In this episode of The Entrepreneurial Mindset Project, we talk to Dan Thorenson, a former Navy mechanic who became an unlikely entrepreneur.
Dan grew up in a small town in North Dakota and floundered in school until he discovered an auto shop program that took him from the very bottom of his class to the top.
After high school, he joined the Navy, where he became an airplane mechanic, a skill that led to a stable career in the aviation industry. As he advanced in his career, he soon found himself at his desk, looking for something more. Like many entrepreneurs, it was that nagging inner voice that led him to pursue an entrepreneurial path. Today, Dan’s business, Nordic Turbine Service, is serving clients around the world.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Taking Calculated Risks With Dan Thorenson
Welcome to another episode of the show. I’m speaking with Dan Thorenson, a former Navy mechanic who became an unlikely entrepreneur. Growing up in a small town in North Dakota, Dan floundered in school. That is until he discovered an auto shop program that took him from the very bottom of his class straight to the top. After high school, he joined the Navy, where he became an airplane mechanic, a skill that led to a stable career in the aviation industry. Yet, as he advanced in his career, he soon found himself at a desk job with a nagging inner voice asking, “Is this all there is?” Like many entrepreneurs, it was that nagging inner voice that led him to pursue an entrepreneurial path.
Today, Dan’s business, Nordic Turbine Service, is serving clients around the world. More importantly, he’s doing something that he truly loves to do. Ultimately, Dan’s story speaks to the power of entrepreneurial thinking as a way to create meaningful and prosperous lives. Without any further ado, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dan Thorenson.
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Dan, thanks for being on the show.
Thank you. I appreciate the time.
I got connected to you through a mutual friend, Jim Correll, who’s doing interesting things in Kansas. He is based in Independence, Kansas. Is that where you are? Are you in Kansas?
I’m in Independence, Kansas. I’ve been here for about twelve years, or maybe a little bit longer than that. I never would’ve thought I’d be in Independence, Kansas. You never know where the world is going to take you.
For our audience, I want to point out that it’s a town of about 10,000 people. It’s a rural community in Kansas. There are a lot of folks trying to figure out economic development in small rural communities. Every day entrepreneurs like you are a big part of the solutions that aren’t being properly acknowledged or harnessed. I’m getting ahead of myself. The same question I ask every guest on this show begins with what got you on an entrepreneurial path?
Entrepreneurial Path
Mine was a little different. I worked in Corporate America for a very long time. I’ve been in aviation for well over 30 years. I started in the Military and was honorably discharged. After eight years, I decided that the Military wasn’t for me and I wanted to go on to other things. I worked at large corporations like Hawker Beechcraft, Cessna, and everything like that.
I had settled myself into a job as a repair station manager for about six years at a small company here in town. I had a cold call from a previous employer that they had an airplane that was down and broken in St. Louis. It was during the COVID timeframe. They had no one else to come up and repair it, so they hired me to fly up and do an inspection.
Did they hire you privately outside of your current role?
They did. They hired me as a contractor. They paid me as a 10-99 employee. I knew the product line very well, It was an engine I worked on in the Navy. I was familiar with the product line and the airplane. It happened to be a cold call that they were looking for help, which no one else could have done.
How did they find you?
I worked for a company in Texas during a layoff period. I got to be friends with him over the years. We keep in contact. He was a customer at a previous company. It was a connection over the years. One of his customers calling for parts said he didn’t know anybody but he knew me, so they gave him my number. I happened to be available, so I flew up there, inspected, and repaired the airplane engine. It was his airplane engine, I should say.
Was that something you had to do on the down low from your employer? You’re walking a line there where you’re like, “If they knew about this, they might not be happy about it.”
Absolutely. During COVID, we were pretty well locked down. We were not allowed to fly commercial because of company policies. We had no travel order in the company. That company flew an airplane down to pick me up. We flew on a private small Cessna. I didn’t tell my employer. I did it all on the down low. When I went back a few weeks later to repair it, I took a vacation. I spent my own time, vacation, holidays, weekends, and everything like that to go up there and perform the maintenance. That’s where I learned about that business and the lack of support that certain airplanes or engines had in the United States. It started the wheels turning.
What’s interesting to me is you were reasonably satisfied at your day job, one might assume, and you might tell me otherwise. When someone calls you, why didn’t you say, “No. I got my day job. I’m busy enough. I got my family. I don’t have time for this.” What was going on?
What was happening was our company had taken a 20% pay cut. We all took a 20% pay cut during COVID and it tore me a little bit. I was pretty salty about it. Budgets are tight. The economy is tough. When an opportunity came up to make a few thousand dollars in a weekend, I was like, “Why not? Why not me?” I was almost plateaued at my job. I was a repair station manager and there wasn’t much upward mobility after that. I was probably going to be in the same job.
I could have been perfectly fine in the same job for another 30 years. For instance, I got paid well enough to where I was secure. I worked 40-hour work weeks, maybe a stretch to 50-hour work weeks. It was not horrible. There was not a bunch of overtime and not a bunch of weekends, but it wasn’t so fulfilling. I wasn’t satisfied. I felt like I had more to offer the world or myself. I also turned 50 that year. For me, I didn’t want to sit back at 65 or 70 and say I didn’t at least try it. That was key.
That is utterly fascinating to me, and I’ll tell you why. I was trying to understand the motivation literature around entrepreneurship and why people are motivated. What I came to learn is that we all have within us what psychologists would call a self-actualizing tendency. It’s the capacity to become all that we can become. There are a lot of people out there who feel like what you described.
I know there are. I work with them every day.
It’s like, “Is this all there is?” It’s too easy to get distracted and push that voice down, go home, and watch football or engage in some other thing. It was a combination of what you’re saying that there’s this voice inside of you saying, “Is this all there is?” That’s the important voice. It was also maybe aggravated by the 20% pay cut. Those two factors created the perfect storm. Did you think, “I’m going to put a couple thousand bucks in my pocket for a weekend. This is fun money,” or whatever?
Honestly, it was a side hustle for me. It’s before the business model exploded or before it exposed itself. It didn’t expose itself. I was like, “I’ll make a couple of thousand bucks in a weekend. I can do this.” I did it for about 8 or 9 months or so.
All on the down low?
All on the down low. I’d save my vacation, take a week off, and go fix an airplane in Mesa. I come back for the weekend on a Sunday and go to work on a Monday. I’ve flown to Idaho to do another airplane repair. I took a week off. I did that. I can’t say what I made, but I made a pretty good amount of money for a side hustle and I used my vacation time.
The point I want to dig into a little bit is it wasn’t until you got into the arena that you started to see that there’s a niche here. If I understand that there’s this special type of airplane engine that you specialize in and know how to fix, then there’s a lot of demand here for these things.
This aircraft engine is installed in 3 or 4 different models. The US Navy in 2018 decommissioned all of those airplanes. There was no US Navy support for that particular engine. These civilian companies started purchasing these airplanes and there was no United States support. Two places repair that engine. One is Israel and another is New Zealand. The cost of shipping to ship one of these engines over is astronomical. It cost a lot of money. No one sat back and said, “Let’s fix it.” Also, it was such a small niche that to a big operator, it didn’t make any sense for a bigger company to come in and start repairing these things. It didn’t make any sense because they are life-limited. We’re looking at probably 8 to 10 years of repairs on these things.
The runway, so to speak. No pun intended.
For a big operator, the ROI doesn’t make sense, the return on investment.
Are you worried about that ten-year runway?
Not at all. In my mind, I have a vision. This product line is going to get me in the door, and then I have another product line after this that I plan on getting into as well. They’re in the same situation. For that other product line, I’m looking at, if I can break into the market, the only people who can repair them are in Europe. Everything else is the US Military. The civilians have no place for them to go in the United States. I still have a long way to go on that product.
Also, if it falls apart in ten years and I’m able to start a nice small business, either it gets sold, bought out, or closed the business and retired. After that, all my bills are paid. I have some money in my savings. I’m good. I’m a winner either way. I enjoyed my last ten years of employment. Instead of being stuck and chained to a desk at some repair station, I’m doing stuff that I enjoy. It’s a win-win.
If you don’t have the math at your fingertips or you’re not comfortable, I am okay with that. What I’m trying to point out to people in these stories is that very often, entrepreneurs like you don’t quit their day jobs and mortgage their house willy-nilly. They validate the idea in the margins. They de-risk it in their spare time before they go, “There’s something here that I feel safe enough to take the leap.”
I interviewed a guy on the show who was a custodian at a high school in the poorest county in Pennsylvania. He started selling maple syrup at the end of his driveway. He sold $70,000 worth of maple syrup on the honor system before he decided to quit his job and go all in. How much business did you accumulate? Do you have any idea before you decided that there was a demand? You’re running out of vacation and people are knocking on your door. What’s happening that caused you to go all in?
Honestly, I had a vision of something bigger but ultimately, I was doing all these onsite repairs, putting a little bit of money in my pocket, and everything like that. I started talking to one of the vendors. Their operation is pretty small. They have a handful of airplanes. They couldn’t afford to go overseas. He was telling me how much he was paying for an overhaul or repair to repair this engine and how long it was taking. I said I’d do a quarter of that. He was like, “You will?” I said, “Yeah.” That’s how it was born. That was the day.
I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I had a plan, but I didn’t know exactly what my plan was. I knew that was my risk or that was my number. I figured if I got this first one, I’d get the second, the third, and all of them. I would use that first money to reinvest in what I’m doing. I was able to prove the concept. I worked a deal with my friend down in Texas. He had all the tooling.
Calculated Risks: I didn’t know exactly what my plan was. I knew that that was my risk. That was my number, if you will.
I set up the shop down in Texas and worked out of his facility. I got the engine disassembled, inspected, and repaired. After that, I started working on my engine number two. I worked to deal with that. I got the second engine to come into my shop. I had to go to different places. I’m working on number 3 and number 4. This is all within a year and a half so far. I went from zero to where I am at all within a year and a half. I’m still stepping on rakes every day. Not that there are many, but I still step on them.
That’s never going away. I have news for you. The minute it does go away, you know you’re in trouble. I love that, stepping on rakes. This happened pretty quickly. You said you have a vision. Did that vision ignite because of the first opportunity or do you have some idea lingering in your mind while you were still chained to the desk?
I wanted to do this probably for the last twenty years. Let me back it up a little bit. I was working for a company in Wyoming. The company had folded. I was laid off. I was doing some contract work in Texas in 2003 with this company down there and I got to befriend him. I have to work for him hard. We also kept that relationship going over the last twenty years.
Back then, I was like, “Why can’t I do this in Kansas?” or, “Why can’t I do this in North Dakota? Why can’t I do the same business he’s doing?” That’s exactly how he happened to be. He is an entrepreneur himself. In my mind, I thought about this business for the last twenty years, at least until 2004. In my mind, I knew exactly how to do it. However, the timing five years ago would’ve never been as successful.
I don’t think I’m successful yet. When I have $1 million or $2 million in the bank, I’ll be successful in my mind, or maybe a little more than that. I didn’t know exactly where it was going to go, but I knew how to do this work for a very long time. I thought about this business. I thought about other ways and other entrepreneurial ideas on how to do things and how to break away from the chains. However, the timing was not right.
You had this vision. You were exposed to other entrepreneurial people. Do you have any entrepreneurs in your orbit, like in your family? Was there somebody in your childhood?
My dad and his wife owned a semi-trucking company. My stepfather also owns a trucking company. I was always around that, but I didn’t understand the entrepreneur mindset. I was exposed to a vice president when I worked at Eclipse Aviation in Albuquerque that had taught me how to be a servant leader. The leadership aspect of it was where I gained more than just the entrepreneur stuff. Those were how to treat people, how to build teams, and how to do the right things with people.
The entrepreneur stuff is tagged right on top of that. It’s like, “How do I do this for myself but also bring people along to try to build my own organizations?” I built lots of teams. I’ve done a lot of stuff for other companies. I’ve worked I don’t know how many hours for free with other companies. If I see an opportunity, why not do it for myself and build my own stuff?
Leadership And Entrepreneurship
We needed to dig into that. The leadership piece in entrepreneurship is about the people. That gets lost. We’re so obsessed with efficiency and we treat people poorly in the process. Ultimately, our obsession with efficiency is inefficient.
We spend so much time worrying about the numbers and how long it takes to get a job done. If you do the job right the first time, you never have to worry about your work after that. If you take care of the people and give them ownership of the products, how to make it go faster, how the products go through the shop leaner, and how to do it right the first time, they know the tricks. If you treat them like you respect them and treat them like they are somebody and not just a number, they will shine for you every time or do it exactly like you tell them to. I’d rather be a servant leader than a manager. I don’t want to struggle to be a manager. I’d rather be a servant leader.
Calculated Risks: If you just treat people like you respect them, like they are somebody, and not just a number, they will absolutely shine for you every time.
What do you see as the difference there? I know what you mean, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.
My thought on servant leadership is that it’s an upside-down triangle or upside-down pyramid. I work for all the people in front of me. I work for all of them. I’m a barrier removal expert. My job is to make sure Johnny comes to work every day, is doing it right, and has everything he needs to do the job every single day. I have to remove those barriers. Also, Johnny has to step up and say, “I got problems. I got to be part of the solution, not just part of the problems.” For me, it’s all about taking care of your team. They will take care of you every single time.
I love that. It’s like the Steve Jobs thing, which I try to abide by. It’s like, “I don’t hire smart people and tell them what to do. I hire smart people and they tell me what to do.” It’s so counterintuitive. I was giving a talk some years ago in Denver. A CEO stopped, raised his hand, and said, “What if I teach all my people to think like entrepreneurs? They’ll all leave.” I said, “What if you don’t and they all stay?” That speaks to the servant leadership question.
Taking Risks
You were at this job where you feel like maybe you’re languishing. You’re not beat down or suffering but you’re not thriving. It’s not optimal. This opportunity shows up as a side hustle at first, but it reveals itself over time to be, “This is my chance.” You de-risked it. How much of a financial risk did you take to break away? What was that like? What was your family saying? Were you putting your family in financial peril? How did that work?
A lot of it was I tried to card it up for the trips. I paid myself. I pay for all the trips out of pocket. I got a separate credit card for the trips. When I submitted my POs, I paid off the credit card and pocketed my labor. It was all on me to do that. I kept on doing that. I kept whatever money I made into an account, or sometimes, I’d spend it on hot rod parts or whatever. It was fun money at the time, honestly. All my base bills and everything were taken off my base income, so I didn’t affect anything it did on the side through my daily pay. It was 100% separate.
My youngest son had graduated high school and joined the Military. It was me and my wife. We were alone at the time. We were empty nesters. It worked out well. I wasn’t putting him at risk or my wife at risk. She’s an entrepreneur as well. She owns her own business. She’s very supportive. My father-in-law was an entrepreneur. He owned his own business as well. They understood the risks we had to take. For me to put in as many hours as I did at my last job and then at least try it for myself, they were very supportive.
Was there an “Oh, crap” moment when you left? Did you have that moment? Did that land in your brain? You turned in your notice and you were like, “That’s it. I’m going.”
Yeah. I gave my two-week notice and I’ve been thinking about this and how this was going to work. When I got the deposit for the engine and I had a pretty good chunk of money coming into my account, I said, “This is it. We’re going to do this.” I already said that ahead of time. Until the money is deposited in your account, you’re like, “I can do this. Why not?” I put my notice in, and then I had to explain. I didn’t give them all the details because I was working on the side. It was two different models. I was also always in aviation but it was not a conflict of interest. It was 100% separate, but there are NDAs. You have to worry about legality. I didn’t want to get sued or go somewhere else. I try to mitigate that as much as possible.
I put my notice in on February 24th, 2023, or something like that. I got a picture of me with a cake and all that stuff leaving. On Monday, I’m driving down to Houston to go to work. I’m driving halfway down there and I’m like, “What the heck did I just do? I quit my job.” There are always times in the middle that you get scared. Everything slowed down around the November and December timeframe. It’s like, “What are we going to do?” February and March roll around and there’s money coming in and more products coming in. You take it day by day. That’s all you can do. Keep your head up the best you can and fight the fight because no one is going to do it for you. You have to do it yourself.
All you really can do is keep your head up as best as you can and fight the fight because no one's going to do it for you. Share on XThere’s also something about when you’re doing it on your own, work isn’t work in the same way that people experience work.
I haven’t worked a day since I quit my job. I guarantee that. I have not worked one single day since I quit my job. I put my long hours in and I’ve done a lot of stuff, but as far as being chained to a desk or being chained to somebody not coming to work every day and worrying about them guys, I haven’t had to put one piece of stress on that. I have complete accountability for my own actions, and that’s what I have to abide by.
I struggle to articulate that to folks. When you’re doing your own thing, something you’re good at, you’re pursuing it autonomously, and you see that it’s useful to other people, learning and work become like a source of joy, fulfillment, and excitement rather than drudgery.
Six months before this thing came out and showed itself, my own entrepreneur job, I was trying to get into sales with corporate. I got tired. I was looking for a change no matter what. I was looking for something. I tried going into sales at corporate. I went down to corporate in Atlanta. I sat in a meeting with those guys and it wasn’t for me. I was like a fish out of water. I couldn’t articulate what I was all about. I was struggling.
I interviewed at another place, another manufacturing job, as a manager, or something like that. I was like, “This isn’t for me either. I’m going to see where this engine thing takes me.” I tried to get out of what I was doing because it was uncomfortable. When the contract came in, I was like, “There’s my sign. I got to go.”
A similar thing happened to me. I’ve been thinking about these entrepreneurial ideas forever. I had a construction management company. I was partnered with an architect. We were building these huge $5 million houses. In 2008, I went to an entrepreneurship education conference and met a guy there from Cisco. They were launching an entrepreneur institute. It was right at the time the building business was tanking in 2008. I got hired by Cisco. It was $225,000 or something like that to do some research for them and develop some content. I was like, “This is my chance.” I had that conversation you talked about. I looked in the mirror. I was 47 at the time. I was like, “If you don’t do this now, you’re never going to do it. It’s now or never.”
Why not take the chance?
Learning Machines
To be fair, the building business went away. My options were like, “You’re going to go work at Home Depot or you’re going to go do this.” It was like that. Let’s go back to something you said before we started recording. You said you weren’t a great student in school, and I hear this a lot. Can you talk a little bit more about what was your experience like in school?
I grew up in a little town in North Dakota. It’s very small. I graduated with 50 people in my class. It was not for me. In my older years, I took a lot of shop classes. I took a lot of Home Ec. The basic stuff was not for me. I excelled at shop classes. Honestly, I excelled at Home Ec. I liked to cook and stuff like that. I worked in a restaurant when I was fifteen. My first job all the way through high school was at a restaurant.
My studies were horrible. I’ll be honest with you. I barely made it most of the time. It was a C maybe on a good day. It was a D and F most likely. I graduated high school bottom of the barrel. It wasn’t a priority for me. My priority was working, being with my friends, and doing the stuff I shouldn’t be doing at 17 to 19 years old or 18 years old. It wasn’t a priority for me.
I joined the Navy at eighteen. I graduated high school, and three days later, I was at bootcamp. I excelled. I was doing stuff with my hands. I was learning stuff that I never heard before. High school, for me, didn’t teach you a lot of stuff. They didn’t teach you the things that I was interested in. It was probably important, for sure. There are days when I look back that I wish I had spent a little more time in Math class because those are skills that I could use today. As far as building my business goes, that’s the stuff that I haven’t even used. We get the right people to help us with that.
When I joined the Navy and then I went to engine mechanic school, I was in the top three in my class. I went from the bottom of the high school chain to one of the top of the engine classes I was in. I was number three in the class. It’s because I was interested in it. I liked it. I’ve been building engines since I was in middle school. We took engines apart in shop class. My friend and I built my own small-block Chevy in my garage one time when I bought a car. I’ve always been a mechanic kind of guy or a hands-on guy. I’d rather grab an engine to pull it apart than grab a book to try to read about it. I’m more of a hands-on guy.
I had a very similar experience. Wood shop was my thing. If it wasn’t for the wood shop, I probably would’ve dropped out. I found a quote from the education reform guy from the ‘30s, John Dewey. He said, “Imagine how many people lose interest in learning because of how it was presented to them.” I hear these stories a lot. It’s like, “When I’m interested in something, I can excel at learning.”
When I interview entrepreneurs, what I see is they’re not always great students in a traditional sense but they’re learning machines. They’re not necessarily learning in a classroom. They’re figuring things out. They’re experimenting. They’re hanging around with other people. They’re watching YouTube. They’re listening to audiobooks. You said, “I got to go figure out accounting. I got to either hire somebody or go figure it out.”
There’s so much to be said with that, understanding who your students are, figuring out what makes them tick, and then helping them grow from that point on. I don’t think the schools are equipped to do that. My friend, Jim Correll, is working on a few things. I’m sure he’ll share some of that with you. His mindset and mine are the same way when it comes to students. Not everybody learns the same. I can’t stand learning from a book and reading line for line how to do it. Give me the engine manual. Let me refer to it, but let me get after it and then try to figure it out.
Calculated Risks: What comes down to students is not everybody learns the same.
I’ve done a bit of research about evolutionary psychology and how hunter-gatherer kids learned. They had to understand a lot of things to survive as hunter-gatherers. There’s almost no instruction. It’s play. It’s interaction. It’s experimentation. It’s imitation. The adults come into the picture only when they’re invited into the picture. To what you and Jim Correll have spoken about, not everybody learns the same. Let me take that one step further. That’s an impoverished method of learning, reading a book, and proving to somebody that you know what was in that chapter of the book. That’s not how we’re wired.
I always turn my assignments in late. I honestly do them last minute because I never liked to do them. In shop class, I did it. No one had to prod me to do it, give me a bad grade, or whatever. Grades are important, for sure, but it’s not a true standard of what you’re capable of doing.
You leave your job. You’ve got a little bit of cash. You got a contract going. You step out and you’re driving down to a job. You’re thinking, “What the heck did I do?” Where did it go from there?
I got down there and I didn’t exactly know exactly how it was going to go. I knew I had engines delivered down there and I got down there. There were butterflies and nervousness. I was trying to figure out if I made the right decision, and then I got to it. I got the engine out of the crate, started disassembling it, and got it organized. I got my shop organized and started getting his tools organized because it was a mess. It was one foot in front of the other. That’s it. There’s no secret from that.
It’s a matter of shutting down your fear, overcoming your fear, and doing it. You can think about it after that. Tomorrow will be another fear that you’re going to worry about. The next day, there’ll be something else you’re going to worry about. You have to understand it. They’re opportunities. They’re not problems. It’s another barrier that you have to overcome. That’s it.
If you compartmentalize it like that, you run into a problem, analyze it, and stop. You sit back for a second, analyze it, and say, “What do we have to do?” When a flat tire happens on the way home, you’re not going to sit there and cry about it. You say, “Let’s find a jack,” or “Let’s call AAA and figure it out.” You have to have a solution. You can’t sit there and melt over it every time.
I was talking to somebody about how the fear never goes away. You got to do this crap scared. That’s what it comes down to. You’re waiting for the fear to go away. What happens is you get comfortable here and then the challenge increases. It keeps going.
You’re always going to run into something that scares you to death. I can’t tell you how many times in the last year and a half I ran into a barrier. I wanted to sit there, cry about it, and figure something out like it’s the end of the world type thing. Ultimately, if you take a step back and say, “What are my options?” You figure out what the best options are, and you’re going to be wrong.
I’ve been wrong many times. You’re going to be wrong sometimes, but you’re not going to be wrong all the time. You figure out your best option, and if that doesn’t work, you go another route and do something else. You can’t let fear cripple you because you’ll never get anywhere. If you’re not uncomfortable, you’ll never grow.
You can't let fear cripple you because you'll never get anywhere. If you're not uncomfortable, you'll never grow. Share on XThat’s it. You’re 15 months or 18 months into this.
It’s still pretty young. I’m not salty at all.
You know this space very well. It’s not like you figured out how to fix an airplane engine last week.
That is the easiest part of my job. Honestly, the engine work is the easiest part. The insurance, the payroll, and everything else is hard.
Was there any one big hiccup moment that happened in the last year and a half that stands out in your mind?
Yeah. I learned it the hard way. I did a bunch of work in November and January. I spent a lot of time traveling. I submitted my invoices, and then my invoices didn’t get paid within 30 days. As a small operator, I rely on that. There were some times in January when I was paying my bills in savings. Nothing is coming in. You’re emailing, calling, and harassing. It’s their fault, but it’s not the direct person I was dealing with’s fault. It’s the system. They’re geared towards huge companies that can rely on a 90-day invoice or a 120-day invoice.
With my small company, I was relying on that. My operating costs are still coming out. I have shop rent I have to pay. I have insurance I have to pay. That stuff doesn’t stop. It’s a little bit of a misunderstanding. As I grow, write more contracts, and understand that version of it, we’ll have to put that stuff in there, like, “Pay within 30 days, at least until I get up and running.” That’s probably the biggest fear.
My drop dead date was January 20th. I don’t know what date it was, but in my mind, I’m like, “If I don’t have something by January 20th, I have to go to work somewhere.” I’m calling somebody. I’m doing some contract work. There were dates in my mind, and on those dates, we hit those milestones. We got paid and got caught back up again on everything. I got a little smarter and tried to do it better the next time.
That’s when all of a sudden, there’s cashflow and you’re like, “That’s what they were talking about.”
I didn’t know anything about that. The insurance still comes out. You could put a plan together. What did Mike Tyson say? He said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” I got punched in the face a few times, and those days aren’t done. I’m going to find something else that’s going to get me.
That’s stepping on rakes.
There are lots of rakes out there. The biggest thing is trying. If you’re not trying something, you’re dying. I’m not ready.
Calculated Risks: If you’re not trying something, you’re dying.
Entrepreneurial And Managerial
People that support entrepreneurship, like small business development centers or what we call ESOs, Entrepreneurial Support Organizations, there’s a fundamental flaw in a lot of these programs in that they fail to distinguish between entrepreneurial attitudes and skills and managerial attitudes and skills. If you were to walk into a small business development center five years ago and say, “I’m a skilled airplane mechanic. I want to start my own airplane mechanic business,” a lot of what they’re going to emphasize are managerial tasks.
Those are understanding spreadsheets, understanding cashflow, and understanding marketing and insurance. Those are all things that are important for managing a business. I don’t discount that, but those things blind us to the entrepreneurial side of it, which is proving the concept. That is what you did with no training whatsoever. You were flying by the seat of your pants.
I knew the product. I knew what I had to do. I knew that I had the quality. I had the background. I’ve overhauled around 350 of these things in the Navy. The Navy didn’t teach me how to be an entrepreneur. They taught me to come to work and how to do it. It took me stepping away from that and learning the business through other companies to try to figure out something that’s going to work for me and what I can bring to the table. Ultimately, I come to a perfect storm and say, “This is my idea. This is what I can do.” To your point, a business college could have never done that to me.
When I started getting into the SBA arena and going to our local mock reaction council, they were a great group of gals. Everybody is perfect down there. I got a link to fill out a business plan. I never filled out a business plan before. I didn’t know the first thing about it, but I studied it. I looked at their examples. I put my own stuff in and I knocked it out of the park. They said, “People come in with bar napkins with their ideas written on them.” I had this book and put forth the effort.
If you’re not willing to put forth the effort, it’s all for a loss anyway. It doesn’t matter. People aren’t even going to take you seriously. The idea is one thing, but the effort is what takes you to the next level and then also sacrifices. You’re sacrificing your family. You’re sacrificing your time at home. You’re sacrificing your duties around the house. You have to have that support from your family to do that. My wife has been wonderful in this battle. Without her support and her believing in me, I wouldn’t be here where I’m at. I wouldn’t have taken the risk.
The idea is one thing but the effort is really what takes you to the next level. Share on XI asked you what was an “Oh, crap” moment where you’re not getting paid and you’re thinking, “I never thought of cashflow and all these things.” I want to come back to that in a second. It’s also interesting to me how many reasonably intelligent educated people don’t understand the economics of one unit.
The basic idea is, “If I’m going to build this widget, what’s the cost of the widget? What’s the labor? What’s the overhead? What’s the net? What’s the gross?” I don’t know why that’s not taught in eighth grade. People think, “Dan has a business that does $1 million a year. Dan’s making $1 million a year.” It’s like, “Hold on a second.” It’s so funny to me. It’s like, “We’re doing $1 million in revenue, but I’m losing $100,000 a year.” That’s interesting to me that people don’t have that basic heuristic.
Until you start cutting checks, you don’t even know it yourself. In my last job, part of my job was to bring in new product lines. My goal was to put another one every year at first, and then one every six months, and then go from there. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen as fast as I wanted to. I have all my documents on how to do that.
I have never in my life put an ROI statement together. I got on an Excel spreadsheet, Google it, and figured it out. You have to do all this form and bank a business case on how to bring that stuff together. I learned that from my last job. I kept all the documents because I built them. They’re my property. That was the basis for what I did.
I call it a new product checklist. It’s like, “What’s the cost of manufacturing? How many can I sell? What’s it going to cost to get the business?” I had to hammer that stuff out on an Excel spreadsheet. I never had that training before in my life. I never even knew the thing existed until I had to do it. If I had known it, I would’ve known.
If somebody would’ve put you in a class to teach you how to do that, you probably would’ve flunked out of the class.
I would’ve failed miserably because it didn’t matter at the time. It was a class. Until it’s the real world and until you get hit in the face, it doesn’t matter.
I saw a little video clip. It was Elon Musk talking about how we’re teaching kids. Instead of letting them take an engine apart, we’re giving them a class on screwdrivers, wrenches, and hoists. They never get to take the engine apart.
They get so bored with the details. Who cares at that point? You’re doing it to get the grade.
I was at a conference in San Diego a couple of months ago and walking down the beach after the day’s events with my colleagues. We encountered these two kids. They were maybe 14 or 15. These kids got snorkeling gear and a mesh basket with a couple of lobsters in it. I stopped them and talked to them about what they were doing and how they learned how to do this. They were so enthusiastic. One kid had taught the other kid how to do it. The other kid learned from his dad. They were super enthusiastic about it. I asked them, “What are you excited about in school?” They went dead sound. They looked at each other and said, “Nothing.” That’s such a tragedy.
I don’t want to bash the school system too badly, but it’s hard. The way they breed people out of there is mediocracy. There’s a lot of good information in there. I’m not going to say school is not important. It’s the way they are taught. It’s the class forum and all the stuff that isn’t even school-related that’s part of it. It makes it so hard to understand.
I’ve been out of school for a very long time. I’m pretty old. My son graduated in 2020. We fought every day for him to at least turn his assignments in. He was much like I was. He was not a very good student. He slept a lot in class because it was boring to him, but he is a good person. He worked hard. He tried to do the right things the best he could. He then went into the Marine Corps and he exploded. He expanded his vocabulary. He expanded his knowledge. He thrives in an environment like that.
I’ve had other friends who thrived in high school, in college, and their jobs. It’s a different path. Not all of us were meant for that path. The earlier we identify that the better it is. In the ‘90s and the ‘80s, they were hammering colleges that you weren’t going to be anybody unless you went to college. Even if you went to the trades, you weren’t going to be anybody.
They treated you like a second-class citizen.
It used to piss me off, honestly. I knew for a fact probably in eighth grade I wasn’t going to go to college. I had no desire to do it. I didn’t want to go to school anymore. It was stupid for me. They treated us like, “You’re going to the Military. It’s all right. You’ll be all right.”
Hell Yes Moment
They discard you. It’s like, “You’re not on this.” It’s a one-track mind. It’s a one-track system. Part of what I’m trying to extrapolate from that is these stories like yours of everyday entrepreneurs who are creating real value in their communities. These are people that our systems of education dismiss. It’s like, “We want to see the scholarly kid going on to college. That’s the only thing we’re interested in.” Let me come back to my earlier question. I know you’re only a year and a half into your journey or so. Was there a time when you had a “Hell, yes” moment?
There’s been a lot, honestly. I went on a trip overseas or out of the country to look at some engines with another vendor or with another company. After the week was over, honestly, it was a lot. I was on the beach after a whole week.
Are you talking about Brazil?
Yeah. I don’t want to disclose anything as far as details, but I was in Brazil. I was sitting on the beach walking. It was almost overwhelming. I started thinking back to when I stopped my job, quit my job, when I was in high school, my time in the military, and then the week how it transpired. It was like, “We’re doing this. This is real.” It was almost surreal.
I had a moment. It was a very spiritual time in my life because it was a big deal to see that many engines sitting in a place and being able to know that some of that work would come to me. This started off as a dream or a thought a few years ago and I have it all accomplished. We haven’t signed any contracts or anything like that so it still could fall apart, but to be introduced to the game was a win for me. To be asked to the dance, if you will, was a huge win for me. I was like, “If this falls apart, then we go to something else. We go on to something else bigger than this,” or whatever the case is. For me, that was a huge deal.
To go back even a little further, taking my first job, flying up to St. Louis, looking at an airplane, and leaving the next day, I couldn’t get over the, “No one else is doing this. Why isn’t someone else doing this stuff? Why am I the only guy? Why is it me?” My wife asked me the same thing. She was like, “Why is it you?” I was like, I don’t know why it’s me. I’m the only one to give it a try. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of, “Let’s give it a shot.” That’s all it is. It’s about being brave a little bit.
That’s such a great story. I say so often that opportunities are everywhere but they can’t be seen with the naked eye. Our brains are inundated with so much data every second. We rely on filtering mechanisms that filter almost everything out. If you are not looking for the opportunity, it’s going to walk in front of you 3 or 4 times a day and you won’t see it.
Calculated Risks: Our brains are inundated with so much data every second. We rely on filtering mechanisms that filter almost everything out. So if you’re not looking for the opportunity, it’s going to walk in front of you.
That and also if you listen to the outside people telling you, “You can’t do this. You’re not the guy. Why would they expect you?” I had a lot of people telling me when I was quitting my job as well as people who worked for me who were entry-level mechanics, “I can’t believe you’re taking a risk. You’re dumb to do that.” I’m like, “We’ll see in a year.” Some of it’s like, “Let me prove you wrong.” Sometimes, it’s not necessarily a vengeance to be successful, but it’s satisfying.
There’s a lot to unpack there. A lot of times, even the people closest to us will try to talk us out of it and try to encourage us to take the safe route. It’s hard to sift through that. There’s a biological thing going on there. This is my theory. Check this out. We’re around people who think more or less like we do. Let’s say there are 3 or 4 of us in a group and one of us says, “I’m going to leave this group and go do something differently.” That makes the group uncomfortable.
This is like eighth grade Biology. The group’s going to try to convince you of the air of your ways to come back into conformity. In some cases, you’re going to convince the group to follow you, but that’s rarer. In many cases, you’re going to leave the group and the group will close up around you. That’s what it’s an expression of. It’s like, “You’re behaving differently. That makes me uncomfortable. Stop that.”
That’s a lot of it right there. A lot of times, if you break the norm, people don’t see. They wonder why you’re breaking the norm. They can’t fathom ever breaking the norm. I’ve worked with so many people, whether in Kansas, North Dakota, or even all the way in Brazil that their scope of the world is very tight. They couldn’t even fathom going 5 blocks away, 5 miles away, or 10 miles away. Being a pioneer is scary, but it’s worthwhile if you decide to break that norm, get away from the people who are dragging you down a little bit, and take to risk. It’s rewarding in the long run, for sure.
I would argue that you didn’t take all that much of a risk. I’ve written about this extensively in my new book. To characterize an entrepreneur as a risk taker may be a mischaracterization. To be clear, maybe I’m parsing here, but to a lot of people, that means, “I’m going to put everything on the line. I’m going to take all my chips and put them on this.” I don’t think that’s what you were doing. You de-risked the heck out of that idea.
You’re correct. It was a calculated risk, for sure. It’s always risky. It’s not an easy path. What people see is success, but what they don’t see is all the hours upon hours of discomfort and travel that go along with being successful. You’re right. I de-risked the heck out of it, honestly. I have positives and negatives in everything I do. You have no choice. What are the pitfalls? You have to try to identify them. There are lots of rakes out there, so you’re not going to get them all. It is a calculated risk, to your point.
What people see is successful. What they don't see is all the hours upon hours and discomfort that goes along with being successful. Share on XThe flip side of it is what is the risk of not doing it?
I lost both my parents fairly young. My dad was 65. My mom was 72. That was all right around in my mid-to-late 40s. I had a lot of time to think about their life. After I left the Navy, my time with them was very limited after that. I was traveling the world and seeing things. I did not want to be like my dad on his deathbed. He accomplished a lot. I’m not going to bash my father for any of that stuff, but I wanted a different lifestyle than what my father or my mother had, for that matter. I wanted to look back at my life and say, “Whether I’m successful or a failure, at least I gave it a shot.” I wanted to make sure I captured as much as I possibly could in my lifetime.
There’s going to be stuff I won’t be able to complete in my life, but at least I can take their experiences and say, “That worked for them but maybe it’s not going to work for me. I want to be a pioneer. I want to do something different from what my parents did, what my friends did, or what my coworkers did.” I wanted to try to break the norm and try to do something else.
I also looked at some of my previous employers, my previous managers, and stuff like that, and said, “I’m going to learn from how they treat people and how they’re doing things. I’m going to take what they have to offer, and I’m going to make it my own. I’ll maybe do some things better or maybe do some things worse, but it’s going to be my own.”
You’re talking about that in terms of leadership.
Leadership or even their life experiences or anything like that. It’s all about learning about other people and being able to take a step back and say, “That’s why they did that. I’m going to try to mitigate that.”
Evolving Vision
I like where you’re going with that. It’s the human side of things. We’re not just here to fulfill our own needs. We’re here to create value for the people around us also. Much of human suffering can be attributed to focusing on the self. Much human flourishing can be attributed to focusing on other people. A question I would like to come back to is how has your vision evolved over time?
We're not just here to fill our own needs. We're here to create value for the people around us. Share on XI have a theory that we come into this stuff scared. You’re confident, but you stepped off into the unknown, you have financial obligations, and so on and so forth. It then starts to work. You hit pitfalls and then you overcome them. For me, my entrepreneurial competence, confidence, self-efficacy, or whatever you want to call it evolved over time and my vision evolved with it. Has that occurred for you? Has your vision grown?
Absolutely. I remember taking one of my first or second trips out to a company. I’m flying out there. I get out there and we’re having problems. I’m thinking to myself, “What do I do? It has been twenty years since I’ve worked on this engine. Am I doing the right thing? I’m not in the right arena. I’m making a mistake. I shouldn’t be here. This is beyond me.”
To get past that, the airplane’s fixed and it’s flying. You get another meeting with somebody else. You start talking about planning. It’s like, “I’m in over my head. I shouldn’t be here.” The same things come up every single time. You step back and say, “I shouldn’t have to sell myself every single time.” You have to stop doing that. You got to overcome your own personal demons and say, “I can do this. I do belong here. I’m going to run into stuff I don’t know, but I belong in this arena with these guys. There’s no reason I can’t be competing with these guys.” You become more focused on your dream, what you want to accomplish, and your goals.
I remember sitting down in an airplane coming back from somewhere, Germany, or something like that. I was writing out my 2023 accomplishments and my 2024 goals. A couple of weeks back, I was flying again. I’m like, “Where were we at with these?” I constantly check on them, and then I’ll do the same thing for 2024, 2025, and so on and so forth. Ultimately, you learn from your mistakes, you become confident in what you’re doing, and you understand that you do belong here at this table. It is your time to shine. That’s it.
There’s a great quote from Steve Jobs when he was young when he got kicked out of Apple back in the ‘90s. It’s this great quote. He said something about, “You’re brought into this world and you’re taught that the world is the way it is. Our job is to fit in the world as it is. Our job is to find a job, try to save a little bit of money, and try to have a little bit of fun, but that’s a recipe for a very limited life.” He said, “Once you realize the people who made those rules are no smarter than you and you can build something that other people want and need, you’ll never be the same again.” That’s what you’re talking about.
That’s exactly it. I’m confident enough that if this thing folded tomorrow, I’d go find another job somewhere else or I’d do something else. I’d be successful regardless. After I left the Navy, I took a job in Wyoming. I left my comfort zone. I was in the Navy for eight years and then a contractor for another five years at the same Navy base back in Washington state.
I left my comfort zone and went to another company in Wyoming. I wanted to get close to the Midwest. They folded after nine months of me being there. I bought a house, lost my job, and then lost my house and everything like that. I was at my lowest of lows. I went through a divorce. I had all this stuff. I was at the lowest of my lows.
I then took what I learned in the lowest of my life and sling-shotted myself into my next job at Eclipse Aviation. I was not going to let that failure define me. I could easily have said, “I’m done. I’m at the bottom. I can’t go any further,” but I took that bad time, which was the worst time of my life, and used that as a gauge of my success and said, “That sucked but at least it will never suck as bad as it did back then.”
You’re going to run into problems over and over again. It’s how you react to those things and what you do to gain experience and better yourself after those experiences like that. That is what defines you. I was not going to let that failure ruin me. If more people would take that advice, look at that, and say, “Okay,” it’s a step back, for sure. It was a life-changing advance. I was in debt. I’ve never bought a house before and then I lost it within nine months. If I had let that time in my life define me, I would never be sitting in the position I’m in, even willing to take a risk or take a chance to better myself. If I would’ve never learned from those mistakes.
It was not a mistake on my part. I chose a bad company. It was bad timing. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault. I didn’t get fired because I was a bad employee or anything like that. They folded. That happens. I put a lot of effort into other companies. When it is my time to shine at my own company, I’m going to use that same idea and same effort that I put into other companies to make them lots of money to try to better myself and not necessarily make money, but own my success, or own my failures.
Resilience And A Compelling Goal
That’s so interesting to me because one of the things I’ve distilled from all of these interviews is that in the everyday entrepreneur like you, one of the things I see in common, and I’m sorry to reference Ice House here, is lesson eight. It’s resilience. Ultimately, what’s happening, and your comments speak to this, is for whatever reason, you are optimistically interpreting adverse situations.
I’ve looked at the research on this. It’s quite interesting. That’s the basis for resilience. I want to be clear about this. By resilience, I don’t mean getting back up after you get knocked down. I’m saying what Nassim Taleb calls Antifragile. Meaning, you not only get back up, but you’re stronger. You benefited from the adversity.
I 100% benefited from my adversity. That was the hardest time in my life. I guarantee it. It was devastating, but I took that devastation and made it my own. I owned it. I decided, “I’m not going to let it define me. I’m going to better myself. I’m going to get stronger. I’m going to learn more things.” In the next problem, you’re going to do the same thing. Over time, it gets easier.
It’s a big problem, but once you get past that, all the other problems seem so simple to you. Sometimes, my wife comes up with problems and I’m like, “All you have to do is this. It’s not a big deal.” People don’t think through that unless they’ve been devastated. I don’t let simple problems bother me. I’m like, “We got to do this and we’re good.”
I’ll go back to the maple syrup guy. His name is David Yani. He’s the maple syrup guy from Pennsylvania. He has built this enormous maple syrup empire and created jobs. He created a lot of economic value in his community. He started a Bigfoot festival that attracts tens of thousands of people to his tiny town every year.
A great part of his story was his wife is his partner in this and they’re all day doing the thing, but at night, they’ll sit on the front porch and think about ideas. There’s an important little nugget in that, and you hinted at this. The thing that distinguishes the entrepreneurial mind from the non-entrepreneurial mind is that we use our imagination as well as our memory. We draw from the past in order to navigate the future.
There’s another component in there, which is dreaming. You said it right from the rip, “I have a vision.” I can’t emphasize that enough to our audience. What’s happening here, whether you know it or not or whether you realize it or not, is the compelling goal that’s resonating with you. It’s like Ikigai. It’s the intersection of your interests and abilities and the needs of people around you that are engaging you in ways. It enables you to use your imagination, which most of us don’t. We draw from the past in order to navigate the future.
My question to the audience is, do you have a compelling goal? Are you listening to Dan’s story here? It’s the compelling goal that’s pulling out of you the best you have to offer the world. Because of it, the people around you are benefiting and so are you. What we’re talking about is human flourishing here. It goes back to the spiritual component we were talking about. I don’t want to lead with that, but I want people to understand that there is a spiritual component. This is not about business necessarily.
It’s about satisfaction. It’s about your personal satisfaction, what you can bring to the table to other people, and how it can benefit all, not just yourself. It’s trying to do the right thing when it comes down to that and trying to make the world a better place.
One of the points I take away from your story is to pay attention to that nagging feeling that’s inside of you that there’s got to be more. I’ve said this probably too many times on this show. The way our brains work is if we find ourselves in such a situation or in our job where we’re not fulfilled, we’re languishing, and we’re not depressed or beaten down but we’re not thriving, our brains make this determination whether it’s escapable or inescapable. If our brains decide it’s inescapable, what happens physiologically is our brains shut down the fight or flight response and redirect our energy and focus toward coping strategies. Don’t bother wasting your energy on trying to escape. Go home and turn on the TV.
Numb yourself with alcohol, cigarettes, or whatever.
It could also be social media. I get so many people who are caught up in political anxiety and fighting. It’s nonsense. If you believe that the situation is escapable, your brain will find it, and it might not find it immediately. I would argue that that’s your story. You were not satisfied, so your brain was looking around going, “Where’s the opportunity?” and you found it.
It’s out there for everyone. I am not a special case. I don’t have the magic bullet. I was in tune enough where everything lined up and I said, “Why not me to give it a shot? Why can’t I be successful in doing something I enjoy?” I used to love building these engines back in the Navy. I didn’t think they were ever going to be in the market, but when it rose, I was like, “That’s what I want to do.” It has been so far so good. I was fine doing the other thing, talking every day, making sure everybody came to work, and doing all this stuff. I was 100% fine with that but I was not fulfilled.
You weren’t 100% fine with that.
That’s true. I hated being in mediocrity. You know what I mean. I could have 25 more years, 15 more years, or whatever, and be fine. I would’ve been financially fine. I gave myself a pay cut to make sure this thing came off the rails. It all depends on what you want in life, ultimately. Do you want to clock in every day and do the same thing that everyone else is doing or do you want to give it a shot and you have nothing to lose by giving it a shot?
Calculated Risks: You have nothing to lose by giving it a shot.
To that point, I want to be clear. There’s nothing wrong if you want to clock in every day. I’m not casting aspersions on that, but if that’s not getting it for you, there are alternative opportunities that you may not be thinking about. That’s what I hear you saying.
I’m working with Jim Correll on the LMI mindset. I’m looking at starting a class with him to do the veterans stuff. For me as a veteran and my son as an active duty Military guy, I’m looking at wanting to give them the skillset to the entrepreneur stuff to help out with the transition when they get out of the Military too. I’m hoping to be able to at least give some of that vision that I’ve learned and with your guys training sessions to help out with that.
Let me know how I can help with that. I would love to contribute however we can to the veteran cause. Veterans are ideally suited for this.
We are hammered from the day we get in the Military to the day we get out. A lot of us don’t have the skillset to transition properly and think for ourselves.
You got the discipline.
I would never turn my time away. I love the Military. I love America. I love everything about it. This class alone will help us at least give a little insight into what it’s going to take to think for yourself and then also thrive on the outside.
That’s an important point. What people don’t realize is you’ve been in a system all your life in public education and work whereby you are taught without anyone ever saying it. The expectation is someone else is going to tell you what to learn and do in order to be successful in life. You don’t even realize there are no opportunities where you have to step out with a sharp stick and some bailing wire or, in your case, a wrench, and figure it out for yourself. At first, that’s a little bit scary, but once you get your sea legs, you’re like, “I can do this.” That’s what your story is.
That’s what it’s about. Give it a shot. Everybody can do the same thing I did, but maybe not in the same job arena or whatever the case is. It takes the stars aligning like that. Ultimately, if you don’t give yourself an opportunity or look at the opportunities that are given to you and take a shot at it, you’re missing out on some freedom.
To your point, we are so hammered in high school, grade school, and middle school and people are like, “The norm is this. You’re going to learn this way, and that’s all you’re going to do.” There are other ways there. If you don’t sit back and say, “That’s not for me. I can do something else,” and realize that there is other stuff out there, you get stuck in mediocracy. I hate to see that for anybody.
As we wind this conversation down, if I had to summarize 600 or maybe 700 conversations I’ve had with folks like you, it comes down to a fundamental thing. The people who are looking for answers typically find them, and the people who stop looking for answers typically don’t.
I agree with that.
That’s a mindset question. Are you looking for answers or are you doom scrolling on your phone?
You have to identify what you want in life. If you want to clock in every day and you don’t want to put forth the effort, that’s 100% fine. If you have a nagging feeling in the back of your head, identify that nag and figure out what you can do. Honor the nag.
If you have a nagging thing in the back of your head, identify that and honor and figure out what you can do. Share on XI don’t want to make this into a spiritual conversation, but here’s something inside of you that’s saying, “Let me out.” Abraham Maslow said something about when the essence of a person is either suppressed or denied, he gets sick sometimes immediately and sometimes later or sometimes in obvious ways and sometimes in not obvious ways.
Your story is a beautiful example of people using their gifts to create value in the world on their own. That’s where the future is going to take us. I want to thank you for being part of this show. I’ve enjoyed this story. I can’t wait to share it with the world, specifically veterans. I connected with a lady, Dawn Halfaker. I don’t know how far you went to the Ice House program.
I’ve been through it all.
Dawn sold her business and is a philanthropist. She is dedicated to supporting veteran entrepreneurs. At some point, if you guys need a connection, she might be able to help you with what you’re doing. She might take an interest in what you’re doing.
That’s great. It’s been a real pleasure for me too, honestly. I’d be interested to have the same conversation five years from now and see a recap. Being this fresh in the arena, there’s a lot there. I appreciate you even talking to me at this level in my time here. It’s an honor.
Let me leave you with this. Having had 600 or 700 of these conversations, I can see over the hill. You can’t. You’re at the side of the hill. You can’t see over the hill. I’m up at 10,000 feet. I can predict how your story is going to end, and it’s probably going to be greater than you even can possibly imagine.
I appreciate the words of encouragement. It’s tough in the trenches.
One day at a time. Thank you.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
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