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0:00I I realized when I was about 28, right, um that I had been trying really hard to beat I mean, you'll notice a common theme with a lot of my stories, but I have one central person that I was trying to prove for a very long time, which was my father. Um and we're on good terms, by the way, because I always get that question. But, uh this was after I left and he disapproved of my whole thing and for five years we didn't talk very much. And so he calls me up um to he says, "Hey, you're going to want to sit down for this." And I'm like, "Okay, what are you pregnant?" You know, um [laughter] and so he says, "I'm sorry." And and I was like, "For what?" And he was like, "For everything." Right? Now, mind you, like this is a Middle Eastern father born in Iran to a Middle to a Middle Eastern father there who was even more legit. Like when where my father was born, women weren't allowed to drive cars. Cars came with drivers with them when you bought them. The driver came with the car. Like he was born in a very different world. Like fathers don't apologize to sons. It just it was it just wasn't that way. And I have a little bit more a little bit more awareness than I did then. And I can see that now. But for me, I was like, now you apologize. You know what I mean?

1:14Um, and so rather than take it for the olive branch that it was, uh, I said, "I didn't care about your opinion 5 years ago when I left." And I was like, "And I don't care now." And he was like, "Well, we'll see how long your success lasts." And so, what could have been a really nice exchange ended up becoming pretty pretty ugly. But the the main point there was that I wanted to in the beginning like make as much as my father, then it was make more than my father, and then it was make more than my father had ever made in his entire life. And once I had achieved that, I realized that as much as like it sounds terrible to say this, but like I was trying to beat him at his game.

1:52And and this is pretty alive in a lot of a lot of Asian culture, same thing. Making money is a big, you know, like when my dad would introduce somebody, he'd be like, "This is so and so. He makes this much a year." Like it was just really clear like this is how much status someone has. And so like it was really deep for me. Um, but it was only when I realized that I had won at his game that I realized I'd never even asked the question of like, what game am I trying to win? And I don't know how many people are actually trying to win at a game that they didn't even set the rules up for

2:19>> so many >> when they're in it. And that's why I say like I think I was fortunate that I, you know, I hit a a really tough goal because my dad was is is a successful man um relatively early on. Um, but that that exchange and then think like and then reflecting back and feeling terrible about myself for like saying what I said and then I was like I'm I did everything that I've done to this point to beat him, beat my father, the man who actually raised me, who tried to make me the best man I can. And when I think when I really start thinking about it, I'm like, I like who I am.

2:52He raised me. So, doesn't that mean that he might have been the perfect father? And then that really messes with [laughter] me. And so, yeah. So, go ahead. >> Well, it's just it's hard to think that the people you used to have contempt for or distaste or hatred or whatever shaped you in a way that you couldn't have been. And I often think about how the things I'm most proud of in myself are the light side of something that I was so embarrassed about, so ashamed about. Um, you know, being an outcast as a kid meant that uh I love or I'm capable of being on my own way beyond how anybody else is.

3:34>> Yeah. >> So far beyond it. I I can work on my own in solitude for an endless amount of time. I I can outwork anybody in solitude. Why? because I spent almost all of my time between the ages of six and 16 in my bedroom listening to audio tapes, right? Listening to audio books and like throwing like a tennis ball against the wall or like playing with my like Mighty Mouse from Mars or whatever they were called. What was it called? Bike of ice from Mars. That was it. Um and that was what I did.

4:06>> Yeah. So, but I all of that discomfort and all of the challenges that I went through there are the thing one of the things that I'm so proud of myself for now. Okay. So, what if I look back and I said, "Well, all of the the um the bullying that I went through and the challenges of feeling alone and being on the outside of social groups meant that I developed such attenuation and attention and focus and an ability to distill down what's happening socially, which is why I became one of the best club promoters in the UK for a decade and a half,

4:41>> right? Because for all of my school life, I'd been obsessing over how Alex wears his tie. Maybe that's why he has friends and I don't have friends. Or the particular brand of shoes that he's wearing or the like he carries his bag on that shoulder and I carry carry mine on this shoulder because I couldn't deconstruct why I didn't have friends and everybody else did. >> Right. >> Okay. So looking back, would I have rather had the friends

5:06>> and had the brother or sister and not develop this skill? I can't split test life. So, I don't know, >> right? >> But my life's ended up pretty good and I'm happy with it. So, I need to not only look back at that stuff as something not to hate, but something to genuinely be thankful for. And that is >> frankly something I'm still working through. [laughter]

5:32>> Well, yeah, it goes it goes back to the the first thing which is like the most traumatic events that happen in our life, you know, they happen for us, not to us. But when you expand the time horizon, like those things, and to be fair, there are people who do have really crappy things happen to them and then it destroys them and then that's it. And then they're just done and that's all it is. >> Not everyone has like a moderate amount of childhood bullying and an only child with like parents that care about them or whatever. Like

5:56>> because you were a child coping with the world with the coping skills of a child. >> I'm still largely that as an as [laughter] an adult infant, right? And so, um, but I think that I mean the key the at least for me, you know, my my key takeaway from both both of these kind of stories is more that all of the all of the the negative things that happen on the micro have the opportunity, if doubled down on, to be huge wins in the macro and sometimes in ways that just a micro win would never have the ability to be doubled down on and become a a capital W win in the macro. Real quick, if you're a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free.

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