6666 Equine Supplement Founder Quit 7-Figure Career — Dr. Keith Latson

What was the cost to you of realizing that you achieved all of your dreams and then maybe it wasn't actually the dream that you thought?

I was lost. Totally lost. I stood at the top of the mountain and looked around and thought, is this it? And I knew it wasn't. Deeply in inside myself, I knew it wasn't. Dr. Keith Latson began his career at the top of equine surgery, treating Triple Crown winners and serving as NBC's veterinary commentator for the Triple Crown. Alongside his wife Chris, he has co-founded multiple 7- and 8-figure businesses rooted in intentional culture and service-first leadership. Their brands, including Full Bucket, 6666 Equine Supplements, and Revel Vet, blend high-integrity care with real-world impact through year-round missions in rural Guatemala and a relational model for small animal care. Keith now splits his time between building purpose-driven companies and exploring the remote corners of the Southwest with his family. I was living on this achievement side of a river and looking across the river at joy and wonder and awe and all of those things, and just wanting to get to the other side of the river so badly, but I didn't have a bridge for that. And so I was, I was very afraid of making that decision because I felt like I had so much to lose if it didn't work. It was everything I thought I'd ever dreamed of. I had penciled out for myself what I wanted to accomplish in that career. To work on a Kentucky Derby winner, to work on a Breeders' Cup winner, to do surgery on some of the best racehorses in the world, and all of that came very quickly. Way faster than I expected. It was amazing.

The view from the mountaintop is empty. Yeah. It's not serving you in the way that you thought it would. How do you begin to reconnect with yourself? You're walking away from a 7-figure your income.

Yeah, it's not easy to do. Delving into that unknown made me felt— feel alive again.

Welcome to another episode of Money Stories, where we have real conversations about money, meaning, and what makes a truly rich life. Today I am joined by Dr. Keith Latson, a dear friend of mine, came up in the thoroughbred horse racing world as a surgeon, made a career pivot into animal supplements, now runs Squared, one of the largest sellers of animal supplements on Amazon, and just a fascinating human. And, and I'm really excited for this conversation. Thank you. Thanks for being here, Keith.

Thanks. I'm excited to be here.

Well, as we always do, let's, let's start at the beginning. How did you grow up with money and how did that drive you to become successful?

Hmm, I had an interesting relationship with money growing up. My mother grew up in a household that, um, her mom worked at a bank and would balance the checkbook to the penny every month. And, uh, so every penny was accounted for. There wasn't, wasn't a whole lot of gravy on top. And, um, so the way that translated into my house when I was a kid, and I was, I grew up as a military child, so we were moving every 2 years, could have been to Germany, Utah, Texas, Arizona. Um, we were a 2-career family, my mom and dad, and, uh, the military doesn't pay much, even, even at officer's pay. Uh, so we had an envelope budget, a literal envelope budget, and on every envelope, we had the entertainment envelope, we had the groceries envelope, we had the spending envelope. Uh, and on every envelope, when even as much as a dollar would come out, it was subtracted on the, on the individual envelope ledger. And, uh, so my parents were very, uh, intentional about how the money was allocated. And, uh, there were, there were some highly stressful events when $20 would come out of the entertainment envelope by my dad and it wasn't, it wasn't marked on the individual ledger. Um, and so that's, that's something I became more aware of as I got older in the house. And, uh, we always lived on military bases. And so the housing on military bases is based on the rank of, of the officer. Um, and so we always lived in very nice houses. Uh, my dad retired as a Lieutenant Colonel from the Army. So we always lived in very nice houses that were similar to everybody else's houses. So it really democratized money and income. And so it wasn't really until I got into high school— I went to a private Catholic high school off post, off base— it wasn't until I got into high school that I saw what having money actually was and seeing the vacations that families were taking and and business owners and entrepreneurs, uh, and their families were taking. And that, that was really impactful for me, um, in a way that made me say, I want that. Um, because it was something that I had never had. Now, that's not to say that, that we were limited in what we did. My, my parents budgeted for Christmases. Christmases were these spectacular events with piles of gifts under the tree, and, uh, our trips to Disneyland, Disney World were epic. Um, so we always had travel and these epic experiences that were very well planned for. Um, but there was the other side of that where when we would go school shopping, for example, clothes shopping for school, Tommy Hilfiger back in the early '90s was a big deal. Late '80s, early '90s was a big deal. And as I got into high school and, you know, you had to wear the button-down shirts and have your hair cut up above your ears and all of those things that come with Catholic education, I was allowed to have one Tommy Hilfiger shirt, um, and that was it. And then everything else was we bought at the PX or the post exchange, the shop. on post. And so the options there were fairly limited. And so I, I would always have that, that one shirt that I wanted to wear to help me fit into the, to the group. And that I became very aware of that, um, as I was around some of these other people that came from families of wealth, uh, and that, that created a very distinct idea in my mind of— it created comparison where I didn't have that comparison before. And I decided that I was going to go get that.

Well, and what I'm hearing is even though there was sufficiency in the household, money was still very much front and center. And maybe even with sort of a scarcity-based, you know, looking at the envelopes, tracking every dollar. I mean, you are acutely aware of paying attention to money in maybe an outsized way.

It's not like many families live now, and even my family were guilty of this. We don't, we don't feel like cooking. Let's just go out to dinner. And we're fortunate to have those options. But it was, it was a big deal for all of us to go to dinner together. And these weren't Michelin restaurants. This was like going to Red Robin, you know?

Right.

And so, yeah, there was that idea of scarcity that I didn't realize was scarcity until I started making money. And it was a fairly long arc before I started making money, having gone through veterinary school, You know, you're living off loans in vet school, uh, and then did an internship, uh, here in Denver, actually, uh, which was a fantastic year making $19,000 a year. And then I got a surgery residency at UC Davis. Uh, and that's the residency I really wanted because they paid $32,000 a year. And I thought, oh my gosh, I've made it. $32,000 a year, like $2,000 a month or $3,000 a month seemed like so much money to me. And I was very conscientious of spending money, but also really wanted to spend that money to live the life that I didn't necessarily live as a kid. And so I remember being able to go to this restaurant, Dos Coyotes, and get burritos like 3 or 4 times a week. And that was epic for me. I was like, oh my gosh, I get to do this. I have the money to spend on it. And that was the first time that I felt that independence with money and the ability to go and spend it the way I wanted without feeling like I had to have permission. Yeah.

And so did you sort of rebel against the envelope budgeting at that point?

Totally, totally. I made $3,000 a month and I spent $3,300. And so, I found myself working into this little bit of a credit card hole. And then I would think, oh man, I got to tighten up so I can pay that off so that it's not on my mind as this loop over and over. And so, yeah, that was an interesting— Interesting time.

From there, how does your veterinarian career unfold? And maybe even before that, what made you choose to go into animal medicine?

I've always had a connection with animals, whether it was the dogs that we had at the house or my mother and I would watch the Kentucky Derby on TV first Saturday in May every year because it was just such a spectacular event, visually spectacular to watch. What I consider to be the most raw athlete on the planet. Certainly the most, most raw domesticated animal on the planet. And I, as a kid, I tinkered around with motorcycles and rebuilt motorcycles, dirt bikes, and I love doing that in the garage. And when I was in high school, I had a friend whose dad was a human orthopedic surgeon. Fairly well-renowned. And I learned that you could actually do on people and animals what I was doing on motorcycles and really using that mechanical and tactile skill that I had. Um, and there was some art in that to me. Uh, and I grew up as a, as an artist, as a very creative kid. And, um, so when I when I learned I could combine all of those things into fixing these amazing animals, uh, when they had a fracture, and I could put screws across the fracture and reduce that fracture and then help them get back on the racetrack and, and racing, it was like, that is where I want to go. And so when I was in college, my sophomore year, I met this girl, um, just by happenstance through another friend whose dad was a veterinarian at the racetrack in Louisiana. And, uh, she was going home for the summer and I needed a summer job, and so I just asked her, hey, do you think you could get a job with your dad for me? And so fast forward a couple of months, uh, we were on Christmas break. My parents were— my dad was stationed in Hawaii at the time. I was at home and I get this message from somebody I didn't know, and, uh, this guy, Dr. Reed, and the message was something like, hey bud, uh, this is Dr. Reed and, um, I, I'd love to hire you for the summer and we'll pay you $250 a week and you'll work 6 days a week and, uh, we'll give you a place to sleep. You can stay at our house and if you're interested, just call me back. And so I did. Uh, I didn't even know how to put a halter on a horse at that point. I didn't grow up with horses. Having moved every 2 years, that wasn't really an option. And, um, so I just took a chance, and I, I thought, man, this sounds awesome. I get to go work with these animals that I've been watching on TV all of my life at the Kentucky Derby. And, um, so I did it. And I remember driving to the racetrack on the first day. Dr. Reed's wife Joanne drove me in at 6:30, so I was technically very late arriving. Um, usually the day starts at about 4:30 or 4:45 in the morning. And as we're driving along the backside of Louisiana Downs, it was really foggy. Um, and I was just watching these horses bolt through the fog towards me as we were, we were driving into the barn area of the racetrack. And it just took me, I just thought, oh my gosh, this is what I want to do. Like that, that was the pivotal moment before I ever even learned how to put a halter on a horse. I was like, this is it.

How cool to find that sort of deep passion early on. In your career. How does that unfold from there?

Yeah, and it was interesting to find it because I was in a position— I had discovered money in high school and what that looked like. I didn't know what it felt like, but I knew what it looked like. And so, I was in a position at that point, sophomore in college, I thought I was on the track to go be a human orthopedic surgeon. I was studying biomedical engineering and thought, okay, I'll understand all the mechanics of joints and locomotion and all of those things. And so, I thought that was my career path. It could have been anything. Any person that would have shown me the roadmap to wealth, it could have been a general contractor. It could have been a stockbroker. Um, but really what I was looking for is that, that handout to say, hey, let me, let me show you how to do this. Um, and Dr. Reed and I had this connection immediately with one another, and, and he became almost a second father to me. And he just opened up the book and showed me, hey, this is how the practice runs. Uh, here are the logistics. Here's how we handle clients. and he had an amazing way with people, with the trainers, just such an affable, likable guy. Um, and I, I really took to that and I studied it. And, uh, so that, that was the, that was the pathway in, but I saw the roadmap. So I went back to college, changed my major, uh, to biomedical science, which is basically pre-vet, pre-med. And I was on the path, man. I was a dog on a bone. And so every weekend, every Christmas break, every time I could get to Louisiana Downs to just be at the racetrack and learn more, I was there. And I also partied a little bit in college or a lot in college. So I dug myself into a little bit of an academic hole. And with veterinary school being so competitive to get into, there were only 26 vet schools at the time, I had not positioned myself to be able to get a ticket in. And so I started a master's degree in poultry science because this is very intentional for that hall pass into, into vet school. Because they needed poultry vets. And I thought, okay, well, if I can put a poultry science degree on my, on my resume, then that's a, that's a pretty good angle. So I did a semester of poultry science master's degree and it was miserable. We were going to Tyson chicken processing plants and watching thousands and thousands of chickens be being processed from the truck into like boxes of Chicken McNuggets coming down on the conveyor belt. And I thought, Oh no, not me.

This ain't it.

This ain't it. So I went back and worked full-time for Dr. Reed in his practice and became close friends with him and all of his associates. And a year later, basically talked my way into vet school. Dr. Reed had a friend who was the head of the large animal hospital. At Texas A&M, and before my vet school interview, Dr. Reed made a pre-call to this man, Dr. Moyer, who's kind of a legend in the space. And as soon as I was done with my vet school interview, they handed me a note across the table. I was like, what is this? So I opened it and it was a note from Dr. Moyer saying, hey, come see me after your interview. So I walked over not knowing who this person was, what his relationship to the hospital was. And so I remember walking up to the second floor of the large animal hospital, which is this beautiful facility at Texas A&M, walking into the office and the, the secretary says, oh yeah, Dr. Moyer's waiting for you. And so I went into his office, which was this glass-walled office with a couple of armchairs and this big foreboding man with this kind of wise gray hair and cowboy to the T, cowboy. And we sat down, he was like, hey, let's, let's chat. I was like, okay. And we sat down and talked for 2.5 or 3 hours about the racetrack and the things that I loved about the racetrack and that he loved about the racetrack. One of those things being that it's an incredible community of characters. It's almost like being at a circus where you have the tightrope walkers and the lion tamers and all of those cast of characters all in this really compressed space. And it's a very tight community of people because they travel when the horse races travel every 2 or 3 months. Geographically from one track to another, all of these people go to the same place. And that felt very familiar to me from my military upbringing where you might move all over the world, but there's a chance that you're going to be in a place where some of your old friends from another place were. So that was, that was a very comfortable environment for me. And all of the moving around was very comfortable. Bull for me at the racetrack. Um, and so when we stood up from that interview, he said, well, we'll see you in the fall. Like, oh, oh, okay, so this is happening. Um, and so I went through vet school and, and flew through, uh, it really struggled with some of the, you know, parasitology and the, the things that just did not interest me. I just wanted to be around horses. And, um, so I did vet school and then I came to a, to a crux point at the end of vet school where I had to decide, was I going to go back and work for Dr. Reed and his practice? And it, that was almost pre-written. Um, or was I not? And I chose not to go back and work for them because I was really conflicted by some of the things that, that were being done to and for the horses to really optimize performance. And so I decided, no, you know what, I'm going to go do a surgery residency. And so that was, that was kind of my out to buy some time and to really dive into that, that one thing that was down that orthopedic surgery road that as a kid I was so drawn to. Um, so I went and did the surgery residency at UC Davis. That was 3 years after I spent a year here in Denver, so for 4 years after vet school. And towards the end of, uh, the residency, I was invited to go down and be on the ambulance crew at Santa Anita for the Breeders' Cup, which is the world championships of horse racing. And I thought, yes, okay, I get to go back to my, back to my realm, my safe space. And, um, uh, I met a veterinarian there who took me around the barn area and showed me that they have at every one of the barn areas at the racetracks in Southern California, they have a hospital with a surgery suite, which is operated by a nonprofit. And I thought, okay, there's something here because I've got no capital expenses to go and build a surgical facility. And we've got this built-in population of athletes, 5,000 horses in one spot that need arthroscopy. They get chips in their joints. They, they have surgical issues. And so I thought, this is, this is the thing. And so out of my surgery residency, I moved to Southern California, went to work for that same veterinarian who showed me the, the backside, the barn area. Um, and I spent a year there, um, before, and grew a nice little surgical practice, um, before realizing, uh, there's, there's some things that are missing here. And those things for me were, uh, the connection with nature, being in the concrete jungle of LA. There, there's some nice nature opportunities there, but I was also working 14, 15, 16-hour days, 6 days a week. So there was really no opportunity or energy to be able to go and interact with nature. Um, that 7th day, man, I, I just wanted to settle in and be with Chris, who's now my wife, just spend some time together. Um, so that's how it all, all started.

Not to fast forward too much, but, but eventually you wind up sort of at the pinnacle of the sport.

Hmm.

What was that like?

It was everything I, thought I'd ever dreamed of. I had penciled out for myself— it was kind of a napkin plan of what I wanted to accomplish in that career, um, and that was to work on a Kentucky Derby winner, uh, to work on a Breeders' Cup winner, um, to do surgery on some of the best racehorses in the world And all of that came very quickly, way faster than I expected. It was amazing. It was like, to— for me to, to look up at the horizon and look back at, oh my gosh, I'm here with the best racehorses in the world, the best trainers in the world, um, some of the most interesting characters in the world. What's not to love about it? Um, and I, over time, um, and then being asked to, to be the veterinary commentator on NBC for the Triple Crown races, like, it, it was everything and more than, than was on my napkin plan. And so I got to a point where a lot of that just became rote, and I think that happens in, in any career where you know, there's at the beginning, there's so much learning and there's so much acceleration and you're just like, oh my gosh, this is happening. All of these doors are opening and all the things I ever wanted are here and the money's flowing. Just began to feel the tension within that as I started to think about longevity and can I it started to become a hamster wheel to the point that I would wake up in the morning at 4:15 and I'd lie there in bed and Kris would wake up next to me and she'd say, "Hey, honey, the horses are waiting for you." Just as that reminder that I was there for the horses, not there for all of the other politics and things that had to be navigated around the horses. Um, but it was those politics and, and, um, just some of the things that, that I was being asked to do on a daily basis that, that were in tension with, with my authentic self, which, and, and the authentic reason that I was there, which was that to me, those racehorses, they've got this reputation of being hot-blooded and they can be hot-blooded and excited, man, they're such magnetic animals. And they— being able to go and see those animals every day, the same horses every day, you get to know their personalities and how they respond to you. And I always tell people that those racehorses are the perfect mirror of ourselves and how we're showing up to them. Because if we, if we show up forward and in a rush, they're like, whoa, man, you're, you're different today. So they tell us that every time we walk in the stall. And so that reminder from Chris that, that I was there for the horses and not the other stuff was, was really the spark that I needed every morning to get out there and do it again for another 16 hours. Um, and, and so all of that started to come in tension with some of the things that really light me up in my authentic self, which were some of that art that I was so connected to as a child and all the way through high school. Um, I got an art scholarship to art and design school in Georgia, but I was so intent on, You can't make money doing that, right? And so I was so intent on going and finding that thing that I had achieved and accomplished, but I really wanted that part of me back that I had put on the sidelines for this career. Um, so it all looked really shiny on the outside, but inside, man, I, I just was, my soul was screaming for being able to get out in nature and, and draw and create and, uh, have fun with words. And, um, so that's, that's where it all came to sort of the, the boiling point. Uh, and that was about 2 years before I left the racetrack.

Yeah. So what strikes me is you sort of have this Cinderella story path rising to the top of this sport that you care dearly about and, and lights you up in some ways. And still do. Yeah. And yet at the height of your success, the view from the mountaintop is empty.

Yeah.

And it's not serving you in the way that you thought it would. What was the cost to you of realizing that you achieved all of your dreams and then maybe it wasn't actually the dream that you thought?

I was lost. Totally lost. Um, and I stood at the top of the mountain and looked around and thought, is this it? And I knew it wasn't deeply in inside myself. I knew it wasn't. And I, I also knew that we had two young boys at home at the time. Uh, I also knew that there was a decision to be made that I either wanted to be a businessman and a famous horse surgeon with a family on the side, or I wanted to be a family man with a business that supports how I really wanted to engage with my wife and my children and really give them myself in the way that I had not been able to up until then.

When did you become acutely aware of that cost?

Um, it was an arc. Um, I, I knew the cost to myself and I felt that every day. Um, at the same time, I, I was so hyper-focused on what that felt like in me that I wasn't aware of, of the ripple effects of it. At the time. Um, and I, around the same time, I had been invited to this event. Uh, a lot of your, your guests have talked about Baby Bathwater. This was in 2015. Uh, I was invited to an event because a fraternity brother of mine in, in college and I had started this little business, uh, animal supplement business on the side. It was it was just a, a little side hustle. And we, we basically were making digestive supplements for horses for us to use in our own practices. And what we learned very quickly is that there were other veterinarians who wanted this product also because there was nothing like it on the market. He was also working as a veterinarian at the time. And so the two of us were really trying to figure out like, How do we do this e-commerce thing and how do we do this? Like, how do we get these products out to our network of people? We were afraid that putting ourselves out there to sell this product would be us selling out of what we had created as our identity, which was our profession. And so we were— we had the side hustle going on and I was invited to this Baby Bathwater event. And I walked into the reception and people were buzzing and there was so much energy in that room. And as I got to talking to some of these people, they had gone all in on themselves and their businesses and what they were doing to, to make change beyond themselves. Um, and I was lit up by that in a way that I had not been in so long. And I felt that, and just the same way that when I was driving up to the racetrack for the first time with horses bolting through the fog, and I said, "That's it," when I walked into that room at the Baby Bathwater event, felt the energy, started talking to people, I told myself, "That's it. This is what I want to do.

I've got to go all in on this side hustle that we've started." I just want to highlight or maybe double-click on You were at the pinnacle of success. You're making a ton of money as one of the premier surgeons in the horse racing community, and you decided to walk away.

What did that look like? Pretty messy. I, I, for a little bit of time, I'd say for a year, for the final year I was there at the racetrack, I started to isolate myself from the work. And so, I wasn't showing up there in the way that I had been before. I would sit in my truck, which was kind of my mobile vet hospital. I would sit in my truck for hours listening to business books and just envisioning what it could be on the other side of making that final decision. But it was scary. I mean, I created this career. I had achieved everything that I wanted. And so I was living on this achievement side of a river and looking across the river at joy and wonder and awe and all of those things and just wanting to get to the other side of the river so badly, but I didn't have a bridge for that. Um, and so I had built this life. That was, was wonderful. You know, we could do anything we wanted financially when we had the time to do it. And so I was, I was very afraid of making that decision because I felt like I had so much to lose if it didn't work. I also looked around at the same time at many of the other people at the racetrack and some of the most successful people, veterinarians, trainers, who, who were living in this space of, of kind of acceptable misery. They were only as good as their last horse's win. And I thought, I don't want to live that way. I don't want to live based on the success of my most recent surgery or, um, and I, I really want to impact the world. Beyond myself, like to scale beyond the individual service that I can provide with my own hands and my own knowledge. And how do I do that? And is it worth it? And what happens if the parachute doesn't open if I make that decision? But it came to a point that it, it had become obvious to my partners, uh, in the veterinary practice that I was sort of detaching and isolating and not contributing to the group as I probably should have been, or as they had come to expect. And so the main partner— we were in Del Mar at the racetrack, which is an amazing meet. The racetrack is right on the coast and just such a beautiful place. And I wasn't really able to appreciate the beauty of it all. Because I was just in this loop of, man, how do I do this? And so he came to my window and knocked on my window. I rolled it down, and he was a guy who was always busy, busy, busy, busy, moving from one barn to the next to the next. And so for him to get out of his truck and walk over to my truck, I thought, hmm, this is interesting. So he knocked on the window, I rolled it down, and I said, hey, what's up? And he said, well, you just don't seem like yourself. And I wanted to come and check in. Totally out of character for this guy. And so that was a signal to me that I had gone pretty far to the extreme in my behavior and in pulling myself back from this. So I was really resisting the decision and at the same time just trying to maintain life and lifestyle and all of those things. And it just came out of my mouth. I said, you know what? I think I'm done. And he said, what do you mean? I said, I think it's time for me to go. He took a deep breath and he said, okay, when? This was in August. I said, December 22nd. And I had not rehearsed that date. Um, but what I knew is that I had not been home for Christmas on Christmas Day to celebrate that with my kids. And it was such a big thing for me as a kid. Uh, I'd not been home for Christmas Day. I'd missed their birthdays. Um, I wasn't being the dad that I wanted to be. And I knew I could be. And so December 22nd represented for me the ability to be home at Christmas and really be present on Christmas Day with my kids for the first time. And so he said, okay, I understand. And that was the end of that conversation. I was so scared and, and a little bit ashamed to go home and tell my wife. And so I held that for 2 weeks to myself before I shared that with her. And that may be one of the hardest things I've ever had to share with her because she, she had the kids. She was starting a business, what has become Squared, our Amazon, Amazon agency. She was doing all of that at home and she had her, she had her systems and her people. She had the dog walker, she had the nanny, she had was able to create time and space for herself to be able to focus on building this other side hustle, the second side hustle that we had going on. Um, and so I was, I was a little bit ashamed to go home and tell her and scared of, well, what now? Um, and so I told her and she took a deep breath and said, Okay. What next?

I just want to highlight something that I think could be really beneficial to the listeners that you, you built a career on it. That is by all external measures, the absolute dream.

Yes.

You knew it wasn't working for you. You knew it was out of alignment with your authentic self. But how hard is it to walk away from the pinnacle and all of the external accolades and go all in on yourself?

Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. Well, I, I knew that no matter what, something would work. There's always that script in, in our heads that says, are you sure? Are you sure? Are you good enough? You haven't ever done this before. And having the confidence, just knowing that actually I have done this before. I set this goal of becoming what I had become professionally and Through that, in, in retrospect, and having done a lot of work on myself and with myself over the past couple of years, there was always that sense that when I graduate vet school, I'll have made it. And then it was when I become a board-certified veterinary surgeon, I'll have made it. And then when I do surgery on a Breeders' Cup winner, I'll have made it. And so that goalpost kept moving further and further out. And so when I got to that point of, okay, I'm here and I have as clients the best trainers in the world, the best horses in the world, and went, said to myself, well, I don't, I don't have another place to go. So now, now I'm just in this maintenance phase. How do I grow? And feeling so constrained in the availability of growth was really the thing that made me say, I have to do this regardless of the consequences. And those consequences could have been great. I'm so grateful that, that Chris, my wife, had the vision, the entrepreneurial vision um, and the confidence that whatever came next would work. It would have been very easy for her to say, man, you have gone off the rails, and I, I need to go do my own thing, and you, you go figure it out. Let me know how it goes.

Um, I mean, you're walking away from a 7-figure income.

Yeah, it's not easy to do. but I also knew that I could create that again. And that from the top of the mountain, I was diving straight down into the valley, not knowing what was in that valley at all. Um, but delving into that unknown made me felt, feel alive again.

What were the hard part? I mean, what, what was, what were the hard times as you walk through that valley? Rebuilding, completely starting over from all intents and purposes?

Oh gosh. One of the hardest was the shift of these side hobby businesses becoming the thing and really recreating and reimagining my relationship to those things that had built into— one had built into a nice six-figure business. The business that Chris had started and was working on had grown into a high 7-figure business top line. And so, I knew the possibility was there. I also knew that they weren't bringing in enough money for us to be able to live on comfortably and certainly not in the way that we had been living prior to that. Learning how to relate to that cash flow and settle into that cash flow and, uh, looking at the bank account at the end of the month and there's less than $1,000 in the bank account where I had never had that experience. Even in my internship when I was making $19,000, there was always money left in the account at the end of the day. And that, that sense of responsibility of we've got two boys at home. Uh, we had just moved to the Vail Valley in Colorado, which was sort of a lateral move cost-wise from LA. Um, and, and the fear of not being able to fund that beyond our one-year runway of money that we had stashed, that Chris had stashed, not me. Because I think she knew this was coming. You know, the fear for me of having to go back to the racetrack hat in hand of, well, it didn't work. That was a real driver for me. But wandering through that valley of, well, now I have to start making cold calls and doing business development. I was scared to death. Of cold calls, scared to death. But just after we had moved to Vail, I had that first Christmas with my sons and family, and my parents were living 10 houses away from us. And the choice to move there was literally because my parents were there, and I knew we were going to need their support as we were reimagining, recreating Having all of that weight of responsibility was a huge driver as well. And so, just learning how to get over that fear of doing the cold calls and then learning that I was really good at it and then learning that I actually enjoyed it just because it was just creating connections. And meeting some really interesting people over the phone that needed what our companies could provide. Um, and then also really believing in the fact that we could fulfill for those, those new brand partners and clients, we could really fulfill what it is they needed. And leaning into believing that, um, took some time. I mean, that, that was a That was a self-confidence thing. I had never done that before. Um, and so that was a, a self-confidence thing that, that took some time for me to build up and begin to trust.

One of the things that, um, strikes me as unique is your relationship with Chris, your wife. She's, she's amazing. And, uh, hopefully she'll be a guest on the show at some point, but What was it like to have a partner that, you know, I imagine that, uh, you know, most women would have a really hard time watching their husband walk away from the pinnacle of a career, making 7 figures, living a very comfortable life. What was it like having a partner that supported you through that?

I didn't realize at the time. That it was everything. She was a source of confidence and a firm cheerleader for me through all of that. She believed that it could be done and would be done. She also grew up in a scarcity, money scarcity household where, you know, it was sort of like a dangling carrot for her. Like, oh, we're going to go buy a new car. Oh no, we're not going to do that. For her, it was, it was very challenging and it was a big challenge to our relationship. Um, because the wheels didn't start turning as fast as as we had hoped or as fast as we thought they could. So there were some very rough times during that recreation. I would say for the first 4 years from 2015 to 2019, it was very stressful. Education options weren't great up in the valley, and so we had one son that was going to a fancy private school that we couldn't really afford at the time. Another son who was in a private Montessori. And so, and we were also in a place where we had just come from LA where you could get groceries delivered at 4:00 AM if you ordered them the night before. And now we were in a place where you had two shopping options, Safeway or Super Walmart. Childcare was tough. If it was a powder day, you couldn't get a plumber out. All of these additional challenges layered onto just regular everyday life on top of not having the, the access for me to be able to fly very quickly and just do a day trip out for business development or whatever. Um, there's literally a half or a full day of travel to and from the house to the airport and then to the destination. And so what, what in LA might have been a, a one-day trip or a three-quarter-day trip was a three-day trip. Um, and so it, it required me to be gone a lot. Um, and to cover that financial gap during those four years, I started evaluating horses at thoroughbred sales in Florida, Kentucky, New York, California. Um, for some of the clients that I'd had at the racetrack. So I still had that connection to racing, and I really enjoyed that, and it, it filled that gap fairly nicely. Uh, but it took a while to cultivate that book of business, um, and eventually rose to the, to the top of the thoroughbred sales business as well over the next 6 years. Um, and so as, as we started to feel the flywheel turning financial flywheel turning and our businesses were beginning to grow, then there was the ability to take that breath and go, okay, now we can live and we can enjoy some of the things that are in this beautiful mountain community that we had moved to and really lean into those and start to reconnect in our relationship in ways that that we couldn't because the stress and the hustle and grind of building those other businesses just took us out of that realm with one another and that intention with one another. And that was the hardest thing.

When did you know you had made it? When did you know you had made the right choice? How long did that take you? Was there a turning point where you finally went, Oh, this was worth it.

Yeah, we, we made a shift in the Amazon business. We were, we were one of those sellers, Wild West sellers, that we had 7 different Amazon seller accounts. And so we, we wanted to own the buy box because we, we had 7 different businesses, quote unquote, that were selling a single, single product. And so if there were 10 resellers, we had 70% of the buy box. So we were crushing, right? Fast forward to another Baby Bathwater event. One of the founders who's no longer in that business or in the same way that he was, he sat me down and— are we cussing?

Oh yeah.

Okay. He sat me down on the deck outside of this beautiful log cabin in Eden, Utah. And he said, hey, I want to tell you something. I was like, okay. He said, you're fucking it up. I said, what are you talking about? We're crushing it. He said, no, you're fucking it up for all these brands that you're selling their products on multiple accounts. He said, you have got to be the exclusive representative for those brands on Amazon. So that you can work with them to help them control their pricing, to help them control their content. And you've got to be a value-add service, not a price arbitrage business. I sort of wrote it off. It was a party and I sort of wrote it off and I was like, okay, thanks for the input. But then we started to lose access to inventory. That we were buying and reselling on Amazon because these companies were saying, hey, we're going to a single seller. And then it clicked and I thought, oh shit, he was right. And so we, that was a time that we professionalized the business and we were like, okay, this is how we're going to do it. We are going to be value-add partners. We are going to be an extension of these brand owners, in-house marketing teams that don't have the resources or knowledge about the Amazon platform that we do, and let's go get some exclusives. And so, uh, by that point, I had, I had learned about cold calling. I was enjoying cold calling, and we started to garner exclusive accounts, just one after it, just knocking them down like bowling. And That's when the flywheel— I talk about the flywheel all the time because it's a— flywheels are, you know, they're the thing that are so tough to get moving, but once they get moving, there's self-perpetuating action. And so when we started to feel that self-perpetuation and we were getting referrals from some of our brand partners to other brands, it was like, oh, this is a real thing. And it will continue to grow and we can depend on it and we're finally taking some money off the table from it. Um, that was the point where we could take the collective breath and lean in harder on it.

Now you're starting to enter a new season. Can you guys tell me about, uh, the transition from now you've built another successful career, you're sort of at the top. And there's a catalyst for something new. Can you, can you dive into that for me?

Yeah, and I, I'll qualify this by saying that, um, all of the, the businesses that we've built are around animal health, and, um, not, not specifically over on the, on the Squared, uh, Amazon agency side. We, we service all all verticals, uh, in that business. But about 60% of our clients are animal health businesses. And so we almost have these Olympic rings of overlapping circles with our businesses where, where they all relate to one another and they, they all boost one another. And being able to have an impact within animal health, um, both on the brand side and with our supplement companies on the individual animal side, That is just to have that impact that's broader than ourselves. It is a vision that if you had told me 10 or 15 years ago, this is how it's going to go down, I would have said, man, you're crazy. In 15 years, I'm still going to be going into the OR and doing 3 arthroscopies a day or whatever and visiting all of my favorite horses in the barn area. Um, but that's where the focus could then shift off of business, business, business to, okay, where am I? And I was still a little bit lost. I was great at creating all of these transactional relationships and, you know, there was, there was always a business thread to those relationships and they're fun relationships. They are fun relationships. Um, but what I had realized is that having grown up and moving every 2 years, you know, I, I would have a best friend, but I always held just a little bit of space for myself because I knew I was leaving or I knew they were leaving. I really had this thirst for creating deeper friendships, particularly male friendships. To go do epic things with people. Uh, and those, those epic things were also things that I had put on the shelf. Um, and so having that realization also triggered in me that, like, where am I with myself? Um, and I didn't really know. Uh, what I knew is that It was very hard for me to communicate my feelings. It was very hard for me to, to feel myself in my body. Uh, there was a, there was a numbness there and I didn't like it. I knew I didn't like it. And I was at a point that we, we had moved people into leadership positions and all of those businesses. Now my, my day-to-day inputs on those businesses were were far less than they ever had been. So I had all this time with myself. And so I started to feel that, that sense of discomfort with where I was personally. And I knew that to be able to go and develop deep friendships, long-lasting lifetime friendships that I'd never really been able to develop as a child, um, it was going to take some work on myself for So that's where I've gone over the past several years. Yeah.

And so, so to, to just kind of mirror this arc, you, you climb your first mountain, get to the pinnacle of success, realize it's not what you thought, burned it all down, started over, did it again. And then at the top of that mountain also realized essentially you're still disconnected from yourself.

Yes. But with no intent of burning, burning the second mountain down. Yeah.

So how do you begin to reconnect with yourself? What does that look like?

Uh, Chris was really integral to this. Um, she, she is very, very tapped in, dialed in. Um, and she was loving enough and graceful enough to to softly point out, hey, you know what, this is, this is how you're showing up. And it was in ways that I didn't even recognize, um, just, just a lack of presence because my brain was thinking about the businesses and are they okay, and, and that sense that I needed to be busy with the businesses even if it wasn't productive. I just, I just felt like over all of these years of conditioning, man, I need to be doing something. There was also a fear of, of lack of relevance, because if I wasn't contributing in some way on a day-to-day basis, how, how do I relate to the businesses? And so really reimagining and reconstructing my relationship to the businesses as more of a visionary leader than an in-the-weeds doer. That was step one for me in being able to accept from Chris and receive from Chris. This is how you're showing up. And so it started with that awareness of being conscientious about before I walked into a room, before I went to say good morning to my wife, How am I showing up in that way? Is it transactional? A quick kiss, good morning, and I'm back out? Or am I going to sit down on the bed, hand her a cup of coffee, and have a 5-minute conversation to start the day warmly and start the day in a connected way? So little things like that that began to happen where I was beginning to feel that warm connection in the house. Again, and beginning to be a part of cultivating that versus depending on Chris to cultivate all of that for us to participate in. That's where it all started.

I think there's a lot of people potentially listening to this that are stuck in this doing phase. Doing is default.

Yes.

And what would your advice be to start shifting into being from the constant busyness?

Shifting into being is a, um, it's a commitment and it takes so much dedication because there's so much unknown to it. And I think particularly for those of us that have been in the hustle and grind for so long, um, there are so many scripts that have to be rewritten. Um, so many scripts that just have to be offloaded and be okay with that. Or if they're not offloaded, when they come back, just acknowledging that they're there and basically saying, thanks, that really worked for me in my former life or my former way of doing, but it doesn't work for my way of being. Sometimes that, that seems like such a big thing to approach because it's a little bit nebulous. Um, and so for me, it was really important to find the coaches and the mentors to, to help not only foster that in me and also to show me the breadcrumbs along the trail to follow. And it was really interesting through, through as I began to explore this and become aware that this is, this was something I needed to dive into. Um, there were just people that came into my path and, and started to mention, uh, Philip McKernan, who's, who both of us have worked with and love as a brother and as a friend. Um, his name kept coming up in conversation, including a conversation with you on the heli-ski trip when we were roommates. One year, Philip's name just kept coming up. And so I had spoken to Philip for— we had this beautiful 1-hour conversation, first conversation ever. And there was a connection between us that I had not felt with somebody in such a long time. And he asked me a question. Which was, what's your relationship with sadness? I burst into tears on a Zoom call with this guy that I'd never met before, and I told him, I don't have one. And that scared me. And that feeling of being scared and also knowing that I had a lot of sadness within me and, and who knows what else within within me that I really wanted to explore. Um, it scared me enough that I didn't talk to Philip for another 6 months, ghosted him. I don't, I don't know what made me do it, but I just reached out to him again and said, hey, you know what, I, I think, I think I want to work with you. So he's gracious enough to get on another 30-minute call, and it was much more firm with me this time. And he said, listen, uh, if you want to walk down this path, I want to help you. And you're going to show up in Ireland and you're going to do this one-week retreat. That's where we're going to start. And that was a year ago. Uh, you were on that trip, surprisingly, which was really fun because, uh, neither of us realized the other would be there. And, uh, I I remember at the hotel before we were being picked up for this event, I was headed to the restroom and you walked out of the restroom and I, my adrenal squeeze, and I just went, oh fuck, I'm about to, I have a decision to make to either bare my soul in front of this person who I've known from baby bathwater and have spent some time with. I either have to make the choice to bare my soul in front of this person or continue to curate how I show up and curate my energy, which I had done for so long. Just, just matching my energy to other people's energy versus putting my own energy out there that I really badly wanted to do, but I didn't know how to do that. And I was fearful of it. And I decided while I was standing at the urinal in that hotel, I decided I'm all in. And that was one of the most beautiful weeks in Ireland of just self-connection and connection with you. That's, that's created a friendship between us that I'm so grateful for. And, and that truly is one of the first deep non-transactional relationships with another man as a friend that has become a cornerstone for me. Um, and so that's how I explored it. I think the path for, for a lot of people who are listening may be very different. Um, but for me, it was about, about finding those people who were further along that path than me. To help shine a light on the, on the way.

And in some sense, throughout your career, you had been sort of trapped in this wearing a mask, performative version of yourself. What's the journey like home to authenticity? What's it been like for you?

I think to say it's been challenging wouldn't wouldn't nearly touch the depth of it. Um, it's been scary. It's been exhilarating. Um, it's been a, a trial of trust, uh, trial of trust in myself, trial of trust in the universe. Um, and, and the things that happen almost serendipitously, um, that before I would have thought, huh, that's weird. And now I just believe that the, the right people come into our paths at the right time, every time. And as I've traveled through this exploration of spirituality and learning how to feel my body again, learning how to share the depths of my emotions and to be honest with myself about them, I don't feel like I have to chameleon anymore. More. Um, and I, I became very good at that as a kid. Like I've said, moving every 2 years to very different geographic areas, there's— we become very good at being able to flow in and out of one group or another and just, just become what, what they are, uh, to be a part of it. And it's almost like flipping a switch on and off. Deactivating that switch so that it doesn't matter what group I'm walking into, I'm showing up as me, not as a reflection of them. Um, perhaps that, that was the scariest part. This subtext of, will they like the real version of me? Um, will they accept the real version of me? And if they don't, am I okay with that? Can I say, let them, like Mel Robbins says, let them, it's okay. Not default to saying, oh, okay, well, they didn't like that part. So I'm just going to put on their coat and be a part of it. Um, so there, there was a, there's some loneliness in that. Initially, but that loneliness is one of the most beautiful things because that loneliness and being able to revere that loneliness is something that was totally displaced by busyness for so long. And so now being able to sit in the loneliness, which for some time, I guess I would call it loneliness. But now for me, it's beautiful silence because I can sit with myself and just love that.

What advice would you give to yourself 10, 12 years ago? You're at the pinnacle of success at the racetrack, living in sort of this paradigm of self-betrayal or inauthenticity. What would you go back and tell that version of yourself?

I could have told myself anything. At that time, and, uh, that version of myself wouldn't have listened. So it wouldn't have— it wouldn't have mattered. Could I go back and say, hey, just, just chill out. It's not binary. You don't either have to be them or be yourself. You can make that transition over time. You don't have to jump off the cliff and hope the parachute opens. And I think that would have given me the, the space and grace to continue to do that work and really appreciate the parts about it that I loved. Um, and to to minimize that weight that I felt like I was carrying, that I, I just wanted so badly to get rid of, just to drop it like a bad habit. Um, it, it, I think, would have helped to deflect so much of that weight, uh, and the thought that I needed to carry that weight. Um, And I, if that version of myself would listen to my version of myself today, I may still be at the racetrack and I may be showing up for those horses and being able to look them in the eye and say, I love you and I'm going to do everything I can to care for you and make it the best for you. Um, and do that in such an authentic way that I felt, but I also fought.

And if someone's listening right now who hears your story and knows that they are trapped in living performatively or living inauthentically to keep the facade of the success, What advice would you give them?

Is it financial success? Is it success in relationships? Is it honesty with yourself? Is it, um, being connected where— with the place where you are geographically, energetically? Um, start asking some of those questions. Those are questions that aren't native and they're not questions that society and social metrics and all of those things really encourage us to ask ourselves because so many of us are living on that achievement side of the river. And looking across that river and saying, man, joy and wonder and awe and all of those things. What are the things on a day-to-day basis that are awesome that we're just too busy to recognize? And just start looking for those things in your everyday life. Like that little thing that happens that would be so easy to walk past and not acknowledge. But when you sit back, you just go, wow, that's amazing. And I think being able to layer just those little experiences on a day-to-day basis, as the awareness of those things begins to aggregate, and we begin to fill this hopper of I have to achieve, I have to earn, I have to hustle, I have to be busy, I have to all of those things, the aggregation of awesomeness and joy and wonder like, huh, how did that happen?

So what does wealth mean to you now?

I think the main thing for me in wealth is depth of relationships. And it's depth of relationship with myself as the primary thing because that reverberates into everything. Um, and that all of the other things that come with with just giving that energy that we have to other people, all of the other things, the warmth, the felt love, the demonstrated love, the, um, the connectedness, the opportunities that, that come into our space that just bring themselves in front of us, all of those things happen.

Naturally.

And so that's wealth to me. It is a non-financial thing. If everything in my life blew up right now, I'd still feel wealthy.

Love it, man. Keith, what a beautiful conversation. Thanks for sharing your journey and thanks for being here and thanks for being such a good friend.

Thank you for being such a great friend. I was so interested in where we might wander in this conversation and I've loved it.

Cool. Thanks for being here. Cheers.