
YouTube interview ("Capital Raising Mistakes", Apr 15, 2022) with Bill Gallagher and Nathan Beckford (Founder Suite). Nathan describes Founder Suite — an end-to-end fundraising software platform (CRM, pitch deck hosting, VDR) and investor database (~200,000 profiles); customers have raised over $3B. He recounts founding the company after years raising capital for startups and a lucky early connection to Polish engineers from a Yelp event. He identifies top fundraising mistakes (poor pitch/story, weak investor targeting, and not committing sufficient time — 2–6 months full-time), discusses product/leadership lessons (avoid founder meddling in product/design; hire a product manager), and shares leadership metaphors (sailing sabbatical) and constraints-as-discipline views.
Chapters
Oh, the music still makes me happy, but I feel like it's time to freshen up. My music, I'm noticing today, feel like I need a new vibe.
I don't know, it's pretty hip, pretty cool.
Oh. All right. So hello again, everyone. Today we're talking more stories and. And lessons learned, like trying to grow a business. I'm joined by another podcast host today, Nathan Beckford, CEO of Founder Suite. So, Founder Suite, and we'll talk all about that and the lessons learned. You can learn things both about growing your business as well as a little bit about funding your business. Right. Founder Suite customers have raised over $3 billion.
And.
And there's many startups and scale ups in the platform, so I think it's a great conversation. I'm looking forward to getting into it. Oh, hello, everyone. My name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week. We bring shows to you every week for years now on everything to do with growing and scaling your business, funding it, exiting it, the leadership skills required to grow and exit the company. Lessons from our clients, from people we know, work with authors, gurus, like everybody in the world of business, growth is our jam. So we got shows like this every week. You'll find all those shows, the back catalog and more wherever you get your content. ITunes, Stitcher, YouTube, LinkedIn. Like, we try to make sure we're everywhere, so get it wherever there. Or go to our website@scalingcoach.com where you'll also find all the shows, notes, downloads, links, things like that. ScalingCoach.com is our website. All right, I'm joined now by Nathan Beckford. Nathan, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Bill. Appreciate it.
So we're just connecting as we fired up the cameras and whatnot. Nathan is just across the bay from me in Marin county, and I'm in the Oakland hills. All of us kind of revolving around the center of San Francisco, but it's really great. It's funny. We talk to people, like, all over the world and. And here we are kind of in the same neighborhood, but I don't know that anybody really goes into studio anymore to do stuff. I remember being on podcasts and TV and that kind of thing in the past, and we go into studio, but now it's like the studio's at home.
Yeah, it's kind of funny. I have an office in Marin, but I'm getting some Norwegian interns this summer and they are going to be based. Aren't we all? Of course. And they're going to be based in San Francisco. So I actually have to get an office in San Francisco to host them because they can't come up to Marin. It's too big a pain in the ass. So I'm actually kind of excited though. It'll give me an excuse to start going back into the city and, you know, doing the city life again, which.
I. Yeah, so yeah, actually we're doing a similar thing. I'm looking at spaces now to have a more regular meeting space in San Francisco where of course, many of our clients are here or come here. And we have a few specific spaces that we like. One in Southern California, one in the mountains in Lake Tahoe, and a couple in town here. So we're always thinking about getting, getting into that. Anyway, enough about that Founder Suite. So Nathan is CEO of Founder Suite. Founder of Founder Suite also.
Right.
So I want you to, let's talk a little bit about what that is, how you got into that kind of your background. Then we'll talk about things that have been easy and hard. Your lucky breaks, your challenges, lessons learned, like the whole world of that.
Sure, yeah.
Well, for our listeners, what the heck is Founder Suite?
What the heck is Founder Suite? It's a good question. It is a software platform for startups raising capital. So I, my background, I started out after college, went into investment banking. For a little while I was helping companies raise capital. A little bit of Piper Jeffrey, a little bit of JP Morgan's private placement group. And it was, you know, basically helping companies raise later stage rounds, B round C rounds, mezzanine rounds. Then I went off on my own and did that for a while with a, a business called Venture Archetypes. I was helping companies raise earlier stage rounds, seed Series A, series B. And then after doing that for a while, I just had this sort of epiphany. It was around the time that Mark Andreessen had his famous software is eating the world quote. And it kind of inspired me. I'm like, you know, we could build software for raising capital. There really isn't anything out there. And you know, we're all just using spreadsheets and a bunch of like sales focused tools. So that's when we started building tools for raising capital. And so now we have a database of investors, about 200,000 investors. In our database we have a CRM pitch deck, hosting tools, investor updates, virtual data room documents. So it's kind of a whole suite, end of end to end to end suite of tools for raising capital.
Yeah. And that's a really useful thing, right? Like getting in the whole world of that. Like using the right tools, learning how to connect with people, I think is intimidating to a lot of folks. I know a lot of times I work with CEOs who want to raise money, but who don't have any background, have trouble getting started in it. And wow, it just, it's so intimidating. They don't know what they don't know and they're not sure where to begin. And so they hesitate and they keep updating their plans. Well, we're going to work on that and we're going to create a plan for that and.
Yeah, well, and that's so true. I mean, 99% of people who go out to raise money have never done it before. So virtually everyone is a beginner at it. And it's not rocket science, but it also, there are a lot of nuances to it that can trip people up and kind of, you know, screw it up if they don't do it quite right. It's, it's. I'd say it's. It. Raising capital is learnable by anyone. Anyone can learn how to do it. Anyone can, can do it if you have a, you know, fundable business. But doing it kind of the right way will make your life a lot easier. So we're, we're trying to build the tools and the, you know, the, the training around that as well, to do it the right way.
So. Yeah. What was the moment? Tell the story of how you even, like, made that shift. We, we know the shift. Right, but, but what pushed you to do this? How did you get started in that way?
I, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. You know, even way back when, even when I was a kid, I was always. I had little side hustles and little, little businesses, so to speak. Little, little gigs. I was kind of working for money. But then I went down this path of investment banking because it's very attractive when you're getting out of college. You know, the, the glamour of investment banking is a, a real lore. But I always really, in my back of my head, wanted to be an entrepreneur, yet I just didn't have a good idea. I had no ideas. I had all kinds of goofy ideas. I used to keep a journal of, like, startup ideas, and they were all bad. They were, you know, another iteration on a dating app or whatever. Just bad stuff that really had no relevance. And then one day I'm like, okay, I've been raising capital for 15 years. I know how to do this really well. I know the pain points Involved and it was like this light bulb that went off after like 10 plus years, 15 years of thinking of ideas, searching for an idea, the light bulb finally went off. Why don't I just build software for what I already know? Right. And kind of pack the pain point? Yeah. It's so obvious in, in hindsight. But of course it took me 15 years or 10 plus years to get there.
So, you know, it's interesting. One of our other previous guests on the show, Chris Ronzio, has a company called Train. You all shout out to Chris and guest friend, graduate of our accelerator program. And Chris's whole business today started exactly that way. Like he had a completely different business and he developed some software to kind of run him, organize himself and make that business competitive and relevant and he realized other people needed that and he started to do more of that. And then he actually had to kind of rebuild all the tools to be more like transferable, more easily usable by other people. But that actually he realized that not the prior business, but that aspect of the business, process management and teaching and was what he loved even more. And that became the business. And I think a lot of times you're chugging through life doing one thing or another for whatever reason, then you see something, you're like, wait, that fits me better.
Right? Yeah, sure. And I think you have to kind of figure that out because that doing something that you're actually interested in and kind of passionate about is, is as I like to think of a requisite for a successful startup. Because there's so many dark days and challenging points and so much rejection in a startup that if you're not really excited about what you're doing, you're just going to give up. If you're just doing it because it sounds like a, could be a cool startup flip or something. Right. You'll give up. Yeah, that's hard.
I think that's a good message for our listeners. Now, if you don't love what you're doing, either something needs to shift so that you can love it or rediscover your love for it, sometimes we, we lose our love for it and something's just off that we haven't noticed. And other times it just never was the right place for us. And there's something else. If you notice that you keep running from thing to thing to thing, then maybe the problem is in the mirror.
Yeah, yeah.
But if, but if sometimes you're just in something and like it, you're waiting for that next discovery. Right? That thing that.
Yeah, here's one Little story. I went to business school in Austin, and while I was there, I went into the entrepreneurship program. And the whole time I was there, I was also trying to think of startup ideas. And we actually got a. A license for some clinical trial software coming out of MD Anderson Cancer Center. And this is software that has this big reputation around it because they do lots of clinical trials, and clinical trials market is this huge, rich market. You know, drug companies will spend lots of money to manage and make their clinical trials more efficient. I started working on that as a. As our startup, and I'm like, I have no passion for this. I just don't. I know it's an important thing. Clinical trials are important because that's how drugs come to market. But I don't care about this at all. I really. I didn't want to learn about it. You know, it wasn't motivating for me to even learn about this industry because it just had struck no chords, and obviously that didn't work out. So, anyway, yeah.
So what do you think has been your lucky break? What propelled your business? I mean, there are other people that have. That do and have dabbled in fundraising software and suites and platforms and things like that. I could rattle off a few. I won't. But what has got you to this place where it's. It's a going thing and. And it's. It's found its traction.
I wish there was some big epiphanal moment that was like our lucky break where we got on Shark Tank or something or got, you know, introduced to Mark Cuban.
It.
None of that happened. I mean, there are a thousand smaller lucky breaks, I'd say. I think the. Well, here's one lucky break. So I had this idea. I wanted to build some software for raising capital. I'm not an engineer. I'm a finance guy. I went to an event at. At. At Yelp, Yelp's headquarters in San Francisco. And it was like a designer's night. And I think, okay, well, maybe a good place to start would. To meet some designers, you know? And I went there and sat through, and it was all over my head. None of it made any sense to me. But the very end, they said, all right, well, we're gonna do an open mic. You get one minute, come up here. If you're hiring, you can, you know, put out the job posting to hire. If you have any, like, thing you're asking for, come on. And so I'm like, all right, I'll go up there. And both of them are like, hey, I'M Nathan. I have this idea. I'm looking for, you know, technical people or. And a guy came up to me afterwards like, well, we should talk. And he connected to me some engineers in Poland of all places. And that was what we used to get our mvp, our original, you know, minimal viable product launched and, and we're still using them six plus years later. We still have some Polish engineers. It's been great. So that was a lucky break, right? Just finding the right people to help me build this and get this thing off the ground. So there's one, there's one story.
Yeah. So taking a risk in a moment, going up, sharing what you're up to and then finding the connections with people that leads to something that you wouldn't go out and say, hey, I'm going to go look for developers in Poland.
Right.
You might look in different places, but. Poland Poland is one. But it's not. Wouldn't have been top of your list.
I wouldn't have thought to start my search in Poland. No, definitely not.
What year was this?
This is like six years ago. So. Yeah, so you might have thought about.
Like St. Petersburg or you might have thought about Bangalore or you know, Ukraine maybe some other spots. But.
Yeah, but we got lucky and I think I can think of other scenarios we could have ended up in Bangalore or something. I've heard good and bad stories of, of founders who have like, you know, started their build using offshore developers in different places. There's sort of pros and cons of like every region. Not to stereotype, but I mean, I think there are, there are culture and.
There are gaps in our communication and cultural reference. Right.
Like that maybe even time zones too. Yeah, yeah, time, the time zone to talk to your engineers in India is 30 more difficult than the time zone to talk to engineers in Poland. Right. There's enough overlap in the Polish day to, to San Francisco time zone then you know, it works well.
And they're a lot more European as well. I mean I, in a prior business, we did business in Poland for some years and I visited a number of times and it's, there's, there's a little more common frame of reference.
Yeah. And they're great. Their English is great. They're, they're practical, pragmatic people. Again, stereotyping or generalizing a whole population, but they're very.
Yeah, for sure. How did you find your first customer clients for Founder Suite?
So I had a little lucky advantage there because I'd been working with startups for quite a while and we had Been doing some events like, you know, so the business before Founder street was consulting to startups, helping them raise capital. And we would put on some events a couple times a year. Like Startup Funding 2.0 was one of our events, and we bring in some VCs and then we'd sell tickets to startups for 10 bucks a pop and pack a room full of 200 or so. So had a little bit of a. An audience, I guess, already built. And then when we launched Founder Suite, you know, we could announce it at these events, like, hey, here's our new product. It's coming, coming soon. Sign up to be beta customers. That was pretty, pretty effective. So I guess, you know. Yeah.
When you look at then now platforms, what's. What are the biggest mistakes that you see founders make in trying to raise capital? What do you see are the things you wish you could. Everyone would learn and, and not do again and again?
Oh, gosh, we could talk about this for an hour plus. But I'll try and make the top three or top five stories.
Yeah, yeah.
I'd say a very big mistake is they go out. Well, there's two. Two biggies, I would say. Okay. One is they go out with a bad pitch or bad story. I mean, your story has to be. Your pitch, slash story has to be really compelling. It has to kind of. If you're pitching me your startup idea, it has to both sort of tug at my emotions and appeal to my logical financial brain how I'm going to make lots of money, but also really just help me envision like a better world with your. Your company, your product in it. So your pitch has to be awesome. The really high. And most startup founders go out with a. Call it a subpar or crappy pitch deck, frankly, because it's actually quite hard to tell your own story in many cases. I think that is an area you can get help with from a consultant and actually, you know, justify it quite.
A bit of helping people tell their story better. Touching that first the emotional side, then the rational side. Left, right brain kind of conversation, hitting on both of them. Why do you even care about this business? What difference does this make in the world? I mean, those are really great places to open. I love that you said that. And the word used is story. Like, tell it like a story. And, and then, and then, you know, what are the. What are the hard facts around it that make it actually a business? Right?
Absolutely. These investors you're pitching hear so many of these pitches. You have to pull them into the story in the first 30 seconds, right? Or you lose them. You lose their attention very quickly. You're pitching, you're talking to the most ADD audience on the planet when you're pitching investors. And so you really have to hook it right away with that story and really getting them involved. So anyway, that's. That's one thing I would say founders underestimate. And the remedy there is actually pretty simple. You, you know, develop your pitch, maybe hire a consultant. You give your pitch 10, 15 times to people who will give you honest, hardcore feedback. It could be your attorney, it could be other startup founders, any investors you're friendly with, you know, so that's kind of the remedy. I'd say the other big mistake a lot of founders make is not putting in the time, the legwork, and putting in the hours into researching investors and really building a good target list, right? And like identifying the ideal 100, 200 investors prospects, you know, that will pay back when you actually go out to raise. And so what. What do people do?
They'll.
They'll like, look in our database where we might have 5,000 investors in SaaS or 3,000 in FinTech or something. They just want to, like, spam, you know, message blast, cold email, 3000 fintech, hoping some of them will respond, and it just doesn't work. And so they get frustrated, and then they get. Their email starts to get blocked or flagged as spam, and it really just hurts them, you know, so that's another mistake.
This is. That's actually a pretty universal marketing message, period. You know, I. And I get pitches all day long from people with automated LinkedIn campaigns, and I'm like, oh, my God, maybe you should consider having a podcast. Well, I've had one for four or five years now, so. Yeah, why are you sending me that? Like, you know, and not, like, if you're gonna pitch somebody who's at a senior level, somebody who's been around a bit, like, who's maybe tailor the pitch, maybe don't automate it, maybe use some automated tools to find people or screen, but then reach out thoughtfully and build a relationship is totally different, right? That's through the noise of something, Hey, I watch your show, and some people try to make that gimmicky and don't do that either. Well, hey, we watched the recent show. We loved X, Y and Z. And you can tell it's all boilerplate stuff that somebody typed in and then it's blasted out.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, you can. You can sense it. And investors can sense it even More. I mean they are finely tuned to that radar when it's.
The other thing though is right, they're looking for deal flow, they're looking for opportunities. Investors want to. So they're interested in your pitch, but if you there. But they're also getting a big volume of. Of noise stuff that's not.
That's right. Yeah.
Two really good examples of, of things folks do.
How about a third things they do poorly or wrong? Yeah, I would say, you know, not treating fundraising. Fundraising is a funny little animal. You really have to go into it as the CEO of the startup and kind of make it your full time job for commit to two to six months full time fundraising. And so I guess the, the mistake people make is they'll just sort of dabble in it. They'll send out a few emails, they'll kind of, you know, and the thing just sort of limps along and it never really catches momentum. And investors, just like investors can tell when it's a cold, a cold email or a mass email or spam email. They can also tell when a deal does not have any real heat on it, when it doesn't have momentum on it. And investors will just kind of watch and wait or, or drag their feet if the deal doesn't have momentum. The way to get momentum is to really be committing, you know, full time for two to six months, like I said, to really driving it, setting up meetings, packing your schedule full of meetings from dusk till dawn with investors. So it kind of catches fire and gets some heat. So that's, it's a little bit of a squishier, fuzzier thing, but it's, it's really important.
So that's a really great thing. And it's definitely a chicken and egg thing, right? Because you got to get your team executing on the existing business, right, whatever business there and going on. And you've got to have your team sufficiently empowered that they can get a lot of their job done. And you've got to have some operational lead manager, director, vp, coo, whatever, somebody who's doing a lot of the regular things. That's why it's so important to get your meeting cadence and dashboards and things like that. Like get something kind of working in the business so that you can put in a full court press on fundraising, that you really can put 90% of your effort into that. In truth, I mean, you said a hundred percent, but in reality people are going to attend to a few meetings or that kind of thing, right? Yeah, but you can't be Sucked in eight hours a day and then send out an email and think you're going to raise millions.
That's right. And I've seen people give their duties, or some of their duties to their co founder. If you have a co founder, you're like, all right, I'm going to focus on fundraising. You're going to handle all my other stuff. I've seen that work. I've seen people even hire like a part time COO or halftime COO to help them for six months during the fundraise. Right. Because what you point out is exactly it, the challenges. All right, if I'm going to spend all my time on fundraising, how does the business keep moving forward? How do, how do our sales keep growing? And that has to happen because while you're fundraising, you're going to be talking about your metrics and everything to the investors. If the business suddenly slows down in the middle of fundraising, that's no good either. So you've got to keep. This is the challenge of being a founder. You got to keep all this moving and do two impossible tasks at once. Yep.
So I have probably a few examples, but I'm thinking of one in particular, a tech business in the area. And their CFO did a lot of the legwork on the fundraising and the CEO did the primary pitching. So the CEO was involved in a lot of running the business and the planning and key deals and marketing activities and evangelizing the business. They were also doing a lot of the pitching, but most of the leg work was being done by the cfo. And so that I think, I don't know how often you see that, but that's another way to sort of balance it that I've seen. And they raised quite a bit of money.
Yeah, yeah. When I was doing the consulting, that was kind of what I was hired to do is a lot of that leg work so the CEO could come in and pitch and know, look good. So. Yeah, but not everyone can hire someone, you know, if you're, if you have a cfo. Not, not that many startups have cfo. Right. Once you get later stage, you can hire that cfo, but a lot of them don't have that person, you know, at the early stages.
All right, let me test your getting real ability. What do you think has been your biggest mistake so far in growing this business?
Oh, boy. I, when I first started, I'll go back to those founding days, I was doing it all like many people do, but I was also trying to be the product person. Like I said. I'm a finance guy. I'm a MBA type. You know, that's who I am. I'm not a designer. I'm not a product person. And so in our first iteration of our product, like, I probably had way too much influence on it. And you know, every time someone would say, oh, I like it, but you should add this bell and whistle, I went back to the Polish guys and like, hey, we need to add this bell and whistle, right? And so just becoming this like, funky, not MVP part of the.
Right.
And it's not even the V part. It doesn't even, it's not even really viable because it's becoming this like, messy thing. So I, I, I, the mistake I, I made was staying involved in like, product too long, where the best thing I did was hire a product manager and kind of got out of my own way. And then we threw away all the code, rebuilt the product from, from the ground up with a proper product manager team and a designer. And, and you know, I would only kind of have like, influence over the product. So, and that's worked out much better. So I know it sounds funny, like, don't meddle, I guess the moral, don't meddle in your own product. But that's kind of what, what I needed to do, so to speak.
Well, I hear a couple of things like, stay in your zone of genius. Stay in your lane. Recognize your limitations. Don't try to be everything to everyone. Right. Don't F up your product. I actually think that is a deep lesson, especially for our tech companies who are growing, who they, they just look across the entire field of competition. They pick every possible thing, and that's the roadmap. That's not a roadmap. That's trying to be everything to everyone. And customers will want you right out of business. Right? They want everything. And that's not choosing to be the very best at a few things and then making a profitable business based on that. Right?
Yeah, I think we actually were somewhat lucky in, in, in being pretty resource constrained. We did raise our, our own round in the early days from a venture firm and some angels. But then after that we really kind of acted more as a bootstrapping business. And I think that adds some discipline to, to product. Right? And you hear this, companies that do raise 20 million, 50 million bucks, sometimes they just are doing too many things at once. Right? If you're resource constrained, you have to pick the top two or three things to focus on because you don't have resources to do it all. And I think that can be actually healthy.
Right. So anyway, yeah, constraint is a great thing to think about. Constraint is a path to true innovation. Right. You don't put somebody in innovation lab and ask them to invent a leverage. You throw them in a cave with a stick and you say, great, dig yourself out and they'll figure that out. Right. There's something valuable. I remember an investor asked me in the 90s, well, what if you had started this business with 5 million instead of 500,000? And I said, well, I would have made the same mistakes, but I would have done it in a bigger scale and with better office furniture.
Right. And a foosball table.
Yeah. Table, Right. We would have, we would have done flashier things, but really it took time to figure out the business and time and iteration and that kind of thing. And so being a little bit constrained, not getting all that money in all at once was a useful thing.
Yeah, yeah.
So one last question for you. What have you learned about yourself in the process? Like what, what's the leadership lessons? What have you learned is like your area of genius and, and what is like your Achilles heel are the things to be careful about personally as the leader.
I'll start with the last. I've already talked about my Achilles heel and it's product design. Even today. We just had a stand up on Monday with our product, product team and she's like, do you like this logo or this color? I'm like, don't ask me. I don't trust my design. I don't trust my design eye. Like don't make me make that decision. So anyway, there's my Achilles heel of trying to be a product designer. And you know what I think has sort of been the, I don't know, superpower, whatever the thing that's been working is kind of having. And I think partly because I'm a little older than the average founder. Maybe it comes from that, maybe it comes from. And I think the older we get, the less like we give a, give a crap, give an S about stuff like kind of just having a more even tempered thing. Like, all right, this is going to be, you know, if you zoom in on our trajectory, it's like highs and lows, even on a daily basis. Right. Even talk to me at 9am I might be having a panic attack. 11am on top of the world because we just got on Bill's show or whatever. Right. I mean it kind of. Right. Middle of the day is all over the place. But if as long as you can zoom out and I think this is what I'm good at. Zooming out and say, all right, are we making like, you know, in the bigger picture? Are we kind of going in the right direction? Are things going up and to the right over the longer term trend here? Let's not freak out and panic about all the, you know, the, the little bugs and crashes and this person's angry at us or whatever it is. Are we making overall progress in the right direction and just keeping people kind of with that longer term, bigger picture Perspective, I think, is what I'm good at. And that actually helps people feel a little more confident in what they're doing. They're not, you know, being whipsawed by every little thing. Right.
Yeah. Be careful. Have some perspective. Follow the big trend. Yeah. And I see some value, right? That's, there's some, there's some benefit in, in that gray there, right, that, that tells you to. It's gonna be okay. Take it easy.
Yeah.
Pay attention to big things. Don't sweat everything. Don't try to get in, in those areas that you don't belong in. That. That isn't your area of genius.
Don't freak out so much. Don't freak out. I mean, my wife and I, before starting this, there's one other little anecdote. We actually took a sabatical in 2008 and just went sailing and we just sailed away. We sailed out. Yeah, we were. So we sailed. You'll appreciate this. We sailed out the Golden Gate, we pointed the boat left, went down the coast, down into coast of California, went into Cabo, went into Sea of Cortez, and then we sailed across the Pacific to Tahiti and French Polynesia. But there were moments on that where it's like, holy, holy crap, I think I'm gonna die. Can I swear on the show, anyway, holy pool. I think I'm gonna die. But you just keep your hand on the, on the, on the, the steering wheel and you just keep kind of going through it and you know, things change. Don't. And I think that's sort of a metaphor I've taken to startups, right? It's like, hey, just keep, keep even. If the wind is pushing you back, even though the currents are pushing you backwards, that will change because these things all change. Change is the only concept. Get through it and, you know, you'll be good. So anyway, sailing is a metaphor.
No, I love the sailing. And we, we often take CEO groups and other teams out sailing and, and put them like, sailing in the bay is a unique experience. If you're if you are used to like warm water, light wind, sailing in the Great Lakes or something like that.
This ain't that summer when you've got 25 knots and it's exhilarating.
You double reef the main and you're chugging along rails in and yeah, it's a totally different kind of sailing. It's still not sailing around Antarctica. Shout out to people if you're sailing. If you love the metaphors, go find our episode with Randall Reeves and the figure eight voyage, who sailed both around Antarctica and up through the up, up, up across the top of the world all in one year solo. And that experience was fantastic. We talked to him by satellite phone or as he was sailing around Antarctica and it was a great, great show.
Oh, I'm gonna look that one up. That sounds awesome. Yeah.
Cool. So I think it's a great place to end it, right? Pay attention to the big stuff. Give yourself some room. If you're going through hell, keep moving. I think virtual credit. So it's awesome. If you want to know more about Nathan and his company, foundersuite.com is the link. We'll put it there in the crawl, put it in the show notes. We'll put it on the video screen here and you can go check out foundersuite.com and see. Maybe those tools are useful for you. Or maybe you want to know something more about Nathan, his work, what he can recommend. I so appreciate coming on and sharing some of the story with our listeners today. Reminder to our listeners if the show helped you, if you dug it, like subscribe. We've done hundreds of these shows now we do one new one every week. You should probably subscribe. You should get them in your feed. And whether you go love LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook for your video or you like to listen while you work out or drive or that kind of thing, you can get it on any of those audio or video platforms all the time. Of course you can go to our website, scalingcoach.com and if we can help you, connect you to find a coach in your area or do something else like that. Drop us a email to info scalingcoach.com info scalingcoach.com is where you'll find us any kind of feedback and that kind of thing. Big thanks to Verne Harnish, my mentor and partner, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework. Our show is produced by Wanda Mitchell, who's there in the background queuing up our titles and getting the guests ready and that kind of thing. The audio is edited by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions. And our show notes are written up by Ayan Codena and proofread by Tim McGowan. Thanks again, everyone, for listening. Keep scaling up. We'll talk to you again next time.










