Adam Anderson: Cybersecurity, Space Exploration and The Future Of SaaS Business #204

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akhil Jafar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about cybersecurity, space exploration, and the future of SaaS businesses in 2023. Today we have our guest Adam Anderson joining us. Adam is the Managing General Partner of Ansuz Capital, a venture fund that helps cybersecurity companies that specialize in protecting businesses from the number one cyber risk facing the world: social engineer cyberattacks targeting your employees. He's also the chairman and co-founder of Hook Security. He's an entrepreneur who, after 20 years on the front line of cybersecurity, wrote 5 books and years of keynotes and interviews. He then sold his first cybersecurity company, and now he's also the co-host of the Two Stones One Bird podcast, where they talk to entrepreneurs who are interested in investing or starting their own funds. So if you guys haven't heard about the Two Stones, One Bird podcast, make sure to check it out. So, but welcome, Adam. Super excited to have you on the show today.

Yeah, this is going to be a blast. Thanks for having me.

So let's, let's chat SaaS. I mean, what's, what's going on? A lot of interesting things happening these last few days. You know, the state of the venture when it comes to the economy, you know, VCs, how are founders looking at it? How are VCs looking at it? How are LPs looking at it?

Man, I don't know. Like, uh, like the sky is falling. So the, the, the problem is, is that all the stuff that's happening with the LPs is coming all the way down to the venture folks now. And it was that, you know, started in the markets and then Series B, Series A. And now what we're doing is you're feeling it in your seed and your pre-seed round where nobody wants to go first. And so what you're seeing in the market right now is Venture capital managing partners inside of the venture capital fund or fund managers will get penalized down the road if they go fast and they choose wrong. Their reputation, they're really worried about that. But there's zero, no one's going to get in trouble if they go slow. So the entire industry has kind of pumped the brakes. And so the very moment where every entrepreneur wants to raise more money, All the VCs are locked up and it doesn't even matter if you have a fantastic company because right now they just don't know how to call the shots. They don't know how to do the valuation. And a fund manager's reputation inside of our network is so much more important to them than getting that right deal right now.

Got it. So doing nothing right now is the value thing. I mean, literally just sitting around and waiting. It doesn't matter if you have a good deal, great deal, fantastic deal, just wait.

That's what the funds are doing right now.

All right, so good advice to founders right now. Just wait.

Well, good advice to founders are find someone who has an emotional attachment and deep pockets to what you're trying to do, and maybe don't pay too much attention to the traditional VCs for the next couple of months.

Yeah, fair enough. That's great advice. Can you tell us what's going on with— you've raised your first fund. I think you aimed at raising $60 million, ended up raising, I think, $1.5. And then you put that into some kind of e-commerce rollups.

Yeah.

I mean, let us tell— tell us more about that story.

Yeah. So I thought that it was going to be so much easier moving from entrepreneurship over to venture and over to private equity because, like, you know, you go to them and they have money and they write checks. It turns out that if you're building your own fund, you have to go to a whole nother set of investors called limited partners and get money from them. And so I rolled in. We thought we were going to get $30 million out of Singapore. And we're like, we're gonna get this done. We're gonna do, you know, $30 million in 90 days. You know what? Let's make a fund that can take 60 because we're gonna be so good at this. And what happens is time kills all deals. It took us a really long time to get our legal documents together. It took us around, my gosh, was it 9 months to build the fund, the infrastructure and all of the things? Because we were positive we were taking so much money. And so by the time we have the BVI fund that works with the US fund and we have all the banks lined up. It was beautiful. Cost us around $350,000 to get it built. And the Singapore guys are like, yeah, we're interested in Bitcoin now and cryptocurrency rather than cyber. And so we missed our opportunity. I was like, well crap, we've got this amazing fund and it's just sitting there. Well, what are we going to do? Well, I, I decided to do a road show. I roll up to Kentucky and I start going and talking to all these people. And what I found out is that just because you have a thesis you believe in doesn't mean that the investors are going to just like write checks. It's the same thing raising a fund as it is funding a company where you have to find people and investors who align with what you're trying to do. And so what we figured out is that all the young kids of the real estate tycoons wanted to get into tech, but all they knew was real estate. So we had to create a fund that mimicked real estate but actually did tech. And for us, that was e-com roll-ups. And so we built a small fund that went out and bought small e-coms, rolled them up. We bought at 3x, turned around, sold the bundle at 6x to private equity who was going to sell it at 12x. And that works all day long because people get it. We're like, no, we're just buying small stores. And so the real estate people began to understand that. And so Yeah, we spun that up. That's going fine. But it's what I find I'm doing now is I'm reacting to LPs who want to write checks for a particular reason rather than build the things that I actually wanted to build, which was cybersecurity and et cetera, et cetera. So we're going back to cyber now where we've got a good line on it. But it turns out I'm having the same problems raising that second fund. As, uh, startups are having raising capital from VCs. Everyone's just sitting on their money right now. So yeah, we'll see.

Yeah. So, okay, so you're trying to— so before we get into more about, you know, your fund of, you know, cybersecurity, maybe start coming back in history, uh, with our listeners behind. So we went to this conference called the Courageous Conversations Conference, I believe.

That's right.

2018. And that where you came out of that being like, I, I'm ready to fight this crime. What's, what's, what did that happen?

Yeah, we came up, the conclusion we had, it's the greatest conversations is Virgin Unite, and that's Richard Branson hangs out for a week and you meet all these amazing people. And, you know, by the time you leave that island, you're absolutely inspired. And so my conclusion was we're losing the cyber arms race. He was, and I remember talking with Richard and he's showing me on his phone how folks are getting hacked and he's getting all these phone calls and it's just like, We are absolutely losing the arms race. And so I decided we had to do something different. And what that was is we gotta not focus on the bits and bytes of cybersecurity. We gotta focus on the neurons and the synaptics of the human brain because it's 90% of all successful attacks start with the social manipulation, social engineering of a person, and 40-ish percent progress due to a missed Configuration from an IT person configuring a firewall. So you got human error and then you got psychological manipulation. And I was like, we should get into that. That's exactly what we should do because the world doesn't need another firewall. The world doesn't need another AI-powered whatever. What the world needs is to treat humans like humans and to, you know, develop a new set of practices. So it went from, you got physical security, guards, gates, guns, You've got InfoSec, which are bits and bytes data. How is all that going? And so I went to Hawaii for 2 weeks and I created something called PsySec or psychological security, which is a framework on how do you protect the human mind and make it resilient to manipulation through technology. And I'm like, we should invest in companies that do that. And then I couldn't find any, so I had to go make one.

Okay.

Which is kind of what you do, right? We, that's how we entrepreneur. When, if you want to deploy capital and you can't find it, just be like, all right, switch hats, entrepreneur again. But I did it better. Yeah, I did it better. I fired myself 6 months into it. I hate being CEO. That's a hard job. So as soon as I got the product market fit, I found a professional manager, a professional CEO, and I said, you, you run this thing.

So he's right. So is that focus on the psychological part or is this more than—

That's right.

It is. Okay. Interesting.

Yep.

Cool.

And it's all on the, it's called Hook Security and it focuses inside of the cyber awareness space. So it's a SaaS platform that also delivers content and training. Yeah. So that's the punchline is we went ahead and created a framework. But when you're innovating, you're building the new stuff, you have to behave and you have to participate inside of existing markets. And so there's was no CySec market. There was no CySec companies to invest in. So you have to join an addition— an existing market. And then with SaaS and with cybersecurity, before you can disrupt it, you often have to get permission. And so you have to build trust in that market for them to accept your disruption. Otherwise, they just like, no, you're too new kid. I can't take a break, especially if you're dealing with enterprise or small enterprise. They're very hesitant to adopt new technologies and new offerings.

Got it. So at the moment, you know, with your fund or what you're trying to raise money for, what kind of investments do you usually work with? What are you looking for? And maybe if you can kind of draw it down a little bit more, you know, what is your definition of slow money versus fast money investments?

I love that. Okay. Slow money versus fast money. Well, first off, my sweet spot is always in that between seed and Series A. When we're looking at cybersecurity companies we want to deploy capital into, Usually I want to see someone who has learned something. They've built the thing, they raised some money and they went out and they tried a strategy. They got punched in the face a little bit and now they're like, I gotta pivot. And now they're running low on money. They need to be able to fund the rest of that pivot to get to that Series A. And that's where I like to come in as kind of be the, you know, I don't wear a cape, but sometimes I feel like a hero. It's all right. So that That's kind of like where I like to play when we're actually doing the investments. And then we only deploy capital into a synergistic way. So I won't write you a check just because you got an amazing company. If I've got a portfolio of companies that you have to, you know, have synergistic value into. So for example, Hook Security has built an amazing channel program. So I would want to sell, I would want to invest into a company that was able to sell through the channel. Like maybe you are, you have a great product and you have a sucky sales team and I'm like, don't worry, I got your sales because you're gonna, you know, resell through Hook or vice versa, right? So when we are building a synergistic fund, it's all about how do the different companies work together and then how do I de-risk them all growing? And the hypothesis is you get more unicorns coming out because the other companies de-risk the early stage and they all have a chance to participate in the market.

Got it.

But that's all. So let's dive into fast capital versus slow capital.

Yeah.

'Cause this is my favorite topic right now. Fast capital is what most real estate folks or what most investors want. I want to give you some money, I want it to do a thing, and I want you to gimme that money back in 2 to 3 years. That don't fly from what we do, right? SaaS, you know, deep tech, AI space in my case are slow capital where you put the money in and you might not see the kind of returns that you want for 10+ years. Like I know we say 7 years, but at this point in time with the way capital is moving, you know, 10 years for an exit isn't out of the question. And most investors don't have the appetite for that. Most LPs don't have an appetite for that. So typically when you go to a VC, the VC has already identified if they're slow capital or fast capital. But when you're building your own fund or when you're building a fund that you're planning on deploying, it's really gotta be real important to communicate back to your LPs what kind of fund is this and how you're going about it. So for our space company, well, for the average space company, they make $0 in profit. As a matter of fact, 100% of space companies make $0 in profit. There has yet to be a profitable space company. And so we are trying to change that and build a fast capital cash flowing space company rather than one that you have to wait 10 to 20 years. I remember talking to Ronald Reagan's special advisor on space, like all the way back to Reagan. He was in charge of the Star Wars program and he's like, Adam, I'm going to be 105 before any of my space investments like payout. And that's true because if you look at slow capital, slow capital is supposed to build infrastructure. It's supposed to build new things that if it wins, it disrupts the entire market and you win the whole thing. And that's the whole game of VC is how do I get in? How do I bet on something that's going to dominate a market? And that's fine, but if you don't develop cash flow along the way and if you don't pay out along the way, it gets very, very difficult for investors to get excited. So at my space company, we're building an orbital manufacturing platform that can make crap in space. I love space. Woo-hoo. And also, it is gonna take a long time for that thing to generate revenue. So what are we doing? Well, I am going to be renting space and building luxury products and then selling them. So we're gonna be building, I'm gonna, my first project is an orbital whiskey distillery. So I'm gonna make space booze. I'm going to sell it like a million bucks a bottle to investors. I'm sorry, to collectors. And so, you know, cost me $25 million to do this, but I'll sell $100 million every couple months. Well, probably every 12 months. You don't want to make too much, otherwise people don't buy 'em. But that's what I'm talking about with fast capital and slow capital. I think that most companies going forward are going to have to show especially ones that need huge amounts of money to get going, that you have to be able to show how are you going to do fast capital returns while you're playing in a slow capital space. Does that make sense?

It does.

Yeah.

So specifically when it comes to cybersecurity, do you look at that more as slow or fast?

That's slow. Slow. Especially if it's an innovation right now. If you're doing a cybersecurity roll-up or if it's tech that's already been, you know, there and you want to, and you're trying to move up the Gartner Magic Quadrant type thing, that's probably fast capital. But if you have a brand new way of doing a thing in cybersecurity SaaS and you're trying to get it adopted and you don't have a whole lot of, you know, buy-in from the industry, you're gonna take 4 years just to be accepted. You're gonna take 4 years just for people to trust you. And then you're gonna do another 3 years of doing massive customer acquisition. And by the time you get to like year 7, Now you're ready to hockey stick. So it's like you don't want to pull your money out. That's year 7 because you're going to miss the upside. And so, yeah, anything that takes about 10 years to produce the outsized return to me is a slow capital play.

Yeah.

What I would love to do is see cybersecurity companies that, and I don't know how we're going to do this because valuations are going to get in the way of this, but I'd rather overcapitalize an early stage cybersecurity company And have them focus on profitability sooner rather than burn money to get to where they need to go. And I would, because if we're talking about a 10-year plan, I don't need you to be working so hard year 1 and year 2 to show 3x growth and look at me go with my KPIs. And, you know, you get on that VC treadmill and if I don't, you build a company for the KPIs of the VC. When you're playing the fast capital game.

Right.

And that's a lose-lose, right? Because, you know, well, maybe it's a lose-win when that's not good. So I would rather see the game change a little bit where we give a safe place for a startup to build for 4 years to 3 years, right? And really build a healthy company, make some mistakes, not get punished for those mistakes, get punished if they don't change, right? You know, if you've got that hire that, you know, you shouldn't have done, but you did anyway because like they were the only guy in the room, like, oh, I guess we're working with Steve. He's the only one who knows how to do the Java crap. So, you know, and giving them that runway to make these mistakes and learn. The problem that I haven't figured out is how do you handle the valuation, right? Because in order to do that and not dilute the founders, you have to have a ridiculously high valuation that's not gonna be supported in the Series A. And so what I'm experimenting with is, man, we gotta fix this stuff. We gotta do a combination of private equity and venture capital. And I haven't seen anybody do it well. I've, you know, you got the venture studio type model that's going on and I don't know, it just, it doesn't, none of this actually feels like it's, we've answered the problem yet. We've actually, we've answered the question yet and solved the problem. Um, so yeah, that's, that's what I'm spending the next couple years working on is how do we, how do we do what I just said? Because no one's doing that. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, most, you know, venture studios, what I've seen, they're generally, you know, it seems like 18 months is kind of like the limit of when, you know, when they wanna launch. But 3 or 4 years, yeah. If you, you have that kind of timing to perfect the, the product, so to speak, then yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, that, that'd be great if you find that.

Well, the, the model I'm trying to get funded right now is a 5-year model where, because you go from accelerator to incubator, incubator to studio, studio to seed, seed to Series A, and we hand this baton and you got these great companies that get dropped. We get, we lose them to the cracks. And so what I want to do is take 8 or 9 synergistic companies from the very beginning, help them grow, you know, maybe my model that so far I'm trying to get approved here in the state of South Carolina and that won't happen until 2024. But getting LP money that is okay with it behaving this way. So this is gonna have to be state money that doesn't require outsized returns. But we hold the hand of the entrepreneur for the next 5 years and we're the one-stop shop for capital. They don't have— they don't spend any time going out and raising. They spend all their time going out and getting customers. And the KPIs are really clear. It's the exact same KPIs as we would want for traditional VC, except now I am, I'm working with these guys the entire time. I am, I'm sitting on the boards. I know where they're at instead of having the CEO spend 18 months trying to raise and then things go, oh man, just looking at these poor CEOs raising right now, it's exhausting. I feel so bad for them. It's, it is, hey, sorry guys, keep, keep grinding, I guess. But that's, that's it, right? The studio model needs to go so much farther. And the problem is that you're looking at slow capital without outsized returns. So in order to get that kind of capital that comes in, because these companies may or may not exit, they may or may not roll up, but they will be like amazing companies. We were talking to the Charlotte Innovation Group.

Yeah.

It's the city of Charlotte and like, we need to build a unicorn. I was like, maybe don't build a unicorn. How about you build 1,000 $10 million revenue companies in the next 20 years? How would that change the city of Charlotte? So I, yeah, I'm losing interest in build a unicorn. What I'm really interested in is how do you build profitable badass companies that spin off more entrepreneurs?

Right. So, you know, one, Great entrepreneur versus 1,000 healthy. Yeah, that sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Yeah. Oh, you sound like you want to write a check. Yes, I am taking money and it's all good.

So you talk about space exploration. I mean, this is literally an open space when it comes to investing. So you're building a distillery producing whiskey in space as an investor or somebody thinking about getting into this space. What do you see as kind of some big investment opportunities when it comes to space exploration that's realistic and, you know, could actually—

Well, it gets back to that slow capital, fast capital game. Like some of my favorite companies are doing some of the coolest stuff and they simply are not going to be producing revenue. What they're doing is they're building intellectual property and they're getting on-ramps into market share. So you, you, You invest in some kind of company that is doing a thing and then you're depending on them making money by selling services to the government. So what I'm trying to do is create the first space economy where it's actually profitable to do business in space by selling back to a consumer where your customer isn't some government somewhere who's like NASA giving— NASA gave 4 contracts for $250 million to different companies to discover if there's water on the moon. Cool, right? Neat.

Water on the moon. Okay.

Yeah. Well, you know, if we're going to be, going to be doing stuff up there, we need to know that there's water. And there's only 4 companies are going to get that contract. This is not how capitalism is supposed to work. And so if you're going to be investing into space, look for companies that have, that sit inside of a supply chain. where the end customer is not the government. Like, so if you look at Orbital Reef and you look at Blue Origin, Axiom, some of these guys, they're really trying to build space economies that are focused on the actual, on the actual consumer rather than on the governments. And that's why we got space tourism going on right now. That's why you see billionaires going to space. Is it vanity? Sure, probably. I mean, I mean, it's sure, it's vanity, but also it's, you have to start somewhere. You have to start putting capital into the system. And if it, we're going to get that by, you know, the 1% of the 1% wanting to go on a ride to space and that funds building the stuff that's actually the manufacturing platforms or funding the technology to go after asteroids, which we can absolutely do. That's what I'm really excited about. I am building these fast capital space companies so that I can build a fund that then invests in slow capital projects such as building the capability to go asteroid mining. Because what I want to do is the whole idea here is how do you save the world? And I believe you can save the world by going to space and manufacturing in space. There was a huge chemical spill in Ohio not too long ago. Why are we doing this? We should be making the dangerous stuff off planet. We should not be strip mining. We should be going to, so Yeah. Is it negative carbon? Are we actually harming the planet a little bit by going to space and like all these giant rockets? Absolutely. Are we getting better at it every day? Absolutely. And will the payout be we have unlimited access to energy and resources? I think that the problem with space isn't the engineering and it isn't the business side of the house. It's going to be the political side of the house. What do we do with unlimited resources? And like, ah, you know what? Solve one problem at a time, baby. Actually, I don't know how to do that.

I mean, I think that's a problem in every industry in the world, right? I mean, the political's always first, right? Oh, that's it.

That's it.

Yeah.

So, so if you're looking to invest in space, there's a lot of crowdfunding sites out there. So if you want to play around, Spaced Ventures is a good one to look at. Lots of little crowdfunding Reg CF kind of things. I would definitely look at there if you're an accredited investor who likes to deploy, you know, large amounts of money. Call me, baby. I got a reg C just for you. But, but really, that's the idea is to look at some of the startup scenes. I know that there's a lot of angel groups out there, but there's not enough. So if you're gonna do this, the right answer is go start your own angel group, go get your own syndicate together. Don't invest alone. Due diligence on this crap is hard. It is hard. And so, you know, make sure that if you're going to be doing this, we, Before I started my company, I talked to a whole bunch of space CEOs and I was like, tell me about your journey. And this is where I learned fast capital, slow capital is if you're building billion-dollar satellites, yeah, doing some slow capital work here. And so yeah, gosh, someone should write a book about that. Okay, I'll do it. I got you, bro. I mean, here's the thing, I've now written 8 books and my mom has stopped buying them. Nobody buys my books because Because you write about what you're interested in, not necessarily— well, I write about what I'm interested in, not necessarily what the market's buying. And so that's—

That's all right. I mean, maybe one person will read it and that's maybe who you wrote it for. I mean, if you're only interested to sell it and make money, I don't think you would.

You know what? That's what I should do. I think my next project's going to be write the handbook for angel investing into space companies. I don't think that thing exists.

That'd be cool. No, I would have no idea how to invest in space, but How much do you invest in? What do you even look for? Yeah, I have no idea.

Here's an idea. Okay, dude. Oh, I love this. We're totally playing jazz music. Look at SpaceWorks, W-E-R-X. SpaceWorks is Space Force's venture wing. And so they do a bunch of work with these different companies and they have a portfolio of companies all the time in there. The lowest risk is to follow on invest to those companies because they're going to end up with government contracts. Is it the, is it the thing that I just described? No. Is it a safe place to put your money? Comparatively speaking, if you know they're going to end with a government contract and they've already been blessed by the VC wing of Space Force, that's, that's probably a good place to start shopping.

Yeah.

If you want, yeah. If you guys want connections, just reach out to me on LinkedIn and I'll introduce you to the SpaceWorks guys.

Great advice there. Yeah. Last question before we get into the rapid-fire questions, Adam. Let's go back to SaaS a little bit. Let's talk about cybersecurity so people can learn. For investors, great advice. But now founders listening in, thinking about cybersecurity, maybe I want to reduce my security risk breach through the social engineering part or some of the issues you mentioned. What are maybe 3 steps that I should take today?

Yeah. The question I heard you ask is, how do I keep myself safe? What are 3 things I can do to stay safe from this social engineering?

Yeah.

Yeah. The first thing, don't log in as administrator. Don't give yourself permission, right? You're gonna get fooled. So, you know, you're gonna click on something you shouldn't. So just take away the, the, the rights to hurt yourself. I'm not administrator on my machines and I'm super smart because I'm susceptible. I'm gonna click on something. And if you don't have your, if you don't have protection, permission to hurt yourself, you're gonna prevent a whole lot of the things that are going on. The other is get training from something or somewhere. I highly suggest my company because it's badass, but anything's better than nothing. The statistics show you're 80% less likely to click on something if you have continuous training. And that's gonna prevent, that's gonna help protect you from a lot of the attacks that come over the internet, right? And then the finally, the last thing is You know, I used to say have good backups, but now they're attacking the backups as well. And so the real answer is find yourself a good cybersecurity insurance policy. Now, the policy itself tends not to pay out. Okay. The reason it doesn't pay out is because people don't do what they're supposed to do in order to meet all the policy's needs. This is a cheat. You go and get a quote for an insurance policy, and then they're going to look at all your cyber stuff, and then they're going to give you a, you have to fix all this plan. So you just, instead of paying for a security assessment for like $25,000, you just had someone come and do a free one. So it's kind of a life hack. Use the insurance companies to develop the plan to get you to safety, and then maybe you buy the policy and maybe you don't. They're not that expensive. So pay $2,500 to get an insurance policy that may not pay out, but you get a $25,000 security plan.

Yeah, there you go. 10% of the price. Yeah, that's awesome.

Math works, baby.

Math works. Okay, that's awesome. I think that pays for itself. Anybody listening in, just do that. You'll be set. Awesome, Adam. Thanks for sharing that. Let's— ready to move to the rapid-fire questions?

So ready.

So ready. All right, so besides drinking whiskey in space, what's one activity you enjoy outside of work as well that gets you into flow state?

Oh, playing music with my daughter. She's a punk rocker, 14-year-old, plays electric ukulele, does ska. I mean, and I play guitar with her and she doesn't let me play, perform with her, but she does let me practice with her. She's like, Dad, you don't practice enough. I'm like, all right, you're right. Touché. You're right.

You're not good enough.

That's exactly it. I was like, I taught you, woman. Yeah. Anyway.

I get the same thing from my 5-year-old daughter. So I imagine it doesn't get better then.

Oh no, it gets worse, but then it gets better.

What's one piece of advice you wish you had known? And if you can go back, you would tell your 25-year-old self?

Don't sell your cash flow company. It's you, you, so my exit was about 27. So if I went back to my 20, my first exit was at 27, 28, and I The man, cash flow is so nice. And so when you get that cash flow happening, you can always put somebody in charge of your cash flow company when you go do your next thing. And don't, don't do that exit if you can avoid it. Cash, cash is king, baby.

Cash flow.

So keep the cash flow.

Beautiful. Yeah. What are some of the biggest challenges you're currently facing in order to continue to grow Ansoo's Capital? Meaning what's keeping you up at night these days?

It's a real struggle getting the LPs to invest. It's something I still haven't figured out. There's institutional on the other side of the house. And so the way that I'm— the thing I'm learning now and I'm overcoming now is how do you build the right strategic partnerships and build the right networks to build the trust with limited partners, family offices, and things like that. And so that's what I'm working on right now is how do you partner with the right people and the right entities to short circuit the need for social proof.

Yeah, makes sense.

Also, I need to eat less pizza. I got to get back in shape, bro. It's hard to stay in the game when you're, you're getting fat. You're like, oh, another call, huh?

Another call.

I need a nap.

I need a nap. One call a day. Yeah, Max. That's it. I love it. I love your— I love your schedule. Who are, or what would you say are some of the best 3 resources? It can be books, mentors, or maybe people you follow in this space who you'd say have been most instrumental to your success over these last few years.

Yeah, my mastermind group that I was a part of for 9 years saved my marriage twice and my business 3 times. So if you're not surrounding yourself up with peers, you totally should be doing that. And there's a lot of different ways. There's a lot of different mastermind groups. Some are paid, some are moderated, mediated, da da da da. Find whatever works for you, but join, get involved in a peer group with entrepreneurs on the same journey that you're on. That's the first thing. The second thing is I remember when I first got started, I listened to Stanford's eCorner. They published, they have all of their lectures online and I remember listening to MC Hammer give a lecture on music and technology in the SaaS industry. So he was an investor at that point and it's like, it goes all the way back to like 2005. So you'll hear them talk about Web 2.0 and what are we going to do about this Facebook thing? So, but there's still just a wealth of knowledge that Stanford gives away for free and you'll absolutely nerd out. And then also join an organization that has absolutely nothing to do with what you do. I joined a location-independent entrepreneurial network which are just guys who are doing dropshipping and no, not a SaaS to be seen. And they were monsters at learning how to do guerrilla marketing. And so by joining organizations that are different and surrounding yourself with people who are doing a different journey, that was one of my big major barriers is I do business with the people that I like and that I trust. And then I never got out of my network. And so that really limited who I got to do business with. And you have to be super intentional to get out of your own networks.

Yeah, that's great advice. Also learning. I mean, you learn the randomest things from people who are working on things that you have no idea, but something you just learn and then you can apply it to your life somehow, right?

Great point. Yeah.

How do you define success to you today? What does that mean? Whether personally, business, financial life? There's no right answer.

Yeah. So I like to define failure before I define success. Because for me, failure is being apparently very, very successful at something that you truly hate. And I have built things that I was very, very successful at that was killing me on the inside or destroying my family or things like that. A very successful business where you're hitting revenue X and you've got employees Y and you're doing all these things and you turn around and your son calls you by your first name rather and dad, you know, having a really— sometimes it's hard to figure out what success looks like. And that will change as you get older and it'll change as you progress through different phases of life. But I find that failure defined kind of remains the same for me. And that is, I'm a failure if I'm not the kind of dad I want to be, if I'm not the kind of husband I want to be, and if I'm not the kind of father I want to be. Where I keep failing with my failing is I don't do a lot of self-care. You're always pouring out to everybody. And I used to be really, really good at that. I'm at a point in my life, about 46 years old. I've done a lot. There's a lot of people who depend on me. I kind of feel bad when I do self-care. I really need to get back to doing that.

I completely understand. I completely agree what you're saying, and it's literally the most important thing. If you— so if you can talk about all the space exploration, you want to save the world, if you can't save yourself, you can't save anybody. You can't help anybody.

So that's it.

I mean, you already know what you have to do. You just said like, I gotta stop eating pizza. I gotta move my ass.

Ah, man, I gotta pick up weights again. I love hearing weights go bang, bang, bang, right?

Like, there you go.

I know I love it. Why don't I go do it?

All right, how about you just join a gym first and then—

Step 1, you gotta get it.

Join the gym.

Well, I'm paying for a gym. You know, I gotta go.

Yeah, exactly. You better pay for a trainer or coach.

Oh, then you're really— yeah, no, that's it. Someone's gotta call me. Where are you?

Exactly.

You're late for your appointment. Yes, sir.

See that pizza, pizza crumbs? Yeah, get them out of there.

That's right. That's awesome.

Cool. Adam, this has been great. I appreciate you sharing everything today. I think our listeners will get a lot of value from it.

Well, I hope so.

Founders, investors, anybody listening in want to get in touch with you, learn more about you or what you're working on?

Yeah, LinkedIn is the— is where I do all the things. A couple of websites you can go visit is CEO to Owner. I have some free, I got about 8 hours worth of free classes up there on how do you fire yourself from your company, right? What are the, what's that 2-year process to get you out of there? So Fire CEO to Owner, LinkedIn. You can go to stellarluxuries.com to look at all the space stuff I'm doing. And if you're interested, you can go to hooksecurity.co to learn more about CySec.

Hooksecurity.co. And, uh, okay, awesome. We'll put those links in the show notes if you guys want to reach out, say hi to Adam. And thank you. Thanks again, man. I appreciate it.

Yeah, it's been a blast. Yeah.

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