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- [00:00]
A
Are you guys litty?
- [00:01]
B
Kitty.
- [00:02]
A
I'm amped.
- [00:03]
B
Stressed. Stressed Kitty. He did not think it was a problem until he saw my face.
- [00:09]
A
I'm never good, so it's just like
- [00:11]
B
shit's on fire in this episode. It is about a week before the book launch and I have to solve quite a few problems. Can you tell Alex we're getting on the book launch meeting? Thanks. I am about to get on a meeting. Let's just start then and receive really bad news. It's in two days. Tomorrow we have the rehearsal. Do we need to make, like a little checklist for tomorrow and for the day of? I mean, I have my own personal checklist. You can't control everything. There's been multiple attempts to contact the person and there's been no answer. No. Fuck. One second. I'm coming back. The guy owns the access to their backup store in case anything goes wrong. We were like, we have this whole plan now we need to do the backup store. He's not responding. I found out for the first time that the lead developer who had put together our site actually was going on vacation from that Tuesday through Sunday or Monday after the launch. They said, shopify support, can't let us in. And homey isn't your. I, like, don't know what to do. I think my immediate response when I got the news that the person who had built it wasn't going to be there, I felt angry. It's so hard for me because I just see, like such a. Such terrible communication. You know, up until the launch, we're just building the site. There's no traffic hitting it. But then the day of the launch is when we're expecting 100,000, 500,000 people to hit the page in one day. I don't know.
- [01:33]
A
Yeah, it's a weird day, honestly.
- [01:36]
B
That's literally the most important time to have the person who built the site on call. It's nice Trevor will be here. I, like, want to have him help. Oh, hey. So Trevor, Dr. Cashy, he's basically like
- [01:48]
A
family and nobody knows. It actually happens. People that just buy stuff and it appears. Do they actually know anything about what
- [01:53]
B
they get or how they got it?
- [01:54]
A
Not really.
- [01:55]
B
He's like my sounding board. He helps me think through a lot of decisions and scenarios. Alex, Trevor's here. Oh, cool.
- [02:05]
A
Trevor, aka Dr. Kashi, is closest thing to a brother to me.
- [02:10]
B
He's coming.
- [02:11]
A
He was just there for support. Fantastic. I mean, he was just as big of a part of the book as I was. I was just more public about it, and it mattered just as much as much to him as it did to me. Okay, okay, so. So, like, how do you respond to them? No, I just.
- [02:23]
B
I'm.
- [02:23]
A
I'm okay.
- [02:24]
B
So. So the reason that Trevor was here right now is because he's basically co written the book with Alex. Trevor is such a good person to have when this all went wrong because he's so skilled at helping logically talk through decisions. He's just smart as fuck. I should have known because in the beginning, like, when I came into the book project, I met with the boss and I said, I don't feel like this person is competent to do this. And then he said, if we were not so far in, I might agree with you. And I was like, why on earth would you have taken the job? And so having him there and being able to, like, talk him through these issues, he is a fantastic thought partner in making decisions quickly when needed. He did not think it was a problem until he saw my face and
- [03:08]
A
then was like, I doubt the guy acted vindictive. Can't Hank and screw their mom.
- [03:12]
B
No, no, no, no, no.
- [03:14]
A
But a fireball offense on all accounts.
- [03:17]
B
I think that the biggest impact that Trevor has had on me has been learning to be more logical rather than emotional. I just want to get it done.
- [03:27]
A
Yeah.
- [03:27]
B
He's all about, you know, follow the evidence, not your feelings, because feelings are fleeting, but evidence is everlasting. I'm trying not to be mad at him every time we're talking. It's really tough. The advice I would give any business owner or CEO going through any unexpected event or crisis is that don't expect yourself to feel good and don't punish yourself for feeling bad. I just. This whole thing, I'm just. We don't have time to wait on our feelings to change. We just have to go act despite them. I also knew that I was going to figure something out and I have the resources to do so, and I'm resourceful enough to figure that out.
- [04:02]
A
Yeah.
- [04:02]
B
And after. And after the book launch, did you. Oh, my God, you need to approve the office signing. So in the middle of all this, I realized that we had to finish the contract for the new office so we could actually get it. I mean, I think we just go in with a strong offer, see if we can get it. I think there was a lot that went into the office. Things can always fall through in a deal. At least give it our best shot.
- [04:27]
A
The strong offer in this scenario would be if we were to do anything else, then all we're doing is playing a game. And the risk we run is if that other person's real and they execute, then we're out. I wanted a big office for a few reasons. One of them is I like having a massive commercial gym. We can do some really good lighting and kind of make it look like skylights.
- [04:48]
B
They do.
- [04:49]
A
And it's become increasingly difficult for me to work out without being interrupted at a public gym. That's become increasingly important to me because I like training hard. I wanted to create space for a portfolio company so that we could hold events for them or so that they could also host events for their customers.
- [05:02]
B
I think I actually wanted a smaller office, but then Alex said he really wanted a gym and more space. What do you mean? What do I think about it? I tend to be like, oh, my God, I don't want to take too much space. If we don't need it, we don't do that right now.
- [05:15]
A
Shit happens. My level of, like, shock around things happening is, you know, continually lower and lower over time.
- [05:22]
B
I think if we wanted to do it, we could accommodate it, but the stuff we're doing right now, we're still gonna have plenty of empty space. We toyed around with that, like, kind of going back and forth on it for a while, which probably came out and why it took so long. Sorry, I generally didn't know what you meant. You're fine. I'm not offended.
- [05:37]
A
I did not perceive that as punishment.
- [05:39]
B
I did not mean it to be punishment, though. Neither of us are right or wrong. We just, like, probably balanced each other in that way. But it felt like it was incredibly important to him and have an office that he felt, like, really, really, really proud of. When we saw this building, I was like, I know that this is exactly what he wants, and I'm not going to die on that sword. You told me two years ago, don't sign anything on my behalf without telling me.
- [06:02]
A
I'm fine with it.
- [06:05]
B
Just say it yourself. Where? In the Alex request thread. Approved. Yeah. I think everyone always puts Alex as a primary signer on everything because they think that putting me is disrespectful to him. Or I asked if they could put it in my name. And again, what did the lawyers do? They always put it.
- [06:23]
A
And still the undefeated champion of signing documents doesn't want to sign documents.
- [06:28]
B
Homeboy doesn't want to fucking sign these papers. So people need to start putting in my name. It's like the bane of my fucking existence. I'm like, when the fuck is this going to end it's ridiculous. Also, to be clear, we are 5050 on everything. So the fact that they have him signed, it's not like I have less rights. It's just the inconvenience of signing. It's because they don't want me to be upset with them.
- [06:45]
A
My wife signed, not me.
- [06:47]
B
Her.
- [06:47]
A
The primary signer, Layla is CEO because she is CEO. A lot of people see this as a side of, like, respect. Totally. And I get it. I just don't care. Layla and I are very much yin and yang. Both elements are required. If it were just me, this company would not run nearly as well as it does.
- [07:03]
B
I've had, like, livid conversations. I'm like, listen, like, this is the third time that I've had to email and tell you that it's not him that signs these.
- [07:11]
A
I will always get a disproportionate amount of the credit because I'm relatively well spoken and I am a guy like,
- [07:17]
B
he doesn't even fucking check his email. He doesn't even check his fucking slack half the time. Okay. If you want him to sign something, it's gonna take three days. A lot of times things feel overwhelming because, like, one day happens where a lot of things happen in one day. I think that in terms of managing the stress of knowing that we have this huge launch in a couple of days and also knowing that I'm about to open up this huge can of worms with purchasing a very large building. How much? How long was the process? I mean, in total, like 14 months. I'm just like, we've not gotten this far, dude. This has been freaking awful this week. I try to just remind myself in those moments that though a lot of the pre event work is happening at the same time, the events are not going to occur at the same time. You know, the book launch is soon to be over. And so that does open up room on the team to help with a new project. I was like, is he. We started talking. Hi, how are you? Good, good. You know, I think that my dad helps me with stressful situations in the way that he's just such a good listener. Some people might be like, wow, it's overwhelming to have your parents come in when these things are happening. But it's not for me because he's such an amazing, supportive father that it actually helps me more than anything.
- [08:31]
A
He says, well, given the time, someone else might need to take a pass at this.
- [08:39]
B
So my dad manages all the book operations. You know, obviously, I think because he's my dad, he Definitely puts a lot of discretionary effort into what he's doing. And he works super freaking hard. He didn't make anybody else the owner of the store. And he's also not responding. And so we need someone else to be able to do things and nobody can. So his boss was telling me this, and I was like, so what are you gonna do? My dad just has endlessly and tirelessly believed in me, and he's like, oh, you're going to figure it out. He just won't log into email, which has access to Shopify. And so now I've messaged him privately. We couldn't log in as an admin to the store to allow somebody else to get into the code because the guy who built the site put it just in his name. So not even Alex or I have access to the backup store. Yeah, I'll follow up with him. The person that had the ability to get into that person's email, I don't think wanted to do that at first, which I see the point of. I also think that given the situation, it is the best decision to do that. I said, is there a reason why you wouldn't log into his email if you own the email to go do this? Because we are in the last 24 hours. You can do anything. So in situations like that, when things happen that are unexpected, I'm not going to go into the blame game. I'm going to go into action mode.
- [09:54]
A
Layla's just a savage. As soon as I know she has it, then she has it.
- [09:57]
B
Our lawyer just didn't respond.
- [09:58]
A
Respond.
- [09:58]
B
We'll just ping her again, and if not, I have somebody else that we can get one from.
- [10:01]
A
This is just so you guys don't get sued.
- [10:04]
B
Alex, like, I would never log into someone's email unless it was do or die. I considered that do or die. And so I was trying to communicate that to this person. He said, sorry for the miscommunication. I will just go do it now. I was like, there was no miss. You just told me you didn't want to do it.
- [10:21]
A
If Layla's in charge of something, then it will work.
- [10:23]
B
That's not our fault. No, no, not at all.
- [10:26]
A
I'll say it's not our fault.
- [10:27]
B
It is our problem.
- [10:28]
A
From an ethics standpoint. You say, we accepted a job out of our scope. Sorry to waste your time. It would only be upsetting if it was unexpected. I didn't expect this, but I expected something.
- [10:38]
B
And then I was like, I'm sorry. I don't understand why you wouldn't do this immediately. Given we have 24 hours left to put this together and it's under email and we have no idea when he's going to respond. That makes no sense to me. Can you help me understand? I have a large network as is my team. Let's all put feelers out for a person who could jump in, go full on sniper mode. And then I sorted through all the people that they had given me and then I prioritized calls with those people. Mission critical.
- [11:02]
A
But it's something I brought up yesterday
- [11:04]
B
going into email to go change the logins and then give them to. I know that like being angry in a situation is not going to help anything. I know that nobody has done anything on purpose. But intention doesn't always equal impact in business.
- [11:17]
A
Almost at on the primary store, we should be good to go.
- [11:20]
B
Thank you so much. Got it done. We found somebody who can come in and they can just deploy all the resources to get what we need to get done. And by the end of the day we were kicking off the project. Amazing.
- [11:30]
A
And then we'll start working on the back backup store. She is CEO because she's the chief executive officer. She's the one who's executing and making a lot of the decisions.
- [11:40]
B
Thank you so much, guys. We got to give a little. A little this because you came in last minute sniper style, saving the day. Thank you. Yeah. So that person came in and then they gave us a lot of insight into what was going on. They were very good with communication. And then they helped to get everything shored up so that the site was ready to go for the amount of volume we were anticipating. Let's go walk. We got a loop. We got it down. When everything is on the line and you're five days out from a launch. Like where decisions are unresolved, where situations have not come to a conclusion. And I think I see a lot of people ruin their businesses or really distract the whole team because they feel a sense of discomfort with that and they want to resolve it quickly and therefore they overcompensate with their actions. Hey, we got it signed.
- [12:25]
A
We got it signed and it's in their hands. So signatures any minute now.
- [12:30]
B
It feels great to have gotten the Shopify issue figured out and to have signed the contract for the building simultaneously. So Frank's been the one that's helped us to try and find a building for until now.
- [12:41]
A
Wonderful. Great job. You know what? It all came together and we found the right one.
- [12:45]
B
The advice I would give any first time leaders, it is really hard to prevent fires because it's unknown. You don't know what you're doing. You've never run a business before. You're probably hiring people that haven't run a business before. And so there's just so many unknowns that it's like you're going to buy consequence of just, like, being new and inexperienced. And I think that if you just accept that you don't know things and you don't know how things are going to turn out, and that's okay, and the only way that you ever get certainty is by going through the situation, being uncertain the first time. I think I'm very comfortable in ambiguity, and a lot of people aren't. So it's like it wasn't all figured out, but I'm like, I'll figure it out, you know, like, I'm resourceful, and I think. I think being resourceful is a skill,
- [13:29]
A
you know, But Layla is an expert leader, and she is, I think, the reason that we have, you know, what we have today.