Ego, Leadership, and Bringing a Product to Market: Doug Katz

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today is Doug Katz, co-founder of Nulu. Doug, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Absolutely. So, well, we'll just jump right into it. What is Nulu?

Nulu is— the name comes from the etymology of it, I guess you could say, comes from New Ulu. So it's a knife originally designed around adaptivity, right? I'm a disabled vet. I have some of my own issues, designed it for myself. With my partners, we really discovered some ability to commercialize it and realize the positive impact. And we're all a little bit older. So I think we also had the means to launch something. And so it's an adaptive knife. And sadly enough, I don't have one in front of me right now because I just got back from an event, so a lot of them are packed up. But, um, it's, it's, it's, uh, more of a circular geometry than you would typically see with that, with it, with a traditional knife.

But it still has a pointy end.

It doesn't. So what we did was, when you think of a traditional knife— and I do have one of those here, as any good bladesmith would— and this is actually a good example, right? This is a very primitive knife. And this was— this actually what started my knife journey because my wife gave this to me and it was made by the knife smith who I later took a class from. But you can see it only aligns with your body when you have a pointy thing on the end. But when you no longer need it as a multitasking item to do this and to cut, then you've created— um, it, it, it does this really, really well. It does this phenomenally well, but you can see you're holding it here and you're trying to cut here. If you're cutting, what it does is it's very efficient. It affects your kinetic chain. If you're sitting, it's very hard to do. So there's a lot of things and it's interesting because we've gone back and forth about do you— how do you address traditional knives, right? People, like their knives. Knives are a very primal thing for mankind, right? It's what helped lift us up. It was one of the first tools. But when you don't need the point, the point is pointless. And so that's why we went with this more circular geometry. And I actually could go— do you want me to go around and get one real quick? Sure, sure. Hold on, give me 2 seconds. I have one in my storeroom. All right, so coming right out of the bag here, right in our inventory. So you can see it's more circular. This is the, the, um, the sheath that we use. But hold on, they're a little bit tight coming out of the box. But you can see it's a very different geometry. So what it does is it aligns with your body. So if I'm standing you can see that it— and it's really a bad view— it aligns with my muscular skeletal structure. So now it's direct force transfer as opposed to, um, more of an indirect linear force transfer. And what it does is it enables people who can't cut to be able to cut better because the transfer of force from their body to the blade is direct. Uh, and for people who do a lot of cutting, we're actually getting some interest in the homesteading, hunting, and outdoor community, uh, as well as commercial. It allows you to cut without the risk of the repetitive stress injuries that can sometimes, um, impact people who do a lot of cutting.

So this was not designed to be a combat knife. This is more—

no, no. And in fact, it's, it's interesting because that's been part of the challenge is the differentiation of knives, right? Some are more aggressive. This is meant to really be optimized in food preparation and some field craft. We're, we're trying to figure out how it fits best in things like skinning or butchering because there are some specialized aspects. But what we're realizing is Nulu is less a knife than a cutting system. And we have some things that are about this that are going to be coming out future state, like accessories that will allow for, you know, like a gut hook or, or, uh, something to be able to scale a fish. That will all be integrated into it. So it doesn't— it's not necessarily just a knife. It can do more at, at the, at the time that we fully, um, fulfill the roadmap.

Interesting. So, how long have you been— when did you launch Nulu?

It was about 3 years ago is when it was— when the inception was. It was very interesting. As we were talking before, I just got back from an entrepreneurial conference that my West Point classmates run every year. And it was an interesting mark of time because I've been 3 years in a row and the first year, I had 3D printed versions, right? That was about it. The second year they do a pitch competition, sort of a Shark Tank-ish one, and I presented at that. And this year I was exhibiting. So it's been about, I would say about 2.5 to 3 years full enterprise lifecycle. I think in terms of the incorporation, we've been at it for a little over 2 years now. As I've built the team and really fleshed out the project and gone to market because right now, we're fully at market.

I love that. I always find inventors of things, I mean, like, you know, they say inventors, I think all entrepreneurs are inventors of a sort. But when you're creating a physical thing, I've always been fascinated by that and the patent process and just like how you come up with an idea in your head and make it a physical thing. So, um, and what did you do?

Take a second on that real quick. Sure. It touches on the why of some of the things we're seeing in political policy now. But what's a shame is when, when you look at sort of the, what, what has really become of a sort of the innovation space, and when I go to events like I went to, most of people are tech. A lot of them are dual-use tech. There are some physical products, but a lot of them are more, you know, again, heavily tech-based. And it's very interesting how anachronistic sometimes I feel with physical products. But I don't think you can replace sometimes holding in your hand like this didn't exist 2 years ago. And, you know, not to take away from apps, I've invested So, invested in some of my friends' companies. But I don't know, it's fun being a product guy. And I hope that we get more of that as AI and other capabilities have democratized the means of not necessarily production, but the means of synthesis and creation. That really changes things in the entrepreneurial space. I did not consider myself a technical guy. I was not a product guy through the entirety of my career up until this. Most recently, I was a mortgage guy, but the ability to research patents and IP and other things to get help creating diagrams where sometimes with IP, when you were talking about IP, two things can happen. You can have, well, a couple of things. You can have no IP. You don't want to do that. You can have bad IP where you either didn't have a good attorney or the communication wasn't such that they knew really what you were creating to be able to make the claims, right? Or you could have good IP. AI and stuff like that allows you to do a lot of the work to where when you're finally doing some of these things, you have a better chance of success. So what I'm hoping is that the Renaissance won't necessarily be on the manufacturing side, because that's great, whatever. The Renaissance should be in the innovation side because at the point where we can strip out a lot of the cost of innovation and potentially the cost of creation of these things, then maybe the manufacturing becomes less of an issue. But it's a part that, you know, everybody keeps talking about the manufacturing side. You don't need to manufacture if you don't have innovative products. And we have much as much of a problem in the innovation space of monolithic companies that in a lot of ways would be better off being broken up. But these companies have the deep pockets where the minute you get some momentum, they try and crush you. So, that was a little public service announcement about IP, but it's something that can be the death knell of a lot of entrepreneurs. And when you told the— when we were talking about your origin story in the beginning, The number of entrepreneurs that think they have IP, they begin to build a thriving business, and then in an instant it's taken away from them. There's an entrepreneur who's in an organization called US Inventors that I'm in named Molly Metz, who had a great— she's a world-class jump roper, and she had a jump rope she invented, and a bunch of companies that were competitors, some licensees stole it. And, you know, that's when you talk about some of the loneliness of being an entrepreneur. When that happens and your life dreams get crushed, it's pretty ugly. So IP is something that they definitely need to understand, but they should be using the tools out there to create as many moats as they can because that will allow them to run their business.

Intellectual property is interesting. Chris, who the show is named after, was a chemist, and his company made a paint stripper. And he was a self-taught chemist, strangely. And he was also an ex-Marine. So he had some similarities with you there. But he never obtained a patent. And It never was an issue. But, you know, I think when, you know, some things like Coca-Cola, you know, they've never patented their recipe.

Right.

Right. And that's, you know, some things I think facilitate that. His product did because it's real hard to reverse engineer stuff chemically.

Yeah.

Right. So, yeah, it is interesting. So You mentioned the loneliness, and I think that, you know, I heard this statement from a pastor several months ago, and he didn't cite a reference, but it just resonated through that we as a society have never been more lonely. And I'm like, you know, yeah, that feels right. I, I think entrepreneurs— so, so I don't want to set entrepreneurs above everybody else and say that loneliness isn't an issue that, you know, a lot of people struggle with. But I think the thing, uh, that to me really causes the loneliness is this trying to pretend, put on a mask, if you will, of everything's okay, I understand it, I've got it under control.

Right. Well, and it's almost like it's isolation and not loneliness. I think the physical loneliness tends to be on the outside. And when you were talking about it, it's the isolation, I think. But I think that's an unforced error. Because, no, I agree. Like, when I looked at parenting a different way and decided to tell my kids, I know nothing about any situation in general, like, everyone is new and I have never dealt with that, but the information that I have to then be able to solve that issue can, can help. But at the point that I tried to give up, or that I did give up, that the important part was the knowing, I guess, the technical competence. And when you elevate to more of the strategic and decision-making and the other competence, the other stuff comes. And frankly, again, this is the kind of the military thing. When you're in the field, right, you're making decisions, but you don't necessarily know everything going on. You're making the best decisions. And people do things based on, "Hey, does this person generally make good decisions with the information they have at the time?" I think that sometimes the persona people try and build is this persona of perfection as opposed to, "Hey, I do the best I can. I take care of the people that work with me. And generally, I get it right enough that I built the intellectual and other capital with everybody to have them do it and the ability to approach them when there are issues to make myself less isolated." So I'm lucky because the entirety of my team are mostly, if not all, over 50. There's a, a quiet professionalism. They've seen commercial tragedy and personal tragedy. So I just think people deal with it differently and it's more collaborative. I think at a younger entrepreneur level, sometimes there's something to prove and they think that what the world, investors, clients, everything want to see is perfection and this person's in control of everything as opposed to, wow, this person is very good at building a phenomenal team and executing, and that's what I trust.

Yeah. And I also think just the way we talk to ourselves as entrepreneurs, I was walking yesterday morning and I was contemplating and I was like, You know, I've made some good decisions and some bad decisions. And then I'm like, well, wait a second. That's only known when you state it like that. You only know whether they're, quote, good or, quote, bad in retrospect. You don't— it's not like you set out to make a bad decision or you set out to make a good decision. It speaks to what you said, like your experience, your intellectual capacity. The principles on which you make decisions. Yeah, I'm going to protect my people or, you know, what other, what other values you make decisions on. And the reality is, is that we should strive to make the decisions through a certain process or paradigm, not, not understanding that the outcome is largely out of our control. Right? Right. You know, we can control certain variables and we have to work to do the best we can with those things that we can control. But in life, and especially in entrepreneurship, the vast majority of the things we have no control over. Like you have no control over someone buying the knife or not buying the knife, right? Right. You can't put a gun to their head and say, buy it, right? That's not how it works. Right. So, that outcome is beyond your control, right? So, to sit there and try and control it—

You know what's interesting is the resource allocation isn't, right? So, that's where I think it's interesting as you talk about bad decisions, you make them all the time, but the scale of the decision is I think what defines how you look at it in the macro, right? So, if I set something on the counter and I don't take the time to make sure that it's fully balanced and falls on the ground. Oh, that was stupid. It was a bad decision, but the outcome is less. I think the bad decisions that people generally— that stay with them are ones at a scale where part of not making the bad decision is understanding that scale, the risk involved, and then going to the right people. Because if the scale is such that it will affect more people than just you, it is a leadership competence and an entrepreneurial competence to say, Hmm, like, what are the risks and who should I be talking to? Even in a short conversation, or even, you know, going back to AI, saying, hey, you know what, just take a look at the— what do you think of this? And should I engage some other players? And I think then that really changes it, right? Just understanding, right? And it's sort of a research allocation, even your brainpower and worry. You know, I can clean up this stuff that fell off the counter. It's not going to affect anybody else. But I can't clean up the stuff that maybe really adversely impacts how it affects even a small enterprise with 4 or 5 other people.

Yes. And I would say that really what you're talking about, resource allocation, I use the Pareto principle all the time with me and my team in the sense that like 20% and this is, I don't know how much you've, you've researched or utilized the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule. But it's fascinating how it shows up in pretty much anything that involves human behavior. Right. And the reality is, is that the majority of the things— it may not be 80%, that percentage is not set in stone, but the ratio is, you know, it might be 2/3 to 1/3, but like, that ratio is large that the majority of the things that you do really don't have much impact. And it's like you said, you can't focus on those things. Well, you can, but it's bad resource allocation. You have to focus on the 20% of the things that are really going to move the needle, that are going to have the most impact. And you can't approach every decision the same way or you would run out of resources or run out of time. Right. So you've got to identify those 20% that are most important and put your resources into making the best decisions on those 20% that are going to have impact.

And I think the one thing that I've gotten better at, but still I think every— is Understanding then how to evaluate that, right? So, if you're saying, "I'm allocating my time, financial resources, or whatever," okay, when do you cut bait? And that's sometimes I think the harder thing is getting over what would be considered sunk costs. And that's actually why I like the entrepreneurial world. Like, it's really interesting. You talk about entrepreneurial isolation, but you can also look at it as entrepreneurial autonomy, the same thing that gives you the ability to make those more rapid decisions. And maybe remedy a bad resource allocation decision are what make it lonely, right? Because ultimately, that decision is the one that you live with. But again, I lucked out. I figured out that I'm good at making the decisions when I have really good partners or when they're making their decisions when they need input from me. So, I think that Experience and wisdom go a long way, I think, with entrepreneurship as well, and patience. And that's why when I was at this event this weekend, I'm sorry, this week, Monday and Tuesday, and there were some younger entrepreneurs. And when I come on podcasts and they ask me stuff, I'm like, find some older guys, find some folks who corporate America has unwisely displaced because they're only worried about what the cost is. And they don't know about the soft cost of not having informal mentorship and things that bring down the stress level and all that. And I'll gladly continue to keep building teams because we have some other products we're looking at bringing out of those folks because I think that's what creates it, right? And if you look at like how the military does things, right? When I was in the Army, You know, you have your officer and you have a senior, more senior, non-commissioned officer giving them good guidance. And the good lieutenants and captains and majors and everybody listen to their NCO because there's a wisdom to be able to have them not make those mistakes. A good entrepreneur can create that same kind of structure. It may cost you more, but when you don't have all the overhead, find the good, the good people. Don't be chintzy with equity or equity for service if you find the right people because I think you live and die based on it. This didn't happen without my team. And the more I realize that every day, the better I've gotten in everything I'm doing, right? It's all about the agency of others. And I think that helps. And it helps also with the isolation. At the end of the day, When you put your head on the pillow, if you're running an organization, yes, it does end with you. But when you empower people to help you make all those right decisions, you know, you're going to sleep much better at night.

Yes. And I think that, like, you know, I kind of giggled in my head, like, yeah, butter bars don't really know what they're doing. They have to have a good sergeant to direct them because they're new. They don't know anything usually. Yeah. And I think that the reality is that the NCO is in the same place as the lieutenant. Right. In that they have to go to bed and live with their decisions as well. The difference is that guy's got more experience, right? Right. And there isn't a substitute for experience, which is why I think entrepreneurship— trying to do entrepreneurship by yourself— and I'm not saying you don't have employees. What I'm saying is you don't participate in peer groups and have entrepreneurial colleagues that you discuss things with is a very dangerous place to be. Because, you know, you, you, you don't know what you don't know. Right. And I've, I've been fortunate enough to be in Entrepreneurs Organization for 13 years. And one of the most powerful things is to be able to go into a group of your peers and say, this is what I'm experiencing. And, and they say, well, I'm going through that exact same thing, right? Like, or I have gone through that same thing. And to know that, oh, I'm not the only one experiencing this. Like, this is normal.

Like, you know, especially the innovation space. Unfortunately, what I think a lot of people— going back to the patent side, um, but it could even be, I've got a great service idea, or I got a great idea for whatever— they think that the idea is what it's all about.

No, and ideas are a dime a dozen.

Right. And the thing is, the number of people that will actually pursue an entrepreneurial path is very low. So, you could tell to someone who thinks it's a great idea, says, "I'm going to copy it," runs out of gas even before they get back to their desk. But the reality is when you talk about entrepreneurial organizations, and I always encourage the people I meet, check about accelerators and the the meetup groups that you're talking about, if people are going to that, they're not going to like, "I'm going to go to as many entrepreneurial groups as I can to steal someone's idea." They're going to solve their problems. So, I have found and I 100% agree with you that you need to have that group of people to just be able to say, and they don't even have to know your business. No. Sometimes, it's an ability to sit down and when you try and articulate the problem, they might not help you with the solution, but they may understand you have a completely different problem than you think you do. And that's why the more that you can get other people involved in helping you, the better. And that's been my big level up, and it's taken me a long time to get there. And I think military guys, especially, make great entrepreneurs and terrible entrepreneurs at the same time because they make great entrepreneurs with everything they've learned, whether they're enlisted, NCOs, or officers. But they get out in the civilian world and they think, haha, I was like 5% of the population. So there are certain skill sets I have. And if I'm with military guys and gals, I know that they know what I know. So I don't have to babysit. I don't have to do everything. But in the same way, when you talk about like a Butterbar getting out there and being like, oh, I have to show everybody I'm, I know everything because immediately they're thinking I don't know anything and I'm not going to be that guy. I think military have been so lionized appropriately for so long that people get out there like, I have to live up to that. I got to be Captain America. As opposed to saying, well, what worked for me in the military? Well, there might have been a platoon leader in the same battery, or a battery commander in the same battalion who I know from whatever. And, you know, hey, how are you solving this problem? I'm having this issue. And they forget that, right? Because when you do that, like, all of you know that you don't know everything and that you're going to be dealing with problems. But I think that stands in the way sometimes of military guys being really, really good. They get focused on the wrong thing as opposed to focusing on good decision-making, character, honor, commitment to duty, sacrifice. You know, the event that I went to on, you know, last 2 days, one of the keynote speakers was, uh, was a— I think it was a major general. And what I loved is he brought up the, the, you know, um, eating last, right? Eating after the troops, making sure everyone is fed. If you bring that stuff to any endeavor and hire the right people, you will, you will have some type of success. Might not be where you want to be, But if you build the right team, take care of them, and have a great product or service, it's not guaranteed. Timing matters, but you're more likely going to not be in the 90% of businesses that fail.

There was a book, I think, Leaders Eat Last. I think that is a book. Yes. And I was also fascinated. We went down to Fort Sill. And did a tour. They have a great— were you ever stationed at Fort— were you in artillery?

I was in the field artillery. So, I did the longest officer basic course in the Army at that time. It might still be. And I think it's still at Fort Sill. I think now though, they have ADA there as well. But yeah, so I spent— and this is my SILL story. So, I spent my OBC there, but when I was picking my post, When I was graduating from the academy, I wanted to go to Europe really, really bad. I spent a summer there and really enjoyed it. And the year before, it was a downsize. So everybody who had picked Germany in the field artillery got sent back to Sill. So I picked Fort Carson, Colorado, because I said, I will not be stationed at Sill for my first 4 years. No offense to Oklahoma, but—

Oh, no, no, no.

That was just not going to be in the cards.

Comanche County is a cesspool. So I completely understand.

Very good beef, though. Some of the best steak I've ever had.

Well, but back to my point was one of the— so you're familiar, but for the listeners, they have reconstructed the fort. And there's like a museum. There's also a separate museum of the progression of artillery, which I found fascinating. Then it was there that I learned what a caisson was, you know, they keep rolling along. So, but they were showing the stables back and they were talking about how the soldiers fed the horses first, right, before they ate. And I'm like, huh, yeah, that makes sense. Because if the horses are dead, you're in deep shit. And I think as a leader, it's easy to think of your team as a cog. I don't know, like something that can be easily replaced, or, you know, it doesn't really matter who sits in those seats because I can just find somebody else. But, you know, the— and military guys completely understand this, but civilians and I had to learn that the team is everything. Like, the team you build is, and you nurture and you grow, is the level of your success. It's not you.

Right. Well, and as you were just saying that, and coming back from being in a room with people who are infinitely smarter than me, you know, you get imposter syndrome. You know that you've hired good people when they are trying to put the processes, technology, capture the institutional knowledge and everything that would be required for anybody to step in and do their job if something happened to them. And I think that that's huge because, you know, they're not camping out in that job. They're about continuous improvement because they're looking and they're saying, one, I care about the organization and I know that in the event that something happens, that they can still function. And that they have their eye on improving the next thing. And I would say for me, the lessons with that that I think have carried into my civilian life from my military side was, you know, a good leader when they will never hold back a subordinate from going to a school, right? Like in the military, schools are a lot about where you get certain certifications and can be very dependent on your career. Or have a big, big impact. And I, I always remember where, you know, there were sometimes people would hold back NCOs or enlisted from going to a school because there was a field training exercise or something where they had to go, and they just needed— and that always, you know, the best leaders didn't do that. They would say, we'll make do, we know far enough out that we can, you know. But, but that's a reality, and When you take care of your people that way and say, "We'll never hold you back," they're the ones who will stay back to take care of you, right? It's always that ironic aspect of when you take care of people, they do the things that the people who don't take care of them force. Kind of like if you don't send them to the school that will help them, then they won't go above and beyond to help you because they don't feel supported. But when you do the right thing, then they go above and beyond. So, I think it's— It's the things that everyone goes, "Yeah, that makes sense," and then they don't do it, right? Like, they get caught in the day-to-day. They're like, "I know I should be doing this." There's something in the Cadet Prayer that's always stuck with me is doing the harder right versus the easier wrong. And if 90% of the time you do that with your people, you will feel a lot less isolated because they know that you're doing that.

Yeah. No, that is sage wisdom. Our leadership team this year went through Jocko Willink's Leadership Strategies and Tactics as a group. Have you read the book? I have not. Okay. It's basically a lot of his experience share. I guess he was a Navy SEAL, but he got sent back to San Diego to develop the leadership training course for SEALs. Okay. And so it was around that experience and the lessons he learned deployed. But one of the things that stuck with me is the idea that the leader, the good leaders will do any job, like nothing is beneath them. It's not like—

Right.

I, I'm gonna— I'm going to do everything in the organization, but I'm, I'm willing to, and occasionally do. Like, his, his example was going through and taking out the trash at the barracks. Like, you know, that, that was just— it was a menial task, sweeping and taking out the trash, but, you know, he, he needed to let his team know that he wasn't above doing it.

Well, there's two sides of that. The, the other part, and I, I'm Been a really neat situation now because my daughter last year graduated from the Coast Guard Academy. And we talk about leadership a lot. That's brutal. And one of the first things she did when she got to her unit was, "Show me your job." And it is a part where you're showing you're not beneath it, but that also now you know what they do. And there's two things that come out of that. First, you could do the job in a pinch. But do you know if someone's feeding you a line of BS? And I always felt that was important too, because that person who shows you that job isn't always going to be the one doing it. And the ability to, to know if someone's doing it to standard— and frankly, um, a good time to do that is if you hear them complaining about the process of that job, because that's the time to look and say, show me what you're doing. Is there a better way to do it? Right. And, and, um, I think that's another big unlock, right? Like, when you start looking and saying, "It isn't about me. None of it's about me at all." And when you do that, the other thing that I have found, frankly, as an entrepreneur and a leader is I'm not particularly religious, but I'm pretty spiritual. At some point, I really got into like Zen and ego death, and you realize how much it really plays into other religious stuff. But when you look at a decision and you say, is this decision about me or is it about am I doing it for that reason? And if you look everywhere, if you're posting something on social media, is it about me and the likes and the self, you know, that what's going to feed me or is it something broader than that? And I think when you do that, that's a really, really big unlock too when you're looking and saying, wow, Am I feeding my own ego? Am I doing something to benefit me completely financial at the expense of other people? When you go through that, that's another big thing. That becomes another big unlock because then you realize how many decisions that you were making were self-motivated. And I can remember the day that my first partner, the guy who really is behind a lot of the design on this, And, you know, I, he, we teamed up and I was about to say I brought him on, but it was really we teamed up when I had a very early prototype that, that was Fred Flintstone style. And one day he said, he goes, how do you feel about me, you know, saying co-inventor? And I'm saying, you are. So, and he was kind of taken aback by that, like, oh, I didn't think it would be. I said, It's not about me. The idea was a spark in my head at a given time with which nothing would have happened had there not been the tinder of having the right people around. And my ego could have been my death with that because I still would have had primitive, albeit, you know, it would look cool, but it wasn't scalable. It wasn't, you know, I could have gone down the direction of making them on ones and twos. And trying to sell them at farmers markets or whatever. But instead, I looked and said, this is largely commercial, commercializable. But I think that's a really big unlock. And I think that helps everything else, right? If you don't have an ego, you go to meetups and you talk to people and say, boy, I'm having these problems. If you don't have an ego, you bring people on and say, run the spreadsheets, run this, do this. What are your ideas? Let's figure this out. Am I Is this idea crazy? I remember one day we brought a guy on board who now is a CEO because I'm on more of the business development strategy because I'm working on some other business ventures as well. And we were talking and it was like his first meeting with us. And two of the other guys on the team are '87 grads from the academy. I'm a '93 grad and I'm ADD. A lot of my creativity comes from that, but I'll kind of go off. And one of the guys was like, "All right." You know, he went off and said, "We got to stay focused." And the new guy was kind of like, "You know, okay, is this how they do business?" And we were all laughing and we said, "That's absolutely how we do business because he was right to call me out." And I don't have the ego to feel I was being attacked personally. We had a problem to solve and it hit a point where— and when you get there, that's where you have something special. And the beautiful part about being an entrepreneur with that is you can be pretty sure that the bigger guys that you're going after, if you're doing something like we are, aren't operating that way. It's all about egos. It's all about maintaining your status, whether it be in forward momentum to be managing up to make those people happy instead of managing down, or if it's in, am I looking at every decision about, will I keep my benefits? Will I get fired? Will I be able to pay my mortgage? And those are valid. But the entrepreneur is looking and saying, how do I grow to be able to continue to do that and enable people that work underneath me to be able to do that as well? And I think it's inherently different. And if you figure it out and you take what we've been talking about this whole time, the autonomy and independence, that can lead to the feeling of isolation and you turn it into becoming the Avengers and bringing on all the people that will interlock to be able to strengthen their weaknesses and amplify their strengths in a collective, you're going to beat anybody out there.

I love that statement, Doug. We're going to end on that note because it was so brilliant. How do people find you? Out more about Nulu and what you're doing?

They can go to nulunives.com. I was going to say www, but some of my team are like, stop doing that. People look for you to have a walker.

You're not putting https://.

Yeah, they can always find me if they look. I've got a pretty big digital footprint. We will definitely promote this podcast. As well. So they can— we'll have, um, you know, if they find you, they'll see this, the podcast, they'll have links there. Um, uh, I'm on LinkedIn. And because this is about entrepreneurs in a lot of ways, and especially your mission and your, your success story, one of the things I can definitely say came out of this event that I went to the past 2 days is that belief that anyone in that room would answer the phone or answer a message when they call. And I would say anyone listening to this, reference your show. If I can help them, let me know. I mean, be specific on how I can help. But I have not just my team, I have gotten to where I am now with friends who will drop everything. You know, at this particular show, I have a guy who I was in basic with. At the Academy, and he has done well. He's a big part of this organization, but was consistently bringing over people who I didn't know what they did and making introductions. That's how people succeed. And I would love to help anyone out I can because I love your mission. And having my class, the class of 1993, has had a lot of suicides from people who served and who lost purpose or lost the feeling that they had people out there to help them. And that should never happen. It should never happen to military. It should never happen to anybody. So, any help I can give, so not just on the Nulu side, let me help anybody who's got an endeavor that I can pass on anything that I've learned. I can't say it'll be valuable, but I'll answer the phone.

I love that. Through my experience with EO, I have learned that experience share is much more valuable than advice. And so, you know, I'll have people, you know, reach out and say, well, do you have any advice? And I'm like, if you're paying me for professional advice as a CPA, absolutely, I'll give you advice. But as an entrepreneur, the best thing I can do is just give you my experience and what I did and what I learned. Because that then puts the ownership of the decision back on them. It's not me telling you what to do, right? You gotta, you gotta figure this out yourself, right? But here's, here's what I went through.

That's like, I, I, when I get help and people ask questions on it, the other thing I would tell people is find the resources. I think sometimes entrepreneurs, um, think of things in a certain way, and their SCORE, um, especially for any prior military or active There are accelerators that are either specifically for that, things like IVMF, Wounded— or sorry, Warrior Rising. But there are ones like Founders Institute that have scholarships for military. But there are also ones out there for disadvantaged businesses, minority or women-owned. And, you know, of course it sounds like all these carve-outs, but if you're not part of any of those groups, there are other people that will help. There are overlapping affinity groups of people who fundamentally want to see you successful. And you got to go out and find them. You got to pick through, you know, if you've been apple picking ever, you know, there's a lot of crappy apples out there until you fill the bag with the ones you want to bring home. But you got to have the desire to do that. And there's plenty of people, a lot of trees out there you can pick from. And I think that more entrepreneurs have to do it because I do think entrepreneurship is what is going to be like the, the next decades of what makes our economy work. I think, you know, the, the multinationals really don't care the same way about your community and about the American worker the same way that the entrepreneurs do. Everyone that I meet loves their employees and wants to see them succeed.

Yes, I, I would agree. They, they, uh, don't want to and, and fundamentally can't solve the problem, right?

Right, right.

Doug, I really appreciate the insight that you've brought to the show. Listeners will have some of those links in the show notes, not all of them, because we referenced a lot. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.