So how do you respond when the plan, the business, the strategy, or even life itself just does not go the way that you expect?

Man, it's so, again, a great question.

I'll be vulnerable here.

You know, I don't respond well quite often, and I don't think most people do.

I think really the goal is, you know, it's not to be some stinking superhero.

I think the goal is to fail forward, fail fast.

I forget what book that was.

But what does that mean? Like on a Monday through Friday? How does how does that leader set the temperature?

great i don't know what you feel is or you're well

i think it's two things i think there's well it's probably maybe multifaceted but i would say on a on a basic level most men weren't you know raised you know, with regards to this idea that I need to kind of look inward and develop some of those, you know, those inner places, because it's kind of the genesis for everything, right? And I think that here's something else, too.

How about this? This is, you know, most men were not raised...

Meaning what? What does that mean? Caused to rise.

They were provided for, right? They were, you know, in essence, right? Hey, dude, don't cry.

You know, work really hard.

Don't be a jerk and work hard.

Tell us a little bit about that.

So what does authentic identity mean to you?

Yeah.

So, you know, I think there's a lot of obviously there's words that we use in our culture like, you know, identity and authenticity and things like that that seem a bit nebulous, quite misunderstood.

So I do think that, you know, you have to submit to a few things, you know, when you want to understand, you know, who you are.

There's one real big one out there that is, you know, we often use it, I don't know, commonly, as it were, with regards to the color of our skin.

Like, we didn't choose things.

You know, so this idea that I didn't make me, right? So I didn't choose the color of my skin, which is a real popular one, right? I didn't choose my eye color.

that you're cherished and loved

So I'm curious, have you always dabbled in that stuff? Did it just come about? Like, give me the life cycle of were you in HVAC? Like, why the hell'd you build this thing? [laughs]

Yeah.

So growing up I was always kind of enamored by true entrepreneurs, right? The guys that kind of had multiple revenue streams, a bit more margin in their time, and you know, I just thought they were different.

I'm like, "What kind of a dude does that? Who gave you permission to do that?" You know, that kind of thing.

So, you know, of course, I didn't necessarily know what that might be, and I moved to Nashville to do music, so a bit of a, a small business owner, as it were, you know, doing concerts and recordings and things like that.

And at the same time, it was on my radar.

Like, what could my offering be, right? What would the marketplace find valuable? And I was actually working for Verizon doing facilities management with the retail stores in five states and so on, and my brother-in-law called me one day and he goes, "Where do I get a stat guard with a combo lock?" He said, "People can't keep up with that stupid key." And, you know, instantly, I was like, well, that's an idea, because, you know, we had stat guards in all of our stores, and everybody jacks around with the thermostat, right? Customers and employees and everything else, and everybody loses that little key.

Did you get outside help? Did you just talk yourself through it? Do you help other people with that now? Like, give me more of that.