Playing to Win - 012 - Brad Pedersen

00:00:00.000 all right it looks like we're live so welcome guys to episode number 12 of the playing to win

00:00:06.620 series and if you guys can hear me right now in the chat just uh say yes i can hear you because

00:00:14.240 i know that youtube's having a hard time connecting uh with stream yard and getting

00:00:20.400 audio working i see the chat's not working but it looks like i'm streaming live so we're good okay

00:00:24.740 brad welcome back brother it's good to be back man it's been a while

00:00:28.820 yeah when i say back it's uh 2014 may of 2014 we we hopped into your hemi after a retreat for forum

00:00:41.280 and uh i mean we shot the shit for a good hour in the car i mean i edited it down

00:00:45.940 as as short as possible because i realized we talked about a lot of stuff but um you were my

00:00:50.900 first video i i'm i'm pretty proud of the fact that i was your first uh richard it's uh you were

00:00:58.020 my first man you were my uh you know you took away my youtube virginity

00:01:01.220 considering your current infamy i i take that as a bit of an honor it was an experiment i remember

00:01:09.120 finally you were uh we had just come out of a retreat um i think we'd been pressed pretty hard

00:01:14.800 by our facilitator in terms of you know defining our future and uh the retarded dog i don't know if i can

00:01:22.420 use that vernacular i think with you yes vernacular is okay and it's funny because i've created my own

00:01:27.760 forums uh now and i was talking about the retarded dog in one of the conversations we had two days ago

00:01:33.380 i was explaining the concept of the dog so um i guess it was colin that facilitated that one right

00:01:38.780 that's right yeah so um yeah let's tell these guys about our little batman origin story because

00:01:45.020 um you know there's some newer people here and there's quite a few that have followed me for a while

00:01:49.220 and they're wondering you know what it is we're talking about and how we know each other so um i

00:01:53.520 met you at um a forum meeting through eo i think jody brought you into the forum at ron's office

00:02:00.360 and um you're pretty exhausted when you hopped in that day i think you're just flying back from china

00:02:04.960 from a long trip and we're working on like no sleep over a day and a half i think that's where

00:02:09.740 i met you for the first time right that's right exactly true

00:02:12.300 and that was your introduction before well it's my introduction to this forum i'd been in forums

00:02:20.500 before but i had been on a bit of a sabbatical um away from forum because i had been you know kind

00:02:27.100 of all hands on deck trying to save my business and had decided i had to uh limit um i guess just

00:02:35.200 any expenses outside of what was absolutely baseline in maslow's hierarchy very similar to where we are

00:02:41.100 today in light of covet 19 um and yeah i had uh not been informed sometime and you're right i had

00:02:48.060 just gotten off of a long flight back from asia where i had madly been working on uh product lines

00:02:56.560 selling our business plan into our international markets which i came from the toy business so

00:03:01.620 that's what we did and um i was exhausted and i was i would say emotionally fragile just because so

00:03:09.640 much had happened uh in a short period of time and and i i remember that meeting because i was so

00:03:16.680 intimidated to be in that group i i just i just remember being overwhelmed by emotion um had a hard

00:03:24.200 time speaking so yeah it's crazy so there were some clip there were some clips that i that i edited

00:03:30.820 out the first video so if you guys want reference what i'm talking about watch it after we're done

00:03:34.160 talking here but just go to my video tab and then organize videos by oldest and the conversation

00:03:39.640 brad and i had at his truck was from like six years ago but there was some stuff that i cut out

00:03:43.020 and i think you were telling um some stories tied into because i mean like the whole point of this

00:03:48.260 playlist that i'm doing just to kind of frame a little bit more for you because i really didn't

00:03:50.880 prep you that much for this uh call was um i put this together because i think it came from

00:03:56.180 colin actually where he was talking about playing to win versus playing not to lose was that

00:03:59.900 was that from him that was a colonism for sure yeah that's a colonism so yep um you guys will

00:04:06.500 not know who he is you won't be able to find him pretty much anywhere on social media he's almost

00:04:09.920 invisible but he's well known in uh facilitating entrepreneurs retreats help them level up and

00:04:15.140 break through their bs and call them out on their crap but um there's a difference between playing to

00:04:20.420 win and playing not to lose and that's why i named this playlist playing to win at some point i got

00:04:24.600 to get colin on this too but um in life we've both played to win and we've played not to lose and i

00:04:31.360 know from from the early get-go i think some of your early businesses you were talking about when

00:04:35.640 you were living in alberta i think you were in uh forestry or you're in uh creating courts of

00:04:41.780 firewood or something like that and then your wife financed your first business was it like she

00:04:45.880 she got into debt basically to help get your first business off the ground was that the toy business

00:04:49.940 or was that something else that was the toy business yeah um i mean i don't know how much

00:04:54.400 you want me to do you want me to talk about that at all or do you want we got 90 minutes man we're

00:04:58.040 yeah we got a lot of time to get time that's why these guys are here they want to hear all about

00:05:02.020 this stuff yeah i mean so going back to the origin story though belaboring that point i was always

00:05:07.040 entrepreneurial but um you know i grew up in a family my father was a chiropractor his father was a

00:05:12.440 chiropractor as well as his mother and my great-grandfather was the first chiropractor in denmark so

00:05:16.460 ever since i was like this high people have said when you grow up you're gonna be a

00:05:19.700 chiropractor like your dad and i just kind of nodded and said yeah i'm gonna be a chiropractor

00:05:22.660 and i just kind of went through the motions thinking that's what i was supposed to do with

00:05:25.400 my life but i knew that that was a head decision not a heart decision um and you know at a very early

00:05:31.120 age i had entrepreneurial tendencies and what you're referring to is i actually had a woodcutting

00:05:34.900 business and to this day i talk about the perfect setup of that business you know it was my dad's truck

00:05:40.900 his gas his chainsaw his splitting mall and uh endless access to crown land which at the time you go

00:05:47.860 and harvest trees and and so it was all his equipment and i just would go on at that time

00:05:53.520 that was before the internet i could see in the paper that they were selling a cord of wood for 65 bucks

00:05:57.820 well i'd offer 60 bucks knowing my overhead was me and um and uh and and we crushed it i basically

00:06:04.400 financed all my adventures as a kid doing that uh my dad thought it was awesome and just kept letting

00:06:10.360 me do what i was doing and eventually i started hiring my buddies and you know uh we we would uh after

00:06:15.420 school and weekends we'd be man we were in great shape splitting the wood is no joke um so that was

00:06:20.420 the very very first business venture i got into that was like teenager right like late teens yeah

00:06:27.000 that was when i was 16 so just old enough to drive in alberta which is where i grew up uh you know once

00:06:32.060 you turn 16 i mean if you didn't have your license within two weeks something was wrong with you that

00:06:35.160 was just kind of right of passage right so i get the feeling that most guys in alberta like as soon

00:06:39.680 as you can reach the pedals you're pretty much driving if you're in the rural area right

00:06:42.860 oh yeah uh no doubt about it i i have fond memories because i grew up my parents had an acreage on my

00:06:50.120 grandfather's uh farm and i can remember driving a truck into the field when i was like you know

00:06:56.160 maybe 10 11 12 like early early ages that they just it was a part if you if you were capable and had

00:07:03.760 uh the ability to help they wanted you to help and so uh machinery was just a matter of learning it

00:07:08.560 wasn't the age age gate it was like are you competent and capable to run this thing okay

00:07:13.140 here you go take that truck drive that out to your grandpa and get him his coffee and uh his lunch so

00:07:18.740 yeah that was it so that was the first business but then leaving from that i mean you met your wife

00:07:25.020 quite young when did you guys get married yeah so met my wife when i was 19 when i was in school to

00:07:31.320 be a chiropractor i was married on 21 um the best thing that came from going to school to be a

00:07:37.420 chiropractor is i met my wife um you know um i i consider myself very lucky uh and you know the

00:07:45.500 luckiest thing for me was finding uh a life partner i i say that the two most important decisions you're

00:07:50.600 gonna make in life are who do you get married to and who do you get in business with and that that

00:07:55.540 first one at 19 to run into my um my soulmate who we've been married now uh 25 years we just

00:08:02.260 celebrated this past year and 27 years together uh what an incredibly lucky sort of turn of events

00:08:08.720 and um she actually i can blame her for actually accelerating my entrepreneurial journey because

00:08:14.100 um you know i was about to go finish up my chiropractic school but i had to move to another

00:08:19.020 part of the world to do it and she basically told me gave me this ultimate saying hey you know what if

00:08:23.320 you do that i don't think i'm interested in a long-term relationship she just come through a

00:08:26.780 a situation with a boyfriend that hadn't worked out well on that so i decided to hang out for a

00:08:31.820 year and a person who's got entrepreneurial tendencies sitting around uh tends to get

00:08:37.320 themselves in trouble or um start new opportunities which is exactly what i did and the uh debt that she

00:08:44.380 took on to get the business off the government was that business yeah so i um i started a toy

00:08:50.340 distribution company and um it came because i've always been a big kid my wife accuses me that i still

00:08:56.020 might be one um we all are we all are right yeah i think that's you know the only difference when

00:09:02.180 you get older is once you start you know making a little more money you buy bigger toys it's true

00:09:06.980 the toys change yeah i say to people all the time i want to die young as late as possible

00:09:12.280 but stay young at heart i think that's really key to really uh embracing the whole life experience but

00:09:19.800 yeah so um i started i basically negotiated the rights for product lines for canada because most

00:09:25.460 americans at that time that i was dealing with kind of looked at canada as just this annoying

00:09:29.280 country up north that they you know their business was in the states and so i just found this opportunity

00:09:34.400 to um to to carve out a niche in a space that i was interested in and um you know that the problem

00:09:42.140 was is it's distribution companies are cash intensive you got to buy inventory and then you got to ship

00:09:46.380 it up and then you got to sit in a warehouse and you got to sell it and um you know i started

00:09:50.760 off as a carny i literally was going to fairs and carnivals and across the country trying to

00:09:56.300 hawk these different things that i had the distribution rights for but it was an amazing

00:10:00.620 uh crucible for learning the the art of negotiation the heart of sales the art of marketing and and how

00:10:07.180 you take a product and tell stories with it but yeah my my wife i mean she she had the she was the

00:10:13.180 responsible person who was employed who had a steady paycheck and i was of course the one with the

00:10:18.440 the potential uh to maybe create something something great so she was absolutely the person who funded

00:10:24.180 those early endeavors and got that company up and running cool and what year was that because i know

00:10:31.100 you had i think it was one or two bankruptcies with business with toys yeah yeah i um i tell people i am

00:10:39.580 on my seventh startup now which we can talk about later but along the way i've had two crash and burn

00:10:44.000 several uneventful pivots and one exit that turned out pretty well okay say that again a little bit

00:10:48.880 slower so you had two crash and burns uneventful pivots several uneventful pivots yeah one sudden but

00:10:56.800 uh good exit uh is it's how i would describe it uh i tell people a sudden exit with a soft landing so

00:11:05.460 um you know we can we can talk more about that in a bit but yeah i mean not all rainbows and

00:11:10.540 butterflies i know you're not you're not eating an apple and orange and a banana and shit in a fruit

00:11:17.220 salad here like world like you know the world's not perfect for you no you know and i think that

00:11:22.680 anybody who would get on your show and actually um would just talk about all these great things

00:11:27.560 have happened to them that that none of us are interested in that story uh i've come to learn that

00:11:32.020 you know uh mastery is on the mountaintop of mistakes and i've made them all i mean i have a phd

00:11:38.200 and d-u-m-b tenfold right so i have definitely made many many mistakes along the way and and some

00:11:46.000 mistakes i had to relearn unfortunately you know they're so they're extra expensive when you have

00:11:49.960 to relearn them um but yeah so i started my first toy company uh in 94 distribution company incorporated

00:11:57.240 in 96 um scaled that business quickly primarily because there was this change in um distribution

00:12:04.800 structures so there used to be a bunch of toy companies in canada that were acting as distributors

00:12:09.040 with these big overheads and the walmart effect was starting to take hold and a lot of these guys just

00:12:14.220 were getting pushed out of the marketplace and we had a revised distribution structure that was just

00:12:18.760 more nimble and lean and more efficient and so while they were dying we were growing and i would say

00:12:25.580 actually it's a great metaphor for what's going on today and we'll talk about that no doubt in a minute

00:12:29.500 um but there's always opportunity in adversities there's always a way to take the obstacle and

00:12:36.100 turn to your advantage and i think that at that time we were like in a great place with a great idea

00:12:41.640 and that company uh at that time was called dynatech um we grew it from zero to just 125 million

00:12:50.320 in sales by 2006 we had been on the profit 100 list in canada which they don't call the profit 100

00:12:58.620 anymore i think they called the growth 500 because they discovered most of the people on the profit

00:13:02.120 list weren't profitable they were just growing with no profits so um anyways but we were on that list

00:13:07.800 four years in a row i had uh won several awards i was nominated for ernst and young entrepreneur of the

00:13:12.840 year award i mean i thought i had tiger by the tail um bull by the horns and that things were

00:13:19.260 um going exactly as planned in 2006 we had a record year um i went to mexico on vacation my family at

00:13:27.280 christmas uh got back from that vacation thinking like okay we're gonna like double down again and

00:13:32.860 we're just gonna get after it and uh within 90 days we were in special loans and what i learned the hard

00:13:38.520 way is that you can grow too fast um and this is something i think a lot of entrepreneurs are confused

00:13:43.460 by but the the hard reality is that most businesses die from choking on biting off more than they can chew

00:13:50.660 rather than starving on lack of opportunity and the distribution company as you grow it you know

00:13:56.620 you can see how the the cash constraints become uh increasingly challenging because you're buying

00:14:02.260 goods up front you put them on the water and they're now coming from china you put them in a

00:14:05.680 warehouse you sell them to a retailer who takes 90 days to pay you well to grow that model just requires

00:14:10.140 a ton of cash and the bigger you create the business the more cash you need and we literally came

00:14:16.380 out of a record year thinking you know high five and thinking things are great but the bank's like

00:14:20.200 actually you tripped all these debt to equity covenants you're underwater in your margin and you're

00:14:24.820 they just went through all this list and we're now throwing you into special loans and um what does

00:14:29.880 that mean just explain special loans for those that don't know what that is well most people are

00:14:34.800 probably familiar with special ops when it comes to the military it's like an elite group of people

00:14:38.740 who are really really gifted at being able to take out the bad guys um special loans is a similar

00:14:44.920 group of bankers they they are micromanaging your business uh to the nth degree and controlling

00:14:51.820 controlling every single receivable payable everything that goes through is under control

00:14:58.660 and um you are not allowed to pay bills or uh we can deposit the money but they've got all the money

00:15:05.640 locked down so you can't do anything without their permission and so it was literally you go from

00:15:11.560 you know working on call it 90 day business plan down to every week your business plan is being

00:15:17.060 revisited your cash flow is being revisited your receivables and payables are under control and

00:15:22.560 most businesses die there because they just are given no uh permission to do anything anymore to

00:15:28.880 continue to grow the business or get it out of its um uh its difficulties because it's being locked down

00:15:35.320 by you're not in the driver's state anymore then right like basically the bankers are that's exactly

00:15:39.840 right yeah yeah so that resulted in um a bankruptcy which happened in 2006 and you know for people who

00:15:50.060 may be grieving and going through some loss in this current crisis um i can tell you as an entrepreneur

00:15:56.520 my identity was attached to that business i had birthed that oh yeah it was just a part of who i was

00:16:01.540 you know i had hung i had some ego attached to these accolades and awards and all that stuff that now i see

00:16:08.400 is just crap but at the time it was like a part of who i was and literally i was i was brought to my

00:16:15.540 knees and um you know adding insult to injury um you know we were a fast growth company and uh because

00:16:22.780 we're fast growth and we're from small town alberta we'd attracted a lot of local interest so i had

00:16:27.380 actually brought in about a million dollars for the friends and family money which now that's all

00:16:32.820 underwater and um you know so going back and and doing family christmas has suddenly got a completely

00:16:38.780 different dynamic but you know i went from feeling like a hero could crush the you know unstoppable and

00:16:45.420 to a complete zero and uh you know challenging conversations pretty much on a daily basis and

00:16:54.640 you know while i i consider that um now to be something very difficult i can there's been enough

00:17:03.360 time that i look back at it and i say this was actually a really important thing for me to go

00:17:09.920 through and not just go through it but grow through it it became my inconvenient blessing like it was

00:17:15.460 totally inconvenient but wow were we ever blessed as we went through uh that process um yeah and then you

00:17:23.980 went through round two after that toy company um didn't work out and you created another toy

00:17:29.080 company that was tech for kids and that's when i met you well yeah so real quickly just to get to

00:17:35.140 that because i i here's i want to double down on is that there's a lot of people who don't believe

00:17:39.920 um there's a lot of i would say miss uh information about their about never quit never stop just keep

00:17:49.420 going and um i was that sort of person that said hey i i can fix this i can you know i wasn't willing

00:17:57.580 to step back uh and and surrender i was in the denial spin cycle this is another colonism and i just

00:18:04.840 was going through my own groundhog day that hey i can fix it i had a growing company i can fix it if i

00:18:09.520 just get more money i can fix it so when it when it went into bankruptcy i found a um a local uh merchant

00:18:17.320 bank who backed me i bought the assets they put three and a half million dollars of cash in and i

00:18:22.440 was trying to resurrect the same business model without taking the time to say hey maybe just

00:18:27.240 the model's broken maybe it doesn't make sense anymore maybe there's a better way to do things so

00:18:32.780 i took two years two more years of figuring that out and then found out that it was also broken and

00:18:40.700 so bankruptcy one 2008 bankruptcy two or sorry bankruptcy on 2006 bankruptcy two in 2008 and um

00:18:48.700 and that was when i finally came to the surrender piece that okay this business model is is really

00:18:56.160 broken but not only had i had all the loss from the first bankruptcy the one million dollars in

00:19:01.360 friends and family you know millions of dollars of shed losses to the banks um but now i had this added

00:19:08.240 uh burden of another three and a half million dollars of merchant bank uh debt that i was personally

00:19:13.820 guaranteed to that kept my wife very motivated by the way she loved it when they came knocking the

00:19:18.360 door and tried to collect the house it was an exciting day um and can i just pause for a second on that part

00:19:26.100 of the story because um there's a catchphrase that um i put out not too long ago and uh your marriage

00:19:37.400 violates it and i'm not saying that i'm wrong here but uh generally speaking on a balance of

00:19:43.720 probabilities women generally don't care about a man's struggles they hang out at the finish line

00:19:48.300 and they pick the winner so you went through two bankruptcies over a couple years um what was that

00:19:53.840 like in the marriage like did your wife ever say you know what brad you've got 90 days to figure this

00:19:58.240 out otherwise i'm out yeah um the answer is no i uh i joke that you know my wife was probably saying

00:20:08.360 under her breath i married you for better worse but not for this bullshit and um you know like honestly

00:20:14.960 i think it really comes down to without being gender specific it's the person beneath that that um

00:20:23.760 you know the one thing i will give her eternal credit for is she has truly been um a a partner

00:20:33.120 in the in the holistic sense in other words when things got difficult instead of going into the

00:20:38.360 fetal position and just saying hey i'm i'm out which should have happened like i i put my hand to say

00:20:43.400 in most situations most guys going through this situation their their significant other would probably

00:20:49.280 have hit the eject button um but she doubled down on we're gonna do this together we're gonna work

00:20:56.360 through this together we're gonna go through this and grow through this together and you know i would

00:21:01.580 say the the stability of how that happened number one is we were uh very aligned spiritually we very

00:21:08.300 much uh believe that you know we're spiritual beings having a physical existence and we are really

00:21:13.860 grounded in that that you know god gave us a purpose and through us being together we're better

00:21:19.900 than on our own and then secondly we just communicated a lot and that communication wasn't the basic

00:21:25.760 bullshit it was like raw and real and getting vulnerable and making sure that you're always cultivating um

00:21:34.120 uh fresh conversation there's this this mythology out there that most people think that um the grass is

00:21:42.980 greener on the other side of the fence and i found it's greener where you water it and the problem in

00:21:47.300 general is in relationships you know your your partner will only ever give you at most 80 of what

00:21:52.540 you truly want need the problem is we focus on the 20 we don't have and if you stick in you know where

00:21:59.460 your focus goes energy flows and if you're focusing on that 20 you're going to eventually have some

00:22:04.420 kind of derailment and so you know what what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and anything this

00:22:10.360 adversity actually helped us grow i would say more together and um maybe that defies the norm uh

00:22:18.840 probably does yeah but i i believe that that is uh yeah there's no doubt that it does i mean this is

00:22:23.880 this is unusual it's it's it's not often that a marriage you know survives two bankruptcy over two

00:22:30.860 years like you go from hero down to zero in a matter of no time you know like women don't usually have a

00:22:38.420 lot of patience for that especially as you get older like they'll have more patience for it when

00:22:41.560 you're younger but as you're an older guy and the runway is running out on the airstrip they don't

00:22:46.260 they don't nearly have so much is what i've noticed anyway um let's go back to the business

00:22:51.200 story so uh second round bankruptcy is around 2008 um you saw that the old business model was broken some

00:22:57.960 of the choices that you were making were getting you the results that you were looking for your belief

00:23:01.560 system was slightly broken um did you did you take a look at colin's model of results choices belief

00:23:08.100 system like how did you how did you um remold your beliefs in your business as you kind of went into

00:23:13.680 brad 2.0 with the next toy business well look i think the one thing so the answer to use colin's

00:23:20.960 stuff at the time probably not directly but indirectly yes um i think you and i subscribe to

00:23:27.860 this world view of being lifelong learners and that is one thing that i truly uh have always

00:23:33.460 believed in and always practiced is being grounded in in ongoing learning um i think where i got to as

00:23:40.020 i reflect on it now is i did go to a place of surrender and then the ability to go back and review

00:23:45.560 my belief system and then you know question whether or not i had made assumptions and uh that were

00:23:52.240 incorrect and then the ability to then choose again and start a new future so i actually the best thing

00:23:58.280 i did is that well my my merchant bank business partners who of course i owed three and a half

00:24:04.040 million dollars not to mention the one million to friends and family um basically said you need to go

00:24:08.320 away and figure out how you're going to fix this and um because they knew that collecting on the the

00:24:14.320 personal guarantees was not going to be very uh profitable for them either so i took a sabbatical i

00:24:20.240 literally just pulled out of the business and took some time and i went away and i just needed to get

00:24:25.880 clear you know instead of working in the business start thinking about on the business and um you know

00:24:31.700 i revised the the business model i completely shifted we went from being a toy distributor in canada

00:24:36.940 to a toy manufacturer we focused on international versus just canada we focused on uh specific categories

00:24:43.960 specific licenses we just got really clear on um the new direction and the really helpful part of

00:24:51.740 that process actually was getting clear on what i didn't want because oftentimes we say what do you

00:24:55.960 want and it's hard because it's like there's too many choices right so the constraints that i find are

00:25:01.640 that help you make better choices is when you actually are forced to say well what don't i want

00:25:05.600 anymore like let's just get clear on that and when you start saying i don't want this type of i don't

00:25:09.260 want to have a warehouse with millions of dollars inventory i don't want to have walmart be 40 percent

00:25:14.100 of my business plan i don't want to you know just kind of going around and then suddenly it was like

00:25:18.320 wow okay i'm much more clear now what i do want based on putting those constraints and um we put

00:25:24.260 together a new business plan we put it in front of them shockingly they agreed because quite frankly

00:25:30.180 usually good money doesn't follow bad like if somebody's underwater three and a half million they

00:25:34.260 typically would say we're done they agreed to give us another million bucks um and the crazy part of

00:25:40.520 that story is that it was a million dollar loan at 24 percent interest which is crazy now that i think

00:25:47.480 about it unsecured or was it secured secured again right against what like the business the house like

00:25:52.800 what are they secured against everything that's personal assets the house put a lien on it was you know

00:25:59.200 there was nothing of mine that i owned outright anymore and um and that business funded literally

00:26:06.720 two weeks before the recession 2008 yeah if if that had not happened i'm not sure i'd be telling you oh

00:26:13.580 no i wouldn't be telling you this story today because you know it was um the markets dried up there

00:26:19.700 was no money i mean and and of course you know so we're like going oh great we got this money and now

00:26:26.160 we can go forward business but oh crap we owe a million bucks on top of the three and a half plus

00:26:31.220 the million to the friends and family and it's got a 24 interest rate on it um but man were we motivated

00:26:38.460 and actually i will tell you what was so awesome about that period just like right now is that our

00:26:46.640 competitors were frozen like the entire landscape had totally froze up uh because fear had gripped the

00:26:53.480 market and when there's uncertainty and fear people stopped moving and in our case you know

00:26:58.820 i wasn't trying to like create abundance i was just trying to get out of pain i was just like i was so

00:27:03.300 far into one i just want to get back to zero but i worked like crazy and in within a year we had

00:27:09.380 actually paid back the entire loan plus interest and we suddenly had the traction the business model

00:27:13.900 had worked and we had traction and i quite frankly don't know that that would have happened at any

00:27:19.840 other time except for in 2008 when all the competitive landscape that we were um working

00:27:25.580 in was frozen and i thought it was interesting that of the you know fortune 30 companies 16 of them

00:27:32.740 over half of them actually started during a recession of depression yes and i would yeah 100 yeah same

00:27:40.780 thing should be happening right now people that have been you know toying around in the business world

00:27:45.640 and creating their own uh business or solving a problem this is this is a great opportunity for

00:27:50.420 it most people are freaking out though like most people are just losing their minds hoping the

00:27:53.900 the government's going to bail them out or that check for a thousand dollars shows up so they can

00:27:57.820 pay their rent but you know chaos is where opportunity um is mostly born from you know it's that whole

00:28:04.420 fireweed thing right 100 yeah i mean we have this discussion all the time with my uh my co-founders

00:28:11.220 and i am so excited i mean it's tragic what's happening obviously covid virus is a terrible

00:28:17.880 calamity but this is the greatest time of opportunity since 2008 for entrepreneurs for

00:28:25.860 problem solvers for people to come out and do something because we're we're motivated by two

00:28:31.540 things only two things hope and fear and fear is the bigger motivator and fear freezes us right

00:28:37.080 and right now if you're tuning into the news which i don't if you tune in the news you will be gripped

00:28:41.920 and consumed by fear and you'll stop in your tracks hope is the thing that drives our moving forward

00:28:49.520 motion and um you know to the extent that you can feed that and continue to to build it you can at

00:28:57.960 least take steps even if they're the wrong steps at least you're moving and taking steps whereas

00:29:02.240 everybody else to your point is frozen they're not they're not doing anything right now this is the

00:29:06.220 greatest time to make meaningful moves in the marketplace right now yeah that's so true man

00:29:10.920 all right so that was like 2008 9 i think i met you around 2012 2013 and around then 2012 i think it was

00:29:18.000 or so a couple years later so so you're running the toy business for a couple years now um even a few

00:29:23.360 years into it when i met you in that forum you were still really um i'm gonna say like you're always

00:29:30.960 edgy very early on you're always super um you know concerned about walking on eggshells with um

00:29:39.540 you know like you're not a walking on eggshells kind of guy like you've got an opinion you've got

00:29:44.120 a backbone i mean you came from a chiropractic family right i mean you've got a backbone but

00:29:48.340 you always seemed a little bit edgy early on when i first met you and it wasn't until the years kind

00:29:53.340 of piled on you're you're putting out more products and you guys started to develop your own

00:29:56.980 products i remember this one product that you're super hyped about that unfortunately didn't really

00:30:00.840 take off the way that we had hoped it would it was that um was it the tech recon gun the one with the

00:30:04.920 rubber band that you put your cell phone on yeah exactly yes i mean like you started to develop your

00:30:09.340 own products um i think that you ended up being something like the number two or number three toy

00:30:14.280 company either in the world or in north america was it no uh in canada we were canada yeah we were

00:30:20.940 we we had um so there was a lot in that in terms of just you know the edginess um i mean honestly dude

00:30:30.060 i was uh in ptsd i mean i had come back from the war i had you know worked through two bankruptcies

00:30:36.100 and you know bootstrapping yet another company uh from a scarcity position where we were just trying

00:30:44.240 to get back to zero um trying to pay back uh investors trying to get to a place where i could be in a

00:30:49.880 position to uh cure up friends and family um it was just all too much like it just honestly was

00:30:57.480 was really as i reflect back on it now it was really emotionally challenging so when you say i was

00:31:04.460 like a bit skittish and maybe um hard yeah skittish is a good way to put it yeah that i uh i was i was

00:31:12.460 there i literally had shell shock and uh was trying to you know also self-worth i mean you know i had an

00:31:21.000 enormous amount of shame that was associated with what had happened like i was like hey i was i was

00:31:26.540 the whiz kid in my town i mean the local paper in alberta was writing stories about you know our

00:31:31.940 company and the things we were doing and you know we were bleeding edge and you know disruptors yada yada

00:31:37.540 all that stuff and and you start to wear that and then suddenly you go from you know fame to shame

00:31:43.620 and um it just was i i think every one of us uh wakes up every day and has a certain element of

00:31:52.940 imposter syndrome that we're never going to get over quite frankly we can only subdue it by just

00:31:58.680 taking actions right it's like what do you feed right what are you feeding in your personality and

00:32:03.160 in your character um and many of us put on bravado and and and you know try and show that we're

00:32:09.820 you know bigger than the problem but beneath all that we're actually you know there's a lot of a lot

00:32:15.400 of challenges and questions so um when you say when you say what you feed um there's a line that i've

00:32:23.460 seen used in movies before it's uh there's one along the lines of the wolf of uh light and the wolf

00:32:28.380 of darkness sort of thing and you know the question is well which one wins and the answer is well

00:32:32.460 it's whichever one you feed right yeah is that what you're referencing 100 there's a battle for

00:32:38.180 your emotions there's a battle for your mind and it's not like it happened once it happens every

00:32:42.500 single day every single day you're going through uh and even as i was listening to some of your

00:32:48.520 interviews with some of the various folks you've had in the on the channel i think was aubrey was it

00:32:52.900 um aubrey huff yeah he's a first bass player for san francisco well he was yeah and i just you

00:32:58.840 know i i so related to his story you know he he here's the guy who makes it to major leagues which

00:33:04.300 makes him a very rare error individual um wins world series uh you know goes from all these winning

00:33:11.740 moments to suddenly uh he's he's an outcast uh for whatever reasons that he he talks about but the

00:33:19.600 idea that suddenly you know if you're waking up in the morning and questioning whether you should be

00:33:23.520 alive that's a self-worth issue right i mean you're just you're you're dealing with demons which we all

00:33:29.600 have that basically are saying hey you're not good enough you're not big enough you're not confident

00:33:35.900 enough or maybe someone's going to figure out you really don't belong here right that you somehow

00:33:41.840 lucked out and that you didn't really um do what was necessary to get here um did you ever get to the

00:33:49.160 point where you were um you know like suicidal you were like this just ain't worth it this is not

00:33:54.700 going to work out like did you ever have those thoughts not really um i mean i i can't say the

00:34:01.180 thoughts never crossed my mind but never to the extent that like when he was telling his story and

00:34:05.400 actually having the same gun that his father uh was taken out with um in his hand i never got to

00:34:11.680 that point but certainly was there moments i thought hey i'd be worth more to my wife dead than i am

00:34:16.320 alive 100 you know and and uh that was definitely you know when you're going through the crucible of

00:34:23.200 the of the the difficulties of the time there was no doubt that that you really it it challenges who

00:34:29.700 you really are and the character um so um okay so we're so we're skittish we got uh tech recon big big

00:34:40.360 build-up to that didn't really take off there's a few other things that you guys put out that were

00:34:43.340 really cool i mean you had a you had an awesome office i remember the times that we had uh forum

00:34:48.100 meetings in your boardroom it was just like um to kind of frame it for you guys picture picture a

00:34:54.120 decent size room like a squash court size room with walls covered in all the toy products that you're

00:35:00.740 either making yourself or distributing or have the rights to distribute and it's like a it's like an

00:35:06.220 adult man's sort of playhouse sort of thing like like it was a it was a really interesting um business

00:35:12.780 that you had going on at the time and i mean talk about the exit and how you left that and where that

00:35:19.140 went sure so you talked about tech recon that was just one of many products so the toy business is um

00:35:25.980 is they actually say that the psychological profile of people who actually are in the toy business is not

00:35:31.580 that different from people who go to vegas and it's true because every year you're basically

00:35:37.160 reinventing your business kids are very fickle um they're um they're what they like and what

00:35:44.240 they're interested in changes quickly and so while you have a hit this year uh next year there's no

00:35:49.540 guarantee so you always are starting over with something new and fresh there's very few legacy brands

00:35:54.060 and toys there's of course the fisher prices the barbies the hot wheels but quite frankly outside of a

00:35:59.760 handful most things don't last that long they come and they go and as a result you see massive

00:36:04.720 elasticity you see companies like friends of mine had a company uh based in st louis uh that was doing

00:36:10.520 about 10 million dollars a year you know decent sized business but nothing too great and they came up

00:36:16.260 with a product called zuzu pets which if you remember those little hamsters that went around in the cages

00:36:19.820 so in one year they went from 10 million to 600 million and became one of the top toy companies in

00:36:24.920 north america and you know but this like the elasticity what grows up fast also goes down fast

00:36:31.140 literally a few years later they're back down to a small company again so um you know we the point of

00:36:37.640 this story is that you're constantly firing bullets you're constantly trying things and when you see

00:36:42.740 that it catches then you unleash the cannon so you know early days we we tacked on to a lot of third

00:36:47.940 party licenses meaning we were working with disney nickelodeon cartoon network a number of the key

00:36:52.960 um broadcasters and children entertainment brands we started developing toys and then categories and

00:36:58.880 niches around that and um our biggest breakout was a product line called mashems and fashions which

00:37:05.320 um if you go on youtube and actually type in mashems reviews last checked i think there was close to 500

00:37:11.980 billion views for um videos of kids opening i'm doing unboxing like on youtube if you don't know what's

00:37:19.540 happening there video game watching people watching other people play video games blows my mind but

00:37:24.380 that's the number one activity on youtube and number two is people watching other people unbox products

00:37:28.860 which primarily is toys and it's crazy but we were early adopters to that it drove our business like

00:37:35.120 crazy and then once we had that baseline success we started to branch out with these other things

00:37:39.800 which tech recon was one of them we had a number of other brands called 3d magic was like a mini 3d printer

00:37:45.160 um we had um uh i don't know long legacy of we did snow sleds i mean like you said there was a big

00:37:53.100 showroom full of stuff and and several we had uh several success stories but i would also say they're

00:37:58.440 usually the exception not the rule so if you're in baseball and you're batting 300 you're a great

00:38:03.940 batter that means you're striking out seven out of ten times well boy business is kind of similar like

00:38:08.480 out of the 10 product launches two to three are actually what's going to be meaningful uh to drive

00:38:13.580 your business forward and um what happened is that after we launched mashems and had success

00:38:19.480 and started to uh see momentum the people who had been along for the ride with me suddenly wanted to

00:38:25.860 see an exit i mean you know if you have outside investors well here's one thing i tell everybody

00:38:30.620 who's thinking about bringing in outside capital the day you decide to bring in outside capital you

00:38:35.100 agreed to sell your company because at some point those people are looking for an exit and um so we

00:38:41.140 started going through a process of trying to find partners to um potentially sell a company to

00:38:46.520 uh we actually went through three separate due diligence the longest being with a public company

00:38:51.420 from hong kong who took 11 months of due diligence and uh in the end we walked away from the deal

00:38:57.180 because i quite frankly was i made up my mind there was no freaking way i could work for these guys

00:39:01.660 um but we got to a place where suddenly you know it was clear that we weren't going to get a clean

00:39:07.860 exit in terms of people just coming and buying the company so i am i had started a conversation with

00:39:14.080 another toy company here in florida which is where i am right now and actually one of the blessings of

00:39:18.800 me actually having a place in florida is because of that whole opportunity but i'd start a conversation

00:39:22.660 with them and uh they were similar size and we you know the other founder was a cool guy he had built

00:39:30.040 a company called play along toys back in the early 2000 had a pretty significant exit over 100 million

00:39:34.960 and um and and he was saying hey there's a real opportunity to do a mergers and roll up uh play

00:39:41.860 in the space and why don't we merge our two companies together and then you know reduce our overheads in

00:39:48.120 terms that we can you know create more efficiency and then go and seek out other acquisitions and roll

00:39:52.400 it up and on paper it was awesome i mean it seemed like a great idea and uh and also through the process

00:39:59.020 uh we started courting private equity and uh institutions to help fund the growth model so

00:40:06.160 2017 we uh merged our company with this company and um you know i i've since come to learn there's no

00:40:15.220 such thing as a merger there's only acquisition because only one culture is going to prevail

00:40:19.580 and what i was choosing not to see uh through this transaction again because i was motivated primarily by

00:40:26.740 a financial outcome i was trying to get my uh partners made whole through the process as well as

00:40:32.980 an ability to finally get some liquidity after years and years of scarcity um i was just looking

00:40:38.240 past the fact that we were culturally completely misaligned and uh so we were something that you

00:40:44.100 vetted for before you guys even had the conversation about merging or was it not even consideration because

00:40:48.900 your partners wanted to get out of it you know honestly richard i was choosing just not to see it

00:40:55.180 like i really i knew that there was differences in the way that we were wired but ultimately i was

00:41:03.540 choosing that i was just going to not go down that path and um i just didn't i was in avoidance

00:41:10.180 of saying hey this is going to be uh a problem for the culture and um so i went from being a majority

00:41:16.920 shareholder in my company you know i'm just going to step out of my deck because it's it's back there's

00:41:22.260 vacuuming happening next door and i just feel like uh besides the view out here is better so you can

00:41:26.580 see there's give us a quick peek of the view there you're on the beach not bad right yeah social

00:41:31.740 distancing in in this part of the world doesn't suck for sure um so let me just sort of fast track

00:41:39.860 the story so i went from being a majority shareholder in my company to a minority in this new company

00:41:46.280 so from tech for kids to a new company called basic fund based here in florida uh we actually

00:41:52.600 in the process of actually we added complexity to this because we actually acquired a company along

00:41:56.520 the way a company from california called uncle milton uh if you remember the original ant farm and

00:42:02.320 um uh star wars science toys they were the makers of that and we also were in the process of doing

00:42:08.160 acquisitions in other places the whole roll-up m&a plan and uh but i found out that when you go from

00:42:14.360 a minority majority to a minority and you have a board of directors that uh you're accountable to

00:42:19.300 that uh if they see that you aren't playing nice with the other uh founders in the business that they

00:42:25.320 can vote you off the island and that's exactly what happened i remember going for coffee with um

00:42:30.760 our chairman on october 30th 2017 and i had an agenda of everything i wanted to cover which one of

00:42:36.240 the topics was hey me and um the co-leader uh from the other firm we're just we got we got to work

00:42:42.020 through some challenges and i said is there anything on your jenny he said yeah just one thing what's

00:42:46.180 that we're letting you go so you became the steve jobs of the company you founded they basically fired

00:42:53.980 you from your own business you know it was uh how did that feel yeah how did that feel was that like

00:43:01.080 heart drop sort of thing or yeah like using the word surreal isn't even described i just remember

00:43:09.880 being in shock yeah and i remember saying you can't do that and they said yeah yeah we can

00:43:16.320 i was like yeah they would have they would have had a few conversations with their legal team before

00:43:20.840 they had that drop on you yeah and it was it was ugly i mean you know they had locked me out of my

00:43:26.600 email they locked me you know the office i mean they didn't they didn't it wasn't even friendly

00:43:30.540 it was not friendly no it was it was exactly the way i never would have expected to have gone it was

00:43:37.100 yeah yeah so that was 2017 you got so you got forced out of your own business i guess they paid

00:43:44.000 you out whatever you were owed well that would so that's a story on itself too and there might be a

00:43:50.340 couple lessons uh because i don't even think i've shared this with you um so the answer is

00:43:55.380 you know there was some liquidity through the merger so from a financial perspective i was i was

00:44:00.800 fine i wasn't really worried about that um and then during that uh that breakfast meeting where i

00:44:07.280 was being fired i actually said to him so i guess you're going to be buying me out and he actually

00:44:11.600 said no no you can just kind of wait for the you know some kind of a liquidity event in the future

00:44:16.480 because the goal was you're going to do an m a roll up grow this thing to 500 million and then go

00:44:21.460 public by 2025 that was the overarching vision and um so i went away uh got treated like an outsider

00:44:30.160 fast forward um a few months i had some great mentors and advisor and the key here is make sure

00:44:38.280 you surround your people yourself with people smarter than you um you know your average of the

00:44:42.440 five people you spend most time with and you should try to constantly up your game there try and push

00:44:46.540 yourself and get around smarter people so some great mentors and advisors help coach me through

00:44:51.160 the process and um you know look through my shareholder agreement said hey you actually have

00:44:56.440 the option to sell your shares like you can sell your shares and there are private equity groups out

00:45:00.980 there who would buy a minority stake in a growing uh thriving entity so i decided to go to market and

00:45:07.680 sell my shares and when my other shareholders uh heard that they disliked the idea that i might

00:45:14.760 choose uh new business partners for them and it kind of forced them to the bargaining table and um

00:45:21.580 it was uh this must have been like 2017 18 or so because when i left the forum that i was in with you

00:45:28.240 that was i didn't even hear about that that that was just after i'd left then yeah so this is uh 2018

00:45:36.100 january 2018 i'm with my wife down in scottsdale um i've got the term sheet from my my business

00:45:45.200 partners to buy out my shares and i'm sitting there and i'm wrestling with it because remember i'm a

00:45:50.860 little bitter that i got treated by so poorly by my former partners yeah it's hard not to be

00:45:55.480 and i'm like i know i can you know this is a good offer but i know i can do better if i go to private

00:46:00.800 equity and i just remember again the um this is the benefit of having a life partner who can

00:46:07.520 give you some common sense i remember her just saying let it go brad they get the best of your

00:46:13.520 worst they get none of your future move on you spending time here is just going to continue to

00:46:18.520 put you in places of scarcity and anger and resentment just let it go and i just looked at her

00:46:27.200 said you're right and i signed the term sheet they had a 30-day window to back out of the deal

00:46:33.380 because of course i knew what they were doing is they were going to market so they could see if they

00:46:36.720 could sell my shares and make an arbitrage on it and of course they had to raise some money because

00:46:41.120 the number wasn't insignificant um and uh 30 days passed and we're like now they're locked and loaded

00:46:48.720 so that 30-day period was uh february 20th of 2018 two weeks later so remember i said there was two

00:46:57.660 weeks before the recession in 2008 well two weeks after that 30-day closet run out toys russ went

00:47:04.840 to liquidation and toys russ with 30 of the business so it was uh i am so grateful that i listened to

00:47:14.460 my wife so and he did that advice so there's a um story like did you go to the eo whistler

00:47:21.400 university that i went to with ron i don't think you were there on that one were you

00:47:25.320 no i didn't get to that one so that one had kevin o'leary as one of the speakers and one of the

00:47:30.500 takeaways from um that conversation was he said you always want a sober second thinker in your business

00:47:36.940 in your life and that conversation that you had with your wife was a sober second thought like i always

00:47:43.400 tell my friends whenever they ask me about my business um my brother's my second sober thinker

00:47:49.000 right like i've come up with ideas to do stuff in the business he's like uh this this is not this is

00:47:53.660 not a good one man you should not do this one sort of thing and i don't always listen to him in fact i

00:47:58.900 probably don't listen more often than not but the times that i have that sober second thought to the

00:48:04.100 craziness that i had going on in my head to try to execute on was certainly valuable so it's a good

00:48:09.840 lesson for you guys watching to always look for an opportunity to have somebody that's got a level

00:48:14.300 head on them has some skin in the game and can offer a sober second thought on important decisions in

00:48:20.860 your life 100 yeah um okay so you got your exit what are you up to these days yeah you know um

00:48:32.280 there's a there's a story of of uh fellow minimum john newton and i'm not sure a little bit of feedback

00:48:39.240 from your um mike i don't know if you can pull back into the corner a little bit or if there's a

00:48:43.360 yeah that that better yeah so do you know who john newton is no okay so quick story just it relates

00:48:51.380 to my story john newton um was a slave trader and uh he was off the coast of africa caught in a storm

00:48:57.180 storm and um during that storm he got down on his knees and prayed to god and said god if you save

00:49:02.180 me i will devote the rest of my life to actually helping abolish the slave trade and miraculously

00:49:07.600 he he lived and he followed through on his commitment he went back to um to england he teamed

00:49:13.840 up with william wilder force who's the founder of the salvation army and together they collectively

00:49:18.120 abolished the slave trade in the uh english empire and you know most people may not know

00:49:24.340 that story or know his name but you certainly will know his legacy piece which is he's also

00:49:28.760 the author of the hymn amazing grace so next time you listen to amazing grace and those words maybe

00:49:33.680 you can get a sense of where he was coming from in terms of you know who he was when he says a wretch

00:49:38.260 like me um and kind of his finding his new future through that disruption that was forced on him very

00:49:45.680 similar to like what's going now so i had a forced disruption and it was uh unplanned for i didn't foresee

00:49:52.460 it but as i've talked about it now it was such an inconvenient blessing it was inconvenient at the

00:49:58.480 moment i hated it i didn't love what happened the way it happened the people that did it to me

00:50:03.200 but man did it ever free up my ability to be a part of a new future and so i was always a little

00:50:09.620 conflicted about um what is it that you know we did in the toy business we put smiles on kids faces for

00:50:15.580 sure but the way that we did things the way that we manufactured um and i always had a very strong

00:50:22.560 environmental um position in fact i tried to launch a toy line back in there in the 2000s uh that used

00:50:29.620 um uh hydrogen cell uh engines uh to power toys and you know it was something that was just baked right

00:50:38.400 into kind of my my ethos of who i was so just so happened that um matt bertulli who is uh he's a lot

00:50:47.620 of people may know him because he's a savant when it comes to digital marketing he had a firm in

00:50:51.560 toronto called dmacc media uh he had a brand that he was invested into called pila and that's bob p-e-l-a

00:50:59.440 now that i'm a pilot richard i spell it papa echo lima alpha um

00:51:02.400 hey hey uh can i share the site on the screen with these guys watching yeah 100 yeah all right

00:51:09.360 so pila.earth or pila case.com and um really what it was is there was a founder out of saskatoon

00:51:16.860 saskatchewan who had uh um just through his own life journey decided there must be a better way to

00:51:23.020 use um waste products and to have things return responsibility to the planet and he uh came up

00:51:29.540 with a uh a

00:51:32.400 you know he decided to turn into a phone case and we'll call that just kind of dumb luck because

00:51:38.540 you know as it turns out the phone case industry is massive um most people don't realize that uh phone

00:51:44.520 cases are 20 billion dollars a year so it's like really uh you always need new ones every couple

00:51:50.720 years too and this is it right every couple years you're getting an upgrade and it's it's a it's a

00:51:56.880 perfect situation in light of the fact that you know the phone cases are um they're made out of

00:52:01.960 material that is not sustainable you know it's going to last hundreds if not thousands of years

00:52:05.760 um and um you know you're changing out every two years so anyways he had created the product but

00:52:12.620 didn't know how to tell the story matt is an expert at telling the story and matt and i were in a

00:52:17.320 forum together and we were sitting uh this was after my exit and everything else had happened we're

00:52:22.120 sitting around talking he's like man i got this project on the side it's my muse and it's taken

00:52:26.400 off and i don't know how to scale it i mean we're running out of we don't have uh an ability to make

00:52:31.560 a product where we don't have the right people and he was just going through all these problems and

00:52:35.400 challenges that he was going through and i was like well i can do that and i know how to do that

00:52:40.780 and manufacturing yeah pretty much got all that nailed down and uh the more we talked the more

00:52:45.900 realized that there was really an opportunity um but to the credit of how we started is that the

00:52:53.680 very first thing we did after just coming through a partnership that didn't work is we took the time

00:52:57.740 to invest into number one we got personality profiles just to see how we mesh together from

00:53:04.100 a disc perspective um and secondly we started with the the why and the how so it was like what is the

00:53:11.000 vision for this company you know what are what is our mission what are our values what do we believe

00:53:15.580 we're right to the core of that stuff and we came through that all feeling really comfortable that

00:53:21.100 we could um could work together and uh and so i'm one of the co-founders in that company my role there

00:53:28.340 is the chairman that's the ceo he's an incredibly gifted talented uh ceo and he's really really good

00:53:35.460 at driving the the company and he understands about matt the mountain biker that i met at jason's dinner

00:53:40.700 that's right master non-biker exactly exactly right in fact we both met him at the same event that

00:53:47.480 mastermind talks so here's the crazy thing that mastermind talks in napa valley where you and i were

00:53:52.640 at um i remember that yeah that was that was an interesting time for you privately too that was we

00:53:59.220 won't go there right that was an interesting time um and um also the uh jeremy who is the creator of the

00:54:10.180 actual uh case was also um at that event so the three of us uh collectively were introduced canadians

00:54:17.680 all met in napa valley and um it's crazy so and this is why guys i always tell you you need to put

00:54:25.100 yourself in better rooms if you're the smartest guy in the room you're in the wrong room you need to put

00:54:29.300 yourself in a room where you look around and go wow i feel dumb today that's where the growth happens

00:54:34.000 that's where you find the opportunity so so that's awesome i mean that's a great story so

00:54:38.240 that's that's the main um project right now you want anything else or that's it you know i um

00:54:45.280 i'm really enjoying the sort of you know when i came through this i'd spent almost 30 years of my

00:54:52.300 life uh working at redline and you know when you're running your your car redline it doesn't do well

00:54:57.980 um and my life was at redline and the three things i kind of landed on again having this disrupt got me

00:55:04.060 the ability to get perspective and i said you know there's sort of three principles that i'm going

00:55:07.960 to live by now number one life plan before business plan which i had never done and i to this day will

00:55:13.280 tell you i struggle with i i still tend to be uh i'm a struggling workaholic who gets sucked into the

00:55:19.500 vortex at times but i'm working at trying to find more balance um second is uh life is too short to

00:55:26.660 work with assholes only work with awesome people 100 yes energy vampires eliminate them from your life

00:55:35.300 and the third was impact i only wanted to work on things that truly made some kind of meaningful

00:55:41.840 impact um that's in the universe yeah i mean more money in my bank account honestly it's it it should

00:55:48.880 just be a representation of score but it's not changing my lifestyle i'm i'm living a life that i feel is

00:55:54.640 fully abundant and uh if more zeros end up at the bank account great but i would much rather start

00:56:00.660 working on the legacy piece of how can i be more responsible how can i ensure that we leave a legacy

00:56:05.680 you know to our kids and to our kids kids because we didn't you know inherit this planet from our

00:56:11.780 ancestors we're the stewards for our children and so to the extent that this company is fully aligned

00:56:16.700 with that and is baked right into the ethos what we do it's so congruent with who i am and what i want

00:56:22.140 to do do you feel like you're playing to win right now are you playing not to lose we are so playing

00:56:28.560 to win i uh i mean we just came through our our quarterly planning session with our leadership team

00:56:35.280 so just a little bit of context i mean pila is a direct consumer brand we have been breaking into

00:56:40.440 retail we've grown very quickly we raised some capital last year from a vc firm that was jay-z's

00:56:46.140 fund called marcy ventures and we did that because we wanted smart capital to table and people that

00:56:50.860 would allow us to access influencers um anyways i mean we've we've been aware of covid for some time

00:56:57.220 because our factories in asia have been under lockdown and shutdown and we've been actually

00:57:01.180 you know helping prepare and support them but point being as we just came through this leadership

00:57:06.200 meeting we had our like one word opener where everyone was at and everybody sitting across the

00:57:11.120 table who put their words in at the beginning of the meeting were words of abundance words of hope

00:57:15.600 words of opportunity and uh we see this um you know matt started dmacc media in 2008 i started tech

00:57:23.700 for kids in 2008 which was a time when as i said everyone else is frozen your competitors are stuck

00:57:28.320 no one knows what to do now is the time that you by taking steps can actually make meaningful uh

00:57:34.680 gains in the market so um i feel playing to win is exactly where we are i'm going to um i'm going to do

00:57:42.680 this because um i usually run this for 90 minutes you have another 30 minutes to go

00:57:46.460 i have about 10

00:57:49.120 yeah um you broke up for about five seconds there but i heard you say you got about another 10 more

00:58:00.780 minutes 10 more minutes okay let's let's do a couple questions here um this guy here in the chat i'm

00:58:09.240 going to post the join link so you guys have 10 minutes if you have a question you want to ask i'll

00:58:12.900 pull you in the stream you can ask it live so that's it there you've got 10 minutes to do it quickly

00:58:16.880 um how do you push through those overwhelming emotional moments in life any tips

00:58:21.460 man uh that's such a great question because you're overwhelmed um here's the thing that i've come to learn

00:58:31.400 is that gratitude and scarcity can't live in your mind at the same time whenever i'm feeling

00:58:37.360 overwhelmed i have to stop and remember what i'm grateful for um and it's it's easier said than

00:58:44.620 done i'm going to be the first say that you know stopping taking a moment taking a few breaths and

00:58:48.920 just thinking about we're grateful for but we always have something to be grateful for i mean i tell

00:58:53.680 people that if you were born in north america you won the lottery you are such rare air people um if

00:58:59.280 you had a meal today maybe two or three meals today you are super wealthy um the challenge we have

00:59:05.540 as a society and that's part of the reason why i opted out of being in social media is that we're

00:59:08.860 constantly comparing up you know we're constantly looking at what people above us don't have versus

00:59:13.120 you know the abundance that we have relative to everyone else in the world so my encouragement there

00:59:16.960 is just you know it's always gratitude where i go whenever i'm feeling um that i need to give

00:59:23.380 myself a check up from the neck up if you could um i mean you've got kids that are around the same age

00:59:29.460 as when you started this business so they're in their early 20s i mean what advice have you given to

00:59:33.000 them i mean i was going to say what advice would you give to yourself if you could go back in a

00:59:36.620 time machine but what advice have you given to them well here's the thing uh it's it's another

00:59:42.200 great question uh because i would say early on my mistake is that i was trying to be too prescriptive

00:59:47.820 with my kids and what i've come to learn is that we all have our own journey we all have our own

00:59:52.760 process to go through and um as much as i want to give my kids advice i know that when the student

00:59:59.980 is ready the teacher will appear so i've um you know if i could tell them something when they're

01:00:08.260 ready i would be saying be a lifelong learner be curious just never quit pushing the envelope of

01:00:14.660 learning that's a part of what will help you continue to be the best and brightest version of

01:00:18.780 you and be kind be honest do the right things live with virtue um you know you were speaking about

01:00:26.840 kevin leary and i heard him do an interview and you know the word success is such an ambiguous uh

01:00:33.220 you know thing because you know what is the definition of success and the best definition

01:00:39.120 i heard was from kevin leary he said it's freedom freedom to live life on your terms and i've thought

01:00:44.960 long and hard about that and thinking you're he's right but i would add to it two things number one

01:00:49.500 grounded in virtue because if somebody wins the lottery you know they're free but they could still be

01:00:55.000 an asshole and do all kinds of stupid things and you know money just amplifies who more of who you

01:00:59.140 really are so more money giving you freedom doesn't necessarily make you a good person you'll do dumb

01:01:03.060 things with it um so having virtue in terms of the way that you live your life and second is that you

01:01:09.500 are grounded in a way that gives you the ability to thrive in other words beyond money there has to be

01:01:15.040 spiritual emotional physical well-being you have to make sure that you're you are touching all those

01:01:20.860 buckets with it so freedom grounded in those two things that's awesome um i'm gonna let you go

01:01:26.480 because i know you got to get ready for your next call um dude thanks so much for hopping on and

01:01:30.940 sharing that experience that was a awesome one uh if you guys are watching this is the first video

01:01:35.720 there's a bunch more on the playlist um similar kinds of stories everybody's kind of sharing their

01:01:40.080 own experiences when they've played to win in life um and a lot of the obstacles that they come up

01:01:44.860 against uh actually before you go i got one more question um a lot of guys uh love to embrace a

01:01:52.100 a bit of a victim mindset these days is what i've noticed i mean i i pick up on it more from my

01:01:58.340 perspective because you know i put out a video and there's comments and you know people are feeding back

01:02:03.280 right so i'm paying attention what they're feeding back on there's a lot of guys out there that are that

01:02:06.900 are practically hopeless and where they're at they don't feel like they have any opportunity there's

01:02:12.960 always something crushing them where they're at um i mean you kind of touched on a little bit

01:02:17.880 um a few moments ago but what advice would you give somebody that's that's like just literally

01:02:22.900 saying themselves i'm just gonna quit i'm just gonna check out effort it's not worth my effort

01:02:27.880 time or anything like that what advice would you give to a guy like that a young man like that because

01:02:31.920 there's because there's a good chunk of men out there that i've seen these days that are just

01:02:34.640 throwing in the towel like they they don't want to deal with chasing excellence they don't want to deal

01:02:38.400 with women they don't want to deal with anything look the greatest uh the greatest failure is

01:02:45.880 someone who checks out the person who doesn't continue forward that doesn't mean you keep doing

01:02:50.580 the same thing and making the same mistakes that just means that when you are finding adversity and

01:02:55.220 finding challenges that you pause maybe the best thing for you to just take a break just take a breath

01:02:59.780 sit back look at it from 30 000 feet reanalyze it and maybe try a different angle um but i you know

01:03:07.240 there's a difference people have to understand there's a difference between failing and being a

01:03:10.980 failure you know failing is getting knocked down and we all get knocked down and we bounce back from

01:03:16.620 it that's just part of the life journey um being a failure is when you get knocked down and stay

01:03:21.320 down you don't get up and then you know there's a great book out there called resilience by eric

01:03:26.060 gretens and he has a a quote in there that i love because he talks about you know to be truly

01:03:30.640 human there's a few things that you need to survive you need food you need oxygen you need

01:03:36.000 companionship you need water you need shelter but i'd add to it struggle because without struggle

01:03:43.060 we can never truly evolve to become the the best and brightest versions that god intended us to be

01:03:49.340 and that only comes through going through this crucible of refinement and as much as we hate it

01:03:55.200 all of my best gifts as as in terms of who i am and the opportunities i've been able to become

01:04:01.780 i've been only because i've been willing to go through the challenges go through the fire get

01:04:06.980 knocked down get up again get knocked down get up again and just getting back after it so love it

01:04:13.120 all right man uh i'll let you go hopefully this uh covet thing blows over real quick so i can catch

01:04:17.960 up with you soon and hop on a flight and hang out but uh yeah get back to your gig uh say hi to the

01:04:23.720 missus and uh appreciate you man you too cheers thanks brother see ya all right uh before i wrap

01:04:30.240 up guys real quick just going to uh shout out to channel sponsor uh grondike soap tactical soap so

01:04:36.440 if you've enjoyed this uh broadcast it really helps me continue to you know put out this sort of content

01:04:40.760 uh i'll put it in the link below after i get off the broadcast or you can just go to cooper soap.com

01:04:46.880 uh you can check out the coupon code cooper get 10 off pheromone infused handmade soap and beard oil

01:04:52.060 uh check that out also quick announcement uh rule zero is the saturday on my channel we're gonna kind

01:04:57.220 of dive a little bit more into um one itis and the stuff that ties into that and i'm doing another

01:05:01.900 playing to win tomorrow since we're all in lockdown and there's no opportunities really to go out and do

01:05:06.620 a whole bunch right now uh doing a plane to win tomorrow with andrew tate uh so the 27th tomorrow

01:05:12.280 i think we're gonna kick off around noon so i'll create that event after i've done this show and

01:05:17.400 promote it on social media so you guys have it there make sure you hit subscribe the notification

01:05:21.380 bell all that good stuff see you guys in the next video

Playing to Win - March 02, 2022

012 - Brad Pedersen

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