Next Level Pros - #84: Bootstrapped Beginnings to 9-Figure Exit; David Hauser founder of Grasshopper

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Welcome to a new episode of The Founder podcast. Come with me on this journey with David Hauser, the visionary behind Grasshopper, as he shares the intricate process of selling a business and transitioning into the realm of investing. Delve into tactical advice on navigating acquisitions, managing deal fatigue, and finding renewed purpose post-sale. Whether you're on the brink of selling your business or venturing into investment, this episode promises invaluable insights and inspiration for your entrepreneurial odyssey. Highlights:  "II wanna get to a billion plus dollar exit, not because I care about the dollars. Like my life is not gonna change at all, but it's the scorecard that exists for the value I can deliver to this world”     "So the more buttoned-up you are during that process, the less likely it is price will go down and the more likely is price will go up."       "Having all of our families together, doing that was so meaningful and impactful.“  Timestamps 4:17 - Acquisition Offer Consideration   7:39 - Overcoming Deal Fatigue in Acquisition   10:05 - Post-Acquisition Financial Management   19:38 - Balancing Work and Family for Impact   24:43 - Selling a Business and Investing Dilemma   28:07 - Family Gatherings' Influence   28:32 - Reimagining Meaningful Experiences   29:31 - Motivation to Prove Doubters Wrong   35:53 - Opportunity Discovery Strategies   42:25 - Cultivating Intimate Connections Live Links:  Join my community - Founder Acceleration ⁠https://www.founderacceleration.com ⁠ Apply for our next Mastermind:h⁠ttps://www.thefoundermastermind.com⁠  Golf with Chris h⁠ttps://www.golfwithchris.com⁠  Watch my latest Podcast Apple- ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-founder-podcast/id1687030281S⁠ Spotify- ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2⁠ YouTube - @thefounderspodcast

It's actually very weird what I'm going to say, but I want to get to a billion plus dollar exit, not because I care about the dollars. Like my life is not going to change at all, but it's the scorecard that exists for the value I can deliver to this world. And that's the next step. So for me, it's driving towards that. Like, what are the decisions over the next 10 years that push me towards that direction? And this doesn't have to be a short-term goal. This can be a long, it is a long, that to me is that direction. And this doesn't have to be a short-term goal. This can be a long, is a long, that to me is the driving success. Yo, yo, yo, yo, welcome to another episode of the founder podcast. Today I have Mr. David Hauser. David was the founder of Grasshopper who eventually sold off. He bootstrapped this thing and eventually sold it off for 175 million

to Citrix, a publicly traded company. Welcome to the show, David. Excited to have you. Thanks, Chris, for having me. Yeah, dude. It's going to be fun. So let's dive in and talk about selling businesses. I think this is a thing that there's not a lot of information out there. In fact, when I've talked about it on other podcasts as a guest or whatnot, a lot of times people are like, like what, what is going on? So I'd, I'd love to like pick your brain. You've had the opportunity to sell how many businesses at this point? Uh, so I've probably sold now five or six different businesses of varying size. Grasshopper was definitely the largest exit. Um, but if you think about it, like they've all gone through the same process. And, uh, luckily we had a lot

of key learnings there that we've now applied across those sales. So, so tell me, tell me about like that first one, like, first of all, who held your hand and made sure that you did it properly? Because I, I think that's one thing that most entrepreneurs struggle with. If they've never done it before, it's like, how do I go about it? Am I going to get screwed? Like what's the actual process?

And so walk us through that first one. Yeah. So I think it's important to set some context for the Grasshopper sale. It was sold to Citrix, a publicly traded company. They've done at the time, probably 50 acquisitions before that. So very experienced. But they came to us and we said no a number of times and they kind of kept coming back to us. We later found out why, like their board had made a decision about telecom and early stage companies and why this fit really key for them beyond just our customer base. And we bootstrapped it to about 30 million dollars a year. But, you know, so in that process, you know, when we finally said, OK, like they've made an offer, it's too big to ignore. That's when we brought in an investment bank not to run a process, but to your point, to kind of hold our hand and say like, hey, here are the mistakes that you may make.

And then also be the bad guy. Right. Because we knew like my partner and I left after the acquisition, but our management team stayed and we needed a buffer for someone else to be the bad guy to say no, to disagree. So that management team could continue successfully with Citrix after the sale. So it sounds like this was just a little bit more nontraditional. These guys came knocking on your door rather than you going in and running a process. So like, how did that come about? Yeah. So they came to us. It was a connection, you know, someone I knew who had sold their company to Citrix and he said, Hey, let's just have a conversation. I said, okay, fine. We'll have a conversation. Um, they said, look, you know, we want to acquire someone in this, in this space. That was their first statement. We said, cool. Um, we're not interested. We're still building this. We have a long way to go. We never expected to sell the company when we started it.

So we had no plans. They came back to us and they said, look, we want to buy you. So that was kind of the second step. We said, appreciate it. Still not a good fit timing wise. We're going to grow this. Ultimately, we said, look, here are our plans for the next three quarters. They came back to us two quarters in and said, OK, how are things going? Well, we beat all of our plans. Their statement back to us was we've done this 50 times and we've seen these plans. No one ever hits them. So very impressive that you guys did. And then it kind of accelerated from there quite quickly to a point they said, look, like here's a real offer. And I talked to a lot of founders about this. Like when you see an offer that is significantly more than you would be willing to pay,

you have to entertain it, right? Because like you have perfect information, you know, every problem in the company, you You know all the issues. And if it's more than you're willing to pay and significantly more with near perfect information, you have to start to think about it. Yeah, no, for sure. So at this point, you said you were doing about $30 million in ARR? Okay, cool. So you essentially got valued at five and a half times revenue, which is a pretty nice multiplier. I'm not too familiar probably with your space or whatnot, but is that what the offer was initially or did it change once you brought a banker on board? the original offer. What I think we spent time working on during that process is beyond just closing was, you know, how does the escrow work? How do we reduce that as much as possible? Luckily, the offer didn't go down at all, right? So like we did a good job of fighting that

inertia that kind of happens in deals for them to pick apart and find issues. So original offer stayed the same and actually increased in terms of retention bonuses. So the 175, then also there was a management team retention bonuses for the management team that stayed. So that increased because they saw the value there during the process. I think the key with the banker though was much more about managing those expectations and processes

to successfully close compared to increasing price. And so at the point that they made the initial offer till the time you close, how long did that go? And like, what did that process look like? It was about nine months, I believe, maybe seven months. It's kind of hard now. It's been a number of years now, but it felt like years, right? Like one of the pieces of advice the banker gave us early on is like, you have to understand every email, every phone call is a go, no go call, right? Like the buyer can walk at any time for reasons you may not ever understand. So every single call is about getting to the next step in the process. That's it. And what's really interesting is we found out after the close that we were about two weeks away from losing the deal because an activist investor sent a letter to Citrix two and a half weeks after the deal closed saying, you should sell all of your SaaS businesses. Wow. Right. And ultimately they did. They sold

Grasshopper and all their SaaS, their GoToMeeting, everything. It probably took whatever period of time, a short period of time. But it was a very strong investor in a publicly traded company and they sold a billion dollars of revenue of SaaS revenue. That's wild. That's wild. So walk us through, I mean, anybody that's ever gone through selling their business at one point or another, they experience a lot of deal fatigue. Like walk us through like the mentality that you were going through over those seven to

nine months in actually getting this first one across the finish line? So I think for me, it was a little less about deal fatigue and it was more distraction. Like we approach this, that we have to run this company like we're not selling it. And it's really, really hard. Like it's easy to say, don't pre-spend the money in your head. And I don't really care about like buying things. So that was easy for me, right? Like I was like, I don't really care about that. That's fine. But we had to know that like if this fell through, that we had a successful business

that was going to continue going and we hadn't fallen down. That to me was much more difficult. The other piece that I think was really hard was when do we start bringing in others into this process, meaning in the company, right? Like how do you share that? You know, we had to do massive code reviews. So like the team went from three or four people knowing the executive team to like 10 people knowing to like 15, right? Like that's the inertia that we were really uncomfortable with and how to manage,

right? And so like, how did you navigate through that? Like once people started hearing about it, like, were you uneasy? Did other people have shares in the business? Like, I mean, what, were they, you know, aligned to be excited about this or like, oh, great, they're selling us off and we're going to have some other some other boss that's not going to be aligned with what we're doing? Yeah, I think it's a really good question. And it's one of the deal points we spent a lot of time thinking about was what happens to this company moving forward? Like we wanted the brand to stay like us and the rest of the team cared about the brand. We wanted to know that they were going to attain the people, that it was going to be an independent brand that was going to be able to be run the way that that group wanted to run it, right? That it wasn't just going to be a Citrix phone system, right? Like it still is Grasshopper

today, even though it's been sold now to another company, right? So that was very important to us. And the point about equity, very few people actually had any equity, including the management team, because I felt really uncomfortable giving out equity, not because I didn't want to, but because it felt like a lie to say, our goal is to never sell this company, but I'm going to give you this equity as part of a compensation package, knowing that our goal is not to sell and it's going to be worth zero. Right. So we thought about how do we, we highly compensated on salary. We had a very attractive bonus program. We did all of these other things. So in that process, we had to step back and say, we are going to reward dollars as if there was equity

to the entire team, top to bottom, across the entire company to make sure everyone was aligned. That's awesome. So you end up selling, is it 100% or did you have some equity that rolled forward? No, we sold 100% and left the day after the acquisition. Okay. So I mean, that happens. You have a huge check hit your bank account. I mean, $175 million is split up amongst whoever the shareholders were at that point. I'm assuming you had a pretty good chunk of that. I mean, what's going through your mind? So, I mean, we were self-funded. So yeah, there was no one else. It was quite very weird, right? Like first, my first question was like, where do you transfer money like that? Like, like, I don't know, like, do you send it to your Bank

of America account? Obviously, our advisor said no, you know, set up a proper proper custodian account of fidelity and wire it that direction and do all those things. But like, that's the first thing I'm like, I don't even know what to do. And I think that the next piece, well, so we had pre-planned a lot of our estate planning, luckily. So we had pulled a lot of those assets out of our estates, me and my business partner, prior to the sale. So that helped us a lot from an estate planning perspective. But then you have to manage this. Like, what do you do next? Did you immediately bring on, did you have to manage this. What do you do next? Did you immediately bring on, did you have a private banker prior to this,

like a JP Morgan or something like this? Yeah, I did. I had a relationship at First Republic and their private bank group. I don't think that they were necessarily helpful. I don't think anyone really is for what I wanted. Like, I actually don't believe in having a traditional wealth advisor. I don't want to pay a percentage. If you really look at the data and understand that no manager has beat the market over a 20 year plus period ever. Like, you don't need active management. You don't need to pay for active management. So I am very extreme on this. Every one of those dollars that I didn't attribute to money to build and do things with goes into direct index funds with tax

loss harvesting. No idea what the balance is, have never looked at it, won't look at it, don't care. That's wealth preservation compared to wealth building. But active management is a big scam. I couldn't agree more. In fact, when we did our transaction and we got this big check, I did bring on a private banker, but I told him, I said, look, I don't want you directing any. I want this all to be self-directed and I want your lowest fee, whatever else so that I can make this self-directed. And the only reason I'm bringing you on is because what was interesting to me that I think most of the population doesn't realize is like there's secrets that the rich have that nobody else has access to, like lines of credit against your portfolio and everything else. For me, it was like, man, if I could go and self-direct stuff into stocks that I was already investing in, I can go and put millions of dollars here and I

could pull out 60% at a 2% rate to be able to go invest in real estate and private equity investments and everything else. I mean, that's a cheat code that most people never access. Like to be able to get super cheap money that's levered against a portfolio. You know, a regular Tom, Dick or Harry, you know, they're just stoked about making, you know, half a percent in some sort of banking setup. Yeah, I think too, like the other piece of it is like if you're not paying a percentage fee, you actually can save money on the rest of the fees. Right. The custodian fees, all of the other things that are bought in bulk by a private bank or an advisor or whoever. Right. Right. Like they're going to have access to institutional pricing. And as a consumer, you don't. So like they add marginal value in some of those areas from a cost perspective, assuming you're not paying percentage of assets. Right. But what, what really a great advisor should do, or even really a private bank relationship is focused on estate planning, right? Getting,

getting that out of your estate is 40% savings. Right. Right. Like above the exemption. Yeah, no, for sure. So tell us like, I mean, once again, this money hits your account, like, what do you think? And like, okay, what? So you, you obviously go do estate planning and whatnot, but what's next? Like, how, how do you, how do you deal with like this drastic change in your life? I'm sure from startup and bootstrapping this thing till 175 million exit, it was like, go, go, go, go, go. And then like, what? There's definitely an identity crisis that happens immediately because we didn't stick around. We negotiated a deal where we left and didn't have to have an

earn out. My life didn't change, which was actually very interesting. I still have the same car that I had then that I have now, right? Like exactly the same car. I already lived in a nice house. Like I had the things that I needed to have a comfortable life. None of that changed, right? What instantly changed was identity. Like for 12 years, I was the grasshopper guy. Like I would get on stage and play a video with grasshopper branding, not about the product, right. But like about entrepreneurs and our core purpose and such, like I did that for 12 years and it seems really small, but my email address had to change. Like very instantly, I no longer had an email address. I'm like, what do I do?

Right. Like they are small things, but it's all tied up in identity. And I, and very quickly, it's easy to lose yourself in that. And the advice I heard again and again from people in this process I talked to is don't rush into things, take time. Even you, you want to be busy and do stuff. That's fine, but don't rush it. So what, what year was this that you exited? This was about six years ago, seven years ago. Okay. So 20, 2017, 2018. So you get the advice not to rush in. You're going through this identity. Like how do you, how do you overcome this identity shift identity crisis? Because I mean, just you talking, you give me a little PTSD

because I've, I've gone through, I've gone through very, uh, very similar type feelings and situations or whatnot. So like what, what, uh, what ultimately changed? Where did you gain new purpose? So, I mean, first of all, as an entrepreneur, I didn't listen to the advice and I probably rushed into some things I shouldn't have. But I tried to slow down. I also set out a goal to make sure I was always learning and growing. Like in my last years at Grasshopper before selling, that was starting to happen. But like, I always wanted to push my boundary of learning and understanding and making myself uncomfortable. So like, I couldn't play golf, like learn to play golf for two quarters or whatever those things were. So I doubled down on that as where can I actually put a lot of my time? Right. And I said, where are the like, so I took a yoga class, found that I liked it, started going seven days a week and did a 200 hour teacher training.

Oh, wow. Right. Like in that time and process, not uncommon for me to kind of go all in. But that was a really critical moment of my life to be able to have that time in my mind to myself and settle my mind, but also engage in something deeply and really push boundaries. Right. Like it's not a comfort level I had. So, so tell us a little bit more about yoga. I mean, you, you went all in on this. Is this still something that you practice on a, on a regular basis? Yeah, I probably practice five days a week now, uh, added Pilates, more weightlifting, some other things compared to seven days a week. Um, I don't teach, even though I did my, my teacher training, uh, that was much more of a journey for myself. But, you know, I found a very active style, vinyasa flow, heated, like it's not a slow yin style, right? So I really love that. And it's become my routine, right? Like, I'm a big proponent of routines. So every morning, I'm at the gym doing one of those things. And honestly, even if I'm not

doing it, I still shower at the gym and get ready at the gym as part of that routine that sets me up for my day. And so at the same time, you're a family man. If I understand correctly, you have, is it three children? Yeah, three kids. Yeah. Three kids. How old are they? Six, 10 and 19. So kind of a wide range. How have you balanced that? Because obviously the 19 year old was very much a part of the grasshopper journey. You know, the two younger a little bit, you know, on the on the tail end of it. But how did you balance that in building businesses or making this transition? So I really thought a lot about work-life integration compared to balance. I'm not good at balancing anything, right?

So like someone said, you can't run a marathon. I ran the Boston Marathon. Like I'll go all in on things. So to me, it's all about integration. Like how can I integrate my kids and my family into trips that I'm taking, conferences, things that I have to go do? Right. Can I extend that by a day? Right. Similarly, if I'm traveling with them on vacation, I'll happily work from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. before they're even awake. They have no idea. But I'm able to be highly productive, not miss out and not get behind. And then when I'm with them, be super engaged.

Right. So like, I really don't like this idea of like, we need to separate time and we need to be very diligent about it. I think we should integrate time. So when we are together, I'm highly engaged and in the moment with them. I love it. I love it. Yeah. That's one thing I talk a lot about it. What I refer to as just impact, right? You can't balance time, but you can balance impact, like just be as impactful for the 10, 15 minutes, hour, whatever that you are doing the one thing. And so I love that you're a big proponent of that. Where are you finding purpose now? What drives you? What's getting you out of bed every single

morning besides yoga? So I really optimize for happiness now. And it's been an interesting journey and decision compared to optimizing for return on dollars or assets. And obviously, I want to use those dollar figures as a scorecard, right? Like that's the scorecard that we have for how much value we deliver to this world. So that matters, right? Like, but what do I optimize for? It's for happiness. So across those things, I've started to really find that my happiness is derived from empowering

other people in their journey and learning. And how do you go about doing that? Yeah, it's a good question. So like, for example, this last year, I donated and volunteered my time to build a 550 person event for Formula One here in Las Vegas for YPO. That was a year and a half of my time for free, right? But I was able to derive a tremendous amount of happiness and fulfillment from that by bringing together 550 people over a four day period with a nine

and a half million dollar budget, bringing in 25 of the best speakers in the world, presidents of teams and all of the different things around sports. And really, like someone asked me that event, like, why did you do this? It was to be able to see those smiles and that enjoyment that people could derive from that event and learning, right, and push boundaries and do all of those things. I was able to give that back, right? And that to me was very valuable compared to working on a company. During the time I worked on a company, I sold one, I did all sorts of other things, but that's not what I think back on over the last 12 months. That's awesome. That's awesome. So you've sold, you said five businesses. What, what advice do you give to an entrepreneur that maybe wants to go and sell their business someday? Like how

do they go about that? Like what? What actions can they take today that will eventually prep them for an exit type of opportunity? Yeah, I'll start with two tactical things. So the first is run the business in the best possible way and profitably. That is how you get the best exit, right? I think people make the mistake and try to optimize for things they think other people care about. Just run a great company. And that is how you get a great exit, right? Like that, I think is the first piece. The second piece of level down tactically is when you're going through that process, start early in the documentation and then a partner on a legal side, right? So when I say documentation, documentation of the legal things and all the stuff you have to do, but all the

processes and procedures and the things in your company, one, you'll get better, two, an acquirer expects it. So the more buttoned up you are during that process, the less likely it is price will go down and the more likely is price will go up. So, I mean, give us some deeper examples of being buttoned up. What does that mean? So I think the easiest ones are like on the HR side, like all contracts are signed, IP is owned by you. You understand where all the contracts exist and don't exist and are they transferable or not. On the business side, like how does the company actually run? You know, what is it that makes this a successful business where these people could leave and continue on, right? Like all of those internal processes and procedures to make it happen.

And then the last part, the planning process, I think is actually very important. So I believe in a framework and whatever framework you choose, making sure that you have a rhythm around planning. So we're all aligned on those goals. That's how you can, during the process of acquisition, not be distracted and actually hit and deliver on those goals. So it's interesting. You go and you sell investing in other operating businesses, either as an angel investor or whatever it may be, walk us through that. First of all, why? Why

ever sell your operating business if you're going to go and just invest in somebody else? And two, what are you looking for? Yeah. So I actually don't believe in investing in others. I believe in investing in myself. I do angel investing as a way to give back and to learn. That's separate from a returns perspective. I think it's a really weird paradox that every operator I know that sells their business instantly turns around

and wants to buy an operating business, right? So you're like, okay, well, maybe I just shouldn't have sold that business. And I've actually had this conversation with a lot of friends. Like, they're like, okay, I'm getting ready to sell my business. I'm like, okay, why? Like, let's actually walk through the reasons. They're like, well, I need an exit. I need to do that.

I'm like, okay, but like dig deeper. Like, what are you going to do next? Well, I want to buy a business that does this. I'm like, okay, you're doing whatever it is. It is highly successful. Just keep doing that and go look at some other things. Like, how do you do both rather than selling? I think that's a valid conversation and question to have

because it's this weird paradox. Like, you know this, right? Like you instantly go looking for an operating business that has over whatever EBITDA and whatever your parameters are. So would you say if you could do it all over again, you wouldn't have sold Grasshopper? It's a good question. I think if you asked me two years later, I say yes. If you ask me now, I say no. So from today's perspective, you wish you would have stayed on and kept running Grasshopper. Yeah. So it's now a $100 million plus company. It still delivers on our core purpose and our core values exist. I love it today. Today, I really got a lot of enjoyment out of building and growing.

And now I spend a lot of time searching and kind of turning assets, which is just not as fun as what we were doing before, which was building this thing. Now, could I build another thing? Yes, I have. I've walked away from things. I've done all sorts of stuff. But yeah, today, went in a sober. Yeah, it's interesting. You're actually making my heart yearn a little bit

because I walked away from a business that I sold 1,000 employees. Many of these people are like family, right? That had grown with me and developed with me. And, and there's a, there's a special place in your heart for, for something like that, that you, that you build. And I, and I can just hear it in your voice and, and the, the, like you yearned to be a part of that, that purpose, you know? And, and, uh, you know, I don't, I don't think it's, it's something that not a lot of people get to experience. Well, one, building something.

Two, you know, letting it go. And then three, yearning back to have it. So I always like I was always like critical of people that like bought back their businesses like at some period later. Yeah. But like I get it now. I'm like, OK, like at the right price, I definitely buy it back. Yeah. But like, I get it now. I'm like, okay, like, at the right price, I definitely buy it back. Right. Because I love it. But, you know, to your point, the one of the most impactful things that ever happened to me running Grasshopper was going to one of our company barbecues that we did every year and just seeing the number of people that we

brought together to do something great together, right? Like that meant more to me than any dollar that we made or anything else. Like having all of our families together, doing that was so meaningful and impactful. Like I can think back to the exact location of where it was, the bar, like when it was like that really meant something. Right. Yeah. And it's, and it's really hard to recreate that, right? Like, you know, you can, you can try to find that similar type of purpose in the companies that you own now or investments that you make, but yeah, there's just something different. Yeah. So appreciate, appreciate you, uh, you, you sharing that where, where would you say, so along your story, uh, uh, like where did you find the drive to go and build businesses? Like what, what made you an entrepreneur where, where would like some of

the foundational things? Yeah, I, I'd say there's two areas. One, I struggled tremendously in school and early in school, reading, writing, have a learning disability, or I actually say had a learning disability because I had the privilege to be able to go to tutoring many days a week and learn how to learn for me, right? My individual style. So I know it's not popular to say, but I feel like I overcame that compared to dealt with it. So that was one. Two, the driving factor for me was proving people wrong, right? Like I was not the popular kid. I actually had this weird balance in high school. Like I loved computers. I spent a lot of time in the computer lab. I also played varsity football. Right. So like there was this weird kind of balance in the middle where I definitely wasn't a popular kid, but I wasn't the typical unpopular nerd in the computer lab. So, you know, I was building computer software and throwing parties. Right. So it was very weird, but I really loved it because all I cared about was proving people wrong, that they believed I couldn't be

successful, that I couldn't do something. And I just wanted to show everyone I could. You know, it's interesting. Me and you sound like we're built from the same cloth. I played football and I was also on math team. Like I always took pride in like not being the nerd on math team. It's pretty awesome. So like how did you draw into that? So obviously that was like created at an early age or at a young age of trying to prove people wrong. How did you draw into that throughout your career? I think just naturally all the time is what I think about. If I think about what drives me on a daily basis, it's proving people wrong even today.

Would you say that you make up voices in your head or do you really think that you're proving people wrong even today, right? So would you say that you make up voices in your head or do you really think that you're proving people wrong? Because what I sometimes do in that situation, like I'll imagine people saying stuff, right? Like to keep me going or like, do you really think that people are still doubting you? I do think that people doubt me, but I think what I really do is I look and think back to and visualize the fat kid that I was, that people definitely didn't think I would be successful. Like that's the image I see. Right. And I'm like, okay, I've changed that. I've lost weight. I've done other things. I've been successful, but that's still what I see. Right. And then I

think other people see that. Right. And I think that's actually more powerful than someone saying to me, David, I don't believe you can do that or whatever. It's that visualization and that image that sticks with you for your whole life. It doesn't matter what changes happen. Yeah. Yeah. And I want the listeners to like really pay attention to what he's saying here, because like, this is such a key to success is like drawing on previous experiences, re-imagining like what it was like to overcome a certain aspect in our life. And like, cause, cause really life is about like the moment right now when things get difficult, right? Like having to like push through the workday or, or get this particular thing done or whatever it is. And, and going back to a time

that you did and getting that extra motivation, that extra drive or reminding yourself how disciplined you are, the person you're trying to prove wrong. And, and like, like that is, that is so key to like really mentally overcoming the pain in the moment that, uh, that we experience every single day. So I appreciate you sharing. I would say like, as an entrepreneur, it's very lonely too. Right. And to, to be able to overcome that loneliness, you have to have those past experiences to draw on because there's not someone sitting above you or next to you saying, Hey, you got to do this. Hey, you got to finish this. Hey, like there's not that thing. Right. So that has to come internally.

And however you build that for me, it's visualizing that person for you. It might be different. Right. But like, you have to have that driving factor because you don't have someone next to you poking. So what would you say, like what's next for David Houser? Like what do you want to live the rest of your life and be known for? We fast forward, we're sitting around your grave site. What do you want people saying about you? Yeah, so it's actually very weird what I'm going to say,

but I want to get to a billion plus dollar exit, not because I care about the dollars. Like my life is not going to change at all, but it's the scorecard that exists for the value I can deliver to this world. And that's the next step. So for me, it's driving towards that. What are the decisions over the next 10 years that push me towards that direction? And this doesn't have to be a short

term goal. This is a long term goal. That to me is the driving success. I don't care if people know about it or say it when I die. That's a very different question than what is my goal and where do I want to drive to? I actually hope that I have a few people that really care about me when I die and they show up. I don't care about the other shit. I don't care about the marginal people in my life. I want deep relationships with a few people that last for a long time compared to very shallow relationships with a wide people that last for a long time compared to very shallow relationships with a wide group of people. I love that. I love that. And how do you currently envision yourself going back to the financial aspect, getting to that billion dollar exit? Are you still looking for that opportunity or is it just a conglomerate of a bunch of different things that you're working

on? So I think it's going to be a singular opportunity. I think focus is important. I don't know what that is right now. So a lot of my time is spent on learning new industries, new spaces, new things, right? Like when I started Grasshopper, I didn't know anything about telecom, right? Like I don't think that I need to be in a space I necessarily know. I know how to operate, grow and scale. So how do I identify those things? It's about learning and challenging myself to be in places that are uncomfortable. That's how I think I discover that and find it. I have no idea what it's going to be.

So what are some things that you're doing on a daily basis right now to do that type of discovery, like go and educate yourself and find opportunity for maybe an investor or an entrepreneur right now that is in a similar type of situation that's looking for opportunity? How do you go about identifying those type of things? Yeah. So one part of it to me is just pure learning. What are the books and things I'm reading that I don't understand? So I don't really read fiction books. So I'll pick a lot of different areas and pieces. The other is like, how are other people identifying opportunities, right? So like the smartest people in the world that make the most money, private equity, like it is a class

of a group, right? Like, how do they think about and understand these different areas and opportunities and identify early in the process or early in the stage or cycle of these industries, right? Like this past week on my email newsletter, I wrote about car washes, like that's in the later stage of private equity, right? You were seeing them pop up everywhere. There's lots of car washes. It makes sense. But how did they identify that early equity, right? You were seeing them pop up everywhere. There's lots of car washes. It makes sense. But how did they identify that early on, right? Like that's the key learning that I want to understand. So spending time talking to those folks and understanding that.

And then the last piece for me is actually touching new companies, right? So like I'm working on a med spa company right now. I know Nothing about med spas, but I identified it as an opportunity. I'm going to spend time in that industry, understanding it hands on. They very well may not be where I spend a lot of my time in the future. I don't know, but I have to touch it and find out. Got it. Got it. And so you mentioned, you know, you read a lot of books and you're studying these different things. Like what are some books right now that are top of mind that are that are top of mind that have really been impactful to your recent learning?

That's a good question. I really liked most recently Tools, which is Barry Stutz's book. That I thought was really interesting for me. Helped me crystallize a lot of thoughts mentally. You said tools by who? Stutz, S-T-U-T-Z. So really liked that. I started to try to look for books about Albert Einstein's life.

That to me is very interesting. Like I think the inventor and the kind of scientist mindset and mind, I think is interesting. I really like a lot of books about evolution. Like how do we get to where we are today? So like that gives like a grand scheme or overview that I can then start to dig into. So, um, I actually have a reading list on my website that has every single book, um, that I like, but also that all the people I think are smart or whatnot, they attribute a lot of their success to different mentors or coaches or different people that they've had along the way. Who are some, or maybe you're a unicorn and don't have any, but who are some coaches or mentors that you've either spent money or hung around and taught you a lot of incredible principles that have gotten you to where you're at today. Yeah. So I'll separate those into the categories, right? So like mentors have had a lot of them, right? Like that could be small relationships, like a professor in college that, you know, I pulled a very key specific thing to, or someone like James, who gave me my first job at an internet company when I was in high school in New York, right? And stayed in touch with him. And we actually built a company together. Those are in the mentor category. And

I've had a tremendous number of them help me throughout my career, right? On the coach side, I think it's very different. I've brought in executive coaches across all of these different companies and now built a framework and that I, you know, ascribe to. But I think it is super important to have someone in that coaching capacity to push and challenge and ask the hard questions about the hard truths that we don't want to confront that sometimes we're ignoring in our companies, that's a different relationship than a mentor, right? What's a budget or, you know, whether it's a percentage or a set dollar amount that you take and you spend on either coaches or self-development or whatnot, Like what, what has been your, your guide or your framework

throughout your career for that? I think it really depends on the size of the company and the asset level, right? So the, you know, typically we look at spending between 5,000 and $10,000 a day for a onsite coach to run one of our frameworks or do whatever we're going to do. Like that's a budget that I think is reasonable depending on the size of the company. On personal development, I actually think it's an unlimited budget. I think it's the most important thing we can do as an entrepreneur, self-care and self-development. So I spend a lot of money being a member of EO, of YPO, traveling, going to conferences, learning, doing all those things. I'm a very frugal person in general, but one of my core values and our family core values is experiences

over things. I will pay for those all day long, no matter what, but I won't buy a new car. I love it. So that's the kind of dichotomy of how I think about spending money. I love it. I love it. Would you say that's like one of your biggest keys to success is just the fact that you've emphasized experiences over things? Yeah. I mean, I think that it is our first family core value. We have a number of them, but I think it definitely leads in all of those categories. It talks about learning. It talks about how you think about and spend money. I don't know if it's necessarily the key to success, but it is the key to our happiness

as a family. Which I would term success in my book. So, you know, happiness for sure. Uh, dude, man, you've, uh, you dropped some incredible, incredible knowledge with us and I appreciate everything. Where, where's a good spot that people can get more information from you, follow you, message you direct what, uh, for the listeners. The best place is davidhauser.com. Uh, sign up for the weekly email that I send out. Um, I write it myself every week. It's actually one of the things I love the most doing every week. And it's made me a better human being and sharer and all those things, writing this over the last four or five years, every single week. I am on social media. I don't use it. I deleted it from my phone a long time ago. It's actually weird since my username on Twitter is DH. So I was relatively early to get that. That's crazy. But I don't think it adds a lot of value to my life and to the society. So I've just not participated as much there. And I want to

engage one-on-one and, you know, have that, you know, connection with people that actually care about what I'm talking about. Right. So, yeah, I mean, diving into that a little bit deeper, like what, I mean, most people, there's a lot of people that would argue against that and say, oh, you know, social media has changed the way I've been able to influence and impact and whatnot. Like how, how do you create those connections now? Or is it just about like just a handful of really good connections? Yeah. So it's interesting, right? Like there's probably 15,000 people that get my email each week. Right. So that's not a small number, but what I do want to have is more direct, intimate and deep relationships, right? So like having a long email exchange with someone is very

different than someone liking something on social media, right? So like maybe I can get wider exposure by doing the latter there on social media, but if I want a real deep connection and meaningful conversation, I think it's harder. Right. But for me, social media was just more of a distraction issue. Right. Like I think we use it to fill time in an unproductive and unhealthy way, like just scrolling. And I want to have that time back for my imagination. Right. And it's scary when we just feel all of our moments by grabbing our phone and I'm, I'm guilty of it. Right. Like at home, I still want to check my email and do all those things. And it's, and it's a bad, bad habit. So as much as I can remove from that, the better. I love it. I love it. That definitely requires, I mean,

in this day and age requires an incredible amount of discipline to be able to overcome these distractions. We have so many things vying for our time. And speaking of which, I appreciate you spending your time today and sharing these great nuggets with us and our listeners. And appreciate having you on. Appreciate it. Until next time!