Al Doan - Missouri Star Quilt Company

hey everybody I'm cool for me to be able to be here today when I was when I went to school when I was in my college years I actually looked up a lot of the entrepreneur lecture series stuff and and would would watch them because I was in Hawaii I didn't get the pleasure of going to yours and and there are some great ones that were actually really really inspiring for me made a big difference and so it's fun to be able to be here and sort of give back I'm sorry that I don't look better than I do I had a very early flight I feel like I start off most of my dates with that same phrase but I'm happy to be here with you today even even with my handy-dandy Royals cap so real quick I'll introduce myself and then talk a little bit about the company and what I'm thinking is we'll just go through I'll sort of give you give you the story of who we are I know that most of you are here you probably don't come these normally but you heard quilting and you said I've got to see it and so welcome I'm gonna tell you everything you need to know we're actually all gonna make a quilt before you leave today so no I'm just kidding so so I worked or when I when I graduated school I started out I was a I was a homeschooled farmer from Missouri but not like like my mom wasn't like a hipster and wanted a better education for me like we needed to cut wood so we didn't die sort of homeschooling mom was like you're not going anywhere you're chopping wood and so that was that was sort of my roots in Caldwell County Missouri and and so I was a high school dropout the whole thing and and ended up going to school as si I rigged it I went to a local college for two semesters then I was a 4.0 transfer student nobody cares what your high school mess-up was when you're a transfer student so off I went to Hawaii I had a great time there finished up in Hawaii and came out and decided that I or I took a job with the Symantec Corporation and some and they make like Norton AntiVirus and stuff but I got it I got a great job with those guys like really surprising way better than I should have sort of job and when when people hire you and pay you more than you're worth they sort of buy your soul that honestly that's one of those things that you'll want to watch out for is you go into your career if you end up in consulting or something be wary of that because they legitimately like you feel guilty anytime you're not working you're working overnight you're not being healthy all that kind of stuff so that was me for a year really laid it on the line for him and then and then I we we moved out our I moved out to Boston I was going to take over our Europe operations for these guys on some consulting stuff and that was in 2008 they they canvassed they can the whole department they actually they actually laid off 27,000 employees and so when you're in good company all as well we after that happened I was an instant entrepreneur right most of you it'll be like normal wage earning people until you lose your job and then you're an entrepreneur welcome back and and I was an entrepreneur slash consultant because I felt better about myself and I said that and and so I come out of that and and I was going to start a company with my best friend Dave Dave lived in Canada and he and I were going to work on on a company together and so I moved in with him and his wife you me and Dupree style and I slept in the basement next to their sweet little daughter and they were upstairs and it was totally kosher and we we started a couple of companies we tried a wealth management firm which in 2008 was a poor choice then we started a a cleaning technology that you sell to realtor's that are trying to sell their houses which was equally poor choice and then I started a quilting company which which ended up doing doing well I'll come back to that in a second I I after after that I worked on that for about a year and then I will I left that I I wanted to go and get my my MBA I lived in Boston I had friends that were going to very cool MBA type schools and I was like that's what I need to do until I looked at how much it costs and I said I don't need that much of an MBA so what I did is I declared a year of the MBA this is you just make it up you guys can all do it with me you make up a year of the MBA I saved up eighteen thousand dollars and budgeted fifteen hundred bucks a month I figured I needed to pay a car payment and a cell phone and then eat some cheesy raviolis and and other chef boyardee products and and so I had just enough there and I all of my old business professors all the guys that were you know that I kind of respected in business sense I said I need I need your recommendations what are your top three most impactful business books you've ever read they send them back to me and I got like a list of about 34 books and I bought them all on Amazon for about 200 bucks and then I started thinking about where did I you know if I went and got an MBA what did I want to do with it well hopefully the thought is is that you'll go and get a get an MBA and that some of your professors will have been from industries that you hopefully want to go back into someday and that hopefully they'll still have been respected enough that they can still get you into those industries and they'll still know somebody there maybe well so I thought what if I just went and found the guys who are in those industries doing cool stuff and and just like social network to my way right in so I I found guys doing cool stuff that I want to be a part of I was curious about venture capital angel investing and there was this cool group this startup accelerator called tech stars out in Boulder Colorado was a huge fan ended up like like literally I was I was flying around I spent three months with each of these guys is like I don't want any money I just want to shine your shoes and work for free and they're sitting yeah come on we can have shoe shiners here and so I'd go and work for free but I was like I just want to go with you when you're when you're having lunch and like teaching people or like running your company and they said okay that's cool and so I'd go and do this and then I was on my way back and sought tweet about tech stars was looking for an intern and I rented a car in Salt Lake I was flying from Hawaii to Missouri and I rented a car in Salt Lake drove overnight to Boulder like ended up in Boulder sort of looking how I do I said I'm sorry I don't look better than I do they said it's fine and and they said we really don't need awkward farmers from Missouri as our interns thanks we'll try again it took me like two more trips out to Boulder till they finally said fine you can have this internship worked with those guys for about two years and then I went and did the same thing over in Europe and so I worked on like 60 companies start to well like from zero to 60 right these are all guys that are like on the back of the napkin like I have an idea techstars their model is they'll give you it's like a little bit like boom startup if you know that in Utah but they'll give you they give you a little bit of cash to last for three months and then like just teach you how to how to do it and so I was I was the intern I took a bunch of notes and just watch this company go you know ten companies every three months just turnover and get better and better and better well on the side I had this quilt shop that I was working on and I actually got to be a pretty nerdy tech entrepreneur but my vehicle was was a quilt company so that's what we're gonna talk about a little bit today but it's it's fun it's fun because I get to come from a cool a cool background with this I love startup to love entrepreneurship which is which is why it's such a treat to be back here so I'm going to show you this this is uh my boy bright Willie he's uh he's he's talking quilts for it some may be sad to learn that now applies to the time-honored tradition of boat making it's now possible to create an individual blanket work of art in as little as a day and as you'll see what this one woman has done is a good thing for a small Missouri town putting the place on the map and becoming something of a celebrity in the do-it-yourself community we get her story tonight from NBC's Harry Smith it looks like it's been a while since Hamilton Missouri has been the hotbed of anything but stopping at the Missouri star quilt company on Main Street and you'll see dozens of people from miles around who have come to see in here Jamie don't don't figure doubt how to streamline a process that once took once but even here that's our whole goal is to make easy it's always been one of these kind of mysterious things that's way out there that better grandmothers did now just about anyone can make a quilt how cool is that but well here's my feeling what kind of felt like dogs at the quote ones you know I know this looks a little crazy Wow Jenny don't splitting revolutions started with a few videos she posted on YouTube I know it looks really hard but it's so easy in then her philosophy first don't be afraid to make mistakes and I don't want to make something that's gonna sit on the Shelf that's so special that nobody wants to music I want to make something that is they loved and worn out to the last thing turns out jenny is so good and her short cuts worked so well she's given me like therapy sessions everything sunshine in a barrel she now has a hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and her tutorials have been viewed more than 28 million times and Missouri star quilt company is the fastest growing business around which is that much more gratifying because Jenny and her family have been knocked flat by the recession which is our son Alan looking around the fact we have 85 employees that all feed their families because of what we do name is Nancy and because people now flock to Hamilton to see a genuine person the plans are afoot for restaurants and accommodations amazing what can happen patch a few ideas together Harry Smith NBC News Hamilton lizard it's just poetry man pulls at the heartstrings but wait how do we will take care of this um so so that was a kind of fun we had a we have this quilt company back in Missouri and the quilt company the quilt company we we got the idea my mom my mom this was 2008 which again perfect time to start a business but my mom had called me she had made a quilt for my or let me back up a little more the my my dad was working at a newspaper place right and in 2008 newspapers were sort of not doing so great they were losing people they were looted like they went from a department of 35 people down to five dad turned like a weird shade of grey because he started working overnight again and you're like that I think you're you're dying he was like turning into Casper the ghost and and so we're watching this happened I was like we got it we got to do something about this my parents are like they're perpetually broke you know they're everything I know about finance I learned from sort of doing the opposite of what they did with a rant we ran into some stuff trouble when we were growing up my brother got a tumor and when you when you get a tumor you just pay the bills right you you put it on the account you just go with it and then we went bankrupt and so we moved to Missouri that was sort of the catalyst to get out there so we're out there and like we're in this kind of crappy financial situation and and things aren't looking great so me and my sister have been talking because we knew that we had to do something otherwise mom and dad were going to be living in our basement when they got old and we cannot have that and so we started talking about like what business should we start what could we do I had never started a company my sister had never started a company but we're just sort of looking around for but what's there and and it's sort of a poetic place to be that's starting at zero sort of place you know I'm a big fan of that idea of failing fast I'm sure you guys have heard that rhetoric the the beauty of failing fast for me is that when you're when you are a zero and I mean you can go all-in on every single bet cuz it doesn't matter right if you fail you just move back in with mom eat some ramen get back out there and do it again and and so like that was sort of my philosophy is I was like we could try any of these because literally it doesn't matter like let's see if it works and and you know the the beauty of school like the thing that I loved about school is if you weren't sure where to go or what to do next in your life you just got to go to school and then you had like a four-year pass where you like no I'm actually I'm doing something I'm I'm being good and learning like everybody thinks I should and then I'll check back out and go try it again well a lot of times a lot of times when you can find the opportunity to just work in a company or do something while you wait for that right idea you find that you find a better idea than when you're like under pressure to find that exact perfect thing right if you've it I remember one year I went home from from college over Christmas break and I decided I needed a million dollar idea and I literally I sat on the couch for a week trying like with a scratch pad trying to figure out my million dollar idea I got no million dollar ideas out of that but while we were just like being able to look while I was still working on other stuff and just being open to ideas we did find we found this great Golden Goose of quilting and and so so yeah on this goes mom calls one day and says hey I'm took a quilting and your sister had a baby congratulation I took a quilt in we're gonna get it back we took a quilt in to get a machine quilted so when you make a quilt you sew all the pieces together you still have the batting the fluffy stuff in the middle and the backing the the other fabric and they stitch all that together that's called you know getting your quilt quilted or I don't know it's weird phraseology but that's what you do you take it and you get it all stitched together so mom said I took it in and I'll get it back in about a year and I was like a year how long does it take to do a quilt and she said about five hours and I was like could you learn if we bought you a machine she said yeah I think I could and I was like that's all the park at research I'm gonna do we're in alright we gotta start a good quilt company I'm literally I'm like the worst business guy you know every book you read I've done the said I'm not like I don't have a ten-year plan or anything I don't do good market research but it works out because I don't know why learn from me I have no idea what I'm doing the so we we did it that was our market research and I'm not joking but then this is the beauty starting a company in Missouri we went and bought a 5,000 square-foot old auto showroom that was sort of old and dilapidated we bought it for twenty four thousand dollars which gives you like a $280 mortgage or roughly the cost of like a good storage unit and so we bought this old building and started fixing that up and then we bought a $40,000 quilt machine to go inside of that which was which was great a $40,000 machine and a twenty four thousand dollar building the insurance guys sort of looked at us weird but off we went so so we we got in there and then we started you know buying some fabric and stuff and I really loved the the model for like woot.com or steep and cheap if any of you guys ever heard of those yeah like so it's it's this deal add a sign they put up a new deal every day and I was so addicted in college like I was going to school in Hawaii and I bought a king-sized feather comforter because it was only $30 and it shipped back to Missouri like I was not eating food over there because I'm so broke but I was like it's such a good deal I gotta get it it was like if they can hook me I can for sure hook my grandma we're doing this so we went in and we started the quilters daily deal and the premise behind this was was we're just gonna put one thing up every day and off we went well the hard thing about the textile industry is it's all on a like a bolt right it's a bolt of fabric you buy a bolt of fabric and it's got fifteen 1-yard units of fabric or thirty half-yard units or sixty courtyard units and there's no way really to determine velocity on those sails or to figure out if if like it's it's a it's a good buy or bad buy and to sell it well on online so we started plunking around and we started pre cutting this fabric into these in these squares and it it saves some time but what it did for me is it gave me a definable inventory item that I could put on sale or know that I had ten of and you know just worked it out to that end and we started this cool thursday lee deal around that so essentially we started making the lego blocks for quilting right so you you buy one of these five inch square packs and one of the ten inch square packs and you put them together like like mom will show you in a YouTube video and off you go you're great and so that was that was the premise that was the neck or the the genesis of all this was we thought Lego blocks for quilting this is going to be the future for us and actually it was so yeah so so I mean that's one of the one of the beauties of what we've done is that we took it like an existing very archaic industry that nobody is really paying attention to you know I I remember was I came out of school I had a friend that had graduated and he had gone he was graduated like a year before me but he came back and talked I was like and when he had graduated he turned down like some job with Dell or something to go work with his dad and his dad made those like metal toilet paper holders and public restrooms which I'm sure you've seen and so when he came back I was like hey dude that's the toilet paper business he was like it's awesome it's like I'm making like 14 million a year on this thing and there's not a single MBA kid coming out of college trying to take my margins nobody cares about me and so I'm just cruising I was like oh well good job on toilet paper that's a really good idea I mean I was gonna do it but you did it first and so like quilting is a lot that same way right there's nobody coming coming out of grad school that's like give me them fabric margins that's what I want and so I just kind of get a go be innovative in this industry that isn't Facebook and it isn't Google but but like it needs a good visionary in there and so we get to go and play that so I would encourage you guys to sort of look for industries that are that might resonate with you a little bit but not be the most popular industries I'll give you an example just a brief example this is one of my favorite business stories to tell we had we spent a year this was two years ago in 2013 we spending a year producing a magazine so this this company this big company in the crafting world approached us and said hey we'd love to do a magazine with you we'll call it quilting quickly with Missouri star quilt company I was like that sounds pretty good and they said we have a lot of distribution you're gonna a lot of people are going to see it and then and then you're just gonna you're gonna love it it's gonna be great so I said alright let's do it we negotiated the same like a little bit better contract than most people but these crafting magazines would they what they would do is they'd pay you like two hundred fifty to four hundred dollars per project right and so we add twenty projects in the magazine man we got like eight thousand dollars per per magazine for all the work we did but we were gonna a lot of people are gonna see it so we had we had to go for it so we did four issues with them over the course of a year and they sold a hundred thousand copies each at ten dollars a piece so it's a four million dollar business for them and I got thirty two thousand it was like hey I love these economics let's make them fair and I'll keep doing this this is a great idea you know you guys are obviously making money I just want a little chunk of that and then we'll be off and and it was really cute they said they said no we really like these margins we're gonna leave them just like they are and and you know unfortunately advertisers don't like your magazine very well it's it's kind of not doing so hot for us and so sorry now some of my best ideas were born out of hatred and spite and this was one of them because I was like I was like don't you dare don't you dare and they're like so I was like if you force my hand I will come after you and with the north and we will know it and she was like she said good luck which I love is sort of like a taken moment on the sobs like oh man it's on and so so so I I step back and I sort of look at this industry right and this is an industry that was there's a model that was built 30 years ago you look at the magazine industry industry and they've got ad sales teams that are calling people and begging for money hey we got ads you guys got it you know you got to put your your ad in this side in this new magazine and I'm an advertiser and I hate magazine ads why do I hate magazine ads I've know they don't convert I have no idea who clicks on them because you can't click it's the worst I don't know why my voice what the hi but you can't you can't click on them so like I'm telling them I only want to advertise in your digital versions I don't care about your print versions and so this industry is hearing oh yeah the paper stuff nobody cares about that anymore we need to go digital I as a magazine reader and probably most of you as magazine reader as well as my grandma who my market they don't like reading on the iPad right late they want to get it they want to get a magazine they can take to the toilet and read and sit there for a month and and like you know a get a look at the magazine that's what they're looking for and so but this industry is shifting not because of what the consumers want but because of what the advertisers won so I look at it and I said well great screw the advertisers we're gonna make a magazine with no advertising and we're just going to go right in we're gonna make it about a better paper and we'll make it bigger and like more focus on the good stuff because we don't need to sell any ad space anymore I never wanted to call and beg for money for my for my magazine and so I started I put on Facebook I said who here knows anything about the publishing world I need to talk to you I set up about a dozen interviews when talked to all of them and and figured out who I needed to hire went and hired three people a creative director an executor or a managing editor and then a technical writer and so I had three salaries that cost me about a hundred and eighty five thousand dollars and I said we're gonna do this magazine I need you to you know just let's go make it happen and and but everybody said they also said you know watch out because in the magazine world the paper you know because it's printing the printing is where all the cost is like Halden I got quotes that I like to print this magazine which is bigger and better paper than the other magazine they were doing it was gonna cost me like 85 cents I was like guys what do you mean that's the biggest concert they were paying ten bucks for something they could make for 50 cents and I was like those are great margins why does he even need an ad an ad room and so I was like I was like here's what I'm gonna do I priced it at half their price so I priced it at $5.99 I love you I love just taking the stuff like price it right at $5.99 well I'm paying eighty eight cents that's a great but it's like still movie theater popcorn markups right I'm doing really good at that point and and so I needed 10,000 subscribers to make it work now we print every other month we're printing over a hundred thousand copies like 120,000 copies of this and it's selling out and if you're doing the math that's like a three or four million dollar business it took me three weeks to put together by making those phone calls again and out the door by going the exact opposite direction that everybody else was going they're trying to go to the iPad no no I want it I want to read it but nobody's innovating over here because they're given up and they're moving on right well it was like it's it's actually it's doing great still the other the other people that had us before they hate us and what can you do you can't make everybody happy you know especially when you're competing and so so so that was that was one of those things that like as you as you're cognizant of what other industries are doing or what they're they're looking at I mean the magazine industry you'd look around you'd be like they've got a pretty good grasp on what they're doing they don't they don't man reinvent that thing reinvented a thousand times to keep going different directions and try new stuff because there's tons of opportunity to be had there so I'm trying to so let's see one of one of the other things that we were going to talk about no oh yeah and and the the other thing that that we run into a lot is with our company the thing that sort of sets us apart there's 3,000 quilt shops in North America if you've been to visit your mom you've probably been to visit a quilt shop right there they're everywhere and so we as we started there's a part of us it's like why do we even matter what can we do and where we land with this stuff is we you know every company has to decide if they're going to no do or be and for us it's very important that we be something really meaningful yeah and and every interaction that we have with a customer is all focused on on that being good to them you know being somebody that they turn to building that relationship of trust with them the magazine was a great example of that right could I have priced it higher absolutely the customer knows I could have priced it higher and they actually loved me more for dipping down a little bit and paying attention to that other bottom line there's multiple bottom lines in every decision you'll make in business right there's the bottom line that talks about your your return on investment or or your your P&L statement and then there's the bottom line that that's over here with the customer and then there's your bottom line with your employees a lot of times you have multiple bottom lines and you'd be paying attention to well so with the magazine we priced it lower we made it better and we you know we give we give digital copies so if you buy the physical version I give you the digital one for free on your on your mobile phone this whole thing like all this extra but they love us for it and and the cool thing so mom the the video you watched was about a year and a half old so they talked about mom does these video tutorials now and that was we get about a third of our traffic from YouTube we get over a half million views a week but this was important to us because we you know there's no ESPN for quilters there's nowhere to like go and advertise where the quilters hang out so we had to create it ourselves and that was the work we did with the magazine well we also did it with YouTube so we we got on YouTube and started started producing these tutorials and people I mean man they they fell in love with them but what was cool about it was mom would teach somebody how to quilt right and so she does this whole big show and and you know like you have this very emotional connection with this woman that taught you this skill because quilting quilting is one of those things that's that a lot of people like in the world of hobbies you know my my sister is actually a great example of this she got married really young but she she was into painting and art and stuff but then she became a mom and when you're when you're a mom you just sort of got to run this house and do all do all the mom's stuff and you can't make the excuse to go to the garage and paint for two hours right you don't let yourself have that luxury a lot of times but quilting is this very functional hobby where at its core you're making a blanket right and so you're like well I mean I I can make this because I'm producing something and look what I've made for us and so you give yourself you give yourself the allow or the uh I don't know I guess you give yourself you allow yourself to go and create and it and Yuri discover like this creative side to you it's color its composition its shape its its texture it's all this stuff that you sort of you sort of love anyway but you haven't paid attention to in a long time and so his mom would teach these people how to do this over the Internet she found this she was teaching a lot more people than she realized you know when we started doing these we thought we'd this would just be for people that worked a lot and couldn't get to a class well it turns out that there's like a man with a agoraphobia that can't leave his house and so he he found mom on YouTube ordered from us online and started making quilts and he'd make them and give them to his kids mom got these she got this great letter from this gallon and Iran or Pakistan one of those and and I don't know but she writes she writes this letter and she says she talks about how she started a quilt guild where she's gathered these women together and they order from us and get it delivered and then bring it into the country and and they make their quilts but she finished it with she said thank you I can't say enough is a little more broken English than this I can't say enough how much I love you you have filled my war-torn life with colour right which which mom is just like you know she can't believe that she's making this kind of a difference to people we had you know like people there's a letter of a lady that after after the Twin Towers were hit in New York they would just they would watch she would gather the women in her building together they would watch mom on YouTube and they would they wouldn't even make quilts they would just watch it and talk about what they were gonna do when they could get mail again sort of thing and she write you know we get these letters all the time for these people at Christmas last year we got 250 Christmas cards from people that were riding to Missouri quilt Co you know like thank you for selling me so much fabric you're the best like thank you for teaching us when have you ever written a letter to a website like dear gmail I use you every day I can't get enough of you like it doesn't happen right like it just doesn't happen Joanne fabrics is not getting Christmas cards from their customers because they haven't bothered to create that experience they haven't bothered to go that deep with their customers to prove that they really understand who they are and what they're doing and care about them well we did we did and it shows in almost every interaction that we do were if any of you know Gary Vaynerchuk I I love that guy he's just an angry New Yorker but he talks about social media stuff and he he gives this this he has this philosophy of with any marketing it's Jab Jab Jab right hook right you you give and you give and you give and then you ask and most marketers cannot figure that out I mean you look at big companies they cannot figure that out even with us with our with our daily deal we write this big story and people follow the narrative and they like they like reply to their emails we have a daily email list that goes out to hundreds of thousands of people that gets almost a 70 percent open rate if you know anything about marketing lists like that that's Godley like this should not happen but every now and then I'll screw up and I won't send the email out like the trigger won't go I get thousands of emails saying where is my email and like I've never replied to unsend spam and said where is my penis enlarging I don't know you know like like you know I'm never thinking about what's missing in the inbox right I'm just like grateful that I don't have more email these people are they are adamant they are looking forward to it but they care they care because we care right because we're driving or we're worried about those multiple bottom lines sometimes I forget that I'm being video recorded sorry mom yeah what's so and so uh I mean one of the one of the we're kind of low on time did one of the other one of the last things that when I think I care to share with you guys that I think is kind of interesting is is this concept of source success right end up making it we a lot of times so so about a year and a half ago we went from our 5,000 square foot warehouse and we built we had to build this like 42,000 square foot warehouse we're now on our way to building another warehouse to continue to handle all of the fabric and stuff but it's we're literally I mean we're 220 employees now it's this massive massive operation in a town of 1,500 people and so we you know we we got in there and started working on on this new warehouse and my way of doing stuff is I'm like you know I'm sort of the John Stockton of startups I just trying to like work really hard even though I'm not that great and hopefully I'll know if oh sorry guys but but you know I just work work work and that's how I make up for all the other all the other stuff that I'm not great at well so this warehouse is coming and and I know that a lot of stuff needs to be built the the construction guys are working on their stuff I'm like listen just get me 90% of the way there I'll take the last 10% so we we order pallet racking and they're like would you like to pay for us set it up and I said no no no I'll set up all the pallet racking and so like I haven't done manual labor in years my hands are like pudding if you ever see and like I'm out there till 4:00 a.m. for three weeks in a row setting up pallet racking right and I'm just like oh my gosh this is terrible well then we got to about 100 computers that have to go in there and I'm like well I'm kind of the only guy in Hamilton that knows how to set up a network and a patch I'll do it I'll do it now I'm running cable and setting up computers then I'm building desks and I'm like doing all this stuff to try and get us ready to launch and I'm like I'm just running myself ragged in this thing and and then we write some new software to handle the inventories change and all this stuff and then we we launch we have our big we're open in the warehouse day and like nothing worked it it was kind of a mess man if you've ever if you've ever liked Bill I mean imagine imagine like it I don't know don't imagine anything the book we built this whole warehouse system nothing worked and and then like it I I was up all night or trying to get this thing going and and then I went and me and my sister Sarah take a picture in front of this new warehouse and I had to fly out to somewhere else and I was as I was going home I was writing this blog post on the airplane and I went and found pictures of Sarah and I my sister when we first opened the business right and we're like you know we're so excited so happy just like sheer excitement on our face the day we opened this business and then we're in the same pose six years later in front of the warehouse but it looked like somebody like punch you right in the gut you know we're like and and I and so I'm writing this and like I'm like this is you know I I'm like not having a very great stabled day at that point I give myself to mental breakdowns a year I was on number two and so I knew I was used up but I called her and I said I was like Sarah like did we make a mistake because I'm not happy like I was six years ago yeah do you ever worry about that did we not do it right like maybe we're screwing up maybe we shouldn't be here my sister was really smart she said I said no you know I like I think we're happy I think she said but but what's different when one like you know when when you know a newlywed couple and you take that picture on your wedding day you're like I'm so excited and then you get that picture four years later and they're like we're married we're still there and like it's good it's good it's good or then you like I'm pregnant I'm having a baby and then like three weeks sitting like we've got a baby and we're really happy it's here you got one we got you know it's not that you're not any less happy right but you sort of understand the cost that comes with that happiness you've associated that it that it's not it doesn't just come it's not just free and that's what a lot of people never see you know the people that are like oh I want to run I want to own my own business someday I'm like you do you because you don't know what this is doing to me and it's like people are like oh you guys are married you got it all figured out way to go way to go I want to be married someday that's so perfect that you like like people that are in a marriage like yeah all right it's good it's good but it's not it's not nothing right it takes work you're putting time in on this and so like understanding that we've sort of changed my world a little bit so far as startups go because we have this picture in our mind of what that success is and I promise you it's elusive I promise you as you go towards that that it's that it's fleeting and it moves around and so sort of understand what you're looking for understand what that what that feeling is and and make sure that it's worth it because when you when you get there you want to be able to look around be like yeah no I'm I'm definitely happy this is where I want to be and this is right so that's that's what I wanted to share with you guys today do you guys have do you have any questions or anything that oh we are going to have a Q&A session in 710 I hope you'll all come with sandwiches I know there was just pizza here we can't compete with that I'm sorry there's Jimmy John's sandwiches upstairs we hope that you'll that you'll join us okay thanks everybody thanks for coming now you

Channel: Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at BYU

Views: 105,538

Rating: 4.7865615 out of 5

Keywords: BYU, Brigham Young University, cet, rollins cet, Rollins Center, Center for Entrepreneurship, Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, Entrepreneurship Lecture, Online Lecture, Lecture Series, lecture video, lecture series video, video, Marriott School, msm, Marriott School of Management

Id: UFfNv0Fh-zo

Length: 36min 4sec (2164 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2015