove yourself wrong.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Just question your line of thinking and and try to poke holes in it.

SPEAKER_03:

Prove yourself wrong first, right? Right. And then and then at least you would know the problem to solve. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that one's that same company, I will say, had a lot of lessons. You know, another one that, and I'll keep this in the abstract and keep the names out of it, but like I remember being in charge of all the revenue and everything that's going on, and we're failing because of the situation I just described. And we're going into a board meeting, and we have a chairman who's extremely experienced, and we're getting ready for this board meeting, and he sort of sees me, and I'm probably wound tight, man. I'm wound, I'm a very different leader manager today than I was then, and I'm wound tight, and I'm like getting ready to go do battle with the board, right? This is you can see probably physically, this is where I'm coming from. And he's like, he decides to delay the board meeting by an hour, and he takes me for a walk, right? We're in Boulder, Colorado, and he takes me for a walk, and we're walking around the city. Um, yeah, it's a kind of a mountain town, and he's like, What's going on with you? And I start to explain why this is like, look, man, look, look this is software, this is IT, this is technology, this is online. He's like, You're not saving babies in the emergency room. Like, get this shit in perspective. If you're calm and you're balanced, you can perform at an extremely elite level. But if you're like this, you're basically playing the junior game the rest of your life. Do you understand what I'm telling you? And I was like, what? And and I think somewhere over the course of six months after that conversation, it finally locked into me what he was saying, and how to like kind of clock that information into performance and considering how to make decisions and how to go at things. And I think it was one of the greatest lessons that I ever got in the heat of a moment where somebody took the time to sort of say, Look, you might be good, you might even be great, but not like this.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so so let's just I'd like to slow down on this for a minute because frankly, sometimes this is something that I struggle with, right? Where it's like I attach myself so much to the outcome that I want to achieve that it becomes like yeah, sometimes it's almost like life or death feeling, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Where yeah, you're you're you you're measuring everything by this outcome, right? In a way, it's like you're attached. Yeah, you said it right.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, so like how do you I do have this, and maybe this is something you have some feedback on, but I I think I have this completely obsessive mindset when it comes to growing my company and making it a category leading. Yep, yeah. And so it's it's like how do you balance that level of obsession with is it is it almost like letting go or or no? I mean, how do you actually implement this as an entrepreneur? Because I struggle with this.

SPEAKER_03:

We are who we are, right? Like that's that we kind of and and whatever it is about us um that got us to this point is is what it is. You feed that energy because it got you this far, right? Nothing's wrong about that. Um, I also have always talked about ego as this wonderful double-edged sword, right? Probably the majority of jobs that I've ever gotten or things that I've ever done, I was relatively unqualified for, but I talked myself and other people into it to let me do it. So, in a sense, I was overselling, but because I oversold and I was a fast learner, I actually got these step-up opportunities. So these are all good things. The lesson inside of what this guy was telling me was there are very, very few one and done moments in your life. You normally have multiple points that you're building towards something. And there's very, there's there's not these like magic movie moments, right? So if you can basically take yourself out of the one final shot of the ball game mentality and think in the systemic building mentality, then you will balance your effort and energy and accomplishment across that structure, and you'll probably make calmer, smarter, better decisions than you will if everything is wound up into this moment that you put in your head. And so he's basically telling me at the time to put a fine point on it like, you think we're going into a board meeting and your job is on the line. That's what you think. So you're in ready to defend yourself. But the truth is, we want you to do this because you're probably one of the only people that can, but we need you to do it better. Let's talk about this problem and solving it rather than being on the defense mode, and you can probably get more done. So he's kind of twisting it, you know, so that I understand that I need to balance and play, relax and play my game rather than be wrapped in a single moment as if it's life or death. Because then I will be a performer rather than this kind of warrior that I turned into.

SPEAKER_00:

Like this overemphasis on these. And it's really it's like a million moments, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Over a period of not very few things that you do, and again, anybody who's an entrepreneur knows this, very few things that you do will have any single moment. You might have a moment where you remember, oh, that's where it turned, but it won't be like a thing you landed, and you know, like it would be a thing where you kind of did 75 things 60 right, and they've they kind of collected on top of each other, then finally something began to go your way, and you could start to build some momentum, and you were smart enough to keep it going. It's usually like that more than it is we did everything, we built it out, we landed, and boom, it took off. It's rarely like that.

SPEAKER_00:

So that was was that a challenging transition for you to change your philosophy toward moments and pressure and yeah, it's to say the least, it was super challenging for me.

SPEAKER_03:

So intellectually, I was kind of born, raised, grew myself into this like a performance mentality of crossing a finish line or throwing the touchdown in an American analogy or something like that, right? We're gonna have this giant celebration moment and we're gonna we're gonna be heroes. You know, it's this kind of hero thing that we we stories that we tell ourselves. Um, and I had to shift it to like the builder mentality, which is I'm gonna build something in a direction. And the belief in that system and the belief in that effort, well, the belief in that delivery will yield the greatest results, more so than the amazing one-time super duper thing that I was gonna pull off. So when you move out of the hero mentality and into the builder mentality, you start to make, I think, balanced, smart decisions that take you somewhere. I'll give you an example. Um, you know, at Bunk, and I just I'm not trying to tang it into bunk, but like at Bunk, there is a very distinct cultural component of solving the long-term problem rather than the short-term issue. So when we, you know, if I were to like do a proposal and somebody was gonna review it and it was really about just fixing something that's happening right now, culturally the company would kind of go, come on, man. Right? Like we that's gonna come up again, right? Three times, five. Let's why don't we solve it for good rather than to solve it for now? And that was one of the things I think you got to make that shift. And it wasn't easy for me because I don't think I'm wired that way naturally. I had to, I had to adapt.

SPEAKER_00:

I wonder too, if it it's maybe the why that's a challenging shift, at least like I'll speak for myself as an entrepreneur. It's because when you're starting back and you go back to those stories of like when you're living off credit cards, right? And and you're in the early days, uh, there's like whiplash sometimes, right? With growth and churn or whatever it might be while you're establishing a product market fit or a consistent customer base or whatever it might be, it feels very much so in your face, like survival mode. I gotta figure out how to do it.

SPEAKER_03:

Failure's real, right? Failure will be real. It could be failure is financially crushing. So it's not like it's not real.

SPEAKER_00:

So is it like, do you feel like there's also maybe this like stage appropriate mindset where it's like, you know, those early days, well, maybe not because it's like you always want to be long-term focused to take some of the pressure off.

SPEAKER_03:

But yeah. I mean, this is you what we are having right now is the classically good discussion about the false narrative of being an entrepreneur and the actual narrative of being an entrepreneur, right? Because the false narrative is it was hard times, it was difficult, we slip on the couch, but this cool thing happened and they found us and they gave us money, and boom, it worked out. And look at what we've done now. That's the false narrative because it happens 0.001% of the time, and it's great what it does for somebody. The true narrative is like we grind it out, right? We grind it out like actors who waited 10 years to find the good gig. We grind it out and we keep going because we believe in it. And in this case, failure is costly. It will ruin you financially in the US. Um, but somehow you still can't roll the dice. And if you can, in those moments, take a little bit of the air out of the balloon and find that center point, I think you just make better decisions.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. An episode you might actually enjoy is we recently did an episode with uh Reese. And Reese is on the founding talent team at a hyper-growth startup called Dust. And previous to being in town acquisition, he was actually a professional soccer player. Oh, yeah. And he talks a lot about like pressure and how to kind of psychologically go through the ups and downs and stay in the middle, essentially.

SPEAKER_03:

That's exactly what I'm trying to say. Maybe Reese says it better because it's like how do you how do you take that path through the center of the sorrow and the chaos to get where you want to get, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's like saying mentally leveled, right? Yeah, well, that's that's cool. That's something that I'm gonna think a lot more about too, just like going into 2026. I mean, like just trying to be the best version of myself too. Right.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think um, you know, these breakthrough moments are things that come slow and they come quieter than most people think. And I know that's not what everybody wants to hear, but uh for me, that's just the reality. Like we've had in the different companies, you know, I think a single account was never really the answer because you can lose it just as fast as you can get it. Like if you're doing an enterprise side. Um, but whatever we got did to get that one, we kept trying and we were able to get four, five, six more and suddenly diversify. You know, that was that was a better answer than the one big win. Um, or on the consumer sales side, you know, the change, change, change, right? Try and change, try and change. Like run a hundred versions until something clicks. And the funny thing is that one word in your, you know, whatever you're doing with Google to game Google might have made a difference. And then you just run that thing until it starts to drop off, and then you innovate on top of it again. Those are the grinders that make massive success. We succeed better through those lenses. And I don't have a business I can point to that I was in where that wasn't the case. I didn't, I was, you know, luck is great, but I'd rather have process.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

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James Mackey

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