August 25, 2024 • 36 mins
In this episode, we dive deep into the multifaceted life of Ken Morrow, an entrepreneur who has constantly reinvented himself over the years. From the highs and lows of running startups to the challenges of local politics, Ken shares his insights and lessons learned along the way.
Join us as Ken discusses his early career in IT and construction, the importance of charging what you're worth, and the mental shift required to move from self-employment to a salaried position. We also explore his brief foray into the world of insurance and his current role in sales, all while balancing the complexities of family life and financial stability.
Ken's story is a testament to resilience and adaptability, offering valuable advice for anyone navigating the unpredictable world of entrepreneurship. Tune in for a candid conversation about the true meaning of success, the pitfalls of underfunded ventures, and the ever-evolving landscape of small business in America.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So reaching consensus in government is harder, and with everybody having a different
point of view, that's harder than business.
Charge more. At every step of every job, of everything that I ever did,
I should have charged more.
I had coaching telling me to charge more.
Oh, wait, you're behind on this one. Your problem. Where I came ahead, I win.
(00:24):
Where you came behind, you lose. I don't feel like a successful entrepreneur
because I never got big. That was my experience.
I did not turn into a millionaire. I didn't go to my high school reunion in
a jet and a limo. That was what I thought would happen.
But isn't it ironic that you and I are having that kind of conversation?
(00:46):
We're in this constant pace of you grow or you die.
There is no, it's okay to have a small shop and run three or four generations
through it, there is no honor in that.
If I could stay home and have more money in my pocket by not working than working
(01:07):
hard for a month or two and ending up with less money, that's a bad deal. We'll be right back.
Music.
Today we have Ken Morrow here. Ken, thank you so much for joining us.
Ken, when do you actually remember meeting me? Okay, I remember meeting you
(01:31):
outside of the museum in Gonzales and you were flying a drone looking around,
and I think I struck up a conversation interested in who you were and what you
were doing. That's when I remember connecting.
See if I can refresh your memory. Sure. Probably to 2002.
You were going to Memorial Heights Baptist Church. You and I were in choir together
(01:53):
at Memorial Heights under Steve Scott. Right. That's how far back.
Yeah, you've got a great memory. I was thinking about politics that might come
out in this podcast of how I even got into that.
And it was actually at Memorial Heights. And they were telling us to greet the people around us.
(02:14):
And this dynamic woman that was well-dressed and looked like she was probably
wearing red, white, and blue was behind me, and I introduced myself,
and her name was Myrna McElroy, and she was the Republican Party chair,
and that's how I ended up in that office and involved trying to run for county
commissioner soon after.
No, I remember her as a political force to be reckoned with.
(02:35):
She was the gatekeeper to South Texas. If you were running for some sort of
elected office on the Republican ticket, you were going to make a visit through there.
Ron Paul had been through her office and she knew him.
Of course, Rick Green was somebody that she helped recruit and get into the Texas House.
But everybody knew her, especially at the state level in the Republican Party.
(02:57):
She was a character and a force to be reckoned with. That I remember.
Part of the reason I wanted to have you on this podcast is I
was thinking back through all the different iterations operations
that your life has kind of
taken from it startups to insurance
to your properties running from
(03:18):
public office you like i feel like over your
life you've in the truest sense of the word to have somehow become a renaissance
man like every few years you've been somehow successful at reinventing yourself
so i think what has spurred you to move from one profession,
(03:40):
one career?
Some people would be like, this is my career for the rest of my life. I guess it's curiosity.
My first job was at County Line Barbecue, where I worked for five years through
being a waiter and a busboy and all of that and having fun while I was in college.
And I probably thought that was a good backup career.
And then the IT job that I got lasted three or four years with a startup that
(04:05):
was just out of working in a garage that grew to $22 million in a short couple of years.
And then I thought I wanted to be an IT guy, and I was all into that.
Somewhere along the way, I had a little bit of an interest in construction and home building.
All of it has been kind of startup entrepreneurial stuff. If you give me an
idea and no money, I like to go charging after that.
(04:28):
And that's what gets me into trouble. level
i i feel honestly my greatest skill set
is to be the
lead sled dog to start with nothing to say hey go figure this out and to try
to figure out a system for doing whatever that is and then but then growing
it much beyond a startup has not been a very good skill of mine to a mature
(04:50):
business is not a good skill with all of the processes and procedures and accounting,
I'm much better operating within a structure with a, with a broad leash.
Right. So it's just more icebreaker, less cruise liner. Yeah.
That, I think that's the best for me. So for the brief career that I had in
(05:13):
insurance, they had all of these scripts that you were supposed to memorize
and meet somebody at their front door and say this, and then say that and say that.
And I mean, I threw all of that out immediately and
just started talking to people and it was much more
successful for me right but you had to have a process and a procedure to train
(05:34):
people and that gave a lot of people a lot of comfort they wanted to memorize
every single comma and inflection point in a script and whereas i just threw
it out i think there's a lot of self-awareness there that a lot of people lack,
I have always enjoyed trying to fire myself, right? I would be better at starting
(05:54):
things than maturing them.
Do you ever find it frustrating that when you have that ability to start things, to lead things,
that so many people assume that you are also good at the later stages of doing
that and people try to hand you more of those things?
(06:15):
I haven't felt that at all. pretty clear
that when you interview me for being a salesperson that
i'm a salesperson and that i'll have a
scope that i can operate within that realm if
i find something that's useful i'm quick to share it
and i want to help develop it that's a skill but the idea of running things
(06:37):
and controlling things is is probably not a skill of mine i'd love other people
to run them of course I ran my own business for 20 years and tried to fire myself
repeatedly. Just nobody would hire me.
Right now, you're not working for yourself full time.
You have a job with a salary, commission structure, expense account, whole nine yards.
(07:01):
Walk me through the mental process.
Basically going from self-employed entrepreneurial like businessmen for all
these years to working for someone again. I mean, where did you start?
And I imagine that's a fairly big shift.
(07:25):
I feel like I had been trying to fire myself for years from my company that was home building.
About eight years ago, some people came to town, maybe 10, and they were doing
a new subdivision. And I met them immediately.
I liked the developer. I liked the home builder.
And they decided to hire me to be the home builder here locally.
(07:47):
My intent was to work with them and join their company and build houses for
them in multiple areas here and in Floresville and get get started.
I think I had been chasing money to make payroll every Friday for so long at
that point that I was ready to work for somebody that was small and scrappy,
(08:11):
that was more established than I was in business, learn from them.
And, and, but in that case, I ended up,
still with my own company, just doing my own thing a couple of years later.
And the headaches of always making payroll when I haven't been paid,
maybe, or constantly billing people, trying to make sure that somebody helped me make payroll.
(08:33):
It was, I ran a startup for 20 years. It wasn't a real company that functioned properly.
I shouldn't be collecting on Friday day at 4.45 to make payroll at five.
And that was a common, common thing. And so it was exhausting.
I think being an entrepreneur and being self-employed the way I did it was incredibly
(08:56):
difficult and exhausting.
And I got to restart a few times. I got to sell my house, downsize,
move to Gonzales, then build a nice, really nice house that was like,
you know, 3,800 square feet out by the lake and then have financial problems,
sell it, downsize, start again, live in a nice house.
Oh, wait, more financial problems, sell it, pay off debt, live in a rental.
(09:21):
So now we're living in a house again that we're paying for, that we've remodeled,
that we absolutely love.
And the journey has been, it has been, it's been tiring.
It's been tiring. Now, my kids didn't suffer that much. They always had food.
My girls were all cheerleaders.
My son had go-karts and a boat to go fishing on.
(09:42):
So, I feel like the life that our kids had was great.
So, that was the blessing of being a broke, struggling entrepreneur.
It was actually good for the family. And it may sound cliche,
but what would you say is the biggest lesson that you actually learned through
that process? Charge more.
At every step of every job of everything that I ever did, I should have charged more.
(10:08):
I had coaching telling me to charge more.
I would try to add a little bit of fluff into my bids so that when things went
wrong, I wasn't in trouble at the end.
I tried to implement those strategies, and it was never enough the way I did it.
One thing that got me jobs was that I would detail the cost of a house on a
(10:29):
spreadsheet that was about two pages long.
And it would say, you know, plumbing fixture budget, this budget,
that budget, and everything was very lined item now.
Lumber budget, labor budget for framing and roofing and materials.
Materials and it gave the clients way too
much information so let's just
say that the their fixtures budget for their microwave and the oven and the
(10:53):
stovetop and all that stuff was like usually forty five hundred dollars sometimes
people told me i know i want nice stuff okay sixty five hundred dollars i had
a flat fee as a contractor and i didn't ever make any more,
if it was nice or anything like that which most builders would have figured out a way to make more.
So there were several things that I should have had like a package.
(11:17):
We're building this 3,000 square foot house it's going to have sheetrock and
white paint on the walls and it's going to have these basic,
features, and your price is $350,000 with a good concrete slab that meets specs.
By giving all of the detail when things went wrong is like, oh,
look, we came ahead on this one.
(11:38):
Oh, wait, you're behind on this one. Your problem.
Where I came ahead, I win. Where you came behind, you lose.
So I would have to change my bid formats. And also, I never built,
other than some townhomes that I built, which I still manage,
and I really am proud of those, I never built the same thing twice.
So there wasn't any economies of scale or learning or repetition other than in the town homes,
(12:02):
which is the first thing I would build again if I were building something again
tomorrow is I'd build townhomes again because all the subs know how to do it. I know how to do it.
And they've been profitable for the investors and profitable for me as the property manager.
But single family homes that are custom, I would try to avoid again.
(12:24):
It's just hard as a small guy. Maybe when you get big and get to scale, it's a different story.
But it's just that ability just
to repeat, rinse, repeat. You know exactly what's happening every time.
You're not trying to do something. You already know how to do this.
Understanding and doing perfection versus starting something and then learning as you go.
(12:48):
So what was the initial decision? decision, like, nope, we've done this for 20 years.
Now it's time. It felt like it had been time several times because as I met
people through different things, I was looking for opportunities to work with
somebody else or to mentor me to grow the business to the next level.
(13:09):
And none of them worked out.
Some of the businesses that I even interviewed with ended up going out of business.
And then there was still me just running around with my pickup truck and a couple
of guys that had worked with me for a number of years doing remodeling and building.
I guess the final straw was after the freeze, not getting paid on a couple of jobs.
(13:30):
And I just decided I don't want to do that anymore.
If I could stay home and have more money in my pocket by not working,
then working hard for a month or two and ending up with less money,
that's a bad deal. So that was the impetus.
There's got to be something else to do a better way.
So then I tried insurance for a year. I actually enjoyed that because I was
(13:53):
running around all over Central Texas selling insurance to small businesses.
And then I got this opportunity where I'm selling plumbing supplies all over
Central Texas to wholesalers, which I just love.
And when I interviewed for that job, the person, my boss, said that he had a
guy that had been working with him 20 plus years.
(14:14):
And the guy was in his 70s. And I said, you're kidding.
He said, no, he's really good. he's been at this since he
was a kid and i said you mean there's a job i can be
really good at into my 70s and relevant you're going
to hire me now at age 52 i can't wait you know where do i sign on the dotted
line so i'm i'm thrilled to have a regular job i'm sure that all of that 20
(14:38):
years had a purpose but it felt like a long it was a long hard battle that was my experience,
i did not turn into a millionaire i didn't go to my high school reunion in a
jet and a limo That was what I thought would happen.
I think that there's a phenomenal amount of people that are trying in the entrepreneurial space.
(14:59):
They're underfunded. They don't know what they're doing.
They're faking it till they make it. And some of them are very successful at
doing that. Most of them are not.
Why do you think it is so hard to move on? To the next thing after something fails?
I don't know. I was talking to somebody. I have a space for lease down on the
(15:21):
square in Gonzales right now. And somebody called me wanting to lease it yesterday.
And I talked with him and I said, so what do you want to do?
And he says, I want to sell like cards and these other action figures.
And I want to sell antiques in there and some other stuff. And I said, okay. Okay.
I don't know that there's going to be any traffic that's good for those things.
(15:42):
And I've had four failed antique shops.
I would rather you not lose money at this, you know, with the rent and everything and the bills.
Are you prepared to sign a six-month lease? And are you willing to lose $5,000 or $6,000?
He said, yes, absolutely. I want to try.
I need to try. I'm willing to lose that. I have that much money to lose.
(16:03):
I said, okay. okay, but I had people that were always trying to start a restaurant
in a different space that had the grills and the kitchen and all of the stuff that they needed.
And I watched people fail multiple times.
And my pitch for that one was, do you have $10,000 that you're willing to lose
to chase your dream, to pay rent and it doesn't work out?
(16:27):
And I had somebody open a restaurant that closed in three weeks.
They didn't factor in the fact that 100 people might not knock down their door
the first day and buy all of their food.
And then, you know, you're just like, that could have taken a little bit better
planning. That's probably where I refined my pitch.
Do you have $10,000 to lose before we even...
(16:49):
Sign the six-month lease in the space that already has all the equipment.
So I think that I actually really care about entrepreneurs. And through my own
trials, I try to be a helpful guide.
You ran for office. I don't think you actually made office, if I read it right.
Yeah, I ran for office. So talk to me, tell us that story.
(17:10):
So that's when I was at church. And honestly, being a Christian,
I just have always had an interest in politics. I was one of two kids in my
high school that we watched Reagan's speeches.
And the teacher would ask anybody to watch Reagan's State of the Union speech,
and we were like, two of us.
And so there was some core of me that was always interested in some amount of
(17:33):
politics and government.
And then when I at church turned around and met Myrna McElroy,
when we had just gotten to Gonzales,
then she had a space in her building that I subleased from her for $100 or $200
a month just for a desk and started doing that IT consulting business again,
which had failed, which was the reason I had moved to Gonzales in the first place.
(17:55):
And while I'm sharing that office with Marner, she said, hey,
you ought to run for political office.
And so I said, OK, sounded like a good idea.
It was a job that had some amount of base pay, and I enjoyed campaigning.
I didn't really realize what campaigning was, but I went door to door and asked
(18:16):
for as many votes as I could get.
And on that time in 2004, the Republican ticket was not what you did to win
elections in Gonzales County.
Republicans gained favor over years, but it was a traditionally Democrat leading county.
Yeah, I remember that. Except for maybe president.
They might have made an exception there. So when I was new into town,
(18:39):
I had only been here two years, and I knocked on a bunch of doors and I got
46% of the vote. everybody said, that was a really, really, really good showing.
You should be proud of yourself.
You had only been here two years and you weren't even on the.
Right side of the ticket to get favorable turnout. So I enjoyed running for office then.
(19:00):
And then that opportunity came up a couple of years ago with a phone call again
from my pastor that said, hey, there's this terrible person. It's no good.
And they're all bad. And they're unopposed.
Do you know anybody that would run for State Board of Education?
I said, I'll do it. And so I got the phone call on a Friday.
And then I filed to run on a Monday, beating the deadline by a couple of hours.
(19:24):
And that led up to a theme yeah like
you know payroll yeah yeah just in
time just in time campaigning over
16 counties is a whole lot different than knocking on doors of your neighbors
in your small town again in that case my the results were actually very good
in all of the small communities that were right-leaning but bear county was
(19:49):
very left-leaning it only voted 41
% for Governor Abbott, and I needed to run on Abbott's coattails.
Nobody knew who Ken Morrow was.
So 41% of Bexar County, I got the same amount that Abbott did,
was enough to sink the whole campaign where I had done much better in the rural
areas that didn't have the population.
How has being a part of governance of a town or a county, how did it change
(20:17):
your perspective on how business works?
Business is easier than everything on a county or a board or a city.
Getting consensus with a bunch of different people with different points of
view is a whole lot harder. If you're running a business, you have a decision.
(20:38):
The reason I like those townhomes so much is that the decisions were always
based on a business thing.
If I put crown molding in this townhome and it cost me $2,000 to do it in all
four units, am I going to get any additional rent for that? Probably not.
One person said, well, yeah, I like crown molding. And to me,
(21:02):
it makes it worth it. It's a feature that makes it nice.
Maybe people won't realize why they like it and why it's nice,
but I like it. It's worth it to me.
The next investor said, it's not worth it to me.
I don't know that I'll get a dollar more for crown molding, so I don't want to do it.
But it's still an intelligent conversation, right?
I'm not going to rent this place for more if I I have a $200 toilet versus a
(21:26):
$100 toilet. The rent's going to be the same.
So trying to draw an analogy between being a builder and the rational decisions
that you make for finances.
But when you're on a board, right now we have a giant flag that flies on the square that's lit up.
It's a great feature. It cost $50,000. The flag or per year to take care of it?
(21:51):
The flag, the pull, the lighting, the install, and the purchase of the original flags.
And there were multiple sets of Texas flags, come and take it flags, and U.S. flags.
Several years ago, I was on EDC and, you know, to buy new flags is like $20,000. dollars.
But somebody was resourceful, Andy Rodriguez, and found out that we could get
(22:14):
our flags repaired, all of them in like tip top shape for four thousand dollars.
So he was a businessman. He was a smart guy. He found a different way in the
original proposal to do that big flag. That's a hallmark of our downtown.
That was a ton of money to spend on something that you couldn't prove would have any result.
(22:36):
And that's very hard to convince a city council.
And it was also hard to convince the board that was making that decision that
this is the right thing they should be doing with their money.
Maybe they should be fixing the sidewalks or maybe they should be doing something else.
So reaching consensus in government is harder.
And with everybody having a different point of view between aesthetics or cost,
(22:59):
in tourism was easy for a long time.
Every question was answered by, if we spend this money, does this put heads in beds?
We're funded from hotel motel tax.
So everything that we spend should put heads in beds.
Okay. So the convention center that we helped fund, the expo center,
(23:20):
that was a good use of fund because when people come to the expo center, they stay in hotels.
That puts heads in beds.
Some of the stuff that we did that promoted the Alamo tied with Gonzales where
people went to the Alamo and we helped sponsor and pay for something of their cost.
It's hard to prove that that put heads in beds. It was a good thing to tie ourselves to the Alamo.
(23:43):
I stood in front of city council and said, if we could get 1% of the Alamo traffic,
our town would forever be changed. That's harder than business.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of business owners that aren't entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs that some of the guys that I worked with, all guys that were all
kind of my size, that had a couple of employees, four, no more than six or eight,
(24:07):
that had a couple of trucks with their name on the side.
And they were making payroll for themselves and for their employees,
but they weren't building a business.
They weren't trying to scale it. They weren't trying to grow beyond this town.
So they're not really entrepreneurs. They're just self-employed.
I don't feel like a successful entrepreneur because I never got big.
(24:30):
But then again, I made it 20 years without completely failing and going bankrupt.
And I didn't quit. So there's some level of success in that.
But it didn't, you know, it didn't survive me. I didn't create a business that outlasted myself.
It's really hard. You know, there's, there's a guy by the name of Jeff Ducharme
who like first kind of challenged me to the concept of like,
(24:53):
are you like, do you actually have a business worth selling?
A lot of the guys want to just pass down their business to their family members.
So you have multiple generations of plumbers or electricians or HVAC guys,
and it's very hard to get those businesses to scale up.
And they may not even want to, or they may not have the skills to have more than two or three vans.
(25:17):
And that's fine if you make a living at it, but it's different than being an
entrepreneur that thinks about how do I make this business.
But isn't it ironic that you and I are having that kind of conversation and
we're like, is that really success?
I think that's one of the things that I've noticed in between.
(25:41):
How I've seen small businesses operate in, let's say Europe,
and how they operate here.
We're in this constant pace of you grow or you die.
There is no, it's okay to have a small shop and run three or four generations through it.
There is no honor in that here.
(26:05):
I think you're right. I think you're onto something. We have a different mentality here in America.
America if you don't blow it up to a billion dollars
or tens of millions or whatever and you're not on a yacht or an airplane you
know you just haven't made it that I think that's the perception where it's
like how do we change our culture in a way that honors those small.
(26:33):
Businesses that that says that that because we we like to say the small businesses
are the the backbone of America, right?
That's the cliche talk. Absolutely. Right.
But small businesses aren't the backbone of America anymore.
And let's just say that you're so clever that you created Instagram.
(26:54):
And I just heard somebody say that Instagram was well over 24 people when it
got bought, you know, for hundreds of millions of dollars and then incorporated
into a larger your business.
Those are so infrequent that it's, it's, it's hard to contemplate them,
(27:14):
but I bet you there's a hundred people, a hundred companies trying some different
version of Instagram right now.
And there's only one. Oh, you think only a hundred?
Oh yeah. I could be wrong. I could be shooting a little low, but,
but we don't hear about, we don't hear about the 100 that didn't make it it's
such a catch-22 because without people taking chances without the entrepreneurial
(27:37):
kind of mindset it's it's it's hard to to move into the the innovation,
because that's normally what it takes it takes people like you or me who are
like all right you know no money have a have a chance i see something i like
and we just go for it do you think the
(27:58):
entrepreneurial culture that we have currently is dangerous.
I want to almost give you a smart ass remark to this. I wanted to be too big to fail.
I want to be so big that even if I'm incompetent, I'm too big to fail.
And then the government's going to bail me out because that's what we did, right?
With all the banks and the financial savings and loans and all of that stuff.
(28:22):
And they were making bad decisions at a very, very high level and getting a lot of money for it. And.
That, I think, is one of the more dangerous cultures that the government is
stepping in and saving things like the SNLs or the stuff in Silicon Valley last year.
They step in and save it because it'll lead to a catastrophic crash.
(28:43):
And now everything is just just keeps the bubble just keeps getting bigger and
the bigger just keep getting bigger.
They just swallow up other companies. That's their innovation is to swallow
up a smaller company, get bigger, get more proprietary and put nice little moats
around their business to protect themselves.
(29:03):
So how do you compete with that as an entrepreneur? You either get bought when
you're on your way up or you're going to get crushed by one of those guys.
I think it's kind of interesting because the system that you're talking about
is basically the big businesses get to play the socialistic game.
The rest of us have to play the capitalist game right there were when i was
(29:25):
a home builder in the small town one of the lumberyard guys said you know it's
only you and another guy left.
All of the other guys but there used to be two dozen guys here that you could
call that could that were capable of building a house two dozen guys in this
small town of 10 000 people that were capable of building a house and now there's
you know just a couple of guys with a crew that can do it anymore.
(29:49):
And then, so you've got competition from somebody I respect,
Tilson Homes, that does really well all over Texas.
They're still sort of a small business and they've got, but they're using crews
that, you know, will travel from Houston to Dallas to do electrical or plumbing
or whatever because they have a commitment to Tilson.
And there's no disrespect there, but it's really hard to beat that scale at a local level.
(30:12):
They're going to get better deals on their purchases of materials than a little guy.
And so it's hard to beat that economies of scale once you get there.
But getting there is a tough road.
So how do you see technology changing the scope of business in a small town? Yeah.
(30:32):
When you and I talked just a few weeks ago socially and we were talking about
AI and I didn't want anything to do with it because I didn't want to power up
the Terminator and have my computer be one of the millions that were linked
together that created a bad result that we didn't see.
And you showed me how useful AI could be in marketing and created a very good
(30:56):
card that with a minor tweak,
I would mail out or email and you did it in 60 seconds to a minute.
That could have taken a really, really talented graphic artist all day long
on a good day to create what you did using AI in 60 seconds.
I've been listening to podcasts for weeks now since I saw what you were able to do.
(31:19):
I really think that the competitive advantage in AI is going to be building
proprietary systems for the back end of your operations that are proprietary to you,
that help your business be more efficient and help you with your customers and
make their business easier.
(31:39):
That's what I'm trying to do right now. Now, just as a salesperson,
I'm asking my customer what I can do to be easier to work with.
Can I make an automated system so that you order from me because I'm so easy to order from?
Everyone seems to think that they want equality in business.
And people talk about AI being the big equalizer.
(32:03):
But with what you just talked about was trying to get a competitive advantage using AI. eye.
Do you think that equality is really what people want inside of business, truly?
No, everybody wants to win. Nobody wants equality. Everybody wants a competitive advantage to win.
(32:26):
That's the good thing about business. Government's the one that's trying to
create equality of outcome,
regardless the fact that you've been here doing this podcast in your studio
with all All of these cameras and all of this technology and all of the extra
effort that you're making.
What if there's a guy next door with one camera and one microphone doing a podcast
(32:48):
and not working as hard and hasn't been in this business for a dozen years with experience?
We don't want equality of outcome. We don't want that guy next door with one
camera and mic to do as well as you with a dozen years of experience.
Experience, but if he does do well, we're going to celebrate him because he
happened to find a content that we knew nothing about, and he found an audience that was amazing.
(33:15):
I'm going to make up Pokemon cards, something I know nothing about,
but that kid next door does.
He's going to get the outcome potentially that he deserves, but it's still going
to be hard for him to get the eyeballs on his podcast, as opposed to being in
a professional studio with a professional that knows what they're doing.
We can't guarantee your outcome, but then you're also competing with somebody
(33:38):
that has a hundred people competing with you in a studio.
So you get to be nimbler, you get to be cleverer, more clever.
You get to think of things that they aren't going to think of and they've got
a hundred people to make a decision.
So that's the entrepreneurial part is the fun part is if you figure out on what
is going to be successful, then you're, you know, you can, you can do well.
(34:04):
I'll let you know when I figure it out.
All right. So what is one question that you will leave to the next person?
Beyond this podcast, you get to ask one question, not even knowing who they
are. What is one question that you would ask?
Do you have enough money to be doing what you're doing or what you're planning on doing?
(34:26):
That's the question I wish I had asked myself all the way along.
Do you really have enough money to be doing what you're doing?
And of course, all of the entrepreneurs, the Mark Cubans out there,
they all started with nothing.
He sold trash bags door to door.
That's a funny story, but he learned how to sell, I think as a teenager.
(34:48):
So it's a bit of a contradiction because the other good thing is if you have
no money, you're forced to do things, to make money, and that's where the innovation comes from.
But more money in my pocket sure would have made it easier along the way.
All right, well, thank you for coming in and.
Music.
So reaching consensus in government is harder, and with everybody having a different
point of view, that's harder than business.
Charge more. At every step of every job, of everything that I ever did,
I should have charged more.
I had coaching telling me to charge more.
Oh, wait, you're behind on this one. Your problem. Where I came ahead, I win.
(00:24):
Where you came behind, you lose. I don't feel like a successful entrepreneur
because I never got big. That was my experience.
I did not turn into a millionaire. I didn't go to my high school reunion in
a jet and a limo. That was what I thought would happen.
But isn't it ironic that you and I are having that kind of conversation?
(00:46):
We're in this constant pace of you grow or you die.
There is no, it's okay to have a small shop and run three or four generations
through it, there is no honor in that.
If I could stay home and have more money in my pocket by not working than working
(01:07):
hard for a month or two and ending up with less money, that's a bad deal. We'll be right back.
Music.
Today we have Ken Morrow here. Ken, thank you so much for joining us.
Ken, when do you actually remember meeting me? Okay, I remember meeting you
(01:31):
outside of the museum in Gonzales and you were flying a drone looking around,
and I think I struck up a conversation interested in who you were and what you
were doing. That's when I remember connecting.
See if I can refresh your memory. Sure. Probably to 2002.
You were going to Memorial Heights Baptist Church. You and I were in choir together
(01:53):
at Memorial Heights under Steve Scott. Right. That's how far back.
Yeah, you've got a great memory. I was thinking about politics that might come
out in this podcast of how I even got into that.
And it was actually at Memorial Heights. And they were telling us to greet the people around us.
(02:14):
And this dynamic woman that was well-dressed and looked like she was probably
wearing red, white, and blue was behind me, and I introduced myself,
and her name was Myrna McElroy, and she was the Republican Party chair,
and that's how I ended up in that office and involved trying to run for county
commissioner soon after.
No, I remember her as a political force to be reckoned with.
(02:35):
She was the gatekeeper to South Texas. If you were running for some sort of
elected office on the Republican ticket, you were going to make a visit through there.
Ron Paul had been through her office and she knew him.
Of course, Rick Green was somebody that she helped recruit and get into the Texas House.
But everybody knew her, especially at the state level in the Republican Party.
(02:57):
She was a character and a force to be reckoned with. That I remember.
Part of the reason I wanted to have you on this podcast is I
was thinking back through all the different iterations operations
that your life has kind of
taken from it startups to insurance
to your properties running from
(03:18):
public office you like i feel like over your
life you've in the truest sense of the word to have somehow become a renaissance
man like every few years you've been somehow successful at reinventing yourself
so i think what has spurred you to move from one profession,
(03:40):
one career?
Some people would be like, this is my career for the rest of my life. I guess it's curiosity.
My first job was at County Line Barbecue, where I worked for five years through
being a waiter and a busboy and all of that and having fun while I was in college.
And I probably thought that was a good backup career.
And then the IT job that I got lasted three or four years with a startup that
(04:05):
was just out of working in a garage that grew to $22 million in a short couple of years.
And then I thought I wanted to be an IT guy, and I was all into that.
Somewhere along the way, I had a little bit of an interest in construction and home building.
All of it has been kind of startup entrepreneurial stuff. If you give me an
idea and no money, I like to go charging after that.
(04:28):
And that's what gets me into trouble. level
i i feel honestly my greatest skill set
is to be the
lead sled dog to start with nothing to say hey go figure this out and to try
to figure out a system for doing whatever that is and then but then growing
it much beyond a startup has not been a very good skill of mine to a mature
(04:50):
business is not a good skill with all of the processes and procedures and accounting,
I'm much better operating within a structure with a, with a broad leash.
Right. So it's just more icebreaker, less cruise liner. Yeah.
That, I think that's the best for me. So for the brief career that I had in
(05:13):
insurance, they had all of these scripts that you were supposed to memorize
and meet somebody at their front door and say this, and then say that and say that.
And I mean, I threw all of that out immediately and
just started talking to people and it was much more
successful for me right but you had to have a process and a procedure to train
(05:34):
people and that gave a lot of people a lot of comfort they wanted to memorize
every single comma and inflection point in a script and whereas i just threw
it out i think there's a lot of self-awareness there that a lot of people lack,
I have always enjoyed trying to fire myself, right? I would be better at starting
(05:54):
things than maturing them.
Do you ever find it frustrating that when you have that ability to start things, to lead things,
that so many people assume that you are also good at the later stages of doing
that and people try to hand you more of those things?
(06:15):
I haven't felt that at all. pretty clear
that when you interview me for being a salesperson that
i'm a salesperson and that i'll have a
scope that i can operate within that realm if
i find something that's useful i'm quick to share it
and i want to help develop it that's a skill but the idea of running things
(06:37):
and controlling things is is probably not a skill of mine i'd love other people
to run them of course I ran my own business for 20 years and tried to fire myself
repeatedly. Just nobody would hire me.
Right now, you're not working for yourself full time.
You have a job with a salary, commission structure, expense account, whole nine yards.
(07:01):
Walk me through the mental process.
Basically going from self-employed entrepreneurial like businessmen for all
these years to working for someone again. I mean, where did you start?
And I imagine that's a fairly big shift.
(07:25):
I feel like I had been trying to fire myself for years from my company that was home building.
About eight years ago, some people came to town, maybe 10, and they were doing
a new subdivision. And I met them immediately.
I liked the developer. I liked the home builder.
And they decided to hire me to be the home builder here locally.
(07:47):
My intent was to work with them and join their company and build houses for
them in multiple areas here and in Floresville and get get started.
I think I had been chasing money to make payroll every Friday for so long at
that point that I was ready to work for somebody that was small and scrappy,
(08:11):
that was more established than I was in business, learn from them.
And, and, but in that case, I ended up,
still with my own company, just doing my own thing a couple of years later.
And the headaches of always making payroll when I haven't been paid,
maybe, or constantly billing people, trying to make sure that somebody helped me make payroll.
(08:33):
It was, I ran a startup for 20 years. It wasn't a real company that functioned properly.
I shouldn't be collecting on Friday day at 4.45 to make payroll at five.
And that was a common, common thing. And so it was exhausting.
I think being an entrepreneur and being self-employed the way I did it was incredibly
(08:56):
difficult and exhausting.
And I got to restart a few times. I got to sell my house, downsize,
move to Gonzales, then build a nice, really nice house that was like,
you know, 3,800 square feet out by the lake and then have financial problems,
sell it, downsize, start again, live in a nice house.
Oh, wait, more financial problems, sell it, pay off debt, live in a rental.
(09:21):
So now we're living in a house again that we're paying for, that we've remodeled,
that we absolutely love.
And the journey has been, it has been, it's been tiring.
It's been tiring. Now, my kids didn't suffer that much. They always had food.
My girls were all cheerleaders.
My son had go-karts and a boat to go fishing on.
(09:42):
So, I feel like the life that our kids had was great.
So, that was the blessing of being a broke, struggling entrepreneur.
It was actually good for the family. And it may sound cliche,
but what would you say is the biggest lesson that you actually learned through
that process? Charge more.
At every step of every job of everything that I ever did, I should have charged more.
(10:08):
I had coaching telling me to charge more.
I would try to add a little bit of fluff into my bids so that when things went
wrong, I wasn't in trouble at the end.
I tried to implement those strategies, and it was never enough the way I did it.
One thing that got me jobs was that I would detail the cost of a house on a
(10:29):
spreadsheet that was about two pages long.
And it would say, you know, plumbing fixture budget, this budget,
that budget, and everything was very lined item now.
Lumber budget, labor budget for framing and roofing and materials.
Materials and it gave the clients way too
much information so let's just
say that the their fixtures budget for their microwave and the oven and the
(10:53):
stovetop and all that stuff was like usually forty five hundred dollars sometimes
people told me i know i want nice stuff okay sixty five hundred dollars i had
a flat fee as a contractor and i didn't ever make any more,
if it was nice or anything like that which most builders would have figured out a way to make more.
So there were several things that I should have had like a package.
(11:17):
We're building this 3,000 square foot house it's going to have sheetrock and
white paint on the walls and it's going to have these basic,
features, and your price is $350,000 with a good concrete slab that meets specs.
By giving all of the detail when things went wrong is like, oh,
look, we came ahead on this one.
(11:38):
Oh, wait, you're behind on this one. Your problem.
Where I came ahead, I win. Where you came behind, you lose.
So I would have to change my bid formats. And also, I never built,
other than some townhomes that I built, which I still manage,
and I really am proud of those, I never built the same thing twice.
So there wasn't any economies of scale or learning or repetition other than in the town homes,
(12:02):
which is the first thing I would build again if I were building something again
tomorrow is I'd build townhomes again because all the subs know how to do it. I know how to do it.
And they've been profitable for the investors and profitable for me as the property manager.
But single family homes that are custom, I would try to avoid again.
(12:24):
It's just hard as a small guy. Maybe when you get big and get to scale, it's a different story.
But it's just that ability just
to repeat, rinse, repeat. You know exactly what's happening every time.
You're not trying to do something. You already know how to do this.
Understanding and doing perfection versus starting something and then learning as you go.
(12:48):
So what was the initial decision? decision, like, nope, we've done this for 20 years.
Now it's time. It felt like it had been time several times because as I met
people through different things, I was looking for opportunities to work with
somebody else or to mentor me to grow the business to the next level.
(13:09):
And none of them worked out.
Some of the businesses that I even interviewed with ended up going out of business.
And then there was still me just running around with my pickup truck and a couple
of guys that had worked with me for a number of years doing remodeling and building.
I guess the final straw was after the freeze, not getting paid on a couple of jobs.
(13:30):
And I just decided I don't want to do that anymore.
If I could stay home and have more money in my pocket by not working,
then working hard for a month or two and ending up with less money,
that's a bad deal. So that was the impetus.
There's got to be something else to do a better way.
So then I tried insurance for a year. I actually enjoyed that because I was
(13:53):
running around all over Central Texas selling insurance to small businesses.
And then I got this opportunity where I'm selling plumbing supplies all over
Central Texas to wholesalers, which I just love.
And when I interviewed for that job, the person, my boss, said that he had a
guy that had been working with him 20 plus years.
(14:14):
And the guy was in his 70s. And I said, you're kidding.
He said, no, he's really good. he's been at this since he
was a kid and i said you mean there's a job i can be
really good at into my 70s and relevant you're going
to hire me now at age 52 i can't wait you know where do i sign on the dotted
line so i'm i'm thrilled to have a regular job i'm sure that all of that 20
(14:38):
years had a purpose but it felt like a long it was a long hard battle that was my experience,
i did not turn into a millionaire i didn't go to my high school reunion in a
jet and a limo That was what I thought would happen.
I think that there's a phenomenal amount of people that are trying in the entrepreneurial space.
(14:59):
They're underfunded. They don't know what they're doing.
They're faking it till they make it. And some of them are very successful at
doing that. Most of them are not.
Why do you think it is so hard to move on? To the next thing after something fails?
I don't know. I was talking to somebody. I have a space for lease down on the
(15:21):
square in Gonzales right now. And somebody called me wanting to lease it yesterday.
And I talked with him and I said, so what do you want to do?
And he says, I want to sell like cards and these other action figures.
And I want to sell antiques in there and some other stuff. And I said, okay. Okay.
I don't know that there's going to be any traffic that's good for those things.
(15:42):
And I've had four failed antique shops.
I would rather you not lose money at this, you know, with the rent and everything and the bills.
Are you prepared to sign a six-month lease? And are you willing to lose $5,000 or $6,000?
He said, yes, absolutely. I want to try.
I need to try. I'm willing to lose that. I have that much money to lose.
(16:03):
I said, okay. okay, but I had people that were always trying to start a restaurant
in a different space that had the grills and the kitchen and all of the stuff that they needed.
And I watched people fail multiple times.
And my pitch for that one was, do you have $10,000 that you're willing to lose
to chase your dream, to pay rent and it doesn't work out?
(16:27):
And I had somebody open a restaurant that closed in three weeks.
They didn't factor in the fact that 100 people might not knock down their door
the first day and buy all of their food.
And then, you know, you're just like, that could have taken a little bit better
planning. That's probably where I refined my pitch.
Do you have $10,000 to lose before we even...
(16:49):
Sign the six-month lease in the space that already has all the equipment.
So I think that I actually really care about entrepreneurs. And through my own
trials, I try to be a helpful guide.
You ran for office. I don't think you actually made office, if I read it right.
Yeah, I ran for office. So talk to me, tell us that story.
(17:10):
So that's when I was at church. And honestly, being a Christian,
I just have always had an interest in politics. I was one of two kids in my
high school that we watched Reagan's speeches.
And the teacher would ask anybody to watch Reagan's State of the Union speech,
and we were like, two of us.
And so there was some core of me that was always interested in some amount of
(17:33):
politics and government.
And then when I at church turned around and met Myrna McElroy,
when we had just gotten to Gonzales,
then she had a space in her building that I subleased from her for $100 or $200
a month just for a desk and started doing that IT consulting business again,
which had failed, which was the reason I had moved to Gonzales in the first place.
(17:55):
And while I'm sharing that office with Marner, she said, hey,
you ought to run for political office.
And so I said, OK, sounded like a good idea.
It was a job that had some amount of base pay, and I enjoyed campaigning.
I didn't really realize what campaigning was, but I went door to door and asked
(18:16):
for as many votes as I could get.
And on that time in 2004, the Republican ticket was not what you did to win
elections in Gonzales County.
Republicans gained favor over years, but it was a traditionally Democrat leading county.
Yeah, I remember that. Except for maybe president.
They might have made an exception there. So when I was new into town,
(18:39):
I had only been here two years, and I knocked on a bunch of doors and I got
46% of the vote. everybody said, that was a really, really, really good showing.
You should be proud of yourself.
You had only been here two years and you weren't even on the.
Right side of the ticket to get favorable turnout. So I enjoyed running for office then.
(19:00):
And then that opportunity came up a couple of years ago with a phone call again
from my pastor that said, hey, there's this terrible person. It's no good.
And they're all bad. And they're unopposed.
Do you know anybody that would run for State Board of Education?
I said, I'll do it. And so I got the phone call on a Friday.
And then I filed to run on a Monday, beating the deadline by a couple of hours.
(19:24):
And that led up to a theme yeah like
you know payroll yeah yeah just in
time just in time campaigning over
16 counties is a whole lot different than knocking on doors of your neighbors
in your small town again in that case my the results were actually very good
in all of the small communities that were right-leaning but bear county was
(19:49):
very left-leaning it only voted 41
% for Governor Abbott, and I needed to run on Abbott's coattails.
Nobody knew who Ken Morrow was.
So 41% of Bexar County, I got the same amount that Abbott did,
was enough to sink the whole campaign where I had done much better in the rural
areas that didn't have the population.
How has being a part of governance of a town or a county, how did it change
(20:17):
your perspective on how business works?
Business is easier than everything on a county or a board or a city.
Getting consensus with a bunch of different people with different points of
view is a whole lot harder. If you're running a business, you have a decision.
(20:38):
The reason I like those townhomes so much is that the decisions were always
based on a business thing.
If I put crown molding in this townhome and it cost me $2,000 to do it in all
four units, am I going to get any additional rent for that? Probably not.
One person said, well, yeah, I like crown molding. And to me,
(21:02):
it makes it worth it. It's a feature that makes it nice.
Maybe people won't realize why they like it and why it's nice,
but I like it. It's worth it to me.
The next investor said, it's not worth it to me.
I don't know that I'll get a dollar more for crown molding, so I don't want to do it.
But it's still an intelligent conversation, right?
I'm not going to rent this place for more if I I have a $200 toilet versus a
(21:26):
$100 toilet. The rent's going to be the same.
So trying to draw an analogy between being a builder and the rational decisions
that you make for finances.
But when you're on a board, right now we have a giant flag that flies on the square that's lit up.
It's a great feature. It cost $50,000. The flag or per year to take care of it?
(21:51):
The flag, the pull, the lighting, the install, and the purchase of the original flags.
And there were multiple sets of Texas flags, come and take it flags, and U.S. flags.
Several years ago, I was on EDC and, you know, to buy new flags is like $20,000. dollars.
But somebody was resourceful, Andy Rodriguez, and found out that we could get
(22:14):
our flags repaired, all of them in like tip top shape for four thousand dollars.
So he was a businessman. He was a smart guy. He found a different way in the
original proposal to do that big flag. That's a hallmark of our downtown.
That was a ton of money to spend on something that you couldn't prove would have any result.
(22:36):
And that's very hard to convince a city council.
And it was also hard to convince the board that was making that decision that
this is the right thing they should be doing with their money.
Maybe they should be fixing the sidewalks or maybe they should be doing something else.
So reaching consensus in government is harder.
And with everybody having a different point of view between aesthetics or cost,
(22:59):
in tourism was easy for a long time.
Every question was answered by, if we spend this money, does this put heads in beds?
We're funded from hotel motel tax.
So everything that we spend should put heads in beds.
Okay. So the convention center that we helped fund, the expo center,
(23:20):
that was a good use of fund because when people come to the expo center, they stay in hotels.
That puts heads in beds.
Some of the stuff that we did that promoted the Alamo tied with Gonzales where
people went to the Alamo and we helped sponsor and pay for something of their cost.
It's hard to prove that that put heads in beds. It was a good thing to tie ourselves to the Alamo.
(23:43):
I stood in front of city council and said, if we could get 1% of the Alamo traffic,
our town would forever be changed. That's harder than business.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of business owners that aren't entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs that some of the guys that I worked with, all guys that were all
kind of my size, that had a couple of employees, four, no more than six or eight,
(24:07):
that had a couple of trucks with their name on the side.
And they were making payroll for themselves and for their employees,
but they weren't building a business.
They weren't trying to scale it. They weren't trying to grow beyond this town.
So they're not really entrepreneurs. They're just self-employed.
I don't feel like a successful entrepreneur because I never got big.
(24:30):
But then again, I made it 20 years without completely failing and going bankrupt.
And I didn't quit. So there's some level of success in that.
But it didn't, you know, it didn't survive me. I didn't create a business that outlasted myself.
It's really hard. You know, there's, there's a guy by the name of Jeff Ducharme
who like first kind of challenged me to the concept of like,
(24:53):
are you like, do you actually have a business worth selling?
A lot of the guys want to just pass down their business to their family members.
So you have multiple generations of plumbers or electricians or HVAC guys,
and it's very hard to get those businesses to scale up.
And they may not even want to, or they may not have the skills to have more than two or three vans.
(25:17):
And that's fine if you make a living at it, but it's different than being an
entrepreneur that thinks about how do I make this business.
But isn't it ironic that you and I are having that kind of conversation and
we're like, is that really success?
I think that's one of the things that I've noticed in between.
(25:41):
How I've seen small businesses operate in, let's say Europe,
and how they operate here.
We're in this constant pace of you grow or you die.
There is no, it's okay to have a small shop and run three or four generations through it.
There is no honor in that here.
(26:05):
I think you're right. I think you're onto something. We have a different mentality here in America.
America if you don't blow it up to a billion dollars
or tens of millions or whatever and you're not on a yacht or an airplane you
know you just haven't made it that I think that's the perception where it's
like how do we change our culture in a way that honors those small.
(26:33):
Businesses that that says that that because we we like to say the small businesses
are the the backbone of America, right?
That's the cliche talk. Absolutely. Right.
But small businesses aren't the backbone of America anymore.
And let's just say that you're so clever that you created Instagram.
(26:54):
And I just heard somebody say that Instagram was well over 24 people when it
got bought, you know, for hundreds of millions of dollars and then incorporated
into a larger your business.
Those are so infrequent that it's, it's, it's hard to contemplate them,
(27:14):
but I bet you there's a hundred people, a hundred companies trying some different
version of Instagram right now.
And there's only one. Oh, you think only a hundred?
Oh yeah. I could be wrong. I could be shooting a little low, but,
but we don't hear about, we don't hear about the 100 that didn't make it it's
such a catch-22 because without people taking chances without the entrepreneurial
(27:37):
kind of mindset it's it's it's hard to to move into the the innovation,
because that's normally what it takes it takes people like you or me who are
like all right you know no money have a have a chance i see something i like
and we just go for it do you think the
(27:58):
entrepreneurial culture that we have currently is dangerous.
I want to almost give you a smart ass remark to this. I wanted to be too big to fail.
I want to be so big that even if I'm incompetent, I'm too big to fail.
And then the government's going to bail me out because that's what we did, right?
With all the banks and the financial savings and loans and all of that stuff.
(28:22):
And they were making bad decisions at a very, very high level and getting a lot of money for it. And.
That, I think, is one of the more dangerous cultures that the government is
stepping in and saving things like the SNLs or the stuff in Silicon Valley last year.
They step in and save it because it'll lead to a catastrophic crash.
(28:43):
And now everything is just just keeps the bubble just keeps getting bigger and
the bigger just keep getting bigger.
They just swallow up other companies. That's their innovation is to swallow
up a smaller company, get bigger, get more proprietary and put nice little moats
around their business to protect themselves.
(29:03):
So how do you compete with that as an entrepreneur? You either get bought when
you're on your way up or you're going to get crushed by one of those guys.
I think it's kind of interesting because the system that you're talking about
is basically the big businesses get to play the socialistic game.
The rest of us have to play the capitalist game right there were when i was
(29:25):
a home builder in the small town one of the lumberyard guys said you know it's
only you and another guy left.
All of the other guys but there used to be two dozen guys here that you could
call that could that were capable of building a house two dozen guys in this
small town of 10 000 people that were capable of building a house and now there's
you know just a couple of guys with a crew that can do it anymore.
(29:49):
And then, so you've got competition from somebody I respect,
Tilson Homes, that does really well all over Texas.
They're still sort of a small business and they've got, but they're using crews
that, you know, will travel from Houston to Dallas to do electrical or plumbing
or whatever because they have a commitment to Tilson.
And there's no disrespect there, but it's really hard to beat that scale at a local level.
(30:12):
They're going to get better deals on their purchases of materials than a little guy.
And so it's hard to beat that economies of scale once you get there.
But getting there is a tough road.
So how do you see technology changing the scope of business in a small town? Yeah.
(30:32):
When you and I talked just a few weeks ago socially and we were talking about
AI and I didn't want anything to do with it because I didn't want to power up
the Terminator and have my computer be one of the millions that were linked
together that created a bad result that we didn't see.
And you showed me how useful AI could be in marketing and created a very good
(30:56):
card that with a minor tweak,
I would mail out or email and you did it in 60 seconds to a minute.
That could have taken a really, really talented graphic artist all day long
on a good day to create what you did using AI in 60 seconds.
I've been listening to podcasts for weeks now since I saw what you were able to do.
(31:19):
I really think that the competitive advantage in AI is going to be building
proprietary systems for the back end of your operations that are proprietary to you,
that help your business be more efficient and help you with your customers and
make their business easier.
(31:39):
That's what I'm trying to do right now. Now, just as a salesperson,
I'm asking my customer what I can do to be easier to work with.
Can I make an automated system so that you order from me because I'm so easy to order from?
Everyone seems to think that they want equality in business.
And people talk about AI being the big equalizer.
(32:03):
But with what you just talked about was trying to get a competitive advantage using AI. eye.
Do you think that equality is really what people want inside of business, truly?
No, everybody wants to win. Nobody wants equality. Everybody wants a competitive advantage to win.
(32:26):
That's the good thing about business. Government's the one that's trying to
create equality of outcome,
regardless the fact that you've been here doing this podcast in your studio
with all All of these cameras and all of this technology and all of the extra
effort that you're making.
What if there's a guy next door with one camera and one microphone doing a podcast
(32:48):
and not working as hard and hasn't been in this business for a dozen years with experience?
We don't want equality of outcome. We don't want that guy next door with one
camera and mic to do as well as you with a dozen years of experience.
Experience, but if he does do well, we're going to celebrate him because he
happened to find a content that we knew nothing about, and he found an audience that was amazing.
(33:15):
I'm going to make up Pokemon cards, something I know nothing about,
but that kid next door does.
He's going to get the outcome potentially that he deserves, but it's still going
to be hard for him to get the eyeballs on his podcast, as opposed to being in
a professional studio with a professional that knows what they're doing.
We can't guarantee your outcome, but then you're also competing with somebody
(33:38):
that has a hundred people competing with you in a studio.
So you get to be nimbler, you get to be cleverer, more clever.
You get to think of things that they aren't going to think of and they've got
a hundred people to make a decision.
So that's the entrepreneurial part is the fun part is if you figure out on what
is going to be successful, then you're, you know, you can, you can do well.
(34:04):
I'll let you know when I figure it out.
All right. So what is one question that you will leave to the next person?
Beyond this podcast, you get to ask one question, not even knowing who they
are. What is one question that you would ask?
Do you have enough money to be doing what you're doing or what you're planning on doing?
(34:26):
That's the question I wish I had asked myself all the way along.
Do you really have enough money to be doing what you're doing?
And of course, all of the entrepreneurs, the Mark Cubans out there,
they all started with nothing.
He sold trash bags door to door.
That's a funny story, but he learned how to sell, I think as a teenager.
(34:48):
So it's a bit of a contradiction because the other good thing is if you have
no money, you're forced to do things, to make money, and that's where the innovation comes from.
But more money in my pocket sure would have made it easier along the way.
All right, well, thank you for coming in and.
Music.
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