Ilana Golan - Founder of the Leap Academy | Restarting Your Career at Any Age

Nothing prepares you for starting your own business. Beer can be numbing. In a relatively young age, basically, 18, 20, 21, you find yourself with more responsibilities than I probably had at age 40. When you are always in a proving mode, you can never admit to a motion. You just gonna go, go, go. Charge your worth. You can move people's minds. The challenges are inevitable. They're gonna be there. Success leaves clues, but we sometimes don't look at them. When we're our younger self, we don't boundary our self. And we just know what works and we go chase it. Teach them well enough so that they can leave. Treat them well enough so that they don't want to. If you don't trust yourself, you will never be extraordinary. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. Very exciting news. HubSpots inbound converts is back, which means you got to clear your schedules, mark your calendars, get the sitter, three jam pack days, from September 18th through the 20th live and boss. And you're gonna hear inspirational narratives, candid interviews on the highs and lows of incredibly notable figures, business owners, politicians. You're gonna learn from successful entrepreneurs like Ryan Reynolds and Serena Williams on how they reinvented themselves and their businesses to achieve massive success. They're gonna gain valuable insights from industry leaders, visionaries on effective strategies for personal and professional growth. And there's so much more. And on top of all that, I'm speaking again, this is my third inbound. So I'll be doing a segment. So if you want to hear from Ryan Reynolds, Serena Williams, or you want to hear from me, go to inbound.com, go see the lineup and grab your ticket today. I'll see you in Boston. All right, Elana, I'm very excited to chat today. We're gonna go into all things, career transition, entrepreneurship, mindset, all the things that you've experienced in your own life. And I mean, you work with so many different incredible entrepreneurs and executives. But I want to kick this off because you've had a really interesting origin story. When you look at all the things that you've done, what would you say is more difficult? Would it be you being an engineer? Would it be you flying an F-16 fighter pilot? Or would it be you building a business from scratch? What's the scariest that of all those three? Yes, I had a lot of weird things in my life. But I think nothing prepares you for starting your own business. If I'm being really, really honest, I think the fear can be numbing. And like you said, I went to a lot in my life. So when I thought about it, I was like, oh, nothing is gonna happen to me. I just got this. And no, I hadn't. So I think that was like a realization that was really humbling and a very interesting slap in my face. Well, I would say so not everybody who listens to this has been part of an army, any army, flown at F-16. So that's obviously a very unique perspective. And I'm curious how that shaped your view of entrepreneurship. Some of the lessons that you went through when I'm assuming it was it IDF? Yeah. Yeah, it was IDF, so mandatory military service, right? And then you chose to go into the Air Force. How did that sort of shape your perspective on hard work, on putting in the reps and eventually how did that help you out? Oh, it's an incredible question. So it a relatively young age, basically, 18, 20, 21, you find yourself with more responsibility than I probably had at age 40, right? And I don't know if we understand that when we're that young, if I'm being really honest. I think I didn't even realize the magnitude of the things that we were doing. And as much as I wanted, at that point, women were not really allowed to be beyond combat lines. Like there was a very clear regulations around it. So I went to become a flight instructor. And there was a lot around breaking barriers. So how do we break barriers and how do we prove that women can do this too? And I learned some really hard lessons at that point because I was always in this proving mode. I need to prove myself. I need to be better. And when you are always in a proving mode, you can never show vulnerability. You can never admit to emotions. You can never admit that something is scary. You're just going to go, go, go. And inside it's eating your alive, which is really, really interesting and dynamic, but you always hide the fear. You always hide all the things that come up for you. But I did learn some really interesting things, especially there was one specific occasion. I don't know if you want to go into it, but there was an emergency in the air. We needed to help somebody land. And it wasn't clear if they can land or they're going to need to eject in the sea. And I remember trying to help them decide and really experiment with it. And it was literally life and death decision that I'm like, I don't know if I can do this. And... How old were you when you were doing that? I was probably around 20. That's... Like, that's incredibly young. To be making those incredibly scary. Yeah, you're no kidding. So you literally realize that every decision you're about to make can be a life or death decision. I was looking around me like, is there somebody that will pick this up from me because I don't want to make that decision. And on the other hand, no, I'm the person that is training them on emergencies. I should be the person helping them when it's real. And at that point, what I realized, and we can fast this forward a little bit, and at the end of the day they did land fine and it was an incredible teamwork that made this happen. But what I learned is a lot of lessons that will live with me for the rest of the life. And I think the first thing is a mission. So I don't think I ever thought about a mission that, you know, that well, like I was just like, yeah, we're just kind of doing this thing, right? But I suddenly realized my mission is to train these pilots to defend my country and come home safe. If my training is not doing that, I missed everything. And suddenly when you see the bigger perspective, you suddenly know what you need to change. Suddenly things become so much clearer. And you know that you need to train better. You need to change the whole education system for all the pilots in Israel. You know, like suddenly things become so much clearer when you're just willing to look a little higher, you know, above, you know, the 30,000 for you and say, what is really needed? Which is a big thing that we're bringing to entrepreneurship today or to my business or to other executives today. The other thing that I would probably point to beyond just the breaking barriers, which is, you know, it just teaches you that it's possible. But I think the second lesson that was really important is to know your audience. And it sounds like a cliche, but it's incredibly important. So I have the story where, you know, I'm giving feedback to one of the pilots in another occasion. And then he comes up there and, you know, and I can feel, you know, how you sense that things are not going well. And you're like, I don't know what's going on, but this is not going very well. And then he stands there and he stands, you know, like the funny Jason says, Ilana, do you know who I am? And I'm like, oh, don't it. There's going to be a catch here. And I know his name, but I don't know anything beyond that. And then he says, well, when you're about six years old, I balled a nuclear plant in Iraq, right? Which basically says he clearly knows air to ground and his sleep. Now, it doesn't mean that the feedback wasn't correct. It doesn't mean that, you know, I said something wrong, but it meant that I didn't say it in the right way. And I would have changed it if I knew who I'm talking to. And that became, it was very humiliating at the time, but it became one of the biggest lessons of my life because every single person, no matter who you talk to, whether it's a clerk in the supermarket, or you know, your kids, or you know, a peer, or a boss, or an investor, you have to understand them so well, better than they understand themselves. And once you do everything opens up, you can, you know, you can negotiate better, you can charge your worth, you can move people's mind, you can persuade, like I can go on and on, but that changed so much in my life, Scott. So there's a couple of lessons and we'll get into how those lessons impact the people that you work with now and have even impacted you. But I think it's really interesting that you mentioned, you saw beyond the 30,000-foot view and you saw the mission. And I actually have seen this with other people that had massive amounts of responsibility at a young age. And then they seem to, even like, I mean, there's a lot of very incredible Israeli entrepreneurs and they all went through the military. And even in the US and other countries, you have these incredible entrepreneurs that, I mean, not everything is always rainbows and unicorns after the military. There's a lot of people that don't build massive things. But for some people, it seemed like that responsibility and that pressure, it creates this perfect environment to understand what you could be capable of. And then you go apply that to a civilian venture or a civilian idea and it's like this perfect mindset and habits and training environment to go build something massive. And I guess, I guess it's more a question about how can somebody understand your perspective shift. And I think this is probably what you work with people with some of the executives you work with. Because you experience this because you're in a high pressure situation, you're a smart individual, you were charged with lots of responsibility and then you sort of saw the light, you saw this bigger picture. A lot of people never see that bigger picture. And they are only so focused on what's at right in front of them and they work their whole career just doing the same thing and not understanding what else they could do outside of their nine to five. How do you unlock this particular thought process in someone who was not put into that high pressure situation and perhaps has been coasting along for the last 20, 30 years and they're not happy but they don't have the vision that you had. It's a beautiful question, Scott. I mean, again, the military teaches you to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and that's a great trait and skill to have. However, if I'm being really honest, the corporation has a way to just mold you back into the mold that everybody else needs to go by, right? So if I'm being really honest after the military, you know, I studied engineering, I went to Intel and it from that point on. And by the way, Inter was an incredible company. Like they treated me so well. But from that point on, I became part of the mold. And the big reason that I started Lee Academy is because 20 years later, I realized that I could see only like, I had these blind spots. All I could see is that one title above that I want to get to, I forgot the 30,000th view. That just wasn't there anymore. All I could see is like, how do I get to a senior director? How do I get to a VP? Like that's all I could see. So you were almost like, you had it and then you lost it. I lost it and I say, if I can be losing that after everything that I accomplished, if somebody never had that, how do I wake them up because they're sleepwalking to life? And they will wake up in a decade or two or three, with massive regret that they could have done so much more with their life than they haven't. And if I can catch them in this space and stage and say, wake up, there's more to life. I want you to see what else is on the menu. Let's go get it. That's where it becomes incredible. So, okay. So what was the thing? So even like walking through your own journey. So military, massive pressure, tons of responsibility, switch to intel. Still a lot of responsibility, but you're more a cog in a machine. But then you transitioned into building your own thing. You started to become an entrepreneur. And you started to figure out that you didn't want to do the W-2-9-5 thing for forever. What pushed you into the entrepreneur space again? It's a great question, Scott. So unfortunately, I sticked around quite a while in the corporate world. I was with one company and I did start going into more startup worlds, but I wasn't part of the founding team. And there was a huge difference between number one and number two. Like, light years away. We didn't really realize at that time. Like, I thought I was kind of badass, but no, there's a big difference. So I did go into some startup. We had the great some great exits. Some not so great, you know, but it was just like I started, but I love the pace. I love the pace of change. And actually, it was a friend of mine that came to me and think became kind of a norm, right? And you're starting to cruise. You know, you're comfortable cruising. It's fine. You're getting a paycheck. Things are cool. I'm a vice president at the point. And a friend of mine came to me and said, hey, Lana, let's start a startup. And he's been in the suburb for a while. I knew him for about 20 years. And I was like, oh my god. Yeah, that's exactly what I was meant to be. And every awake hour, I was building this startup on the side. We were, you know, already going to investors. We actually raised capital. It was incredible. Scott, like within a few weeks, there was $800,000. The term sheet, they're evaluating our little baby at five million. And it wasn't even, you know, like some weird investors. Like three prominent Silicon Valley investors. Like I remember looking at this thing and I was like, oh my god, like how did that become my life? And by the way, this is like, this is like an entrepreneur's dream. Like an $800,000,000, you know, I'm assuming pre-revenue, seed check for $5 million valuation, prominent Silicon Valley VCs. Like that's like, oh my god. Exactly. But the dream kind of became a nightmare. Yeah. But I did, you know, so I left my job, my, you know, comfortable VP job, which I built from, you know, here in the U.S. from the first printer to, you know, this incredible multi-million dollar machine. And I left the job. I was excited. Like here we go. You know, this is an incredible entrepreneur. And the same day my co-founder decided to take the money and told me out of the business and Scott within a day, I found myself with no job, no salary, no startup, no investment. And probably the hardest thing in my life was that my ego was down the drain. I told everyone about the startup. It became your identity. Just what this became. My identity. What do I say now? Do I say that I was kicked out? Do I say that I was just, I was devised to start. I had no clue how to even cope with it. I couldn't even figure out how to breathe. I couldn't figure out what to do next. Do I look for a job now? Do I look for, you know, to start another business? Do I look for revenge? What do I do? Can you tell us, tell the audience because there's a lesson there. Obviously, exactly how this went down. Because obviously somebody's listening is like, how do you get kicked out of your own startup? And there's many ways. But I want to share what happened to you and I want to hear the lesson that you're going to teach everybody when they're starting their own company. At least talk about it. Well, in hindsight, I can say it's probably the best thing that happened to me. And, you know, obviously, I'm living the dream now every single day. But at that moment, the big thing was, first of all, that we just never wanted to talk about it. Like, we didn't really want to talk about the day after. And that's so common because we're living this fantasy. We're working on things together. Again, it's somebody I knew from way back for 20 years. So it's not some stranger that we just went on a date and decided to start something together. It's somebody I knew for so long. And there's this trust that shouldn't be there because the minute you start something, this is business. This is not relationship anymore. This is business. Obviously, you want to get along. Obviously, everything needs to fall into place. But you also need to put the things. You need to write them down. You need to have agreements in place. Now, in hindsight, again, Scott, I would just say, thank God, I dodged that bullet. That company never lifts it off the ground. And my, in this already, you know, I already sold one and I have this eight-figure business, you know what I'm saying? So, in hindsight, it's the best thing that happened to me. But at that moment, it was the hardest thing that I could even imagine. And it was, it took me on this credible, down-to-spiral that I didn't think somebody so strong. So, you know, brave, theoretically, that ticked all the boxes of success or many boxes of success. And suddenly, I can find myself waking up in three in the morning and trying to figure out how did I become such a failure. And that was hard. It was hard on my family. It was hard on my relationship on, you know, like on my health. Like, we were deteriorating. It was just taking a huge toll. So, what you experienced, unfortunate, hopefully, nobody has to experience that kind of failure or disappointment because obviously, you hope that the people you do business with, you get the contract signed, that, you know, everything's legally binding and you go into business together. And if you fail, you hope it's not because of somebody sort of stabbing you in the back. You hope it's because you weren't able to scale the company. I know that failure is failure, but I much rather fail going to business with somebody and trying our hardest and working together. And then it doesn't work and somebody stabbing me in the back. That seems like a different kind of failure that just sucks, to be honest. It's just not a fun. I guess if I was going to rank, like, how fun different kinds of failures are. It seems like the least kind of fun failure, for sure. So, okay, so, and the point is, everybody's going to go through a lot of these kinds of failures as they transition into entrepreneurship. You turn your identity into the company, which is going to have a huge toll on your mental health, on your physical health, on your relationships. What is your advice for people? Because you work with people that are trying to do career transitions. It could be career transitions to different kinds of careers, career transitions, into entrepreneurship. Failure is inevitable. After going through that, how do you coach people and even almost encourage them to take a jump when they're going to listen to your story and be like, damn, I don't... Scott's saying it's failure is inevitable. Her partner stabbed her in the back, like, how would I have... Maybe she was just nuts, and maybe that's why she did it a second time. Like, I don't have the courage to be able to do that, and maybe we are a little bit nuts. We are nuts. Okay, so someone comes to you. What do you tell them? They're listening to this story. So, first of all, we are nuts, and it's also the best thing that could happen to me, too, right? So, I will say a few things. First of all, the challenges are inevitable. They're going to be there, but the suffering of the choice throughout the journey. And I think one of the things that I would say to anyone that is listening is you can't have your entire identity only defined by one title, one company, et cetera. It has to be also defined by your own brand. And once you have that safety net, you're never alone. You never are nobody. Like, for me, the biggest thing is that when I would go to events, suddenly, it's like, hi, Ilana, what do you do? Nothing. What do you want to do? I don't know. You know, like, I became a nothing. How can you become a nothing from being somebody that is so proud of themselves? So, I think a lot of it is how do you build such a powerful personal brand that really clear on what you want to do next, really align your story, really align, you know, like everything. And then, yes, what? It's okay if it's in parallel. Everybody will have for your careers these days. And if you, you know, and again, I want you to have one stream of income. And it could be from a job. It could be from a business. It could be something. But if you now have your own identity as part of your own brand and your own reputation, you never fall so deep because you always are left with yourself. I was left with nothing. Well, that word you said, portfolio careers, what's that? So, for, you know, and we're really kind of in the air of change, like with AI and gig economy and working remote and all of this, like we are seeing a pace of change that we've never seen before. And there is not even a thing called stock, like nobody's stock. If they're not moving forward, they're losing relevant at a speed we've never seen before. But one of the things that we were seeing more of is something called more of a portfolio career, basically multiple stream of income. Because what happens is that people want to not just have one thing and that's all they do, 9 to 7 pm and then go to sleep, right? Some people want to be, you know, excited about other things or maybe have some impact on the side or maybe be part of some non-profit or maybe some doing some board then maybe do some public speaking and maybe do some consulting. So, they want to richer life, they want more experiences, they want extra income on the side, they want to create not just an okay life, they want to create an incredible life. If you don't want to work paycheck to paycheck, they want to create, you know, generational wealth or freedom or whatever that looks like for them. And what we're seeing is that the many of things that you can do today is just, you know, incredible. It's God, you know, you know it, right? I get it, listen, I'm living it. You don't have your preaching to the choir, but right now that I know and that's why, you know, we're talking, that's why, you know, you're on my show, right? Because it's incredible to watch, because when you have this portfolio of things, that's what changes your life. It's not going to be about negotiating another 10K for yourself. What is that going to do? A hundred K in a decade? Like, how is that changing? How is that moving the needle? But if you now start creating some income on the side and some portfolio careers, hey, you're never alone. You're never, you know, go into this downer spiral like I did. You never find yourself in nothing, but also you have other streams of income. So you always have a safety net. You're always, you know, it's more exciting. You're happy here. And again, it needs to be done right. So I want to make sure that I'm not telling everybody so spaghetti in the wall, see what sticks. No, that's what I'm saying. But if it's done right, it actually changes lives. And it created an incredible life for me too. So let's, let's talk about that. I think that's probably what you help people understand specifically, because somebody who's listening to this, who is a W29 to 5. And they have, they've never tried to build anything before. If they start to look into entrepreneurship, even in 2024, they're going to get into this trap of, I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to go try and build maybe some cool tech idea that I've thought of and I'm not technical and I don't know how to do it. And I have maybe six months of, maybe even a year of money saved up and that should be enough to figure it out. I think that is the worst version of entrepreneurship. Full stop, worst version. That's my, that's my opinion. I think that there's many healthier ways to do it. So, so what, what do you advise people to do? Do you advise that everybody should be an entrepreneur? Do you advise that everybody should have a side hustle? What happens if the side hustle compromises your job? What happens if your boss doesn't like that you're building a personal bread? There's so many scary questions. I'm curious how you sort of go through this exercise to understand when somebody comes to you and leave Academy. This is where you're at now. Let's start to think strategically and where do we go from here. Let's unpack this because I think this is such a beautiful question and it's so, so, so important. And again, it's also going to be very individual. But I'd like, we need to understand where you are now, where you want to go and see what's, what's going to even help. The, the, the one thing that I will say is unfortunately the education system, you know, right now is not a good help, right? Because again, whatever I start day to day 22, electric engineering, how is that helping me right now? Nothing, right? So, and even if you do go to an MBA, it's very theoretical. What you need is something that will meet you where you are and take you to the direction that you want to go, right? So, that's the first, you know, so we wanted to first of all, for every driven person to have a home and for them to be among other driven people about, you know, surround with experts that will really analyze where they are and when they want to go. But the way I'm looking at this is, if they have a W2 right now, like you said, the worst thing that you can do is leave everything behind and jump all in. There is something to burning the boats, but it needs to be done right. And if you have no clue what you want to build and you really haven't even tested the grounds, the chance of success is about zero. Okay. And the truth is, Scott, I think there's also a lot of, like, we tend to paint into entrepreneurship and very pink and roses type of colors. It is hard and not everybody is meant to do it and not everybody should do it. And I still think that if you know how to monetize your skills, at least a little bit, you at least have a safety net. So, and that's where it's really like, I'm going, you know, with, you know, even if somebody is a W2, I don't want you to burn the boats yet. You're not ready for it. You don't even know what you want. But if you start monetizing a little bit of your skills, whether it's again, like for some people, it's mentorship and startup accelerators and maybe some advisor here and there and maybe some of them can go into board seats and maybe some of them can do some coaching, consulting, whatever and maybe some of them, it's speaking of attorneys and maybe, you know, and I can go on and on, like for different people, it will be different things and also different companies will allow different things. Like you said, you know, there's the big consulting companies in the world that you can do a lot. So you also need to take that into account and say, okay, what is allowed here? And how do I make sure that my brand and my identity stand on its own and I don't want to rub my boss in the wrong way? So I also going to make sure that the company is leveraging my new capabilities and there's actually an incredible win win, right? So I think if it's done right, it's actually really, really powerful. So it does take such a unique approach. I'm wondering if when you start to work with people, do what is the exercise that you have them go through to figure out what is really important for them? Because I think that is probably what leads to all the right answers. Yeah, absolutely, Scott. So the very first thing is you need to understand what motivates them and what's important for them. And I think for me, this was the hardest thing. So if you, if I look back 10 years ago, this was the hardest thing because somebody driven, they always know what's the next step. They know what college you need to go through. They know, you know, like everything is always clear until it isn't. And when it isn't, you're lost. So not knowing what's next was one of the hardest moments in my life. So for me, that's the first thing that I want people to get clarity on. And it really gonna be, you know, basically two things, right? One is kind of what is, you know, what are your muscles? Like what's really critical for you right now? And we'll talk about it if you want. And then what is that zone of genius that, you know, where is the secret sauce? Because when we're kids, we always try to lean on, you know, learn new things and try to be, when we're at 40 plus, 50 plus, 60 plus, we don't want to learn new tricks. We might need to learn new tricks, but we rather like really lean on this zone of genius. And when we do, that's where we're going to shine. So if I want to be a chef now, that's a disaster. That's my husband saying like, I'm not good. Okay, no, but that, we can go into that because I think it's a very useful thought experiment for somebody who is later in their career. And actually, I think there's probably, you know, it's interesting. So you work with people that are later in their career and they're not trying to learn a ton of new things, trying to focus on what they really know best. More is a, more is a necessity. It's more a necessity because of where they're at. However, I do believe and maybe have ideas on this. I do believe that if even a younger entrepreneur adopted the same mindset, I think they would still be more successful. I think that maybe being young, they feel like they can learn everything and anything and I actually think that could be a detriment to them focusing and building. You are a thousand percent correct. And the truth is, I think eventually, whatever we teach in Leap Academy, should be part of colleges in high school. Like, you know, I don't, I don't think it should be proprietary. I don't think it should be what they exclusive. Like, I really think every single person needs to have a very engineered way to always decide what they want to do next, align those story, align them network, align the reputation and go into the hidden market because that's where all the opportunities are. So I really do believe everyone should know this. And I do believe we also gonna have this habit of leaping again and again every year to now this, this pace of changes. So vast, right? So now that we see this, people will change, even within the same company, they change responsibility, they change function, they change the tech that they're working with. They change, you know, everything changes all the time. And if you're not ready to reinvent Leap, Leap, Leap, Leap, you're gonna fall behind. So first of all, I do think it's just a skill that everybody needs to know. But the way that looks specifically the Mustavs, if you're gonna look at your career and it was actually kind of a fun exercise to run, you're gonna see that your Mustavs also change throughout your career and it's really interesting. So the way I look at it is sometimes all we need is finance. Like all we need is to just make cash. And that's all we care about, that's our biggest priority and this could be because we need the cash, it could be because we, you know, it's bringing us more confident. I wanted to make more than my husband. It really doesn't matter what it is, but cash is king, right? It's, you know, there are stages where it's more about growth. Like I wanna feel like I'm growing. I wanna grow entitled and reputation in a responsibility to have a team. I wanna learn more, I wanna even fang, you know, like I just wanna feel like I'm growing. Sometimes it's really more about the impact. Like I just wanna finally feel like I moved the needle. I make a difference whether it's on the company, whether it's on people, whether it's some kind of a legacy, whether it's on the world, whatever, right? But I wanna feel like that I'm moving the needle. And sometimes it's balanced because whether we like it or not, there are some stages in life, you know, that we, you know, the career will take a little bit of a backseat and whether it's for kids or health or hobbies or whatever it is, it will take a little bit of a backseat. And the interesting things, and we've done this research on thousands of the people, the interesting thing is again, no career will have all four. And if somebody thinks they have all four, don't ever leave, you got this. Right, like I just don't like that. But if you look back, you'll see that you rotate between the two of them and you switch every a few years. And one of the things that we look at is, first of all, if you just look, don't look too far because it's gonna change all the time. But if you just look a year, two, two, what are the two must have that are right now critical for you to chase? Because that defines a lot of things, right? If somebody says, I need cash right now, they can't go to entrepreneurship. Like that just, you know, that's irresponsible, right? Or if they're already working, then maybe we can start something on the side, right? But a lot of the decisions will be derived, but what are these must have? And based on that, we can make a lot of conclusions happen. And that becomes your compass. That can become like a GPS that really helps you figure out what's next, but also realize it's gonna change. And that's what's beautiful about it. So, no, I love it. And I'm now the second piece to that equation is your zone of genius. And I'm even curious because after you had failures, you had successes. So before leap, you went through this whole exercise yourself. And this is probably how you built out the framework. So using even yourself as an example, how did you find your zone of genius, which allowed you to be successful? No, it's a beautiful question. So the truth is that success leaves clues, but we sometimes don't look at them. And I think the interesting thing with all of this is that when we think about our zone of genius, usually we look at the very specific thing that are always on job descriptions. Like the very specific skill I learned computer engineering, I did this, I did coding and it, but the truth is a lot of times the zone of genius is not there. It's what people are already intrigued by you. What people already come to you for? Where did you get awards? Where did you shine? Where did your eyes sparked so much that you were like, I can't breathe, this is incredible, right? Like it's things that are not necessarily that specific skill, that specific software programming that you've done, right? Like it's something different and it's usually a pattern that is actually you can see it in different places in your life and different places around your career. And sometimes it even goes back to your younger self because when we're our younger self, we don't boundary ourselves. We don't put limitations, we don't try to give it names and we just know what works and we go chase it. When I was about five years old, I took half of my house and when my parents were not home, which I don't know why my parents weren't home, but anyway, it makes you think, but I took a little box and I sold it outside the house because I thought that was so exciting. And my parents came home and I'm like, what just happened, like where did everything go? I was like, oh, I sold it, I thought. So it was so entrepreneurial. When you really kind of look back, there's always lose and the question is, whether you're willing to look at the clues. And for me, the clues were, there's a lot of imposter syndrome that I'll have about the various things. But the one thing nobody can take away from me is that I leaped in so many ways throughout my journey from Air Force to engineer, to technical sales, to product management, to architect, to VP operations. Like I leaped so much that nobody can take that away from me. And I think when you start realizing that and suddenly people are asking me about their career and suddenly, you know, I'm like, and I don't think myself at that point as a career coach, like I hold businesses. I invest in a hundred companies. I, you know, like that was not even a thing for me. But suddenly when I saw that, I was like, maybe that's where the pattern is. And that became the zone of genius. I just want to take a second and thank the HubSpot podcast network for sponsoring the show's success story, even part of their network for the past three years now. If you're a podcast fan, you have to check out some of the other incredible podcasts in the HubSpot podcast network like My First Million, hosted by Sam Parr and Sean Perry. They feature famous guests like Alex Ramozi, Sophia Emma Russo, Hassan Minhaj, sharing their secrets on how they made their first million and how to apply their learning to capitalize on today's business trends and opportunities. Listen to My First Million, wherever you get your podcasts. I love this. You know, I'm also curious, I'm also curious just because there's a flip side to leaping and there's a flip side to the things that you coach and I just want to touch on this briefly because it's obviously a real concern. And we can keep going and talking a little bit more about how you coach people through this transition in their life. But the flip side of this is when people are leaping so much, somebody who you are coaching or working with is either going to be an executive in a company or they're going to start, some of them are going to start companies and those companies will be successful. Now, think about the employees that will eventually work for them that are switching careers and switching and starting personal brands and starting side hustles and stuff like that because if you do it, you know, there's going to be somebody young and ambitious that's going to be doing the exact same thing. And then you're like, now you're a CEO, you made the career transition, you're a founder, you're hiring people and you realize that they're wanting to switch jobs every two years and they're wanting to leap themselves into entrepreneurship. From a leadership perspective, how do you manage people that are in this process are sort of navigating their career in 2024 and beyond and doing these leaps and doing these career transitions because that can be massively disruptive to a business too. So first of all, I think it's a brilliant question and very, very important one to address. I don't know if you've noticed my social media, but one of my, you know, I'm a huge fan of Richard Branson. I go visit his private island and go on safaris with his aunt because I'm learning so much from this guy. And one of the quotes that I really love that he says is teach them well enough so that they can leave, treat them well enough so that they don't want to. And that became like a really big mantra for me because the truth is I'm so armed with a team and we have, you know, 20 something people on my team, right? And it's almost 30 now that are, that, you know, if they're going to leave every year, like that's going to suck because that's what I... Winning it lightly, right? But the beautiful thing is one of the things that we did with them is again, speaking of treated, first of all, I want this to be their multimillion dollar mastermind, like I really want them to feel like they're learning to take their career and their life and their reposition to a whole different level. And what we did with them is something called professional, professional, personal, financial goals. And they, you know, we set with each one of them and kind of looks at where they want to be and each one of these for one year, three years, five years. And then we basically looked at how this company can help them get there. And when you can align the company's goals with their personal, professional, financial goals, now they see the value of actually not only staying, but they see the value of actually realizing that this mission is what they want to be associated with this mission of changing lives and creating this massive impact in the world. That's what they want to be associated with this. That's what they want their brand to be around. And they can see how that creates this massive success for them too. And so again, for me, it's really important to walk the walk and my team, we, you know, make sure that they build their own personal ground with it, we make sure that they go and, you know, just some public speaking, we make sure that they have their own shiny light on them. Because first of all, I, you know, that I think that's gonna make them happier, it's gonna make them feel more fulfilled, but they also gonna see how this place is actually exactly what they need to, you know, create a bigger tomorrow for themselves. And yes, in 10 to 10 somebody wants to start their own, I will totally wish them luck and just know that I created a little piece of that in them. So I think that's amazing. I think that more brands should do that. I think that brands are really missing out and companies are really missing out on enabling people to build their own personal brand and to shine the spotlight on them. Because from what I've seen, it's always a net positive for the business. It's not often when somebody is investing, I think the concern is, if I let somebody post their own stuff and build out their brand, the concern is, well, what if they say something stupid or what if they embarrass the company? From my experience, anybody that is that committed to building out their own personal brand and their professional career, they actually probably air almost too much on the side of caution as to what they post, because they're so concerned with their self image. And I think that brands have to trust more. I think they really have to trust more. I do have, I mean, you're doing it because you're living it and you're doing it yourself and you live in this world of enablement and personal brand and career transition. Is there best practices that you deploy for your team that gets them on stages or helps them understand what content to post versus what not to post? And is there anything that you do? So what I tell my team is that I am a big believer and again, I think it changes when you have 100,000 people under you, right? Like it's something that I can do because we're still small. So there will be probably different rules for bigger teams. But for us, the way I look at this is I want to hire people that I trust. And I want to feed them with insights on how I see things. I have full transparency. They always know our numbers. They know exactly how much we make. They know exactly how our expenses are. Like they know everything. And the reason why I want them to know everything is because again, I'm going to hire smart people that I trust and they can make the decisions. And at that point, I don't need to micromanage them. I can just let them go and they're going to say the right thing anyway because they believe in us, they believe in the mission, they believe in themselves. And that's all that matters. But I will also say Scott, if somebody loses my trust, it's like this. So you give them the trust until they don't have it. And actually, as you're saying this, I'm just thinking, I'm like, if somebody really is upset with the company, I mean, they're going to act out. Maybe they say something stupid online. But if you're letting somebody go, if you're terminating, if you're exiting from the company, I mean, they're going to say the things they want to say anyways. They're going to say what's up, what they're upset about. They're going to talk, I mean, then there's, you know, they can go on glass door. They can, they can, they can talk shit in a whole bunch of places about a company if they weren't happy there, right? So I think that it's best just to enable them into trust. I think that's probably a healthy way because there's too much stress in business anyways. The way that works, I don't know how to micromanage, honestly, Scott, like, you know, for me, the biggest portion is about, I know every piece of the company and what it needs to be. And at some point, I probably did every piece of it. And the reason why I'm hiring somebody is because I don't want to do it anymore, because that part of the game, right? So to some extent, it's like, I have to hire people I trust. I have to give them the trust, and I have to teach them as much as I can in trust, right? But at that point, I need to make sure that they're going to make decisions on their own, and that they just understand how I make the decisions and what's important for the company. And I, the truth is, you know, and I'm really proud, I think most people just been with me for the very first second that they were hired, and... I mean, that's a good sign when people stick around, right? Okay, so let's go back to talking about people going through career transitions, life transitions, couple questions, but to start off, what would be one of the biggest mistakes that say somebody in their 40, 50, 60s makes that you see that can really hurt them. When they start to think about, I want to do something different. Outside of just, we already went over one, which is jumping into a startup that they're building themselves, really with no experience, or no semblance of product market fit, or six months of runway in their bag. That's obviously a huge mistake. Is there other things that you see the people do? Yeah, so I mean, I think the other biggest mistake that I see is just not even being open to realizing that you need to be intentional, strategic about your career, right? And just kind of like letting it slide and think that, okay, if I'm not going to change anything and nothing, would change, well, we are in an era of change. And if you don't really move forward, you're losing relevance and you will find yourself with ageism, with other things, like you will find yourself out of that stability. So for me, not being in the driver's seat, not being very intentional, strategic about your career is a huge mistake. So I believe everybody needs to be leap ready all the time. Whether you decide to leap or not, that's a whole different story. Whether you decide to move up the ladder in your own corporate environment, it's up to you. Whether you decide to build your brand, it's up to you, but what I'm saying, you always need to know what you want, how you wanted, how do you tell your story, tell it was confidence, you know, like you always want to be leap ready. So that's one, the second thing that I'm saying, speaking of mistakes, I think, you know, there's this cliche, don't you network, talk to them, right? And what we see is like, you know, people are just creating all these meetings with like really influential people and they completely butcher it because they have no clue what they want to do. They don't know how to tell their story and they burn bridges. And honestly, like they become a red flag and they have to stop because again, that you can't go back to the same people again again and hope that they will now open the doors for you. You lost it. So one of the things that I would say is like, hold on before you talk to a network and don't worry about the network is the most precious thing you have. But make sure when you go to them, you know, what you want to say, how you want to say it, what you want to be known for, what kind of ask do you have? What are you trying to open, really understand, but also understand who's your audience, what can you add to carry to win win? Like really understand what's going on, how to do this right? Because again, all these cool opportunities are only the hidden market, like all the executive roles, all the co-founding things, the investments, the speaking, the boards, the advisory, I can go on and on, like it's all the hidden market. It's never gonna be on job boards. We're done with job board at about 35 year olds. Like after that, nothing is relevant, right? So if you don't know how to play in that hidden market, you're losing on so much in life. When people are more advanced in their career, they have a lot of expertise. If they've been in a company for a long time, I bet they feel pretty highly about themselves. They probably have a little bit of an ego. So let's give some wisdom to somebody who's in that position. When is it useful to lean on your ego and appreciate your own self importance? When is it important to maybe be a little bit more humble and to humble yourself to the market and the fact that maybe you aren't as good as you think you are. Because you can lean on expertise to a degree, but I've seen a lot. Consultants that come out of CXO roles and they think they are so good, and I think that turns people off, and I think that that can kill the chance of them doing anything new or innovative, or getting on a stage or getting on a cool podcast. I think that, I mean, you've seen this more often, and I've seen it a lot. So I'm curious about how you balance the experience plus the humility. I can't, I don't know how you thought of asking this question. It's a brilliant question. Because I see it. I see it when people want to come on the podcast, and they're like, look at what I've done. Look at, I'm so cool. And this is what I can talk about. And then I get 50 of those a day. And then the person doesn't get exposure to this, but I see it. And I see it with consultants that come at me, and they say, listen, I've worked in this company for 50 years. Look at all the cool stuff I can do. And I'm like, well, can you make a clip on Instagram, go viral by finessing the first 15 seconds of the hook? And I'm like, if you can't, then there's a little bit more that I know about marketing, and Alex Chamozzi and Gary Vee know about marketing and not putting myself at that level. They're phenomenal marketers and much better than me. But I mean, there's something to be said for what you know. And there's also a time when you have to just relax and be open to knowing, be open to the concept of, I don't know what I don't know. I think that's an incredible thing. And honestly, I wish somebody caught me 10 years ago when I was that VP that knows everything. Oh my God, I know everything. Mine said his crap. It doesn't exist. And I was the person that knows everything. And in fact, I think because I knew everything, theoretically, right? That's why the downed inspire was so painful because I think it was just humbling to realize how much I didn't know. And there's this cliche. The biggest thing is what you don't know, but it is so freaking true. Like I wish somebody slapped me in the face 10 years ago and said, no, you don't. Now listen, right? And the truth is that in every conversation, there's two frames, right? And the stronger frame always wins. And unfortunately, I was this VP was a very strong frame, a lot of great energy, great background in my strong frame always won. So people didn't stand up to me and said, no, you're not listening, and I wish they did because the amount of things I did not know Scott, it's actually embarrassing. And I wish somebody told me my journey towards entrepreneurship would have been a thousand times or a million times easier if I would just a little more open to ideas, a little more open to the fact that mine said is real. That the reason why I was not taking action is because of fear. And what will people say? It wasn't the strategies, the strategy was easy. Write a post that this is what you wanna do. It wasn't complicated, but I made it complicated because I was scared. But you don't wanna admit that fear is numbing, right? Like why would you? I'm this badass person. So, you know, like I learned so much along the way. And I think there's like this really beautiful thing that you alluded to and you said it, you know, so well, you have to trust yourself on one hand, right? Like if you don't trust yourself, you will never be extraordinary. That's versatile. But on the other hand, if you don't realize that you are in learning mode all the time, you are this one year old that always needs so strive for understanding, understand, understand, learn, learner because there's endless things that you don't understand. And I'm right now, I'm paying about a million dollars this year for different coaches. I have a coach for this business to take me to 20 plus middle of it. I have, you know, for the podcast and for the LinkedIn and for the Instagram, you know, like I have, seriously, like I've invested so much and I'm the person that didn't even believe in coaches. What? Okay, like I thought they were all BS and all were brought, you know, you can do it. I'm like, no, there's people that have walked the walk and if I can learn from them, how much is that worth it for me? So I switched, I knew that earlier. It's just fascinating how experience really clouds somebody's perception of what they don't know. It's, it's what. And we're working with the directors, VPs all the time. I know you are. I know, so you see it. You see it all the time. And I try to shake them up and say, I was you, not listening, right? Because I was dumb and that in only when they truly listen, this is where you see suddenly people move from directors to sea level and to create incredible things. And we had so many, you know, selling their company for $10 million. And we had one that is now expert in M&A and one that started a fund for $20 something million. And like now we're seeing people do incredible things, but it's only when they realize how much they didn't know first. That has to come first. It's like, you know, all the conversations I have, self-awareness keeps coming up like again and again and again and again. And I think that there is a self-awareness, a massive lack of self-awareness in society. And I think the people that are the most successful have the most self-awareness they have to. I think so anyway. And John Maxwell said it so well with the lid, right? Like you think your lid is somewhere but you actually have this leadership lid and your success will never go beyond that lid that you actually have in yourself. So that self-awareness is really important and it's so easy to quad our view. I think it's definitely another thing. I like sort of painting these pictures of conflicting ideas and wrestling with these two conflicting ideas. So the other conflicting idea that I have for you to think through is we're talking about for a zone of genius you're focusing on the things that move the needle the most in your business or the things that will move the needle the most even in your life. And that's what you should focus on and you're not trying to be a jack of all trades. However, there is a point where you do have to upskill. So what are the things that you have to, and you can, I mean, just to think about a few it could be, it could be tech, it could be understanding AI, it could be understanding social media and marketing or whatever. There's a whole bunch of the things, right? So what are the things that you are in your mind transitioning from VP to business owner and entrepreneur and speaker and author and podcaster and all the stuff that are sort of like the mission critical skills, could be hard skills, could be soft skills that you've had to incorporate into your own life to be successful. This is a great question because like you said, it is a balance, right? So you're on a focus on one hand, yeah. Yeah, I'm learning all the time, all the day, you know, and again, like I said, I'm investing in like a million dollars and learning as fast as I can so that we can grow, right? The way I look at it in, you know, there's basically, like you wanna, I mean, there's gonna be things that you're just incompetent about, right? Like again, you know, my joke about the kitchen, true, right? There's things that you're competent about, but you're just, it's never gonna be your secret sauce. Like I could have continued writing code in Intel, but that would never be what I'm shining in, right? Like I could always see the people that, oh my God, I can call the full day all day, this is so fun. And I'm like, no, there you go. And for me, it was low for the interaction with the clients and the people and putting that business, you know, accum together with the people that made it really fun for me. And so if I'm being really honest, I was looking for that combination of people, business, for a long time, and that's why I did all these roles of technical sales and product management, then, you know, operations and leaders. And so I was looking for that too, right, for a while. So it takes, first of all, some time to really nail that zone of genius and don't be afraid of experimenting. So that would be what I would say to your audience, right? Like experimenting is the right mechanism. Start-ups need to experiment all the time in order to find where their market fit is. Why are we so afraid as individuals to do that too, right? So first of all, it's been a lot about experimentation. But once you find this thing, and for me, that passion became really helping people with the same thing that I had, you know, to really reinvent the leap so that they can do it again, again, and become the best version of themselves. And once you have that, now you can say, okay, so now, what do I need to learn to make it do the first million? What do I need to learn to make it do the first 10 million? What do I need to learn? You know, it's because now there's things like there's sales, there's marketing, like you said, like I don't know how to do this, you know, editing thing, whatever. How do I hire? Who do I hire? How much do I pay? How do I train? You know, how do I scale? Like I can go in and on, like I mean, I just came back from a course on finance. Like I don't know enough finance, like I know enough finance to put, you know, some random check of $50,000 on an entrepreneur that I cared about, but I don't know anything about finance. Like it's a very different thing. So you're learning all the time, but as long as you know this is getting you closer to your goal, that's where, you know, that's where you want to be. And again, for me, it's about eventually championing those who really dare to dream, but in order to do that, I need to dream too. And that's why, you know, like for me, I need to keep on pushing my dreams, keep on being surrounded with incredible people. That's why I have the podcast that I get to talk to incredible people. That's why I go to Richard Branson Private Island because he inspires me. So that's why I need to constantly move my lid of belief. And that's the only time I can actually start helping more people move their belief as well. So I hope that answers the question. It does. And I'm also curious for you as a business owner and an entrepreneur, you, I mean, you've done all the right things. You've immersed yourself with people that are a couple steps ahead of you and far, far ahead of you through your network and your connections and your podcast, you're investing in coaching and consulting a little bit curious about that because I know not every entrepreneur invests that much money in coaching for sure that's a lot of money to invest in coaching. But then you, you know, you figure out what things are KPIs or metrics you got to track and you figure out the activities to sort of move them forward. That's a lot. So that's very overwhelming. So I think that this is a great conversation for somebody who is just starting to build if you're going to give advice for an entrepreneur to say they really do want to start to build. They have their own, they have their zone of genius, they've sort of listened to this whole show so far and then they're like, listen, okay, if entrepreneurship, even after I figure out my zone of genius is going to take all these different new things that I have to learn plus, plus a million dollars a year in coaching, forget about it. No. So let's, let's, I mean, you're the perfect candidate for this sort of case study because you transitioned out of corporate and you now made not only your first million not only your first 10 million but that you started out your first million. So how did you find product market fit for your zone of genius because there's, you know, the concept of Ikki guys. It's what you're passionate about, what the market needs and what you're good at, right? So there's these Venn diagram of the three things and the zone of genius is, I guess, the similar Venn diagram intersection. So it's not only what you know and what you're good at but the market needs it and you have to be able to actually do the thing. How do you figure out for yourself? Look, leap, how did you figure out there was a market need, product market fit to get you to your first million dollars? So it's a great question and I want to put, you know, first start with, you know, the numbers, right? Like you don't invest the million dollars if you don't know where this is going where the ROI is, right? Like first of all, let's put some caveat. And also like let's be real. First of all, we talk about that not everybody wants to be entrepreneur and I also gonna say not everybody wants to work as hard as I do, right? So I don't want to make it sound like I sit on the beach all day and collect the money. I'm the hardest worker I know and not everybody wants to work that hard. So the fact that I told you see how this can become a billion dollar company and I will do whatever it takes to get there, that's not necessarily where everybody else is going, right? So first of all, you need to find your own journey and what's right for you. And this is also where the must have really helped because you know, if you want a quick, you know, I just want some, you know, bigger paycheck and you know, to just cruise and do some, you know, fun things on the side, this is not it. And that's okay. So first of all, just kind of like putting a little bit of perspective and that's also not how I started. So I started with probably investing about, I don't know, 5K and you know, that helped me get to the first whatever 15K. And then I say, you know, put 30 and that helped me get to 100K and then I put 100 and that got me to the first two, three million. You know, like it, there was like a rhythm there. So you don't just start with shielding money if you don't know where the ROI is. But I will go back to experimenting because I think one of the things that companies do so well and I was mentoring in the biggest startup accelerators like in Google, you know, Google accelerator in Singularity University and I was teaching Carnegie Mellon and other places. And one of the things that I realized, it's so common for us to help companies experiment or startups experiment with how do you find your first clients? Is there a market fit? Like how do I assess it? And for some reason, people don't do this for themselves. So the one thing that I would say is, hey, it's easy to test, so cheap. Like let's see if there's the demand. Like let's put an ad together. Let's put a landing page and just see if something comes up. Let just post somebody, you know, something and see, you know, people say, yes, I'm interested. Like that's all it takes initially because initially you're not looking for 100 clients. You won't even know what to do with 100 clients. What you're looking for initially is those 5, 10 individuals or one or two corporate that will say, yes, I do. So initially we're not looking at big numbers. So all we need to do is a few really, really cheap, free ways basically to just let's get this off the ground. Let's test it. And the beautiful thing is not only you test the man, but you also test it this is what you want to do. And once you do, you learn more. And now you can like take it to a next level. You can change the pricing. You can start scaling. You can decide how you want to scale. So I really believe those experimentations are really, really critical. And I don't think enough people do that. Very, very smart. Okay. What did we not, we went into a lot. What did we not go into? What did we not talk about yet? Trying to, yeah, I can go into everything. We went through a lot. We went through a lot, a lot. Okay, so we can say, like listen, I want people to know. I'll ask a couple of questions just to close it out. But where can people, like you're working on leap academy now, even just a quick description of what that is, who it's for and where people can find you and leap academy. So just so that it's in the in the podcast. And then I'll put it in the show now to see what's some links and whatnot. Awesome. So we help driven professionals, or driven individuals that really are feeling either stuck or they feel like there's a lot more that they can do to really reinvent and leap in their careers, leap their reputation, leap their income, leap their capabilities, and really become the best version of themselves. And whether that means that they need to just land a job right now and then leap again again, or whether they want a faster leadership or want to jump to a entrepreneurship or play with a portfolio career, that's what we want to help them do. And it's leapacademy.com. And my email is elanaethleapacademy.com. It's really simple. And I'm probably gonna push it to my team. But the one thing that I will say is, and if I may, because you asked what we didn't talk about and I will just say it one thing, leaping is a habit. And once you learn the skill, you can just apply it again, again, again. So one of the things that people ask us is you just started a podcast. How are you already top charts in education, right? Like that doesn't make sense. And the reason is because we're just applying the same skills again and again and again, right? You want to join boards, you do the same. You want to do public speaking, you do the same. You find your clarity, you find your story, you're a linear network, you're a linear repetition. Like it's really not rocket science. So when you learn this skill, you can apply it again and just start taking the boxes and live a life of dreams. So I think that's a great example. I love that. Okay, if you were going to, if you look back at all the different things that you've accomplished through your life, through your career, and I also, I don't, I use to ask this question all the time. I don't ask it because a lot of people have the same answer to it, but I want to understand your perspective on this question as well as some of the people who are later stage in their career, their perspective on this question because I know that you will have answers for them as well. But the question is what does success mean to you? So what does success mean to you and your life and your business as an entrepreneur who's gone through like very distinct different careers? But also what does success look like for somebody who's at a later stage? What should people aspire to be like or to emulate? So that's a beautiful question. It will vary. So one of the things that we're hearing are pretty much three types of answers and I'll then say kind of blind. So one is we hear people that basically want to tick the box of the C suite or just tick the box of that corner office, managing a large team. I just need to feel and it doesn't matter if because they need to tick the box, they want to prove to their family that they tick the box. It really doesn't matter. But they're that driven, they did everything right and they just want to see themselves in that corner office. And the second thing that we're hearing is freedom. And freedom, I think it varies, like I call it freedom to choose because the freedom to choose can be, I want the bigger house, I want the house at the lake, I want the second home, I want to fly first class, but it can also be, I want the freedom to know that money is not an issue and I want to create everything and I want to donate to nonprofit that I care about and I want to create my own nonprofit and that is a big portion. And the third thing is more that legacy, thought leadership, to really feel like you have a name and you're moving people and you get the status and you find yourself on your finance or on the big stage and you just feel like, oh my God, look what I created, right? So we do see a little bit of kind of people kind of splitting to some of these in terms of where they want to go and kind of what there's the big thing for them. For me personally, if you would have asked me probably two, three years ago, my answer would have changed. My answer was basically just to feel like I've been successful to feel proud, to feel accomplished. And only three years ago, you still hadn't felt that. Because of my big, downed spiral, I think I shattered my whole view on myself. You know how ridiculous that sounds though? Given like what you've accomplished. No, I'm serious. You've accomplished so much. It's pathetic. But it's true. Like it's shattered every confidence level that I had. Well, if you ask me now, after I know what we achieved and maybe being inspired by people like Richard Branson and others, what I realized is that there is a level of impact that I didn't even realize exists. And obviously we get a lot of impact here in leap academy. I know we change people's lives. I mean, we change probably almost 1,000 lives a year, right? Like it's a big number. But I also know, and you know, when we change our lives, their families are better, their companies are better, their role models, there we change societies, we create a better life in better world. But what I realized is there's a different level of impact that I would love to aspire to. First of all, because I would love to move the needle on millions of people and kind of be able to change millions of lives and a billion people in the world. That's kind of how we say it for our company. But what I realized is that when you build a specific personal brand in a specific level of success, you can actually call almost anyone in the world. And you can actually create bigger things than you ever imagined. And if I could, you know, kind of have a crystal ball about where my next 10, 12 years, 15 years are going, this is where my crystal ball is going. I love that. How much, just to add a dendum onto that question, how much of, if you mentioned freedom and freedom to mean a lot of things, you made a lot of money as an engineer, obviously I'm assuming for Intel engineer, that's a decent sized paycheck. I mean, making a lot of money as an entrepreneur, how much money do you think people need to make to truly be comfortable? Because I think that it's a lot more than a lot of us think, like I don't think that 100K in Canada, I'm Canadian, 100K in Canada after tax, cost of living in Toronto is really hard, right? That's not, that's actually not a lot of money. But I think that it's a lot less than $5 million, $10 million a year. For most people. So I'm curious in your experience with all these executives, some of those executives are pulling big paychecks too, like some of them are, they're not, they're not making nothing. So what do you think that like perfect amount is based on your experience as a W2 entrepreneur dealing with execs? It's a great question and I think it's a really hard one to answer because the interesting thing is, as human beings, the more we make, the more we somehow, make use of it, right? So I think there's, again, when I came to the US for the first time, I just made 60K and I was so proud of myself because they basically asked, how much did you make in Israel? And I just flopped the answer and I didn't even think that we're not paid the same. So it took me a few years to realize, oh, okay, yeah, I'm the lowest paid engineer probably ever in Silicon Valley. So I think it's also, so I needed to kind of learn also the hard way to negotiate and charge my worth. But I will also say that it changes, right? Because somehow I was okay with making that amount. And right now, I think it's very, I mean, again, it's not necessarily what we take home obviously, right? But even as a company, you know, if we're making less than half a million a month, we're in trouble as a company, you know what I'm saying? So the number has changed. But it's not like your lifestyle changes dramatically either because a lot of that, especially as an entrepreneur, you're putting that money back into the company anyway. So you're putting it back to growth, right? And I think that's also where you need to decide what your priorities are. So I barely take paycheck right now. I just keep pushing it on more hires, more ads, more marketing. So I barely take anything because I'm so believe on what we're creating and I just want to make sure that we keep on changing more and more lives. But on the other hand, I do live a dream and I find myself on a cruise ship through the Bahamas with celebrities and, you know, whatever. Like I do allow myself to live in incredible lives that I don't know if I could ever imagine. But I try to also create a lot of impact and a lot of change and to donate a lot more than I ever could. And also know like he buys other things that I don't think I knew in advance. So just to kind of like say what you know, I mean, with professionals, I mean, we worked with professionals all the way from trying to get to the first six figures all the way to people who landed $2 million rolls a year. Yeah. And $2 million with no responsibility, you know. You don't have a superdarsive responsibility. So let me tell you, they're going to make a lot more than me for sure. But the interesting thing is, so again, we see a variance and we see all this, you know, but I think this pros and cons in that too because I call it the golden, you know, handcuffs. Like they feel like they can't leave and they're trapped now. And again, some people are like, well, I'm not going to cry about that. But the truth is they don't necessarily live the life that they want. They travel as much of the company wants. They don't see the kids as much as they want. You know, like there's like there are drawbacks to that. So I think that's also where it kind of comes back to the Mustavs and really to the side. So one of the big moments in my life and kind of how I came with the square focus in the Mustavs is when, you know, I got an opportunity to be somebody very, very high up in one of the big companies that we know. And that would have meant basically flying every single week. Yeah. At that point, I tried to think about what is the number that will get me inspired. And I thought big, I was like a million dollars a year, two million dollars a year, three million. Like, is there a number that will make me leave my family every week again? And I was already there for my, you know, previous start I've been like, you know what? I don't think there's a number. And if there isn't a number, that means that it's not meant to be. So I think there's also a level at some point that you're like, you know what? I'm not, what am I going to do? Buy more clothes. I was like, what am I going to do? The only thing that I can do is donate more, be involved with bigger sayings, you know, and make sure that leap academy changes as many lives as possible. So at some point, you just don't need more cash. You just need fulfillment and freedom and to live the best life you can. Hello, that very, very good answer. I think that's smart because a lot of context, because I don't like when people just, I mean, you should never start a business for the money. But I don't like when people just want more for, and I'm a big fan of capitalism and making a ton of money. But I think that you have to figure out how you want to make it too, which is very important. Last thing I wanted to ask you just to give some last wisdom, bits of wisdom to the audience, because you've given a lot today. But you go back in time, you can talk to your 20 year old self, but it would be one thing that you would tell your 20 year old self. Wow, it's funny because I asked this, and it's really a hard start. I think one of the things that I would tell myself is to not go through this alone. I think my journey was a lot lonelier that it should have been in the first 20 years of my life. I thought that with my Air Force background, I need to continue that facade of everything is under control. I got this. I don't need to ask anybody for help. I will always figure this out. And if I need to, and I don't cry, don't show emotions. And if I need to, I will show it on my pillow, but I will never, you know, like I was just really like, you know, this loneliness, it's lonely. And there's no reason because people have walked the walk, people can help you get there faster, and people can get there higher. What would have happened, you know, the biggest cost in their life is always the money we're not making. What would have happened if I started this years ago? We would probably be at a hundred million now, right? So it's like, what was I thinking, you know, so I think there's something about just stop being alone on journeys. Find the person that have been roughly where you are. It's probably the way it's honestly us, right? But find the person that's been where you are, know where you're going, and they can probably get you there faster, higher than you ever imagined possible. And I wish I didn't do all of this on my own.