Discovering Fulfillment: Entrepreneurial Success & Contentment with Gregory Shepard

And so meditation has really helped me sort of. It's like exercise for your brain to catch these things when they first happen before they get to before that trench gets too deep.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

Hey.

Hey. Welcome back to another episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. My name is Joe Fear and of course my job here is to bring you interesting folks who are doing big things in business and expanding themselves and creating more happiness or content.

This is a reference to the episode.

Here and this time I brought on Gregory Shepard and he is an incredible entrepreneur. He's built and sold 12 plus businesses in various fields. He's an author. Upcoming book Startup Science is coming out later this year. You can get info@gregory shepherd.com and this guy has been fascinating. He reframed a lot of stuff that.

You'Ll hear during this episode.

When it comes to happiness, like I mentioned a moment ago, and how that can be reframed a little bit and and probably take a lot of loads.

Off of our backs as entrepreneurs.

This is a big thing that he wants to bring to founders and in his program and upcoming book called Startup Science, his mission is to really help founders at all levels, all ethnicities, all walks of life. Doesn't matter how much funding you have or the lack of mentorship. He wants to democratize what it takes to create a great company as an.

Entrepreneur, as a founder, and give the.

Tools and the perspectives of a lot of mentors, including from his own research and studies. And it's fascinating.

And as someone who has autism, has.

Dyslexia, he is one that has been able to use the power of his mind specifically to change the way he thinks and acts and shows up and he tells us he deep dives into how he does that in this episode and talks about a lot of things he's never talked about elsewhere, including some amazing quest that he does every single year.

I mean, we're talking about diving with.

Great white sharks and swimming marathons and doing this with a purpose.

I mean, it's all to challenge and expand what he's doing.

So enjoy this episode. I invite you to take notes. Reach out to gregory@gregoryshepherd.com find him on.

All the social channels. This guy's incredible.

He's a new friend of mine and.

I'm happy to introduce him now to you.

So enjoy this episode and I'll catch you in a moment.

Gregory, we're finally hitting record when we can spend 15 minutes jamming. First time meeting. It's. It's going to be a great episode. So thanks for joining me today, man.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Yeah, I mean, you reached out and I peaked at what you're doing. And as we've been jamming, there's so much that I feel like a lot of folks can relate to here. You have a colorful background. Not speaking about your actual background, but yourself, you know, personally, and some of these interesting stories from. I mean, I don't want to give away all the secrets. I feel like you tell it so much better. But I'm not worthy.

No, it's not. But yeah, I mean, I don't even know where to start, because you've been in the startup game for a long time. You sold many companies, you invest. You're in San Diego. San Diego, brother. You have a great beard. But your background, I think, fascinates me the most. And where you came from, I can relate to bits of that. You've done a lot and you've come from a really hard place in the eyes of a lot of folks, but I know that's your life, so you wouldn't know any different.

Yeah, that's true.

The best way to start, I mean, you mentioned foster care was in your life. Autism. You've scaled massive companies almost to a white sold for almost a billion. You met Barack Obama twice. You mentioned, I mean, do stuff with the military. It's very colorful, and that's why I say colorful. So it's, it's, it's also empowering, I feel like, for a lot of folks. So what you're doing right now, I know, is interesting because you're helping founders. I guess we'll start there and then maybe we work a little backwards.

Okay. Okay. So the way the sequence is, you know, because of autism and dyslexia and synesthesia and savant, they call it Savant syndrome. It makes it sound like a disease. I don't like that one. But anyway, I, I've had a hard time, you know, and my family is fostering, adopted and everything. So it's been a pretty hard road. And I barely graduated from high school. But I started businesses when I was like 16. By the time I was 19, I was, or I think it was at the end of my nineteen twentieth year I was running a bank that I started a federal loan. It was a non depository lender. And then after that I did a bio applied environmental biotechnology company. And then when the Internet came out, then it was just software and Internet. From that point forward I did 12 in total, four private equity awards for transactions between 250 and a billion. Two companies to eBay. And for when we first did the transaction, I was this chief strategy officer for ebay enterprise and then the chief technology officer for ebay enterprise. And then we bought all the companies away from ebay that they had and created our own thing and bought and sold a whole bunch. It was just a crazy ride. And then, you know, like I was trying to figure out how to give back. So I went into politics and was a congressional campaign chairman for congressional candidates trying to get women and people of color into congress. And then I got really frustrated with that whole situation and decided that I was going to learn more about what I had learned. The reason why I was going into politics is because 4% of people have the ability to get out from check to check living. The majority of those people, I mean the ones that do do it through a windfall and that's like lottery, believe it or not, inheritance, so on and so forth. And the big piece was starting a business. But then 90% of the people failed trying to start a business. And because of my background I was like, okay, I'm going to dig into that one. So I put 500 grand into a fund and then I hired people, five different people to start a project to research why, when and how founders failed. And it still is going on. It started in 2016. It was supposed to only be five years, but it keeps. And we did like, I mean I did 2100 interviews, more than that now I lost track. But the last time I looked at it, it was 2,100 interviews with founders that failed, founders that succeeded, investors, accelerators, so on and so forth. And then I got a book deal. But I, you know, I'm like, I read and write it like a fourth grade level because I have level five dyslexia. But I got people to help me and wrote a frigging book which is pretty crazy for somebody that can't hardly read that well. And then I started putting together a curriculum, a school program to help kids and it expanded into adults and then it became a full on platform that teaches entrepreneurship and helps people avoid the main reasons why entrepreneurs fail and has everything you would need as a founder inside of it. And then I started selling that to universities, accelerators, government programs like all kinds of places. And now there's like thousands and thousands of founders in there taking classes and doing things. And I get to watch, I get to watch people build amazing things and not fail, you know, so it's really, really, really very fulfilling. I love it.

I love how you identify that too.

With your background and knowing how I guess society is, how politics are and where the lack was, you know, because I agree. I mean there's so much, so many people that maybe have this dream, they have some kind of dream obviously and they want to create something and help others. Maybe they, to relate to what they're already doing. But the business thing is just prime for failure for so many. They don't have the framework, insights, advice, mentors, structure.

Yeah, yeah. I mean like when you look at, when you look at the data and you look at, you know, these failure reasons, right? It's sort of like a tree at the top. Everybody sees above the soil and you see that it's all underneath there, it's all in the roots. So in the top it'll say like, you know, a lot of them came down to like bad decisions, right. So then we were like, we had to dig in and be like, okay, how did they make the bad decision? And then that ended up in bad advice, right. So then we're like, okay, who was giving the bad advice? And that ended up being mentors and investors mainly. They're, they're not doing it on purpose. It's more like a process of them never having like they'll be in a mentor who's like a one hit wonder who did one deal and all of a sudden they think they're, you know, or a mentor who is a really good sales and marketing person but not good at other areas and they're trying to spread themselves through it. Investors who have the lens of an investor on and never have been an operator trying to get in and tell people how to do operations and they have no right, they should not be doing that. Oh, and a lot of it, you know, the, is caused from the people that are supposed to help them that are actually hurting them. And they're not doing on purpose. They're just. Everybody's an opportunist. Right. So. So what I was trying to do is like, give the entrepreneurs real solid information so that they could judge the people that they're talking to and the advice that they're given on their own, you know, instead of being held hostage by the advice because they don't have any other option.

Yeah.

So I spent a really considerable amount of time and money building out all that stuff. And it's really, really like. It really, really helps them, you know, and I love that part of what I do. And you know, on the other stuff, that's just stuff that I do to keep myself in a place of struggle. Because I think struggle is really, really healthy. You know, like your body's cells don't regenerate unless they're under stress, unless they're struggling. Right. That's why people do the cold showers and the fasting and stuff. Right. And plants that survive are the ones that had the hardest struggle and people are no different. So I do these questions, stuff that we were talking about before the call to keep myself in a place of struggle. And it always makes me remember that I'm just real and I'm not better than anybody else, I'm not smarter than anybody else. And money doesn't make you more important.

You know, and that's so powerful. I love the struggle angle and not going away from it. It's like you stress, you know, I think it's Tim Ferriss talks about that.

Yeah.

Or anti fragile is another Nassim Taleb talks about. Yeah. Just putting stress on a system and it gets stronger and there's in quests. I love how you integrate that. We were chatting about that before we hit record. And you have what each year what a challenge or a quest that you can embark on and I guess rattle off a couple of these. But also I'm curious if was this something that you always had in mind because of your upbringing or anything else, or was it something you learned and why it was?

Well, it started because I wanted to get out of high school.

I was like, reason?

Yeah. I was like, this year my. I'm going to try all of my energy just to get out of high school, you know, and then the next time I was like, oh, I'm going to try to win a bodybuilding contest because I was bodybu so I wouldn't get beat up because I was getting beat up all the time and I didn't want to get beat up. And I saw the football players were bigger, so I was like, okay, I'm going to start lifting weights and maybe they'll leave me alone. And so I did that and then I went through to, I mean, bungee jumping, skydiving, hang gliding, base jumping, wrestling, crocodiles, racing Indy cars. I swam a marathon last year, ran a marathon, rode a bike, 500 miles. I mean it goes on and on, right. And it's a lot this year. I haven't told anybody yet, so you're the first one to find out. But I'm doing a 30 day water fast next month, so I'm, I've heard.

Good things about those actually. Yeah, dry fasting, right.

And then my reward for doing that is wing walking, which is where you walk on, on the edge of an airplane wing while it's flying.

And so that's next year. That's what you, that's.

No, that, that's going to be both of them this year because you know, you have to get to a certain weight in order to get out on a wing. Ah, I'm like, okay, well I'll be at the, you know, after that I'll be definitely able to do that, you know.

So your habit stack your, It's BJ Fogg talk that I've had him on the show and he talks about. Yeah, stacking things and stacking two quests, I guess. Quest stacking.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, the, the things that I've done. It sounds like I'm just saying these things, but you know, when you're gonna swim six and a half miles in the ocean in the Pacific Ocean, you know, that is why couldn't even make it across the pool the first time. You know, I would have asthma problems and all kind of stuff and I was afraid of getting in the water. It took me three months to get past my chest in the water. I was afraid because I went swimming with the sharks and I eat like seals and it was terrifying. You know, it like really did a number on me. So like it sounds easy to talk about these things, but they are really hard. And the fact that they're really hard keeps your tolerance for, for struggle and your tolerance for doing things that are really hard at a higher level. Meaning like, you know, it's so easy for people to say, to doubt themselves or be like, man, I don't know if I could do this or think that something is too big for them or think that they can't do something because of, you know, the Pigmentation of their kin of skin or the gender or where they came from or whatever. Disability, you know, And I'm trying to show people that. I did a TED talk on this to try to show people, like, look, you know, you actually can do things that you don't think you can do. And the more you take on doing things you don't think you can do, the more you think you can do, you know?

Yeah. A picture of this gif in my mind, I think I saw it on Twitter or something the other night. It's like. Yeah, you think this big boulder is like insurmountable, and then you start to roll it or pick it up or however, you know, and the more you do that, it's just like an everyday task or at least it's part of you. It's integrated somehow.

So.

Yeah, and I know, like, I'm big on entrepreneurship and happiness because there's some stats out there that show that people who take on business for themselves are less happy than those that are employed or, you know, there's a lot more stressors that we put on our back. And I'm sure, I know you can relate there and who can't? You know, if you're, if you're taking on these challenges, you're creating the path for yourself. And that's what's so cool about what you're creating with the, with the whole startup science, you know, everything with the platform and your fund. Yeah. And because I genuinely, like my dad committed suicide. I talked about a lot on here three years ago, right before my daughter was born. Thank you.

I learned so much.

Yeah.

I mean, there, there was a lot that. And it came down to habits and pushing yourself and doing the things you love. But also, like, I'm thinking of the quest, the way that you're taking on life and not just letting it happen. You're going after it and there's something new and you're like you said. Yeah. It makes you this resilient in everything, you know, you don't second guess yourself anymore.

Yeah, I mean, I, I am, you know, pretty ironclad at this point in most areas, but my armor has holes and, you know, I'm constantly trying to make sure I get them plugged up with some sort of a challenge or something. But, you know, I mean, I feel like to your point about entrepreneurship, I mean, entrepreneurship is not like happiness to me is an emotion. It's not a state of being. You know, like, like you experience happiness from time to time. You're not just happy.

True. Yeah.

The trick is being content.

I like that.

And then have some floating happiness happen in and out of your. Of your contentment, Right?

Yeah.

And for me, like, in my life, I realized, you know, look, I'm not going to, like, be happy. And people say, are you happy? I'm like, at the moment, no. I mean, you know, but am I content? Yeah. And, you know, the difference is just levels of satisfaction with your life. And I think that, like, when you're starting a business, the level of satisfaction you have in your life. Life is far above anything else, Right. You feel like when you're creating a business, you're creating something out of vapor. Like you put on this podcast, right? And you just had this idea, I'm going to start a podcast out of nothing, out of thin air. And then you created a podcast, and now you have this really successful podcast. Like, I mean, that's amazing. And when you feel like you doing those sorts of things, it brings contentment to your life. And the interaction with people, like I have with you earlier today and right now, because you're such a cool cat, brings me moments of happiness. I think that entrepreneurship has extraordinary amounts of stress, but stress is also a state of mind, because these are all just chemicals, right? Like, you think things and it releases chemicals. You hear things. Whatever your sensories are, they produce chemicals, and those chemicals cause you to feel a certain way. Right? That's how it works. So once you realize you're under the influence, and you realize that in order to prevent yourself from being under the influence, you have to get control of your mind. And a lot of people go, I ask people, do you have control your mind? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, no, you don't. Because right now, if I started to yell at you, you would not be in control of your mind. And that happens under stress, that happens under anxiety, that happens under sadness, like when your father left. And, you know, it's like you learn to control your mind, you learn to control the chemicals, and then you can control your life, you know?

Yeah, that's. I love the reframe and the perspective because it's. It's very true. It's. It's a state of mind. And the content ness is. Yeah, it's the through line, I guess, through it all. And it's the glue behind, you know, with the. The valleys and the peaks that. That come with being a person at the end of the day. And I love that. No, thank you for that.

People will. If people say, you know, happy, they always Use this thing. Happy word. And I'm just like, I mean that's like reaching for the stars. I mean that's like so far out of reality. I mean we're not in a movie, you know, and happens, right? So maybe don't reach for happiness, be happy when it happens, you know, be like, oh, awesome, I'm having a moment of. But reach for contentment because the, that's where the real balance comes in. And you know, being somebody with autism, I'm constantly having to kind of keep my shit together. I'm sure it has strengthened my ability to have control of my mind, you know, and, and I urge founders to do that because, you know, there's neuroplasticity is the concept of, you know, your brain is trying to think of something, it's trying to do something, it's trying to make itself more efficient. So the more you think about a subject, the more efficient that neural pathway becomes, it becomes bigger. Like goes from a trail to a freeway, you know, four or five lane freeway. So if you're thinking about things constantly like stressors, you're basically brainwashing yourself. You're creating what you're not trying to create because your brain is optimizing for that thought. So it's optimizing for a larger pathway, right? So you know what I tell people is I'm like, listen, you know, the worst thing you can do is dwell and think about the things you're afraid of. Earth dwell and think about the things that you're, that you're stressed about. It's better to, even if it's a completely different subject is to not think about those things and use a different neural pathway. Like one of the analogies that one of my mentors did is he's had this like piece of a small piece of wood and he had this, and it was on his desk and he had this piece of a key and he would rub it on the wood and rub it over and over and he would say, you see that little trench that's on the wood? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I see, I see it. And then he goes, now I'm going to put my key right next to it. And he tries to scrub right next to it, keeps falling back into the ditch, right? So you can't just move slightly over. You have to move far enough over to create another neural pathway that the ditch representing neuropathway.

Right, I follow.

You know what I mean? So I always tell people, I'm like, listen, the key to contentment is to Control your own mind and then your chemicals and the rest of the stuff that you feel. Because, you know, we don't feel our thoughts, we feel our chemicals. So if you do that, then the rest of what you feel changes, and then you can get to a better, better place, you know?

Yes. 100. Wow. This is big, Gregory.

I'm gonna. I've already written down a few notes. I'm gonna definitely, you know, think a lot deeper on this whole thought because it's. It's true. As I'm, like. Got this little, like, arrowhead thing in my mind, I'm. Or in my hand, I'm always kind of rubbing this, and it's kind of like what you were just talking about with itch in the wood there.

I mean, like, I'll tell you this interesting thought I had. I was in Israel last month, and I was speaking at a conference in Israel. Israel. And I went to the Wailing Wall. I went to Jerusalem and stuff, and I saw the. The people there, and they were praying over and over, and they're reading the same chapters and doing the thing that they do. And I was just thinking about, man, how optimized is that neural pathway? Yeah, like, I mean, that thing is wide open. And that made me think about people that are in a state of depression. And everybody goes through states of sadness, right? It's just like happiness. It comes and goes and. And contentment is the middle, right. Happiness is the top and the extremes, right? And when you're in a position where you have that sort of, you know, that. That kind of incredible sadness that happens, the best thing to do is to try to branch out of it and start driving, creating a new neural pathway. That's why a lot of people, I think, stay depressed, because they're widening that neural pathway and they're optimizing for something that they're not intentionally trying to optimize clients for.

And it's comfortable, right? It's that. That groove that it's. It's easy. It feels easy in the moment, even though it's. It's not uncertain. You know, people like the misery of certainty hard. You know, they avoid uncertainty. That is, they love certainty. That could be the depressive state or a lot, you know, joy. Pure joy.

Yeah.

This is fascinating.

Is this something that you've worked on a lot with.

I mean, with your neuro. Just all the qualities that you have in yourself and to. To create. Because I feel like. I mean, you've been so productive with since 16. You were saying, I think it rattlesnakes Right, like you started selling rattlesnakes.

Yeah. I used to take a stick, a green stick, and cut it down the middle and then put a twig in between it. And then I would come up behind the snakes at us because the stick was long and stick it in the dirt around their neck and the little twig would break and because the stick was green, it would snap closed and trap them. And then I could come up behind and grab their neck and throw them in a feed sack and take them to the place.

I need these sometimes out here. I got an acre and. Yeah. Spot those.

I don't know what to do.

Yeah. Watch out.

Y. Yeah.

So, I mean, like, did you.

So with this topic of content and the neuro pathways, like, is this something that's been on your mind, you know, because of. For yourself, like, for your own doing? I'm sure, you know.

Yeah. I mean, and, you know, I think probably, I don't want to speak for all of my tribe, but I think a lot of us have problems with, you know, depression and that sort of stuff going up and down all the time. And so you're constantly trying to keep yourself in between the rails, you know, and so I still. I wouldn't say I'm a master. I don't know if it's even possible, but I do a tremendous amount of meditation and try to get control. I find that meditation helps me recognize my thoughts and then deal with them. Like, when I first started meditating, I had this incredible Buddhist monk guy who taught me, and he says everybody thinks that meditation is about thinking nothing, but it's not. It's impossible to think nothing. Right, Right. And that's. That's called transcendence. And very rare, rarely does even happen to anybody. But if you just close your eyes and you just notice your thoughts, that is success. Right. So you just see them. And as soon as you notice your thoughts within a fraction of a second of having them, and, you know, if anybody's meditated before, you sit there and you're pretty deep into a thought before you go, oh, wait, what am I doing? And then you go back to, you know, try to go back to the breath. Well, the faster you realize what you're thinking, the faster you're going to realize that in your whole life. So sadness sneaking up on you. A thought that's going to cause sadness. Right. Because there's usually a daisy chain of effects that causes the outcome. So, you know, you can have that thought where you're thinking, oh, you know, holy. Yeah. I don't want to be thinking about that. Right. Same thing. And so meditation has really helped me, sort of. It's like exercise for your brain to catch these things when they first happen. Before they get to. Before that trench gets too deep.

Yeah. Oh, that's a great way to describe it because there's. Yeah. So many ways meditation's described or how you can practice, but just that simple noticing of a thought, but also the.

The reasoning why you would want to.

Notice a thought in that moment as it's like a sapling popping up out of the soil. Be like, ah, pull that. Or, you know, let's focus on the.

Oak that might be growing.

That's a lot better.

Yeah, yeah. People always say, like, oh, I have my best ideas when I'm in the shower. Right. That's just because you're not distracted. It's the same as meditating. Right. You're just not distracted. So. Or people say, oh, yeah, I can't go to sleep because then my mind goes crazy. Same thing. Right. But when you meditate, you're. You still do that stuff, but it's like you're organizing. You know, I think of it like defragging your brain. Yeah. You know, the old defrag of your computer. Computer. Because what happens is, like with the old disc is the disk is spinning and when you hit save, it's saving all over the disc, like a record player. But they're rows and, and columns. Right. And it saves in these little ditches, but it's spinning all the time, so it saves the information all in random places. And then when you defrag, it collects them all and puts them into one. Puts them together so it's faster. Right. When you're meditating, you're defragging. And so when I, before I started meditating, I felt like, you know, constantly, like, all over the place and having a hard time getting to sleep and all that kind of stuff. Stuff. And then when I started meditating, I realized, wow, like, it really works. And it's sort of like looking at dirty water. Your life being like, maybe muddy water. And then after it's clear water and you still. You can see through it to the things that matter. But you're not like, looking through this fog of, like, fragmentation of all these random thoughts and things that bothered you or things that made you happy, like, kind of broken into so many pieces that it's like a fog. Does that make sense?

It does. It organizes maybe those particles into a mud ball over here that you have organized more or less. Kind of like defragging you can identify things maybe like. Yeah. As a whole fog or a mess.

How do you organize your attention and.

How do you give it to the right thing and prioritize?

Yeah. Like, when I was doing the. I was getting ready for the swim, you know, and I. That was a really hard quest, man. I'm telling you that.

That swimming's tough, man. Swimming is rough, especially in the ocean.

With, like, waves and currents and tides and swimming through big, giant patches of seaweed wrapping around your face. I mean, it's pretty.

Diego, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I have had, like, seals pop up next to me. It was just terrifying. You know, I got stung by a stingray one time.

Oh, geez.

In the leg. But, you know, just. I would meditate and I would sit there on the beach and I would meditate, and I would see myself doing what I was trying to do. And I do this all the time. And that's because your brain doesn't know if you're doing it for real or not. It's experiencing something. So this is why all the Olympic athletes and everybody say, you know, if you are, you know, rehearsing in your brain, you do better in real life because you're creating a neuropathy neural pathway and strengthening it. And then when you do the thing, you know, you're automatically better at it, and it helps.

You're visualizing right through it all.

Yeah, yeah. It's. It's. It's incredibly effective. Much more people always ask, they're like, if you were to say, like, what is the best thing that you do in your life that helps you become what other people think are successful? It's meditation. Yeah, yeah.

And.

And with you describing the deepness of how to apply it and your background. But all of us can relate. Doesn't matter what your background. You just apply it to your own thinking and how you're operating. We're all unique in that way.

Yeah. Like, also, like, if you think about this, that. So I'm a huge physics nerd. Right. So if you think about atoms, Right. The. This in quantum physics, which is just subatomic parts smaller than atoms. Right. Subatomic particles, which are just little things that they can't see, but they knew they were there. Sort of like a current, Right?

Yeah.

They all carry just two things, energy and information. Right. And the energy, I think, is just to move the information. So really they're just full of information.

Information.

So when you're meditating, you are you, you. And they know this through science. You're creating. You're changing the particles with new information. So. And we're made of those particles, and everything's made of those particles. So I always picture, like, I'm breathing in these neutral subatomic particles, and then I'm converting them into fresh, really strong the things that I want and then exhaling back out into the world. Right.

So, okay, so you're sharing them with the world. You're not, you know.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And.

And then it makes me feel good about what I'm doing. Like, I have this visualization of, you know, seeing this. These little particles, you know, and taking them in and then them picking up my vibe. And then, you know, and I like to be around other people because, you know, you get their vibe, and it's really cool. There's this documentary called Water, and they take water and they expose it to all of these different. Different situations. People that are being nice to it, people that are in need to it. Music. And the water picks up the emotions of what's around it.

I've seen this. Yeah, the pictures. Yeah.

They had this chemical that they put in the water sealed completely in glass. It was. There's no way that the chemical could have leaked out, and the water was toxic after a week.

Whoa.

So those are subatomic particles. That's how it moves. Right. So do you see my point? Like.

Oh, yeah.

Really think about things. You know, science through traditional science and neural pathways, through quantum physics and subatomic particles, Everything points to this idea of get control of your mind and going back to struggle. That helps you get control of your mind, because struggle is you have to conquer it, and then you have control over that aspect. Right. So that's like my sort of secret sauce. I've never talked about that on a podcast.

This. Thank you for sharing, because it makes all the sense in the world, and I love how it plays also in the context of what you do for founders and other entrepreneurs who are starting up in probably most stressful time not saying it.

It doesn't go away.

But at least maybe this is the. The fertilizer.

What?

Whatever's in the soil before that tree that you were talking about.

Yeah. I mean, there's two sides right there. Types of founders. There's a visionary founder and a subject matter expert founder. And the visionary founder is coming from the outside in, and the subject matter experts coming from the inside out. And the. Those two founders, they both have the same thing, and that is that the art is the idea and building the business as a science, like all startup science. Right. Because it is a science, it's a process. And when I was looking at this, the, the only way to execute on in science is to have a clear head. So you have to get control yourself or you're going to run yourself off the rails. And so that's like, you know, a really big component of being successful as a founder is having the ability to deal with high stressful situations and not become part of the problem. Like when I was getting ready for the book, when I was doing the initial research, I interviewed like the Navy SEALs in the first fighting wing of the Air Force and smokejumpers and the CIA and SWAT teams and I mean, you know, like I was trying to figure out how do people with highly organized infrastructures handle unorganized chaos, because that's the life of a founder. And, and then create a way to put that into curriculum so that they can sort of be prepared for these things. Like one of the classes we have is on war gaming, which is one of the things that I learned about. And so, you know, the, the idea of being a founder, I mean, it's hard and you gotta be willing to take a beating. Like, you have to be pretty tough and gritty and like, you know, it's like walking in the ring with Mike Tyson, right? I mean, you're gonna get hurt and.

It'S gonna be hard to punch.

It's win. Yeah. And how hard?

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And you have to be able to, you know, have thick skin and get through it. But man, I gotta tell you, like, the rewards of creating some, something that somebody else feels valuable and they're willing to pay millions of dollars for it makes you feel pretty like, wow, like, I can't believe I did that, you know? Yeah, it's addicting. That's why I keep doing it over and over again.

I could, I could tell. And I've experienced my own little corner of that. And I guess I've never labeled myself a founder, but at the same time, we're all founding, right? Our own things, whatever venture, whatever scale that we choose to, to grow it. So I think anyone here listening can definitely relate.

Yeah, you're the founder of this podcast, right?

I'm right. I did have a co founder for a while, but now it's mine. I have reinvigorated it myself. So I gotta give credit where credit's.

Due there, you know, Fair enough.

Yeah. Yeah, Gregory. So book, it's coming out, what, later this year?

Yeah, it's called Startup Science. Yeah, it's coming out later this year and the web gregory shepherd.com. if you guys go there, if somebody wants to go there, there's a lot of stuff on there, but there's a way to pre register for the school and for the book. And then I'm going to be giving a ton of those away to founders that don't have any money, so.

Yeah, right on, man. Well, hey, anything I could do to help once that thing's launched and live, I'm happy to because I feel your mission, your heart, and I love how open and inclusive you are with your mission because it's, it's unique and we need more of it. So appreciate you.

I appreciate, appreciate that, of course, you're a cool cat. I, I really do appreciate, like, you having me on your show and everything. So thank you.

Appreciate you, man. Have a good one.

All right, all right, all right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But you know, work can be fun and it should be feeling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list, writing a review or whatever it might be, Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.

Sa.