Anniversary Throwback - #22: Jonathan Lusk, BirdDog - In The Thick of It

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey, listeners, this is Scott Hollrah.
It's hard to believe that we launchedIn The Thick of It almost a year ago.
As we're nearing our first anniversary,
we're workinghard on a celebratory episode.
In the meantime, we'd love for youto catch up on a founder story
you may have missed.
In today's episode,I talk with my friend and former

(00:20):
Fightin Texas Aggie Yell leader,an entrepreneur who grew up in Whitesboro,
Texas, before going on to build a careerand wealth management.
Jonathan started out at AT&Tand Goldman Sachs, but eventually left
to launch his own independent investmentfirm.
More recently,Jonathan co-founded Bird Dog,
an online marketplacethat connects landowners with hunters.
We'll hear about Jonathan's journey fromsmall town kid to successful entrepreneur.

(00:43):
The lessons he learned along the way,
and now he's bringing technologyand innovation to the hunting industry.
Jonathan.
It's all about living life to the fullest,
taking risks,and is constantly learning and growing.
So I think listeners will find thisoutlook
inspiring regardless of their backgroundor industry.
Get ready forsome high energy inspiration.
Well, today is a super fun

(01:04):
one bringing in an old college buddy,Jonathan Lusk.
Welcome to In The Thick of It.
Thanks for having me, man. Yeah.
So you grew up in small town Texas?
Whitesboro. That's right. Yeah.
What was JonathanLusk and Whitesboro, Texas like as a kid?
Oh my goodness.It was, it was pretty crazy.
So Whitesboro is a small townof about 2500 people north of here.

(01:29):
Dallas, about 70 miles, ten milessouth of Oklahoma.
Very poor family.
Growing up,my dad was a fisheries biologist.
Still is.
And so he stocked, and managedlakes and ponds with fish.
And so we grew up.
You know, seining ponds and working.
There were six of us.You're one of six kids.

(01:49):
I'm one of six of my mom leftwhen I was in kindergarten.
And then my dad got remarried,
had my little brother,and then I had two step siblings.
So there were six of us in the housegrowing up.
And my dad made.
I found outwhen I got my first job out of college,
I was making 55,000 bucks a year,and he's like, that's more than I make.
I was like, how much do you make?
Like 30 grand a year?
It's like you,a six of us on $30,000 a year.

(02:11):
Like, yeah. So it waswe didn't really know.
Just because the communitydoesn't really flourish there.
And it's more of like, how how do you getout of here and go do something else?
And there are a few peoplea year that do get out and go to college.
But most of my friends growing upstill live there.
Got some, you know, fun stories.
My best friend, you know, Daniel Pruitt.

(02:32):
Growing up, I took my wife to go meet him,
and he was like, man,you know, she's really beautiful.
And he's like, where are you from? Plano.
She's like,no, I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I don't meet too many peoplefrom Minneapolis and Whitesboro.
And he's like.
Tell me, right now you're like,I got a serious question for you, for
Chevy.
And she's like, I don't know.
I said, just say Ford, just say Ford.

(02:53):
She's like, I like Ford.
He's a nice guy, I like her,I like her a lot.
I was like, I need your DP, I need you.
So grew up there, graduated high schooland then ended up going to.
And my dad was the first personin our family antiquity to go to college.
I was a second person to go to collegeand he went to A&M.
So that's where I chose to go.
But that wasI just wanted to go to college.

(03:15):
I wanted to get out of town,go to college.
But beyond that,
I really didn't have any dreams
or aspirations of anything elsebecause it's all that I knew.
Were you into sports? Were you?Yeah. Yeah.
So it's a it's a small three day school.
So in that context you play everything.
Basically you play football,basketball, baseball, run track.

(03:36):
You know as many peopleas you can get on the field.
They do.
So that was really coolplaying the sports.
My friends all growing up,
you know we had a pretty decentbasketball team growing up.
And now they're actually decentat football.
But I played football for, you know, threeyears on varsity we won like five games.
It was so bad.
And now they make the playoffs every year.

(03:57):
I'm like very proud of these guys.
And this is this is awesome.
But it was not like thatwhen I was growing up.
But you know I had a lot of. You to leave.
They were waitingfor me to leave. Exactly.
It sounds
like hard work was something thatwas instilled in you from a young age.
Oh, I mean, from what I can remember,very young.
You're signing ponds, you're dragginga sign to go, you know, pick fish up.

(04:21):
You're putting them on the back of a truckat a tank and you're delivering them.
And I just rememberriding in the front seat with my dad.
And one of those bucket or not bucket,it was, you know, one of the long benches
and the truck driving all over the statewith him to deliver these fish.
And that was just and still,you know, you'd get up at, you know, this
not during the week you go to school,but weekends are in the summer.
You're up at 4 or 5:00 loadingfish and delivering them.

(04:43):
And you got to meet interesting people,you know, landowners and,
you know, people who owned companiesand sold companies lived out the country
and you knew they were different from youand you knew you worked for them.
But it was also, you know, it was veryinteresting meeting these types of people.
I was like, man, I want to do that.
You know, how to how do you do that?
But yeah, it was always work hard.
My dad always instilled us.

(05:04):
He's like,do you want to be a winner or loser?
Yes. What do you want to bea champion like?
Here's what you have to do to be a winner.
And so he like put this mentality in us.
I don't want to lose them.
I want to win. You know,I want to be a champion or whatever it is.
So like whatever he told me to do,I would do.
And it was one of those deals.
He said to him,he's like, the most important attribute

(05:24):
is can you be coachable?
Can you be coachable?
If you can listen to people who are wiseand do what
they tell you to do and go execute on it,then you'll make it.
And if you don't, you won't.
And it was very, very simple for me.
And so I think about that a lot as I tryto grow and learn and gain knowledge.
Just try to be an open bookand surround myself by people

(05:45):
that are better than me, smarter than me.
And I just listen to what they sayand then go do it.
Talking about your dad's,you know, winning
mentality had a little TalladegaNights flashback.
If you're not first, your last is thatis that kind of how it was basically.
Yeah.
I mean, it was it was like, hey, Eddie,do you want to be a champion?
Do you want to be a winner or do you not?
It was very binary with him.And I was like,

(06:06):
you know, I choose the winning,you know, so whatever that means.
And it was hard work.
It was discipline.
It was humility,and it was those types of things
that were instilled at me at a young agethat kind of grew from there whenever
I got to them and met my friends.Like you.
You've never met a stranger.
You've got a lot of charisma.
Is everybody in your familyas outgoing and boisterous as you are?

(06:28):
We're all very similar.
My dad is like this.
My brother, my sister, my little brother,not so much,
but we're allI mean, it's the life of the party.
And when you're around for the holidaysand you're sitting around the dinner table
or watching, you know, the Cowboys playeror whatever, it gets lively
and fun and people are telling storiesand it's a blast.

(06:48):
I love my family and very thankful,but we are we're very similar in that,
you know, the fun lovingbut also the work.
Like we're all very some of my sister'sa nurse.
She, managesa bunch of nurses here in Dallas,
and my brother brother's a, residentialreal estate agent in Phoenix.
And there's just this workethic and drive.

(07:09):
And you don't make excuses.
There's no.
There's like, no woe is meor I can't do this or can't do that.
Everybody's like, suck it up.
We have to get this done kind of thing.
And it's very consistentwith those people.
Where are you in the birth order?
So I'm, I'm third, third or four. Really.
So I've got a brotherwho's eight years older than me.
A sister is two years older. Me.

(07:29):
And then I've got a little brotherseight years younger than me.
So I'm number number three. Come.
And did everybody leave Whitesboro?
Yeah.
My brother left right after high school,moved to California.
My sister ended up moving out of townas well.
And then.
And then me and then.
Yeah. So no one,no one lives there anymore.
My dad sold his house about two years agoand moved to Granbury

(07:52):
when he was a little kid.
His parents had a place on the BrazosRiver near Granbury,
and that's where he grew upand learned to love fish.
So I wanted to go to A&M, and that's wherehe really drew up a passion from there.
And so he's like,that's where I want to spend.
The last chapteris where I spent the first chapter.
So he bought a place out by Lake Granbury
and he lives out thereon the, on the Brazos River now.

(08:13):
But no one,no one lives in Whitesboro anymore.
All right.
You mentioned earlier the goal growing upwas just get out of town
and you went off to A&M.
What did you want to do?
I didn't know what I wanted to dowhen I got there.
It was actually it was
I was really nervousthat I was going to fail
because I was like,you know, small town kid.
I met all of these peoplewho were just excellent.

(08:35):
I joined the Corps cadets.
And so that was pretty wildand full of discipline, which I needed it.
Whenever I was in high school,I was a lifeguard at the White
Republic pool, and this guy, Bob Joel own,local daycare, and he's like,
hey, Lusk here, you're going,you're going to be in the Corps.
I was like, absolutely not.
And, he said, why not?

(08:56):
I was like, man, I just that sounds hard.
I was like, I want to do that.
He's like, go home tonight and you'regoing to put a teacher together.
Of all the positives and negativesof the Corps, I was like, okay, so
I wrote down the positives were thatI would, stay in shape,
that I would make my gradesbecause they make you study.
And I thought that the girlswould like the uniform.
So that was like what I basedmy decision on.

(09:18):
And, What was in the negative column?
Negative was like,can't sleep and don't get to hang out
with the people that I want to.
It was just stuff that didn't matter.
When I got down to it,and the fact that he just challenged me
to think about it, I was like,okay, I'll go do this and that.
I mean, I didn't know,I wasn't didn't know ROTC.
I didn't know what to expect.
I just thought like more discipline andboy, were my eyes open when I got there.

(09:41):
But I don't know what I expected.
I didn't have great expectationsother than getting out of Whitesboro
and trying to achieve something bigger.
You know, when I think about life,I think a lot about legacy,
and I think about my grandfatherand then my dad and how
this guy got the ball downthe field as fast as he could.
And then my dad did.
And then I'm gettingas far as I could down the field.

(10:03):
And then my,my kids will pick it up and take it.
And so I think a lot about that.
But I was just trying to get to a placethat I'd grown up going to football games,
and that I love the atmosphereand I love the people,
but I didn't know really what I wanted.
A lot of people didn't going in
and a lot of people even years afterwarddidn't know what they wanted.
and I would actually put myselfin that category.

(10:25):
Real quick talk
just a little bit about the core cadetsfor people that may not know what that is.
Are you guys all in the Army now or what?
So the Corps Cadets is an ROTC programas part of, Texas A&M.
I'm making this number up, but it'ssomewhere between 2500 and 3000 people.
So a largea small percentage of the university,
but very importantfor the image of the university.

(10:47):
I would say that 25 to 35%take military contracts.
It's a decision you makeafter your sophomore year to do that.
I did not take a contract,but a lot of my friends did.
So it's very regimented during the daywhere you have morning formation workout
and then breakfast,and you have classes during the day
and you come back and

(11:07):
do more workout and learning and trainingand all those things.
Formation, go study, go to bed every day.
A lot of drill and ceremony,things like that.
And you bond some very significantrelationships
just because of the trialsthat you go through
and you think about like the harderthings that you do with other people,
the closerthose bonds typically, come together.

(11:28):
And so that's what I found.
And that, I mean, when I first started,when they're recruiting you, I got it's
awesome everything.
I remember my first day, my commandingofficer was a guy named Scott here.
And I walked up and I just got out of fishcamp, which is, basically
it's a camp before you go to eightM to teach you all the traditions.
And I got off the fish camp bus,and I came into my dorm

(11:51):
and I was like, hey, Scott.
And they're like,shut up and get on the wall.
And I was like,oh, we're not in Kansas anymore.
And I was wearing like a Hawaiian shirtand some frayed shorts
and some, like, DocMartin sandals or something.
And I was like, oh, then they shavedmy head and I got yelled at every day.
And I was like, man, I hate this.I want to go.

(12:13):
I wanted to quit like six times.
But that was not in the playbookof how I grew up.
If you started something, you finished it
and so made it through my my freshman yearand was like, okay, I've got this.
And and you don't even feellike you're part of the university
because all your friends are having funand doing all these things
and you're not you'rejust basically doing push ups.
And then you realize, like,you are the image of the university,

(12:34):
and you're like, man, I didn't you don'trealize it until you do that 1st March.
And you're like, this is pretty awesome.
This is pretty awesome.
When you saythat you are the image of the university.
Certainly being in the Corpstotally get that.
But you actually hadsome other pretty prestigious things,
and you literally werethe image of the university you were in.

(12:56):
Pass mount, carve your Ross volunteer
and you were a fight and Texas AggieYell leader.
Well, I would do a one minor correction.
I was in the cave.I was not a Ross volunteer.
I didn't go up for the RVs.
I went up for Aggie Men's Club insteadof the RVs which they did not like.
But I was like, hey, I love these guys.I want to go do it.
I always felt that.

(13:17):
I just love the Cav.
I'm from the countrylike I loved being out there
and, you know, parts, amount of calories,the mounted unit
that is part of the core cadetsand they march in before the games
and they all the horses are on Fiddler'sGreen, which is off campus.
And it's a very hard unit.
There's a very hard year.
It's basically twice as hard in termsof discipline than your freshman year.

(13:40):
And so maybe 30 guys go out for itand 20 of them make it.
And so I looked at that going, Isee those guys wearing that, yellow cord.
And I want to be part of that groupbecause those are some bad guys
in a good way.And I had a lot of respect for them.
So I went out for that.
And then into my sophomore year,I got elected for junior year later

(14:00):
and then got reelected senior year later.
And so it was it was a dream for me.
I mean, there was no legacy. There was.
I didn't know anybody.
You go through a system in your blockwhere you're selected
within the core cadets,and then you run and the general election,
against folks who are not in the corpsthat want to run a campaign.
And so to win, that was a lifechanging experience for me,

(14:20):
changed my whole lifein terms of image on the, you know, at the
at the university, but also likethe relationships that I've been able
to develop the rest of my life,it put me on a different trajectory.
I'm sure it's opened all kinds of doors.
I mean, thethe L'Etre network in and of itself
is a whole bunch of guys that have gone onto do a lot of big, amazing things.

(14:42):
And but the exposure that you got being ayell leader
had just had a compoundedand opened up all kinds of doors to you.
Well, I'm 42 years old,
and people still introduced meas the leader of For hearing.
And you say this, John, he was the leader.
I was like, yeah, 20. Years, 20 years ago.
And our teams were terrible.
And I was there.
Let's not talk about this.

(15:03):
So we beat out you, we beat you.
And they were number onewhen I was a junior was. Friend coach and.
He was that.
So my junior year later
year was coach locums last yearand my senior was friends first year.
so my junior year when we beat Oklahoma,which was like
the highlight, you're in a fish pond.
And still I still remember that game.Yeah.
Yeah. It was, it was it was a big deal.
When Reggie McNeil.
Yeah, he was actually a studentin a class that I was a to for,

(15:27):
you know, Doctor Welch.
Yeah, I was the toand regimen Neal was in that class.
And when he showed up the next weekfor class, people were throwing oranges
and and all kinds of stuff.
But he's getting a standing ovation.
Yeah, exactly.
What did you study in college?
I was an ag major. I was ag development.
I started out in business.

(15:48):
And I remember my sophomore yearI made like a 40 on
an accounting test, and I was like,maybe this isn't for me.
And then I wouldn'ttalk to these guys who were like,
you know, leaders in the quarter.
Like, I'm like, developer, but I give up.
And I was like, well,that sounds good to me.
I grew up in the country, I understandagriculture, and I loved it, I loved it,
and then, you know, when I graduated,I went to work for AT&T, here in Dallas.

(16:11):
And succession planning was always like,what's ag development?
Because I was doingreally good in the business.
But they were, you know,what is this degree?
I was like, oh, man.
So I always felt self-conscious about mymy degree, which is very interesting.
And so it's really the reason I wentto get my MBA was self-consciousness,
because people are like, man,you can't make it to where you want to be

(16:31):
if you don't do this.
And now the business I'm in, I'm like,so thankful I was an egg major.
It's like it is all come full circle.
I totally get what you were sayinga minute ago about people were telling you
you couldn't rise above a certain levelwithout that.
But looking back today,do you still buy that?
I don't buy it.
I don't buy it at all.

(16:51):
And man, if I was a mom,my wife was a finance major.
She's a doctor now.
She's like pre-medand my finances are major.
And she might remember2% of you know what she learned.
Same thing with me.
I was like, I bought this propertyout in the country, and I'm like.
And all I care about right now is like,growing grass, growing
trees and, like, flowers and stuff.

(17:14):
And I'm like,I need to call the extension of.
I wish I would have paid more attentionto these classes because this is
what I actually care about deeply now,and I don't really know what I'm doing.
And so I don't know that it mattersas much as the relationships
that you develop.
I really think thatand I think like just the university
as well, that you choose and that networkand the people who will help you along.
I mean, if you have a work ethic,if you're humble,

(17:35):
if you don't make excuses like, and you dogood work, people will find a spot for,
I mean, that's what I want.
That's what I want to hire businessesthat I've started.
That's what I look for.I look for that. And there's people not.
Are you technically proficientand such and such?
I can teach you that,but I'm looking for a specific
type of personthat I want to hire, and it's that.
How far post collegeshould you go get your MBA?

(17:57):
I got my MBA whenever I was 28,
so six years after I graduated undergrad.
You'd gone on from AT&T at that point?
No, I was living in Dallas.
I was dating my college sweetheart, Cat,who played soccer at A&M,
and she was a freshman.
I was a senior, and so I lived hereand I would drive to College Station
every weekend.

(18:18):
And I remember I went and asked herdad's permission to marry her,
and he told me, no.
And he didn'twant her to marry a southern boy.
And I wasn't a doctor or a lawyer,so I wasn't successful
as smilingand dialing in a cubicle at AT&T.
So he's like, no, I don't think so.
And so he wanted usto date in the same city.
So she moved here with a family,and we dated in Dallas

(18:38):
while she applied medical schooland then got in in Houston.
So we moved to Houston in 2008,and that's when I applied and,
started going to business school at rice.
But I was working during the dayand got my MBA at night at rice.
And then from there I just started, see,I was like, man,
you've got a really nice houseand you have a really nice car.
What do you do? And these guys are like,I do finance.

(18:59):
I was like, what does that even mean?
You do finance?
Like, what do you know, wealth managementor do sales and trading or do investment
banking and investment bankers like, yeah,we stay up all night, do pitch decks.
I was like, man, it sounds lame.
And, and then the wealth managementguys develop relationships
and investing in the markets. I was like,that's what I want to do.
So I met a couple guys did this, and I met

(19:22):
this guy, Shea morenz, who was likeone of the best human beings in the world.
He was the quarterback for Texasback in the early 90s,
and he was a managing directorat Goldman Sachs.
And I interview with himand he gave me a job,
and it was so funny because he was like,hey, why should I hire you?
How's that?
Well, I look on the on the floorand all I see is longhorns.
I was like,you don't have any Aggies, man.
And I was like, I know him.
So I was like, you should hire meright now and let's go crush it.

(19:44):
And he was like, game on, let's do it.
Lusk and so that's how I got my jobat Goldman and that was at it.
So I literally like, you know, resigngave me a 30 day notice at AT&T.
15 days later I graduated from riceand then six weeks later
I started at Goldman in New York,trading July the 5th of 2011.
I want to dig into to Goldman.

(20:04):
But first, for peoplewho are considering going
and getting an MBA,what advice would you give about that?
I would say go to a school, I would goI mean, when I think about MBAs, it's
you're basically going forthe relationships and the name on the wall
because it provides credibilityto whoever you're talking to later.
Like nobody cares.

(20:25):
You know how you finished in your class,all of those things?
I wouldn't say that.
I was like, I left rice and I was like,man, I've got all this more,
not more knowledge.
And I, I did, but again, I was justI was trying to get through it.
I was working, married,you know, trying to to execute on that.
But when you say, hey, I went to riceand I've worked at Goldman,

(20:45):
you have instant credibility with people,you and whatever you're doing.
So when I tell people and they say,I want to go get an MBA, I was like,
just go to go to prestigious schooland make a lot of friends.
And if you can't, then don't do it.
Go work somewhere, get experience,get a great mentor.
And that's what I tell your kids anyway.
It's like your first job doesn'tnecessarily matter what you're doing,

(21:06):
but it matters who you work forand go work for a great leader
and do it for 2 or 3 yearsand learn everything that you can.
Like that.
So Goldman Sachs big, big name,very prestigious.
And you were doing wealth managementthere.
What what did that mean at Goldman?
You basically go get meetingswith rich people and bring in someone

(21:26):
who actually knows what they'retalking about, to talk to the people
you got the meetingwith as a young person.
So it's a lot of networking and,you know, spending time around.
I focused primarily on peoplewho were selling companies
because you have this thingcalled a t list,
which is a list of namesthat each person has.
And you can't call that personif they're not on your t list.
So basically anybody you'd ever read aboutis already covered by somebody.

(21:49):
And so I would just I wouldn'ttell my investment making buddies
that worked for these smaller shopsthat were, hey,
we're selling this company for 20 millionbucks or 50 million bucks or whatever.
I'm like, hey,can you connect me with those guys?
So I spent a lot of time in Berlin,
and that's kind of how I built my businesswas, you know,
developing those relationships.And I go back to it.
Most of my clients were all, you know,blue collar guys who sold these big, awful

(22:12):
service companies
that I could just relate withbecause they were like me
from a small town, but they just hit itbig and figured it out.
And so it was very different.
I really didn't spend much timein the city going after folks,
but that was kind of that'show I built my little bit, my business.
And go on a meeting with these people.
The goal was to get themto move their investments to Goldman.

(22:35):
Yeah, yeah.
And you know, at at the time
2011, it was like four years afteroh eight, Goldman had a bunch of bad
publicity and, you know, you'rejust trying to get meetings.
I remember there was this guywho sold this awful service company.
And you know, Goldman'sgreat to tell your friends.
I think it's cool.
But at the time was very challengingto get clients.

(22:57):
I mean, people would call inbecause they want to work with Goldman
and those leads would get distributedto different people.
But our job was to go get those meetings.
And I remember this guyand I brought him in the office
and he was like,all right, he's a goldsmith.
You guys are an investment bank.
What kind of investments do you have?
And I was like, oh, dude, I'm probablygoing to get a client because, like,
he actually doesn't know who we are.

(23:18):
And I mean, we are an investment bank,but we were in the wealth management
side of it.
And so we were able to bring himone of the clients, my first client,
like 17 million bucks,I was like, high five.
And it was really cool.
But yeah, I spent a couple of years
there and went to workfor a group called Avalon, which,
spun out of Goldman back in the 90sand then started their own shop.
And so WeWork forthose guys are just the great guys.

(23:40):
I loved working for them.
And the culture was like,probably what Goldman was like
when it was, you know, private.
And so, I mean, they werethey were just great.
And I did that for a few years, andI was like, I was super successful at it.
And I was like, man,I can do this on my own.
Like,I can either make you guys a lot of money
or I can go make money for my family.

(24:00):
They respected it.
I mean, I wasit wasn't like I was a big dog.
I'm not trying to portray myself as that,but I was like,
I want to go to this someone I own,and and I'm a terrible employee.
I'm terrible at working for people
because I see the world a certain way,and I want to go do it a certain way.
I'd rather be told, hey, here's the resultI want, and then let me go do it
the way that I want.And then I'll deliver for you.

(24:22):
But it's not going to be your typicalcall.
100 people do this or that.
And so I was like, man, I, I never thoughtthat I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I was just too much of a maverick,not to be.
And so I ended up figuring outthat there's all these guys in wealth
management that have their own shops,and it's very fragmented industry.

(24:42):
And so it's all based on relationship.
Like if one bank had the best results,like everybody would be of that bank.
And so nobody does.
It's like it's basically marketing.
And so I was like,
and there's this industrythat will help you,
you know, from custodian to complianceto products, all these things,
they all support you to gostart your own deal.
It's like, can you go get clients or not?
That's the biggest question.And so I was like, I'm going to go do it.

(25:05):
You know, I could have just finished her.
No, she'd finished
medical school, was in residency,and we didn't know Jackson was born.
He was six months old. And I was like,you know what?
I made a decision before I was 35 thatI was going to go start my own company.
And so I was 34 when I left and started
the investment management businesseight years ago.
Talk a little bit more, though, abouthow did you compete against the

(25:27):
the big names like Goldman, MerrillSchwab, like these are these are names.
They're household names or namesthat people trust.
Why are they going to trust a guywithout a big name behind them?
Yeah. No, it's a it's a great question.
When I first I just didn't knowI mean I, I left going
you know, I want to I'm going to do this.

(25:47):
It's already been done. It'snot like I'm reinventing the wheel.
I know 20 people right now.
They've got their own shops.
You manage 100 millionto 2 billion or whatever it is.
And I was like, man,if they can do it, I can do it.
And it was a confidence.
It was confidence.I just saw how the business worked.
I saw how these other other entrepreneursworked,
and I just thought, like,I want to go do this.

(26:08):
If you can do it, I can do it.
And it's not rocket science.
It's literally like,go develop a relationship.
And this is what they taught us atGoldman Training.
There was this guy
I wish I could remember his name, buthe came in and he wasn't wearing a tie.
Even Lloyd Blankfein had a tie on.
But this guy,he had the largest wealth management shop.
And Goldman is from South Africa.

(26:29):
And he was like, okay, here's the dealI got here.
I didn't know anybody.
I'm not from this country.
I got a credit card numbers and businesscards, and I just started calling people.
He goes, if I can do it, you can do it.
And he used some pretty funny analogiesto explain what was going on.
And, he was like, you know, somebody,you see somebody lose a lot of weight
and you're like, well, what did you do?You're like, I just changed my diet.

(26:50):
And I started exercising, you know?But what else did you do now?
I just get up every morning at fiveand I go work out and I eat healthy.
And that's how I did it.
And he was like, that's whatthis job is. Diet and exercise.
But can you do it because most of youwill hit the snooze button.
Can you get up and go do it?
And then at the end he was like,and do me a favor,
write me a bad review so they'll stopasking me to come talk to you guys.

(27:10):
I don't like doing this.
And I was like, dude,I love standing ovation.
Like, love this guy. He's like, awesome.
But when I got on my own,I just did the same thing.
I just, I looked for people sellingcompanies, never pitching people
who already had wealth.
It's a waste of timeand just found those folks that were
that were selling companies.
The other thing that I noticed

(27:31):
is that entrepreneurswant to see other entrepreneurs succeed.
And so guys gave me businessthat they did not have to do
because I was taking a risk.
And I'm like, hey, I cut the assetsat Schwab, you know, do this and do this.
On investing. Like,you can't screw that up.
I can see it every day.
So I'm going to help you out
by giving you a couple million bucksor whatever it is and like, get you

(27:52):
because I want to see you succeedbecause I like you.
And so it started out like that.
And then you just build a track record.
And I started doing private investments,not just, you know, the public markets.
And so that draws the younger crowd,kind of the 35 to 45,
because they're not looking for a 60%return.
They're like,hey, I'd rather give up liquidity
and go invest in a in a private investmentthat I can't not

(28:15):
get my money back for 5 or 7 years,but higher expected returns.
So we started doing a lot of those,which is different.
And then I haven't shown a PitchBookin six years.
It's all referrals.
What I learnedis just take care of your clients.
Take I mean,I don't ever take a sales man.
I'm just like when I meet with
I met with somebody last nightand it was a referral from a client.

(28:35):
They already know what to expect.
They know what I do, what I don't do,and then it's like, okay, when do we start
this kind of the conversation?
Here's what we do. It's like an hourand then we go.
And so that kind of helps that.
I've also saw thatthere was a relationship
between the wealth managerand the, like, rich guy.
That gets really upsetwith the wealth manager.
There's a codependent relationship.

(28:56):
The wealth manager takes it
so the guy doesn't pull the moneyso he doesn't lose his fee.
And I was like, man,that's that's pretty jacked up.
I was like that.
Well, why would youwhy don't you just tell the guy the truth?
Well, he's going to pull his money.
And I was like, I'm never doing that.
Like, I like to sleep at nightand so talk straight, follow through.
And if you set those boundaries,the right people will come to you

(29:17):
and the wrong people will stay away.
Something you saidbefore you kind of dug deeper.
There was you're maverick.
You don't like doing things
you don't like, people telling youhow to do things a certain way.
And I've probably said this beforeon on the podcast, but the only thing
I like less than being told what to do isbeing told how to do it does that.

(29:37):
It does.
And I tied together because it's kind of,
there's like this dichotomy in mebetween being teachable, coachable,
but also seeing a way of doing thingsthat I'm sure other people see it.
But it's like,I think this works over here
versus like checking a lot of boxesso that you can go report to your manager
and they feel good.

(29:58):
So you have kind of these false metricsthat don't really matter at all.
And so I'm like,how do we get rid of all of that.
And it's hardto do in a large organization.
It's very hard to do.
The second thing I'd say is
if you want to create wealth,you need to own your own company.
You've got to own equity in something.
And that was my other conviction is like,if I want to go do this,
you can't complain.
You have guys that have been at thesefirms for 20 years and they complain,

(30:22):
why don't have equity?
What do they do this for this I'm like,why don't you go do your own deal?
Like, what's stopping you right now?
It's your monthly expenses, I get it.
But like, stop complainingor just go do something different.
Go do something about it.
Because you don't want to be that guywho's 45 or 50 years old
and trying to stick it to the man, like,go be the man.
You have the opportunity.
And this one, I'm sure, and told mewhen I saw the company, he was like,

(30:46):
you know, you're standing over a cliffand it's really scary.
And you look down thereand you've got to jump.
And he's like, you look over and thenfinally you jump in what you realize it
was it wasn't actually a cliff,it was a curb.
But most people won't jump.
And that's what I've found is like people,you work your tail off,
you find a niche, you find customers,you take care of those customers.

(31:09):
I tell other peopleand the thing just goes bananas.
1,000%.
And I love that cliff curb analogy.
I think it's the fear that holdsmost people back.
And the fear is what you said.
It's making making those
those monthly expenses,making sure that they're covered and paid.
You talked aboutyou'd set a goal for yourself
that by the age of 35,you wanted to start a business.

(31:31):
When did you make that decision?
Probably when I was 33,
because I was talking to this, old guy.
I own the hemp company, explorationproduction company, and, Houston.
And he said that he started his companywhere he's 35, and he just challenged me
as like, hey, by the time you're 35,that's when you need to do it.

(31:51):
And I've heard this great Jack Ma orwatch this video and have you seen it?
Or he's like in your 20s, you should belearning everything you possibly can.
you should be a student.
Like learning under a great mentor.
When you're in your 30s, go try somethingbecause your risk level is very low
by the time you're 40.
In your 40s should be do somethingthat you're passionate about.
By the time that you're 50,you should be like pouring in

(32:13):
and mentoring tons of people.And when you're in 60s,
you should be spending all your timewith your grandkids.
And I think about it, I tell that a lot.
I tell the younger folks who work for meand just go, hey,
you're in your 20s right now.
Like you, I hope you go live, bird dog.
You can go start a company and I'll backyou like in your 30s.
But right now, learn everythingyou can, develop as many relationships

(32:33):
as you canand just be an awesome employee.
And then go start something.
When you're in your 30s, whenthe risk is minimal and you can go do it.
And so that's kind of how I think about itin those terms.
Mentorship is a topicthat's come up a ton with our guests.
You clearly had a lot of mentors thatthat spoke into your life along the way.

(32:54):
Were those mentor relationships?
Were they like formal relationships where,
you know, Jonathan,we're going to sit down
once a week and we're going to talk aboutwe're going to go through this program,
or was it more about just somebodythat was present in your life
that that spoke when they saw somethingthat needed to be spoken about.
The way that I've gone about itis when there's someone that I meet
and respect and want to learn from,I typically pursue them.

(33:16):
And again,I tell this to kids coming out of college.
I'm like, hey,
whatever you want to do,go find five people that you respect
and email them or
call them and say you want totake them out the coffee or lunch
and you're never going to,I know, you know,
mean money,but like, you're never going to pay.
They're going to pick it upwith just the fact that you'll go
take the initiativeto get in front of them,
and if they like you,then they'll spend more time with you,

(33:38):
or they'll help you and connect youand all those things.
And so that's been my approach.
If there's been somebody thatI respected a lot, then I'll pursue them.
And if they like me,
then they'll invite me, hey, come to thisdinner with me or come to this.
And then I just ask a lot of questionsand just go through things
that I'm struggling with,that I'm thinking about.
And a lot of like, how do I make gooddecisions and things like that.

(34:01):
And so all of my mentorrelationships to this day are informal.
It's like, hey, can we go, you know,can we go grab dinner on your schedule?
I know you're busy, butI'd love to just talk to you for an hour.
And they typically always make themselvesavailable.
And do you have people that you'renow doing that for?
Oh, yeah.
I would say that

(34:21):
the people that work for meare the people that I talk to every day.
You know,a couple of them are in their 20s
and I teach them everythingI possibly can.
I would say the two groups of peoplethat I've mentor the most are my kids.
And my employees that are in their 20sand spend a lot of time with them.
Then I've got tons of kids from Adamthey call and want.
I mean, I talk to these guyswho started a company yesterday

(34:44):
and we had an hourand 15 minute conversation
just about life and businessand how to think about things,
how to prioritize who to listen to,who not to listen to,
how to make decisions, things like that.
And so I mentor, you know, downand get mentor, you know, up as well.
You still have your investment businessfriend that's been gone eight years now.

(35:05):
You're like, there's last week.Yeah. Okay.
What gave you the confidenceto make that move?
It was more like dissatisfaction.
You could go back to,why did I want to get out of Whitesboro?
Why did I want to get outof the corporate world?
Just not satisfied I'm not there.
I was like, your boss comes by 3:00and you're acting like you're busy

(35:26):
and you're done at 11.
And I wish I was, like, taking a napor working out because I'm tired
and then,you know, getting back up at four
and go to meet somebody for coffeeor drinks and dinner
and then go inand that's what I want to do.
I mean, I'm like, goes back to my like,this is how I think it should work.
Like,I think you should get up and work out
and go make some money for breakfastin the all your calls and go to lunch
and then go for me. I'm like a slut.

(35:48):
I need like an hour nap or whateverbecause I'm like going very fast
and then I'll re-energize and like,get after it and then go meet more people.
But I find myself, like,acting like I'm busy when my boss walks by
and sending him reports that don't matterabout things that don't matter,
that aren't really moving the needle.
And I was just like, man,there's got to be a better use of time

(36:09):
to actually just do the job and spend timewith people that I really love
and enjoy being aroundand building a business around that.
I don't know how I'm going to do it.
There's no guarantee success.
It could failand I could have to come back and ask
for my job and just live in a situationthat I don't enjoy.
But like the pain is too muchfor me to to stay.
And so I have to go.
And then when you start the company

(36:30):
and then it's successful and takes off,you're like, man, I made it.
And then I think a lot aboutand even in the bird dog venture,
which I talk about a little bit, is youdon't want to miss out on the adventure,
especially when you're like,this is a startup.
I hope my business works.What if it doesn't?
Am I going to lose money?Lose investors money?
I mean, I haven't investorsin the wealth management business,

(36:52):
but what if it doesn't work?
Reputation. I'm all in.
All these things that you battle against,you're like, I don't care.
I'm going all in. I'mgoing after it all in.
And from the first business to now,I just think about,
do not miss that opportunity of facingfears, of going through tough times
and enjoying the moment,because you hear about guys all the time

(37:14):
and have big exits and I'm like, man,I just miss the grind and how hard it was.
And you know, things like that.
When you came home one dayand told your wife, Cat that you wanted to
go off and start your own investment firm,what was her response?
Well, she knows that I prayabout everything, that I seek wisdom
about all major decisions, and I talkto her and just and she knew I mean it.

(37:37):
She knew that I needed to go do it myself.
And she was in the middleof medical school
and then going into residency.
So she was super focused on that,and our expenses were very low.
I mean, we lived in an 800 square foothouse in Houston and had a couple of dogs
and a bunch of student debt,but I was like, I've got to go do this.
And she's like, okay.
And that's how she's always beenwhen I've talked to her about it.

(37:59):
And I'm like, I'm certain of this.
Like, we have to go do this. She's like,okay, go do it.
I'm here and we're doing this together.
So she's always been solid. She's solid.
All right.
Bird dog. Yeah. What is it?
So bird dog is a marketplaceconnecting landowners with hunters.
the genesis of thisis that two of our friends, Evan

(38:20):
Loomis and Jason Ballard,start a company called icon Build.
It's a 3D printing company,
and they took some money off the tableon a recent fundraise.
And Ballard bought a ranchin Terlingua down in Big Bend.
And I'm managing their money for them.
And, Ballard's like, hey, Lusk.
It was like, after the Christmas party,he's like, okay, here's the deal.

(38:43):
I need you to not just manage my money,but I need you to do my taxes
and manage my ranch.
And I was like, well, I don't doany of that because that's a lot of work.
And that does not sound fun to me.
He's like, we'll just double my fee.
I was like,what did you just say? I was like,
let me let me update my resume.
I'm in the ranch management business.
I was like, that's amazing, let's do it.
And so I was trying to find like an Airbnb

(39:04):
for hunting to put his ranch onso we could show some income.
And his LLC, that was that was basicallywhat I was trying to do.
And I scoured the Earththat I could not find a good solution.
And I went back to him and said,hey, there's no Airbnb for hunting.
You can imaginethere's no technology in this business.
And like 95% of the land in Texasis privately owned.

(39:25):
You have all of these ranches,you only get to hunt if you're invited
or you own a ranch.
It's like,hey, Scott, you want to come hunting?
Well, it's like January the 8th.
And you know what?
It doesn't work for me or whatever.
And here's a listof all the things you can't shoot.
You're like, okay, but my dad said,we can shoot hogs, you know?
Okay. That's fun. Yeah.
It's great,
but what if you had a central placethat you could go to and choose

(39:49):
what species you wanted to hunt, whatprice, what geography, where you could go?
And I liken it to, like,if there are golfers out there,
imagine a world in whichthere are only private golf courses
and you only get to playif you're invited.
We're effectively creating a publictee time system for hunting, so I can
choose where I want to go, what dateI want to go, how much I want to spend,

(40:10):
and then we're getting these guys into itwho are just falling in love with it.
A lot of guys who didn't grow up huntinglike me, I didn't grow up hunting my dad.
I mean, I,I worked in the fish business and my dad,
yeah,he traded fish for one hunt when I was 14.
And so I got to shoot one buck.
And so I've got kids now, and I'm like,well, I want them to grow up.
Is this part of our family tradition?

(40:32):
But I don't even know what I'm doing.
And so what I foundis there's a lot of guys like that
that have got some capital to spend.
Want to go hunt?
Maybe not know what they're doing,want their kids to get into it.
So we do a lot of hunters,
where the kids are in the front row,the dads are in the back row,
and that's okay.
I know what I'm doing.
And I'm like, no,you don't, and neither do I. So it's cool.
And then we teach the kids

(40:52):
and teach the dads,and then you go shoot shotguns and rifles.
Hey, dad, you get up here and load it,you know, and then he starts shooting,
and then you open up the laptop
and you have a father son huntand it's just been very, very successful.
And in the spirit of not growing up in it,I had a view of what I wanted
my experience to be like, and I couldI was like, I want to show up to a ranch.
I want to go sight rifles and go hunt,and then I want to have a great meal,

(41:16):
sit around the campfire, smoke cigars,all my buddies and like,
laugh and talk and go deepand then go hunt again, have great meals.
And I was like, man, I'd love for thereto be some country music aspect of this.
It'd be fun to have somebody playing.
The month after Taylor Jackson,I started this business, by the way.
So, and then Ballard backed us.

(41:37):
So Taylor and Taylor was in theconstruction business and was like, hey.
He's your co-founder. He'smy. Co-founder. Ted's my co-founder.
So he was in the construction business,and he was looking at it
from a perspective of, hey,
I want to take all my subcontractorshunting, but it's hard to find places.
And I was coming at it from a stewardshipperspective, from
I've got these wealth management clientswho've got ranches

(41:58):
and they need to sell more huntsto generate income.
So Ballard's at 810.There's been talk about this.
You guys get togetherI'm gonna I'm going fund you.
And then the next monthI was hunting with Colt McCoy.
And Colt was like, hey, I love this idea.
I want to invest in the company.
And so he andI become really good buddies.
And so he was my second investor.
So we raised some capital
and gotten our trucksand just started signing ranches up.

(42:20):
And basically you've got all of theseranches, tens of thousands of them
in Texas that already have lodges,food guides and game.
They just need help on marketing
and maybe a websitethat's 20 years old and call for pricing.
It's very challengingfor the hunter to decipher.
Why does this animal cost 3000?
This cost $2,500. Same animal.

(42:41):
What are the amenities? Things like that.
It's just like Airbnb or Vrbo,but for hunting.
And so we just, you know,I read Brian Chesky talk about how
he would go to a professional photographerin early days of Airbnb and the
in the photo sold.
So right when we started,we got a professional photographer,
photographed all the ranches,drone footage, all the things,
wrote descriptions, talk to the biologistabout what game could be harvested.

(43:04):
And then we put it on a websiteand we built it on Shopify.
originally.
And, you know, our first year we had 112hunters come through in like four months.
And, you know, we just finished our firstfull year and it was around 200 hunters.
But all everybody starts
shooting a doe or something smallerand everybody goes up for bigger animals.
So higher margin stuff.

(43:25):
But it's been really cool.
Back to the country music.
I called Colt and I was like,hey man, I've got an idea.
We should get some country musicsingers out here on the ranches
and just play private concertsand things like that.
I was like, well, how do you know?He's like, I know everybody, man.
I was like, well, let's go.
And so he hooked me up with Pat green.
And so I brought on Pat as a partner,gave him equity in the business.
And so, he's been great,playing shows for us and then brought in

(43:48):
Roger Krieger
same way and then do a lot of stuffwith Josh Abbott, who's wonderful.
And so we've got this, and then we've gota bunch of guys who are in the Texas
country music scene,but not those big names, but phenomenal,
phenomenal musicians, singer songwritersthat will come.
And it's,you know, corporate groups who like,
hey, I've got 8 or 10 guysand I want to go do this hunt.

(44:08):
Can we get a musician to play on Saturdaynight or something like that?
Not Saturday, because all these guysare busy on the weekends.
But if you did a deal
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,then they're going to come and do that.
So, it's been I'll tell you what,we're having a lot of fun.
It's a blast and it's fun.
It's always fun.
It's really cool to see the livesget changed on these ranches when you can,

(44:29):
get guys off their phoneand onto the ranch and to go hunt,
especially the father son stuff,where you're creating a rite of passage
for them that they otherwise couldn'tfigure out how to do,
and they don't know how big of a deal it'sgoing to be until it happens.
And so thethe comments are not like three star.
It's like all five star.
And hey, this is life changing.

(44:50):
Thank you so muchfor what you guys have done.
And so we see that there's a huge purposebehind what we're doing
building this company.
You talk about being a maverickand wanting to kind of I'm paraphrasing
but break the rules.
And man, it sounds like with this,you've done that.
I mean, there weren't a lot of rulesto begin with, but like, you've
you've really pushed the boundariesand taken it created something

(45:11):
out of nothingthat is truly, truly unique.
I listened to a podcast recentlywhere the founder of Calendly,
I don't know if you're familiar Calendly,
but it's a calendar system that helpspeople book meetings with one another
in creating Calendlycame out of his frustration with the fact
that he needed to schedule meetingswith different people, and it was so hard.

(45:34):
There was nothing.
There was nothing out there toto help him do that.
Your thing was birthed out of necessity,right?
You had this need.You had this frustration.
It amazes me how many problems
there are still out therethat don't have a solution.
Do you think beyond bird, dogand are there other ventures

(45:54):
that you're thinking about getting into,or are there other problems
in the marketplace that you seethat you want to go solve for?
Most of the problemsthat I see can be solved within Bird Dog.
So I didn't seek this out.
Go on. I'mlooking for another company to start.
I mean, life was really good
and now it's really hard,like working 12 to 15 hour days.
But when I look into this industry,it was out of necessity.

(46:18):
I just couldn't believe there wasno technology in the hunting world.
I mean, you got websites that connectoutfitters with hunters, but there's,
you know, there was no real websitesthat connected landowners with hunters.
And I knew the landowner really wellfrom doing my wealth management business.
I mean, these are all the guysthat I was talking to.
And so within that,I've noticed a lot of things,

(46:40):
like the companies that will start,you know, it'll be within Bird Dog,
but there are things like the animallive trade, like Texas is like
Africa, basically, where you've gotall these species of animals that are bred
and then sold from ranch to ranch,and then people go hunt them.
And a lot of species exist,like are not extinct because of hunters.

(47:00):
And so they breed all these animals.
But there's no technology withinthe buying and selling of the animals.
So hey, we just sold 20or we need to reload.
Can you help me find oryx?
And then you call a bunch of people,and then you finally find some,
and then you hope that the guy
is trustworthy to get it there,and then you hope some of them don't die.
And you're like, man,this is super inefficient.

(47:21):
And so what I've noticedis as we talk to our customers
on the land on our side,they tell us all of their problems.
I mean, the other one I would say isyou have a lot of landowners
who own 20 to 100, maybe 200 acres,
and they live in the cities they live inDallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio,
and the pipe bus on their welland they're like,

(47:43):
okay, what do you have to do?
You got a call from Dallas,like five different plumbers
until somebody can comeget it fixed, or I need my fence fixed.
I need to build a pond.
I need a pole barn, put up whatever it is.
Like the services outthere are very fragmented.
And so at some point,not right now, but we'll create, you know,

(48:03):
think of like the Angie's Listfor rural landowners.
So the reason that people dogood work is if they can do their job
and then they and there's accountabilitylike you're publicly rated and reviewed.
I think about myself as an example.
We've got a little place in WashingtonCounty.
It's like 26 acres.
I got my barn yesterdayand one of my pipes is busted at the well.

(48:26):
And so I use a real example of mine,and water's going everywhere.
I've turned all the valves offand I can't think of what to do.
And I called two different plumbers,and thankfully
one guy was like, hey,I can come out there.
We happened to just finish a job,but if not,
you'd be luckyto get somebody out there that day.
And he was like, hey,you know, totally electricity after the,
you know, hit the breaker.
I was like, oh, great.I didn't think about that.

(48:47):
So turn off the water stops.
Fine. He fixes it.
But I live there.
Imagine if you don't live there, you havea caretaker or something like that.
Then imagine like going into a websiteand we call it like a landowner portal
that we're buildingwhere the landowners can go
in, they can blackout their dateswhen they're at the ranches.
They can buy and sell animals,when they need to reload.
And then you also say,hey, I need a plumber.

(49:09):
And guess what?
The top
ten plumbers with all five star ratingsin the surrounding three counties come up
and you message themand they pick up the job,
you know, like an Uber driver or whatever,and like, hey, I'll be over there
because whenever you're pipes busted,you're not really negotiating on price.
You're like, hey,I just need it fixed as soon as possible.
And so that's the next thing.
I think there's no real service component,especially those ranches

(49:31):
that are 20 to 100 acreswho don't have a dedicated ranch manager.
But you could put together a platformfor fractional ranch managers,
for people who mow and trim your treesand clean your house.
And if you don't live there, have itprepared.
When you and your family and friendswant to go, it's all fragmented.
These guys are on the phoneten hours at a time before

(49:53):
they can find somebody to come spraythe weeds on their pond.
I see a lot of thingsthat are ancillary to what we're doing is
you start out with hunting,but then you can become a SAS company
for that landowner to go, hey, if you wantto sell hunts on your ranch, you can.
If you don't, BrewDog offersthese other this other marketplace
this, you knowkind of business to business for you.

(50:15):
I think about that.
As a business leader, business owneryou got lots of ideas.
How do you prioritizewhat you're going to do next?
How quicklymy design product and engineers can work.
And how much capital I have.
I mean, I've got a lot of ideas,but I also have a board of directors.

(50:36):
And so we have quarterly meetingsand kind of go through here's what we did.
Here's kind of the vision.
And Jason Alexander board, probablythe best board member you could ever want.
He's he's total is unbelievable.
We have this law firm for startupsin Austin.
This guy was likeBallard left our board meeting
and the guy was like, hey, you guyswant some honest feedback after me?

(50:58):
He just. He didn't say a word.
The whole meeting is just,you know, taking notes.
He's like, as for a guy who sits on 20or 30 of these a quarter, he's like,
that's the best I've ever seenof any company I've been involved in.
And what. What made it so.
He said that Ballard was commandand control.
He said most board
members are like finance guyswho really don't think about operating,

(51:18):
but they just want to see the numbersand all that stuff in Ballard
whiteboarding, going, okay, here'swhat the organizational chart needs.
Here's where we're weak.
We need to go find a product personfor the hunter side.
I probably person for the lander side.
You need three engineersfor each of these.
If you're not willing to commit three,you don't care about the product.
All right.
We need to identify a product personto report the CTO.
Okay. The next group is the sales team.

(51:39):
Here's how it's broken out okay.
Admin, this is our CFO.
And he's going to handle all documentsfor hiring all financials,
all those things okay. We got it.All right.
Lusk, your job by the next boardmeeting is to go interview 60 landowners
and hunters.
You're going to get 15new ranches on the website.
I want you to add fishing to the website.

(52:00):
And then I want to do a deal codefor anybody who signs up for it.
Give them 250 bucks
and they give me another 100for each friend they have that signs up.
All right. That's your to do list.
He goes, I'm just a board member.
You don't have to do anything,I'm telling you.
But this is my point of view.
So a board member who's actuallywhiteboarding and strategizing
with you, he's got a but I said, well,how did you learn that, Ballard?

(52:21):
I told him at dinner,I was like, man, yeah,
I wasn't impressedbecause this is how you always are.
Like,I just thought, that's par for the course.
But this guy was very impressed.
He's like, I learned it from a guynamed Jason Portnoy, who's
I think he's like the first CFOfor Facebook or something like that.
He's the PayPal Mafia and just a stud.
And he's on Jason's board.
He's like, this is how Portnoy doesall our board meetings.
It's I've learned it from him.

(52:42):
And I was like, man, that was I'mso thankful for you to have you.
And so how do I go back to your questionabout how do you take all these ideas
and really stay focusedis those board meetings are super helpful.
I need like three tasks to go get done.
Like what can I go executeand where does that fit in with the vision
for right now?
Because I tend to live in the future,and a big area of opportunity

(53:03):
for me is to be present and to go like,what do we get?
We got to go execute on this nowand then we just do 30 day sprints
before the next board,30 days or so, 90 day sprints.
What are we going to do the next 90days? We've got to get it done.
And all of our KPIs, key performanceindicators
are all driventowards those goals to achieve.
And then you go to the next board meeting.

(53:24):
It's like,okay, let's update the org chart.
What do we need next?
And that's been super helpful
to have that structure with Taylor,my co-founder on the board, and Ballard.
You've touched on this
a couple different timesand you've referenced Uber and Airbnb.
You are a two sided marketplace.
You've got to find the landownerand you've got to find the hunter,

(53:45):
which is harder of the two.
So I think in the in theif you were to come into this
with no relationshipsin the state of Texas
or wherever that you're starting it from,the landowners the hardest part
because these get likethe typical landowner
is a guy who sold a big companyor owns a big company, bought this land.
It's recreational. They all lose money.

(54:07):
I mean, if you have a huge cattleoperation, you might break even
or make a little bit of money,but I'd say 99% of them are in the red.
They're recreational,they're fun for family and friends.
They're typically in a trust.
There's five kids in the trust.One kid likes to hunt.
The rest don't care,and everybody gets capital.
Called for propertytaxes, feed bills and insurance.
And so you may get a sibling is like, hey,we need $50,000.

(54:31):
Like, well, I don't that's not my ranch.
Well, yeah, you own 20% of it.
So like send the money and soand then they've got to generate income
because they're, they're LLCs.
And so they're either cattle hayhunting operations, whatever they're doing
to generate revenue.
So through our relationshipsand really our investors in our cap table
who are really tied in with this,and just as we talk on podcasts

(54:53):
and meet different people,somebody is like,
hey, my cousin's got a ranch,my uncle's got a ranch.
Hey, these guys want to sell some hunter?
They've already gota commercial operation.
We want to put our ranch on Bird dog.
And so we've been very fortunateto get ranches.
We've got about 30 ranchesin the last 15 months.
we're going to add another 35 this yearbecause we think that that that capacity
you can have again, a fan of metrics like,oh, we got 300 ranches.

(55:16):
Doesn't matter if you're not feedingthese people business and they're happy.
And I'd rather have 65people love us than, you know, a handful.
Not like usbecause it's not working out for us.
So we've been very fortunate on the ranchside.
The interesting thing about the Hunterside is the two groups
that we really focus onare high net worth individuals

(55:38):
because our experiences are premium.
You sell a premium product, we.
Sell.
Them to sit around the campfire and drinkbourbon and smoke cigars with that grain.
That's not an everyday kind of everyone.We put these opportunities on Facebook.
We hear about it.
It's like, that's highwayrobbery. I'd never pay for that.
I'm like, I know that, I knowwe'll get there as you scale ranches
and then you can show all these ranches,like who's paying what for what.

(55:59):
You have all the data on the backend to go, hey,
the average hundredand 50 inch whitetail is going for $4,500.
And so you can adjust your pricingaccordingly accordingly. Mr.
landowner, then I can take it down to 3500and then like its supply
and demand, you know, increase supplyand then prices come down.
But the other group outside of that,those individuals are corporate groups,

(56:21):
and there are corporate groupsthat have budgets that are 20,000, a
half $1 million to take clientshunting in the construction business.
All full service companies, whatnot.
And they usually go to the same ranch.
And so we spend a lot of time going,like setting up booths at different events
for all full service companies,for exploration
production companies or whateverit is at these events.

(56:42):
And then they're like,oh man, we can go do this.
Like, hey,we're going with you guys this year,
and then you get that repeat businessor they'll bring 8 or 10 guys on a trip.
And if you can get 50 of those a year,you break even in this business.
And so we focused really heavilyon those groups of people.
I also think thatwe launched two years ago
and then last year with the rate,you know, interest rates

(57:03):
where they're at like this couldn'tbe like the harder year to ever operate
because they're raisingall my budgets cut.
I set of ten guys this year.
I've got to bring three or like
bring them and we're going to knock itout of the park for them.
And when it comes back,we'd love your business
and we'd love to hear this more like,no, definitely we'll be back.
It's just budgets are down.
And so those are theI don't know that the hunters are the

(57:24):
the hardest part, but they are whenever,whenever the economy's down.
But we still fought through itand had a really good year
and developedsome really important relationships.
So I'd say the hunters this yearwere harder to get than the ranchers.
But at the same time, when hunters aren'thunting, ranchers need more support.
So we weren't able to,like, really level up all of our ranches

(57:44):
because everybody went fromif you had 50 guys,
you know, two years ago or three yearsago, you might have had, you know, 30.
And so like, hey,we need help sell more hunts,
which is allowed us to get moreranchers on the platform.
Is it safe to say with youryour first business, your investment
business, it was not a capital intensivething to get off the ground.

(58:05):
Yeah. It just took grit.
And you know,you need some money to go buy
coffee for people and tell the story.
And maybe you know, go print pitch decks.
You didn't have to raise moneyto start that one.
That was interesting
because I partnered with a family earlyon, who gave me working capital,
and then I bought them outafter a couple of years.

(58:25):
But the working capital
was really just a hedge against my fearbecause I was afraid of failing.
And so I was like, if I could partnerwith this family, that'd be really good.
But never in a kind of a raising a,
you know, asafer convertible note or a price round.
I never raised money.
I mean, I didn't, you know, Ballardcoached me up on all this.

(58:45):
He was like, yeah, you got to get a C corp
and you got to do thisand you're going to go raise money.
And this is the wall you're going to use.And here's how it works.
And so it's, in the venture capital world,and we've raised
a little bit of venture capital.
Roger Sealy here in Dallasis one of my partners.
Morrison. Seager.
They're awesome.
And so there are one venturecapital partner.
We've got another special purpose

(59:06):
vehicle group that came in,and then the rest are all individuals.
But it's definitely kind of a venturecapital structure
of raising, you know, rounds of capitalto grow the business,
to eventually, you know, grow a really,really big company.
Is it stressful having these investors,
and how active are they in terms of whatthey want to see the organization do?

(59:28):
What I thought
about raising money from investors was,
when I first started was, you know,am I going to get feedback?
Is it
going to be talking to a ton of peoplewhen I need to be operating the business?
The way I thought about it, it'svery similar to how
I thought about my wealth managementbusiness.
Like I'm not working with any jerks,you know, there's no
I don't care how much money you have.I'm not working with you.
And so you can't do that at first.

(59:50):
You got to take whatever you canwhen you're in that business,
but eventually you can do itthe way that you want to do it.
I thought the same thing about investors.
I was like, I only want to workwith people that are really like that.
We have a high level of trustand they can help us grow the business.
So these investors are all guyswho own companies or running companies
or own ranches,and they're all accretive to our success.

(01:00:13):
Like if I go to those guys right nowlike, hey,
I need five more ranches,they're going to connect or hey, I need to
we need three more groupsto go hunting with us.
Okay. Hey, I got this company that we workother here.
Their starts comingup, introduce them to us,
and you just remind them and they can helpyou actually grow the business.
Versus like I should say,it's a real estate company.
You give that those guys money,you really can't add any value.

(01:00:34):
You just hope to get some return from themfrom what they know, what they're doing.
This is actually differentwhere these people can be involved.
They're focused on people who can help usgrow the business, who know the industry,
and really, it's just a businessthat attracts the same type of people.
Like they either get it or don't like.
I pitch this to probably 300 peopleand I've got about you,
about 15 investors,and then two of those are spivs,

(01:00:58):
that have got,you know, 10 to 15 in each of those.
And most people said no, you know,
and then but the people who said, yes,we're like, I totally get this.
This is a brilliant idea.
Like,why is no one doing this? I'm all in.
And so when I'm raising money,I don't push it hard.
I just tell the story.
And if you want to do it, do it.
If you don't know, big deal.

(01:01:18):
But usually they'll say, hey,talk to these three other people.
And that's how I've gone about it.
I mean, I just I live with open handsand the right people will come.
It's like mentor. Mine is like,
you know, he's like, I imagine myselfsitting in a chair every day.
And then I look around a room and there'sa door over there, and I go open it.
And if it's if it opens and I walkthrough it and explore what's in there

(01:01:41):
and if it's locked,because when I was younger, I kick it down
because I wanted it so badand then it would never work out.
It's what I wanted so bad, butit's not what it was supposed to happen.
And so I think about thatin life in general,
whether it's, you know, investorsor ranches or,
I mean, there's 100 decisions a daythat you can try to force,
but if you don't, if you explorebut not force, then

(01:02:02):
things typically work outthe way they're supposed to do.
You get two separate companies at least.
Yeah. Just do. And a family. Yeah.
And how do you balance your time?
it's very challenging with Bird Dog,and it's something that I talk to my wife
a lot about because there's this aspectthat you have to be on the road
and you have to be on these hunts.

(01:02:23):
You have to understand what the landownerwants because they're all unique.
You got to understand whatthe hunters want and then resolve problems
while they're there.
So there's an element you're one on one on22 hunts, like I had to be there.
But I also felt this guilt and shameof being away from my children
because like, hey,when are you going to come home?
What are you gonna do?When are you gonna hang out with us?
And there's all these country music songsthat you listened to, like my dad

(01:02:45):
wasn't there and, you know, whatever.
And like, oh,I don't want to be a country music song.
And so I thought about it a lot in yearone and just decided the folks
that work for me who don't have kidsor aren't married, I'm like, hey,
you're going to go on all these hunts.
And I just have to trust that, you know,you can pull it off
and you can identify thingsthat need to be resolved.

(01:03:06):
But when I think about the balancing,you have to prioritize
and you have to really take a lookat what your priorities are
and then put those first.
And for me,it's like my walk with the Lord.
Number two, it's my wife as my children.
And then it's, you know, my friendsand then business.
And so I'll ride it out.
We're like,where am I actually allocating my time?

(01:03:28):
And am I staying true to thosefirst principle things like you have to
and if I'm not, which no one does,you just go,
okay, it's time to recalibrateand I'm going to do it right now.
And then I'm going to go
say it out loud instead of keeping itin, I'm going to go tell my wife and I
go, tell my children, go tell my friends,I'm going to tell the colleagues.
And then that something about saying itout loud, you get a lot of power

(01:03:49):
and then you just get back upit like, right now, you know, I went on
maybe two hunts this year.
And so I've spent a ton of timewith my children,
with my wife, very attunedto I'm not just like, know about am
I know them I know I'm really well,there's this joy in that.
And now I'm going to season this nextmonth where I'm on three different hunts.
I'm here in Dallas for Dallas Safari Cluband it's time to work.

(01:04:09):
And I told them, hey,this is what I've got to go do.
And here's the expectations,but I'll be back.
But I just want to getto the end of my life.
You know, knowing thatI kept those first principles first.
And I took care of my wife and my kids
because it goes back to my family,like a broken family.
And then like getting the ball downthe field is like,
we've been married for 15 years together
for 23 kids, and it's like,let's go for 50 or 60 or whatever.

(01:04:33):
We can.
And then I want to see these kidsgrow up to be awesome human beings.
And it's just that bird dogin the wealth management
business are just a way to do that.
Doors that open up that Ithey just opened up.
but it's not like I'm like,oh man, I love finance
and I'm, I'm passionate about huntingand all these things.
It's like the Lord's called me into it,as best I can tell you, Scott.

(01:04:54):
And I'm and I'm going to go deliver.
What hasn't worked outlike you expected it to.
Working with friends is really hard.
Working with friends is very challengingor just working with people who,
even if they're not friends,let's just say it's a colleague.
Like they have different interestsfrom what your interests are.
And so let's say you have like,

(01:05:16):
a supplierthat, you know, I'm making this up, but,
you know, someone who sells shirtsor something like the outdoor shirts,
and they want to partner with you,
and you really like them a lot,and you're like, man, I need shirts
for this,but it's a bad allocation of capital or,
you know, I'm not going to do itand you're going to be mad at me
because I really want to do itand be big for you and your business.

(01:05:38):
But I can't do it, okay?
Conflicts of interest are verychallenging, and there's a lot of them.
The other one be like,we meet these people,
and when you're building these companies,you don't know exactly what you need.
I don't know anythingabout engineering and tailoring.
I found thatneither one of us are engineers.
And so he's like,hey man, take what I'm getting paid.

(01:05:58):
And let's go find an engineer,and I'm going to be on the board
and like,let's go showed a ton of humility on that.
But we didn't know that.We didn't know that.
We just thought there's like some whitelabel thing you could buy off the shelf.
And do this and just use relationshipsand things like that.
And then you have these different
groups of people who are like, hey,this is how much it costs.
This is what you should expect.
And then it's completely differentfrom what you thought.

(01:06:20):
And then you have to fire themand you're like, man,
I really like you as an individual,but like,
we can't keep youbecause it's not right for the business.
And I've got investors.
If it was like
just me by myself, I'd be like, okay,I'd be a little bit more compassionate.
But when you have other people's capital,it's a different ballgame of going,
and it makes you better because thoseare the right decisions you ought to make.

(01:06:41):
Like you're a fiduciary, like a fiduciaryin this one business.
You're also fiduciary in this other one.
And you have to make decisions that arein the interest of your investors.
That's something that surprised me.
I can't remember the question. Yes.
Well, that's been hard.
That's very hardbecause people get their feelings hurt.
But then the day, you know,
you're doing the right thingand you can sleep at night.
How many people do you have on the birddog team today?

(01:07:02):
We have got seven people on the birddog team.
Right.
Earlier in your career,when you were at AT&T
or when you were at Goldman,did you manage people?
My first job out of collegewas managing a team at AT&T.
I was in there like leadershipdeveloped program or manager program,
where they put you in an areafor 12 months and right

(01:07:23):
when you under like the training wheelscome off, they move you to another spot.
So my first job out of collegewas managing 12 network engineers.
And they were ladies
who, when, they would make a change outlike on a telephone pole
or something, they would call inand these ladies would type in the change.
And it was a union environment.
Two which is very interesting.

(01:07:43):
They're like,
hey, the Ldpe program, I called them,they called us little dumb people.
And they're like.
The leadership development program.
And I just
I laughed it off and they're like,hey, you just sit back
and don't try to be a hero,and we'll make you look really good.
I was like, all right, let's do it.
And so I'm just like bringing peoplecoffee, like,
you know, hey, let's wina, you know, gift card to so and so.

(01:08:06):
I was just like out therekeeping everybody happy.
And they crushed for me.
But I managed teams and then I, I did thatand then I managed a big sales
team was get my MBA is actually the reasonI could study all the time
because AT&T
had just bought Cingular Wireless andthey were integrating into AT&T wireless,
and there was no integrationbetween businesses

(01:08:27):
that had AT&T landlinesand internet and wireless.
So like, hey,
we want you to manage the teamthat goes into all these businesses
that have wireline businessand sell them cell phones.
And by the way, we're going to give you15 of the best Cingular
AT&T wireless salespeopleto come over here and work for you.
And so we crushed it.
I mean, I literally have salesteam meetings in the morning,

(01:08:50):
like just putting out fires for peoplesolving problems.
And I'd study, you know, during the dayand then go to school.
That and thanks to those peoplelike we made, we all made Diamond Club.
We got to go to Vegas.So I was like your top salespeople.
I was like, it was cool.
But, you know, thankfully the managingteams for, you know, a long time.
Is it different managing

(01:09:10):
when it's your businessthan when you were at AT&T?
Does it feel different things?
Do you manage them different?
You know what?
I've thought a lot about the leadershipnow that you're like, older and
have gained a lot of wisdom from peoplethat I've surround myself with,
is that you actually have something toto teach them.

(01:09:31):
The younger folks,you have someone that you can like,
wisdom, you can pass on them,and the leadership is interesting.
Like the guys I was talking to yesterdaystarted this apparel company
and they're like,
we only manufacture in the USAand we're giving 12% of our profit away.
There are revenue to nonprofits.
And we've talked to all these leadersand they told us what a bad idea it was.

(01:09:51):
But they had a lot of convictionaround it.
And I was like,hey, man, don't listen to them.
Like, you go do your deal.
And if this makes it big, stickto your guns are what you're building
and just go build itbecause like, you're fully committed to it
and you're young and you're hungryand you don't know what's going to happen,
you could be the next big whatever,but don't ever be discouraged.
And I think, like leadershipnow is a lot about those.

(01:10:14):
I just think about the thingsthat I've learned about decision making.
I talk about this a lot,
but Terry Looper is a mentor of mine,and he has like this process
of like how he makes decisions,and he's wrote a book on it.
And, you know, the first is like,consult your friend Jesus.
This is what he says.
First, he's like,you know, I was talking about bird dog.
Like, we're blowing and going.We're crushing it. He's like, hey, Laura.
He goes, hey, Lusk, if you talkto the Lord about this, I was like, nope.

(01:10:35):
He knows.
You know, he's like, well,
you might have a nervous breakdownlike I did when I was 37, but
now he's got a $6 billion companythat he owns by himself.
And he uses frameworkconsult, consult your friend Jesus.
He said, number two, gather the facts,like figure out what's true
and what's false.
Number three, watch for circumstanceslike what do you see that are trends
that are important.And number four is get neutral.

(01:10:58):
Don't try to manipulate the outcomebecause a lot of times we want to do
what we want to do instead of likejust waiting for the right thing.
It's kind of like what I was saying
about sitting downand waiting for that door to to open.
And he's like,and if you use that framework,
you'll make the best decisionsevery single time.
And so even importing that wisdomon these guys, it has impacted my life

(01:11:18):
if you can, if you can impact lives,I think that's the biggest thing.
On mentorship.
The other thing is just hiring a players.
If you hire a playersand you lead them well,
I just think most of my job is takingwhat the board says,
going and delivering a clear visionand then letting people execute.
And when they have big issuesthat if they bring it to me, it's

(01:11:39):
an issue that they really need help onand I need to get resolved ASAP.
And so it's a big decisionthat takes time to think through
and make the right decision.
And so, you know, I really empower them.
I'm very impatient with B playersand have no tolerance for C players.
But like that's the one of the biggest.
Get the eight players onand pour into them

(01:12:00):
and lead them well and they'll go flourishand then let them be free.
Don't try to control them.They want to go start another company.
Go let them do it.
If they want to go, call me and say, hey,I'm leaving to go somewhere else.
Great. How can I be supportive of you?
Live free.
The next person is going to come alongand they're going to crush it.
And that guy's going to get crushed.
That girl is going to go crush it,
and you're going to be friends,and it's going to

(01:12:20):
and you're going to watch your success,
and you're the one who planted the seedin the first place.
Like, let it grow and flourish.
Don't get upset.
That's how I think about it.
When I was younger, I was just like,what numbers I need to hit is the team.
How do we do it? Please help me.
You know, I'll do whatever, whateverI can.
It's very different now where I thinka lot about the mentorship and the wisdom

(01:12:40):
and trying to take what I'm learningand even delivering that wisdom.
It's one thing to learn something.
It's another thing
to teach something that growsyou even deeper into what you believe.
It's like saying it out loud is important.
It's kind of ingrain it in your heart,in your mind, and your soul.
How are you finding good people?
Hiringpeople is the hardest thing in the world,

(01:13:01):
and I've hired some eight playersand I've hired some really bad folks.
And a lot of people say hireslow and fire fast.
And in the startup world,you have to hire fast and fire fast.
So what I've found is, like word of mouthis the most important thing.
And then I take my time interviewing them
and then always get reviews on people.

(01:13:22):
Like before I was like, you know what?
I don't have time.They're going to crush it.
Let's go do it.
I learned this in engineeringwith these engineers
where we had a really bad experience,
and we've got these new folksthat that came on and they're really good.
But I really want to get the old engineersout, the new ones.
But I was like, no, we wantwe want two references
for the specific guys,the not your company, but these guys.

(01:13:46):
And they got one. Okay.
It's going to be another ten daysbefore something like that.
Then we can get the other one.
I was like, oh, we're not signingthe contract until we enter.
Like, we think you're great.
All the things,
but we have to know, like, I have to knowsomebody who's worked with you
to do that.
And then I'll give typically, you know,give a project before you get paid.
This is going to take you take you a daycould take you two weeks.

(01:14:07):
And I want to see how you do.
And I want to see how you arewith the team.
I want to see your work ethic.
I want to see if you don't know how todo something, if you're asking questions.
And on the other end of that, you know,we've got an offer that we're ready to do,
but we got to make sure that we like you.
It's like date before you marry.
It's like going to make surethat we like you and you can do the job.
You're competent and you havethe attitude, the right attitude to do it.

(01:14:27):
But I think it's the hardest thingthat I'm still learning.
I'm still learning.
But that's that's I'm thinking about veryspecific situations because we've done
we've done a lot of hiringand had to let some folks go as well.
I wholeheartedly agree that hiring isone of the absolute hardest things to do,
and one of the challenging thingsis that you don't really know

(01:14:49):
if somebody is going to be a good fitfor 90 days,
six months, maybe even longer,and you can do all the reference checks.
But I find that,
I mean, people aren't
going to give you a referencethat's not going to say good things.
So I wholeheartedly agree.
That's one of the hardest things,
and there's only so muchyou can do to mitigate on the front end.

(01:15:10):
And I think for me anyway,I've had to go with my gut a lot of times.
Yeah same here.And sometimes my gut right.
And sometimes it's wrong.
And then it goes back to expectationslike am I going to leave this person
in the business
just because I feel bad about itand I'm going to hurt your feelings,
or am I going to do what's rightfor the business and you have to do it?

(01:15:31):
I mean, you'reyou have a lot of responsibility
and you're kindand you're gracious about it, but you go,
hey, just didn'twork out and hear the reasons,
and I love you,but I'll help you any way that I can.
Oftentimes, you're not just doingthe right thing for the business.
You're doing the right thing for them.
Yeah, because if they're not,
if they're not flourishing,you're preventing them from going
and doing somethingwhere they could be flourishing. Yeah.

(01:15:52):
Yeah. That's that's a great point.
Looking back,
is there anything that you would dodifferently knowing what you know today.
Yeah, I mean this is like very specific.
But I wouldI would get a deep technical understanding
at first like two years ago
because like when you're not technical,you want to change an industry.

(01:16:15):
I'll tell you,I don't have time to do it or like,
but go into the third partyengineering world
and turn that thing on its head,because the gap between great engineers,
it's like great engineers are terribleengineers.
It's like there's something in the middle,and you've got all these companies
that will outsource their serviceand you don't know what you're getting.
And the model is, is really broken.

(01:16:35):
But I think that two years ago,I mean, this is like
if you don't have enough capitalto have in-house engineers, right?
This is if you have to havea third party group.
But I would have gotten more technicallysavvy, like we don't have any fatal flaws.
We haven't made any issues with that.
But I wish I would have known
a lot more early on,like when we built the website on Shopify.
At first it was a great experience,but then the functional pretty quickly,

(01:16:58):
you know, we needed more functionalitythat we had to go build ourself.
And so when we started doingthat about eight months ago, it was rough.
And then I just jumped in. I was like,hey, I'm going to learn everything.
I possibly can.
I'm going to hire a new guy
who could be a fractional CTO,get this stuff cleaned up.
I learned the difference.
When you know that engineering productare two different things,
and you have to have design productand then front and back and engineers,

(01:17:20):
quality assurance, stuff like that,and then within those roles,
yeah, who's going to play those roles?
That's something that, you know, it'svery specific to my situation,
but it's something that we got fixedvery quickly.
But I wish we'd have done a better jobsix months ago.
We've covered a lot of ground.
Is there anything that you wantedto get into that we haven't yet covered?

(01:17:42):
No, man.
This is this is awesome.
I'm so proud of you for doing this podcastand featuring
all these different folks on. I think.
I think it's super helpful, man, to learnand I think podcaster and that's
I listen to music and podcastsand I learn every day.
I'm on the road for like 40,000 milesa year on my truck,
like just traveling and meetingwith people and things like that.

(01:18:02):
And so podcasts are very important.
So it's nice to do what you're doingbecause you get to not only
are you understanding what people do,but why they do it.
And if you could understandhow people think
and why they make decisionsand why they do what they do,
it's very interestingbecause you can pick up nuggets here
and there that can make you better,that you may not get in other forums.
And so I'm thankful for youand proud of you for doing this.

(01:18:23):
And I appreciate you having me on.
Always be learning.
Always be learning. Lusk.
Thanks for comingin, man. Yeah, bro. Thanks for having me.
That was
JonathanLusk, CEO and co-founder of Bird Dog.
To learn more, visit birddogit.com.

(01:18:46):
That's birddogit.com.
If you or a founder you know would liketo be a guest on In The Thick of It.
Email us at intro@founderstory.us.

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Anniversary Throwback - #22: Jonathan Lusk, BirdDog

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Anniversary Throwback - #22: Jonathan Lusk, BirdDog