Shakin' Hands
Welcome to 'Shakin' Hands,' the podcast where entrepreneurship meets fascinating stories from the most intriguing minds today. From proven business practices to groundbreaking ideas that challenge the status quo, Shakin' Hands' is not just about the handshake that seals a deal but about the shared experiences and values that unite us all. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned business owner, or someone who loves a good story about overcoming odds, Shakin' Hands' promises to deliver compelling content that shakes up the conventional and celebrates the extraordinary.
Tune in to Shakin' Hands' where leaders, thinkers, and doers come to share, inspire, and, most importantly, connect. Let's shake hands with the world, one story at a time.
Host: Jack Moran
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Shakin' Hands
Ep. 50 | Your Career Isn’t Linear. It’s a Playground - Ryan Covert
In this episode of Shakin’ Hands, Jack Moran sits down with serial entrepreneur and investor Ryan Covert to unpack what it really takes to build a modern business, and a modern life. From launching Tidewater, a next-gen private club in Charleston, to exiting multiple companies, Ryan shares raw insights on vision, team building, operational clarity, and personal growth. The conversation covers the evolving definition of success, the balance between strategy and execution, knowing your entrepreneurial type, and how to build businesses that align with your lifestyle. Whether you're starting from scratch or scaling with intention, this one’s packed with real-world advice and mindset shifts that matter.
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Host: Jack Moran
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Welcome to Shakin’ Hands, where we provide the platform for entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their stories in order to hopefully influence others to get out of the rat race and chase their own dreams. If you have any recommendations for guests or questions that you want to be asked, please don't hesitate to reach out. Anyways, if you enjoy the podcast, please like, comment, subscribe and share in order to keep the podcast growing. Otherwise, I'm your host, Jack Moran and this is Shakin’ Hands. If you're looking for business mentorship, I have a place where you can get feedback on your unique personal development and business growth challenges. Over the last year, I've brought together a group of impact driven thought leaders where we meet every single day to discuss psychology, communication, mindset, and business case studies. We have people who have made millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars, Harvard MBAs and new entrepreneurs like you and I. Entrepreneurship can be lonely. So if you're looking for a support system, please follow the link in the description below for some more information. The company here is called Tidewater GA. So Tidewater is a private club that's going to be downtown. It's actually just right down the road from here, by the bridge to nowhere. So right next to where the magnolia landing projects going in just about. So it's like this huge $2 billion development that's going on right next door. But what Tidewater is, is we're trying to kind of reimagine what the country club experiences and trend it towards a more energetic crowd. You know, you were talking earlier about, something that just kind of feels more authentic. I think when my wife and I moved here, we looked at, you know, you're trying to meet people, and a lot of people have moved here over the last ten years. And when you're trying to meet people, you're trying to find out, like, where's our place? Where's our people? We went and looked at some the different country clubs, other, you know, all these different clubs around town. And we didn't really feel like it was felt authentic for us. Right. It was like, okay, we went to Day Island and nothing wrong with Daniel is a great country club, but it kind of felt like I was hanging out with my dad's friends when we were there. So maybe I wasn't just quite ready for that. Maybe I will be someday. But I'm not there yet. Some of the stuff downtown felt a little more, maybe a little stuffy, a little old. So not kind of. We were looking for something maybe a little more contemporary, a little more energetic, a little more fun. You know, we have two young kids, and it's, You. I have a two and a half year old and a four month old, so we're in the thick of it in terms of being parents. But that doesn't mean that we're like, you know, calling it in and not looking to do, you know, not socialize, meet new people, build community like have fun, do things like that. Right. So, that's kind of where the impetus for this club came from is we're thinking about, okay, like there just isn't really a place for us. And as we started talking to a lot of people that our peers, other, you know, other couples, young families, you know, kind of people that are somewhere between the country club crowd and, you know, 22 year old and black and out on King Street, there's there's some middle ground there. Yeah. That we thought, you know, is kind of underserved in the market. And, when we heard that Soho House was no longer coming to Charleston, were like, well, that's that's kind of that gap, right? So what what what could that look like? So, we started kind of exploring that idea a little bit. And, we did some customer discovery. We sent out a survey to like, 50 different people, that we thought were kind of in our target market and said, if you could have a club, like what? What would it be? What? You know, how would it feel? What kind of amenities would it have, those kinds of things. And after we got some feedback on that, that's how we kind of came up with Tidewater. What do they come back with? Yeah, there's some interesting things. So, one of the things that has, has been pervasive in terms of events and is that people are really looking for like a healthy, active lifestyle. Right? So there's this whole thing, about just, you know, like if you think about the traditional country club experience. Yeah, it has golf. Yeah, it has tennis, but they're not really like, you don't think of that as being like high performance athletes, right? It's which so if you're looking at people coming from the other end of the spectrum, they maybe have been athletes or, you know, have grown up with going to the gym and you know, that that whole, you know, my wife drinks smoothies and, you know, she's very like into yoga and all that kind of stuff. Like there's a lot of people that are in my peer group at least that, you know, are interested and living like it's, it's like so cliche to say living your best life. Right. But like, they're optimizing their health, they're optimizing their experiences. They're optimizing all the things that they want to do in their life. And they're being intentional about that, right? And so, you know, that was one of the things that kind of stuck out was, yeah, there's a you know, I mean, we have a bar, for example, but we also have pickleball courts. We also have indoor golf simulators. And we want to like I think what we kind of glean from that is that these the pickleball courts and the golf simulators, and also we have Copeland Sauna, you know, some of these wellness components that that's really about like an experience we're going to meet other people and that it's about leagues and it's about tournaments. It's not about like going in there like, I was part of another golf simulator club in town. And, you know, you go in there and nobody talks to each other, you put their headphones in and they just go in and they just like pound balls. And it's like it's awkward at times. Like there's a lot of times there's no music on, there's no atmosphere. There's not there are no thought that's been put into this being an experience. It's just that this is like some place that you can go and it's basically a dry indoor driving range right through. And I think that driving range experience has already been reimagined. You've got type of golf right up the road, right? So if you're thinking about this like an entrepreneur, you're going, yeah, they kind of like hit on something there, but they're still missing it just a little bit. Right. Which is that the people are looking for this healthier lifestyle, but they also want the community aspect and if you don't have the community, then that's why people start looking at joining a country club or joining Carolina Yacht Club or, or the Harbor Club. There's all these clubs around town where people are just, you know, trying to find other meet other people. Right. And that trends only accelerating because of all the remote work that people are doing. Is this similar to other businesses you've done, or is this is like something completely different for you? The the only thing. Well, so yes, in a way it's like sort of like an amalgamation of all the different things that I've done in, in other ways. It's like something completely, you know, new. I was watching this video. I think it was, Tara was like a songwriter, and they were talking about, how do you like, how do you be creative? Like, what is creativity? And really, if you're thinking about, like, songs or music and stuff like that, it's it's just taking things that already exist and mixing them in a way that's sort of new and unique, right? Like nobody's inventing a note, right? The notes already exist. Chords are already there. You're just kind of like taking certain pieces and going, oh, wow. Well, if I blended this in a certain way when a new connections. Exactly. Right. So you see this with fusion, you know, cuisine, you see this with all different kinds of things that people, you know, sort of deem as like being creative or like interior design, like this background, like we've got different textures here that make it look interesting. Well, I don't know if you would have put some of these things together a few years ago, but now this is trendy because textures are all in, right? Right. So it's blending those things in in a way that's unique, that people see it in kind of a different, different light. So in one sense it's like, I started I started a youth sports business. That was my first kind of adult business, so to speak. And, you know, we we ran tournaments, we ran leagues. We did a lot of events and stuff like that. So there's definitely an element of that experience that comes with for this project. We want to do 150 events a year at Tidewater. So this is very much a programing, experience for people to be able to, you know, you can join a league during the week, you can do tournaments on the weekends. But we also want to do things like bourbon tastings and, you know, chef driven dinners and big parties and masquerade balls and fun, you know, kind of fun stuff like that. So I think a part of it comes from that business. I also had a bar in Atlanta which, completely different, you know, type of experience. I would say that I'm, you know, behind the scenes, not behind the bar there, but, kind of help to drive the engine that that financially drives that business. And, so we very much took a lot of the lessons from building that bar to the bar that we're building upstairs at Tidewater. So the the clubhouse is part inside, part outside. And, that experience of like, wanting to be at a bar and more like kind of a more upscale, but in a kind of cabana style, where you can be outside, you can enjoy the outdoors. You can. This is all goes back to this kind of like lifestyle that you're trying to achieve. And so we're kind of taking that bar or taking the club aspect or taking the, you know, this sort of events piece or mixing those things together. So, yeah. You said your first business was a youth sports business. How old were you when you started? I was 23. Okay. So you went directly into the entrepreneurial path? Yeah, I've. I've always wanted to be a business owner. I started my first business when I was, I guess 10 or 11 years old. It was called roller blades. And, it was, this way we would ride on a roller blades and go to people's lawns where we put our lawnmowers and we'd, like, cut their grass and roller blades. That was like the. Yes, we'd switch to shoes like I was gonna say, like, yeah, it was like in our neighborhood. And I just had a couple of lawns that we managed in the, in the neighborhood. I went to Kinko's back then, which is where you would like, go make copies. And we came up with this little thing and it was like a roller blades, like a little plan word of cutting your grass and, Yeah, that's how I bought my first car. So it was like a little bit of, it was a great experience of, like, learning how to do that and then like, getting a few lawns and learning how to manage that and being dependable and all those kinds of things. But, yeah, once I, went to college, started that, entrepreneurship and business school and was just trying to learn how to think about, like, how do you think about those problems? Like what are like what is what? I mean, I don't think that I really even knew what entrepreneurship was. I think I'm still learning, you know, about what it actually is and what the process is. But, I've always been very curious about learning about lots of different things. And, that's kind of why I think I was attracted to it. Yeah. What do you think? This is like a big debate right now? What do you think about college? You think it's, like, valuable for someone that's who wants to be an entrepreneur to go to college or, interesting. Yeah. So I think so. Another business that I was involved in, was elevator business. And, so after the, the esports business, I got you got a broad spectrum here. Yes. Yeah. I was yeah. I always joke, like the bars, the elevators. It's like I help people to get up, to get down. So it's. They are sort of linked. And actually, my role has kind of been the same in all those jobs, which is trying to figure out how to build the business. Right? It's all the stuff that you don't see that's the engine that drives it to grow. So you're more operational? I would say. So. I've done every job right. I can I can confidently say that if there's been a job in a business, I've done it. You know, when you're when you start as a one man show or you're, you're having to kind of wear different hats at the beginning when, when the business is growing, you know, I've done operations, I've done sales, I've done the finances of, you know, all of those things. So I'm kind of like, you know, because it's in all these different industries. I'm sort of industry agnostic in that I'm like a, jack of all trades, master of none kind of thing. And so what I always try to do is find smarter people at certain things to, you know, to come in and help me to, to, to do that. And we've certainly done that at Tidewater. But, I don't think I answered your question, which is, do I think colleges are as valuable? So if you if you were to tell me, you know, there's sort of like this, this American compact about like you go you go to college, you know, you study hard and that kind of guarantees you this certain kind of life. And I think to a certain extent, people are seeing that that's not entirely true. Right. So I think that's what you're, you're speaking to. I think you have to really think about what it is that you want to be, you know, so it's not a binary. I don't think it's a binary answer. It's if you're a if you're the type of person that you know is really interested in technology and, you know, you know, is a little more cerebral, maybe, I think college could be a good path for you if you're a type of person who likes to work with your hands and you like to build stuff, and you like to get outside and, and, you know, create things that way, that's maybe not the best way for you. You know, I've seen a lot of guys that came up in the elevator trade that, you know, they're making six figures. They have no debt. They're making, you know, all the money in the world, and they love what they do. So I've seen how that's been. You know, I think a lot of the trades are becoming more appealing right now because we have so few people, people, you know, going into those trades. And so as a result, the, the, the pay for a lot of those jobs has gone up pretty significantly. So, yeah, I think it's it just depends on who you are. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think like a lot of people well, I think the problem is, number one, at least in my own experience, like in high school, there wasn't like a great system of understanding your interests, right. And understanding like which path to take, I remember, like determining what I wanted to do based on like there like, oh, dentists make good money or like, software programing those. That's going to be a huge career where you're making a lot of make a lot of money. And like, looking back, if I had gone to college for computer programing, I would have been miserable. It's not aligned with my personality whatsoever, my skill set. I would have been a failure at that. My attention, you know, my ability to focus on a computer or like is, not good. And so to pursue a career in that wouldn't have been a good choice for me. I would have wasted a lot of money. And I think that's the problem with college right now is you're going in as an 18 year old like you're a kid and you're picking like you're taking on, you know, maybe $200,000 of debt, to go down this path that you're not even sure if you're going to pursue. Yeah. So I think, like, if you understand exactly what you want to do, college is like a great resource where you can learn a ton and you can, like, take in all these, you know, you can get like niche education on whatever it is that you want to do, but it's making that choice first before like jumping into I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah, no, I mean, anything that I learned in business school, you can download a Harvard Business Review and do those cases and read and learn a lot of that stuff. That's not really what the value of, of colleges. I think a lot of people, very, very much misinterpret that a college degree equals money, and that's not what a college degree was ever intended or designed for. College is about learning how to learn, which is a very important skill, but doesn't necessarily translate to money. Right. Like, there's a lot of things where you can learn how to learn, like what? It's like, I was watching this, documentary about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Very fascinating about, you know, how he became you know, this, this power, you know, powerlifter and the Mr. Universe, and then he becomes this movie actor, right? The biggest star in Hollywood. And then he becomes the Governator, right. And and they were asking him, like, how did you become all these things? And he said, I just very clearly pictured myself, you know, as this, as this thing. Like, I could see it very clearly in the future. And then he's just like, I just worked really hard towards that. But I think what's interesting about it also is that once he realized that he could transform his body, then he realized what he could transform his ability to act, or he could learn how to transform his ability to be a businessman. Or you can learn how to transform his ability to be a politician. Like those are all learnable skills, right? And that's what the value of a good education is, is that those foundational elements, it's not necessarily what you're studying at all, is that you learn that you can learn. Yeah. I've realized right now, like I hear this repetitive theme where people are having major difficulty, like understanding their path or direction, like, how did you define that path for yourself? And like, no, like this is like the lifestyle that I want to pursue and then stay congruent with that path. And like, what advice would you give to people that are trying to define that path for themselves? Yeah. Wow. That's that's a really deep question. I mean, you got to get to your why and, you know, if you if you have a dream that, you know, again, it goes back to how do you see yourself? Who are you? Right. And those are those are questions you got to kind of try on some different masks before you find out, you know, what they really are. And I certainly have I've had tons of failures where I've kind of you try something out for a little bit and you go, nope, that's that's not it right there. You know, the when I'm thinking about it's interesting. So I'm, I turned 40 this year. So that's a big, big milestone. It's a big number. It's kind of a scary number. And it's I was kind of like feeling a little anxious about it at first. Right? Because when I was turning 30, I also kind of it was a it was a similar thing where and I think you kind of do these like every decade. Right? Like when you're 18, like you're saying you have no idea what you want to do, you're approaching that 20. It's like, oh, wow. I'm like, I'm a I'm almost an adult here, right? Or I'm some version of that. And so you're going, okay, what? I'm supposed to have this? I'll figure it out. And then at 30, I was like, wow, I don't I don't have this figured out yet. And then at 40, I'm like, okay, I still really, you know, I don't still quite have it figured out. And then I think you start to like, maybe just get comfortable with that idea that, like, you're going to have like a couple more versions of you and that, you know, like, here's a good example. So my grandfather worked at essentially one company his whole career. My dad had like two careers. I already had five careers, and I'll probably have more, you know, and I think that's just the pace that the world is changing. Now, what I've even though my career has changed, what I've found is that there's certain things about myself that I now know to be true. And so I only do the things that I know that I'm good at, and I focus on the things that I like doing because I can do the other things. But as soon as I can pass those off to somebody else that likes doing those other things, that's the best thing for the, you know, for the business. It's the best thing for me personally. We use this, this software called the Predictive Index. Culture Index is a similar one. But it's it's sort of like the Myers-Briggs, but it's a it's more helpful in a job scenario, and it helps to kind of it's like shorthand for helping people to understand what kind of person, what type of work they like to do. They make what's it called? It's called the predictive index. I love Myers-Briggs, I'll have to check it out. Yeah. So I would say, I think there's some data. It's something like, you know, 70% of the Myers-Briggs information that you're going to have is kind of a good picture. This is more like 90%. And the reason why it is more effective is because in Myers-Briggs, you have to pick an answer. In this one, it's a free word association. So there's all these words that you can pick and you go, these are the words that are me. You can pick zero words or you can pick wow, that's really interesting. So it really changes in terms because like sometimes in Myers-Briggs you're like, nothing. None of these are really the right answer, right? But you have to pick something, right? So that's part of the reason why it works better. And, it's something that I do with anybody that I'm gonna go to business with. Now. It's something that I do with anybody we're going to hire. It's something I like to do even with, like, vendors or like, Really? Well, I sent it to our architect and our, interior designer because I wanted to understand how they think. And there's different kinds of people. So you have people that are like that are visionaries, right? Those are people that think at the macro level. So it's like they can see the big picture. Now you try to put that person into the weeds. They're not going to they're not going to be that happy. Right. There's but then there's people on the other end of the spectrum, right. They're very good with the details. They cross the T's and they dot the I's. I'm like a simple example of that is like most entrepreneurs, if you were to ask them to draw like a, if you had a bunch of crayons on a, you know, an, a pic, like a picture that you're going to color in, right? An entrepreneur like, might pick up the green and Carl color a little bit, put it back down, grab a red, draw a little bit, pick up a blue, whatever. Whereas somebody that's more detail oriented, more precise, they're going to finish all the red spots and they're going to be very careful. They're going to take their time and they're going to fill in all the red. And then when they're done with that, they'll put that down. And if somebody was like, hey, I need you to do the blue thing right now, I'll be like, no, no, no, I'm still working on the red thing. I'm like concrete sequential, 100%. So they work in a linear fashion. Whereas like, you know, you're almost like A.D.D. when you're not sure, like, I will work on 10 or 20 different things and then I'll circle back around. I'm just kind of like pushing everything a little bit at a time. So if if you don't know that about yourself, which one you are, that really impacts what kind of career you should go into. If you're linear and precise, you should be an accountant. You should be a, you know, a lawyer. You should be something where you can. You're going to do deep work. You're going to focus much trying to distract you. No, no, no, I need to finish this. I need to do it correctly and I need to do it perfect. Right. Whereas, you know, with a with an entrepreneur, it's the opposite. I need to fill as fast as possible. I want to have. All right, that doesn't work. Boom. Switch change. Go to the next thing. Right. And so those those are the kinds of insights you can get from doing something like that. So there's sort of this visionary thing, there's this idea of being more detail oriented. Then there's this other concept which is like more of a glue person. So we, you know, you talk about like on sports teams, there's glue guys, you know, like all this guys, you know, oh, it's such a good camaraderie. Yeah. Yeah. He's a rah rah guy. Everybody loves him. And he might have sort of like he's he's the rebounding guy. He plays good defense. You know it's stuff like that. You need glue people too. So there's there's the engine that pushes the, the, the the ship. Right. There's the gas. Somebody is like push and push and push and push and and then there's somebody that's kind of checking on everybody. That's a glue person here. You okay? Is everybody good? Has anybody talked to the customers? Everybody happy? Kumbaya like all that good stuff. And then you need other people that are going, hey, do we bring enough water? Are there any holes in the boat? Did anybody, you know, call ahead to make sure there's a reservation? It's people. Hey, let's slow down a little bit right. But in order for your team to really be, you know, strong, you need to have all three of those elements. And if you are able to get that under a team, that's when you see magic happen, right? That's when the some of the part starts to, you know, become greater. That's super interesting. I've realized like there's a there's where I've struggled is going from strategy strategy to operations. And there's sometimes like tension between those two positions 100%. There's like, how do you smooth it out and like, you know, keep everyone going in one direction and not have conflict between strategy and operations. So operations should be breaks. There should be break people. They should be telling every when you have a vision, okay, if you're the strategy guy and you're you're flying here at 30,000ft, they should be every day the bane of your existence cause they're gone. That won't work because of this. That won't work because of this. And you might get frustrated with that. Yeah, right. Because you're like, why are they being like this? You might even take it personally, which is even worse. Yeah, yeah. Now you go from, now you have relational conflict as opposed to task conflict, which are two, two different kinds of things, like task conflict is when you're, you're like, hey, what's the best way to go, you know, drive downtown. Why should we take meeting or should we, you know, we take this sort of take that. Well, that's sort of could be subjective. You might argue about it a little bit, but ultimately when you have task conflict, you find the best way, right? People? I say what I think, you say what you think, and then we go, okay, this is the best one. Yeah. That's different than relationship conflict, where if you are going, this person does not trust me to figure out, to get us downtown. Now we have got a whole different, you know, sort of situation. Right? So, task conflict is good when you have your gas person and your break person butting heads. That's what's supposed to happen. That's why you need that glue person to make sure that they're okay. You know, they kind of act as that buffer a little bit sometimes. Yeah. And they also then might be interact with your clients because if these two are yelling at each other, once they figure out what they want to do, then that glue person can go back to your customer, go, hey guys, this is what's going to happen. And they're like, great, thank you. Yeah. They don't need to know about all the, you know, how the sausage gets made. So how do you avoid the relationship conflict that that is or what causes relationship conflict? Man I mean is it ego that can be a big one. Yeah. Well, and also not identifying what's happening. Right. So like, there's a whole well, if you want to talk about ego, this idea that it's my idea if you say something is my idea, then it's about you, right? It's not your idea. We were talking I was talking about this earlier. When thinking about creativity. Like someone's thought of this before. If you're if you're seeing something and you repeat it to somebody and they say, well, yeah, that's cool. And then somebody else has like independently thought of that on their own. What you're doing is you're tapping into truth. You're not coming up with something new like it is what it is. Right? Like it is nice to be on a beach just because you observed that it's nice to be out on the beach, doesn't mean that it was your idea to go to the beach, right? Well, people have thought about this before, so that is a that is an ego thing and an ego. If you're especially an entrepreneur phase, people go, oh, I had this great idea. It's like, who cares, man, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. I, you know, if you're thinking about like, an equity stack and how to split up a, you know, who's going to who should get the other founders, how should we split it up? How much should we give to investors? How much are we going to give employees all that stuff? Ideas. We're about about that much. Yeah, right. Because it's only the execution of those ideas that actually bring and creates value. Is there a methodology for doing an equity split? I, had a chat, a while back about this. I, I don't know that it's a this isn't something I learned at business school. This is more just like from my experience, but really in, like, every single deal, you have three different kinds of elements that, you know, you might, might give value to. Right? So you think about it like a triangle. So going back to this kind of staying in this, this, you know, idea is you have money, right? So if people put money in, that's great. You you're going to need money. You need it now. You maybe you need it later. But people put in money. You can you can quantify that. And money is really just a representation of their time okay. So in order for them to give you that money, they had to give their time somewhere else where they were then compensated by with money. Money is time. Like there's that expression like time is money. But but it literally is. That's how we store time, which is, kind of a crazy way to think about it. Yeah, but someone, instead of giving their time, can give money, right? And they can get a percentage of the, of the pie for that. The other way you can do it is by giving you your time. Right? So maybe you don't have any money to give. That's what you typically would talk to about that. Like it's like for the founder, equity or it's like sweat equity, which, in a couple of businesses I've been involved in, that's that's how I was able to to get in there. It's like I'm young. I got all the time in the world, man. You know, I'll work late, work long, you know, figure it out like I can. I'll figure it out. That's that's the sweat equity piece. So there's there's your time. There's the money that you're going to put in. And then the other pieces. Expertise. Right. So a lot of times with expertise you're going to buy it. Right. You're going to go find the best person. If you were starting an elevator company, you'd go find an elevator mechanic that really knew what they're doing, and you're going to buy his time. But what you're really buying is his expertise right now. If he gives his time now, maybe he's getting some sweat equity, right? If he wants a salary now, we're paying for that expertise. Or maybe it's some sort of combination so we can't really afford you. You're the best. You're the best researcher in the world, and we want to develop a new drug. Well, we can't pay you that much cash, right? But we can give you some equity for our company at any time. So it's really it comes down to time if you think about it. And then what is the value of your time? Is it just is it just the cash in which case you're not really involved. It's passive. Is it your expertise in which case, you know, that really kind of comes depending on the stage. It could be marketing expertise, could be legal expertise. But all that stuff, all that expertise, those are things you can buy. Right. But what do you need for that? You need money, right. You know, and time. So so I see like a lot of people that like want to participate in the game of entrepreneurship. And they don't have money. First of all, they're they're young, they don't have a lot of capital to participate in the deal, but they've become like anchored by their bills and by, you know, all these things that limit the amount of opportunities they can participate in. How do you kind of get out of that cycle? And obviously you haven't really been in that cycle because you jumped right into, you know, entrepreneurs ship. And likewise with me, I try to always keep my expenses pretty low so that I was able to pivot. But that's a big struggle. That I see a lot of people having right now is like, they get into this system immediately where they, you know, make a paycheck off their first job or whatever. Then they immediately get rent and they get, you know, 12 month lease. So then they're eight months out before they can start paying this $3,000 bill per month. Like, do you have any insight on how to, like, get out of that kind of rat race and into get two jobs, man, I mean, I, I when I was learning the elevator business, I took a job working for Coney Elevator. It's the biggest elevator company in the world. Or close to it. There's the four big ones. But, I wanted to see how the machine worked, and they paid me to teach me how things work. And really what I learned is how dysfunctional they are. I was shocked to find out that a company that, you know, had 10,000 employees, was operating on a system of SAP that was from 1995. They were brutal in terms of internal operations. And everybody that works there had never really seen any other business because kind of what they did was groom their own and promote, promote from within. So they had no idea how far they were lagging behind from a tech perspective. I just as a, as a simple, crazy example, I had to I sold a repair of an elevator. Okay. So my job was to go an elevator, a break, and we kind of, with a mechanic would assess what needed to be fixed. Right, in order to get that to happen internally, I had to go on Microsoft Word, and I had to type out this whole thing right then. I would print that off three times. I put one to, the service supervisor, the guy that would organize mechanics, and I put it on this big pile on his desk, and he had huge piles, and they would just sit like a literal file on his desk. Then I had to put one in my file, and then I had to go to this filing cabinet in the office and put it there for records. And I was like, who? Who checks on these records over here? We don't know. No, that's not your don't ask those questions. Just make sure you give one to Gary. Put it in that filing cabinet and you put one over here. And I was like, okay, so how did the how do the mechanics know that they need to go repair this elevator? Well, Gary will get to it. And I was like, I was just so blown away because I'm, so turned for this here, but I'm an elder millennial, so I remember the world before, you know, smartphones and all that stuff. But I also grew up with the internet. So like for me, it was like shocking that they could not have technology to just make this happen more quickly. Right? It was it was it was kind of crazy. So going back to your question, though, which was how do you know if you're trying to learn a business, go take a job. It wasn't the best job I ever had, but I got I had a company car, I got, salary, I had health insurance, and, you know, I had to work, you know, I reasonably could do that job in 35 hours a week, which left plenty of time for me to do other, other things work, start working on other things. And I ultimately plan my. I was planning my escape, you know, as soon as I got in because I was like, wow, it's going to be pretty easy to beat. These guys like you think, wow, this is this big, huge company. They're going to be there. They're going to squash me because I've got this great idea. They can't. They're like a oil tanker. They can't even turn five degrees. You know, they're they're just on the path that they're on and they're, you know, just chugging along and they don't even see you. They can't they can't even imagine that things could be done differently. Yeah. It's very apparent to see, like, your unlimited mindset where I like, you know, presenting that problem of having, you know, the expenses tying you down, you instantly have that solution to get a second job. And I see that problem a lot, that limited mindset where people are like, I can't enter this opportunity because of X, Y, and Z reasons. But it's finding that, you know, that y or the one reason, to be able to pursue that. Well, going back to the predictive index, I think a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs need to be visionaries. They need to be able to imagine this very distant point in the future and then work your way backwards to it. And if you're not able to do that, you're probably not an entrepreneur. You might be better off. Maybe you want to get in that space, but think about what your skills are, because you don't have to be the CEO of the company. You could be the, you know, the CEO, and you're the best person at going. Instead of thinking 1,000,000ft in the distance, you're going to go, okay, what's the best way to do this ten step process? You know, and I'm going to work on doing things faster and more efficient. And you have a real knack for that. Like you like I give you an example, like somebody that does Sudoku, that's probably more of an operations person that bores me to death, bores me to death. But there's people that love it. I see to do it all the time. My grandmother used to do that. And you know what? She. She was an engineer. She went to Purdue. You know, that was the way that her mind works. She's like, here's this puzzle. So if you're that type of person and you want to get into entrepreneurship, go find a visionary who's going to be all disorganized. They're going to frustrate you, you know, every day, and you're going to frustrate them, too, because you're going to tell them all the reasons why it's not going to work. But you need each other, right? You know, I'm curious, what is the what was the synopsis of your it's called personality index or, predictive. Predictive index. Predictive index. Yeah. What was your, so my profile is called the captain. I've been captain on a lot of teams that I've been on. What? The captain is good at. So it's kind of like raiding you on, on a spectrum of four. Things are not good or bad, but, it's the first one is independence versus, how collaborative you are. So I'm very independent. You know, I can jump out into the, the boat, and we're just going to start going and, you know, I'll figure out where we're going to go. I may not even know yet, but I'll figure it out. Another one is how sociable you are. So, some people are more reserved. Other people are more, you know, energized by being around other people. I'm more energized by being around other people. This is fun. Like, for me, where if you were, again, maybe more of an engineering type, this might kind of drain your battery a little bit. You might need to go be kind of quiet after this. Whereas for me, I'm going to be excited today. Another one is pace of work. So I'm like, I'm super driving. I want to go fast. Other people are steady. If you're working on a nuclear reactor, you probably want somebody that's a little steadier. Probably not the best person for that, right? So, and then the last one is how flexible you're thinking is versus how precise you are. And so I'm a very flexible thinking. I'm driving, I'm sociable and I'm extremely independent. Those are a good profile for for entrepreneurs. They're pretty similar to the Myers-Briggs. Yeah. Well, this is so again, no, the Myers-Briggs and predictive index didn't invent this. This wasn't their idea. They tapped into some truth. Right? Right. What they're describing is something that's just true. You innately understand what I'm talking about because you've experienced this with people, right? It's just how people are. And, you know, if you look at, like, it probably has to do with like evolutionary biology, but like, yeah, we used to be in like groups of like 160 people. And out of those group we needed different kinds of people. We needed a blacksmith, but we also needed a chief. And we also needed, you know, all these different kinds of things. So I think people just genetically and probably evolved into this way where, like, you just kind of have these dispositions and having now having two boys, it's and nephews and stuff like that and, and coaching a lot of kids like I used to think it was like more nature versus nurture versus nature. But boy, I think it's it's a lot of nature. You know, you you can't really change who people are innately like. You can you can kind of work on the corners, soften some of the edges a little bit. But like if you're the type of person that wants to, like, go out on a boat and sail the, you know, sail the sail the ocean, the you can't just put that into somebody. Like there's people that are just built that way. There's other people that like to do Sudoku and it's not good or bad, it's just that you need to figure out who you are. And if you once you start to have that information, then you start to view the world very differently. You start to view other people differently. And that was a, you know, when I got involved in the elevator business, that's when I learned about this, this concept of, the it was called the Culture Index, which is kind of the same thing. But, you know, there was somebody that I was working with, and I in my mind, she was working against me. I thought we were, like, in competition with each other, but in reality, she was just kind of, helping to, well, she was basically cleaning up the wake of destruction behind me, right? Because I was just like a torpedo going through the ocean. But then there are all these little details that needed to make sure that they were getting, you know, cleaned up. And once I realized that, I was like, oh, wow. This person, like, they're trying to help me, but, you know, if you don't see that, that's when you get into relational conflict. So as the captain, what are the the strengths of that personality type and what are the weaknesses of that personality type? Yeah. So one of the things that I do is I leave people behind. So, once we say, hey guys, we're sailing or jumping in the boat, we're we're sailing off into the distance. I sometimes get so focused on that, and I'm going so fast that I start to leave the group behind where, you know, one of the one of the, the drawbacks to that is you're, you're called the, the absentee manager. So one of the things I've had to learn is that I'm really not a very good manager. Because if I teach you something once and you demonstrate to me that you can do it, I believe that you've got it. And I'm going to move on for. Okay, whereas a more glue type person is going to come back and check second time. Third time to the point to where you're like, hey man, I got this right. But so it's it's again, it's it depends on the situation. It's not that it's good or bad, it's that it depends on the application of those behaviors. And you're going to. It's not that I can't be the other way I can. I can be doting and and slow down if I need to. But that's not my natural disposition. So if, if I can just go and go and go and go, I'm just going to keep going until the people tell me to pull back. So what systems and habits have you had to put in place to kind of counterbalance, like your weaknesses? If and your personality? So so many. I use my calendar, I, I have, I have set so many alarms throughout the day because I get so engrossed in this conversation that I'll forget about all these other things I have to do today. I get I have like hyper focus as opposed to some people that like, you know, are all over the place. Like once I'm zeroed in, the whole world, like disappears. Yeah. So I have to set alarms, my calendar controls my entire life. Everything with my wife, with my family. I have a lot of different things going on. I use that as a tool. The other thing I use is this, software called asana, which is, project management software. I use that for Tidewater. I've used that for other businesses. If you have like a consistent process that you're having to do, even like thinking about our family financial plan, like kind of plotting out, what does that look like? Here's the goals that we have. How are we going to get there, like creating milestones and working backwards for that? That's a way for me to write down those things and, and organize those thoughts in my head, because otherwise it's kind of like, you know, sometimes I wake up at 3:00 in the morning and I'm thinking about ten different things. I have to go down to my office and I'm just like, I have to like, get this out of me, because it's been going on in the background. And I got I have this idea about, you know, we need to do this, we need to do that, and I have to get it out on the paper. And so I use those tools to kind of organize those thoughts. And then now I can share that with other people. So that helps other people to not get left behind because they can see what's kind of what the roadmap looks like. What about like managing energy levels like throughout the day and like keeping your you know what, maybe it's working out or good diet or like, you know, how do you manage those to make sure that you or what habits do you instill to make sure that you're performing every single day and you're consistent? Yeah. So my wife has been actually really helpful with this piece. She's sort of just a natural Yogi type person. But yeah, I mean, my diet, I've definitely been working on that in terms of just eating more whole foods, trying to stay on the things with boxes, staying on the perimeter of the, of the grocery store. And it's not 100%, but, you know, that that helps. We're going to bed earlier. Obviously, that's part of also just having young kids and stuff like that. And then, you know, I do try to work out, you know, pretty regularly and, continue to play sports. I play in a pickup lacrosse game every Sunday. Chase around a bunch of guys that are half my age and, still enjoy doing that. So, yeah, I think you got to have, you got to do those things that make you feel excited and, you know, cause you joy. And then also, you know, keep the motor going. Right? But, you know, I don't know, like, it's it's funny, like, I, you would think that I would have I definitely don't have that figured out. I mean, I, if I, it's like, yeah. What this is 40. What is, what is 40 supposed to look like? And and you would think that you would know you have all this experience, all these things. And yet here you are still, you know, stuck in some old ways of thinking, small paradigms where, like, you're doing stuff that made sense 20 years ago but maybe doesn't make sense anymore. So there's a lot of things that I'm trying to do to to grow and grow as a person, grow as a leader. But it's hard. Yeah. You've been obviously on this journey for a long time now. Like, how are you operating differently now than when you first started out as an entrepreneur? Like what? What things do you do differently now that you think are imperative to, you know, success? Well, I'll give you a simplest example is when we, we started the first business. I don't think I had a shirt on. So, you know, we were just, like, 23 year old. We're trying to figure out how to make a website. Didn't know how to make a website. That's I mean, it's it's like, you know, that's that's a it seems like a, I mean, it was a lifetime ago. So there's there, there's there's no comparison really to to thinking like, have that. So this is the six business I've been involved with starting and I've been a, a bit of first employee, but I've had, I've been in the sweat equity role. I've been I've been an investor. I've done it all by myself. I've done it with partners. So this time it's a lot more organized, right? Like there's a method to the madness. You know what you need to do? We need first thing we need we did this time is instead of building something is we went out and did customer discovery. Right. So we need to go out and talk to 50 people. We need to get their input. What do you want? And you know, turns out that smoking cigars wasn't that big of a deal. Now, I didn't necessarily think that it was right, but we had probably 25 amenities. What are the things that you like to do? It was a very clear curve. Right? People love the sauna and cold plugs thing. I don't do that. But apparently that's a big thing now. So we put one in. People are into pickleball. And what was interesting about that is that pickleball, for women, much more likely to play pickleball than golf. That was that was an interesting learning. So, you know, it's like now instead of, building something and then hoping people will buy it, we just ask people what they want to buy and then we build that. Yeah. Makes sense. I've been trying to do this with like I've been doing some, like, siphoning some money off, you know, or my distributions that come off my core business and to doing some real estate development in Latin America. And my business partner and one of my mentors kind of taught me that strategy, which is like, you know, branding a destination. Like he buys old cattle farms, oceanfront properties and then develops them into, you know, communities. Cool. But instead of, like, defining that community, it's like finding that audience or like, picking that audience and then doing the same thing that you're talking about, like, you know, kind of surveying them. And the most recent community there is a place called Playa Nomad. And he sold it to, you know, jiu jitsu coaches and then, you know, built this community and brand this community to jiu jitsu coaches. And so it was easier to perpetuate that community when you have this, like, you know, brand that's defined off your audience instead of like him saying, okay, I'm going to make this, you know, about whatever. And I'm trying to find that audience. I'm, I'm really into XYZ. So I'm going to build this. Other people are going to be into this too close to going the other way around. Who are the people that are super passionate about triathlons, right. Or whatever it is? Right? You know, they, yeah, jiu jitsu, their interests, like those communities, already exist. So then go surf, go find a community that's not being served and then do something for them that they want. Yeah for sure. Yeah. So it's just like an, you know, different way to go about it. But it's like not typically I think how people would initially think to go about things. But so there's you know, if anybody out there that is thinking about going into entrepreneurship, first thing you should do is you should buy the Lean Startup. There's a great, great books from Harvard professor, and it basically lays out what the process is to start a business. And one of the concepts that it talks about is creating a minimum viable product. So what's like the smallest thing you could do to test that? People want this. I was watching out, interview this morning, and the guy was talking about this, this girl who is in her dorm, or she was in college, which had this idea that she wanted to do, like, a close sharing, peer to peer thing where you could do this. And so the guy goes, well, what's the simplest way we could test if this is true? And he goes, right, do you want to borrow my clothes on a piece of paper and just knock and then tape that on the outside of your door? So simple. Like, costs no money. And it was such a good, good example. I think it was the guys that started Netflix. It was getting interviewed there. And, he was just talking about how how simple is that, right? Like do does your idea actually have traction? Well, how could you find out? What's the simplest thing we can do? You have clothes in your closet that cost you nothing, right? Just see if anybody on your dorm, all these girls want to buy your clothes. And I don't know what the answer to it was, but that's going to inform your next step. How do you qualify an opportunity? Like, what kind of filters are you going through? Or what aspects does an opportunity have to have for you to think it's worth pursuing as an option? As a business move? Yeah, that's really changed a lot. I mean, so I think the first thing is like, does it there's an intuitive component to this, right? Which is like, are we tapping into truth here? Is there something that feels like, I don't know how to explain that. That's intuition. It's it's your collection of experiences, whatever that is. You can sense it when you're on to something that the universe like. It just things just start happening. It's like, oh, we're going in the right direction. And the exact opposite is true. When you're not on to something, you start getting resistance. Perfect example. There was this software we're looking at to manage the club, and I had some reservations about it a little bit. And then we talked to one investor and they said, yeah, no, we we rip that out of a club. And then I had a and then I had a demo call with them. And there was this like so hairs were sticking up in the background like I'm like there's something wrong. Like, but we need the software, we need it. We need to get this complete so we can go to the next step. And it was like, the universe is like telling you like, no, no, no, no. And then we got a little bit deeper into it and they had claimed that they were a cloud software. They were not a cloud software. They were built on Citrix, which is something from the 90s, which is what which is called remote access. Right. So used to be like, you'd have a server somewhere and you could connect into the server from a remote location. That's not what the cloud is. Okay. But they were the salesperson was like, oh yeah, no, it's all in the cloud. And I was like, all right, well, how does it kind of integrate with our accounting software? And they're like, oh no, it doesn't. I'm like, well then it's not in the cloud because that's what that is. And so it's like, you know, you gotta trust your intuition. Intuition. Yeah. So I think there's a there's a piece of it that's that's intuition. The other piece of it is like, do you have passion for this? Do you have the skills for it? Are you excited about this? Is this something is this a place where you like, you think you could play? And that's having to take a hard look at yourself? I don't, you'll notice none of mine involve tech, right? That's like the sexy, cool thing to do is like, oh, I'm going to learn how to code. That's not who I am. You know? I'm not going to be the best coder. I'm not interested in doing that. So that's not the right place for me to play. I'm playing it more in the, you know, SMB world. You know, where it's, you know, under 2 million. You know, if I could get a business to $2 million in EBITDA or, that would that's a great win for me. That's the place where I, you know, going from 0 to 2 million. That's where I think I have the best chance to play. Other people have better skills that are going to be from 2 million to 50 million. Or maybe it's going to be your skills are going to be, you know, you want to go work for some big corporate company, but, you got to really understand, do I have skills here? Right. Is there something unique that I have or that I like doing something about me that's going to allow me to, to compete in this arena? And I think, you know, for example, with Tidewater, I am the core demographic. I mean, this is this is fun because I know what I want. And now I'm going out to, you know, a lot of people in my network and go, well, what do you guys want? That's a a unique, resource that I have that I'm able to touch, talk to people that are, you know, potential customers. I think that was true with the with the youth sports business as well. And I was the product actually, in that, in that business, you know, coaching lacrosse. So, it's I think it's you got to look at passion, you got to look at your skills, you got to have that intuition. And then at the end of the day, it's like a lot, a lot of it is like just the macro stuff. You can't control. So there's no reason why golf simulators would need to be a thing. They are. It's really happening right now with Tiger Woods Golf League and the technology is really improved. And, you know, it's like the confluence of all these things that I can't control. I'm not making projectors that are higher definition, but those exist now. AI is helping the golf courses to look more realistic. I didn't I don't need to invent invent AI, but the experience of doing indoor golf now is better because of the way that it looks. I didn't invent the Tiger Woods Golf League, but that's happening. And now what we're going to do at Tidewater is our Tidewater team is going to play our golf team. It's going to play against other golf, teams, because we have this Trackman software. That's cool. We can play anybody in the world. We can play in all these leaks. And it's all about this competition now, which is so different than going out on a golf course with a couple of buddies, or maybe some people you don't know, and spending the whole day with just you know, three other people. Now we're talking about, you know, now we're talking about having 24 people in a row and we're all able to watch each other's shots, and it starts to get a little fun. And there you start getting a little chippy, maybe, maybe talk a little smack, you know, hey, we're we're we're down by one. We got to make this shot. Oh you make the big shot. Everybody's you know. Oh you know. Yeah. Like that's what that's the community piece that that I think we've tapped into is like that's what we're trying to create is getting people excited about wanting to get together with other people because that that's not changing. So I've noticed I noticed you didn't even mention money at all. Why is it important to pursue or gage or filter an opportunity with values more than finances? Well, because money is a symptom of tapping into truth. Yeah. When you tap into truth, other people will recognize that. And you, when you are sincere and you are deliberate, like when you're solving a real problem for somebody else. Like as an example, if you're, if you're a dad and you have a couple young kids, you might feel a little isolated. That's not something that a lot of guys would want to talk about, but it's definitely, definitely a real problem. You go from spending all this time with your friends, you spent, you know, you're in college or having a good time. You're surrounded by people all the time. And then now maybe you have a remote, remote job. Now maybe you have, you know, a wife who works or you're helping out at home. Now, maybe, you know, you have moved to a new place and so you don't have this, these easy ways to just meet other guys or meet, make new friends or just have this sort of normal human interaction so people are starved for. That's what co-working spaces are, you know, are popular. And this, you know, this theater is a place where you could bring a laptop or a phone booth where you could take a zoom call. It's not a place to it's not your office. But like, you could go there and hang out. You can go there and do a little work, do some emails, take a phone call, have a meeting, that kind of thing. But it's just a place for people to connect. And that's if you're creating that kind of connection for people, they're happy to pay you for it. What the price is going to be is, you know, you got to you got to do a little discovery. There. But the price is determined based on how big the problem is, right? The better the problem you can solve and the better you are at solving that problem, the more people are going to be willing to pay for it. So that that is a symptom. That is the result of digging deep into value and trying to speak truth to people. What motivates you outside of financial gain? Well, it's not that financial gain doesn't, you know, motivate me. Of course it does. And I think I've had some some different levels of success and those different, experiences. I would say that for me, I have always wanted to live my life on my own terms. I wanted to I wanted to reclaim my time. And I'm now in a position where I get to decide what I do with my time and I don't, like, have a dream of making, like, so much money that I don't have to work. That isn't really very interesting to me. I'm more interested in being in a position where I can work on things that I want to work, and I can work as much as I want to. You know, I've, I've been in the, I've been in the grind. I've had to have a boss. I know what that life is like. And I just wanted to be able to live my life on my own terms. And that has always been more important to me than, you know, just just actual dollars, but that that's what the dollars represent, right? You got to get to a certain point where it's like you're you're I mean, if you can get to a point where your unearned income is greater than your need, you now have reclaimed your time. That's the goal for me. What? And this is my final question. What would you say is the number one thing that you know now that you wish you knew when you embarked on your entrepreneurial journey? Wow, that could be more than one thing. Yeah. The number one thing that I've learned. I guess it's all about the people that you're going to work with, you know, the relationships. I'm very happy. So, and the back end, Elliot Calhoun and my, my co-founders and this project, we get along great. I was a friends with Andy before, you know, we we started this project, and, you know, I think we'll be friends afterwards. The. And Elliot has become a great friend as well. The when you get the right people in the room, it's the right balance of those characteristics I was describing. It's just like, it's just magic. Like it's just lightning in a bottle. You can't explain it in any other way. And I, I've been in I've had no partners. I've had two partners, I've had four partners. You know, it's not necessarily about the amount of people. It's about getting the right people involved. And when, when you when that happens and your life is just so much more exciting. I mean, perfect example is, is marrying my wife. Like the amount that I have exponentially improved as a person because she's now in the room with me like that. That is how you grow, right? And it's, it's it's like, it's when you're younger, your friends kind of kind of keep you in check, you know, like the if you get a little, little too high minded, you think, you know, you're really great or something, your real friends, they'll cut you down a little bit. Right. And that's, that's a good thing because they're helping to shape you, right? They're helping you to have realistic, understanding of who you are as a person. And so, yeah, I'm I'm working on becoming you know what I'm good at pieces of advice I got when I was, like, looking for a wife was, try to become the person you're looking for. Is looking for. And I think that's great if you're out there, if you're single guy and you're trying to figure out how to, you know, meet the right girl is you should try to become the person you're looking for is looking for to unpack that a little bit one more time, become the person who you're looking longer to become. The person who you're looking for is looking for something, looking for you, looking. Okay. Okay. So there, right now there's there's some amazing person out there for you. And she's going, well, I have this person that I'm about. Yeah, yeah I so become that. Yeah. Okay. Become that. And you can become just like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You know, he he became the Governator, just like he became Mr. Universe, you know, just became a he became all these things. You can do that too. And I think that also I think maybe what I'm as, even as I'm sitting here right now where I'm realize is you could do this in business as well, because I'm not the businessman that I was when I was 22 trying to figure out how to make a website. Right. I've, I've grown and I've evolved. And I think also the people that I'm working with now have done the same. So, look for people that have that growth mindset, that have that kind of pioneer mindset that are like always growing. They're always pushing to the next place. They're always looking to, you know, try to improve what they're doing. And that's how you're ultimately going to unlock this value. Because if you get the right people in the room and you start really digging into real value, and you speak and you connect to that truth, your your businesses, it's going to work. And I think like just defining that outcome or being intentional about that outcome or like, you know, when you talk about like who you want to be like just going through that practice of like, like when you said, you know, being the person that the person you're looking for is looking for, just like going through that methodology or that practice of like, define who that person is, is like a big step towards becoming that person. And same with like, you know, I was going to ask like, how do you find like good people that you're aligned with again? Like just going through that practice and being conscious and defining who is that person that I want to be partners with gets you that much closer to finding that person, you know, like, and it's, you know, for me, that's been something that's been super difficult for, for me is like getting good people. And I think when I started being intentional about, like, the type of values of the people and the personality of the person that I want on my team, like those people started emerging. But it's it is so important and it's great advice that you're giving because like, in my opinion, people are the most volatile part of a deal, like managing personalities and like managing people and making sure those people align can be the the opportunity can be so unbelievable. But if you don't get the right people in that deal, that's what typically like makes the deal fall through. I don't know if you agree with 100%, I percent, yeah. If people, are interested in, you know, what you're doing, like, you know, the club that you're starting and or, you know, might just want to ask you for some advice or I want to chat with you. Where can they find you? Like, and hit me up on LinkedIn. It's Ryan Lee covert as the as my LinkedIn thing at the end. But also if you're interested in Tidewater, it's Tidewater. KCCI's dot com. We have a, contact us page, and there's a place where you can apply to, if you were to go on there, that will get you invited to upcoming events that we're doing. So, we probably will be open December. January. Yes. We're under construction right now. But what we're doing is every month we have events that, people can come out to and kind of get a sense of like who the membership is going to be. So we already have, 65 people signed up to, to join the club. We have another 200 people that have expressed some interest. And so we've got great momentum on that. And what we're trying to do is have those people come out and have them invite their friends, have them invite other people that are in their community, to connect. And so, like this month, we have, at Over the Horizon. We're doing a women's yoga event. So it's International Women's Month. So we wanted to connect on that piece. So we're doing this yoga event with some healthy snacks, and smoothies and, and that and then next month we're doing a, chef driven experience with, Chef Anthony Marini from the past. He's doing a dinner event for our founding members, to kind of get everybody together and, to sort of experience some of these chef driven experiences that we want to have at the club, these ideas of, like these curated dinners, five course meals, wine pairings, but also like you're there with people maybe you don't know, and doing that on purpose, as a way to, to connect with other folks. And then we have we're going to do some parties, we're going to have a, we'll have all, you know, all different kinds of events coming up. So if you're interested in doing any of those things, you want to join this community. That's kind of the way to to get to meet people, to see if this is a good fit, because I think kind of like what you were saying before about how do you find good people. It's as much about them picking you as it is about you picking them. And I think that's the same way we're approaching our membership is like, you're going to know if this is something that appeals to you, if it solves a problem for you or not, and if it doesn't, that's okay. Right? We're looking for people that want to have this this pioneer mindset, that want to have this growth, that maybe have had some success but still want to grow. And that doesn't necessarily mean monetarily. I mean, just as a person, as a as a community to meet more friends to, to live this better life, to try to level up, you know, and if people have that mindset, I think they're going to find a good home at this, at this club. Yeah, I'm definitely interested. It's a great idea. And I think you're like a great case study of how like having passion and that energy, definitely translates because it's inspiring. Like, I can feel your passion when you talk about it. And because of that, it's engaging and makes, you know, me interested. So, I appreciate you coming on. It was a great variance. So much for having me. Yeah, absolutely. That's a wrap. All right.
