Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. Um, as I told you right before we started recording that this is Ah, you know, I don't know if anything, any one thing I'm gonna say is gonna be that impactful to, ah, to students. But, um, in my life, I have learned so much from just hearing a vast array of experiences from other people. Um, and so I I appreciate that, and hopefully something that resonates with someone, but, um, how did they get to where I am today? So initially, I've always had a passion for building value, right? That's something where it's actually more than a passion. It's an obsession. Um, so out of when I was still in college, I started a nonprofit organization. Then I went to New York City, started working at an advertising agency and just couldn't deal with it. It was I felt like, um, the value that I was creating was so insignificantly small that I just like I couldn't do it. So I started a company, and I built that for a couple of years, sold that went back, and I got my MBA because I felt like I didn't really know enough about business. I studied advertising, so I went back on my MBA Start another company during my MBA actually ended up winning. Um, a lot of money with your business competitions. One actually more money than any other student. Uh, BYU has ever won. And it was really cool, because something that I learned from my from that experience was that, you know, I wasn't the smartest in my class. I didn't I didn't really didn't have the best grades. There is a lot of classes I struggled with, but man people, um you could leverage your strengths in different ways. And that was something that for me I felt so blessed to really learn that. And so when I went, um, on, Teoh went to PWC after that, had great experience doing management consulting. Um, but I still felt like a cog of a cog in a big machine. And so I wanted to build value and ah, and so that's, you know, my whole, um after I graduated from college and starting the first company, I just knew that I wanted Teoh build my own companies to build and create that value and one thing that always a lot of a lot of times, friend, that I've talked to the thing that holds them back. Is there afraid? RoWhite of they're afraid of, uh, missing out. They're afraid of missing out on the job that they have. But at the end of the day, we This is a mantra that I live my life by every day, which is choose extraordinary for ordinary will always be waiting, right? And the the, uh now that ordinary, then the my philosophy is how do I elevate my ordinary right? So the first thing I did was I graduated from college. Okay, so they're all of a sudden, like I've elevated my ordinary. The next thing I did is I went and worked in ad agency in New York City's now got connections out there. I could go back a work out there. The next thing I did is I went out for summer. I did summer sales, and so that way, it's like, OK, worst case scenario, I get a six figure job doing doing sales. Um, then I got my m b a. Then I went and I worked at PWC, and so everything that I've done. Ah, when I worked, when I wasn't specifically starting a company was to elevate my ordinary. So that way, if I didn't I don't have any fear of falling flat on my face. Because even if I fail and I lose everything, it's like my ordinaries, you know, pretty good. You know, um and so it's not scary for me. Teoh, do a start up. Ah, and that's something that I'm I feel really blessed by. And that's something I'm really excited about. Um, and, uh, then in terms of absolute of the career path Now, in terms of the startup that I'm in right now, um, what we do innovation is we are a guest feedback solution for restaurants and retailers where we help them to, you know, find and fix problems both from an individual. And from an organizational standpoint, um, and that that concept of connecting the companies and the customers is one that I am really fascinated and solving, and that was a piece of advice that someone gave me. Don't fall in love with your solution when you're starting a company, fall in love with a problem, and that's something I always loved and I tried, like, focus on which is really solving that problem. And for me, it's all about that connection of, ah, digital consumer and the physical world that there needs to be a better bridge. And so that's what that's what we built with Ovation through our actionable guest feedback tool.

all about logistics recruiting, right? I I, um, actually wrote an article, and it's called your first hour as an entrepreneur. And so you're sitting there and all of a sudden, boom, you've got this, like, great idea that comes to you. Well, what do you do with that idea? And the first thing is that you really need to take a step back to understand the problem. It's so easy to come up with. Solutions have been tried to find a problem based on that solution. What you really need to dio is find a, uh, find a problem and the unique solution to it. Then the next thing that you want to dio is we went and I just researched. I came up with 10 different ways that someone with that problem, what they would search for in Google. And I looked what's already out there who's doing something similar? How are they doing it? Ah, and then do I still need to exist now? Ovation was probably the 50th 60th idea that I went through this process with, um and then I realized OK, I understand the problem. Understand? My customer base? Um, now I need someone to help build a prototype. And so I went out to my connections and I said, Here's the concept. Here's the opportunity. I want to build a prototype and test this out. Can you build it for me? And, um And so we went into business together and to this day is still my business partner. Now, granted, the problem that we set out to solve has changed slightly as the mawr that we got into it, the more that we understood what some of the problems were in, what some of the problems weren't. Um, and our customer has changed, right? So when we first started, it was me, um, selling the product right. I had I had a business partner to help me out, but it was really like me selling the product. And then ah, and then as we got going, it was like, OK, well, one of the things we realized was the customer that I was selling to wasn't necessarily the customer that we wanted or the customer that would lead us to $100 million a $1,000,000,000 company. And so what would guide us a $1,000,000,000 company? Was we needed to shift to our customer was and shifting that customer helped us focus our solution mawr, um, on solving their specific problem as opposed to such a broad problem that we started off with. But honestly, it was like you have your you're very basic logistics to start off of getting everything set up, making sure you're 83 b is filled out when you set up the company. If you don't know what an 83 b is, find out what an 83 B is because I had a buddy and he lost millions of dollars because he didn't fill out a one page thing. So you know it's so critical to get that 83 b, um, locked and loaded in there. So it's in the beginning. It was a lot of like the company had a lot of logistics to set up. And then it was about finding those first few customers who were willing to really, really pre beta tested, um, and I really Alfa tested and then getting it out there and, ah, you know, slowly realizing over the next few months, um, that we were onto something, and so I eventually quit my job I went 18 months without a salary working innovation. Um, and that was because I've always been preparing for this, and so I saved up. Saved up, saved up, saved up that way. When I quit my job, I knew that I had 18. Was about 20 months runway left, um, to start ovation because, you know, you can't You can't take a salary when you're only making a a few $100 revenue.

shins. So initially, one of the challenges being part time. You know, I still had my job as I was working on innovation, and that is really challenging, because I am not gonna short change someone who's giving me a paycheck. Right? So how do I not shortchange them? Not short change my family and still be working on a start up? Uh, it was challenging, especially because the hours that my customers were working are going to be. You know, um, specifically worked at the restaurant and retailers. The down times are that, like, you know, 10 to 12 and then that, you know, three toe, you know, 3 to 5. Those are the times that air gonna be down. Well, I'm working right. And so it was. It was a real challenge to do that. So I got some help from someone who can was able to talk to customers during those times, and then I would talk to them in off hours and weekends and things like that. Um, but part time was really challenging to dio, but it was something that I felt like for me and for my family, I needed to be part time first. Um, the other thing that I talked about was initially I didn't have a lot of big connections. Sure. Now we have the former CEO of Burger King, Popeyes, Tim Horns, Planet Hollywood on on our board. But when I first started this, you know, I didn't know anyone in the restaurant retail space, Really? And so I would call up, Um, you know, I call up Miguel of Two Jacks pizza, right? I would call our Manny of Two Jacks pizza. I'd call a bluesy of Lucy's Brazilian. Um, I would be literally calling up these stores, going there and selling them because they were the ones who I could talk to. The problem is that those small customers, it's a totally different company. And so the challenge was, I was building, Ah, a company for the wrong customers. And so I was listening to my customers. But you you don't just listen to your customers. You have to listen to the right customers. And so now we understand who are customer is you know what what they look like. A linked in what they're, um their background is what their responsibilities are and were able to much better build a product for them, speak to them. But that was a huge challenge of the beginning because, especially as we're trying to go upstream, you know, they were like okay, but this seems like something for a one location shop. I own 200 locations, so I don't know why I should be talking to you. And how do you pivot the product? Pivot the pitch to sell to those customers. So it's really important to do that. Another thing around customers that's challenging is, you know, the previous startup I had I built. I built an algorithm to translate social media data into gift recommendations. Well, that's all good and well, and we did a lot of customer research on that. The problem is, we did research with the end user. We did research with a person who was looking for the gifts. The problem is, those aren't the people who are going to buy the product that people were going to buy the product. Well, they were the ones like, you know, Amazon, like Macy's, like Sears, who would buy that algorithm and put it on their on their website. So once I learned I've been doing the research with the wrong people, then we had do research for these folks. So then we started in research with them. We get all the way to, like contracting of the algorithm, and then all of a sudden I realized that, well, hey, there's a hole technical component to this where there's going to be someone who runs the website that we have to work with and they're actually our user. And so what we found was that you need to map out your customers to realize who's using you. Who's paying for you, who's implementing you? Um, and maybe there's other categories as well. But don't, uh, don't count out those users. So, for example, we work with a lot of restaurants. Well, we could build a product for the customer. That's really good. We could build a product for corporate. That's really good. But if we don't build a product that the managers air going to use, well, then that creates a problem because then they're not gonna use ovation, and then the customers are going to see the benefit. You know, corporate isn't going to the benefit, and so you have to look at all of your customers when you're building. Ah, company. Um, one of the challenge that we faced is unable to talk about this next question, I think. But it's funding, right. It's money because at the end of the day, here's what it comes down to. This is something that I learned through observation of, Ah, a lot of great startups. I went. I was able to go out and be a part of 500 startups, which is a really cool program out in. I went to their headquarters in the Bay Area, and it was It was an incredible program, really intense, and they bring in just tons of successful entrepreneurs, and I was able to listen to them and and ah, get some wisdom from them. And there is a pattern that I saw, Um, and there's a pattern that I found in all the podcasts I've listened to of other successful entrepreneurs, and and the pattern is this. Here's how you win at the start of game, you stay alive and excited long enough to get lucky, and that's it. Um, you have to stay alive. You have to have the money. If you don't have the money. You can't pay people. You can't make the product. You can do the marketing. So you have to have a way to get money in. Stay excited. You know, there comes a certain point in some of the starters have been involved with where I just didn't even want to goto work. I didn't want to work on the start if it wasn't interesting to me anymore. Um, and and one of the things I've done to overcome them, to stay excited is the fact that I've become obsessed with the problem that I'm solving right that connection of the digital consumer in the physical world. I feel that's such an interesting problem. And my, um, you know, ovation solution to that problem is one that I feel like is unique in that the world needs that in 10 years is going to be the norm. And I don't want to go to a restaurant in 10 years of my daughter and see a tool that's just like Ovation. But is innovation can I gave up to soon, right? So, um, and it's about keeping the team excited to sharing the vision of what's gonna happen. The future and then get lucky. At the end of the day, you I've seen so many successful entrepreneurs, but they they run out of excitement or money too soon, and they don't get a chance to get lucky. And in every single story. And I'm not saying this happens for everyone. I'm just saying with everyone that I've talked Teoh, every successful startup has had something happened where it's like and then this happened, and it's totally lucky. It's not something they did, but it was something that it was a breaking point was a turning point. It was this this point of inflection for the company, and it was not necessary. They didn't prepare for it, but they were prepared for it. Does that make sense? It happened to them out of luck. But had they not been moving forward and excited and coming up with, like, new solutions, new ideas trying to improve, that never would have happened. And so that's my That's what I have observed my observation, all formula for success, not necessarily my own. Stay excited, as I say alive and stay excited long enough to get lucky. Um and yeah, I think they were talking about funding next. But as I got some thoughts around the challenges around funding because it is, ah, really tough topic.