Five Secrets to Raising Capital: Lessons from a $3.2 Billion Strategist with Thomas Powell

Welcome to beyond you'd why podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now, let's meet today's guest.

This week we're going to be talking about the why of better way to find a better way and share it. So if this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator and you're constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better. You also desire to share your improvements with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like, what if we tried this differently?

What if?

What if we did this another way? How can we make this better? You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto, I'm often pleased but never satisfied. You're excellent at associating, which means you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or discipline and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something. So today I've got a great guest for you. So I want you to imagine building a thriving business, only to realize that every success, new risks, complexities and challenges arise. What if there were a better way? A clearer, simple way to grow, protect and sustain what you've built? Now, today's guest has dedicated over 35 years to helping business owners do just that. Dr. Thomas J. Powell is an entrepreneur, international financer, a legal strategist who believes that when you find a better way to, you share it. He's raised and structured over 3.2 billion in capital, guiding founders through financial and legal challenges with clarity and precision. But Tom isn't just about building success. He's about making it last. If you want to scale smarter, protect what matters, and create a legacy that endures, you're talking to the right guy. Please welcome Dr. Thomas J. Powell.

Thank you. Dr. Gary Sanchez.

We're gonna go by Gary and Tom.

Gary and Tom. That works a lot better for me. I still, I still like Dr. Powell.

Who is that who thinks, yeah, who is that guy? Well, tell our listeners now, where are you now? Where do you live now? And yeah, so where, where are you right now?

Well, right now I'm in my podcast studio, but that happens to be located in the Tahoe area. So a little town called Truckee, California. We also live in Nevada, so we, we share Nevada, California or border and spend a little bit more time in Nevada than California. So we get Nevada residency. And so this is the Donner Lake back there. That's in my background picture. You can see it barely back there, lit up by there. That's a great little old bridge.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's go back and in your life, Tom, and where were you born and what were you like growing up?

I was born here, so almost in exactly where I live today, which was great. So my grandfather was a prospector from Ireland and discovered one of the largest mines in the state of Nevada back in the early 1900s, late 1800s. And so as a young man, I grew up in the Sierra Nevadas and I had always been a slow, eager learner. So some things came extremely fast to me. But what was the traditional school didn't really interest me. So I just typically did not go to school a lot unless I found something that was, was of fascination to me. Pretty early in my childhood my parents exited most of my life pieces. So my mom got very ill, she went to Ireland and my dad was off doing other things. So my older sister became my caretake and we were living very modestly at best. And my bedroom was a breezeway. So between a house and a car there was two walls that we put up so that I could have a place to sleep and there was no heat in there and we didn't have enough money that we had more month than money as I've heard. Right. So I started my first. Well, I started earning money pretty early on. I can remember my first kind of ventures were like 6 and 7 years old of trying to figure out how to make and you know, throw a car wash or do various things, selling newspapers on the corner and then getting newspaper out. But I started my real first company at age 12 and that was simple. I mean what can a 12 year old do? Well, they can mow lawns and they can take care of dogs and they can remove snow off sidewalks. And so we, we started that business. The business was called Maau, which stood for millions are coming our way. And so at the.

At age 12, I'm listening to Napoleon Hill and Earl Nightingale and all these other people in there, and I'm like, I love this. And so that's kind of how I got my start.

Well, who got you started looking at those books and reading those books and thinking about money? And was it just out of necessity, or did somebody mentor you in that direction?

You know, I am so blessed. I had so. And I know this, and I've been able to stay friends with a lot of these people. I had so many mentors that didn't purposely say, hey, come along with me. But being where I lived, many of the parents and mostly all fathers of my friends were business owners. And most of their children grew up pretty well off. And so their kids weren't necessarily paying attention to what dad was doing, but I was paying very much attention. And so those dads would often take me underneath their wings. And throughout my whole life, I mean, into my 30s and 40s, I had many of these people as my mentors, which was great. And my oldest sister also had started into a. I think it was called a network marketing group, was called Jafra. And so she's doing this sale and building an organization, and I'd be sitting in the background listening to these tapes that they'd be doing. And that's where I first started hearing this kind of science of self improvement.

Yeah. And so, okay, so you start reading these books, you start a business, and when you're 12 years old, did you go and then off to high school? Right. So now you're in high school. If we. If we had seen you in high school, what would we have seen?

Well, by the time I was like a sophomore in high school, I was earning more than the teacher. So all of a sudden I had a pickup truck, because that was one of those things I wanted to have. And back then, you could actually have your shotgun or rifle in your pickup truck because, you know, this is the seventies, and. And you weren't worried about somebody getting shot at school. But we go out hunting, and then in the rest of the year, it was skis that were usually in there. And I'd go to the classes that interested me, and I would leave. I played football, and I was a moderately okay football player. I was on the ski team. And I always found that I was a better coach than I actually was, specifically at the skiing side. So I was interested in the coaching side. And then I got, very briefly, I went to work for Foot Locker. It was an athletic shoe company, and Foot Locker asked me if I'd like to open a store up at Lake Tahoe. And I did. And then that went really well. And so I. I'd finished up high school, barely. I mean, my sister actually still says to this day, because when she calls me Dr. Powell, she goes, you know, and I never thought you were actually going to ever graduate high school. So. So. But I'm up in Lake Tahoe, and we did well. And they asked me to run five stores down in the Bay Area. And so I moved down to the Bay Area, and, you know, a wonderful story for me. I had read a book about a football star who had gone to usc, but he couldn't get into USC unless he had gotten his grades up and he'd gone to a junior college. I'm like, what's this junior college thing? Because I never thought I was college material. And so I started going to a junior college called Chabot, and it moved me on to Cal State University. And I'm fortunate now because I am an eager learner, and I figured out how I like to learn that I do have multiple degrees in multiple subjects. But that led me to Wells Fargo bank. And Wells Fargo bank recruited me in 86, 87. And it was because they needed people that could manage salespeople. Banking deregulation had come out, and because of banking deregulation, all of a sudden the banks hired a bunch of salespeople because they had to compete on rates. They used to give toasters away, and then all of a sudden they're competing on rates. And Wells. There's a great book called Good to Great. And if you read that book, I was there at that time, and I'm one of the kind of little trademarks that go within that scenario, which I was at the time the youngest VP ever in the history of Wells Fargo bank, which is absolutely crazy, because I had no skills, no ability, nothing else other than.

That'S really when the Better Way came out. I'd always go in. I'm like, well, what do we do? How do we do this? Who do I get involved? So is the who, not how, and the better way, and putting that all together as I'm completing my college and understanding finance and banking.

So you saw a lot going on. So you graduating out of high school college was not the first thing on your mind?

Not even remotely on my mind. Didn't even think. Didn't even think I was college material ever in my lifetime.

But it's.

Didn't think I was not Intelligent, but I'm just like, that is not going to be my pathway.

It sounds like you at some point thought that you needed it because then you went into junior college and then you kept going on that path.

Well, I don't know so much as I, I felt that I needed it, I felt that I wanted it. So I wanted to go learn some things that I didn't know or didn't pay attention to. And, and I appreciated the people that had gotten some formal, formal education. I also appreciated the people that hadn't. So the total entrepreneurial world, and there we know plenty of them that are really well off and have.

Consummate learners. You would not say that they're not educated. They just didn't follow a formal pathway of education. And so I'd followed that. I had made some money and I didn't actually, you know, get my, my bachelor's completed until I was in my 30s. But boy, once that happened, then I got, you know, a mba and then I, I did get accepted into Harvard for graduate school, and then I taught internationally with Harvard and then went on to get a law degree at Pritzker Law School and then went on to get my doctor in law and policy at Northeastern University.

So.

Gee, who the heck does that?

I don't know. There was really no good reason for any of it, except I was incredibly curious and it was a great way for me to start going down that curiosity way. So we were working on a legal strategy, being in finance, working in legal strategy, and I have, you know, 12 attorneys reporting to me. I've got general counsel and other people around there. I'm like, this is a fascinating subject. How do I learn it best? Well, let me go apply to law school.

Man, that's a lot of school to be going through after 30. So when you were done with your doctorate, how old were you?

Oh, 56.

Oh, my gosh.

I just finished. Yeah.

Wow.

A couple years ago. Yeah.

So you learned about. Okay, so you went from high school to San Francisco to California, then you went into Wells Fargo. How long were you at Wells Fargo?

Right, at five years. So I was there at a pivotal time in Wells Fargo. I was there at a pivotal time for me, and I was in the. There at a pivotal time for the economy. So the first major downturn of the economy for me as an adult in California was in 92. And we had been coming down from the high interest rates of Carter in the early years of Reagan. And so rates are, you know, coming down, coming down, coming down. And you had Certificate of deposit rates that were dropping below 12%. I mean anybody would kill to have a CD today at 12%. Right? But so they were getting down to 12% and clients were getting, bank clients were getting upset about that. Wells Fargo bank and bank of America both had to write off a billion dollars in commercial real estate for what are called performing non performing loans. But it threw California into a recession in 92, which also taught me another interesting thing because the economists were saying, this is a new economy. California is so strong, it's a seventh economy, you know, most diversified economy in the world. We will never see a recession again. And boom, here's a recession, right? It's like, boy, whenever the economists start saying never, that's the time to start paying attention to what's going to happen. So I had people that had money that wanted to get better yields and I had people that were very bankable clients that needed money because the bank wasn't lending anymore. And so in 92 we formed our first fund. Wasn't called a fund back then, but it was just raising private capital. And that grew into be. What is our company still today?

Ah, okay. That's how you got. Okay, so now it's starting to make sense. And, and then what? Okay, so you started raising money, you created the fund and then what got you interested in completing the mba because you did the MBA after that?

It was to, you know, I, I was in strategic coach actually when I started the mba and I'm reading these materials and then I went to, I was always curious about where do they get these materials. And I'd see certain pieces coming out and I'm like, okay, so the university system saying this, Coach and others are saying this and you've got Drucker and, and you know, a number of people out there. It's like, I want to, I want to have an academic approach to this as well. And so did my, did my MBA and specialized in real estate because at the time we had a very large mortgage bank. So in, in shortly after 92, one of the things we did was we invested with some other ex Wells Fargo guys on a mortgage bank. Now mortgage banking is different than mortgage brokering. Mortgage banking was still. You borrowed money as the entrepreneur from the bank and then you use that on a warehouse line to close these loans and then you sold those into Wall street as what's called the secondary market. And so we had built a national mortgage bank and sold that fortunately in 2005, which was great, great exit timing. But yeah, so that was the Part of it, our mortgage bank grew into be what part of our other investments were because we were out of Silicon Valley, we started seeing these things way before the name was called it fintech. So people would say, hey, I need to start this company. And we started doing early stage investing and I'm in Silicon Valley. So my, you know, one of my associates, partners, still a partner to this day, started a company called Get Smart. And Get Smart was this simple way to compare credit card offerings. You, you and I, you know, we're the same age, so, so you remember you used to get these credit card offerings in the mail and at the time you'd get a stack of them like every week. And there was no way, you know, AOL was the dial up and you'd hear the, you know, put the little phone on the modem scenario. So that was one of the first ones that sold and he was, he was successful and, and exited on that.

So that continue. Grow. Sorry.

Yeah. And you started investing in businesses during that time?

Yeah, that's what, that's when we started doing these investments in companies and started formulating a model through using part of Strategic Coach, part of what we did through academia, partly through acquiring talent in our own, you know, stable, I guess that we'd say we'd go in and meet a new entrepreneur, they've got an idea, they've made sale one. We'd invest in their company. Not just money, we'd invest time. And so it was coming in, getting them some systemization. And so in a lot of those cases, we'd end up being the acquirer or we would do the exit with them, go through there, get them, or go through the next round of capital raising and help them acquire the next round of capital.

For an example, today even I was on the phone on a zoom with someone who's looking at doing their next round of capital raise. And it was very interesting because he's raised millions of dollars, but it's all been friends and family at this point. And so we're putting together this, this level of capital raise. I said, well, this is your A round. It's like, man, I thought I was at C already. I'm like, no, you're still just at your A round, right? So there's a, there's a structure, a pathway to how this stuff works. And that gentleman who started the Get Smart and I, in I want to say 2010, our former boss at Wells Fargo became the dean of the B school at Stanford. And I was teaching part time at Harvard. And Bill was teaching, my partner was teaching part time at Stanford. And Josh came and said, hey, would you guys put together one of these executive weekend courses on how you raise capital together? Bill and I had raised a couple billion dollars. And so that started a company that is called Six Secrets of Raising Early Stage Capital. And that took our formality of what we've been doing and actually looked at and said, okay, and there's lots of courses out there you can take on how to raise capital. This is the Betty Crocker recipe. It's like if you just follow Betty Crocker and you add the water at the right time, you add the egg at the right time, you stir it up at the right time and turn the oven on at the right time, you, you will have success. Right? So it's really pretty basic about that. We don't make it fancy or anything else, but it ended up, you know, being a success, a great success and has launched a large number of companies.

And so now let's talk about today.

You have a company that now that invests in other businesses, both with capital and with just like what you were talking about, right?

Yeah, we still, we still operate as a private equity firm. We do that less today than one of the things that we've come back to. So we do, you know, we are a boutique family office. We come back and do our own investments and have several hundred companies that are in our, in our portfolio of early stage investments that have grown and matured and at various stages.

But we, the new company is called the Founder's Office. And what the Founder's Office has really become is an advocate for the entrepreneur. So within this case, so this gentleman that's, that's raising this now 40 million dollar, and he's got a brilliant, you know, brilliant business idea he's executed well, he's an Algerian immigrant, which is just a fascinating, fascinating story to talk about. And he found a way that he could meet a need with homelessness and drug addiction and merge the two and be able to have a solution for that in the D.C. area. And so he's able to take the thing out to another, another new market.

So we're helping him with that. But really our stance is I can help you bring this to the VCs and really pretty quickly you will have an exit that takes you out because they will bring the professional management team in. And in many of those cases, what ends up happening is the VCs or the private equity firms kick out the entrepreneur. And most of the entrepreneurs actually want to be A part of it, you know, especially if they have a better way scenario, they want to be part of that scenario and they just want the access to the capital. So we become the advocates of how to keep the entrepreneur's family healthy and reasonably happy while they're going through this process and mostly protected and more. So how do you raise and structure the capital so that it does what the intention was for the capital? And, and that's what the founder's office is really about, is how does. How to structure to protect the entrepreneurs and how to give them the platform so that they're secure to be able to raise that capital throughout the process.

So how is that different, you know, for the. For the listeners? How is that different than a venture capitalist? How is a, you know, a. Yeah, how is it different than a venture capital firm?

I think where it comes into for the venture capital is the venture capital. And not speaking ill of venture capital, we use and utilize venture capitalists. We'd be considered venture capitalist in many ways, but in most cases, rightfully so. The venture capitalist concerned about how the business is doing and what we're looking at, it's more of a relationship business. And we're saying, okay, how is the entrepreneur doing? Because the entrepreneur is really the secret sauce of this. And they're probably going to. You and I know, because we sit in a room of serial entrepreneurs and they move from this idea to this idea to this idea. The venture capital is a pathway, it's a tool for how they do that, but it's not what creates it. If venture capitalists could start the businesses, they just start the businesses and bypass the entrepreneur altogether. The entrepreneur is the needed secret sauce to this scenario. So we're there to help the entrepreneurs with that platform of how they do that, while either bringing our own capital to it or helping them attract the right strategic capital to what they're doing.

So how do you determine which businesses or entrepreneurs you're going to invest in? What's your process or your thinking? Because there's going to be a lot of those types of entrepreneurs listening to this. What do you look for?

So the first thing that we look for is we're looking for what problem are they solving? And in almost all cases.

Entrepreneurs define the solution really well, but they forgot how to define the problem that they're solving.

And so what we're trying to find is what problem are they solving? And who else thinks that this is a problem and is looking for solutions? So is the problem big enough that solving it is a good economic Opportunity and it makes a difference in the world. Right. So I do a lot of non profit investing as well. So it's not going to be just a pure economic play. It's like, so as you know, I'm involved in the nonprofit ski area and it's like, what impact is this going to make? Well, if we teach a thousand kids to ski every year, you know, that to me makes a huge impact because it's a lifetime sport. So you know, what's, what's going to be that problem that gets solved? The second one is, you know, is it a big opportunity that's going to again, make money or make a difference? And the third one is, is there some type of barrier? Is there a moat that protects that? So that, is there an IP protection or something else? Because you want to be able to have something that will make a scalable business. And then the next piece that we look for is once you get that kind of basis along the line is, tell me about the entrepreneur. Are they all in? Did they, you know, did they come up with this idea? Did they, are they willing to really almost, you know, even though it's not a real true story, are they willing to burn the boats? Are they willing to go all in? And then the second part of that entrepreneur is can they, can they collect talent?

Lots of entrepreneurs, but they always stay small because they burn through their talent all the time. They can't surround themselves with the who's right. So they've got to be able to work with that. They don't have to be great CEOs, they don't have to be great managers, but they got to be able to collect the talent and have people buy into their dream. And so those are, those are kind of the fundamentals that we're looking for. And then we start saying, okay, where are they? And one of the last big ones, have they made sale one?

So I tell people this all the time. I would be a horrible, horrible Google early investor because I never understood the free model. Now we understand it, right? How does it work? And all the, all the various back end or Facebook type scenario, you know, I want to see that somebody was willing to pay for that.

And if somebody's willing to pay, then we know we've got a business. Because if you can deliver it at a profit, maybe if even that's down the line, then you've got a business that's kind of the structure.

Yeah, that's super helpful. And so, so much of it does come down to that entrepreneur almost entirely. Yeah, yeah.

So that's what, that's why franchises work for so many people. You know, when you, when you go take Econ101, you find out that in the early stages when they were designing what is economics, they took and said, an entrepreneur is a unique part of this whole makeup. We've got labor, we've got capital, we've got, you know, what's going on in the free market system. But this entrepreneur is the only one that's really generally out there willing to risk it to take the next chance and borrow the money or get the investors in it and go, say, gosh, if we built a bridge across here, we can all be benefiting, you know, whatever it works out to be. And so that entrepreneur is a part of. But they're not the only part, because there are plenty of entrepreneurs that just can't do the other parts of it, which. And the biggest part of that is can they find the talent that can execute on their dream?

So now you've got two companies that you're thinking about investing in. They both seem to fit the mold. What is it that separates the one that succeeds from the one that succeeds from the one that doesn't?

I wish I could always tell you.

Because the great thing in this business is we don't always win. Right? There's too many variables. There's government variables, there's economic variables. There's just life that happens. And sometimes somebody dies, that's a key player or key client, or somebody leapfrogs it. But the main variable really does end up being the entrepreneur. Because when all of those things happen, the entrepreneurial spirit is the one that recognizes the. This opportunity is closed and this opportunity just opened up. And I don't know if you've read the book by Ben Horowitz, the Hard Thing About Hard Things. Fantastic book. I recommend it for everybody. And it's funny as heck to read as well as listen on Audible, but Ben Horowitz talks about when he was launching his one company and they knew that was the company and all the investors are in this company, and he knows as it's growing that, that it's a dead end. And he goes back to the investors and he's like, this is a dead end. We're going to ride that till it ends, but this is the one we should take. And that's why he became a billionaire. So, you know, that's. That's generally what's happening. I think that happens, you know, in, in the, this Y system that you say that you created. And I Appreciate. We're sitting across from dinner and you're sitting there smiling with Joel and you're like, oh, I already know your why. Right. But you are a master at this stuff. You are absolutely a master at this stuff. But. And then I told you funny stories about my wife after I took this, and she's like, aha. I'm like, well, you can't come to me with a problem and not have me give you solutions. Right. It just doesn't.

You can't do that.

So you know that that's, that's part of this process is, is do entrepreneurs, will they look for the way over, under, around, through? And that's not everybody's personality.

Yeah. You know, it'll be interesting over time to have the yos of all of the entrepreneurs that you've worked with and kind of evaluate which ones did well. Is there a pattern? Is there something more predictable than just hope?

Well, that's where we started taking the six secrets and modeling that in there. So we do a radar graph when. So if you brought me a business idea, I'd be putting you on our radar graph. We'd be doing our risk assessment. And the risk assessment is different than what other people are looking at. But we are looking at a lot of those standard risk assessments. But we're measuring the things that I said, like, you know, what is the entrepreneurial strength? And are they on a scale of 10, are they an 8 or a 7 or 6 or where do they fall in there? And we measure that through a series of questions, not as formalized as your questions, which is great because it will be interesting to layer in now the yos y os, I don't know how I say it properly, but into our system. So we're implementing that now because I find it brilliant. Right? I mean, it really is brilliant. And I was talking with one of your teammates earlier today. Partly why I think I find it brilliant is so many people talk about a company needing a vision, right? We got to write the vision and you don't know where you're going until we write a vision. And I'm like, you know, most of the entrepreneurs that I know, they can do a rear view look at and create the vision, but they couldn't have told you their vision of where they're going to end up when they started that thing and launched that thing in any way. In any way. Even. Even Elon would be able to tell you that that's where they ended up seeing it going to maybe in a certain way, but not in the total way and write a vision for it. So really got to be able to ask better questions. And I think your program helps people ask questions. Better questions, Right. Who's on my team? Who do I need to have on my team? Why do we need to do this? What's a better way we can get this done? Who knows how to get this done?

How do you put the right person in the right place, doing the right thing where they love what they're doing?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, isn't that the most fascinating thing? That's what, that's. That's why I love that. You know, good to great. It's about finding the right people on the bus and then getting them in the right seats.

This is a little. Sorry. So my daughter gets stuck on a chairlift for 90 minutes a handful of weeks ago up on one of the mountains, and she's with two friends, and they have a blast while they're there for 90 minutes. Right? And they will remember that story forever. Other people were on that same chairlift and they had the most miserable experience, but she happened to be with two really creative good friends. And they're talking and coming up with all sorts of different things, and they're talking to the ski patrollers down below and, you know, talking about how they're going to belay down. And I don't know if you've ever had this, but I've had an experience where you go to Disneyland and you're with somebody who's miserable in the happiest place on earth and it's miserable.

And.

You can be stuck on a chairlift and have a great experience. Right. Because it is the right people in the right bus, on the right seat. And I think that's what your program does, is it helps figure out how that, how that integrates.

Yeah, it just allow. Gives you the words to tell the world exactly who you are, and it just makes it doable versus a concept.

When you think about, you got an entrepreneur needs your help, you invest, bring them in, then they exit. What do you notice with entrepreneurs as they're exiting their dream, their business, what they've been hoping for, what happens? What have you seen?

Chaos in almost all cases, right? Oh, actually, you know, one of the things. And you, you and I had just chatted with same same person and had a nice exit. And now sitting there going like, okay, so what's next? And he said, so what have you seen? I said, well, one of the things that I've seen is that entrepreneurs knew how to run their business. They didn't necessarily know how to invest in businesses. And so what they get sold on is they get sold on somebody else's business. And they're like, oh yeah, I can kind of see that. And so they put a large chunk of money in and that's where a lot of entrepreneurs end up losing their money. So it's not, you know, through hookers and blow type scenario, although that does happen. We do see that happen in many cases. It's that they start making a, a bad bet on different deals. And, and I will tell you another one. So, so the founder's office, we're helping a doctor doing a franchise down in Las Vegas. And my daughter was explaining the story to me. She's on with the commercial real estate agent and they're negotiate the leases and she's like, okay, so we're going to only allow them to do two year personal guarantee on the lease. And it's a 10 year lease, right. So that saved this entrepreneur, you know, well over a million dollars in liability, contingent liability. Yes. The business may be successful, but it may not be successful. Right. And so that should be the risk that partly the landlord takes on you pay back the DI's, now you're into the running. Right. And then she also was able to give them other pieces that the franchisor is sitting there going like, these are great things we need to add in to our systems because we're the entrepreneurial advocate. So we're looking at the things and that was critical. And this entrepreneur goes, he's a doctor. He's like, I'm a doctor and you could have just made me lose millions of my future income on this business deal. And that's what I'm saying out there is that when you've been a business person and you've made money at it, we see a lot of entrepreneurs lose money there. More importantly, and I've had this happen myself, is they sometimes lose a sense of self.

They tie themselves so much to what that dream was, that business. And the real thing is they're entrepreneurs, they're not that business. They, they know how to solve problems and that is such a needed space in this world. So what the entrepreneur needs to do is get back on the horse and figure out what their next entrepreneurial venture is going to be. It doesn't mean they have to put a ton of money into it, but they've got to figure out how can they improve. Like in my case, again, I'm helping improve this nonprofit mountain, the ski resort. And you know, it's it's a tremendous amount of hours and time, but I bring the entrepreneurial and structure skills and legal strategy skills to this mountain and hopefully I'm making it better. Right. I also wrote my ski skills, so hopefully I'm making it better for that too. But we'll see.

Yeah, well, let's talk about that for a minute. So tell our audience, like, what is it that you're doing?

So visit sky tavern right there, skytavern.com or skytavern.org, either one. It's a, it's a mountain that is a city park in Reno, Nevada. So it's on the Sierras. It's right below another major mountain called Mount Rose. So the first thing we've got to talk with is like, do you have a barrier to entry? Well, having a mountain that's already a barrier to entry, I mean, that's like the truest barrier to entry. Right? Because there's only so many mountains that have ski resorts on them and have availability ski resorts. So this is a 75 year old non profit mountain. 50 years ago, it's where I learned to ski. And then 20 years ago, I'm sorry, almost 40 years ago is where my daughter learned to ski. Right. And then my kids grew and now my grandkids are learning how to ski. But more importantly for me, I've come back to the mountain to be the resort trainer and I'm helping to improve the quality of the instruction that's going on in the mountain in all areas. And part of that is also in our adaptive program which if you go to YouTube and you look up Sky Tavern or try and find the why we sky, there's just amazing videos and I think I may have shared the one with you. For our adaptive ski program and the adaptive ski program, I got to see the mom who's in that video out with her son free skiing yesterday, and I can't help but tear up. So not only did we take the young man who, you know, has essentially cerebral palsy, can't, can't really move in the sled out there skiing, and he's just loving the speed and the feel of the wind in his face and that, but we taught mom how to operate the sled and then give mom access to the sled so that mom and her husband and the other kids, they can ski as a family. And it's, it's, you know, it sounds like such a simple thing, but being out in nature really is important. And when you live in the Sierras and you don't have access to it. To me, that's just a crime. So that's something I threw myself back into. And it's, and it mixes my passions. I love skiing. I love being outside. I love the mountains and I love teaching people. And so just, you know, fills the bucket in so many different ways.

Skiing has been a big part of your life, right?

Yeah. That's why I probably did everything else I did was because I was addicted to skiing.

Yeah. And you've skied at the highest level and you teach at the highest level, right?

I can, yeah. Certain minutes, yeah. Well, you know, I had, I had a great opportunity ski with some world class skier. Well, I have an opportunity to ski with a lot of world class skiers. A lot. But one of them is really well known. His name's Franz Klammer. And we were skiing in Austria and Italy this year. And it's wonderful because next year is, is what, the six 50th, 50th anniversary of him winning the gold medal, which really does make him. I mean, he is such a class act, first of all. But second of all, he, he just is probably the most famous. It's not probably. He's the most famous Austrian athlete that there is. His nickname is the Kaiser. Everywhere you go, it's the Kaiser. It's Kaiser Kaiser. And it's just fascinating to be. Be skiing with him and other world, you know, World cup champions. You know, these people are on the podiums at the highest level of where they are at the times. We were over there when, when Lindsey Vaughn was making her comeback at, you know, age 40, which is also pretty cool to watch. And it's just a, it's just, just an amazing sport. And, and you take that back. And I've got my four year old granddaughter. I come back to the mountain and it's just a horrific weather day and all these different things going on, and mom's tired and baby definitely needs a nap and she just doesn't want to go home. And we got a great video of her where she's screaming, no, I want to go to the tippy top. I want to go to the tippy top. Right. And all I can think of is, you know, I want to ask Lindsay. So, Lindsay, do your parents have a video of you doing that same thing? Because, you know, that's exactly that spirit that is just out there. And that's the cool thing about being around Olympians and champions.

Yeah. And so skiing has been part of your life for many, many years, and now you're Just perpetuating and perpetuated what you went through. Is that what the whole mountain and the nonprofit is about?

Yeah, it really is. You know, I love sports that can be lifetime sports and I love sports that can be family and friends sports. So there's a whole bunch of spots. You know, my wife is an amazing runner and I can't run with her. She's like so much better than me. Right. So it's not, it's not like, it's not even like it's fun for me. Right. But she loves it type scenario. But we can both ski together. And she's a phenomenal skier too. Right. So basically she's a better athlete at every single thing that we ever do, which is always humbling. So it's the true, it's the true Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire scenario. Right. She does everything I do backwards and in high heels. And it doesn't matter if it's academia or it's, you know, she was a lieutenant colonel in the US army and her athleticism superior and everything else. So. But that's the cool thing is being able to find sports. Golf, skiing, pickleball, as you said, you know, there's other, these other sports that are these lifetime sports that, you know, Franz is in his 70s and he's still out there rocking the mountains. My father in law is 84 and he just retired from Vail, so he's got a, you know, he's a PhD, he has tenure at three different universities and his claim to fame is really being a ski instructor for 30 years along with it. And, and just now retiring and skiing, you know, still skiing Black diamonds with me as, as rim rocking the world, which. That's a cool thing.

Wow. Wow. Okay, last question for you, Tom. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given or the best piece of advice you've ever given?

Wow. First of all, I'm always, I'm always challenged by best because it just limits the world so much. But I will say probably one of the ones that perpetuate most in my life is.

We'Re going to be lucky. And let me give you the definition of luck. And Earl Nightingale's kind of attributed this, but it's preparedness meets opportunity. And when you back into that, it also means that if you're not prepared, an opportunity is going to make you look like an idiot or you're going to miss it. So you got to be prepared. Right. And it came to me, I didn't hear it through the tapes and Everything else, I heard it from my football, my freshman football coach, and it was in training in the summer before you're starting to play football. He goes, we're going to be the luckiest team. And we actually did end up taking state in our scene in our junior year. We took state last time our high school had won that state championship, actually. He said, we're going to be the most prepared team as we go in there. Fast forward about 25 years, and I've got a friend and he's getting ready to go speak to a group and he says, you know, Tom, I really don't know. When they ask me about success, how do I tell them that, you know, I'm successful because I want to bumped into the right guy's trash can. And I said, well, you know, if. If I had bumped into Wozniak's trash can, I could have gotten him a home loan. You bumped into Wozniak's trash can and you helped him write code for Apple that became what is the company. I said, the preparedness on those two sides are tremendously different. Right? So I said, that's preparedness meets opportunity. And you also took that opportunity because that's the other part. We can be prepared and we don't take the opportunity. So that's probably the best thing is, you know, be prepared for when those opportunities come up, because their opportunities are. Are endless. We never ever short for opportunities. We short for preparation. Yeah. Yeah.

And you know, the word I keep hearing you say, which I say a lot as well, because you and I have the same why. But it's the. It's the word curiosity.

Yeah.

Be curious. Right? That's been a thing for you.

That is. That is. That is. Yes. That's curiosity. And the cat type scenario. Sometimes I get in paper bags and can't find my way out. But.

You know, it is. It is. I am endlessly curious of how do things work and why do people do that and how do we figure out this? And, you know, it's a never earning. It is. It also is. Why I love both genius and strategic coach is because you're around just a group of people that are endlessly curious. And both Dan Sullivan and Joe are just curious people, you know, and why does. Why is Joel Weldon doing what he's doing at his age? It's because he's incredibly curious and he asks great questions. And I just. I love that. Why else to be alive? I mean, let's be curious, figure out what all this means. Right?

That's how I think that. I don't know if everybody else does. But Tom, I so appreciate you taking the time to be here on the podcast. It was awesome to hear your story, and thanks for sharing it.

Yeah, absolutely. Gary, it's my pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for doing this.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez and I'll see you on the next episode.