You have a door knocker and he sold alarms, or sold paint, or a dent repair, or the rocket. This person has been successful and you can tell from where they have been that they are going places. I think so many people, underestimate the journey, right? They’re like well, I had to resign as CEO. I’m sure there were some scary moments there. I had to fire people and sell a company. I’m sure there are scary moments there. I’m sure there are 130 million dollars in projects. It’s like well, that was fun to sell them, but now we don’t get to collect that. He’s like, I’m sure you say all these things so lightly, but I guarantee you when you’re sleeping at night, going to bed, you’re thinking back and you’ve had many heart attack moments. Times of just like, what is going on? You know? It’s cool to hear about the success stories. It’s cool to hear about the roller coaster of an entrepreneur. So I guess what were some of the biggest challenges that you’ve run into as you’ve kind of taken the entrepreneurial journey? You know, because it sounds like you’ve had a lot of crazy rollercoaster challenges along the entrepreneurial journey.
Challenges Along The Entrepreneurial Journey
The best thing that has happened to me is I’ve just been surrounded by really good people. I remember people asking what was the first lesson you remember learning in life or like business like mentorship? And it was like just surrounding yourself with really good people is so important. I remember that from when I was like 18. I’ve just done that and that’s really helped me get through things. But, yeah I like full transparency about things. So the real challenges are like, I’d say just the mental the emotional journey. Right? I mean, it’s not like we made a lot of money. We did really well, built a dream house, and had all the Teslas, and all the things. Then, all of a sudden, things stopped and I mean there was a time when I thought I was gonna lose my house. That was not long ago. It is just crazy how fast everything changes and you try to learn the lessons you’re supposed to so you can get through those. All of a sudden, for me, some of that stuff just came together as I really focused on getting myself in a really good place mentally and emotionally. Who am I really? You know? I really focused on a lot of that stuff. And man, it’s amazing what’s happened like financially just been super blessed, and more importantly I love what I get to do now you know some of that stuff I mean we started that company we thought we might have like 10 people working there 20 people and all of a sudden there are 250 people in 260 and like I loved it I loved working with the people but man it got to be a lot I never thought it was going to grow like that and it just consumes you and sometimes your business kind of runs you instead of you running your business so I really am grateful now that I found something just love what I do.
Surround Yourself With Good People
And so I guess one of the things that I’d recommend out there is just to surround yourself with really good people because that’s how I made it through the hard times. The ups and downs you will go through will be easier with people by your side you can trust and when you find those people man, latch onto them because sometimes that’s hard to find, you know? Learn what you can along the way and just understand that that’s part of the journey. The ups and downs. I mean everybody talks about that stuff, but it’s always different when you’re going through it. So yeah, some big ups and downs along the way so, when you surround yourself with really good people and you know like hold on to them when you know you got them like how did you find and vet good people because that I mean that seems to be the challenge in business and everybody that’s listening to this. I’m good with people, and I know how to work a business, but you really need to figure out how to hold on to those good people and surround yourself with good people to make the highs and lows easier.
Vet Good People
The next challenge is to learn how to vet good people for your company. This is going to be one that will help you and your company thrive. This is who you will have by your side when it is time to go to war together. When you go to war together, you get to see what they’re really like. Most people, at our core, I think are good people, but their values get challenged when things get really tough. So for me, like I got to see my original partner, Trent, as we went through some really tough decisions like, should we sell our residential side? We knew that was what that was going to do and how that was going to change things in the company. We had to sit down and discuss, whether should we focus on commercials. Should we sell the company? Should we get into the next step? What should we do next? And through this process, I got to see somebody who I really admire. He just kept his integrity throughout all of it and his value system. It was really important to me when we started that he became a part of it. So, he’s now the chief operations officer of Quativa so happy ending there. He’s with me. We’re still working here together and the same guy who made sure all those 250 million dollars in projects went through the last 10 years is the guy who’s now at Quativa making sure our partners’ projects are getting installed.
Identify Their True Character
So, watch how people handle the hard times and how they keep their values during those times. Identify their true character when you are working with people. If you watch how people act during the low times, not just the high times, that’s really the key and that’s when you really can identify their true character. When you see them behave a certain way in those times, even on a personal level, you’ll see who they are. You can really see who a person is by how they talk about what they’re going through. Whether that is something with their wife and like how they talk about their spouse or one of my friends, or whatever it is. You usually can really tell a lot about a person by the way they talk about other people when they’re not around. Your normal values and characters. All the cliches, a lot of them are true. And so, when you see that for me, that’s what I identified what kind of a person they are, and then you latch on to it once you find that in a person. To actually go through something really tough together, sometimes it’s hard to just fabricate. So when you’re going through something tough like that, the highs are really easy to see people at their best but the lows are where you get to really see their true character.
