A speaker (entrepreneur) reflects that their luckiest break was meeting and keeping the right people—specifically a partner named Mike. During difficult times in the 2010s they chose to cut their own salary in half to keep Mike on the team; this decision led to forming multiple seven- and eight-figure companies. The excerpt emphasizes being people-focused and valuing partnerships.
If you think about your career so far as an entrepreneur, what do you think has been your luckiest break? Yeah, man, good question. Biggest break, you know, Big break. Yeah. I think my biggest break has probably been honestly meeting the right people at the right time because I am very people focused. And I don't think I would do well if it was like just me. But I had through the mid, what do they call the teens? I guess the 2000 teen years. That's how, you know you're getting old, if I think about it. But you know, the tens. Yeah, I, I, I had like, you know, we, we had up to seven to eight, nine different partners kind of cycle through everything. And one guy in particular who, who I became pretty good friends with and he was like the only one at the time that was kind of calling things out that I felt should have been. Yeah. And we had a different person on the team. Again, I'm not trying to be vague, but I don't want to call individuals out or anything, but no, it's fine. You know, we, his name is Mike, but, you know. Yeah, so, so we had, in Baton Rouge. Yeah, yeah. So we had a certain partner that was trying to, to force him out because I think he was finding a lot of things that were going on that shouldn't have been. And they justified it by saying, we're going through a hard time so we're not going to take, we can't afford them. So I actually stepped up and said, you know what, cut my salary in half and give half to him and I'll take the other half. And that was the best thing that I ever did because that guy and I have went on now to form multiple seven and eight figure companies.
