Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Process: The Mindset of an Entrepreneur (Ep.3)

Episode Date: May 11, 2018

In Episode 3 of The Process, Alex Fiance updates us on the recent public launch of one of their companies, CERA, who offer a personalized home-care solution to the aging population, allowing elderly people to live where they are most comfortable and happy.We then get to learn from Tim Hwang, the founder of FiscalNote, a Kairos company.Tim shares why he cares about making societal impact and how his merging interest in technology and politics was the impetus for Fiscal Note. We discuss his company's values, the biggest mistake he's ever made, and why entrepreneurship is about the intersection of risk and passion._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. All right, welcome to The Process. Alex, how are you doing? Good, Mike. What's going on? Yeah. You know, this feels like a little treat for me to be able to have this conversation with you and to have them frequently. And we get to have these little nuggets, little gems of what you're doing, what you're up to. And I'm super

excited about this conversation because we're going to introduce one of the companies that you've invested in. And so before we get started there, just give me an update about what's been going on. What are you trying to sort out? What's actually happening in your business? And I'd love to hear what's going on. Yeah, look, day to day, we're always looking at new companies to work with to back. But we're also obviously supporting the companies that, you know, we've already backed. So we just did the public launch of the elder care business that we've been working with, along with the company I beat that I actually, you know, mentioned we invested actually mentioned we invested in on the last episode. What was the name of the first one?

Sarah, C-E-R-A. So they focus on home care for the aging population in the UK. And they're pretty far along. They've already done 200,000 hours of care. They're the UK's highest rated care agency. And they announced this amazing innovation where currently to have someone come to your home as a care worker, you're kind of, let's say, renting them for the whole day. They just released a kind of first of its kind innovation where if there are, let's

say, multiple patients with similar needs in an area, the care worker can rotate between households every few hours. So you can cut the cost by as much as 75% and only pay for what you need, which is a massive breakthrough in terms of making this type of care accessible for everybody. Because currently you're paying as much as $1,500 a week for home care in the UK. So, you know, this is obviously a new model. And if it goes well, you know, it's something that we can scale all over the world. So we're really excited about it. That was the big announcement we made. And as part of that, you know, if someone's not going to have care 24-7, you know, we also need to make sure that if there's an emergency that they can be taken care of. So, you know, we also need to make sure that if there's an emergency that they can be taken

care of. So, you know, that's part of why we invested in IB, right, which is that smart watch that is almost like a home security system for your heart that will alert the EMTs if there's heart failure. And, you know, I think those two complement each other very well. And Sarah also announced that, you know, you could have a care worker in your home if there's an emergency within 30 minutes. Cool. Okay. So as you're rolling these out, is that how you think about rolling things out? Like having the companies snap together or creating a synergistic rising tide?

Or is that just unique in what's happening right now for you? Yeah, I think that's the way we want to enter a market, right? You know, we focus on, you know, how do we solve this problem or this consumer pain point? More so than we say, you know, how do we find a great company to invest in? Or how do we launch this one company? So, you know, we wanted to enter the market and make a big splash around, you know, the problem itself, that it's next to impossible for people to, you know, currently afford the best care and that it's a major problem with the growing aging

population. So I think it makes a much bigger splash to show, hey, there are multiple, you know, new solutions that we're helping bring to market and they complement each other. One of the things that's on our mind, and, you know, we could probably dive into it a little bit after we chat with Tim, the entrepreneur, is, you know, we're just seeing a very, very high volume of companies, especially now that we've publicly talked about the problems we're trying to solve. We're getting a lot more inbound. You know, it's a little bit overwhelming to be honest. So what that's forced on us is that we need to make decisions much, much, much faster. So, you know, we can talk about this a little bit after you talk to Tim, because I think, you know, for the audience, just as context, you know, we're inviting on one of the more impressive young entrepreneurs I've ever met in my life. You know, Tim is someone who I hope one day we're going to politics because, you know,

our world needs more leaders like him. But he's just an exceptional entrepreneur who, you know, has no limiting beliefs around what you can or can't do when you're young. You know, just to tie it all together, Mike, like I want to make sure you can kind of get inside the head and see what this type of entrepreneur is like. Um, because ultimately what we're trying to get better at and faster at is, you know, quickly getting to know entrepreneurs quickly getting to know how they're wired so that we can make sure we, you know, back the right founders. It's one thing to pick the right

problems to solve. It's a totally another thing to find people like Tim. So, you know, I think I'm just excited for you to meet Tim and to see what bit of the work that he's done is rad. So he's the founder and CEO of Fiscal Note, and we're going to dive deeper into that conversation with Tim. So let's get Tim on the line now and get to know him. Okay, Tim, how are you? I'm great. How are you? Yeah. Thanks so much for being on this call and spending time out of your schedule and to be able to share with us what you're doing and then really to jump into the weeds of like, what are you struggling with? How are you thinking about those struggles? What are some of the roadblocks internally, externally to entrepreneurship? And so again, thank you for spending some time. Absolutely. Okay, good. So Alex had shared a story, and it was a high school story about, worked for President Obama's first presidential campaign back in 2008 at the age of 16. And at the age of 17, I had this crazy idea. And I said, you know what, I'm going to run for office, you know, and ended up winning a term on the Board of Education in Maryland representing Montgomery County, you know, overseeing 22,000 teachers and a $4 billion operating budget.

And one of my teachers, she had always seen me kind of leaving class and coming back and leaving class and coming back. And she would ask me, what exactly are you doing? And I told her, well, I'm currently negotiating your pension and the salary increases with the union. So if you want me to do that, you can tell me to keep going and coming back, or I can just sit here and sit through this biology class, so you tell me what to do. That's awesome.

Did she ask, did she say, well, are you in favor of increasing pension? If so, you need to be back at that business meeting? What did she do? No, she just said, do what you need to do and come back, and we'll talk about it later. So needless to say, I don't think she liked me very much, but it was definitely an interesting experience. Why politics at an early age? What was that about for you? I think for me, I've always really been drawn to this idea of maximum leverage, right? Really trying to find opportunities where, you know, it's sort of finding almost lazy opportunities where one unit of time equals the maximum amount of impact or societal change.

And politics to me is sort of the lazy man's, you know, kind of way and opportunity to change the world, which is literally, you know, you get elected, you raise your hand, you introduce a bill and you can massively impact a large number of people, you know, in a really great way. And so you see that very viscerally in the work that you do in a campaign, certainly where there's sort of a very discreet win or loss. But certainly when you get to governing, that's when it gets really difficult when you're dealing with unions and taxes and massively important budgets and programs on behalf of citizens. I think that's really where a lot of societal change happens. Okay. So you're looking for economy of scale. You're looking for efficiency and a powerful lever, if you will, to be able to create change. That's kind of a prime mover for you, it sounds like. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So then walk us through whatever variables we need to understand that led you to being the founder and CEO of Fiscal Note,

and then describe what Fiscal Note is and some of the internal, external challenges that you're facing. So that would be like a nice little arc, I think, for our conversation. Sure. So, you know, when I was thinking about what to do next, you know, I left politics and I was, you know, sort of searching around here and there. I think, again, I was looking for that economies of scale, that societal impact. I knew I wanted to do something in government for sure because I felt like that was one of the most impactful things you could be doing. Why do you want to create impact? How old are you now? I'm 26 now. Okay. Why do you want to create impact? And then I'm now? I'm 26 now. Okay. Why do you want to create impact?

And then I'm going to be bold and kind of a jerk in a way. Because I struggle with this question, so it's going to sound jerky, but it's not meant to be. Why do you want to create impact? And then what gives you the internal right to say that I can, you can change for the good and create impact. Like I really would love to hear you wrestle with that. You know, to me, it's more of an existential thing. Um, I think that we all have very short, uh, amounts of period periods of time where we, where we're on this planet. And I feel like, you know, uh, when you really break it down, uh, you only have a, a, a have a very limited time window in order to impact change. And actually, this is something that I think a lot about, particularly with respect to youth. And it's relative how it relates to risk, right? So I think when you're really young,

you have an opportunity to take a lot of risk without a lot of downside, right? You know, you don't have a house, you don't have a mortgage, you don't have children, you know, you're primarily kind of getting off in your career. As you get older, and you get more responsibilities, and you gain all these different things, then the downside continues to increase. And then, you know, there's sort of this arc that comes back down as you get older, you know, into your 50s and 60s and 70s. So I think being young, having a lot of ideas and not a lot of downside, you can pile on a lot of risk. If you define those two discrete points where the maximum leverage relative to the amount of risk that you're taking is so widely dispersed, that maybe is 10, 15 years. So you've got to strike it really, really

hard while the iron is hot. And I feel like for me, that's sort of the main driver of what we're trying to do. I love the answer. As soon as you said the word existential, I was like, I like where Tim's coming from. So that's really cool. So there's a cool concept that I want to share with you. One is 1440. You probably heard that number and phrase. There's only 1440 moments a day, minutes a day. And so we do have a limited amount of time. And I like where you went with the risk and the youth correlation there. And I want to share a cool finding that maybe you can use this in your life as well, is that I spent some time in motorsports and it was a relatively

well understood kind of myth, but kind of backed, not real science around this, that when drivers that were men had children, they got slower. Isn't that interesting? And then, so I was sharing that concept with a female individual sport athlete that was at the top of her game, the top of the world in her sport. And so I don't want to say the sport. And so I shared that concept with her and she just had her second kid. And she goes, what? She goes, no way. After I've had my first kid, I was significantly better.

Because when I would show up at practice, I was like, listen, let's have the greatest practice in the world because I'm giving up time for my child. And that ended up over the long haul, having her be something extraordinarily better than she was before she had the kid. And she was already a medalist. So like, isn't that cool? Like there's also a gender difference, possibly, possibly a gender difference, at least from those anecdotal storylines as well. Yeah, no, I totally, I was talking to somebody the other day about morning habits, right? Trying to establish really, really routine habits, getting up early in the morning, meditating, whatnot. And I, I said to someone the other day, I think if you have a lot of constraints in your life, uh, like you have to get your kids to school and, uh, you gotta pick them up for, from, from afterschool practice, whatever it is, the constraints, they force you into this

really strong discipline. Otherwise, you know, uh, for me, I I'm, I'm young, I'm unmarried. It's, um, I, you know, it just, it's so unstructured that, uh, there's not that there's not these sort of discrete constraints that drive a lot of that discipline. So it's just a lot harder to try and implement some of those morning routines on a day-to-day basis. Okay, cool. Get us to fiscal note. Yeah, so I was thinking about fiscal note and I was thinking about how to make that impact. And I was thinking about fiscal note and I was thinking about how to make that impact. And I was thinking about particularly the impact of technology.

And at the time, I was thinking about these problems. The country was taking a look at changes in our health insurance system through the Affordable Care Act and subsequent changes in the regulatory agencies after that. And one of the things that a lot of newscasters said at the time was, it's been 50 years since the country has taken on healthcare reform and we've finally gotten to this outcome and yada, yada. And I said to myself, wow, I really don't want to spend 50 years changing our healthcare system. And when you look in technology, you realize that, you know, there's some really amazing things going on, right? You see particularly things like

genetic editing, you see, you know, even more simplistic things like leveraging mobile technologies for telemedicine, where you're connecting, you know, urban doctors with rural patients and, you know, these entirely new business cases that are almost transforming our healthcare system overnight. And I said, that's the place where I want to be. So I kind of merged these two things together. And I kind of created this concept of Fiscal Note, kind of merging my two interests in technology and in politics.

And Fiscal Note, just sort of get into a little bit. What we do is we aggregate laws, regulations, court cases, government filings, government documents from every country on the planet. And our goal by the end of 2019 is to try and create a singular digital repository of every law and every regulation that governs humanity. We think that that platform can be the kicking off point for an entire ecosystem of societal change, whether it's something as routine as regulatory compliance within a Fortune 100 firm, all the way out to, you know, we started working with the UN and many of its partners on sustainable development goals, particularly around rule of law. And trying to push for more kind of robust legal systems in developing countries. And that's all based off of sort of digitized technologies and artificial intelligence and natural language processing that are making all these things possible.

Okay. And then, wow. So you're taking on some big, big movers. What does success look like for you? Indonesia, Brazil, where we've been making a lot of investments to try and kind of help the governments digitize their information, get their legal systems up and ready. I think in the long term, you know, we align ourselves with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 16, which is to try and build a world where everyone has equal access to the law, where the law is evenly applied, and they live in these sort of stable governments that are dependent on these rules of law,

whatever form or fashion they may be. And I think that that only comes from transparency of law and dissemination of law, you know, to try and create these more stable societies in the long term. So you want to reach all, what is it, 190 something countries? Yeah. That's okay. And so what does that look like? Is it, it's got to be technology based.

It's not infrastructure based, right? It's more technology based on some sort of like data platform or tell me more about how you'll do that. Yeah. So we have a technology platform. Basically, you know, you give me a topic, right? Hydraulic fracking or medical device regulation or ride sharing. And we can tell you every single regulation that governs that industry or that topic across multiple different countries in Japan and South Africa and France. You literally just write ride sharing at the top of this application. And you can look up all these different laws from

all these different countries, translate it into your native language. And as we kind of get more and more penetration into markets, more and more organizations, governments, businesses rely on our information every single day to operate their organizations and make sure that they're compliant and understand what the laws and regulations are. And then so what is your crown jewel? Is it the technology? Is it the AI? I'm assuming it's AI that's generating this. What is your crown jewel?

Is it the idea itself? Is it the network that you have between people? I'd love to understand that. Yeah. So not to get too deep into the weeds. I mean, it's a data pipeline that we've developed where we can just throw in any country or any regulation into sort of this top of this funnel. It'll automatically classify, analyze, structure, normalize that information, and make it available for our customers in a very unified format. So we've spent a lot of time building the world's first legal taxonomy, you know, being able to sort of, I mean, we've thrown

in everything from, you know, public utilities commissions, building codes, zoning regulations, in multiple countries around the world, just trying to build this massive understanding of how humanity is governed and how they understand and how they relate to their laws and regulations. It's big time. And I want to ask, I've got a two-part question, but I need to know the answer to the first to get to the second part of it, is what is an example of an external hoop or challenge that you have not internal, you know, but an external challenge that you've got for

your business? Yeah, I mean, this is something that we haven't talked about too much. But, you know, we are still a business, right? So, you know, we have to run the kind of core operations of servicing our customers and, you know, making sure that they're happy, innovating in each of our core spaces. As we enter into new markets, particularly in countries where there's less government infrastructure, we personally have to start making some of those investments into helping governments digitize their information. So there's a lot of work that we do with the World Economic Forum, with the United Nations, with the countries themselves, with the World Bank to try and make sure that we're facilitating some of those changes. But it's sort of this entirety of the spectrum all the way from

where we source our data, right, in working with a lot of these governments directly, all the way to servicing our customers as we get larger and larger, just constantly reinventing our product and reinventing our model to meet those demands. So you're really, you've got like a, you've got two edges here that you're working from. One is you've got a product at the front end, and then you've also got to build the structures on the back end. And that's like for me, that's like when a new sport is moving from lifestyle into science and the art and science merge to create something that is a higher performing industry. And so building those structures in place are really hard, way harder than the actual service delivery. And I'm wondering if you're finding the same thing or is it different for your business? No, I mean, I think, I mean,

some of our biggest challenges are internal, right? Because we are growing so rapidly, you know, we now have offices in pretty much multiple different time zones. So there's somebody working at our company at any given time of the day. And so how do you disseminate communication, internal communications? How do you make sure that you're allocating resources properly? How are you making sure that the processing systems that you put in place for reviewing metrics and whatnot that worked maybe 18 months ago, you have to rewrite those systems again. I say this to our executive team, you know, I can't write org charts fast enough to keep up with the pace of growth. And so how do we maintain a culture that is okay with that level of uncertainty? And that's, I mean, there's a lot of those challenges that we're facing on the internal

side. How are you doing that? I love that thought. Like how, so how many employees do you have about? Uh, the other year will be, uh, in the mid four hundreds. And then did you start with three? How many did you start with? Yeah, I started with two co-founders and then, uh, we hired our first employee about a month later. And then, so you started with, and the reason I asked that that's kind of a joke in Silicon Valley or Silicon forest or Silicon beach now is that, yeah, just start with a couple people. You know, it's like three is the magic number for some reason. And then you went from three to 400 in what type of time mark? About four years.

And what's the number one or two or three, whatever success processes that you have to enhance your culture? I think it's just being consistent. You know, we wrote our company values down even before we finalized our company strategy. And we've, you know, with the exception of one or two values, all throughout those years, we've consistently stuck to those values. They're on our walls, they're on our performance reviews. I literally talk about them. There are these hashtag things that go around on Slack in our company. They're ingrained into how we do things as an organization.

Are you a value-driven company or a value-grounded company? How do you think about that? I think we're a mission-driven company or a value-grounded company? How do you think about that? I think we're a mission-driven company, but I think that the way we operate is definitely value-driven. Values are incorporated into our decision-making process. Whenever we acquire businesses, the first thing that we do is we talk about the mission that we're trying to accomplish and the values that we have as an organization about the mission that we're trying to accomplish and the values that we have as an organization. How many values do you have? We have seven values.

Seven values. Okay. Can you riff them off the top of your head or? Yeah, they are level up, bias for action, drive alignment, support the family, find the truth, know your audience. And I know there's one more, uh, uh, level up. No, you said level up. What is, and I was going to ask, what does level up mean? It means you're constantly devoted towards, uh, personal growth, professional growth. Um, it means that, uh, you're trying to find areas in which you are improving the organization on a constant basis. So, uh, it's, it's, uh, uh, it's, it's a sort of growth mindset that we're trying to instill across the organization. Cool. Yeah. So are those, you chose the word values,

are those, are those values or those behaviors that you want people to have, or do you want them to value whatever the behaviors are that will help you level up? Yeah, I mean, I think the way we interpret values, I guess, is a sustained set of behaviors that are ingrained into our company. So it's a little bit of both, I guess. Okay. All right. Very cool. Yeah.

So, all right. And then, I don't know if this is politically too sensitive for you to answer, but I'd love to give you a way to answer this properly without pointing anybody out. But on your executive team, how many members do you have? Is it like seven or 12 or how many members do you have there? Depending on how you look at about 12 or 13. Yeah. 12 or 13. Okay.

So out of those 12 or 13 folks, let's say there's, yeah, let's at about 12 or 13 yeah 12 or 13 okay so out of those 12 or 13 folks let's say there's yeah let's just say 12 13 how many have like great alignment like like they're really on it and they could carry the cultural values uh on their shoulders how many of you of the on your team are squarely there? I would say probably about 80%. And then are you, are you being kind because you don't want to like, that's a good number, but it's not, it's not the number you want. You want to say a hundred, but like, is that the accurate number? One of the biggest mistakes that I've made in my career consistently over and over and over again is hiring pedigree over culture and values.

And Tim, I haven't, I have not met a world-class coach that when they say that they go, I should have let go of him or her earlier, but you know what? They're top earners and they figured stuff out and they made us win and dah, dah, dah, dah. But they make us 10% better on the field, but 20% worse in culture. And so it's probably a net loss. Yeah. I mean part of it also is you need to balance some of the short-termism on the quarter-to-quarter basis and whatnot. And you're always trying to balance the that I'm removing as quickly as possible executives that I don't think are a good fit for the organization. And sometimes because we have, I think, such a strong culture that there's sort of this organ rejection as well, right? If they don't fit in, then they end up just not being successful in the organization. That's rad. Yeah, that's rad.

Okay. What is one of the kind of, I'm an entrepreneur, budding entrepreneur myself. And so I'm, I'm using the science and the craft of high performance psychology and building a business right now. So we're early days, early phase, we're two years in, we've got a nice little base and we're in a fun space to be able to amplify if things go well. So could you give an early stage entrepreneur some sort of thoughts to guide, to maybe pay attention to that would be useful? And that's everything open discussion from, I think culture, we're pretty good, but everything about like business strategy and decision-making processes and, you know, stuff like that, that you say, God, looking back, these were the tough, tough things that I had to navigate. You know, I think that this is something that I tell a lot of our managers all the time,

especially when we're starting new projects. Business at the end of the day is not complicated. We can make it complicated through these complex financial models and really technical schemas and business strategies and whatnot. But at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is you're trying to give a product or a service to a customer. Whether you're McDonald's selling millions of hamburgers or us selling enterprise software and data, you're trying to create something that supports the needs of the customer. All of the systems and hierarchies and reporting structures and pricing and packaging and positioning, all of that is in support of making sure that the customer is successful. So it's so cliche, and I know that everyone says it, but as the company gets more complex, and as you're doing more things, and you're dealing with payroll, and whatever the case is,

I think that oftentimes it gets really difficult to try and hone that. But I think that we, whenever I've had a hard decision, just going straight back to the customer and building a new process or whatever it is, you know, that, that's always been sort of a guiding star for me as we've kind of built this. God, I love it. Okay. So where can we find and follow you and what you are doing, what you are doing as a man, and then also what your company is doing? Where are the places we can track? Yeah, I'm on Twitter, Tim T. Huang, H-W-A-N-G. And then for our company, we are at www.fiscalnote.com. Awesome.

Awesome. Okay, good. Hey, Tim, one thing, one thing, one sign-off question. The audience from Finding Master is repeatedly asking this question. Like, how do I know if I am wired to be an entrepreneur, if I should start a business, or if I should, you know, go for a hyper growth business versus a small business? Like, do you kind of have any high level advice on deciding whether to start a company, whether to just go after a problem to solve, etc? I mean, I'm a big believer that everyone's an entrepreneur i mean everybody everyone is

capable of identifying problems um and i think that there's certainly no shortage of people who have solutions at the back of their mind whether it's you know in a big fortune 500 company as an entrepreneur uh you know whether it's sort of pursuing a hobby or passion uh uh or trying to sort of you know take all that risk and trying to get out there and be aggressive. But I think it's really dependent on, A, your level of risk, where you are in your life, and B, what you're passionate about. If you're passionate about being an entrepreneur and changing big organizations to do new things, go for it. If you're really, really passionate about technology and high growth scenarios. And I think, and you have the risk tolerance for it. And that's, you know, certainly something that you can do, but it's, it's sort of this intersection between risk and passion. Very cool. And as a sign off for me, one,

one last question, Tim is what is the most meaningful or powerful thing that you say to yourself about yourself? I don't know. I tend to be pretty self-deprecating, pretty self-critical, but I think the thing that gets me up in the morning is that, you know, we're doing some really impactful and meaningful stuff. And you're really lucky to be here at this time, you know, at your age. And I think that's just, you know, continues to drive me, you know, every day. So it's that mix between the opportunity and being grateful for the opportunity. Yeah. Yeah, that's what's up. Okay, Tim, I'm wishing you the best.

I'm stoked to meet you and to be able to follow along what you're doing. And so, Alex, thank you for including him in our community. And like, I love it. And if there's anything I can do to be a resource for you, Tim as well, like, please don't hesitate to holler as well. Absolutely. If our tribe or our community has some questions, would you be open to answering a few of those? I know you're busy ripping and running, but would you be open to answer a few of those? Yeah. Always happy to help.

Yeah. Tim, thank you for your time. Thanks for having me on. Okay, guys. I'll see you soon, man. Great. Thanks. Okay. Alex, you and I were back here. That was rad. And I see the caliber of what you're looking for. He's clear about his mission. He's clear about the values that are driving behaviors and thinking patterns in the organization. And he's highly resourced. And not only that, but like, he obviously thinks clearly and on his feet as well. Like, I get it. I see exactly what you're looking for. And

I see why you would bet on somebody like that flat out. So Mike, does a high performing entrepreneur remind you of a high-performing athlete? Does it remind you of a high-performing CEO? Or are there nuances and differences here? I think when I think of the conditions of high performance, there's three big ones. And the first is genetic coding. So there's some sort of genetic coding that we'll never get away from. It's important. And in sport, those genetic codings are usually about lever length and lever size, right? Like the ability to move quickly and meet the demands of the conditions of the sport. So there's a genetic coding and there's also a neural genetic piece, which is how quickly and accurately in space people can process information and manipulate themselves in space as well. So that's one, genetics. The second is skill development. And that skill development is technical skill, physical skill, and mental skill.

And the third is the environmental conditions that we either purposely create and or that are naturally part of the ecosystem that we're in. So those are the three big buckets. And when I'm thinking about Tim, he's got a high genetic process. I'm sorry, he's got a high genetic gift, which he thinks clearly and quickly. And there was no preparation for that phone call that we just had. There's no preparation for the conversation we just had. So it was wonderful to see how we process information. His skill development, I don't know. I don't, I don't know what he does to get better, but I'm imagining because he's got a sense of gratitude and is grateful for the mission that he's on, that he's spending countless amount of hours, you know, refining his craft.

And it sounds like he's taken a nice, uh, purposeful look at creating a culture and an environment that brings out the best in people. So, and I could go deeper into all three of those with him to really stand on the table to say, I get where you're coming from, from each one of those three variables. But as a cheap seats, it looks like he's aware at least of all three of those. But if you were to zoom out, right? And imagine you're me trying to identify maybe non-negotiable personality traits of entrepreneurs we decide to partner with to solve a problem. Um,

what do you think, you know, the two or three are, how would you describe it at kind of the concept level? Yeah, I would, I would think about it in two ways. The first I would, I would want to have a clear map and picture about the things that will never enter our ecosystem that we're intolerant of, that we are not going to be part of. And I would start with the dark triad. And I don't know if you're familiar with that, but like there's three personality traits when they come together, it's really nasty. And so Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathology, when you get those three together, it's like, watch out, you've got something on your hands that nobody is going to be able to manage. But just take a quick look at the dark triad. And I think you'll enjoy that. And oftentimes they can be very charismatic,

very much of an alpha, very much of a purpose-driven approach, but it's all driven out of like this dark experience that, and deep neurotic access that is nearly impossible to manage. So I would start there, making sure that I'm doing a good job of gating out that. And there is a fine line between the altruistic, passionate alpha and the more Machiavellian, charismatic person who's going to really do some damage because it's really about them sorting out their own needs rather than being altruistically mission-minded. So I would start with something like that. And then as a non-negotiable, I would make sure that the person that I'm mapping with, that there is some sort of value alignment. And so Tim

definitely was value driven. He's got values that he's grounded in. And what I liked about what Tim did is that they were authentic to him and to his team. And it wasn't like they went to some sort of billboard and said, what are the most important values for successful people? Let's just write those down. Excellence. Excellence should be on. Which happens a lot. No, which happens a lot.

No, I get it. Yeah. So I think that that authenticity. Like bumper sticker tattoos. Thank you. Yeah. So those are a couple. And I'd like to think a little bit more about it because in alpha competitive sport, we're looking for alpha males and alpha females because we're looking for people that have a strong point of view and can help others lead when times are tough and when times are boring.

You know, we're looking for that. But too many alphas with that dark tone to it becomes super problematic. Look, this is super helpful as a starting point. I think the right way to do this is to kind of start by identifying a couple things and maybe add to them, right? So let's just keep revisiting this. I'm going to keep introducing new entrepreneurs to you who are going through different experiences. I think you're definitely right. It's one of the things I've always admired most about Tim is he is so sincere about balancing the opportunity cost of his time with what can make the biggest impact. I've always felt like everything's always coming from a place of

goodness. I got a couple of lessons from this that will definitely help us over the next month. I'm going to keep putting entrepreneurs in front of you that are going through different versions of the same experience. And, you know, by the end of this series, you know, I hope that we kind of leave with the framework for, you know, the non-negotiable traits of a great entrepreneur that we're going to back to solve a big problem. Yeah, good. Let's keep pulling on.

I'm stoked to meet your people. I think it's good for you that we get to amplify the people that you're investing in. And I get to learn some gems and nuggets from entrepreneurs who are in the process right now. So I love this win. All right. I appreciate you, Alex. Have a great day. Talk to you soon. Okay. Bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the

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