Lessons from a Serial Entrepreneur's Failures | Tim Jacobsen, COO Raw Optics (Podcast 402)

I've doubted so many times not to do things, I've questioned things, I've failed probably six, seven businesses by now and I wouldn't change a thing looking back. And so I'm really grateful for all the failures because they were stepping stones in the end. And so I think that we're often so afraid, so scared to make a mistake, especially when you're young, take the risk, you don't have that much to lose yet. So I would say fail and fail often to myself, because ultimately it brings you so much more than you think.

Our guest today is Raw Optics COO Tim Jacobson. Tim and I met at the Health Optimization Summit of Tim Grays in London. I was blown away by their brand and really impressed with Tim as a coo. With all the challenges in today's modern world, Tim aspires to look back at the end of his life and believe that his life had a positive impact on his direct circle of influence. And you can really see that and feel that in the way that they're growing Raw Optics and the way that he's showing up as a leader. He's open, he's authentic. His personality allows for genuine connection with others. He believes that that's also contributing to a better world. He's gone through a number of struggles in building and failing at a couple of his own businesses. Prior to joining Robtics, some of his biggest passions in life are people and well being. He believes life is all about what we're doing, why we're doing it and with whom we're doing it. And you can feel that permeating throughout the Raw Optics brand. You're going to love this episode. You can also watch it on our second in command podcast YouTube channel. We'll see you on the inside. We'll also see you wearing Raw Optics glasses. So, Tim, welcome to the Second In Command podcast.

Thanks, Cameron.

Yeah, looking forward to this. You and I met about a month or two ago in the uk. I was there for the Health Optimization Summit and you were one of the exhibiting companies that I was really impressed with and I wanted to talk to you and get kind of an insight as to a brand that was in that space and also, you know, exhibiting in that space and also kind of growing and positioning a company because you're a European based company, but you're more of a global customer base. So maybe you can give us some background.

Yeah, we're actually a US based company, so we're based in San Diego, California. We do, you know, fulfill orders worldwide, but predominantly in the U.S. still, I would say 90 to 95%. So yes, U.S. based, but focused on worldwide.

And then you're, you're based in Europe. How many of your team or what percentage of your team would be global? And do you have a plan around where you're going to be basing your, your employees?

For us, we've so far always worked with a remote team. So a bigger part of our team is focused and currently positioned in the States because of our, our HQ there. But we have people working from, you know, Europe, we have North America and basically the entire team operates predominantly remotely. We do meet up every quarter with the whole team at least sometimes more often to meet in person, but we mainly operate remotely as a company.

And was that a strategic decision when they started the business? I know you're still a startup, you're an earlier stage business. Was that a strategic decision to be a remote company?

I think it was initially just because of also the nature of the CEO. He's often traveling around the world meeting with, whether it's manufacturers, whether it's with celebrities, partners, et cetera, he was often traveling. And so for him to base himself in one location wasn't ideal. And I think from that strategy also came the decision to also have the company mostly remote.

How's the business funded? Where did they raise money or did they start bootstrap?

Completely bootstrap sale, yeah.

And was this like investor money that the founder had from other businesses or. I mean, it's not an easy business to just get off the ground.

The answer is twofold here. It was his own money just made from, you know, working a regular job and saving. We were extremely lucky to also work on very favorable payment terms with our vendors.

And walk me through that. What does that, what does fairly favorable terms mean and how did you establish that? Because I think a lot of companies are in negative cash flow. And walk me through how it's working.

It's honestly, I think something that we should be extremely grateful for. We have just such great relationships with our current manufacturers and our partners that the trust has been established very quickly. And their confidence in our company, our team, our mission is so big that they also feel comfortable with giving us a very favorable payment term because they know we'll sell the units. And so I think once partner like that really begins to believe in your mission, your product and sees what you're doing, then it gives them the trust also to be more flexible towards payment terms. And that's something that we've been very fortunate with. And it's Definitely allowed us to scale faster than I think most startups because, you know, oftentimes there's so much cash just stuck in inventory, especially for our business. It's, you know, we have a lead time up to four months. Your cash is stuck for four months. As a startup, that could be a big issue.

So walk me through. I wanted to get some of the technical terms on, on how the actual financing or payment terms are working. But walk me through how you built the trust and established the trust with the manufacturer. You said that they believed in your mission and the team. Walk us through some of the, the kind of specific things that your company did or your founder did to start to establish that trust or that you did.

So we heavily believe in that the people on a team make a difference and that personal relationships, especially in an era where it's more and more digital, driven by robotics, AI, etc. And tech, that being human centered makes a difference. And so we've always gone out to meet people in person, when these days it's so easy to, you know, have zoom meetings, such as we do right now. But also, I think just email contacts. Often we keep it with an email, we keep it with online communication where we always invest from the start in going to the person on location and meeting in person. And that's, I think, you know, one of the critical ways to really build a relationship because that's how you get to feel someone. How are they not just with you, but how are. How am I not just my business partner, but how am I with my partner? Am I with friends? How am I in public? It tells you a lot about individual. I think that's one thing. The other thing is that we've always, at least I've always said that the best way to gain trust or become a trustworthy person is to continuously do the things that you said you were going to do. Once you do that, you over and over and over give the signal to the partner, like, all right, they said A and they did B all the time. And once you break that pattern, it might, you know, create some kind of mistrust at some point. And if it happens more often, you lose trust. By doing the opposite, you gain trust. And that's something we've done from the start.

That's funny. Like I'm smiling and kind of laughing inside as you're saying that because it's such a simple thing and I don't understand why more companies don't get it. And the things that really frustrate me are things like a CEO showing up late for a meeting and not caring. That massively underscores the way that they treat everything in the organization and the way that people will feel about them. And they're like they're harming the foundation of their company with something so simple. I was taught years ago at a company called College Pro Painters that when you're setting up the estimate to go to someone's home to paint their home, you tell them you'll be there at 5 o' clock to do the estimate. And when you show up at the front door, you, as soon as they open the door, you look at your watch and you go, yep, I'm here on time. And you remind them that you're there exactly as you said. And it's kind of like a game that they taught us to do. But you're right that one simple do as you say and say as you, you know, mean what you say and say what you mean. It's so simple. So, okay, so you do that. You're establishing trust. Were you also selling them on the vision of the company? You talked about the mission for the organization, but were you selling them on the vision of where you were taking the company as well?

Absolutely. And that's, I think mostly, you know, to the credit of the CEO because his, his vision has always been really big. And that's also the reason why I joined the company in the first place, is because I felt like I really believe in what you speak, that you stand behind your words. And I think that one of the biggest values of a CEO or founder often is the energy behind the vision. They're so focused on wanting to make it happen, almost obsessed, but it also often leads to performance. And so that's something that I think also our supplier in this case or a vendor felt like, they really felt like, I believe that you say you're going to take this product to, for this company, to a billion dollar company, that you're going to make it happen. Still to this date, when we meet with them in person, it's always like, hey, I saw this famous person wearing your glasses. So cool. Hey, I saw them. I've been a fan since I was young, so I'm wearing your glasses. That's fantastic. These give them some kind of also I think confirmations in their daily life that were things that we said we were going to do and that think further also confirms or sells them on the mission.

And I love that you talk about his like singular focus and that almost maniacal focus. There's an author, years ago who wrote a book called In Search of Excellence. His name is Tom Peters. And Tom's talked about the only people who actually ever scale a company are the monomaniacs. With a mission like that single maniacal focus towards. Towards that goal and. And people rally behind that. So how did you get involved in the organization? How did you find out about the business? And why did he select you, especially when you weren't based in San Diego?

The answer probably that I got with this company as a result of a slap from the universe. Getting back to my path, it's. Before joining this company, Cameron, I had an investment fund in Dubai. We focused on digital assets, bitcoin mining, powered by renewable energy sources. My whole background was more focused on people, relationships, health, wellness before that. But at some point I took a turn and, you know, I was young, I was in my early 20s, and I figured that I want to make more money. And so from exiting at some point, my e commerce company, we invested our funds into this investment fund and started there, only to figure out much later that I'd gone so far from my core values focusing on money. This all happened during, I think, the pandemic. War broke out. Russia, Ukraine, we were depending on two variables, the bitcoin price and the energy price. And so both worked against us because the bitcoin price went down a lot and the energy price went up tremendously. Basically, that fund went bankrupt, and I went through a process of bankruptcy with the company. I still had enough capital on my own to, you know, continue start a new business. But at that point, I felt like I don't even know what to do right now. I felt like I'm in a place where I'm looking for something to do next. I don't know exactly what to do. And then a good friend of mine approached me and said, hey, listen, the founder of this company is a friend of mine, and he's looking for someone to join me as a partner, you know, in operations, strategy, and, you know, marketing, et cetera. I was like, huh, interesting. Yeah, you know, sounds cool, but I don't think I want to work for someone else, so. No, thank you. And I went home and I was like, geez, actually, I think this is my ego. Like, why wouldn't I? I've used their product since many years. I'm a big fan of the company, and I've listened to podcasts of, you know, the founder for many years. But just because I didn't feel comfortable in giving up that identity of myself, of not being an entrepreneur or founder I didn't want to work for the company and take that opportunity. And so I settled myself for a bit in the car and I was like, you know what, let me have that call with him and see where this can go. And so we scheduled the zoom call. We talked about the mission of the company. He pitched me on how things came along and why he started the company, why health is so, why life is so essential for our health, et cetera. I was already completely convinced and, and I was not convinced yet of me joining the company. But then we spoke about also, you know, the options and the possibilities and the vision. In the end I decided, like, you know what, let's meet in person and discuss more what we can do together. And so within, I think a week time we met in Amsterdam, he flew over to meet me in person, had a wonderful day together, and I think only a week later, perhaps even less than a week, I joined the company.

Okay, now you said that you've been using the company for a while. So how did you learn about raw optics then before you got involved with working with them, their products?

Yes, I think initially through just, you know, via podcast that I listened to many years ago. I've always been very interested in optimizing or improving myself in terms of personal development and health, staying healthy. At some point I came along the science of light, so to say, and what's. What light does, what. What light does for our health and which roles it plays in our daily lives. Right now what we do is we create products based on the science of light that inspire people and change their health. And so I have been using products for already a few years and I've been very impressed with the quality and how things designed behind it. You know, this step made sense because I already was convinced of the efficacy.

Now I first heard about your products from Ben Greenfield. Ben is a former client of mine. I used to coach his coo. His COO is a member of our CO alliance and Ben and I were in a number of mastermind groups together. You kind of mentioned earlier that, you know, you built some relationships with celebrities. And I think you also probably talk about like influencers in the health space. How does being involved in the biohacking space and with some of those influencers. Let's talk about the kind of health influencers first and then we'll go to the celebrities second. How does working around the health, like the health Optimization Summit and having a Ben Greenfield wearing your glasses, how does that impact things and how do those relationships work?

I think that it's you know, it kind of speaks for itself. But if, of course, people with significant influence in whether it's social media or in person on tv, use your products, there's just statistically a very high chance that at some point they will share something about it reaches much more people, many more people than you could with your own efforts. And so I think that, of course, them wearing our glasses and endorsing our product, it's one of the, you know, most valuable, I would say, marketing approach that we currently have in our business. So many people believing in our products, especially when they're famous or have some kind of fame to their name.

Yeah, it's interesting. I was. I was actually walking through the Health Optimization Summit with Tim Gray, who is the founder, and he and I were. I've been friends for a while. We actually met in Ibiza about a year ago, and Tim and I were hanging out, walking through his show, and he literally stopped right in front of your booth and said, you got to get to know these guys. And that was how I got to see your products for the first time. So you've clearly made an impression where, you know, there were roughly 100 exhibitors at that conference. Why do you think he stopped in his tracks at Raw Optics? What was it about your product or your brand when, you know, there's. There's hundreds of companies out there selling yellow and red glasses? What is it about your. The. The science of the technology and. And the product, you know, versus the others?

Largely the story that we also share with people because apart from creating products, we also create education. Like, we want to educate people about the impact life has on our health. And so it's not just that we put a product out in the world. We market it and we sell it and make money. It's no. First and foremost, we want people to really understand the crucial role that light plays in our health. That's first and foremost. And so I think that Tim also felt like we're sincere. Like, we want people to become better. We want people to not just buy the product, but buy it because they understand why we share with them that it's so important and why they can help them so much. Our products, again, getting back to the energy behind the brand, it's like, we believe in why this is so important, plus we have the science to back it up. I think many companies in our niche are competitors, if you will. They create the products because at some point this, you know, hype came along of bio and then the glasses, but many of them to Be completely candid, lack the science. And so we invested from a very early stage on in the science. We have a chief science officer on the team who's a medical doctor as well as a PhD researcher and has been studying light since the 1980s. And so everything we do is first and foremost developed with his oversight and approved by him. And, you know, he's a German scientist, and if you know Germans, they're very rigorous, precise.

Yeah. So it's a little bit different, I think. I get what you're saying is there's a lot of competitors out there that are probably just involved in the hype cycle and they're producing yellow or red glasses, but there's not necessarily any science behind the lenses. There's not. And they're certainly not doing prescription like you guys will do as well.

So, to be fair, some do. Yeah, some actually do. And, yeah, partially due to the science. But I think also, Cameron, that next to the science is also that when we started this company seven years ago, there were some glasses in the market that did focus a bit on science, at least the basis of it. But the basics, but then were extremely unsexy, if you will, the glasses. And so we decided that, okay, if this is something that's beneficial for our health and the science is there, then what can we do to make it more appealing to people? And the answer was to make them more stylish. People want to look stylish, especially if you put something on your face that makes you look like, you know, a dorky Terminator almost, if you will, or cyborg, you know, you gotta make them sexy. And that's something that make frames that are sexy.

It's funny, I just. I just went and hopped on the website as you were talking, and the frames are much nicer than the. Than the normal frames. Yeah, the ones that you buy off Amazon are just kind of like a. Whatever plastic frame with. Yeah, you guys at least have some good styles in there. So you've got the brand, you've got the influencers, you've got a great vision. Give me the specifics of the payment terms. Are you paying for these after they're delivered? Are you paying for them partway through manufacturing? How does that work? And because I think there's some opportunity for people to rethink the way that their company is working with their suppliers, potentially.

So what we do is straightforward. We don't pay until we receive the products.

So the four months of lead time of manufacturing time does not get eaten up at all. That's a Pretty solid in your manufacturing in China. Where are you manufacturing?

Yes, so we do, we do manufacturing in China. We have materials from over the world, Italian acetate, German steel. And production happens in China simply because there's great stuff being made there. Often people think that, you know, there's some kind of negative feeling around production in China. Actually they make some really, really good stuff.

Oh, not anymore. Yeah, no, the, the whole like made in China was in 1980s, 1990s misnomer. When they were trying to figure out how to do manufacturing, they figured that out, then they figured out how to run businesses and now they figured out how to do strategy. Companies that are, are running out of China are doing it better than anybody in North America at this point in almost any industry. So. And it's just financially irresponsible to not manufacture there. You know, you, you can't afford to manufacture in the Canadas and the United states and the UK's. It just doesn't make any sense. So we can run business and marketing from places and strategy, but the, the grunt work of stuff has to be done where it makes sense.

If you were to, you know, the company scales up massively, you're, let's say your billion dollar company and you want to increase the perceived value for customers who still believe in anything produced in the status of higher value, of higher quality. You could then, you know, start producing or manufacturing in the states only. But at the same time, I think as you mentioned rightfully so, this whole I think idea is slowly dying as we get to see more and more often that great stuff actually is produced in China. Often better than in states or way better for sure.

Okay, walk me through the celebrity side of things. The celebrities are a key part of the, the kind of brand or a key part of the marketing. How did you establish the relationships with celebrities? Were they paid? Was it just, you know, reaching out to them, getting them excited? Was it going after the ones from the, the health space first?

This is completely to the credit of the founder because this I would say is his unique skill is to really connect with so many different people and travel around. Of course argue that being in one place, sitting up in headquarters and focusing on building the culture there is very important and impressive for a startup. Sorry, important. But at the same time, him traveling around and meeting with all these people in person created so many valuable connections for our company that it's completely justifiable, I would say. And so many of these people were again completely sold on the vision that he shared with them. Like all right, this is what we do, this is why. And explain not just what we do, but also why it's so important, touching on the. And how it can help them. And so I think that if this were. If the conversation were around nutrition, they might have been less interested because there's almost. Already so much information about nutrition on the, on the web and people explaining about this diet and the keto diet and the paleo diet, et cetera. But light is fairly, I would say, still new to people.

New, yeah. Niche too as well.

Probably the oldest thing in the universe. So old, but, you know, it's still fairly new to people. There was a huge focus on light in the early 1900s when there were Nobel Prizes won for discoveries in light medicine, et cetera. But it slowly faded away, I think partially also because of almost censoring it more or like muffling it because it was so effective yet free. Example is that in 1904, 1905, another two years is that Niels Finsen, a Danish doctor, won the Nobel Prize for discovering that UV light specifically was able to cure lupus vulgaris, which is skin tuberculosis. That was a huge breakthrough. He won a Nobel Prize in medicine for that discovery. And I think only two decades later, or maybe 15 years later, they came with penicillin, or penicillin, what's the exact pronunciation, the medicine for doing exactly that, which was, of course, they could patent that. And so then it basically became less interesting to look at light, which is free. And so now I think that we're getting this whole new. We're seeing this uptrend in focus on. On light, at least light modulation and light exposure for our health. Many people know about vitamin D and our. Our sleep rhythms more and more still not enough, I would say, but more and more. But so I think many of these celebrities, to answer your question, understood that there's something to the story here. There's something interesting and not many people speak about it. So perhaps it's something for me here to also to learn from and utilize something that's not so common. So that's the value thing for them. For us, of course, it was really cool to have people with such impact believe in our mission and our company. And so the question for us next was what can we do to give back to them and form some kind of partnership there?

Well, and if you think that, that your product kind of lends itself quite nicely to celebrities as well. I mean, celebrities are not daft. They like to get press. And it's not like they're taking your Sleep supplement and nobody knows. I mean, they're walking around with a pair of glasses on their head. So I mean, nobody would know that I'm wearing a pair of, these are very light yellow glasses. Nobody would know. But if I was a Cameron Diaz instead of a Cameron Herald and I'm walking around with a pair of yellow or red raw optics glasses, everybody knows very quickly. So it's clearly been good for them to associate with a premium brand and then for you to have them on their heads. A friend of mine started a company years ago called Dry Farm Wines and they're an organic, pesticide free, incredible quality wine. And they went to all the mastermind communities and sponsored them and gave away wine to all these CEOs and influencers who just kind of got addicted to their wines and then couldn't stop talking about it. I think you're kind of doing that same approach with it, which is brilliant with you being based in Ibiza and in Finland, living over there, kind of bouncing back and forth between the two. And then your CEO, I think his name is Matt, is based in San Diego. That's a long distance between the two in terms of time zones and geography. How do you stay in sync with the CEO? How does he stay in sync with you?

So just to give full context here and bit of clarification, Matt isn't necessarily positioned always in San Diego because he travels the majority of the time. So he's often in Europe for more than, you know, several months. So we do get to meet up regularly. But of course still there's travel involved and different geolocations and time zones. We make it a practice to share key updates frequently. That's one thing. We make time to have phone calls. We have recurring important meetings about strategy, important projects. Then of course, internal, you know, project management. We have, I think in the end it comes down to having very clear communication lines with each other. And so brief key updates and regular check ins are something that's very important for us. Plus a monthly larger report of the big others in the company from my.

Side to him, smaller company again. I mean you're clearly, you're big enough, you've got a huge brand, global reach. You know, you've talked about yourself being a startup. How many employees approximately do you have full time? Part time?

So we're currently, I would say we have between 10 to 15 people on.

The team that are full time.

Yes.

Okay, so how, how do you decide what to say no to? I mean part of being, being an entrepreneurial startup company is the ability to say no more often than we say yes, because there's an inordinate number of opportun opportunities. But you need to say no to a bunch of them to focus on the critical few. How do you decide?

I think it comes down to, for us at least, having very clear goals and a very clear strategy, like where do we want to go and what's the strategy that we want to implement and follow as a company. And so if we start there, then it's much easier to say, does this new project that comes in our awareness match with a strategy in our. In our plan or not? If the answer is no, then that's basically an easier way to decide, okay, we won't do it.

So based on strategy, that's. That's one. How do you avoid getting sucked into the minutia of everything? You know, at some point you're, and you're at the stage now where you're building out a team, you're able to delegate more and grow people more. I launched a course called invest in your leaders with the whole principle of a CEO's job. And a CEO's job is to delegate everything except genius and then grow the skills and the confidence of the people so they can keep taking more off their plate. How do you avoid getting sucked into doing work that you should be delegating? And how do you focus on growing people so they can take more off your plate?

Feedback? So what I believe in really is that, for example, last week I was out of office for a week. First thing I did when I came back is asking the team, what were some things that you ran into last week that clearly indicated that I was a bottleneck in the process that you needed me for in order to solve it? Because this allows me to identify an issue in a company where I'm still needed to solve something. And so once I identify that, there's either the need for me to automate this or to properly delegate it, or to write clear SOPs or guidelines for something.

It's a great question. What do you think you learned from the crypto space and, you know, building out the business that you're doing that you apply to your business today? What were some of the lessons from success and some of the lessons from some of the struggles or the lessons from the edge?

Do more due diligence.

Do more due diligence.

That's, of course, regarding the financial side of things, but that is something I learned to really take the time to think about things. Of course, we always, you know, nowadays focus on quick decisions and speed for startup, they're imperative. At the same time, I think, especially regarding large decisions, I'm a big advocate of taking the time to evaluate things properly, to not miss details that perhaps when you look back after a couple of weeks and months, you were like, I wish we look into this more before making a decision to go into this. So I would say research, getting a full picture of what we're dealing with. For example, new project, what are all the parameters, what's the full context of this project, what are the implications, what's needed, asking questions otherwise really focusing on relationships more and more. I of course mentioned this in the beginning of the, the conversation but I really believe Cameron, that in an era where we focus so much on, on tech and AI, et cetera, that we're going to make the difference by being human and connecting, being present, by hearing someone, by seeing someone, by listening. And so I think that that's often something, especially in my previous industry, you know, finance, it was often just about hard business and about making the sale making transaction. I've become to understand more and more that ultimately, you know, if that's your, your goal, you might be even more effective if you focus on the individual and really care.

We had a huge logo above our reception desk at 1-800-got junk and it said it's all about people. And it was just a complete obsession in caring about people. That's hard to scale, I mean that, but I think I know what your answer is going to be. So how do you focus on that caring and that empathetic leader and the caring about people and that connection with people as you grow and add more and more people, how do you continue to scale that up?

Ownership and giving the example like walking the talk. It's like I'm a big advocate of, of treating people with kindness and empathy. I believe it brings you much further than being authoritative or just not caring enough at the same time. Also, while I say this, I fully admit that I make my own mistakes, of course, and I don't always do these things the way I'm sharing them right now. But when I don't do these things, I want to make sure I own up for that. I take ownership for the mistakes I make and to get back to something, if I don't listen to someone enough on a call and in the end the person doesn't feel heard or seen by me to get back to that later and say, hey listen, I want to get back to the conversation last week that we had and just acknowledge that I wasn't fully present, and I apologize for that. And so I believe that it's so much more than just those words. It makes someone feel like I'm being heard, I'm being seen. It makes them also want to perform better because they're being valued in this company. They're not just some number. They're part of the team. You value them like they're important to you. And I think that we all want to feel important. We want to belong. We want to be part of something. We want to be heard and seen. It's. It's so important for us feeling motivated to be in any social situation, whether it's with your partner. You don't feel heard and seen. Respected there. You will, at some point, walk away.

Now, I've been to the Netherlands and Holland a bunch of times, and one of the things I know about the Dutch, well, two things. One is they. They all speak about five to seven languages. That's kind of normal. And they're all tall. You're all freaking tall. Like, I'm six foot, almost six foot four. And you're all taller than me. How tall are you and how many languages do you speak?

All right, so I'm six foot one. So I'm actually shorter than you are.

You're shorter?

Yeah. And I speak, you know, English, Dutch, obviously German and some Spanish, and that's it.

So four. Okay, so you're kind of an underperformer for the Dutch with four languages then. Now, for a lot of our listeners are in the United States or in Canada, we do have a huge global audience, and we've interviewed CEOs from all over the world. I'm curious what you bring from the Dutch from the. From Holland in the. In the kind of culture and into the business world that, you know, what are some of those traits or things that you bring in that are uniquely or, you know, either more European or more Dutch that you bring into the business world?

I would say one being direct. Like, we're known to be very direct. And so I like to address things the way they are. And of course, doesn't mean that you can't have, you know, you can't say them in a nice way, but, like, say it as it is. Don't you go it really big or just say it as it is, but say it with. With kindness. That's one. Two. I think frugality, to be frugal is something that a Dutch definitely are known for.

Yeah.

So when it comes to, you know, negotiations or payment terms, I'M the guy to speak to people, most likely because I like it in good deal, I guess something in our DNA, I think also togetherness, like the Dutch people have a, we're such a small country and so densely populated. For example, to give, you know, some comparison here, Finland, where I'm right now, is, if I'm not mistaken, 9 to 12 times larger in terms of service square meters than the Netherlands, yet they have three times less people than the Netherlands. So they have around between 27 to 36 times more space per individual.

That's crazy.

And so people are very used to having people around all the time. Wherever you go, it's bicycles crossing the street out of nowhere or with more bicycles than, than people in our country. Cameron.

It's, Yeah, I know. I, I bike through the Jordan area of, of Amsterdam a bunch of times and it's chaos. And then I rented a little scooter and tried doing that. I'm like, this is suicide. It's, I love it. It's amazing. It's fun. It's funny about the Dutch, you're right, they are very direct, but they're also very humble and nice. Like, I, I, I don't, I think that at least, I've always felt that about the Dutch at least, versus the Parisians that are, you know, not that nice in Paris. Is that true about the Dutch too? Are people tend to be.

I would say so. I think we always have things to complain about our own culture. You know, we always complain about the weather isn't good today, like it's such poor weather or people aren't so nice. But then once we travel to a different country, we might realize actually things aren't that bad.

Maybe it's because they legalized marijuana so much earlier and everybody's a little more chill over there.

Who knows? Who knows?

So with, with the size of the organization you're at now, what's your onboarding? This is a random question, but I'm curious how you onboard new people when you can't bring them into office and get them to meet everybody. What's your onboarding system to get people up to speed culturally and get them to know everybody and know the systems. Do you have a, what are your systems for that?

So mostly we have one company, company document that includes, you know, core information about the company that is just very important to, to read for anyone, to study, for anyone that joins the company to get a full picture of, you know, what the company entails, what's our mission, et cetera. But also right from the start, it's media training. So depending on which role you're in, we make it a practice that you get on a call with someone as soon as possible and join calls. For example, the partnership division. If we have partnership calls with, for example, we had a partnership with Aura last year, huge company from I think originally Finland actually funnily enough, now in the States, of course. But that for us was a massive partnership. And so we just, I just joined the company back then and so immediately I came on that call to get a full understanding of how things, how things are happening in company, how we do things. And so I think, especially when you're still a small company, the energy and the way of going about things from the core, people on the team make a difference. And so if you get people involved as soon as possible in following the process, they can learn quickly on the job.

Did you say media training or immediate training?

Immediate training. Sorry, yes.

Okay, got it, got it. Yeah. I, I thought you'd said media training. I'm like, wow, that's unique that you're training everyone on how to actually speak to the press. But I think you're, it's the cultural indoctrination that you're getting people into training very quickly that's important.

Exactly.

All right, I want you to go back to the, the 22 year old Tim Jacobson and give yourself some advice. What advice would you give the younger you that you know to be true today, but you wish you'd known when you're just starting out in your career?

Career sounds perhaps corny, but the Nike slogan, just do it. I've doubted so many times not to do things. I've questioned things, I've failed probably six, seven businesses by now and I wouldn't change a thing looking back. And so I'm really grateful for all the failures because they were stepping stones in the end. And so I think that we're often so afraid, so scared to make a mistake, you know, in, in business, whether it's because we feel inferior, whether we feel not capable, whether we feel like it's too big of a risk, whatever it is, especially when you're young, take the risk, you don't have that much to lose yet. I am so glad I went through a bankruptcy when I didn't have a family yet to take care of because I went, if I would gone through a bankruptcy when I'm 45 and I have kids to take care of and a wife and I have, you know, obligations. I have all these, you know, assets that I have to perhaps liquidate or they can, you know, confiscate because I have to pay my, my collectors. So I would say fail, and fail often to myself, because ultimately it brings you so much more than you think.

I love it. Tim Jacobson, the CEO for Rawptics, thanks so much for sharing with us on the Second in Command podcast.

Thanks so much, Cameron. It's been a pleasure. We had to make a decision. Which way are you going to go? You're going to do the safe thing. The league that guaranteed games, guaranteed opponents, guaranteed, you know, you'll sell it out easy, comfortable, safe. Or do we go all in on, on this banana ball thing? Because we realize very quickly we cannot do both.