Ariana Pareja - President & Co-Founder at Pareja Family Foundation | Entrepreneurship & Empowerment

How do you manage, basically, the dark side of entrepreneurship? Oh, man. Today, my guest is Ariana Parreja. She has over 18 years experience in entrepreneurship and investment. She successfully started operated and exited three businesses. She is an alumnus of the George Washington University School of Business and she currently serves as president and co-founder of the Parreja Family Foundation. So, quick back story, my parents were political refugees. I was the acre baby. I fell into entrepreneurship more out of necessity and then, an age girl really want a pair of my kids. And I see $32.99 on clearance. So, I get excited. I go home. I get my report card out. I put it on my poster board and I pitched my dad as to why he should buy me these shoes. Did you get the shoes? What did you learn raising money? Gosh. Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. Now, if you enjoy success story, you're going to love some of the other podcasts in the podcast network. One of them, or one of my favorite, is the hustle daily show. It's hosted by four dynamic hosts, Zachary Crockett, Jacob Cohen, Rob Litters, and Julia Bennett Ryla. Now, they speak about a ton of different engaging offbeat business topics, tech topics. One of the most recent ones I tuned into was their episode about Amazon pausing HQ2. And I can assure you, it's all informative, but it's a blast to listen to. They cover a ton of different topics. They covered the rising cost of dating, AI news, America's obsession with Air Fryer's Trust Me. You do not want to miss it on this show. It's a perfect way to keep up on the latest news while enjoying light-hearted comedic takes, entertaining spins on things. So please subscribe to the hustle daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today, my guest is Ariana Pereja. She has over 18 years experience in entrepreneurship and investment. She successfully started operated and exited three businesses. Her expertise lies in recruiting, training, and growing enterprise sales teams while maximizing margin and reducing cost of acquisition. She is an alumnus of the George Washington University School of Business, and she currently serves as president and co-founder of the Pereja Family Foundation. The foundation is dedicated to providing disadvantaged women and minorities with a career in tech. Now, as a mentor for the venture mentoring team and score.org, Ariana is committed to fostering the South Florida start of community. Her extensive knowledge and experience has led her to speak at renowned industry conferences and establishments such as DevCon, consensus, ITExpo, and top universities. She shares her insights on technology, entrepreneurship, and fundraising, and also serves on the board of minority-led startups. Yeah, so I can't pinpoint one thing, but what I can share is four lessons that I learned in early in childhood that really set me up to who I am. So, quick back story, my parents were political refugees, I was the anchor baby, and I fell into entrepreneurship more out of necessity. So, I'm in second grade, I come home from school, and my mom opens my book bag, and there's just a lot of cash, and she's like, what is this? And what it was was that I was purchasing four cookies for a dollar from the gas station in the morning, and then during lunch I'd walk around, and I'd scout to see who had a healthy packed lunch, and I was selling these cookies for a dollar each or two for five. And that's when I understood the power of supply demand, and then teenage girl really wore a pair of my keys, right? And I see $32.99 on clearance at Marshalls. And so, I get excited, I go home, I get my report card out, I put it on my poster board, and I pitched my dad as to why he should buy me these shoes. $32.99 shoes at Marshalls? You're pitching your dad? They're on clearance, I'll get better grades in PE, the other girls won't tease me, so I'll concentrate on my work, and he goes, you know what kid? Okay, get in the car, let's go. And that was the moment I understood the power of a good pitch. And so, we're driving, and we get to the shopping center, and I look up, and I don't see Marshalls. I don't see footlocker. I see pay less. I don't know if you have pay less, and can we have pay less? I know what pay less is, and they don't have like the best of the best of the best there either. No, and so, like any sensible teenage girl, I went into a full on meltdown publicly, and that's when I understood the power, I went, you know, of handling rejection, right? The important side. Why did your dad bait and switch you? It was my dad, so the next morning I wake up, and I'm like, you know what? My pitch wasn't the problem, my dad was the problem. And I went, I knocked on every single door, and then entire shopping center, including pay less, and I pitched them on why they should hire me, so that I could get these shoes. And that was the day that I understood the importance of persistence. Did you get the shoes? No, you know, I got the job, of course, but I did not get the shoes, because when I went back to Marshalls, it was already sold, and I was too foregold to go to footlocker and pay full price. I love that. You know, as you go through your story, a lot of great, oh, that was three. Well, yes, no, that was four, so, so supply and demand, the power of a good pitch, handling rejection. Oh, sorry, in persistence. And then persistence, but that led me into, so after high school, I got into real estate, and I actually met my husband at a deal, a closing a deal. And shortly after, we decided to move in together personally and professionally. And when we moved in together professionally, it was into this 2000 square foot scrappy little office that I like to call the Pareha incubator. And it was, the reason why I call it that is because we were running so many different companies simultaneously out of this one office. We had an event management company that was named number one in DC by Condon Nass with government contracts that I later sold to a competitor. We had a real estate team. First company that you sold? Yes. Then we had a real estate company that was named by Kellewames as the number one producing team in the world. We were constantly, you know, featured on Wall Street Journal for our production. We did 4,000 transactions over a billion dollars of closed business sold that to Compass in 2017. Then we had Washington Capital Partners, which we started with our best friend, Danny. And that went on to do great things. It is the largest private lender in the mid-Atlantic that has, they did last year, 380 million in loans originated. 1.7 billion cents its inception and about 25 million a year in revenue. And then of course, Remind, Remind, which was our tech company that also started out of this incubator. And that was the tech company that was to improve the daily workflow life of a realtor. There's over a million realtor that have access to the platform. While we raised over 48 million in venture capital, sold that to a conglomerate of four of our customers in October of 2021. And on top of all these different companies, in which by the way, there was definitely some in there. And that incubator that failed miserably, that you'll never see on my LinkedIn. I was going to say, because it sounds like you go into real estate and then you find your husband and then all of a sudden, like you're just rolling out companies like it's nobody's business. But that's not really the case. Like there's always a lot of success, but a lot of failure too. Oh. So I mean, what do you think? I'm also curious just to sort of unpack your state at that point in your life. What do you think led to the successes? Because you didn't, that you have corporate experience together? No. What was the business acumen that made you successful? It was just grit. That's, I mean, both of us, we were just, it was just grit. It was just grit. Like, let me try this. I feel so what? I get up and I try again. I try another company. It fails miserably. So what? We get up and we try again. It was just a constant effort, constant effort. And we both worked like 100 hours. So you were selling homes or you were. So. Releasing and what capacity to like sort of fund some of these as well and try to understand. Okay. So the bulk. So there was more to the story. So in. On top of all the different businesses that we were owning, we were principles and over 100 real estate deals. 68 of those properties were just me, my husband and our business partner, Danny, and then the rest we had outside investors. But what we were doing. So in 2008 timing is everything. 2008 was a big crash. 2010 is really when you started to see all the good deals hit the market. And so we were purchasing properties for about 26280, putting 100K into it. And then listing it back onto the market for 500K with a four to six month turnaround time. About 30% spread. And like, I like doesn't even exist anymore. But the timing on that was incredible. And so we learned a lot through that process. We learned that there wasn't that many private lenders in the area. Aside from just a couple guys that were extremely unprofessional and you call them, they just hang up. And so that that kind of idea spun what. So you solved the problem that you were experiencing yourself. Yeah, it was always like about solving problems. Like in the same with Remind, we were trying to solve a problem with Remind. And that was that we couldn't get data all in one place. So if you're a realtor in the United States, you have access to what's called an MLS. And the MLS is where you list and sell properties. But you have to go to several different platforms just to gather data. So we were trying to solve this problem of with Remind of getting better access to data. And so we called CoreLogic in Black Knight, which is the two largest data providers in the country. And we said, okay, we want data on these counties that we were servicing. And they told us a number that would like making one throw up. Okay, we can't afford that. We were doing okay, but not that good. And so our business partner at the time, he found out that Restly, which is owned by Zillow, was having this 24 hour hackathon. And so they went with their two programmers. And whoever won this 24 hour hackathon, would have an open API to all the public record data in the country. That's huge. That's enormous. Of course. Yeah, exactly. So we actually won the hackathon. And so the panel of judges for this hackathon were, you know, it was like the number two guy at Zillow, there was Alex Perillo was out there, former CEO of Realogy, some of their MLS figureheads. And came back, that was November of 2015. And it was like, okay, so this is pretty cool. This is pretty big. Let's show it to a couple different companies. And again, so we still had our real estate team that was highly producing. And that was cash flowing, a lot of these other businesses, because Washington Capital Partners didn't turn a meaningful profit for the first four years. And so, you know, we showed it to Heller Williams. And they were like, okay, you want to buy it. And showed it to Realogy. Okay, this is interesting. We made one of buy it. And so that was when we were like, okay, this is a huge opportunity. One, two, is this something that we want to just sell to one company? Or do we want to level out the playing field and let every realtor have access to this, regardless of what brokers are with? And so that opportunity kind of set the tone as to why we sold all these other companies and kind of try to focus on Remind, because we saw that as like the big picture. And so, to go on from that, you know, we built our MVP, which by the way, we did not take a single dollar outside capital until we had, let us say, three letters of intent and we had put in $650,000 of our own money into it. So, you know, nowadays I do a lot of mentoring for startups and whenever I see a founder pitch something and they don't even have their MVP built out, their first prototype, I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, if you can't do that, why are you here asking for funding? Like, it blows my mind when I see that. So I want to ask you something on that point, because that's a very interesting conversation. So when somebody is earlier on than you were, because there's, you were making good money and you were working and operating in an industry for a while and you saw a pain point and you saw the pain point in the industry that it was more or less a legacy industry. Like, that's my favorite version of entrepreneurship, because your success rate is so much higher than if you don't know an industry and you're trying to solve for a problem as an industry outsider. It's a very difficult thing, but if you're an industry insider, those are the most successful entrepreneurs. I'm sure if you look at the data, it's like set of like, what is it, the classic 10% win rate or success rate and a 90% failure rate, it's probably inverse of that or something akin to that, right, because you really know what you're solving for. Not all entrepreneurs can put in 650,000 dollars into their own MVP either, right? So when somebody comes to you, how do you help them? If they are super ambitious, they're graduated or maybe they're working their first job, they're making a little bit of money, but they obviously don't have, you know, half a million or more. And they're asking, you know, for seed round or friends or family, angel check, whatever it is. I have my opinions about how to deal with that. Yeah, yeah. But how would you suggest they navigate? You know, find a co-founder that can put some money down. I mean, find a co-founder that can put some money down, raise it, figure it out, go get three jobs, like get a part time job with a high commission opportunity potential, figure it out, like, that's just my opinion. I know there's several incubators out there that, that's just my opinion. I actually don't disagree with you. I would also say an added point is, if you're a non-technical co-founder, find a technical co-founder, and then they can actually build it for no cost and just equity. And then I mean, like, you can go to, like, I think why a co-founder has like a co-founder matching resource for non-mistake. And there's like a few other ones like that. But I actually agree with you. I just don't think people are, they don't know where to find the proper help to build something. So then they default to give me some money to build something. I don't even know if it works yet. Yeah, and that's just... And then your valuations are going to be shit. It's going to be a toss-per-relation with the VC. It's going to be very bad. It's going to be very bad. And the fact of the matter is, it's like, if you can't even do that simple step that you've just mentioned of finding another team member to bring on the team, get a little some equity to have them build it out. If you can't do that simple thing, how are you going to solve all your other problems? That's fair. That's a valid point. Yeah, that's a very valid point, because there's going to be a lot of them. A lot of problems. Okay, so let's talk about... I mean, there's a lot of different things we can go into. I think that like the last thing that you sort of spoke about is exiting your last business. And I think that's it. And we can talk about the growth and all the different things that you sort of teach over to people now. But I mean, that was the most relevant point in your life that you've dealt with more or less recently. So let's talk about your own personal journey in like growing, scaling, exiting a business. What are just some thoughts on how to prep your business for an exit? What are the things you should think about when you're exiting? Are you even happy with how you've gone through your various eggs or the things that you would like do differently if you had the chance with any of the businesses you sold? Yeah, I think when it comes to selling your business, you really have to ask yourself three major questions. And the first one is, why? Why are you really selling your company? Is it because you're burnt out? Is it because you're bleeding money? Is it because your co-founders pushing you out? Is it because your investor wants you out? Is it because your biggest customer is basically saying, I'm tired of paying this invoice every month. You've been expensive. I just want to buy you and just own your tech. So figure out the why. And I know you've interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs. And I'm sure there have been entrepreneurs on this show that have said, you know, I regretted selling my company. Because now I'm bored and I don't know what to do with myself. After the event, yeah, for sure. After the event, exactly. Because the reality of it is you don't know what you're going to do after. And in that moment, you're so burnt out that you just start like, I just want to sell it. But if you have a good operating business and it is cash flowing and you're burnt out, that's not a good reason to sell your business. That's a good reason to take a break. That's a good reason to go. Maybe, you know, vacation for five, six months, find someone to run the day-to-day of it, add it to your, just think of it as your investment portfolio, give them, whoever you hire, some equity. And that's a good reason. But the second thing that you want to think about is who, right? Who are you selling your company to? You need to always think about if you are going to exit, like what is the most, what makes the most sense strategically? You know, a lot of people, especially with service-based businesses, they'll get purchased by a competitor, right? And that's hard for an entrepreneur because the last ten years they've been at war with this person. But if they look at who makes sense to purchase them, it's probably going to be a competitor. And that's hard to deal with your ego, but it could be. And then the other question of who is if you're going, like for example, you have a tech startup and now you want to exit, finding the right investment banker makes all the difference, right? Because you want to go after and find, and start to build a relationship with investment banker way before you even start to think so, so that when you get to that process, they have your best interest. I mean, obviously, they're always going to have your best interest, they're professional. But you want to go after and find that investment banker that has sold companies like yours and a multiple that you want, right? That's smart. Now. And then when? Yes. And then, well, I was going to say one other point too, because that's, it's good advice, but it's counterintuitive to what a lot of people teach entrepreneurs, which is when you're building something, build it to sell, right? And then have some sort of strategy in mind so that if you're taking on money at any point, an investor understands where your vision for the company is. So does that advice change if you're taking on investor money? No, that that, I mean, yes and no. Yes, I mean, obviously, if you're taking on investor money and you have a growth-based business, your plan is to sell. I'm of the mentality that I've done service-based and growth-based businesses, you know, small SMBs. It's a different kind of exit. But it plays into, it actually plays into your mindset about taking on money as well. So you're not even taking on money unless you are trying to transition into a growth-based business where you're hitting monumental milestones. Absolutely. So that's the whole difference between everyone who, it's so confusing because there's so much conflicting advice. Yeah. There's people, I mean, you listen to the sharks on Shark Tank which are all very successful entrepreneurs in their own right. And I think Damon John is always about OPM, like other people's money, other people's money, never use your own money. So you hear that and you're like, shit, well, I have to find other people's money because I don't want to burn my own money. And then there's another way to build the business. So I think it's hard because there's so much, and entrepreneurship is already hard as hell already. Yeah. And there's all these different conflicting ideas because you're right and he's right in different circumstances. And it's up to the entrepreneur to sort of figure out who's right when and who's right for them. And that is the most confusing thing. So if you were going to, if I was an entrepreneur and I was looking at all these different pieces of advice and Damon John on Shark Tank saying use OPM and then you're saying actually build an MVP and then take on money if you have to grow. How does that entrepreneur understand what they need to do? It depends on their industry, depends on their business. So for example, if you're going after consumers, you need to raise them because going after consumers is really hard, especially on a national scale. You're not going to be able to strap that. I mean, you could, but it would be really, really hard. And then, you know, if you're going up against publicly traded companies, for example, like in our case, we could not, we didn't have the luxury to bootstrap Remind. Like our competitors were publicly traded companies that were coming after us every single day saying that they're going to squander us. And so the only thing that set us apart was speed. That was the only thing that I could really set us apart at that time. And so we needed to raise capital so that we could hire the best the best in the country and just deploy quicker and faster than everybody else. And what did you learn? That was the only business you ever raised for, correct? Outside of literally buying properties. Yeah. So what did you learn raising money? Oh, gosh. That's the first thing that even like before we reported, I was saying how we met, was that a tech conference? Yeah. And that's the first thing that you mentioned to me because I was going through a raise myself, which I'm literally still going through in that, like it's a testament to how long some of this should contain, because that was what, like almost here and now. Yeah, that was an e-merge last year. Yeah, so it's been like an ongoing thing in my life. But then you mentioned like don't take on money if you don't have to. So obviously that comes from stress. Trauma, yes. It does 100%. So what happened? Or what would you do differently? Oh, gosh. Don't take such a high valuation. The thing about VCs, well, let me rephrase that. So the thing about taking capital just in general is that once you take on other people's money, it's no longer your company. It's everyone's company now. You don't get to act like a dictator anymore. And it's a democracy. And I'm just, yeah. So taking on VC capital as well is really tricky, especially if you've never done it before, because you don't understand how things work yet. And a lot of times, not all VCs, but a lot of times VCs, what they'll do, is they'll give you this ridiculously high valuation, and they'll give you X amount of runway, and they'll give you these milestones, and they'll say, OK, well, if you hit these milestones by this time, then we'll fund you again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they know that you probably won't hit those milestones. And so now it becomes this dependency that they've built. So you, as the entrepreneur, you don't hit these milestones, and then you have this value, then they're like, oh, well, OK, we'll give you money again, but we're going to take preferred shares. And by the way, we want all the board seats. And we want this. And they're in this position of power to negotiate whatever they want. And what are you going to do? What's your choice? You're either going to say, no, I'm not taking that term sheet, and then your lights go out, and you go bankrupt, or you just say, OK, I guess this is what we're doing, and you just sign on the dotted line, and you just move forward. So my suggestion would be, if you have to raise capital, angel investors in a way to go, definitely angel investors. Because the thing about VCs, they have so many people in their portfolio company, and unless you're that one unicorn, they're not going to pay attention to you, and they're not going to care to help you. And a lot of times founders think that, oh, if I raise venture capital, the second I do it, I'll be replaced, and they'll get into CEO, and they'll get really involved. Actually, no, that's not the case at all. They don't really get involved at all. That's more growth and private equity. They get more involved. And so, you know, if you're going to be doing it all on your own anyways, you might as well just figure it out with the angel investors that will play friendly when it comes to raising again, and not everyone's experience is that, but that was by. No, but yeah, you have to be, you have to be very careful, because some venture capitalists are professional investors. Yeah. And I think the one thing that I pulled out of front, you just said is they'll play onto your emotions about a high valuation, because you'll think as an entrepreneur, I want to get a high valuation, so I give up less than my company. That's the immediate entrepreneur mindset when it comes to raising money. But then that screws you in the future, because if you think about how much money you actually have to make to make those investors happy. Exactly. So especially at, I mean, if you look at the different rounds, right? So these are all like, these are all guesstimates. But I think for like a seed, it's like they're looking for like a hundred X, and then like a series A, maybe like a thirty X, and then like a series B, C, D, it could be like a five X, six X, ten X, whatever it is. But if you think about raising at, you know, if you want to make a hundred X on, on ten million dollars, like your company has to be like wildly successful. Yeah, you have to be very, very, very. You have to be like very, very successful, right? Yeah. So you have to be careful what you raise that. And then there's, then you have to do down rounds in the future. And you have to have a huge total of dressable markets really hit those numbers, right? That's true. And then also if you think about it, if you are raising that much, and then like that, that second term sheet is not as favorable, well, it's super time consuming to go raise money. So yeah, they're putting money right in front of you with shit terms. But like if you are a founder and you're raising more money from new people that you think are going to give you better terms, it's like a full-time job. Oh, hundred percent. And if you don't have money for an investment banker because you're trying to keep the lights on and pay salaries for another three months, you don't have the ten or fifteen K retainer for the investment banker that can go help you with at the same time, right? So it's just all around very stressful. I've never, I mean, raising money has a place, but the entrepreneurs that I know are the happiest have never taken on money. Because they have all their equity. Yeah. And they don't have the stress. And they don't have the stress. And they didn't feel like an employee in their own company that they built. So after you exit the business, and this is going to be, and we'll go back into building it and different lessons for scaling and sales and marketing, but after you exit the business, what is your, because I've done this with a few people, I did this with the CEO of Tiger 21. I had a conversation with Joseph Martin about life after exiting the business. So for you, after exiting the business, what is, what is the shift? What do you, what do you focus on? What are some of the realities that you're dealing with after selling something? Yeah, so it's tough. Because when you're in the thick of it, and you're exhausted and burned out, all you want to do is sell. And you don't, you're so exhausted, you're like, oh, whatever. I'll just build another company. I'll just be an investor full time. I'm done with this. And then, you know, you, you play on the beach for a while and you get bored. And then you realize that, hey, yeah, you can invest full time, but even that can get boring after a while, and consulting get boring after a while. And so, you don't really think about, well, you know, when you tell yourself, I'll just start another company. It's like, okay. But, everyone that you know, that just invested in your last company, is either still waiting on that return, or maybe it didn't like the return. And so, finding capital could be hard. Or maybe you don't want to do that again, right? But, also, you might not have the liquidity yet from the seller company, or it might not go the way you had planned and intended to, to start something else. And then, you're also in a different place in life. But by the time you start a company, grow a company, exit a company, and then, start your new life, you're probably in a different place with your lifestyle, then you were back then. So, like, I remember, I'd always be, like, talking to my husband, like, who cares? We'll just start in the company. We'll just start in the company. Well, fast forward, six years, my kids are a little bit older. I don't want to work 100 hours a week. And I know that, if I start something from zero to one, from the ground up, you're working 100 hours a week. And, I don't, I just don't want to do that anymore. And so, you really have to get, really fine night, about what you want to do next, and really think about different ways. Like, if you're, if you really want to just get out of that industry, some, some, I've heard founder say, I'm just done with this industry. I'm tired of it. I'm going to do something new. You can, but then, what are you going to do? Start from scratch with your career? You're going to throw those 20 years of relationships down the drain? I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot. Now, everyone is looking for the best bang for their buck right now. 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You're a different kind of person now. Yeah. And unless it's a really, really cool ones in a lifetime experience, you're probably not going to want to take a job. So, really thinking about kind of what you're going to do next. This is important to your point about like thinking about, do you actually want to exit? And do you want to actually exit? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, what are you really going to do? So, so let's, let's go into like what, like, because I know you've been jumping between things now. And I know that you've, even like just, you know, on calls you've mentioned, like, oh, I'm looking at this opportunity and this opportunity. And, and not a lot has stuck candidly since I've known you, right? And it sounds like before I met you when I moved down here to Florida, like, there was always something that you were working on. Yeah. And now Leo, your husband's working on something else. And he actually took a job, took a job. So, for you, what do you do? What are you looking at? What do you get excited about for somebody that, and I want to frame this as, a professional who has, who's killed it in her field repeatedly, and now is, like, doesn't have the same purpose that you have when you're building something. But also for, a successful executive that has worked in a company for a long period of time, and now they want to look at doing something different, right? So, they've been making, you know, three, four, five hundred plus for years, a C-suite, and then they try and become a consultant, and then they just don't know what to do, and they're, like, spinning their wheels, and they're very confused about where to take their career. So, when you've achieved that success, like, you have, or, like, some, because I don't just want to frame it in the entrepreneurial perspective, I think there's a lot of people that are also at crossroads in life when it comes to career. What do you do? Like, what have you tried to take on, what hasn't worked, what has worked, what do you get excited about? Where do you spend your time? Where do you want to spend your time? Yeah, so, right now, I mean, I, I, I saw a couple of different boards, and so that's, that's keeping me engaged, keeping me excited, and it's kind of like, sort of a way to date before getting more involved. But, I'd also say that, you know, my, what I want out of life has changed, right? So, my definition of success has changed. And, you know, when I was younger, I defined success specifically for monetary metrics, right? And then, when I got a little bit older, I defined success as recognition. And, when I got a little bit older, and I became a mother and I have kids, and I want, with every woman working with mom wants, and that's life balance, right? Which, by the way, it does not exist, unless you, unless you hire proper domestic staff, it doesn't exist. Even with kids, it's like, your life is not your own anymore. It's dire own, yeah. And then, now, I'm at a point in place in my life where I want to build impact, right? And I'm in a position where I can build impact, and which is why I started my family foundation. And it's, I know that businesses come and go, right? I've lived it. But my foundation will outlive me. And that legacy will go on. And my kids, regardless of what they decide to do in life later on, at least I know that they can work on that together, right? And I'm having an impact on the world. And so, you know, I, I'm still all constantly looking at different opportunities. Have I found the right one that has stuck yet? Not yet. But if and when that comes, that I get really excited, then I will take it on. But until then, I'm focused on building out legacy from my family. So let's talk about impact. So what does impact actually mean in the world of entrepreneurship and business? Yeah. So impact means different things for different people. But as an entrepreneur, you're impacting the lives of people you employ. You're impacting the lives of the people who use your product or service. And just being really passionate about that, it'll take you to all different levels and different heights. But, you know, for me, my, my impact for me is like, if I can just change the life of a person and increase their income, whether that's through our scholarship program or through our financial literacy program that we just launched with Miami-Dade College. And I could teach somebody how to fish, essentially. That is a generational change that they'll have within their family. That is breaking the cycle of poverty that their family line has, that their legacy has been, right? And their grandfather's legacy, grandmother's legacy. So for me, it's like, I'm just trying to get as many people, as many specifically into minorities, to become wealthier. And how do you actually accomplish that? So it's entrepreneurship, is it investing? Because there's so many different avenues? Oh, yeah, there's so many. And actually, let's actually describe the problem first. I think that's really important, right? So describing the problem. So, I mean, I can only speak to my own experience, but I'm sure, like I was very privileged growing up. I didn't go to a shitty school. I had smart parents. But even that, I didn't have a lot of financial education. There was no push towards investing, super-risk adverse, really no focus on entrepreneurship at all in my family. Talking about money is very taboo for many cultures. It is. So I can only imagine that if a well-off family did not have those conversations, people that do not have money or access to great education growing up, I can only imagine that there's like zero conversation about that at all. It's very stressful. And it's, maybe you said it's taboo, but how do we, what's the reality? Do you have like data points on, on, on, you know, underrepresented individuals going into entrepreneurship, building businesses, success rates? Do you have any idea about? Yeah. I mean, for sure, right now. I've had some conversations. Yeah. And there's like pretty wild stats as well too. And wild stats like women, they're less than 2% represent representation and funding. And I think minorities specifically Black and Latino is like even less than that. It is. And you know what? I've had a couple conversations. I had one, one woman, Julia Burstein. She's a, I think a CNBC reporter, but now she's written a couple books, and she like did actually an investigation into how much, like venture funding and angel funding, women received, and I can't remember the number off top of my head. Less than 2%. But it was, yeah, it was, but I spoke to another guy who was responsible for building a Black, a Black entrepreneur incubator. And it was, there was some stat like, there's only been one entrepreneur, one Black entrepreneur in like the history of ever that's received over a million dollars in seed fund. It was like something, that sounds crazy to say I allow, but it was something that was like holy shit that can't be right. But he's like, it definitely is right. And then if you look at funding of, of minorities underrepresented women and every other underrepresented class, like really nothing has changed. I mean, with like Black entrepreneurs, you saw, you know, for two years in 2020, 2021, you saw like a spike. Yeah. And then it's like, it's just right, it's like right fucking at the bottom, like right now. Yeah. So I speak to a lot of awesome people that are trying to solve for this. But it's like an exceptionally hard thing to solve for, right? Because we try and solve for it the way that, the way that we know existing institutions work. What I mean by that is, if I'm trying to solve for helping women get more funding or underrepresented minorities get more funding, it's okay. So how do we get more people on the board of this venture capital firm or this family office that's going to look at some of these investment opportunities? But that's to fundamentally change all these organizations that invest. It's incredibly hard. Yeah. So is there a better way to fix this solution? Like what are you trying to do, like financial education literacy? That's one way. But even in terms of helping women secure investment, how do we do that? Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a tough one that we're, I think no one has figured out yet, because the problem is, is the people with the capital just don't care enough to make those initiatives. You know, there's so many companies that I've talked to that they'll ask me, you know, as a woman, there's a woman of color, a woman of minority. What can we do to expand, you know, diversity and inclusion within our organizations? Like for one, you could start promoting women to see sweet. Like that, that's the first. But like representation really matters because what happens is, when there's a woman or a minority in a see sweet position or on the board, they're basically showing everybody else in the organization that, hey, look, it's possible. And they're also leading the example to everybody else in the organization that we should have, we should consider this more often. And very few companies are actually doing it. Anywhere real estate, which is formally called Rilogy, they're like the only organization that I've dealt with, because we deal with a lot of corporate employer partners for our foundation to get the students hired once they graduate. And they do such a good job with this. I mean, I remember getting on a call and it was like the most diverse group I had ever seen in my entire life. Everyone from the CTO, the CIO, head of people, like VP of engineering, it was all women or minorities. So is it possible? Yes. But I think it starts from the top down of having that representation in the first place. And to your point, I was going to actually ask you, like some of the things that you encounter, but you didn't even raise money for a lot of your businesses. Like you actually didn't go through the, you didn't go through the shit of having to always find VC money at an early stage. Like you had massive success. And then of course, yeah, if you put $650,000 of your own money into it, then venture capitalists is going to be, oh, okay. Well, not as I mentioned. So before we even approached the VC, we had already raised six million between friends and family in a private office. So we had already had raised six million. But your, your bar is like, it was so hot. Like it was insanely high. Yeah. Like that's not good. To say that the bar has to be that high to raise money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so when you're talking to, who do you work with? You work with founders, you work with individuals like in jobs, like who's like the person you work with most, who you're trying to like educate or help? So we have several different programs within our foundation, but you know, we do work with a lot of founders in terms of mentorship that are seeking Thursday funding. We work with, and they're typically already, they already have an MVP built out. They are come from a accelerator program, and we do that work with the DMT. Then we have our scholarship program, which basically it takes anyone who's making 50k or less. We put them through a six month upskilling boot camp so that they learn the skills to become an STET. And so a software developer engineers. Oh, what is that? A software developer engineer and test. Oh, okay. Got you. And so STETs are typically, you know, in the DC area, because that's where the school's based. In that area, you can get a job offer entry level, you know, 100k. We've had students get up to 120k. And so, yeah, so that's how we're kind of helping in working. And so if you're speaking to somebody who's maybe in high school, and they're looking at their career, what's the advice? How should they look at their career? How should they map it out? Is their career, who is underrepresented? And they want to, you know, they want to achieve whatever they can achieve. And you're going to give them the best advice. Is it become financially literate? Is it to go through a program like this? To learn specialized skills? Is it start your own business? Like there's so many alternative career paths. Yeah. If somebody can take on. So how do you point somebody in the right direction? So they have the highest chance of being successful in spite of existing infrastructure that doesn't support them? I think, well, first and foremost, financial literacy is important. When we were launching, well, we were about to launch our program with Miami-Dade College, but when we were doing the research, we had asked over 200 students, what is it that they would want to learn a continuation course? And we had different, you know, multiple choice questions. And the number one thing that people want to know is financial literacy, but they call it adulting. And so that's how we came up with our adulting course. And, you know, the fact of the matter is, you know, McKinley just put out a report that only 57% of Americans are financially literate, meaning they understand how credit works, they understand how to plan for retirement. That's only half of America. That's insane. That's insane. That's the only thing that's only half of us. And the report showed that it didn't matter of the socioeconomic status. Obviously, of course, those with a higher wage had, you know, but it's affecting everybody. How is this still a thing in 2023? It doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know. But, you know, when we had our, we used to have these brown bag paper lunches, once a month, with all of our engineers who were millennials, and they made very high salaries, and that was also their number one request during these, like, lunch and learns, like, how do I manage my money? How do I invest my money? So I think at the core financial literacy is the most important thing any one of any age should understand. And secondly, I would tell a high school student, yes, if you are very passionate about something, get granular on the skill sets, we actually had a young high school student take our program in the evenings, while she was in her senior year of high school. And so she maintained her GPA, a high GPA, and then was taking our course in the evening. She graduated from school. I think it was like June 7th, and then the very next day, June 8th, she already had a job at a publicly traded company. So that's awesome. That's super, super awesome. Yeah. I mean, her parents were extremely happy, of course, but yeah, I mean, so if you can get the, if you could get the education on the skill that you want to go after, but at it's hard, right? Because most high school students, they don't know what they want to do yet, right? No, and I don't, I mean, if you think about what happens in, what happens in high school, right? So you have a guidance counselor that's giving you career advice. And I mean, you know, guidance counselor is good for you, but do you actually know all the different things that somebody can actually do in their life? No. Like, could a guidance counselor have spoken to you and told you to build all the things that you built? No. Definitely not. No. Does a guidance counselor know how to invest? Like, I mean, like, like, let's be, let's be real. Like, these are the people. So I think actually I was thinking about, just as you mentioned it, and I'm like, why is there, why is there so much financial illiteracy? And I think, I don't think that it's, it's really gotten worse. I just think that the job climates change and what I mean by that is if you look to our parents and our grandparents, they had defined benefit and defined contribution pensions. Yeah. So you either had 70% of your best years until you die as your pension and you really didn't have to invest, because why would you, if you have 70% of your salary till you die? You can, obviously, but not a lot of people did. I know for a fact, because my parents are not huge investors. They invest, but they're not huge investors. And all very safe, risk adverse jobs. Dad was in police, and then he worked in counter-terrorism, and I worked with the government. He'll always make money when he stops working. He never really has to worry about investing. He wants to make more fine, but you don't have to worry about it. And then define contribution. That means that you have, basically, in a large enough company, you have x percentage of your salary going into it. And it's matched by the company. And then you have people that are basically investing on your behalf. So professionals that are investing into different things, based on your risk tolerance, right? So for a whole generation and previous generations, they never really had to worry that much about investing, because there was always pensions lined up for them. So I don't think that financial literacy was better. I don't think that our parents percentage-wise, maybe, knew more about credit. And I don't know, there's just pulling- I think also it was like, there's been a- But now you have to- Cultural shift, too, though. Like, our parents' generation, you got married and had kids by the time you were 21, and you bought a house, and you settled down. Our generation, not so much, right? Now, our generation is all about instant gratification. And I'll lease that Porsche or BMW, because I want to post about it on my Instagram. And it's a different cultural shift as well. I think that has constituted to the problem of- So you have like- It's like this problem, and it's being attacked from both sides. So one, there's no more pensions, people don't stay in jobs for as long. So I mean- Everyone's doing the gig economy. Everything's doing gig economy. Yeah. Yeah, gig economy. So you have no safety security. Plus, you don't have much disposable income, because you're wasting it on all this bullshit. And then that- both of those things are just squeezing people. And I don't even think that retirement makes- I don't think retirement's even an option. So if you're living paycheck to paycheck, and you have no pension coming in, and you're blowing all your money on dumb shit, which a lot of people do, like, how do you even think of retiring at 60? There is no retirement anymore. I mean, I'm not a big fan of retirement retirement and like the stop working, and don't do anything. And I'm pretty sure that's when you start to climb intellectually, and then like- to slow death from there on. I'm a big proponent of that. But besides that, maybe people do want to retire. Yeah. And no one's setting themselves up for it. No. So this is where the financial literacy comes in. This is where the understanding credit, understanding debt, understanding good debt, bad debt, how to use it to leverage- Just be understanding your 401k. I mean, it shocked me all the time when we would give an offer letter to an employee and they just had no idea what their shares meant. Like, what does this mean? No, it's very confusing. Yeah. It's very confusing. And not understanding that those benefits can make or break whether or not you take a job offer. 100%. So I think that actually, if I'm not mistaken, Florida is starting to mandate- I think that I'm sure there's similar programs like around the U.S. But Florida is starting to mandate financial education in high school. I think that was like very, very recent. Twelve states are doing it now. Twelve states. And I guess Florida is one of them. I just heard about it because now we're down here. So I hear about the things that are happening here. But it should be a thing. It should have been a long time ago. It's been the thing the entire time. Yeah, but no, 12 states have now rolled up. So just if people are listening, obviously some people are going to listen to this and they're going to say, no, I'm good. I don't need a financial education course. But other people that are listening could be like, actually, that's super useful because I don't know shit. So what do you, if somebody is actually going to go check it out and we'll link it, but what would they go to learn just so they have an idea of what they're getting themselves into? Yeah. So the date is for April 29th. It's when it starts and we'll have the registration up on Miami-Dade College website soon. But you could check us out and follow us on AppPrayHowFamilyFoundation on Instagram. I wasn't done yet. Oh, I'm sorry. How about that? No. It's all good. It's all good. It's all good. It's all good. Don't worry about it. You can drop this. I thought I'd, like, look at the time. I was like, it's been like an hour. No, because the clock is right. I told you that when we started the clock. I know, but the clock started at 12. And now it's 148. No, it's been like 50 minutes. Okay. Well, I know there's a couple more things. Okay. No, but tell me, okay, first just tell me what's in the course. What's in the course? And then listen, we'll get the Instagram socials anyways. You can drop them now if you want. Halfway through. Go for it. So what's in the course is that they will, anyone who attends will, will basically learn the basics and the fundamentals of credit of like, what's good credit, what's bad credit, how to, how to raise credit, how to leverage your credit, how to create passive income, like the difference between passive and residual income, and then just like an overall overview of how to maximize like your Roth ROI and your 401K. And yeah. And so if they'll, that will be out soon. And we're really excited about it. No, that's awesome. I appreciate that you're doing that because that's much needed. So no, what I wanted to go into because I just put some notes down here that I thought would be like good entrepreneurial start-up lessons, like more like tactical things that you can teach over. So I guess, I mean, your background is more, more in sales and marketing, I guess more sales and anything. I mean, you're not a tech co-founder. You're more on like the business side. So let's talk about scaling up a company. Good lessons for people that are just starting out. So you mentioned a few things, like you want to find out if you have product market fit, you want to find out what, you know, even like what's the tan, like what's the total address we'll market? You're selling in twos. You can understand the size of the opportunity. Good for you to know is not to remember also, you know, if you're trying to raise money. But for somebody that say, let's talk about, like the furt, let's go from, like zero to a million, and then like one to 10. Those are two pretty big milestones that are not, and then after 10, we can leave it to someone else to tell them about that. But like, from zero to one, how do you get your first few customers? What would be your strategy of somebody's building something brand new? Yeah. So if you want to figure out what your sales funnel is, they figure out how you're going to have, where you're going to hit your lead generation from. So if it's a, you know, it does vary so much depending on what industry you're in. Of course. But you look at it, you look at an opportunity, what is your thought process? Yeah. So depending on the business, the, figure out what can bring in the most amount of leads at the lowest cost. Right? So cost of acquisition, figuring out that piece of it. Because you could have 50 leads a month that are great leads, but if they're costing you more than what, you get out of it, then that's just a waste of time. And then, I'd say that, you know, really maximizing joint ventures, right? And doing rev shares. So that's low cost. It brings in high volume, right off the bat. And you could start to build some customers. So doing joint ventures with other similar, something that makes sense synergy with, synergistically. Yeah. So you have like, this is, this would be like the B2B version of an affiliate. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. So you identify, like, like, the major players in your space. And you're saying, we'll do a rev share on this. You know, you have the customers we want. We can fulfill. You're not going to fulfill on the product that we're offering. And that's, and you build these agreements so that you're more scalable day one, as opposed to, and we're talking about, I know there's a million different business models, I mean, between like B2B, which is, I think, more or less, what you were doing, then there's B2C and direct to consent. What the point is, where's the audience? Yeah. And how do you tap into an existing audience, so that you don't have to basically build that audience from scratch? Yeah. And that's more or less, how you get your first customers. How do you, and for somebody starting out, you know, what's, if you are a B2B company, it's a really smart idea, as opposed to, because you're not going to have money to hire a salesperson, so it's going to be you. Well, and you can, you can allocate shared resources with the joint venture. Yeah. Yeah. What would be a good deal? So somebody doesn't get, you know, screwed on a deal. You could rev split for a B2B product, that you'd be happy with. It really depends. Like, if they're, if they're bringing you, if they're doing the bulk of it, I'd say like, if you kept at least 15 to 20%, and they're doing all the legwork, like, throughout the venture, you're keeping 15 to 20%, I think that's a good start. Everyone, I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode, well, now, who here remembers those high school language classes that never really clicked? Doesn't matter if you're learning French, or Spanish, whatever it is, I tried to learn French in high school. 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I did define that early on. And you know, when you're early in your journey typically, you'll hire just whoever has a pulse. Yeah. Whoever's interested, whoever shows interest in has a pulse. You're like, so you're your friend, you're cousin, you're whoever, whoever, you're your friend of a friend, when really you should be hiring for people that are specifically good for that role. Not just because you know and trust them. And that's hard when you're building a company. Because when you're a startup, it's very hard to convince somebody that's very specialized in what they do to leave their, you know, stable company to come join your vision that you don't know what you're doing yet. So that's tough, right? It's easier to recruit a friend or family member to join you on that rocket ship. So I would say focus on the people and getting people that are really specialized at what they're doing and that fit to the culture of your company. And the type of culture you want in your company. Two questions off that point. Decide how you want to take them. But first question would be, how do you identify what that culture is? Or how do you build it from scratch when you are just trying to stay, you know, keep your head above water? Yeah. And secondly, the avatar of the person you hire is going to fit into that culture and or build that culture. Is that person, it's going to be a leading question because I have opinions on this. But is that person coming from, from experience? And the industry that you already have or is that person like a figure it out, growth hacker kind of person? Remember when like the zero to one phase right now we're starting to scale. So who is, because I personally think, and you can debate me on this, but I personally think every time I've hired somebody who's operated in like a Fortune 500, Fortune 1000. Oh yeah, I can't do that. They always fuck it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that experience is like too much because they have all these support systems in place and then they're not used to operating on their own. And they don't want to roll up their sleeves exactly. So who is the person? How do you, how do you find the right person that has enough experience but isn't going to be, like, ruined by the, by the team and the support they had in a much larger company? Yeah, so you don't obviously don't want to get someone from a Fortune 500 company. What you want to do is find someone that was maybe just like not even a managerial role, but maybe like a lead at their last company and they're just dying to get into that manager role. And so they have some, you know, big corporate experience, but at the same time, they haven't jumped that ladder yet. And by coming onto your company, you're giving them this opportunity of this title of director or manager and now they have that opportunity. So they'll, they'll roll up their sleeves and get dirty with you. I love that. And then culture, you mentioned culture, culture super important, culture is a big buzzword that people throw around too. And I think a lot of people have a hard time defining what that is and what it isn't. So as an entrepreneur, what is culture? How do you build it? What do you focus on? Who creates it? Who maintains it? What's that? Yeah, I mean, obviously the founding team builds it, creates it, and leads by example. So it's your behaviors that then the rest of the company looks up to. So if you're the type of founder that's in the office by 8 a.m., and you're not leaving until 8 p.m., you need to be completely open and up front when you're hiring people that that's what you want. I did that all the time when I was hiring someone. I was like, hey, listen, I understand you're at your nice, cos you job, but this is a startup. You get in around seven. I expect you to, too, and I would say that in the interview. And if they said no, I'm like, all right, then move on, because I'm not going to hire this person and then three months down the road, we have this issue of, you know, whatever. So you address those things head on. I love that. When you set the table for expectations, the initial interview. Okay. Of what you want. As you start to scale up, people are very important. You've taken a company from zero to a million dollars in revenue. Now, how do you take it from one to ten? From one to ten. So, I mean, that's acquiring other companies. It will probably be the easiest fastest way on. It's never been a, I've never had that answer before. That's super interesting. Yeah. You think about it, though. Like, if you're at X revenue and you need more revenue, you find a distressed company that makes sense that you could acquire. It's very smart. It's very good. It's very good. You know what? It's very smart. It's very good. You know what? It's very good. It's very good. You know what? You know, you're like the perfect kind of lazy. You know what? Because it's like, even when you start something out, it's like you just tap into, no, it's smart as hell. Like, you go into existing audiences, and that's where you bring your customers. You're not fucking grinding and like trying to find everything yourself. I mean, there will still be a grind. There's a lot of grind to it, but I mean, you want to increase your revenue by a company that's distressed, that's already selling into your market. And then all of a sudden you're adding revenue to your customer base and you're adding these things that, okay, you can get them yourself, but it's going to be so much more expensive, so much more time consuming. Yeah. You just did the whole zero to one. No, I'm actually thinking about. No. Yeah. A little bit. That's very, very smart. As you, as you grow, you mentioned a few things about, like redefining success in your own life. As you grow your company, maybe day one successes, metric driven, financially driven, whatever that is, and then it changes in the entrepreneur's life. How do you manage, like, massive scaling burnout, all the other, basically, the dark side of entrepreneurship? Oh, man. And, and, like, for yourself, was there, was there rock bottoms in your journey? Absolutely. And what did that look like, what happened, what led to that, overextend yourself, working to, like, walk me through, like, that story. Yeah. So, what was the saying that it's lonely at the top? Well, the reason why it's so lonely at the top is because you have no one that you can invent, too. And I'll tell you what I mean by this. So, a lot of times in the journey, as an entrepreneur, they'll be times where you're like, oh, my God, only have, like, four months left in the bank. And it's, obviously, that's stressful. And, you know, now when I look back and I talk to other entrepreneurs, I'm like, okay, that was pretty normal, meaning to go through. But, in the time, I'm like, oh, my God, this is roller coaster. And so, you have no one to vent to, because if you vent to your co-founders, that's not productive. If you vent to your investors, that's obviously not productive. But it should, it should be. Well, yes. Yeah, it depends on the investors, right? Yeah. If you, and you certainly, you certainly cannot, um, vent to your team members, right? You're a leader, you have to show up every single day, you wake up, you put a smile on your face and you walk into that office and you act like everything's fine. And, which can be frustrating, because then, someone will come into your office with this problem that's so irrelevant, and you just have to, then you're like, in the back of your mind, you're like, this place isn't going to be here too much of this work out, so yeah, I'm sure, we'll address your, your problem here. And, so, not having any of the vent to it, and for my case, personally, I couldn't even come home and vent to my husband, right? Because, that wasn't productive either. Like, there was a period of time. Why not? Why not? Oh, cause we would go through these downward spirals. There was this period of time where, like, I would cry myself to sleep, and he'd be the rock, and then the next day, he'd be like, okay, I cried, you cried yesterday, I was the rock, now it's my turn, and then he cried, and then it was just like the cycle of depression, not to mention, neither one of us were ever home. I mean, he traveled 190 days out of the year, I probably traveled 80 to 90 days out of the year. Yeah. We were, there were times where we were both gone out of the house, and our kids were just with staff, and we were both, like, he was on the west coast, I was somewhere in central, and I remember there was a point where we had gone four months without having a proper sit-down meal together, because even on the weekends, when we flew back to the house, we were still entertaining, we were still like, remember, we had raised six million between friends and family, so we were still, you know, having dinners with our investors, we were still giving them updates, and so we were always on, right? Not to mention, we still had these other companies that were still kind of running the background of our portfolio, so we never got a break, and so the other thing about success is the more successful you become, the more ambivalent people show up in your life, and that is extremely stressful, because mentally, you know how to deal with a good person, you know how to deal with a toxic person, a toxic person that's easy to detect, but at the ambivalent person, to some certain extent, they do care about you and you care about them, but when push comes to shove, you don't know how they really feel about you, you don't know if they're really rooting for you, or if they're just waiting for a moment for you to be vulnerable, so that they can stab you in the back, and this created a whole, like just, I'm just now getting over this, of paranoia, that I live from. I was going to say it sounds very paranoid. Yeah, it did, because... But what do you, so I even want to unpack that, because that's interesting, when you say that, when you say that there's these people to come into your life that are waiting to stab you in the back, and what way could somebody stab you? Let me rephrase that, not stab you in your back, but ambivalent people show up the more successful you become, because you are in a place of powered movements, maybe they want access to your role of dex, maybe they want you to hire them, maybe they want you to be their business partner in the next endeavor. So they're never authentically showing up to talk to you for you. They always want something from you, right? And those type of people, they're hard to identify, because maybe they do care about you, or maybe they're just around because of the position that you're in, or maybe, you know, you're their boss, and they have to be nice to you. And so, that mental drainage of trying to figure out, okay, do they really, like, are they really cool? Yeah. They just want me for something. They want me to invest in something. And so, that is very mentally draining. And so... And how do you find those people? Oh, they... I mean, it's... How do you protect yourself from those people? You know, it's tough. It's kind of tough to identify, but now I'm at a place where, if I'm looking at a business opportunity or an investment opportunity, I'll ask to go out to lunch or dinner with their spouse, with them and their spouse. That's right. Because how someone treats their spouse says a lot about their character. If they are disrespecting their spouse, their own spouse, the mother of their children, or the mother of their children, or the father of their children, believe me, they'll disrespect you too. If they badmouth their family members in front of you, and you just met red flag. I mean, you know, if this person is talking bad about their own family members, God knows what they say about you when you walk out the door. So, there's those little things that you do. And then, I mean, obviously, you're never going to be fully protected. But, I guess, some of the better ways to cope with all of these things that you experience when you become, to a certain point in your career, is to just find somebody that has absolutely no ties to your company, or to you, or to your anything. And that is the person, not someone from your industry, but somebody that you can just vent to. And that person may not have all the answers, but just a simple act of talking about your problems out loud can really help you. And you can find these people either at mastermind groups that are other entrepreneurs that are going through a similar thing that you're going to. It could be a counselor or a mentor, but just find that person so that because venting goes a long way. Do you suggest that person isn't your spouse? No. No, I'm saying it should be someone else other than you. It should be someone that has absolutely no ties to your business, so that they have unbiased, an unbiased ear to listen. I love that. That's really good advice. I'm now I'm thinking, you're giving me a lot to think about now. It's very good. Another thing that I thought was a very interesting point. And it would be good for, again, people that are parts of this show have been good for people that are just building within those people that are in very, very specific situations, very similar to yours, and have a spouse, and they're building things with or around their spouse. So I'm not even alluding to me. I mean, like, I am, but this is not why the question is coming out. So I'm going to like preface with that. But obviously you went through a super difficult time. I mean, not in terms of like your relationship but just in terms of stress. Oh, no. That put a lot of stress on our relationship. So how did you, I mean, I know he's still around. Yeah. So like, how did you navigate? Like, what did you do that allowed that to be, I mean, manageable. Oh, God. I mean, it was awful. There was a period of time that it was, like, Leon, I sense the day that we met, we were always rock solid in our relationship and our communication. But there was a period of time that all the stress that came with our last company that really put, and the fact that we just physically weren't in the same state at the same time, that it put a lot of stress on us. But when I look back on all that, I am so grateful for that journey because it has made us that much stronger. But I mean, being open and honest, like, yeah, we went to marriage counseling. We talked it out. We just consistently tried to put on our schedule date night. And then we eliminated things out of our life that was like a blocker. Like if there was something like a project that we were working on or investment that was taking up any extra time from our family life, we were just like, you know what? I don't care what the upside could come from this. It's a distraction on us. You cut it. And we cut it out. We took a break. Do you have advice for people that are single building and they're looking for somebody in their life? And they would love to have a relationship like what you had. But maybe past relationships haven't worked out. The spouse or the partner hasn't really understood the entrepreneurial person that they are. How do you find somebody that is okay with this? I feel like no one can really get this right. It's very lucky. The best thing I could say is work on yourself, right? Because if you're constantly working on yourself and you identify what's important to you, your values and the type of lifestyle you want to have, the more clear you will be when you meet that other person and you'll engage with them if they're also on the same path, right? So when I first met Leo, we obviously had very similar goals. But aside from our business goals, we were both very spiritual and we always both believed in giving back. He and I both were big brothers, big sisters. And we both volunteered. And that was not something that we discussed prior or we just both did that. We both had that want and need to give back. So when I found out that he wouldn't become a big brother, that was when I knew he was the one for me. I was like, oh my gosh, this is it. That was when I was crystal clear that this is a man that I'm going to marry. We had already been dating for a while. But that was when I was crystal clear. I guess always constantly work on yourself, know your values, know what you want. And you will attract the person that emulates that. Yeah, I love that. And if not, because there's, you know, maybe just work on things together. And when you're working on yourself, ask your boyfriend or girlfriend, hey, I'm doing this, you know, self-development journey, come with me and see what happens. No, it's good. And I like to touch on that because I mean, we can talk about like business tactics all day, but then all the other and silvery things that come with entrepreneurship that are maybe not discussed enough. So like the mental health and well-being, relationships, stress, burnout. Like even when then you become successful, people coming through life that shouldn't be there are not good for you, strained relationships with existing people that were in your life that now don't understand that you're in a new spot financially. And that could be also difficult as well. So all these different things that are never really discussed when it comes to entrepreneurship. So I just appreciate the input. Like a lot actually. Okay, so I would say we went through most everything that I wanted to go into sort of anything that we didn't go into that you wanted to go into. Um, looks at her. I don't know. I don't know. I didn't even see what you wrote down. No, no, we went through all that. Okay, good. Do you have any last advice? Like Flores yours? Any last advice for an entrepreneur or somebody who is like younger in their career journey? Um, what would you tell them? Face the hard truth instead of living in ignorant bliss. And what I mean by that is you know when it's time to do a round of layoffs and you're like telling yourself, no, no, I'll figure it out. We'll figure out the revenue. Um, you know when that business partner that you're thinking about going to business with has red flags. You know when that relationship is not conducive for what you want out of life. You know these things. But you ignore it because you have this ignorant bliss and you just you're hoping for the best. Um, you also know as an entrepreneur, there comes a time when you need to either sell or stop a company, shut down a company and cut your losses. You know when that's there. Just do it. Just face the hard truth. I love that. And I bet that if anyone's listening to this, like when you said that one line, everyone thought of something in their life. So that's what you have to do. Whatever it is that you just thought of when you heard that. Um, where can people connect with you? So now you can retell over all the socials in the website. And, and I guess because you have a foundation, you have this financial literacy course program. So tell people where they can go for all the different things. Yeah. So, um, so by the way, the course that will the, the Miami-Dade College, um, program that financial lawsuit program that we're launching, that is going to be online and anyone can log in from it. You don't have to actually live in Miami. Um, but it's, we will live you live on the Miami-Dade College continuing education registration site. Um, for more information that has been posted yet, but if you want to follow us at Ariana Paraha, A-R-I-A-N-A, Badeha, the A-R-E-D-A, on Instagram, I'll be posting updates as well as on our other Instagram account, which is at Paraha Family Foundation. Um, and then our website, Parahafoundation.org. Awesome. Okay. And last question, I ask everyone, after your journey, after your success, and your failures, and everything, what does success mean to you? Success means, success means to me, to have, and to accomplish, the goals that, you, in that period of time in your life, has set out, right? Because as I mentioned earlier, the definition of success will change for you, as you evolve. But, seeing it through, seeing it through, whatever that goal is, that you have at that time in your life, to see it through. .