From Straight Fs to a $90 Million Dollars Exit. Scott Taylor's incredible story of overcoming.

And we sat in this— in the Crown Room, and he said, we're prepared to offer you this amount. And I looked at the amount and I played as if I didn't care. I was a good actor. And I said, that's nice, but that's not going to do it.

What do you do when you just signed for like $90 million?

You have a moment. And I'm thinking flashbacks of where I came from and teachers that said I was stupid, like all the typical things you hear from people. The old Kanye West. The Kanye West that everybody was thrilled to listen to. He's come a long way since then. Donda West was an amazing person. I met her through some friends that I had.

Welcome to Driving Impact. Welcome to Driving Impact. I'm thrilled to welcome our next guest, and it's B. Scott Taylor. I call him Scott, and Scott is a naval aviation veteran, but he's also an internet pioneer, and we'll talk a bit more about the company that he founded, VirtualRelocation.com, that got acquired close to $100 million by Monster.com back in the day. Scott is also the father, not of one, but four children, And he's a philanthropist, is a big advocate for women in sports, which we need, and especially for women in the US Open tournament. And we'll talk more about it today. And lastly, Scott now is a, he lives in LA where we are and he's a partner in Blue Sky Ventures, which has invested in multiple companies. And one of them is a woman-founded company called A Sale. And I like to call it the plant company.

Yes.

Welcome Scott to Driving Impact.

So good to be with you today.

It's been like years in the making, I feel.

Absolutely.

And I wanted to start with a fun fact. So when we talked about you and your career, you told me that you were featured in Donda West's book, which is called Raising Kanye. And we're talking about Kanye West and we're talking about Kanye West's mom, the old Kanye West, the Kanye West that everybody was thrilled to listen to.

He's come a long way since then. Donda West was an amazing person. I met her. Through some friends that I had. You know, there are fun facts. I was sponsoring a Formula BMW race car and I had an idea to bring a bunch of brands together. I love collaboration and I love kind of curating a lot of different brands. And I had an idea that at the time, if you remember, Kanye West had said George Bush hates black people. I remember that was a problem for Kanye West's brand. BMW at the time was trying to shake their yuppie reputation for their cars. They thought it was just a bunch of white people with flipped-up collars, you know, driving cars. And I had a friend that worked at the World Food Program at the United Nations, and they were trying to, you know, promote their program. And because I have this eclectic, crazy personality, I knew all these different people for different reasons. I said, what if we could solve all these problems together. And so I brought Kanye in to sponsor a race car with me, Rodney Peete, who also is a local guy, Marcus Allen. I brought them all to Spain to make BMW cooler.

Mm-hmm.

And then I had the World Food Program also on the car when we went to Spain to promote the fact that they were working with these people that you never would associate Kanye with the World Food Program and BMW. And it was kind of like this wild moment.

And I met Mishmash.

It was a mishmash. Exactly. And I met Donda. She came to Spain and I spent 10 days with her almost.

Wow.

And, you know, it was fascinating. She's an amazing woman, very smart woman, was a professor. And we talked about the power that moms have in raising their kids. She was writing a book called Raising Kanye. And I told her how instrumental my mother was and what a positive influence she was in my life, in spite of me being a complete lunatic, getting straight Fs. And causing lots of trouble in Catholic school.

Like a lot of entrepreneurs.

Yeah.

So you were— I have so many questions. I need to unpack the story.

So we met and we talked about it and she said, hey, would you mind if I put you in this book? And I was like, no, thank you, Donda. And unfortunately, less than a year later, she passed away with some random surgery. So it was too bad.

That's unfortunate. But Kanye flew there with his mom?

Just his mom came. Kanye didn't make it to the race, but it was the Kanye West Foundation. I would meet him subsequently in other times and got to know him as a very interesting character. This was young. This was graduation. This was way back in 2003, 2004.

That was early Kanye.

Yeah.

Totally different. Then you talk about your mom. You were raised in Manhattan by a single mom. How was it growing up?

It was outside of New York. It was in Westchester County. Westchester County is a very affluent place, but I grew up with a single mom, so I was like the token poor kid in town with a bunch of kids whose parents were captains of industry. It was a very eclectic town of, of, you know, CEOs and playwrights, musicians. It was about 40 minutes north of Manhattan, so that's why many of those people live there. And my mother was just— I was so lucky, man. When you get a mother that that just loves you unconditionally and provides a safe and kind of secure upbringing. Even though I didn't have much, it was very consistent. And she was one of these mothers that just told me, no matter what, you're going to be amazing. You're a special person. You're going to do amazing things. And given—

She believed in you.

Yeah. The power— and this is what Donda and I talked about— the power that specifically a mother has in the development of a son is very important. It was, yeah, definitely changed my life for sure.

That touched my heart because I have a 4-year-old.

I know.

And I know that every single word that you tell your kid is going to have a big impact.

Don't be helicopter mom.

Well, let's talk about this. So you talked about growing up with a single mom. How was the experience?

You know, it seems like my life was just a crazy movie of all these experiences. So back then, this is in, I was born in '63. So when I was like 5 or 6, The summers would come. My mother really didn't have a whole lot of money for, you know, summer camp, somebody to watch me or even a camp. So the local town had a recreation department that, you know, you could go for a couple of hours. But after that, I literally was on my own. And so I lived across the street from a post office. So I would go to the post office and they would have— they would watch me. They would basically babysit me. They would put me on a stool and I would cancel stamps.

Oh, my goodness.

Before they had the machines, I was like 5 or 6 years old.

Right after the recreation program, you would spend most of your day at the post office. Yeah.

And then there was another guy who was part of the Royal Air Force, and he drove the summer school bus. And we met him through my mom and some friends. And he knew my mother was, you know, working her best. She was a great person, and she must have trusted them. And so I rode the summer school bus with him while he was taking kids to summer school and kept him company.

So you were raised by the community, the local community, and did you have any struggles of being a Catholic?

Literally. Yeah, I mean, the struggle was I didn't really understand what it was like back then when you don't have a dad. It's really weird. Like now, you know, lots of people are divorced. There are a lot of single parents, parents that never got married that have kids. And back then there was a stigma attached to it that I didn't realize until later when I was probably 12 or 13. But the town, my mother didn't really have a choice, and I was really fortunate. It creates a whole different independence and confidence that you have that I think we lose a lot with parents that are very much in their children's lives and don't want them to fail. I mean, I would ride my bike and I would crash and smack my head and bleed.

And you'd be alone.

And I'd be— yeah, and then I'd go home and my mother would eventually come home and She'd say, what happened? But I mean, I crashed, I lived, I wiped myself off. And these are things that really put you in a position to take risks, I think.

So it seems like you grew up, you learned to be alone, you learned to be self-sufficient. You also learned to live life. If my son tomorrow, as soon as he bleeds or he falls, I'm like, oh, are you okay? But there was nobody to tell you, are you okay, Scott?

No, I mean, I had people that said, are you okay? I mean, I literally remember a time I was an altar boy. And I was driving back from Mass, and my front brake popped out and got caught in the spokes and flew me like in the air on Main Street in this little town. And I literally can remember, you know, I was probably like 12, sailing through the air, landing on my head, being knocked out, waking up next to these two old Italian ladies who like pulled me off the street, pulled my bike in front of the pizzeria, and they were just like, "Eh, you're gonna be okay, it's okay." And I had this like big knot on my head. And that literally happened, and I kind of drove my bike or like walked my bike because the chain was all messed up. But there were things like that happening all the time.

It's interesting. So how do you feel that your early experiences brought you to become an entrepreneur and to take risks in life?

Yeah, I mean, when you realize early that you're not going to die most likely, and you're not going to ruin your life, that you'll get up the next day and you'll have fun, then you have a massive advantage over people that are protected, people that don't fail, people that don't know what it's like to be poor, people that don't know what it's like to be at the bottom rung of someplace and have fun. And so you're playing in the black all the time, even though you're at the very minimal part of your life. And so when you get these other things, when these things happen, not only are you grateful, but you start to appreciate living in abundance. You start to appreciate, like, all these fun things that you get to do. And I just think it's a huge advantage. That's what happened to me.

Yeah, it's interesting because you faced some of the realities of life while other people are very protected and overly shadowed and pampered, let's say. So when you got into the world and became an entrepreneur, you co-founded VirtualRelocation.com, you had this sense of like, what's the worst thing that could happen?

Absolutely. What's the worst thing that can happen? I mean, after, you know, I I was in high school, I did terrible. I got Fs. The teachers were always calling my mother in. And when I look back now at this single mom who has a job in an all-man world, she's like a secretary. And guys are back then in offices smoking cigars and like telling her to get coffee and like all this other nonsense. And if she said, I have to leave and go to school, my son's in trouble, I can't imagine the pressure that she felt to have to say that. And she would come in and I was an affable kid. You know, I was kind of funny and nice. I was polite. My mother raised me to be respectful and polite, but I was just a knucklehead. So I would, I would never study. I would always make bad decisions, but not out of being a bad kid, just being stupid. And I remember one day she came, the guidance counselors in high school, I was in 9th grade. And they said, you know, they give you the whole, you know, we think Scott has a lot of potential, but unfortunately he's not applying himself. And I was like, Mom, I don't know what I'm in school for. I'm going to be a stuntman. I'm going to be a stuntman, and this is not going to matter. And she said, I know, honey, I know you're going to be a stuntman, but you know, you're going to have to get out of high school first. And turned out I never was a stuntman.

Did she believe that you were going to become a stuntman?

No, she thought I was delusional, I think, always. But you know, she helped add in my delusional attitude because she would tell me things like, you know, you could be the president. You know, that's old-school mothering. You know, you tell your kids lies. Yeah, it's like you're going to be the president.

Lies, unconditional love. What else?

So that's an interesting, you know, thing to think about, like a mother that tells you, you could be the president, you could be anything, you're special, you're not like the other kids. And I don't think that she meant that special like I was delusional, like mentally. I think she just kept feeding me these things, and it's really an interesting test because I literally did think, I thought that if there was a plane crash, I'd probably be the only person that would live.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes. If she believes in you so much and says you can do anything even though you have Fs versus other parents like, you have an F, you're not good enough, you're never going to be a point, like you're never going to become anything, you're never going to have As, if you're not a doctor, a lawyer, or you're—

You're absolutely right.

You're not going to make it. So you have the opposite of that. It's like, it's okay if you have an F, I love you, I know you can do anything, and then you end up an entrepreneur who took risk. And tell us a bit more of the story about virtualrelocation.com. .com that you co-founded.

So Virtual Relocation was the first real big jump, but before I got to Virtual Relocation, you know, I was in the Navy. That was a whole other story. I get out of the Navy.

Thank you for your service.

Oh, thank you very much.

I just, I didn't know that you were in.

Yeah, I was in the Navy from '81 to '85, and that was really the first time that I transitioned from being this kid that was in trouble all the time to a kid that, because I grew up in this town, And I could speak in fluent sentences and use an occasional linking verb. They thought I was like a Rhodes Scholar compared to all the other knuckleheads that were enlisted in the military. And they put me in charge. So I became— like, I started getting leadership. People started listening to me, and not just because they thought I was funny, but they thought I was responsible.

And so it feels like you maybe do have early wisdom because from raising yourself and then having a mom who believes in you, and then you get selected.

I mean, looking back, it's, it's wild, like, just thinking about all those experiences, how they just kind of all connected. Yeah, but the Navy made me more confident. It started to fulfill leadership promise that I might have because I never, never was really that guy. And that got me— but I didn't have a college degree. And when you don't have a college degree, you're limited to the type of jobs you can have.

Still today you don't have a college degree?

No.

Oh wow.

No, ironically. And then I speak at, like, the Anderson School of Business at UCLA for entrepreneurs. It's kind of funny.

They go, we're just graduated.

Yeah, I didn't go to school, but that kind of led me to, to, to limit of the jobs that I could have. So I got a job selling copy machines for 3M for straight commission, essentially.

And again, it goes all the way back to, well, like a sales job, which is like a sales job is hard knocks because you have to knock at doors and there's no guarantee.

It's straight commission. And so had I not failed, had I not survived, had I not had those previous experiences, to most people they would say, well, what's my base pay?

Yeah.

And they, and they would say, well, you don't get a base pay. And then you would say, but if you sell, you can make all this money.

So it's input and output. You have to input and you have to output to be able to get paid.

Yeah. And since I didn't have the fear of failing, I said, well, so if I sell things, I can make that much money? And they said, yeah. Where other people were more rational and logical, saying, but if I don't say anything, sell anything, how am I gonna pay my bills? And I went, well, of course I'm gonna sell. Of course Of course I'm gonna be great, 'cause my mom told me, you know, I'm gonna be great. And I was a top salesman at 3M. I made, you know, a lot of money and did a lot of fun stuff.

It's so interesting. So 3M.

So the 3M experience selling copiers really trained me to understand business, like in the real world, not in some book, because I'm sure I have ADD and ADHD. I would have never paid attention, you know, had I gone to a formal school. I'm not fancy educated like you.

Katheline Jean-Pierre. I studied in Montreal, so I don't know if it's fancy, but yes, I'm educated.

It's very fancy.

But there's just something like, there's a blueprint. There's so many entrepreneurs who were not good at school, were more like follow their own path, and it seems like you followed that kind of, like a little bit of a prototype. But there's also entrepreneurs who went to school. But I think it's interesting because you experienced a lot of freedom and you became fearless. So, and also selling copy machines makes me think of Sarah Blakely.

How sexy is that?

Well, Sarah Blinkey has a similar story where she talks about how she had a sales job selling fax machines, which is unsexy.

The same thing. People were throwing you out of their buildings. They hated you. You were the worst thing that could show up in their day. Hi, my name is Scott Taylor. I made it a point to stop by and speak to the person in charge of your office automation. It's like, get out, get out right away. But again, you just— it was a numbers game. I did well and I got promoted and became a manager. I started understanding P&L and and write-downs and, you know, how to run a business. And that was really the next step of basically putting me in a position where when I finally started Virtual Relocation with my partner, I already had 3 kids.

Oh, wow.

One on the way.

Okay, you were productive.

Am I? I'm Irish. You know, it's the rhythm method. That's the result of the rhythm.

What is the rhythm method?

I don't know what that's another show. It's after hours. We'll talk about that. So when my partner, who had already sold the company, and I started speaking about doing something together, he said, you know, the only way that we can start a company effectively is if you quit. You can't have like a parachute. You can't have like something on the side, which was very good advice. And I said, but dude, I have like 3 kids. My wife is pregnant with my 4th. I'm making really good money. And why can't I— we just do this at night first. Again, this is 1997, the internet's just getting going. I don't even know if it's gonna be an internet company that we start. We just start thinking about ideas of going into business together.

Yeah.

And I quit. I quit my job.

A high-paying sales job.

Yeah, and I was like, wow. And you know, my tactic with my wife was not to really go into detail about my new adventure.

Was she working?

No, she was a stay-at-home mom.

Okay, and did you have savings?

I had enough money from— I had enough money that I thought would be enough if I did this for a year, but Murphy's Law of entrepreneurship is that you never have enough money.

Yeah.

And I ran out of all the money like 6 months before I thought, and I was desperate. And we decided, my partner and I decided to start an internet company, so we picked the internet. And we picked this space of moving and relocation through other acquaintances that we had known, kind of started into that world in the internet.

Okay.

But remember, it's very early. The idea of buying a house or renting an apartment or getting a mortgage online was unheard of.

Yeah.

Giving somebody your credit card on this thing called the internet was unheard of.

No, it was AltaVista and dial-up and like you get access in the university lab. Back in the days.

Yes.

You go once a week, not like everyday scrolling.

It's a trip to listen to kids in their 30s talk about the internet that they've always known, and you have no concept of pre-internet.

Yeah.

You know, and back then it was like, how do you monetize it? And, but you know, it turned out to be a good bet. The internet turned out not to be a fad.

So VirtualRelocation.com was a pure play, purely on the internet in 1997?

1997, Virtual Relocation was the name of the company. When we tried to raise money for that company, which we thought was a no-brainer, nobody would give us money. They said, "No one's going to go online to move or buy a house.

We think no one will ever do that." Were you still in New York or were you in the States?

This was in Portland, Oregon.

You were in Portland?

I was in from 3M, the copier business. I left and there's so many parts of my eclectic world that I'm not going to drive you crazy thinking about it. It was 3M copiers. I got into telecom, telecommunications, telecommunications. AT&T just broke up and all these companies sprung up to compete with AT&T. I was a part of that movement.

Okay.

That company gave me some stock.

Okay.

And that company was acquired and that gave me the money to start the internet company. And so that's when I moved to Portland. I moved to Portland with a telecom company. Quit there, had my family, and then started this internet business and raised money.

And how much were you able to raise?

We raised, I think, $6 million. And back then, it's hard for people to understand also that that was a lot of money.

It was a lot of money for something that's very early, and that's pure play in the internet in 1997.

Yeah. And we were really fortunate too, because when you're raising money and the frenzy starts, venture wants to give you a lot of money because they're responsible and paid for giving money away.

Yeah.

Managing a fund, you— the fund, the people that invest in the fund don't want you sitting on their money taking management fees. They want you to deploy capital.

Yeah. You have to invest. You have to decide.

Yeah. And so that was tricky. But again, I learned— I never knew what it was like to raise money. I had no idea what that was like. And I got to experience that, which was amazing.

How long did it take to raise from start to finish?

We tried to raise money. We had friends and family. We literally— I had no money left. My Amex was maxed out and they were going to cut it off. And my accountant gave me a loan to pay the Amex bill so we could do a trade show and pay for the trade show with the Amex.

Wow.

And he didn't even know what the internet was. He goes, you're a good kid, like, I'll give you the money. And then Many people didn't. And then we— our first big investor was a guy named Ken Langone, who was one of the founders of Home Depot and EarthLink and a number of companies that I didn't know who he was. Yeah, we did what's called a road show. We were in New York and my partner's dad knew a guy who knew a guy, and we ended up meeting him. And because he invested, everybody else wanted to invest.

Wow.

He didn't even know what the hell we were doing.

Because he's a smart guy?

No, he— this was old school New York, man. This guy is like, what do you guys do? And I'm so, you know, smart, and I'm gonna tell him this amazing idea that I have about this company. And he just essentially said, so listen, I don't know anything about the internet, but like, you're— you guys seem like good kids. And I know his dad's friend, and we worked at Dreyfus together. And then, how much are you looking for? And we told him, and he wrote a check and brought some other people in the room, and they wrote a check. And well, And he said, "Good luck." And a year and a half later, we gave him 10x his money, which he probably didn't care about. He's a multi-billionaire. But it was another lesson about networking. And it's your network and the people that you meet. And it had nothing to do with me thinking that I was smart. It had to do with my friend's dad worked with a guy who knew a guy. That's changed my life.

Yeah, I think he's a game changer, 'cause it's not about is the business model sound? At the time, it was not if the business model is sound. Was sound because it was so early.

Yeah.

And then it was you as entrepreneurs, but also having access, which is a privilege. It's amazing having access to these investors. And then what happened? So first, what was the business model of VirtualRelocation.com?

The business model at the time was also very pioneering. I mean, we were talking about it off set. When we started that company, nobody understood what the model should be.

Yeah.

There were, there were two different camps. There was advertising, which was pretty vanilla. And then there was be a part of the transaction. So taking a percentage of the fee, taking a percentage. So there were some people that said if I made a penny from, you know, like Cisco and some of these other companies that make a penny of every phone call you make, that kind of thing. So we chose advertising and I was in sales and marketing. And the thing about sales and marketing is that you're taking somebody at rest You're making them sufficiently disturbed at their situation, and then you're presenting a product or a service to fix it. Yeah, that, that's the marketing dollars.

Yeah, it's taking somebody at rest, it's solving their problem, but you've got to understand the pain.

Yeah, so you got to create the problem first. That's marketing. Why are you driving that car? You're never going to meet any hot girls. Why are you using this service? It's terrible. You've got to use our service. That's billions and billions of marketing dollars.

Yeah.

And I thought because I had moved and you had moved, you've moved a bunch of times. And think about if there was a place that you could go and they would help you with one of the most disruptive moments in your life.

It's so annoying.

They would find an apartment for you. They would tell you the cost of living. They would tell you the crime rates. They would give all this information that would make you feel like you were in some sort of control at this moment in your life, which you feel really out of control.

Yeah, and also you can give them your problem and then you just fly yourself and then you arrive there and everything is set up for you. So that was the idea of—

as an example, so the idea was advertising. Who would want to be in front of these people that have to make decisions? So we were capturing these people that were already sufficiently disturbed. Yeah, there were no marketing dollars that had to get them there. They had already made the choice that they have to move, and if you have to move, then you have to make these decisions. You have to get a rental apartment. You have to buy a new house. You have to get a moving company.

Yeah.

And that was the— gee, I was so smart. And when you think about this, when I would present this to investors, they were like, I just don't get it. I just don't know why somebody would go to your website and be interested in that information. And you're going, what, am I on another planet? And these are people like at Sequoia, the biggest venture funds on the planet, and —because there's so many use cases, right?

There's some families where traditionally it was the husband had to relocate for opportunity, so the whole family had to relocate. I personally relocated, what, 3, 4, 5 times, and every single time it gets better, but it's very— a lot of me doing it.

Yeah, normally it's some realtor who goes, oh honey, I have a friend, and she's some yenta that tells you that there's other friend in Cincinnati where you're moving, she'll take care of it. It's just a network of realtors. —yeah—that want to sell you houses.

Yeah, they don't care about all these other things, but they don't carry— they don't carry all of the logistics of that.

That was a trip. And then, you know, we raised money, and then before we knew it, you know, we grew to 150-something people. We were doing millions of dollars in revenue.

So people needed virtual location. So people were relocating. So that was—

we had an office in Tokyo. Like, we partnered with one of the biggest trading companies in the world, and I was building we were building for them the Japanese version of virtual relocation, which was called the Hikoshi Guide. And then we sold the company before we actually finished that.

But tell me about the sale of the company to Monster.com.

I'll tell you, man, the sale of the company was so surreal coming from where I came from. Yeah. And when you have friends that you have this dream and you're telling them you're going to be a millionaire and you're going to do all these things, And you have no reason to say that because you're getting F's in school. I go into the Navy as a jet mechanic and a plane captain. I come out like, this is great. This is where I'm going to start my real career. It sounds average.

You were like the average, way below average.

But, but, you know, the moment comes when I'm in a meeting in Portland at our headquarters. I realize now that I'm worth millions at this point if everything doesn't go sideways. On paper. Like, there's enough hype about the internet and all these things. So I'm kind of getting a little swaggy, you know, kind of was feeling fun. And then we got an email to the generic email box, like info@virtuerelocation.com. And my assistant came in and said, hey, this person sent us an email. They said they're interested in talking to you about the company, and maybe it's an important email. And I go, just leave me alone. I don't know who these people are. Some company called XYZ.com or something. And she came back in and a couple hours later and said, listen, this guy is on the phone now. And I said, who the hell is this guy? Like, tell him to stop bugging me, you know, blah blah blah. And it turns out that the company that owned Monster.com was called TMP Worldwide. Okay, so I didn't recognize that name. This guy, you know, we connected, we met. He was also military, ex-military. He also was raised by a single mom. He was the youngest child the president and CEO of Ryder Truck Rental, who had just taken a job at Monster to acquire a handful of companies. And we were one of the companies that he identified.

Yeah. And his background seems like to make sense.

And that goes back to that connection. That goes back to that network. That goes back to not business models. We connected on a personal level. Yeah. Which was special. And over the next 6 months, you know, we put a deal together. We met at the Crown Room, which is now called the Sky Club for Delta at Portland International Airport. My partner and I, my CFO, we were nervous. You know, I'm a crazy person. They're like, look, don't talk too much. You know, you don't blow this deal for us. This is going to change our lives. Like, don't screw it up. I'm like, hey, take it easy, man. I'm not going to screw it up. This is so funny. It's really funny, right? And so we get there and this guy, Tom Zorn was his name. Handsome MBA program fast track at Ford who owned Ryder, I think, at the time. That's how he got that position. He looked like Tom Berenger, if you remember that actor. No. Handsome Tom Berenger. And we sat in this, in the Crown Room, and he said, we're prepared to offer you this amount. And I looked at the amount and I played as if I didn't care. I was a good actor. And I said, that's nice, but that's not going to do it. And my CFO and my partner, I mean, we had been less than 2.5 years.

It's very early to be acquired. Yeah.

And this is— it was for $56 million.

Okay. That's the first offer.

The first offer, which we would have taken 3 probably. Yeah. And he said, this is what we're willing to offer. And I'm saying, look, you know, you and I both know that's not going to work. The investors will never go for that. We don't have to argue whether it's realistic or not in terms of like what's a company really worth at this moment in time. We know it's worth a lot more. And he said, well, what are you thinking? And I'm like, it's not that. Now my partners are giving me death stares because they think I just talked past the sale.

They just wanted the $56 million and just run. But you were the crazy one, right? And then you were like, I'm gonna ride this wave and I'm gonna crank up that deal.

And I was having flashbacks of being in the copier business where where like this guy's asking me for extra toner and a few more reams of paper, and I'm like, you know, I don't know, I'll have to think about that. It's all the same negotiating but different decimal points. And we walk out the hallway.

So poker-faced, you poker-faced your way through this, okay. Poker-faced.

But on the inside, you can imagine, we go out into the hallway, he goes on the phone and talks to the CEO, a guy named Andy McKelvey, who he has to get approval for going higher. And they go, you're gonna blow this, know, what are you doing? And I'm like, just stay with me.

See, I was freaking out.

The partners, and for good reasons, they're really smart. It could have screwed the whole deal up and could have ended up in a really bad place. So I don't give myself credit for it. I just— what I did, they just didn't think about it. It wasn't because I had some smart tactic. I just acted that way. Fast forward, we go back in the room. He goes, okay, here we go. What if we do $88 million? And I'm like, In like 10 minutes, you jump up $25 million. Like, what kind of operation is this? So you were right.

Yeah, so valuation was higher. This was all stock.

So again, they were playing with Monopoly money. Yeah. And so now I'm thinking, this is insane. I'm like, in my mind, I'm thinking about what that means to me. I'm like, this is crazy.

And you were two partners plus a VC.

Two partners and some VC. Yeah, but we were— we still had a nice chunk of the company. And so We ended up negotiating, and they had something, you know, said, look, this is a standard, and this is, this is a lesson. These are all amazing lessons. Here's a standard contract. So as we're going back and forth, they keep changing the contract. So you accepted the $88 million? Well, on the surface we said, okay, but let's look through the details again. And my CFO is brilliant, um, Peggy Miller. She was amazing. And she looked through the details, and the thing that you learn about standard agreements is that there is no such thing as a standard agreement. Uh, It's whatever agreement you want to sign.

That's lesson number one.

Lesson number one. Lesson number two, soon as you change the agreement, if I change the price, they could go back in, redo the agreement, and change all the other things.

Yeah, they can change the cost.

So you need to go look at all the other things very specifically to make sure. Many people fail to do that because they are focused on the money. Yeah, or whatever the one change was, like, okay, you made that change, we're good now. But they go back in and change all the other things. So it's very important to remember that. And one of the things that they had in this standard agreement was, at the time, a 15-month lockup in stock was very normal for founders. But the idea was that if you were a big company being acquired with publicly traded stock, they didn't want you to be able to sell all of your stock because it gave the market an impression that something must be bad. [Speaker] Yeah. so then therefore it could send the stock into a nosedive.

And he sends a message. Right. In theory.

However, if you're an $8 billion market cap company buying a company for $80 million, it's nothing. Yeah. And I knew that just from all the prior experiences I had to then go back again and say, we're not going to do this 15-month lockup. And you use the board.

Did you do that at the moment? In the room?

In the moment. So now we've got a fresh—

like the bold guy in there.

I was stupid. When you're young, man, you do crazy shit.

How old were you at the time?

32, I think. Okay. And so, but I had no experience. I didn't go to Wharton. I was selling copy machines, and then I was selling long distance, and I was a jet mechanic. Like, what the hell do I know about anything? I'm just on the fly. And so I said, okay, well, we have to change this again. He goes, listen, I can't send this back again. We have, you know, printers like going in the business office of this— they change it on the old-school computer.

So we go old school.

He goes, okay, if I do this for you, is that it? And I go, I swear, no more changes, that's it. So he literally takes a pen, scribbles out 15 months, writes in 90 days. He initials it, I initial it. And we shake hands.

So I just want to make sure I understand. So instead of 15 months where you and your co-founder would be locked in—

I wouldn't be able to sell, and anybody that was an investor couldn't sell for 15 months.

So 90 days instead, you could sell all your shares if you wanted to.

Everybody could sell. Everybody that was invested could sell all their shares.

Okay. Did you have to keep an operating role?

I stayed. They wanted me to stay. For 15 months? They didn't say how long they wanted me to stay. They just said, do you want to stay on? I go, yeah, let's see how it works.

It's interesting because nowadays they want to hold the founder for longer, 18 months, 15 months. That's very interesting.

So the other thing you realize about when you're an entrepreneur and you start a company and somebody wants to acquire you, they literally think that you're really missing the most important part of that business. So they think that they're smarter than you and that if, if they had the company, they would make the company way more successful. So they in fact at that time were thinking advertising is a terrible model. The model that we're going to change this to is a transaction model.

To take a percentage of fee of everybody.

So instead of having— I had a directory like a big Yellow Pages on this virtual site. Yeah. And instead of having all the realtors and all the rental companies that you could choose during this transition where you felt empowered, they said, we're gonna do a deal with Ryder Truck Rental. One company. We're gonna do a deal with Apartments.com. One company. They'll pay us a part of the business. So they had a completely different way of doing it. So they're thinking— different model. Yeah, we don't care if Scott stays or not. He's not that smart anyways. They didn't need you, right? But they go, you'll stay, and you know, if you want. But why would I stay? I'm like rich. I'm not gonna work again. Yeah, what do I care, right? So fast forward, we signed this thing. And now we all look at each other like, shut the front door. Like, there's no way that that really just happened. So we all drive in our separate cars.

What do you do when you just signed for like $90 million? You have a moment.

And I'm thinking flashbacks of where I came from and teachers that said I was stupid. Like all the typical things you hear from people, you know, all these people that doubted you. You know, I think about my mom who had passed away.

I'm like, oh, you You know, think about the haters.

You think about the haters, you think of all this stuff, and then you just think— you have this massive humbling blanket that comes over you because you think, so many people are smarter than me. Yeah, so many people are more deserving than me. It's very interesting because you think that you're gonna have this cocky response and think, I did it, you know, because it takes all that confidence and that cockiness and that bravado in that moment to negotiate.

Yeah, to— not just that, to negotiate, to push the boundary, to get the terms that you want, but also to leave a cush job, start a business when you have 4 kids, and then run the business when you don't have cash, and then raise money, and then— so it's the whole thing takes a lot of courage, and you have to be fearless.

I mean, it did, and naïveté, which you also know entrepreneurs, if they knew what they knew afterwards, they never would have tried. Yeah. So there's a big chunk of naivete that happens. So I'm in my car, I'm driving back from the airport, and I call my wife and I say, hey, you know, I sold the company. And she goes, what does that mean? She goes, they can let you work there? And I go, well, yeah, I can work there. But she goes, what do you mean that you sold the company? Now you have to understand, my wife is raising kids. Yeah. She doesn't know the internet from like a computer. Doesn't care. She's— I'm crazy. Like, think of the things that I've been doing my whole life. Yeah, this is just another thing.

So she married you, she believed like you were selling copy machines. Yeah, she liked the guy, she had kids with the guy, and then you went into the internet and she's like, yeah, what is the internet?

I mean, like, it goes a little deeper than that. I met my wife when I was 17. My wife's father was the captain of my squadron in the Navy, so I literally would, would snap him into his seat as a plane captain. And then one day on base, I'm playing for the softball team. I watched this red, like, '63 Porsche roll up to the parking lot. And I'm a guy, so I'm like, wow, this car is amazing. And then I see this beautiful blonde, like, person get out of the car. And I'm like, wow, I get to meet that person. They're like, dude, you can't talk to her. That's the captain's daughter.

And I was like, But you're the, you're the people, you said the knucklehead. So you go and you talk to the girl.

So I'm the knucklehead. So I go talk to her and, you know, I, I talked to her and then I, you know, I figured I'm going to ask her out. And so I got the number and I'm in the barracks now, you know, like on base with all these guys standing around. I'm on the pay phone. You know, they dared me to call her. But remember, she lives at the captain's house. Yeah. Like the captain of my squadron. And I'm praying that he doesn't pick up the phone because I'll be a dead man. Yeah, you're done. I'm enlisted.

And then like, how do you dare talk to my daughter? So that's where I met—

this is the person I met. I'm not gonna do a huge story about that, but it just gets deeper and deeper. So this is the person I married 7 years later.

It's the same woman. So the captain's daughter is— she dumped me, went off to college.

I ran into her 8 years later, we got married, had a family. So, wow, that's a trip, right? That's a trip. So I called her and said these things. I'm like, yeah, you know, I sold the company. And she said, oh, you're gonna be like— she was just worried that I was gonna lose my job and like, how are we afford all this stuff. Yeah, I go, you know, well, actually just made tens of millions of dollars. Like, this is— she goes, we will see. She's like, we'll see. She doesn't believe me yet.

Well, until the cash hits the bank account.

Because I'll tell you what, when you go to the ATM and you put your ATM card in and you see the cash at the account, that's another level. That's crazy. That is just like—

you want like to hide the ATM machine.

You want to go run in the bushes and just like hide all your money. 'Cause little did I know that less than 9 months later, that the internet bubble would burst and everybody would lose fortunes.

Wait, so that was 1999 and then the bubble was 2000, Y2K, everything crashed.

Everything, the internet crashed, people decided, you know, you're gonna have to start making money and most people didn't make money back then. You know, Mark Cuban made all that money and his company was never making money. Nobody's making, Amazon was losing money. It was a bubble, yeah.

It was not profitable. It was a lot of hype. So basically you signed the deal in 1999, and then thankfully you didn't go for the 15-month deal. You went for the 90 days. So you were flush, you got your cash before the crash.

Then the crash happened. Lots of my buddies got wiped out, and I was like, hey man, what's with all the frowns? Why you guys all bummed out? They're like, screw you, man. I got really lucky. But you know, that was a long time ago. So then deals happen, you invest, you lose money. So it all comes around. That was my turn. That was my turn. I was very blessed, very humbled. It was mind-boggling and life-changing. That's amazing.

I think it's a beautiful story. Thank you. And then what's interesting is that you've had multiple careers before becoming an entrepreneur and now an investor. One of the questions in Driving Impact that we like to ask is, how did you find your purpose?

Well, I think that when something like that happens to you, my reaction, because I grew up the way I did, poor, I was so humbled by it and so thankful. You almost have survivor's guilt. Yeah. Like people that come back from war, like, why did I live? And my survivor guilt, if you will, was why was I the one that got to make all this money? Oh, wow. And so I'm going to have to do something good. I'm going to have to help people. And it's not altruistic or, you know, like I'm a nice guy. It's like an involuntary thing that happened. Like, I didn't think about it too much. It just happened. It just was like, this is what I need to do.

So did you feel like a responsibility because you found the way in brackets and you got access to now give back to the world?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So, and that's dangerous too. And I think that you see this with a lot of professional athletes that make all this money and want to take care of all their friends. There are phases of this maturing with newfound wealth. Yeah. And so you have everybody jump out of the woodwork. That thinks you owe them money. You have people that you want to give money to. I funded some past bosses' businesses, you know, and when you have tens of millions of dollars, you know, you think about like giving somebody a $20 tip at the valet. I have people coming to me saying, "Hey, I got this business idea, you know, I need $250 grand, I need $200 grand, I need $150 grand." So you kind of indirectly become a VC.

Yeah, because everybody's pitching to you.

Yeah, everybody's like thinking you're just peeling off hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. And it's like, wait a second, this is ludicrous. And all the nonprofits come to you and say, Scott, you know, congratulations on this, this newfound success. You know, we're doing some really great work in the community. We'd love for you to be a part of it. And you're like, okay, because now all of a sudden you have all these big shots talking to you. Yeah. You know, guys, it's a bit sudden. It's a bit sudden. So I went through that phase, and— but then I realized what some of my passions were. My passions were to help women because of my mother. Like, it went back, right back to that. Like, single moms. Single moms. How can I help single moms? How can I help, you know, women in general? I have two daughters at this point. Yeah. And life took me down that road. And so I started investing in female founder companies. The Syl— the Syl is one of the companies that my partner and I invested in, female founder, and I just found myself helping these companies out, mentoring, investing. Is that what Blue Skies Ventures is? It's like your— Blue Skies Ventures is a venture firm that my partner and I have. We invest not just in women-founded companies, lots of different companies, but that was a vehicle that I used, and some of the deals that we did were— many of them were female-founded companies.

It's amazing. And they're like, are they prosperous, these companies? Yeah, I mean, well, you exit some of them.

They haven't— we haven't any exit strategies yet, but some of them are prosperous, some are doing well. We hope to have liquidity events with them. Most of them fail along the way. We're early-stage investors, so the likelihood of those companies, you know, making it is unlikely, but your return is exponential if one of them happens.

And then you also the first cash investor in the Women's US Open.

Yeah, that was a trip.

You know, how did you go from like virtualrelocation.com?

Because I have ADD and I'm like a lunatic. And instead of a stuntman, I just became somebody who throws himself all over the place. Like, how did it come about?

Like getting involved in women's polo?

Yeah, I met a guy who's what they call a patron, who is the player owner of a polo team. Who was also promoting women in sports. He had sponsored a women's polo team called Hawaii Polo Life, and he introduced me to some of them, and I thought polo was fascinating. And polo is fascinating. It's super Gucci, it's luxe, but it's super athletic. The women that are beautiful— that feels very luxurious. It's very luxurious, but these women are fierce. These women do not play. They come out to win. And that was interesting for me to watch, that blend of, of, you know, a lot of money, a lot of luxury, a lot of athleticism, a lot of determination and grit. I mean, these women are flying down fields with mallets, swinging, hitting these hard balls across the field, getting hit and not getting knocked off their horses.

It's physical. It's technical. You're on a horse. It's very impressive.

I would recommend just go online to USPA.com and check it out. It's wild. Everybody knows the men, Nacho this and Adolfo and the Polo ads, and there's all these beautiful Argentinian men playing polo. It's super sexy. The women, like most sports, don't get brought up a lot.

Yeah, a lot of women's sports are underfunded, don't get attention, no sponsorship, etc.

And the thing is, that's true, it's a business around women's sports. It's like, you know, obviously men's football makes a lot more money than women's basketball. Yeah. So we're all adults, we're all business people, we understand that. However, in order to seed some of these ventures in sports with women, you've got to promote them in order to get people to see them. And what I saw as an entrepreneur and as a marketing person was this tremendous opportunity with women playing polo for the reasons I said. It's athletic, it's pretty, It's luxurious, it's risky, it's dangerous, you know, all those things.

It's kind of a world of its own.

Yeah, I'll get you to polo, you'll love it.

I want to go, I want to go.

Santa Barbara's close, but you know, we'll get you to Wellington. So through this guy, Chris Dawson, he lives in Hawaii, he's very generous to these women polo players. He told me about it, and then I was working with IconSource as an investor and helping them build that company. They were working with women in sports as well. I got involved with this, this polo team, and we sponsor— I found out that the women's team didn't have a cash sponsor. So the winner of the US Open, just like the US Open tennis or golf, this is polo. It's not like some hacky thing. It's the thing. It's the US Open.

The main thing. There was no sponsor for the women.

Well, it just— I mean, people don't go there looking for sponsors necessarily because they're Their expenses are paid by the patron. So it just was interesting that they didn't have a mechanism to do that. So I said, let me go find some sponsors. I found Icon Source and a company called Eastern Hay were the cash sponsors, first time in history. And that started a movement of other sponsors getting involved. They were playing on a side field in a place called Port Mayaca. And we ended up helping, I think, helping them get to play on the main field at NPC National Polo Club in Wellington, Florida. Simultaneously, they were also working on a program with ESPN to cover the polo matches for the men and the women. And that was 3 years ago. And since then, a lot more sponsors, the women's team are getting a lot more attention. And we're currently in production right now. With a film. It's going to be probably a 6-part docuseries featuring these women polo players. We partnered with a company called Hello Sunshine, which is Reese Witherspoon's production company. And they're going to help us develop and get this thing distributed.

So basically your purpose at this moment is really to bring more awareness around women polo.

Yeah, women in polo. Prior to polo, Well, during polo, actually, through this company, IconSource, we had an opportunity to be the first company to do an NIL deal with women. NIL, for those that don't know what NIL is, it's name, image, and likeness. And so Congress passed a law that it was illegal to not let college athletes prosper or benefit from the selling or endorsing of their name, image, likeness. It was illegal in the past. And when that ruling came out a couple of years ago, IconSource, who previous to that were— we were doing deals with pro athletes and brands. It's a marketplace that connects pro athletes with brands. When we knew that college sports was going to open up, it was important for us to play a part in that. So I and the founder started talking about who would we want to do the first deal in history and who would we do that with? And I was a proponent for a lot of reasons, thinking that everybody's expecting the quarterback of the football team to do the first big deal. Yeah. Or the star basketball player. And we said, what if we— what if the first deal in history was a woman, was a college athlete, it was a female college athlete that would take people like in the whole other side of this conversation. Whoever thought that women would also benefit. There's 47,000 student athletes in this country. Yeah, that can now all benefit from it.

So the first— because of, because of the change of the law.

That's exactly right. So at 12:01 a.m., the first deal in history, the first college endorsement deal that was done by Boost Mobile and the Cavender twins, Hailey Cavender and her sister. And also the second deal was with Jackson State University, an HBCU. That was the second deal done in history. Wow. This tracked globally.

New York, you know, and this deal— I want to make sure that we understand. So the deal was to promote and it was women in polo.

This wasn't the polo deal. The first NIL deal. This is the college athlete deal that was with two basketball players that were going to Fresno State. Okay. So that happened all around the same time that polo— we ended up sponsoring this women's polo team. So the college sports thing was separate from polo, but it was female athletes.

So it's the same vein. It's the same vein.

Yeah. I was able to be in a position to not only help sponsor, get sponsorships for two female athletes in college, which was brand new and historic. And we were also able to be part of a historic first time ever that the US Open Women's Polo got a cash prize. And so, and that was around women, and that was really exciting. This year in the Women's US Open, which the final is next week, yeah, which I'll be going to, right? First time in history that a Black female will be playing in the US Open.

Ooh, what's her name?

Her name is Sharriah Harris, and that's pretty special. What's the story? Her story, her story was that there's a nonprofit group that encourages, you know, inner-city kids to do something outside of basketball, football, whatever. And they introduced horses and polo. She played for this program while I think she was going to nursing school or something. And when we were putting this film together, we realized that there wasn't a lot of diversity in polo. It's a lot of white people riding horses. Yeah. And we started to research, well, what other people play polo? And, you know, Is there other communities that are involved? And a couple of names came up. Shirai's name came up, and another person's name. And we contacted them and said, how would you like to be a part of getting back into polo again?

And so she was not in polo, and you brought her back?

She wasn't aggressively playing polo. She was doing pickup games when she could. She was working, and polo is extremely expensive. Yeah, it's expensive.

So you need to have sponsors. You have to need endorsements or a rich family. Yes, right above. All of the above.

We talked to her on the phone and weeks later, you know, we had this— we were at the same time trying to get this production deal done and it all came together. And so she's playing polo as we speak, actually scored the winning goal of one of the competitions a few weeks ago. Wow. In Wellington.

Did she drop nursing?

No, no. These people all have careers. They have their other lives. But, you know, she came out and did that. And I can't wait to see her in person to talk about like this old guy calling her saying, hey, I have an idea along with my producer partners. She probably thought, whatever, this will never happen. And she's playing polo in Wellington, Florida. It's amazing. Yeah, it's, it's super rewarding. And where does she live? She lives in Pennsylvania. I think she lives in Philly.

Okay. That's amazing. Could be mistaken. Beautiful story. And then does she have a sponsor?

Yeah, well, so she's being sponsored right now by a team, a patron in Wellington, and I think this could be a start of her now playing with this team and maybe being a part of her life again. That's exciting. And encouraging, you know, other women that look like her to go do something different.

I think it's super inspiring. I mean, first, thank you for bringing awareness of a woman in polo. And then second, for able to create all these opportunities for people who were not— that were on the sidelines, if I could say. So when we think about women in polo, how much investment have people put, like, yearly of this tournament?

Millions of dollars collectively. I mean, to field a polo team, you know, you need— and I'm not a polo expert by any means, so if anybody's looking at this saying, oh, you don't know what you're talking about, you're right. He doesn't know what he's I don't, but I know kind of what I'm talking about. They have dozens of polo ponies that travel with them around the world. Argentina, Wellington, Florida, Denver, you know, all around the world they play seasonally. And in order to field the team, you have all the expenses of flying these people around. You have expenses of the horses, the feed, the barns, the horses, everybody. Oh my goodness. Millions and millions and millions and millions.

So basically, for— they need sponsorship, they need— they need patrons. And then how do we create more sponsors and more awareness?

We're creating awareness. So this being on ESPN is going to be a big deal. I think when we get this production, this docu-series done, I liken it to what Netflix did for Formula One. They created an awareness about Formula One that never existed before. And in golf, there's a film called Full Swing, which they did also, and it created a tremendous amount of awareness about golf for people that normally don't— aren't interested in. So we're doing this for polo and for women in polo to open up this world that's very exclusive, very expensive. Yeah, very niche, but nonetheless very entertaining, very athletic. And we think that when people see what women are capable of, specifically women are capable of in this amazing environment, that many people will come out to watch polo. Because you can come watch polo, there's polo fields, they have private matches, and it's really fun and it's festive, drinking champagne, dressing up in your best polo gear, Sunday polo.

I'm going to go buy my little polo shirt. And then drink all the champagne. You have the hat. So do you think brands are going to start flocking towards women in polo?

Brands currently, you know, think of the most luxurious brands on the planet. They're around polo. They've been around men's polo. Yeah. And Rolex, Tiffany, you know, pick a brand. Yeah. We think that it takes money to make money. Initially, the first couple of matches in the US Open were maybe 3 or 4 teams. Now there are 8 teams this year, women's teams that are being funded. Tommy Lee Jones, his wife Dawn Jones is involved. I think they're sponsoring a team. There are some very strong women who happen to have, you know, have enough money to do this. They're giving back to the community. It's just great to watch. You know, sometimes it takes a spark. It sounds cliché, but there are a lot of strong women, a lot of women that need sometimes help from men. Yeah, you need some in some crazy way.

As a Black woman in business, I mean, you need all the help, all the sponsorship, and sometimes the people who help you really do not look like you. And not because people have access that sometimes you don't have. So I can totally imagine that would be similar for maybe marginalized communities who want to play polo.

Yeah, I mean, look, if you're poor, you're not going to play polo. Sorry. You know, you're going to—

unless you have a sponsor.

Yeah, you're going to go play stickball, do something fun. Like, just— this isn't meant for everybody, you know, just the facts. I mean, golf is expensive too. Snowboarding, skiing, and skiing is expensive. So look, I grew up poor. I didn't get to go skiing and I didn't get to go snowboard. I wasn't playing polo. So most people aren't going to get to do this. Yeah, because if people think life is fair, life's not fair.

Yeah, life is not fair.

My mother had 3 pillars, Katheline Jean-Pierre, as a single mom. This is what she said. Life's not fair because I said so. And I'll give you something to cry about. Those are my mother's 3 tenets of raising her 3 kids.

I think your mom is super interesting because she had this very realistic way of looking at life, but then she had this very bubbly way— I'm gonna call it bubbly— of like thinking that you can do anything, and she was not like reinforcing that you have to go from F to A+. Right. So, which is amazing, right? It's pure belief. So I love what you're doing with women in polo. I love what you're doing in venture. And I love the story of virtualrecolocation.com as well. I want to hear now a little bit more about if you had 3 career tips that you would give to people who want to really grow their career but really drive more impact in their career, what would these 3 tips be?

Hmm, well, if you're thinking of becoming a stuntman, it's unlikely. It's unlikely that you actually do that. Just go You know, drive your car fast in the parking lot and do donuts or something when it snows out and then take pictures of yourself. The earlier you find a passion that you can make money at, that's what most people will tell you. I didn't know what my passion was going to be and so I worked hard at learning business. So selling copy machines was not sexy and glamorous. No. I didn't like it. I didn't like people yelling at me. But I kind of looked at it similar to the way people look at working out. I'm going to have to do things that are going to make me uncomfortable, but I'm going to look better. Hopefully not in my case, but most people that work out, you know, you're going to get that six-pack, you're going to show up at the beach, it's going to be all worth it. And some of the things that you're going to have to understand about business is how does it operate? What are the— what are the verticals that are out there right now that are making money? Can I be a good worker first?

So your tip number 1 is be a good worker. Be a good worker.

Don't think that you have to find your passion right away.

Because your passion was stunts.

Yeah, I mean, well, I don't know my passion. My passion was like making people laugh and then, you know, random ridiculous things that made no sense. But what you're told is find your passion. When you find your passion, you know, do something you love and then you won't quit. Yeah, that's great. Eventually you might find that, and I think I— maybe I did. I— but be a good worker first.

Show up on time. Be a good worker. Show up on time.

Train yourself to be uncomfortable doing something that you might not necessarily like, because you're gonna have to understand how to develop those skills no matter what you do. Even if it's something that you pursue that's passionate, first build— building block would be do something that you're not comfortable with. but that's going to teach you things that you know you'll need later on in life no matter what. Yeah, that's number one. Yeah. Number two, always be thinking about building your network. And that doesn't mean, you know, you have some software that you're plugging names and numbers into. It means when you meet people, be kind. Take the time to shake someone's hand, hug them in a meeting, differentiate yourself. If you're, if If you're not very social, you're going to need to be social unless, you know, you have some savant programming skills and you're going to be able to sit in your mom's basement and like type code all day long.

So it's like you need to build like relationship with people whether you're an introvert or extrovert or you don't like to go leave your house or so you have to find a way to build meaningful relationships.

Find a way to build meaningful relationships and if you're not social, get outside of your comfort zone and do things that will make you more social. Because my opinion, especially now in this age, that your personal relationships are going to be the difference between your success and failure. Your access to people via the internet with LinkedIn and social media, those things I'm watching being involved in a digital marketing agency, are quickly becoming very tight. The filters now, just reaching out randomly to get a hold of people, there are all these layers of protection. Yeah. And it's gonna come back full circle to where you're gonna know me because we met. Yeah. You're not gonna know me because I follow you on Instagram and I DM you and then we meet.

That's because you've shared a precious moment with someone, right? In the real world. Yeah, in the real world.

Yeah. So if you're not social, do what you have to do to get yourself outside your comfort zone to do that. That's really important. And then 3, I would set goals and expectations. I would write them down, I would put timeframes around them. In other words, reaching for the sky is something that people say, and what they really mean is that if you reach, then if you fall, you'll be close to wherever you wanted to be in the first place. I don't know if I believe in that. Find something that you're capable of, even if you have to push yourself. Don't set unrealistic goals, because when you get defeated often, you'll give up entirely. So I think you have to be careful about setting expectations. Make sure they're reasonable, they're obtainable, even if it means you have to work really hard, but it's not out of the question. I got it.

So basically, dream big, but it's really baby step. It's step by step that you're gonna get to the vision. But sometimes it's almost—

you're saying don't dream too big. Yeah, I'm saying, I'm saying don't dream too big. I gave a presentation in front of 600-something people at some executive meeting when the book Good to Great came out. Yeah, remember this book? Very popular. They talk about what's the difference between good and great. And I thought, is good a bad word? Because when people say, wow, you're really good at that, that's like a complimentary word. Why do I have to be great at something? Why can't I be good? And so I think it's important to distinguish. I'm not going to be a great basketball player. I'm not going to be even a great entrepreneur. I'm I'm a good entrepreneur. I made some money.

I think you have to be good with the business that you're developing, right? The business, whether it's VirtualRelocation.com or any business that you have, you have— it has to be good. It has to work. It has to attract customers. I went big.

I went big because I can go big. Mm-hmm. I know that about myself. I went big. I wrote a book, had a radio show. I had an internet— I mean, I knew by that time that I was meant to to do that. And I think it's really important.

So that's— that was your calling. So that's how you found your purpose.

And that's the— through delusion and naivete. But at an early age, things were happening in my life. I mean, if you put all these things together at an early age where I was traveling around the world, you know, in the Navy, in the squadron, I meet the captain's daughter. Like, I keep telling myself all these delusional things, like, your dreams are happening.

Coming true, like dream women, dream— like you didn't know what you were gonna do in your life, but then you ended up in the Navy and very happy. And so it's like things were happening, so you knew you could build momentum around things that interested you.

Yeah, and I think that there's something to be said, and when this all happened to me, I thought, am I better off than a guy who is in the trade business? He's a plumber or a carpenter, somebody makes good living in production, you know, doing production. Film, TV, anything, that is happy doing what they're doing, pays their bills, goes away, might have a fishing boat, maybe goes skis, rents a place for 2 weeks with his buddies, that's a really good life. Yeah. And so if you're judging yourself on— and oftentimes people do this, like, if I'm not a millionaire, if I don't sell my company for tons of money, then I'm a loser. I mean, that's a ridiculous premise because so many things have to happen. Just like if you don't become a famous actor, but you want to pursue acting, then pursue acting until you're done, and then realize that, you know, I can't keep doing this because I'm not making any money, and then you go get a job and try something else, and you pivot and you iterate. Yeah, so I'm just saying not to give up on your dreams. If your dream is to do these things, obviously do them, try them. But I think we're really hard on people, especially with social media, that if you don't make a fortune, then you're a loser. If you have some 9-to-5 job, you know, Why didn't you do something more special with your life? And it's like, you have a job, you're paying your bills, you have a family, you're taking care of them. Are you healthy? Do you love your kids? Does your wife treat you nice? Does your husband treat you nice? You get to go on vacations with your cousins and family. Stop and settle for a second, be happy with what you have.

I think fulfillment is, is important, and not like being fulfilled and, and happy and content about the life that you're living. And if there's something that you're like truthfully, that just like, I want to go do something else. That's a whole different conversation. If you feel like there's something, a calling or something that you should be doing, and then you think you can make money, it's also important to be in tune. Because if you're making money and you're doing something that maybe you're not connecting as, you still have one life.

Well, that's important. You're a living example of somebody that continues to push and do all these different things. You've had an amazing career, you know, with some really sexy big companies. I mean, did you know you were gonna do that?

[Speaker] No, I mean, my dream was to be a writer because I was reading all these French existentialist books. And then I went and I did poetry and I was touring for poetry and then my sister said, "Well, you should do rap." So I didn't know I was ending up in tech. I thought my dream was to be in Paris to be a writer when I was a kid. And then after that, to become the best French rapper in France. And didn't happen because I couldn't sign the record deal with that rock label. Long story. So I didn't know that the dream would be redirected to an obsession with Silicon Valley, with tech. And while I was in the arts, when I was— I studied journalism, then I went in tech and spent a lot of time in tech. And then 15+ years later, I'm back in the mic.

1, 2, 1, 2. Bonjour, comment ça va?

Bonjour, ça va? No, it's like test 1, 2, back on a mic because the thing is I started when I was 5 years old. I wasn't doing like playing Mozart on the scene and I was doing theater and that passion is still there and was still there through the career in tech, but it's self-expression is dormant. It's like I really want to do this.

But you're able to incorporate your self-expression expression and your— feed your soul through this and through probably in your work, the way that you touch your employees' lives, which is what I've been able to do. So yeah, yeah, I want to be a stuntman, maybe be an actor. I was in theater, but doing the things that I do, getting involved the way that I am, feeds my soul in a different way that I couldn't have predicted.

Exactly. So you can kind of piece it all together, and that's how you find your purpose. And your purpose could be like you're multi-hyphenate, so you're touching different fields.

Those are those college words, the multi-hyphenate. See, I'm like, I have a jet mechanic and I didn't go to school with Montreal with multi-hyphenate or whatever you call it.

Yeah, multi-hyphenate. It's just multiple. Instead of saying, I like to call it Renaissance person. It's somebody who's doing multiple things. Some people are just, I'm an accountant, that's what, and then I like to barbecue. And then some people are like, I'm an accountant and I like to sing and I like to barbecue and I also involved in this company and this. So people have different passions and different and that's all it means, multi-hyphenate.

The way that you describe it is much nicer than, you know, Sister Mary Jane when I was in the third grade and she said, "Stop talking, you're too fidgety, stop," and then she would hit me. That was a different experience than being multi-hyphenate. She should have said I was multi-hyphenate or whatever it was.

We all have teachers trying to kill the joy for different reasons. I don't blame them. I remember I was in Montreal in a college in the physics class, no, a chemistry class, and I was always laughing and making jokes in the class. And it was like, hey, somebody's having fun in the class.

Did you do your makeup like this when you went to chemistry class?

No, I did not. I did not. And then she's like, you need to stop laughing. And then that was the same day that everybody gave us— everybody had a bad— the average test result was 55, and I was 45 in chemistry. And then she told me to stop laughing, and I was like, I'm just going to take this piece of paper and then go in social science. I'm done. So anywho, I don't know if that helps with the calling, but it's also like finding what the energy pulls you, what excites you, and then you decide if you're going to let people shut your joy. And at that moment, I said, no, you know what? This is what I needed to leave science, and I went to social science. Anyway, let's back on track. I mean, any parting words for all of our listeners who want to drive impact in the world, in their career, in the industry, in their leadership, anything that you can recommend as a father of 4, as a venture capital investor, but also as an entrepreneur and a fun, you're a cool guy.

I'm a cool guy, thank you.

You're a radio guy, you got a podcast.

I appreciate that.

And you have like the book, the book of Kanye is somewhere. Yeah.

Where's the book? Raising Kanye. Thank you, thank you. No, thank you for even being interested, you know, in anything that I'm saying. But it's cliché to say that, you know, it feels good to give back and do things like that. But it's absolutely true. I mean, raising a family, I have an immediate kind of feedback from how their— how their experiences. When you're a parent, you have this immediate feedback system that comes back, like how do they grow up. And now my kids are 32, my youngest is 25, and you watch the impact that you can have on humans. And some of them could be negative, some it could be positive. And when you have an eclectic life like I did, I often thought that they'd be so twisted because they're like, what does your dad do? And it's like, I mean, I really don't know. And now that they're older, they're like, wow, what a great adventure. So I'm happy that they had a positive impact on them.

And I met your daughter, and she's very— one of your daughters, and she's very lively, smart, successful. Thank you. Like, you did a good job. I don't know what you did.

Yeah, my wife obviously helped, but she's probably why they're nice. But I might have got them to be somewhat adventurous. And the projects that I get to work on, like this radio show, a book, all these different things, meeting people like Donda West and these amazing girls playing polo and lots of other people. Whenever I can help in some way, It makes me feel like I am feeding my soul, and they're not in any one particular place. They're— I don't know anything about polo before I met them. Yeah, I might have a passion for polo, but I have a passion for people and have a passion for when I can be of impact, when I can make a difference. And I would suggest that anybody— you don't have to sell your company to do that. Be involved. And help people. And, you know, you're building this network. You and I met years ago for a moment. Yeah. And we connected.

And I knew you were special. I thought you were cool because, I mean, I was the head of sales at Google. I met with all these agency owners, and there's a lot of logical relationships and meetings that you have. And there's some meetings where it's like, hey, I'm just gonna— I remember I rapped because we were in your office. Your office had a mic and stuff, and I'm like, what's with the mic? Sometimes it's rare that you're in a meeting and you feel like you meet kindred souls. We're just free-flowing, a little bit creative. Of course, we put a lot of zeros, the Plat to $100 million. I remember all those slides, but beyond that is can we have fun when working together? I think those are the relationships I like to nurture and cherish. It's like, "I want to have fun. I can sign checks. I can help you grow your business and all these things that I do, but I want to meet kindred souls." and have a transformation with them.

And I think as a result of that, this can happen all the time with people if they take the time to meet people and understand that it's not a quid pro quo relationship. It's just meet as many people as you can and share this piece of you with them. But you never know how it's going to reconnect. And, you know, listen, the show— I probably got a couple of Christmases left in me, but I'm going to continue to hustle. And try to be as crazy as I am and continue to get fed by all these great people that I get to meet.

Thanks for having me. Well, thank you so much, Scott, for coming to Driving Impact. I'm excited about what you're going to accomplish in the future.

Thank you. Thank you.