How To Execute Multi-Million Dollar Ideas w/ Serial Entrepreneur Michael Girdley

We started Duro, which is the second largest technology company here in San Antonio now. It's 4 years old. We started it from scratch, and I started it with 2 guys from Rackspace. They were former Rackspace employees. It's the kind of largest technology success story in history here in San Antonio.

Welcome to Entrepreneur's Handbook Podcast, where we share inspiring startup stories with practical takeaways for For you, the listener, today's guest is Michael Girdley, who's building a $100 million plus holding company for investments in 11 different companies. He's doing things in a different way to how many people expect, who try to build up one company from scratch and use as a sole source of income. His companies are quite an eclectic mix, and I'm excited for you to hear about them. Michael is also a star on Twitter with over 100,000 followers, and he's got two of his own podcasts too. So I recommend you have a listen to those. Let's go into the show. Welcome to Entrepreneurs' Handbook, Michael. It's a pleasure to have you here.

I'm excited, excited.

You've got a really interesting story and you run multiple different companies. But how did this all start for you? Like, for the listeners who've never heard of you before, how would you say that you became an entrepreneur? Like, what was that journey like?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think ever since I was a young person, all I can ever remember is this is what I wanted to do. You know, I talked to one of my buddies and he told me about 20 years ago, he and I were riding around in a car and I was talking to him about how the economics of like vending machines in front of bowling alleys work. And, uh, he, he says that this is what I've always wanted to do is, you know, basically own portions of and create businesses and then support people running them and have a whole co-model like I do now. So this is, this is what I was born to do, frankly.

Did you ever have a job before this? Would you go straight into business?

So long story short, you know, I grew up here in Texas, born and raised in San Antonio. My office right now is like 3 miles from the house I grew up in. So I haven't moved too far in the grand scheme of things. I was always a computer kid. So we got our first computer when I was 9 years old, I think. 7 years old, 1982. And, uh, that was an Apple IIe, and I used the heck out of the thing till the keyboard broke. And, you know, I was always in computer science classes, and, and then I went to university here, uh, in the US at a small liberal arts college, majored in computer science, uh, really enjoyed all that. And then after leaving college, you know, I knew I wanted to go to the mecca for for technology. So I moved out to San Francisco at the time in the late '90s when there actually weren't that many tech companies in San Francisco. They were all down in San Jose and a few in Oakland, but you actually had to work really hard to get a tech job in San Francisco at that time.

Yeah. And like, what was the first company that you bought part of? Like, what was the first business that got you started?

Yeah, well, before I, before I got to do that, you know, that was in my, my late 20s that I became more entrepreneurial. I had the misconception at the time that I would be better off and learn I'm going to learn more about being entrepreneurial by going to work for other people. It turns out you do learn a lot doing that, but I don't think you learn as much about entrepreneurship as most people think. And I think that's a misconception a lot of young people have, is like, I want to be an entrepreneur someday. The best way for me to learn that is to go be an employee. And that doesn't, doesn't necessarily work as well as people think it, thinks it does. So, you know, I had gone to go work for big companies. I worked, my last kind of big job was a big software company called BEA that eventually now is part of Oracle, and made a lot of good friends and saw a lot of stuff, and it was a good, good niche, you know, knock on the resumes type stuff. But my entrepreneurial journey really started when I moved back here to San Antonio and got involved in our family business, which is as far from technology as you can possibly get, uh, and it is a retailer of consumer fireworks. Um, we import them from China and we sell backyard fireworks to people across Texas.

Yeah, and like, I've heard about this story, um, about the fireworks and like how It's obviously a very seasonal business, and there's lots of different dangers related to that. But you've been running that for many years now. Like, what have you learned through that process that's helped you in other businesses?

Yeah, for sure. Well, I think, I think a unique perspective that I have is working hard in a really difficult business, or one that's really far from technology, really teaches you a lot of stuff. Um, you know, the, the obvious thing that's tough about the fireworks business is the, uh, cash flow dynamics are incredibly difficult. I remember going from that business to getting involved in my second, third, and fourth business and just thinking it was a miracle that customers would pay me before I deliver the service. Um, and so it taught you how to really model your business out in a way very conservatively, to manage it conservatively, uh, and deal with these kind of risks of potential failure, you know, when you're only seeing money come in the door 2 times a year in significant amounts, uh, in that fireworks business. So it, it really gave me, I think, a sense of conservatism, you know, whenever I started anything now or get involved in anything. It's, it's always little bets that are manageable and, and achievable or sustainable losses that I could, could deal with if they don't go through. And then I always seem to have a plan A, B, C, D, and E so that failure just really isn't even an option. So that probably hurts in terms of maybe people who swing for the fences compared to me, but I don't like losing. So, so that teaches you some things that maybe scarred me a little bit for life and how I approach things now.

But like you say, for people who like to swing for the fences, but from what I gather across your portfolio, the net worth of that is pretty huge, right? I think you revealed this in another podcast recently. Are you happy to reveal it again?

Well, we talked about some revenue numbers. I mean, in aggregate, all the stuff I'm involved in does, you know, over $100 million in revenue. Now, I don't own all of those companies, but I own significant chunks of them sometimes. And everything I do actually is with partners. So that's a unique thing. I don't own anything. 100%. Everything from this office that I'm in to every business has partners. But yeah, the stuff I own significant chunks of, and that's like single digit to 60% plus of a company's— that's kind of the aggregate revenue. So valuing it, I don't know, it's all paper money, but it's not nothing. So I'm happy with it.

Yeah. And like, for a lot of people listening right now, So then that would be swinging for the fences, like the idea that they could like own like significant parts of businesses that in total have $100 million. But it's interesting that you think like that there's still a long way to go. There's much more that you could have done if you weren't so conservative.

I look at like somebody like Travis Kalanick or somebody that just said, hey, like I'm gonna go put all my net worth into this company. And I work with some, some friends who have companies that they've done that. 98% of their net worth is in a single business and they're the CEO and You know, their equity is standing behind $50 million of investor money. So like, all of that to me seems very swing for the fences, a much more binary outcome than what I've done, which is, you know, having multiple bets, things going in parallel, achievable losses, incremental investment, um, and then just taking the time to compound that over, over time. I mean, all this is a, the culmination of 20 years of work now that hopefully over the next 20 years will compound again.

And you mentioned about how every business has a partner. Was that intentional, or was that just at the beginning it was just an accident and then you realized you wanted to keep that going?

Well, I think, you know, an example is, um, you know, the second business that I incubated, which is an educational company here, you know, to get it off the ground, I realized that I had a set of skills that would be essential to what we're doing, you know, strategy and really kind of the sales and marketing side. Like, I had that ability to bring that stuff, but I wasn't I wasn't going to be the right person to, to say, for example, do the teaching or the crafting of the curriculum for that company. It's called CodeUp. It's here in San Antonio and Dallas and Houston. And so we're doing really well, number one in Texas, all that kind of stuff. And but I realized early on, like, okay, well, how do I think about a sustainable model in which I can partner with the right people to complement what I don't have and also what I don't really want to work on? Like, I didn't want to be the guy selling the course, doing the strategy, getting the financing set up, getting all the, you know, that stuff, all the business side. And then I didn't want to be the person in there trying to teach the class. So a lot of times for me, partnerships are a way to bring on people and align interests in a very strong way. So in that situation, my partners and I who co-founded the business together, you know, they came in and worked for sweat equity for a while. I put in a small amount of cash, then I worked for free for a year to get the business up and off the ground. And so basically what that did is I know those folks are going to be a 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 6 or 7 or 10 situation because they're going to be thinking like an owner, like I am, and not like a hired gun. And, you know, I think that's the, the kind of thing that, that alignment of interest becomes so powerful for me. And then I think the second reason I do it is like, I, I grew up being a peacemaker a lot of times and being the one that was dependable and holding stuff together. And, you know, like, it feels pretty easy for me to partner with people. Other people hate partnering. Like, I really like it because I like— I can read the psychological dynamics, the social dynamics, and like understand what's going on, and then really make the sacrifices to keep the thing moving forward. And that doesn't mean I'm perfect at it, but like, I kind of feel like I'm okay at it. And so I keep doing it because it works.

How many of the businesses share the same partners? Is it like a different set of partners you have with each business, or have some people joined you through multiple ones?

Usually it is, usually it's just one and one and forever. So, you know, they're compartmentalized and the common, the only common thread amongst them is really that I'm involved in them as the person across it. There are people from that world that, you know, we're working together and, and we'll work on stuff in the future and we want to partner again on new things. It just hasn't happened yet.

And like, how do you find these people then? Because you've been You've been quite lucky, I guess, to find at least 10 different partners or so that you really get along with and you really like working with.

Yeah, they're, uh, they're like gold. Like, they're so hard to find. Um, but a lot of times, you know, I'm always meeting new people. Um, I will get introduced to people, especially from people I trust. And so, like, a great example there is, um, you know, we started Duro, which is the second largest technology company here in San Antonio now. It's 4 years old. We started it from scratch, and I started it with 2 guys from, from Rackspace. They were former Rackspace employees. I did not work at Rackspace, but it's the kind of largest technology success story in history here in San Antonio. And so those guys were executives there, and I had gotten introduced to my co-founder of Dura, Paul, who is the CEO. And I got introduced to him by one of the founders of Rackspace. And so, you know, at the time I met him and we had lunch, and then I called him up later and I said, hey, I have this idea about building a software company that would acquire software companies to grow and become a big holding company, and then we'd make a lot of money. Are you interested in running an experiment with me to see if that would work? And, you know, so you start kind of founder dating that way. And all along, you know, I knew Paul was somebody that, um, was complimentary to the skills I have. You know, like, I'm not, I'm not an operator. I don't want to be an operator. I want to support the right operators and then help them when they need it. And so I knew in Paul I would find somebody whose interests and strengths were very complimentary to mine. Like, when we start talking operations and HR optimization, I'm like, I said, like, my eyes just glaze over. Like, it's so boring. And but for him, like, he'll get in there and grind it out and he likes that and that's who he is and that's one of his superpowers. So like, I, you know, I start to build up this mental Rolodex of people where it's like, okay, this person's really awesome. This seems like the type of person they're really good at. Where do they complement me and how can that be turned into an interesting opportunity? And so I'm always doing that and always ideating. And so for for the outcome of like 10 of these things coming about, there's probably another 110 where I'm like texting people on the weekend like, hey, I have this idea, why don't we do this? And literally like over the weekend I was texting one of my buddies about how we should start a new sports league. I was like, here's the sports league we should start, let's do this. And so he's like 7 AM getting texts from me about this idea. So anyway, there's a lot of that kind of stuff. But again, that was a situation where he has skills and resources that I don't have to go do something like that. And Yeah, anyway, if you want somebody texting you at 7 AM about crazy venture ideas where you can make a lot of money, I'm a good person to have on your Rolodex because I will definitely do it.

Yeah, I feel like you might be getting a lot of people now messaging you after this interview being like, I want to make a lot of money, can we be friends as well?

Yeah, well, I have low self-esteem, so I need all the friends I can get, so hit me up.

With all the businesses, what's quite interesting is that they're not like very related to each other, right? Because obviously Fireworks is very different to what Juro does.

Right.

How did that come about? Like, you think often that people would create companies that are in the similar kind of field where you can potentially have overlapping, they can help each other out. But as you said, like, they've all got different individual co-founders. Is that intentional? Do you try to make sure that you don't create companies that potentially work together very well, or like have obvious ways they can work together? Or is it just your interest mean that you keep going into different fields that you just find interesting?

Yeah, there's a couple things going on. Um, so number one is the methodology of how I bring new things to life. Um, and so my worldview is that there's actually three different kind of methodologies that people bring new ventures to life. So number one is kind of classic Lean Startup, and I, and I simplify that to describe that as find a problem and build something to solve it by, you know, that kind of stuff. I don't do that. I find that really boring because people have a habit of lying to you, and it also ends up a lot of times with small ideas. Option number 2 to build a new venture is you have a vision for something that should exist and you go iterate and waterfall your way to it. Very VC kind of model. I find that boring because it's like super risky, um, and like you get involved with VCs and stuff, which isn't necessarily that much fun because they have a habit of wanting you to be all in in businesses so they can be partially in. Not interested in that. So, so that's the second lens. The third lens is one that I really like, and it's, it's promulgated by this lady who is a management and entrepreneurial studies professor at the University of Virginia, and she calls this third methodology effectuation. And basically, effectuation is 6 different principles where you go and look at the, the things you could potentially do in the world, or the things that look like opportunities, and then you go very quickly run experiments of those, and you make incrementally bigger bets as you get positive positive results from those things. So if you're interested in this, I wrote a thread about it on Twitter, went pretty popular. Um, and then there's also a website for it called effectuation.org. It is the worst marketed, uh, entrepreneurial methodology ever, but I'm trying to bring it back because it's really good. But so if you think about, that's the way I do stuff, right? Where I'm like, oh, here's this idea where there— it smells like there's an opportunity here. Like, let's go run some experiments and see if there really is one, and then we'll incrementally bet more and more as we go there. Like, if you think about, that's the way I do stuff, it's very easy to see that you have a curious person who's like, you know what, like, I see these people making a lot of money doing drive-through coffee shops. Let's go open a drive-through coffee shop business and see if we can make money doing it too. And then suddenly you look up and you have a chain of 6 of them, right? Which is where we're going to be hopefully end of next year. So that's how it ends up, is like, I'm not starting at a vision of where I want to be in entrepreneurial software. I'm not just going to interview some guy in IT, and that's how you can end up with like very related stuff. If you think about it, that I'm using this methodology that's very much like, let me go, this looks interesting, let me go run some experiments there and see what comes out, what kind of vision comes out the other side. In this effectuation model, like it becomes much more apparent how I end up with like this hodgepodge of stuff.

Have you ever run some experiments on something that like when you look back in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have done that, it probably was quite obvious that wasn't maybe a good idea? Like, have you got any examples of that, like the craziest ideas you've experimented with?

Yeah, I mean, a bunch of them. I mean, one I did was around, and it was early in kind of entrepreneurial, kind of, I'm always interested in entrepreneurial venture creation. So for a while I was working on putting together like a residential Y Combinator here in San Antonio for college graduates. And like, I got it all kind of arranged and I was like, okay, well I need to go see if anybody gives a crap about this. So I actually went around and talked to a bunch of college kids out on their campuses. So I went to UT and I went to A&M and got like in and talked to the computer science students there. I was like, okay, I have this thing for you. You can come live in this apartment and like we'll give you a place for free and you work on a venture and go from there. And like the kids looked at me like I was insane. Like, why would I sign up for this? I'm like, oh, this, I don't think this is gonna work. So, but that was an easy thing to just be like, okay, I don't think anybody's gonna care. Um, yeah, there's tons of them, tons of them. We're using— and that's the nice thing about it, is this methodology where you're getting out and running experiments very quickly, is you can fail very, very quickly, right? Whereas you're— the big vision thing, like, it's hard to fail quickly. And I, I— the prospect of spending 3 to 5 years working on something that's not going to work, that just seems like purgatory to me. Terrible. So yeah, that was a great example. And yeah, very quickly you can discover, like, nobody gives a crap about your solution, and you just move on to the next thing. And that makes very happy.

You mentioned as well about how you don't like the operating side of things. Like, what, like, functions do you do at the different businesses? Like, what's your main roles at each company?

Yeah, so every company I'm involved in, you know, is a very active— think of it as a very active board member is the best way to describe it. Um, you know, I see that there's really three things that the, that those very active board members should be doing. So number one is making sure the right few leaders are in place and helping them kind of be their best selves. Number 2 is running the supervisory kind of process of a board. I mean, there's the formal things that you need to be doing, approving plans, making sure all that kind of stuff is there, you know. And then number 3 is being there when they need help, right? And that's where hard decisions come up, where they need a sounding board, where somebody's aligned with them, etc., etc., to dig into those kind of problems. But beyond that, like, I'm very very strongly respectful of like chain of command. Like, I will refuse to do the CEO's job for them. Like, I think that's disrespectful. Like, I want them to be their best self, and the best way for them to be their best self is for me to get out of their way and let them be the CEO and the COO and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, I really try to limit what I'm doing to those three categories of stuff and really do the job of a board member like a board member is supposed to.

Have you got any experiments that you're running at the moment? You're running you've run recently that maybe you're still in the ideation phase that you'd like to share or just like get opinions on?

We got a couple that we're working. So I actually, we, we spun up a venture studio. So that started early last year. It's called Affectual Ventures. And so basically I have a partner there named Hayden, and he and I are working on stuff. And then we have some associates that we've hired that are working on things. So two that we have going on right now, one is called DM Bridge. So that's a personal frustration, which is the DMs suck in Twitter, and I get like 20 a day. So this bridges them into my email, which is great. And it's a SaaS business, um, so I think we're at several hundred dollars in MRR now. Like, it's pretty great. Like, we'll take it. So if you're interested in that, you can find it at dmbridge.app. Or if you hate it, like, let me know. And then, um, the second thing that we'll— by the time this comes out, we'll have launched it. Um, it's called Cardapult, C-A-R-D-I-P-U-L-T. So we're incubating that idea, and basically it is an insight that came to us from a friend of mine that I met through Twitter. And basically the insight is that you can get— if you're an e-commerce retailer that sells through Amazon, through FBA, Fulfillment by Amazon, you can increase your reviews and reduce your returns if you put in handwritten notes into each one of your boxes and say, if you have a problem, do this. Thank you, Jim or Jane or whatever your name is. And so we've created a setup where you can actually have those handwritten notes put into your boxes in China before they ship over to the Amazon warehouse, and you pay us and we get it all set up. So one of my associates is running that. We're starting to sell to customers now, and it's called Cartapult. And I think it's at cartapult.com, that's our website. So cartapult. So But yeah, so that's a typical thing where it's like, okay, we've put up the website, we have the ability to fulfill customers. Now we run experiments to see if there's a business there and see if we can actually sell anything. So as quickly as possible, spread towards customers. That's what we do.

Yeah. Well, the DM Bridge idea is something which I think I could be a potential customer for because one of the problems I have is that people message me on about 10 different platforms. And I'm like, inevitably, I think I miss Twitter and LinkedIn the most. Because for both those platforms, once you click on the little icon, you don't see there's any more notifications anymore. So I'm sorry if like there's probably people listening who've DM'd me or messaged me on LinkedIn that I've ignored and I'm not doing that on purpose. It's not intentional, but I just can't keep up with like so many different platforms. And generally, if you wanna make sure you get a reply, it's probably best to go for email because I need to check my emails, whereas I don't always need to check my DMs on Twitter or LinkedIn. With the venture studio you set up last year, so like some people listening right now might not really understand the difference between venture capital and a venture studio. And you kind of mentioned earlier how you don't really want to go to a venture-backed business in the traditional sense because of how big the outcome needs to be and not all companies are maybe designed to have that huge outcomes. So why would a venture studio maybe work better for some of the entrepreneurs listening?

Yeah, well, so I would say more of what we're doing is a business studio. Like it's not, we're not necessarily doing businesses that'll be on a venture path, but some may end up there. And there are people, you know, for those of you that maybe aren't familiar with it, a venture studio or a business studio is basically a business that creates other businesses. Um, so it's like a factory that creates businesses. And so you'll come up with a process that you're going to run and a segment of the market you're going to go after, and you build a repeatable process where you go through and find opportunities, build businesses, and then spin them out. And there's all kinds of different flavors of those. People have them for crypto, people have them for just straight up B2B SaaS startups, some of them have them for consumer businesses. Um, I did a thread on Twitter about a guy named Kevin Ryan who is probably one of the most successful venture studio owners, um, and he's out of New York, has a company called AlleyCorp. He has a very interesting model. For us, I think there's a lot of kind of founder market fit, which is, you know, as you hear me talk, hopefully it comes across that I like the ideation and creation and launching part of businesses.

The—

about the time they get a CRM and start to get into that operational growth phase, there are better people to run businesses than me, whether they're a venture startup, venture-backed startup, or bootstrap startup or whatever it's going to be. I'm happy to hand over the keys to somebody else. So there's some, there's some, there's some personality match and aspirational match in terms of what I want to work on. That's the stuff I find fun and rewarding, and I don't want to do the other business building stuff. So this is a, this is a niche in which we can live and, you know, hopefully be our best selves doing it this way.

Over the last year or so as well, you've been really building up your Twitter following and you've got over 100,000 followers now. And how much of that has helped you in terms of your businesses, in terms of getting inbound requests or meeting people? Has that had an effect there? Do you think the investment in that following has been worth it for you?

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of it. Being a real person on social media, especially in the business world, like my friends look at me like I'm an alien, like they just don't understand it. And I try to coach them. I'm like, no, no, don't just put some crap your marketing department want you to say on your Twitter, like, go be a real person there, or go be a real person on LinkedIn and, you know, be curious and be open and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, I think it's presented in retrospect a big opportunity for me to just be a real person, um, on there. And that attracts— hopefully attracts other people and like-minded, interesting, smart people that I get to connect with. So like that, as a direct example, that Cartapult, uh, that Cartapult business, that's from somebody like I've never met in person. He and I just know each other. Came, he came to us with the idea from Twitter. We're partnered with him on the whole thing and it, it's accelerated it just because of being out there and him knowing that, okay, this type of incubation stuff, uh, is what I do. And then at times when, you know, I think you give a bunch to an audience and that's how you grow it. Um, and I try to, you know, put a lot of stuff out there just to help people with no expectation of return. But then at times you can go out there and say, okay, like I've given all of this, like I have an ask, like I need to hire somebody for this role. Here's my job posting. And that's like jet fuel on those opportunities. And, you know, like the last job posting I put on there was for an associate to come work with me on kind of this new venture creation. And I got like 250 applicants in like 3 days. And they were all high quality. And that was just because I put it on Twitter and no place else. And, you know, that was super powerful. The other thing that's proven to be a big surprise about it when you're out there and being a real person is it's also It's also talking about who I am and communicating internally as well. So I don't know if you saw, but Mark Zuckerberg— did you see it? Mark Zuckerberg like went through and did this whole Meta kind of public transformation of the company and change of direction, and he was very public about it. Did you see all that kind of stuff? Yeah. So they actually asked him like, why did you do this? Like, this is super weird. Like, why, why are you so public about Meta? He's like, oh, you guys are all confused. The change of the Meta name and all that publicity and stuff that I did, I wasn't talking to any of you guys in the public. I was talking to my employees. The way I could really get through to them was blasting through everything they were doing by, by talking about this, this transformation of the company. And so I've— it's actually been very surprising being a real person and transparent about my goals and what's going right in my life and not right in my life. That's actually a huge level of communication where the feedback I've gotten is the people that I work with actually feel like they know me better because I'm communicating so much about who I am and being a real person on Twitter. It was super surprising to me when I found that out in kind of my annual review with everybody.

It comes down to that trust, and it's what we say as well with Entrepreneur's Handbook on the written publication side, is that so many people want to give advice and be like, you need to do this, you need to do that. But the bit that really connects you with people and that bit that actually matters is when you tell your own story and people can relate to that. And we always say this at it should be like your inspirational personal story and the takeaway that other people can take from that. So let's say your business failed and this is what happened to you. It's like, because of this, I learned this. And then other people will be like, okay, like now I can see those lessons and see the examples of why it actually makes sense and keep that in mind. And it's how we've learned for like, from the beginning of time, right? Is these stories that, okay, you've heard this person or like Icarus flying too close to the sun. Those are stories that help us. Whereas if you're just told, do this, do that, do this, you're kind of natural temptations for— no, I don't want to do that. And I think for the people that you work with, when they get to see you and the emotions you go through and the reality of that, it makes you like a 3D person, right? Whereas when you only talk to somebody in a business perspective, it's quite easy for you to just become like a number or like a skill set. Rather than like the fully fledged person. And like, we want— we all want to work with people at the end of the day. Well, at least I want to.

Yeah, and people you like, right? It's, it's so much easier to like somebody when you know their journey. And, you know, I think very eloquently said what you just said also. And, you know, to me, I think I tell my friends, I'm like, look, nobody wants to hear from the marketing department. They want to hear from the CEO. And you should be out there and talking about your, your journey of that stuff.

I think the other aspect that plays into that as well is like a big reason why many startups fail isn't necessarily because the idea is bad, but because of co-founder relationships and like all the tension that happens there where people want to go in different directions. And when somebody you're working with, like for example the person who reached out to you about Cardapult, if I'm saying that right, they already know quite a lot about you and understand whether or not you're the type of person they'd want to work with before they even contacted you. And it kind of gets rid of some of this potential risk because they can see your story, they can understand what kind of your viewpoints are. Whereas if you went into that cold or you just had a lunch, something like that, there's only so much you can gather. What's your kind of ambition? So you said like you're focusing on Twitter at the moment. Is this idea that you maybe do want to go to other platforms as well, or do you just really like Twitter? And I know we talked about this before we started recording, so like, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, well, I kind of made a mistake this year, which was, you know, I set for my goals this year to get to 150,000 followers on Twitter. As the Twitter algorithm has shifted, and also I've learned more about Twitter, I set this goal in January, and by May I started to realize how much of a vanity metric followers is. It doesn't actually really matter that much. The algorithm really controls who gets to see your stuff. And so I'm kind of in a chicken and egg thing where I went out, you know, and I have this I have this goal set for the year, but then in May I realize that goal is pretty stupid and now I'm stuck going after that goal. So my goal for this year is continue to do what I'm doing and play the game on Twitter to get to 150,000, and then I'll think I'll figure it out at that point. Overall, the bigger my Twitter account gets and the more reach I have in terms of posts that get in front of other people and the more I give to other people in order to achieve I want, the, uh, the more the universe seems to pay me back. So at some point there may be a diminishing set of returns there, but like every time I add a new follower, I seem to get more from social media than I possibly put into it. And it's, it's never stuff that I expect, but it's always an order of magnitude more than I give. And that's, that's why it's so powerful. So I'm gonna just keep doing more of that. And, um, then in terms of kind of goals past 150K, I'll figure that out later this year. But I'm, I'm stuck with this one I already gave myself, so I'm not gonna quit. I can't quit.

I think it's one of these things as well, which is that, that instant stamp of authority, right? Of when, say, you contact somebody, they've never heard of you. In your like email or signature, if you have your Twitter bio, like they just Google you, they straight away see, okay, 100,000 followers. Okay, if 100,000 people care what he has to say, it's probably worth me talking to him. And it's one of the strange things is that this can be people who don't have any following at who are amazing and you'd like love to listen to them speak, but you've got to make a snap decision, right? If you get as many emails as like you do, and I'm sure like other people listening get as well, you can't reply to everybody, you can't go jump in a call with everybody. And having a social media following or Twitter following, it's just one way to kind of help you to get through that noise because it's showing you put in the work, right? You don't just get 100,000 followers, it's because you've tried to understand your audience, you've been vulnerable, What are your goals like outside of Twitter and like what are the other things you're working on? Is it just— you seem to like really love what you do just in terms of like spinning up new ideas. And is it just continuing that or have you got other things maybe on the side that you want to do as well?

You know, I have a lot of hobbies, but professionally I love what I'm doing. Total business nerd. Um, you know, I put it out earlier this year, like I have a North Star of a, you know, an increase of net worth and a strategy to get there and a vision of where I want my life to be. Um, and that cascades down into a set of goals. So I have a whole setup for that. So if people are interested in kind of how I run and plan my professional life, that's in my pinned thread on my Twitter account. But professionally, the goal is, you know, a north star of kind of getting to this net worth number that I don't talk about, but it's a good amount. And then, you know, personally, like the correlation with that is the freedom to do what I want and work where I want and go skiing as much as I want to and ride my bike as much as I want to and all that kind of stuff and spend time with my family. But yeah, that's really the big north star is kind of what I'm doing there. And venture creation is a big part of that, right? Assets are really expensive right now. So when assets are expensive, you make assets. So I'm out making assets.

And one question we've got from a reader is as well, is that they want to understand more about how you use the EOS framework for your personal planning.

Yeah, on my pinned thread on my Twitter, I wrote a thread about how I've adopted the EOS methodology to basically run my life. And I think it's a very powerful way to run companies. And I think it's a great way to run, to run my life as well. So I've taken the parts of it that really make sense, and then I use that and I run that methodology inside of how I do everything from a, from a personal standpoint. So that— the, the short answer is how EOS works at its core is you define one or two numbers that represent the kind of big ambition that you have in life, say for 10 years from now, and then you cascade that down into smaller time chunks leading a straight line back to what you do pretty much this week or this quarter. And so every quarter I'm running 3 to 7 kind of very defined SMART goals that are things that keep me on track to be that achiever of my 10-year vision for myself. And so that's what EOS does for companies. I just do it for myself personally. And for somebody like myself who is very susceptible to shiny objects, like just having that North Star is like a huge transformative thing for me. It just makes my life so much better that I'm just like, okay, I don't have to change my mind on this. I'm just doing this one thing and I just keep going that direction. And so I use that. If you're interested in more details on that, there's a whole thread I wrote on it. It's in my pinned thread on my bio and my Twitter account.

So I know you've got to head off now, and it's been a pleasure to chat to you. Where should people go if they want to hear more about what you're doing and the businesses you're running?

The best place to start there is go to my Twitter account, twitter.com/Girdley. There's a bunch of links to my personal website, girdley.com. I have a bunch of blog posts there and then links to the two podcasts that I do currently. One is a show called Acquisitions Anonymous, which is the number one podcast about small business M&A. And we have a great time doing that podcast. And then I have a show called The Michael Girdley Show, which is a lot of interviews and me following my curiosity, talking to really smart people and learning from them. So you can get links to both of those off my Twitter page or at girdley.com.

Perfect. Thanks so much for coming on.

Amen. Awesome. Thank you.