Soul Venture Stories: Startup Lessons You Won’t Learn from Business School

Author Ashwin Gulati joins Nikki to unpack the personal cost of startup culture. They discuss his book Soul Venture, the emotional rollercoaster of entrepreneurship, and the difference between solopreneurs and high-stakes founders. From restaurant failures to Silicon Valley pressure, Ashwin shares hard truths and helpful insights for business owners navigating their mental health and professional dreams.

My book/ Website. www.soulventurebook.com 

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashwingulati/

https://www.facebook.com/ashwin.gulati.1

https://www.instagram.com/ashwin.gulati/

Ashwin Gulati
===

[00:00:00] Hi Nikki. It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me. My name is Ashwin Ti and I'm the author of Soul Venture, A true life and death journey into the startup culture. Just, was published about a few weeks ago and has been, doing quite well.

And, I think today what we're gonna talk about is some of the things in the book and some of my experience in helping companies. Take off or land, and both the business side of it, the personal side of it, and a lot of things that people don't talk about. Okay.

I kind of wanna start off by getting a background of you.

So how long, when did you start your first startup? Like, how far back was that? How much, experience do you have with them kind of thing? So, yeah, I'm gonna give you a little bit of a personal background because it dovetails into all of this. So, I was originally, I was born in India and I came to the US when I [00:01:00] was, in high school, 14 years old or 13 years old. And honestly, I went from a pretty stable environment to a pretty unstable environment. And, I've actually been working, I would say three jobs a day since I was 13 years old. And, I've been very entrepreneurial. Like even when I was here I had to survive, so I was always doing projects.

But then in college I went to college, in Claremont, McKenna College. I don't know if you've heard of that. It's in Southern California. I also studied in London at, King's College in London School Economics. I've heard of that one. Yeah. And I studied business. At first I thought, I just, in order to make money in America or be successful in America, you gotta be in finance or on Wall Street or something.

But I quickly, realized that's not what I wanted to do. And so I moved to Europe and I got into software. And, really not as a programmer, but more as a sales and business development. And that was kinda my day job. But even while I was doing my day jobs, I lived in England. I lived in Spain for over six years.

I was always doing little companies on the [00:02:00] side, I was like importing tennis goods to England. I was, I started a little audio text company in Spain and none of it really worked out. It was really hard to do it in Europe. So I moved back to US, in the late nineties, and that's when I actually started my first, official company that, required investment in the whole Silicon Valley game.

And so I'd say the first one was, 1997. And then, I've done several companies but I've also worked with a lot of entrepreneurs in on their startups because I work with incubators, accelerators, I've also worked with the SBA and help them create a tech type of a startup division in California.

And so I think I've been in there living in the trenches of startups for over 30 years. My company is also other people's companies and seen a lot of things in there. And it's kind of the basis of my book a little bit it's not just a business book. In fact, that's the first line of the description of it.

There's a lot of business in it, but it's really about sort of what the entrepreneurs are really going through mentally, [00:03:00] physically, emotionally. And then what are some of the things that. Are kind of con counterintuitive, in the business world, that people say you should do, but actually ends up backfiring.

So I kind of put it all together in a kind of a memoir and a knowledge share mix, a hybrid book, I would say. And I think it's being received very well. I have read some of it. I will read more of it. I have been having lately a dry spell with my reading, which is just my brain's fault. But it's very descriptive and I can't say enjoyed reading it because some of it is hard to read.

Mm-hmm. Because, it does get dark, but it's been a great read. You're very like, I felt like I was there and mm-hmm. So that was, I go back and forth really between the inner journey and the outer journey a lot. Mm-hmm. So there's a little bit of shift going on there.

I know the book starts off a little heavy, but, I think if you go [00:04:00] along, you'll find it, it all makes sense, as to why it's all intertwined.

So I What made you decide to write a book ? Because I was told by a therapist that I should write a book and my dumb, but thought that a podcast would be so much easier. So, they probably are. And in fact, I actually think, it took me so long to write this book, like over a decade, right. And people even you said, right, people don't read as much, you know?

And I think people's personalities are changing and times changing. But I do think that writing a book is, it's probably the hardest thing I've done. Of all the things it was very hard to publish this book. But if you read the book and you look at the story arc. I think it'll answer a question for you, of why I wrote it. And the reality is this, it was not like one day I woke up and it was like, oh, I got a great business idea. I wanna write a book. It was not like that. In fact, it's a very, very deep journey. And here, [00:05:00] what if I told you that first company that I told that I started was called Writers Gems.

Okay. And so I've been thinking about writers and writing for like, decades, and I've been writing in the Closet for a long time. And I thought, well, you know, writers shouldn't publish until you're like, famous or something like that, but, I think that it's been written over a very long period of time and it was not like I have an idea.

It was something inside of me that honestly needed to be completed. And, in fact, this is my second book. And the first book I was, yeah, first book. I was too scared to publish. I was very scared to publish this one, but I was more scared to publish the first one. I was just too personal. And but I did lift some sections and out of that one for this book.

So I think it's a, I gotta tell you, hats off to anyone that ever been through what I've been through. And I've talked to so many authors and it's all the same. You put yourself out there. I've been a really private person all my life. Really private person. No one knows, what I do or how I do it, and, no website.

And here I am, totally [00:06:00] public doing a podcast with you. And, all these articles have been written by the book and I have all these interviews. So it's a really weird feeling of exposing yourself and putting yourself out on the world. And I mean, honestly, people have this mask on,

to survive in the world. You have your business mask on. And I, in this book, I take it off. So a lot of people close to me are kind of shocked. They're like, really? Did you really publish that? I dunno if I answered your question, but, it was not like one book idea, it was just, it evolved over a very long period of time.

Okay. So tell me more about venture capitalism or startups. Talk to me about those things. 'cause me I'm a small business owner mm-hmm. Or a solo entrepreneur or whatever you wanna call me. Mm-hmm. I have no idea about startups. So can you explain how, what is the startup process? Well, actually you are an entrepreneur and you are doing a [00:07:00] startup.

Mm-hmm. So, I don't know. I can't talk much about the venture capital world. I have experience in it, but I think the book is really more about the new businesses and for me, entrepreneur and investor standpoint, right? So I think it's a really glitzy world out there.

People wanna do startups. I'm an addict of it. I've been like that for a long time. And one of the problems in startups today is that it's so easy to start a startup. You know, it was not the same 20 years ago. And like right now, you could actually literally, start a business, get it branded, get in product service out, go on to Google get virtual assistants internationally.

Literally by the end of the week you could click a button and you could have a business online, right? And that was not the case, 20, 30 years ago. But the startups that I'm focused on, even though there's a section in the book by the way, that almost says you should be a solopreneur, not a entrepreneur.

Because of how hard it is to be an entrepreneur, but the, what I'm focusing in on are like some of those high stakes ones, where people are like, Hey, I'm gonna change the world, or I got this best new [00:08:00] idea, that no one's done before and I'm gonna file a patent and I'm gonna be a billionaire and, move outta my way.

Those type of people kind of. The way I am or mostly was that's the kind of startups I'm talking about where, what it takes to build a team, what it takes to really take money from entrepreneurs and friends and family and all the emotional stuff that goes along with it and how hard it is.

There are some chapters in the book about how customers really think and how removed the customer really is from the entrepreneur's perspective. Sometimes nine to 10 times, removed how hard is to get investment and then it's kind of like a rat race that you're always behind in the business side.

But what people don't talk about as much is kind of what's going on internally. There's a lot of personal and psychological strain that the founders go through, and I talk a lot about that as well. So, do I say don't do a startup? Well, I try to tell people not to do a startup, but if, but, if I said that, [00:09:00] then we won't have, iPhones and electric cars and, new restaurants and things like that.

So I don't really mean it, but I do mean it to think about it, really, really hard of as to why, not the business, why, but the personal why. And, one thing I learned was, and this is I think funny, not funny, almost sad actually, is that most people do it because they want freedom.

Maybe you did it because you want freedom, you don't wanna work for somebody, or you don't wanna work on a corporate nine to five job and you wanna be free of your own, and make money. So lots of people say, I wanna be my own boss, and then they go out and raise money from 20 investors and they have 20 bosses.

While they had one boss before, you know? So I think there, there's all this like push and pull going on. And so I write about that stuff. But, you should definitely keep going on the book because, I think the beginning is just the warmup. Oh, yes. I'm going to finish the book.

I am a big reader. Every once in a while though, I go through a little spell where it takes a bit for me to finish a book, but [00:10:00] usually I can read like three to four books in a week. Wow. So it's, it will get read. I'm parenting that. It just didn't happen in the last little while because of my brain doing it.

I wanna break thing. But like I said, I have enjoyed what I've read so far. There's all these books that you get for business because yes. I have my own business on accident. I ended up helping people and then they paid me and, Hey, ta-da, you have a job.

So mine was an accident. It's a good accident. It's a good accident, but it was still an accident. So there was no plan of, okay, we're gonna do this, this, and this. Nope. It's none of that. It was, I'm gonna help this person and they're gonna pay me so that I can eat.

That's pretty much it. Probably not the best way to go about that, but I also know myself and I know that I couldn't end up in cubicle hell. Because yeah, it would be hell, I would know what everybody's doing. I would be able to hear everybody's keyboard [00:11:00] clacking. Yeah, I'd be the one that everybody worried about, well, maybe you started the business the very right way.

Maybe, you found something that you really good at and you enjoy and now it's paying you, so. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's called success. Yeah. I guess it is.

So without revealing all of your book do you have any tips for people, maybe they're already in that startup culture that will help them, survive it a bit easier or anything? Yeah. I mean, the book is full of tips, but lemme give you some common, things people ask me, if I was to do one thing all over again, what would you do, right?

So I think there are two things, ways of looking at it. I think the first thing that people need to realize, and even the investors have to realize that this is not just a business, it's, this is like a personal pilgrimage [00:12:00] as well, for the founder. And they don't talk about that.

They have to fail business and be all very strong, the outside world, so I think on the personal side, I think I would tell the entrepreneurs, even if they're in a successful business right now, that they need not just business help, but they kind of need some personal help.

So there's a part of the book that talk about the core dream team. And when you go to a venture capitalist and you ask 'em what the dream team is, they're gonna say, the sales animal, the best, CEO, the CFO, the marketing guru, et cetera. Right? And what I'm saying is, yeah, that's all important, but that's not the inner circle.

The inner circle is, a therapist or a coach, or a, and depending on, if you're an athlete, a physical trainer, nutrition, I mean, things like you are the number one asset. If you're gone, then the business and everybody else's livelihood is not doing well.

So I would say that number one thing to do personally is. And it's hard to spend money on that, because money's tight and b, especially when things are going well, I mean, why do you need a coach? And I play a lot of tennis and if you look at all the top players in the world, [00:13:00] top 10, they all have like five coaches, and why do they need five coaches if you're so good?

And so I think that's personally, I would say, to take care of yourself somehow. I didn't do that very well. I didn't learn that until later. I was trying to be scrappy with money and not spend it on this and spend it on that type of thing. On the business side, I mean, I think there are a lot of, this could go on forever.

A lot of things to remember. And I think. People ask me what, what are the top reasons startups fail, right? Of course, number one, eventually it's because they're, run outta money, right? Which is the big problem. And but why do they run outta money, right?

They run outta money because, they timed it. I mean, basically timing is the probably number one reason. If you look at companies that have all the money in the world, the best product, the best technology, the best intellectual property, the best teams, and they still crash and burn, you know, it comes down to timing.

They were too early or too late, so that's a very tricky one to figure out. But just have to be aware of it. But, there's so much going on, [00:14:00] you know, how much money you take, who you take it from how you know how to make sure you test get the first 10 customers really happy before getting the, the hundred ones.

All those things I've learned the hard way. So it all depends what kind of business you are. Are you a service business, a product business? Are you a solopreneur? I mean, I think the answer would vary for each one of them, but the personal side of it won't vary. I think that one, I agree 100% no matter what business you're in, that you need to get some help personally.

And I think it's a big trend right now, especially in Silicon Valley, where, CEOs are required to get coaching and things like that, or, work life balance, support, that kind of stuff. So I think those are some of the things. If you read the book, there's a lot of gems on business.

But behind it, there's a lot of personal stuff that I think we need to consider.

So when you say that it's different between solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, and [00:15:00] Right, whoever else, what are the differences that you see? Because a lot of people just use the words interchangeably. Yeah. But a solopreneur, is an entrepreneur, but an entrepreneur isn't always a solopreneur in my mind, right?

So if, for example, I consider you an entrepreneur, but I think the difference that I was referring to is that one is like you're building a company, an entity that's team based, that is maybe product driven and has departments and investors. So you're not alone doing all of this, even though you're alone possibly starting it, but day to day there's like a team side of it, right?

And there's a lot of other things to balance in that type of a business than in a solopreneur business, which can be really great too, where it's just you, right? And you might have some support and some, service providers supporting you, but you don't have a payroll of 20 people to worry about every month and you don't have a lot of other things like maybe you have investors, but maybe you don't, and there's actually a chapter in the book where one of, the people I was [00:16:00] working with ended up, going both routes and, you could say that the route to solopreneur was a happier one, right? But I'm not suggesting that's for everyone, because that also has a lot of, being alone by yourself, and not no support.

So there's pros and cons in both, but those are the differences that I see when I say entrepreneur and startups. I'm kind of like in this, product driven Silicon Valley, let's create something and sell it and scale it and hopefully sell the company to someone else, or monetize it that way, that's what I was referring to as part of the differences.

So you'd be the, you'd be both a solopreneur and entrepreneur, right? Yeah, pretty much. I am the jack of all trades. What they call a CEO in a startup? No, chief Everything Officer. Completely true though. Yeah. It is true. Yeah. Have you ever heard of a fractional COO? [00:17:00] Yeah, I had one of those on my podcast earlier this year.

It was the first time I'd heard of it. So that's a new trend. I've done a lot of interim CEO work where I come in to solve a problem, have a company from point A to point B, that's a new thing. 'cause most people can't, like a fractional COO there's a big thing on fractional CFOs as well.

You need a CFO, but you don't need it all the time and you probably can't afford it, depending on which kind of business you're in. It's a big trend. I've seen fractional CMOs, I've seen a lot of those. CMOs marketing officers.

In fact, I believe there are some sites on the internet where it's like a group of, specialists that can sign up to beat that fractional person, okay. So are there any main points that you wanted to talk about today that I haven't brought up? I think that when we first talked briefly [00:18:00] about this podcast, I believe we were talking about this hybrid of. The personal and the business. Right? And I know at first you said you were gonna talk about the personal side.

It'd be good to hear a little bit of your perspective on that too. But I said I'm happy to talk about both. And the reason that is that, that I believe it's not one or the other. And you know, even in the introduction of my book, I talk about the fact that if you wanted to read a book about what to do on a startup, or like a business plan strategy, whatever, don't read this book because there are like 600,000 of those out there, but if you wanna uncover like what's going on behind the business decisions and behind the personal ones, I think that's why I think Soul Venture is a very different book. And I know you wanted to talk about the personal side a little bit and I'm happy to chime in, but my personal stories are all.

Hey everyone. Thanks for sticking with us. Before we dive into our next topic, I just wanna take a quick moment to remind you two who like this video, subscribe [00:19:00] to our channel and hit that notification bell. That way you'll always be the first to know when a new episode drops, and we want to hear from you.

What topics are you most excited about? Drop your thoughts in. The comments below. Your feedback helps us create content that you love. We've got some exciting stuff coming your way, so don't miss out. Now let's switch gears and jump into our next discussion.

Sort of about why people do startups and what they go through and what they don't talk about and they have to really show us a strong front, and that's all that is important. But the reality is the reality, right? Robin Williams could make the world laugh. Yeah. But he was still majorly depressed himself.

It goes to show that it doesn't matter what's happening out here. Yeah. There's stuff happening in the head that we just, we don't know even, no matter how well we think we know a person, think about [00:20:00] Anthony Bourdain, he was so successful, or Kate Spade, and there's like a list of com people that are actually achieved success.

Robin Williams is a great example actually. Everybody thought he was this happy guy, Gokey guy, right? And everyone was shocked to hear what he was going through, right? So I think, he made millions laugh. Everybody thought he was happy then he were, they were like, if he could make us laugh, he can't be depressed.

That's not how it works. Yeah. And it's not just depression that like, I don't think depression. Of course, I talk about that in the, in the book, but there's like a whole bunch of other things going on here, right? There's a, DHD, there's, there's just a lot of things. And some of those, by the way, are actually good for business, right?

Like some of those conditions can help you work like multitask and be, superpower and work late at night. And, but, those that can last forever though. Okay? Mm-hmm. And that's what I've seen. I've met a lot of people. I think, I actually believe this is a, probably, I shouldn't say this on a podcast, but I believe that [00:21:00] if you're gonna go after something crazy, like a big disruptive company or game changing company and start from scratch there's probably something going on mentally, right?

Okay. And it's, I have some in some actually third party information in the book about, that's probably a example of insanity, okay? To try to do all of that and make less money and have no vacation and then probably 97% of the time times you will fail. So that whatever was happening mentally or personally for that person or, it could be a good thing or could be a bad thing.

We don't know until it all plays out, right? A lot of people talk about, you know, the backgrounds of Elon Musk, or if you look at the background of Steve Jobs, who was adopted, and we don't know. We don't know what's driving them, so those are the kind of things that people, don't talk about.

Yeah. My podcast name is Operational Harmony Balancing Business and Mental Wellbeing. Oh, good, okay. 'cause, being in business for myself, I see I [00:22:00] have, I am mental let's not get twisted like I am out there, everyone is out there. Yeah. I amm out there with the mental health thing, but, having a business and helping clients and doing the work and doing the work, even when my body is like, no, why do I wanna do that?

Or. When my body is in go, go, go, go mode. And it's like, you haven't done everything. Keep going. And then sometimes I end up having no balance between life and work, because work becomes absolutely everything I have to do because my brain is going, keep moving.

So I know that I have made big moves towards, trying to get both of those directions to be a little bit closer together so that I'm not completely, can't do anything and then can't stop doing everything, and so I work on that. I work on my mental health. I do not think that [00:23:00] at any point, even if you are considered normal

that you should just think that you have nothing to work on. Yeah. As people, we are not perfect. And while we shouldn't be striving to be perfect, we should be striving to be better today than we were yesterday. So we keep improving and keep going. And one of the things you have to improve is how you look at things, how you are in relationships, you know, your mental health and where your mind is at is very important.

It's not just a, oh, whatever it'll do, it'll be whatever. No. There are days when I have to force myself to get, right. Hitch in my head along. Right, right, right. You know, it's hard and it's not easy. But then there's other days where I'm just like, let's go. I mean, and I have to deal with that.

I have to make the choice every single day to do the work because there's nobody else to do it. Yeah, no, you're right. And you [00:24:00] know, some people say that, oh. Even if you work for a company, it's also like 24 7. It is, and I know a lot of people actually, investment bankers, I know a lot of people

that are like working like crazy, but the difference that I see between them and the entrepreneurs is that, okay, it's not about the long hours, it's about the fact that their brain, or their, not brain, but their goal is to solve like one piece of the puzzle. Like one slice of the pie.

Maybe they're tech, or maybe they're sales and they're working like crazy, whereas entrepreneurs are pulled in these crazy directions, right? You have to go from sales to podcast to, your accounting, right? It's just like, that I think is a different type of a dimension, you know?

But I know a lot of people that are not entrepreneurs and have corporate jobs and are killing themselves, right? But at least they're, but in a different way. I think, but even then, I think you're still working, so you should still be again, working on yourself.

But [00:25:00] not in that way where some people are going, well, I have mental illness, and you have a salad, and you can't have the avocado touching the egg, dude, it's my food. I personally, I wouldn't eat an avocado to save anybody's life, but you know, if somebody wants to have whatever they're eating, leave 'em alone.

That should trigger anybody. That's true. I read a story yesterday where somebody was triggered over somebody else's salad and Oh, I'm still like, what? That's weird to me. But you can't do that. You can't expect somebody else to go eat in their car because you're upset that they are eating something you don't like or that something on their plate is touching when you wouldn't do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's different. So I'm a firm believer and we all have to work on ourselves no matter where we are, we need to get better at doing something. And whether that's communication or doing the work when you don't really feel like doing the work and that [00:26:00] kind of thing. Yeah.

Just to push yourself sometimes. And what are the type of things that you work you tell people they should work on? For the, on the mental side? On the mental side? Yeah. Usually for me, the people I'm around it's, there's a lot of trauma in people's life. So I always recommend that.

You're at least going to a therapist. Work through that stuff. I have two of them. I am working through my trauma. And I have a whole lot of it. Highly recommend it. Because the things that happened to you yesterday, no matter how many yesterday ago that it was, are keeping you tied down to yesterday.

And so in order to get that string or rope to let go, you have to work on those problems. You're gonna have the hard days in therapy and, one of my friends always used to tell me to have fun when I was going to my therapist. And he didn't, he doesn't understand therapy. Right.

Right. But I would be on my [00:27:00] way to therapy going, it's not gonna be fun. Therapy isn't fun. I mean, I have my days where it's not quite bad because, we're not. Stabbing into some problem I have. But therapy is hard and it should be. Yeah. So if you're just glossing over and everything's hunky dory you never talk about anything upsetting, then you're not being real with your therapist or yourself.

Yeah, that's true. That's true.

What else would you like me to share with you about the book or about anything related to the trenches and of startups without identifying markers? What was your most difficult type of startup? Oh, I can tell you what type of startup is craziest of all. And also the most. Learn most, you [00:28:00] can learn from it.

If you don't go fully bankrupt, in it. Okay. It's the number one failure rate in America for a reason. Okay. Because it is so hard. And that's like the why not the restaurant hospitality business. Okay. , And there's so many people that do this, right? Oh my God, I got the best recipe from my grandmother and I'm gonna create a restaurant.

And oh, I got the best idea, for a bar. And it's great. And customers are really fickle. They're all rushed there for the first week and then they never go back. But what's interesting about that business is it's almost like the whole. The whole pyramid of the company is upside down, right?

Because the most important person is the person like the server, right? Because that's the face of the customer, is the person that's like, doesn't even care. Not doesn't care, but is a transient employee. Maybe they're just there for a few months or the summer and the most important person is like way in the back, which is sort of the owner or could be the chef or someone like that, right?

And there's so many moving parts in that business and so much [00:29:00] things you can't control, food cost, beverage cost and theft and marketing and it rains one day and no one shows up. And or if you're not, well, what do you do? So I think that business is probably the hardest business to do, and the ones that get it right are, I mean, hats off.

But everyone I talk to that's a successful, restaurant here, and I tell 'em about oh my God, I went to this incredible place and blah, blah, blah, blah. You have to go check it out. And his or her answers always, oh, yeah, I'll go check it out. But, let's see what happens in nine months.

So I think that is probably the toughest business to start. And also the one that's the most, so many started right all the time. And you don't, you see. A restaurant go in close and a new one come in another close, and then another one comes in a different concept and

and or they have to remodel to make themselves look better. Yeah. But every time you do a new concept, you probably need remodel anyway. So there's a lot of money that goes into this stuff, it's not [00:30:00] like, it's not a solopreneur situation alone. Not even a little bit, not even alone. So I think that's very hard.

And on the business side, I think tech is hard because the other side of the business I'm saying is because it depends what type of tech, if it's like a hardware, it's like so hard to get it right. So if it's software, it's so hard to get it right.

And once you get it right, then how do you differentiate yourself from, the big boys and customer acquisition is really hard. Business is hard. I mean, people say, oh, you know, I don't mean to be, doomy gloomy about it. I think that, I'm just saying that if you can get over the initial hump, then everything is awesome, you know?

Because you've done everything, but the initial hump is extremely hard. And as you already know, and I don't, it doesn't matter if you're a solopreneur or a restaurant here or a, Silicon Valley person, I think that it's getting it started and getting it going and keeping it sustainable where money in is greater than money out,

which is really the true formula of [00:31:00] business. To get there takes, and it's above the level of poverty. There. No, good point. Yeah, good point. Because it can be, expenses are lower than income, but income's still not really. Yeah. Where be Yeah. Enough to sustain, to be, to sustain your goals.

If you can do that and keep growing, then I think you've made it right. It doesn't matter what kind of business it is, yeah. And then I think you've arrived, but that road is filled with a lot of work. That is not the yellow brick road. Yeah. Yeah. But it's worth it for people that have great ideas and the energy and they're aligned with an expertise that they're really good at and they know how to, make money at it.

I think it's not a bad path if we forget all the pieces. Right. It makes sense to me that kit, that restaurants are one of the harder ones to, to get going because I worked in one for just about a year. I think it was a couple weeks short. And [00:32:00] that was some work.

I worked as a, I was hired as a prep cook. And then the, one of the line cooks come to me and he was like, what are you doing? And I'm like, chopping this. 'cause I was supposed to, I don't know. Right. And he's like, come on, you're gonna be on the line. And I didn't know how to cook. I still really don't, but I knew how to do those recipe items after a while.

I was like, if you yell at me, you do know that I'm gonna yell back at you. Right. And he was like, yeah. Yelling in that business. That's for sure. He's like, no, you won't. And I was like, bet yes I will. I will completely yell at you. I am Italian and Spanish and a whole bunch of other stuff that yells and I will yell because I'm, yeah, nope, I'm not afraid of you.

And he didn't believe me until the first time it happened. Right. I'm sure those are tough businesses. Those are tough businesses. But yeah it, working in a kitchen is not easy. So I am, [00:33:00] putting one together is probably not easy. , There's one similarity, and I actually talk about this in the book as well, between.

There's like friction between company in departments, and companies, there's always a friction between tech department and a sales department, right? Yes. The tech's like, Hey, if I don't make this, then you have nothing to sell. And, sales, like, if I don't sell anything, you don't get paid.

Or the sales person is like, oh, but I'm not selling that. I'm selling this thing. You don't even have Exactly. And then go build it afterwards. Right. Same thing happens in hospitality, the kitchen is like, we do all the hard work and you just take the order, and the other, the front of the front of the house, I guess they call it, right?

Yeah. Is all like, wait a minute, without us you don't, there's no orders coming for you to cook anything. So there's always this battle going on and, oh yeah. I was just saying everybody, ev every, everybody else's job seems easier, is what I think. But, as the lion cook who had to stand over a stove in the middle of summer.

Oh my. That's hard. That's hard work. That is not okay. Okay. Like it was [00:34:00] 110 degrees anyway, and then it was like 90 outside and for some reason it was the same 90 degrees in the building Right. In the kitchen area. I don't understand that for at all. So it was hot. That's truly hard work. Yeah, it was hard.

And then I went and worked for Walmart for two years.

That didn't go very well either.

In many ways for the employees and also for the not owners because there's so much moving parts going on. Yeah. And then, but I did learn a lot there. One of the things being, I don't like to cook.

Okay. At least you find out what you did not want. Wanna do. Yes. That's good information.

So do you have any experiences like that where I've never done a line experience? Not expect you to [00:35:00] have been aligned. But like where you've been working somewhere and things gone sideways and Not all the time. Your fault. All the time things go sideways, right?

And they're like, basically a lot of expectations on both sides. What we're talking about is mismatch of expectations, right? Yeah. It doesn't matter if you're a line cook or if you're in sales or if you're in tech, things go sideways most of the time, frankly, and, what happens is over time, people realize that there is a mismatch and, either they can walk through it

I think it's sometimes better not to work through it and find the right match, like you did. And so, yeah, it happens, in sales it happens a lot, and you didn't close hit your quotas or you didn't, get the right type of customers or, marketing and then, this, it's a lot of mismatch in expectation setting that happens.

And so I think that, taking it a step a further up higher in, in the end of the day, this is an example of the things that all entrepreneurs have to deal [00:36:00] with and have to solve to keep that ship running, pretty smoothly, right? And I think, gosh, managing people is the hardest.

This the one reason I would say be a solopreneur. Is because then you don't have to or worry about employees, right? But then again, if you wanna scale a business and do something big, you need employees. So there's, I think HR is one of the toughest pieces of the puzzle of a business.

And because in the end of the day, people, there's no business without people, and people are all different. They all have their issues and personalities and make it all work. And I have my hats off to, HR managers and even entrepreneurs that are like really good at bringing people to together in very difficult situations.

And I think that's the key, right? So yeah. The people, are probably the number one problem, right? In the business. Yeah. Yeah. I think the number one cause of failure in a business is people. Yeah. I mean, that's a tough one to solve. But when you get it right, it feels good, [00:37:00] you know?

For sure. I've been in many situations where it's been tough and with the people I'm working with and some situations like, so great, that you feel so energized, and also goes up and down ebbs and flows on how the business is doing and how our people are doing.

So I've learned over the years to not be too intense about it, even though I was always too intense about it in the beginning, because you can't really control what you can't control when it comes to people.

And you said you did something for the first time in 97. What was that again? Yeah. And that was a software, where I, actually invented, like electronically highlighting the internet. Like where you would, if you were, it's kinda like Pinterest now, but it was back then, it would be like, if you're on the internet, you see a quote or you see a picture, you could highlight them and create little digital libraries, and then use them in your writing, or in your, research and you would create like automatic footnotes and bibliographies for you.

So it was a pretty good idea and very well [00:38:00] received early on. But I went through the.com bust and I came out alive. I was one of the few that came out alive, but had to do some major restructuring Yeah. Of the company, like really change. Teams and outsourced a lot and just to survive the storm.

And then, so that was my first one. And then I came out of that and then, and I ended up selling it, so I'm gonna age myself, but in 97 I was still in high school.

A lot of great companies have been started from high school. Right? Yeah. You graduated in 99. Yeah. I'm feeling older these days, so I think, spending 30 years in one way or the other, mine or others, startups has just given me this perspective.

And that's what I'm bringing in this book, soul Venture.

The 8-year-old, I think started singing That Staying Alive song. Yeah. And me [00:39:00] and two other people at the table were like singled along with her and the 10-year-old goes, oh, you were all alive when that song came out. Oh my God. And me and one of them were like, Hey, no, we were not.

Right. That's funny. Like your grandma was the only one. Your grandma and grandpa are the only ones alive during that time. Thank you very much. Wow.

Well, that song's gone, that has staying power for sure. Yeah. The little kids know it and they like it. I think it's just because of that one thing. And it's in Shrek Staying Alive. Staying Alive. I think, the kids are the today I have, and I have a two kids.

And they like this old song, old music, not old, I guess old for them. 70 seventies and eighties. And, that was some good times of music. I was some music from the fifties [00:40:00] right on through to music from today. Which is wild to be in a car with me with music going for hours because we, you'll get fifties and then it'll be something like Christian music and then at some point a rap song will come on, and then you have some heavy metal.

The country music's in there somewhere. It just all rattles around. If it's a good song, it's a good song and I like it. I don't like all of anybody's music. I'm not obsessed with anybody. It's not my way.

Well, 50 years from now, we'll be all talking about Taylor Swift and what great music, 50 years from now. Yeah. Because, our kids are my kids are like in that category. Right. All the new music in the last 10 years,

some things have staying power, which I, which is great. Yeah. The good one. Do wish all companies had that. We all hope the bad ones don't. We would all like to stop being rickroll. [00:41:00] That's true. That's true.

I don't even know why they came up with that one. But, it has been nice having you on my podcast. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Enjoyed our discussions. And I think this topic about what you've touched on the inner world and the business world, I think it needs to be talked about more.

And, I would hope listeners would check out Soul Venture Book. I think it's a different take on it all.