← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 460 - Lumati COO, President & Co-Founder, Ashley John Heather
00:51:38
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- [00:00]
Cameron Herold
Hey, it's Cameron Herald, the host of the Second in Command podcast. Before we dive in, there's something you need to know. If you're a coo, VP Operations, or you're in any role where you're the second in command to the CEO, the COO alliance is the place for you. If you're the integrator to the visionary, you're going to want to join us. The COO alliance is the world's leading community for the second in command. We've had over 500 members like you join from 17 countries to grow their skills, connections and confidence. You'll get the tools, friendships, and a 10x guarantee to ensure that you get your money's worth. Go to cooalliance.com to learn more and see if you qualify. You can even book a free call with our team to ask questions. Now, let's jump into this week's episode.
- [00:44]
Ashley Heather
I think in general, we humans lean into comfort. We're told we're educated, that comfort is there. It's a shining light. Generally that's not taking you into the growth, right? Growth generally comes from discomfort and doing the hard things, even though you don't necessarily want to. But every time you do it again, going back to the man's mind won't stretch, right? The stretching, that's that discomfort. So that's where growth comes from. So if there are people who are more introverted, and I think Covid unfortunately has led introverted people to be even more introverted and it's created an ability for them to do so and live behind the computer and the screen, working from a home office. Maybe they don't have to be in the office as much, interfacing with people in the same way. And I think that's a challenge.
- [01:32]
Savannah Brewer
Welcome to the Second in Command podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now here's your co host, former COO of a multi eight figure remote company and alumni member of the COO Alliance, Savannah Brewer.
- [02:01]
Ashley Heather
Today we are joined by Ashley Heather, co founder, president and COO of Lumati. He's an Entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience building and scaling successful companies from funding health tech ventures to leading a company called Cleared4. During COVID which was an exponential period of growth to over $100 million in revenue in just two years, Ashley has seen firsthand what it takes to navigate high pressure environments, sustain momentum through failures, and maintain a clear vision when the road gets tough. That is why in this episode we're going to explore how to support your team during rapid expansion, the mindset shift needed to move forward after setback, key skills required to grow at scale, strategies for staying grounded and calm during high stress situations, and how to hold onto your vision and belief even in the hardest moments. Whether you're leading a fast growing company or you're just looking to level up as a leader, this conversation is packed. I absolutely loved this conversation. I had some amazing takeaways myself and it is definitely a conversation you're not going to want to miss. So let's go ahead and dive in with Ashley Smith. All right, here we are. We are live with Ashley. Heather, welcome to the show.
- [03:23]
Thanks. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Yes.
- [03:26]
All right. Well, I am so excited about this conversation. We were just talking a little bit, diving right away. You had to jump on a kind of urgent call because you've got some cool things in the works with your company and it led us down to some really amazing things that you guys are up to. So give us a brief kind of overview of what are you doing currently with the company Lumati? What's your role and how did you get involved?
- [03:50]
Great. Well, yeah, it's been fascinating conversation already. Hello everybody. Who's listening? Thanks for joining in. So Lumati, as a wellness company, we're really focused on the space of longevity within that wellness category, essentially increasing the health span of people so making them avoid pain, disease and other issues, you know, putting it off as long as possible. And so that's really what we are focused on as an organization. We have a clinic, a location in Encinitas, San Diego, and we have a second clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, where we do certain things that we can't do in the US Clinic. And then we license a bunch of our tools and technologies and things that we do to lots of other clinics around the country and in fact around the world. That's Lou Marti. The brand is relatively new. Many people on this call probably have not heard of it. We are a relatively small business, but we do have big aspirations. The goal is to reach a billion lives in the next 10 years, improving them in some positive way through the application of our tools, technologies, education, et cetera. So big goals. We're just getting started. The business is about three years old. It was under another name. We rebranded after I joined to create this global brand of Lumati Illuminating Your vitality. So it has both of those words in it. It's also a six digit domain, lumati.com, which is pretty hard to get in today's world. A short domain that feels right for the business and also is a global word that translates and know all the stuff you have to do when you're branding. So we got through that and we are Lumati have been for about a year. I'm the president and CEO of the company, so you know, the number two. Joining an amazing gentleman, David Perez, who's the founder CEO of the business. And he's been on his own sort of health journey for himself and his family over the last 15 years and through that journey stumbled across various modalities, technologies. He is not a medical doctor, but is around medical doctors a lot. He's a tinkerer, an engineer, an entrepreneur and through that, you know, and a philanthropist, sort of figured out how to kind of create some pretty interesting technologies. And the way, you know, everything we do is holistic and we really focus on a few different things. But I don't want to answer your question to go into too much detail. You can steer me, you know, where you want me to go. But so yeah, I've been there, I've been there about a year and it's been a super fast growth company over the last 12 months. So very exciting.
- [06:09]
Okay, awesome. And I'm curious to hear because I know I've been in this space myself for five years overcoming some health issues. Finding different modalities that are outside of traditional medicine can be difficult knowing like, where do I start? There's so many different types of things that are coming available. So I'm curious, what, how do you guys find the things that you want to specialize in and then who are you focusing towards serving?
- [06:36]
Yeah, I mean, there are so many people out there that are looking to improve their health. So it's an enormous market and it's a $4 trillion industry, the healthcare industry, sometimes referred to as the sick care industry, depending on how you kind of view it, but essentially $4 trillion and a lot of people have been going through, especially in the last few years, a couple of different angles. So one is I've tried the traditional stuff and it's not working, meaning Western medicine. For whatever reason, what I have, they can't click their fingers and give me, you know, give me the magic pill or prescribe me, you know, some treatment that's working. And so more and more people are fitting into that category where they're just not being served by the existing kind of western medicine medical setup. So I think that's, you know, that's a big piece that we're seeing is happening and we can talk about why and all that kind of stuff in a minute. The second is that obviously we've just gone through this pandemic with COVID and the vaccines and there's a lot of evidence now coming out that for some people, unfortunately the vaccine did not help them in their long term health. It may have had a temporary benefit around Covid and so forth, but ultimately it has triggered the vaccines, have triggered other health issues or brought up things in the past that that user maybe was dormant and the COVID vaccine has sort of brought it out. And so that's really unfortunate because in essence the vaccine was there to help people, but actually there are millions of people. And in fact I think at the US numbers is there's 10 million people with long Covid essentially meaning that some impact of COVID is affecting their lifestyle, their ability to work or look after their family, whatever their issue is. And so that's 10 million people. That's a lot of people. So that's kind of really where some of this comes from. It's essentially people who aren't finding a solution in the current network or setup of medical doctors or physicians and so forth and are looking for something different. And then I think the third group is, I think we're raising our awareness that holistic and the natural ways to heal could well be better than non holistic ways for healing in the long term. And so I think there's a growing population of people that are just looking for, you know, different ways to heal their body where it's more about, you know, what they're putting in their body from a nutrition, you know, food is medicine, exercise is medicine, like what can we do with our bodies to get ourselves back to stasis and so that clean healthy living approach and not just be relying on some GLP1 or some medication or you know, some expensive surgery that's generally presented as the first thing. Oh, you've got pain. Let's let's, you know, let's get some surgery. Let's kind of, and, and you know, that means a lot of money, which is great if you're in the medical business, but not necessary as an individual. It can be expensive and often there's long recovery times associated with that. So sometimes people are, you know, they've had an accident, an injury or something. It's like how do I, how Can I get back faster? Back to performance, whatever performance means for that individual without necessarily going for surgery and without doing, you know, some of these. Getting on a lot of medication and so forth, which has a lot of contraindications. You know, a lot of these medicines, you know, if you do one or two, okay. But then, you know, people are on 4, 5, 6, 10, 8. And it's like, it's just. It's just unknown the impact it's having. And a lot of people aren't getting through that process well. So I think there's lots of. Type of people who are coming. I think you mentioned earlier, you know, you suffered with mold and possibly Lymes and some other things. I'm sorry if I'm saying that on the. On public. If you didn't want that on public. Shared. Shared. So HIPAA violation. Sorry. But anyway, you know, that's, you know, these are. There's. There's many of you out there that are developing and, and I think nobody has the magic answer as to why. I think a lot of people are putting forward theories, you know, Dr. Mark Hyman and others talk, you know, regularly about what's going on with our food systems, what's going on with our environment, with toxins, microplastics. And so this is kind of the world that we exist in. We hear all of this and we're. We're sort of building tools and technologies and treatments that can help individuals and improve their health. And it's difficult. We never talk about curing treatments. Is this specific word that regulated. But it's really about modalities and doing things to improve your lifestyle that are very natural. And we can go into more details about what some of these things are in a second.
- [11:10]
Sure. Cool. Well, one of the things that you touched on was Covid. And it sounds like this is my experience and sounds like yours too, is the illumination of a lot of. That may have been a trigger with the vaccines of people really starting to look at their health with the goal of serving a billion people. And I was watching the video that you guys have on your website, and there's a line in there that I wrote down because I thought it was so cool. Said the secret elixirs of the immortals are now available to humanity. I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. So I'm curious. That's a really ambitious goal. You've been with the company for a year. What was it about you and your track record? I got to see a little bit about what you've built, which is Amazing. Why were you the perfect candidate to bring into this a year ago?
- [11:56]
Great, great question. So my journey into this world, I did a business degree, I'm English, so grew up kind of in London and around London, worked there a number of years in pretty traditional marketing, management consulting, finance, et cetera. Moved to america just before 911 to be sort of an entrepreneur and to be entrepreneurial and ended up building some technologies and platforms, but mostly in the marketing industry, building websites and other kind of fun apps for different people and a few for myself. And you know, it was great, it was a great ride. For 10 years, essentially I sold things to people that they didn't really need. You know, the consumer economy and luxury products and services and things. And out of that ended up selling a company and making some money and decided to kind of think about what's my purpose and where am I going. That was in 2012, so just 12, 13 years ago. And ended up leaning into health, partly because my brother, my younger brother had a terrible accident and basically fell on his head off a hotel stairwell and made a 20 year recovery through a brain injury and just essentially was a different person after that injury and really kind of shocked me and sort of brought me into the health industry to try and figure out how can I use my skills to help other people be the best versions of themselves that they can be and avoid this pain and tragedy of my younger brother. So that was sort of part of the why that drove me. So I'd made some money, I had some opportunities dealing with something new. Health was there. I'd gone through this traumatic experience and also seen that health care numbers were rising. Spending as a CEO of a company, which I was, healthcare costs were going up 25% every year almost. And it was like, wow, my rent's going up 3% and my salaries are going up 4%. What's going on? And looked at it and lifestyle, chronic diseases, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, basically things that theoretically can be reversed, driving 75% of that, what was then $3 trillion, it's now $4 trillion. But 75% of that spend is basically due to people making kind of poor decisions, or what seems from the outside as poor decisions. And so I started a company called off the scale in 2014 to reverse that and reverse obesity and diabetes and build a system and platforms around that. So I was in this space of, let's call it biohacking. Before the word biohacking was really popular, really helping people think about their purpose, their exercise, their life, what they're trying to do and trying to be a healthier version of themselves. And so that was back then. It was a frustrating journey. I was too early, bleeding edge, as many would say in this sort of entrepreneurial industry. I had some great technology and some great applications, saw some great outcomes, but I had misjudged the medical business or the healthcare market, thinking that they would really embrace quickly something that would reverse people's chronic conditions. Whereas it's a difficult industry. A lot of people are still in the FIFA service and doing more, more surgeries, more this, more that. And it's under the COVID of health. Of course it is, but there's an undercover of just doing more and we were doing less. With our solution being successful, there would be less surgeries, there would be less need for some of this stuff. And so there was a difficult pull and push in many meetings around that. And I understand it from both sides as a businessman, as it were. So that was a failed entity. Got into the world of COVID when Covid happened and built a Covid platform called Cleared4, which basically became the largest platform for health information around. Covid, used by Netflix, T Mobile, large employers, large colleges who basically needed to know, have you been vaccinated recently? Were you being tested? Remember when there were rules and they were changing all the time? We built a platform to manage all those rules across the U.S. in fact, globally, and had amazing global clients. And it was an incredible business. It went from 0 to 100 million in enterprise value in less than two years. And, you know, so that was an incredible rise of hiring people and building technology and working with clients and all the stuff you have to do with a company. And it was a great rocket ship. But then of course, Covid disappeared so quickly and faster than any of us. You know, we all knew it might be, you know, some kind of dip, but it again went from, you know, sort of 100 million to essentially zero in the sense that nobody wanted to track Covid anymore and it was in everybody's rearview mirror. So there was this beautiful system and technology that was integrated into door control systems and HR systems and great. But it just, it, it just lacked a need, it lacked a long term need and we couldn't, as a team, pivot into another area. So, you know, really unfortunate story. An amazing journey and amazing experience for the dozens and dozens of employees that were with us and, you know, great team. And that sort of ended in 2024. So the timing with Lumadi was just sort of perfect in the sense that David was sort of building this vision, he'd been doing all sorts of hard work in the space, knew he could have a rocket ship on his hands and needed extra help, extra assistance of people who'd raised money, built technology, built processes, built very fast scaling companies. And that was something that I was coming both personally from my own vision in this space of wanting to heal and help people that I already had, plus coming off the back of some experience of growing a very, very fast scaling company. Those two things combined, I guess made me the perfect candidate, or there's no perfect, but a great candidate to join David on his mission of getting to a billion lives. And so it's been an incredible journey since.
- [17:21]
Thanks for sharing that. Amazing. And I think what stands out to me is both your passion and interest and exploring and finding different modalities and ways of healing while also being the brains behind actually scaling something. I mean, 100 million in two years is so unheard of. I'm curious for you, what do you think are the skills that you've learned or built, developed that allowed you to scale that quickly and really seize the opportunity when you had it?
- [17:52]
Yeah, I think there's a lot of things that come together. Experience is one. I've had six startups to successful for failures, right? So I've learned a lot. As they say, you learn more from failure and sometimes than you do from success. So missing, you know, missing those opportunities, being blind to it, having the wrong people in the right seats, you know, wrong people in the wrong seats, etc. There's just a lot that goes into knowing when the timing's right and having the right team members to execute relationships, right? Knowing like, I've got so many relationships now through just doing all this stuff for 20 years that in one phone call I can get to some people to execute on something with a trusted relationship that 10 years ago I wouldn't have had. And so when you're moving quickly, you can't move alone. You need to move with lots of other people, not necessarily employees, but partners. And so being able to have people, a Rolodex to leverage and use and bring along with you on that journey, like building technology. I'm very lucky to have the same technology team that I built four different platforms with. So when I needed to build one very quickly, I didn't have to do an rfp. I didn't have to spend six months vetting different teams. I had a known entity. And of course they're not perfect, nobody is. But I knew their strengths, I knew their weaknesses. You can kind of manage the weaknesses and lean into the strengths of building a lot of code very quickly. And that was one of their strengths. And so I think it's experience, it's relationships, it's faith. I think there's a big issue in startups. It's very, very hard. And you put your heart and soul into these things happening, whether it's a business deal or a technology working or whatever it is. And you have to believe and everybody's looking around you, you're at the top of an organization, you have to believe in whatever it is. And it hasn't been done before. Rarely any of these things that have been done, they've been done for the first time. So there's no track record, there's no path you are charting that. And so you have to have a lot of belief. And so how do you build belief? The scars in your back help train you and understand that of what you can do. And I love this phrase of a man's. It should be a person's, but I'll use the original phrase of a man's mind, once stretched, never retains its original form. This concept that if you go through enough sort of pain and experience and whatever and you don't die, you're kind of like, okay, I can handle that. And you just, you can take on more and have that belief that it can happen. And so, yeah, there's probably 20 other things if we had more time to kind of go through on. But speed, nimble, having the team, having the resources. I've in my career been relatively unfortunate in the funding in the traditional. So Silicon Valley, like, hey, here's 50 million, here's $100 million. I have not been whether it's blessed or unblessed in that journey, I have had some venture capital in the past for some ventures and some lots of angel money. So I've been around that. But it's always seemed to have been what I call stone soup, which is you're trying to make something delicious out of rocks. You don't really have everything you need, but you're still trying to create this delicious meal. So we call it stone soup. But there's always more to be done, less resources. But I think years of that has trained me to understand where to put money, where not to put money, how not to waste money. So very frugal and has allowed us now in this, you know, in the last company we raised two and a half million dollars. That was it in clip four. Two and a half million dollars was all we raised from no Venture. It was all just kind of angel y. And then we got profitable very quickly. Almost the same story here. We've raised a little bit more than that, but not a lot more. We are looking this year probably to raise pretty significant capital, but we're ready for it. We're profitable, we're growing 4x a quarter. So we've now got the metrics that we can go out with traditional funding and raise. But we've got here to a lot of hard grafting and stone soup. And we were just reviewing our numbers and we've had three profitable months in the last four. And it's rare for a young startup that's growing quickly to be able to do that.
- [21:59]
Love it. Well, there's a few things that I captured from that that I want to dive into, but overall, one of the biggest things that I heard in that is it sounds like four failures, two successes, and those all combined kind of built this foundation of skills with just experiences, relationships, resources, that's kind of allowed you to have the platform, which to me, as someone younger in my journey and after having what felt like a success and then also a failure at the same time, by leaving the company, the mental game of just coming back into confidence and belief and getting clear on what I want to do next and realizing, like you said, I've built this skill set and expanded my brain and my capacity in ways that whatever I do next, that's already, already available to me. One of the pieces that stood out to me that I'd love to ask you, because we have a lot of CEOs listening. And typically I'm an extrovert. I'm more of an extrovert, probably why we're on here and doing this together. But there's a lot of CEOs that are a lot more introverted. You know, they prefer kind of being behind the screen. You know, that's why we're kind of second in command, you know, CEO, take the vision, lead the charge, and we're kind of behind the scenes making sure that things are moving forward and balls aren't getting dropped. However, I do think there's a lot to be said about relationships. And as a CEO, if you're bringing the right people into the company and filling those seats, you've got to have some ability to have, you know, the relationships that you need and those skills of being personal with others. So for any coos that are listening, that are maybe like, man, that's kind of a weaker area. For me, I don't have a lot of Relationships. What advice or wisdom would you share to those people?
- [23:43]
I go back to the. You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Another one of my key phrases that I live by is I think in general, we humans lean into comfort. We're told, we're educated, that comfort is there, it's a shining light. And generally that's not taking you into the growth. Growth generally comes from discomfort and doing the hard things, even though you don't necessarily want to. But every time you do it again, going back to the man's mind won't stretch, right? The stretching, that's that discomfort. So that's where growth comes from. So if there are people who are more introverted, and I think Covid, unfortunately, has led introverted people to be even more introverted, and it's created a. An ability for them to do so and live behind the computer and the screen, working from a home office, maybe they don't have to be in the office as much, interfacing with people in the same way. And I think that's a challenge. And I faced that with my last company in a way that we were a virtual company. We never even had an office because it was Covid. And we grew through that time. And so getting out, getting to conferences, meeting people and putting ourselves in those uncomfortable positions, I think that's where the growth comes from. And so if you just keep rinse and repeating all the skills that you have, that's why you hire somebody beneath you to kind of do those rinse and repeat things. Your job, if you're in a growing company, is to be growing because then you can be given more things. I always thought when I was younger that becoming the expert at the job was the job and that taking more responsibility was the job. And just more and more on your shoulders and piling it all up. Look at all the stuff I'm doing. But what I learned, the reality is that the job is to get somebody else to do the work so that you can to then do more things. It's not to necessarily be doing all the doing, but how do I build an autonomous machine beneath me that's doing the doing? So then I can accept another task to kind of automate and do the doing of and another task, because if you, you just have so much, you just can't, you can't take on more, you can't, you can't grow. So it's really empowering training, leading as much as it is doing. And I think we, and I suffer from this. I'm in no way, you know, perfect at this at all. But I suffer from, you know, I, I, I take a lot on because I can do things quickly. I've got a lot of experience, a lot of tools and if you want.
- [26:07]
Cameron Herold
More leadership tips and systems from me, they're free at YouTube, forward slash amronherald and that's H E R O L D.
- [26:18]
Ashley Heather
And sometimes it frustrates me when working with others that they're not as fast or can't do the same thing. And I have to remind myself that someone else doing something 70% of my quality but without me doing it is way more powerful than me doing it 100% to my quality. And obviously I want that 70 to go to 80 to 90 over time, but it doesn't have to be overnight. And it's the power that other people can do those things to some degree of quality that you're happy with, that then empowers you to be able to take on more and lead, especially in a fast growth. I'm really talking about these sort of hyper growth organizations where workload is doubling every month and you just can't put it all on your back.
- [26:55]
Yeah, well, speaking of the rapid growth, what systems or structure do you have in place between you and CEO? We'll start there and then we can talk about team, but between you and CEO or whoever is also on the executive team. When you guys are moving so fast, how do you make sure that communication is clear, people are on the same page? Is that meeting structures, is that different reporting systems that you have? What does that look like for you guys?
- [27:28]
I want to say yes to all of that, but the reality is it's trust. Without trust, everything else, there isn't time to build all the processes and the machines and all the stuff. Again, depending on where you are in the growth journey and how big you are. We were 5ish people a year ago, we're now closer to 50 people. So that's 10x in 12 months. That's just a lot of people. And so I think having a clear culture where you set expectations of what type of organization this is and what it isn't, because every organization is different in its culture based on its leader, leader, leaders, the industry it's in and so forth. And so being clear on culture, empowerment and trust, light on meetings, you know, you have to be light on meetings, you have to empower your teams to just be good people and get the work done. And then between myself and in this case, David, you know, it's hard, it is not easy and we don't have a perfect system. We try and check in every morning and every evening, right? We try and do a check in. I'm certainly the one who's got more plans and more leading the team in terms of KPIs and documents and so forth, and trying to free David, my CEO, to be able to go out there and land the massive deals and to really build relationships that he's amazing at and such a good networker and so forth. So empower him to that and then give him the information that he needs to know where we're at as a business. And, and that could be scary because, you know, you go from highs to lows in days and some of these things, you're putting a lot of bets and some big things and they don't come in and, you know, there's a lot of stress there, a lot of stress on everybody's shoulders. And so I, you know, I think calmness and I, you know, I've turned, I'm 52 now, certainly turned a lot of corners myself on, on being a reactive personality, to just being a much calmer person, on sort of taking, whether it's bad news or difficult news or just, just having belief and faith that just keeping a level head and working through the details and making the right approach rather than just that reactionary kind of stuff. And so I think we play yin and yang quite well around that piece. And sometimes if the CEO isn't reactionary, very calm, maybe the CEO needs to be more to kind of create, as another phrase that somebody told me years ago, which is if you and your, let's call it CEO or partner or whatever, agree on everything, one of you should be fired, right? It's like, if you are so alike that it's like a yes nod and it's just so easy. You don't need both of you. What's the point? Because without you both, you'd have the same outcome and the same decision. The whole point is one plus one equals three. And so that conflict, so long as it's not taken as conflict, but that discussion, that diversity, that approach generally drives to better decisions. And somebody's got to compromise in some of that. And obviously the number two probably compromises more necessarily than the number one. But so long as there is some compromise on both sides and having conflict and disagreements, again, I thought was a weakness, but now I see it as a strength. And so long as there's a process of handling it, then it's healthy, amazing.
- [30:38]
The reactionary to grounded piece stands out to me. The company that I was involved with a couple years ago, our executive team was consisted of me and three others. We were all salespeople before we started this company. So very similar personality types. And I would say there was a couple of us that were a little bit more grounded, even headed and then some of us that are a little bit more, you know, salespeople. Let's go like a little bit more of that reactionary type energy. For me it's been a big part of my evolution and learning how do I have a big problem, come in and keep clear headed and still operate with the same level of just trust and certainty that I had before that came in. What have been, are there any practices that you've, you know, utilized to develop, becoming more grounded or has this just been something that over time just naturally it's come.
- [31:34]
I think it's combination. Never one secret, you know, one magic pill. I think obviously experience and you train the brain to realize that oh, you did that calmly and look at the outcome and therefore the brain knows to do more calm things. Right. So there's kind of this sort of loop of reminding yourself and reflecting as you got through something that the calmness helped you get through that. And that's. Oh, okay. I'm a very big believer in, you know, mind over body and matter and controlling through your thoughts and you know, meditation, all those great things and breath work. And obviously I practice quite a lot of longevity health type hacks, whether hacks or just routines and so forth. So I think those generally help to carve the autonomic systems, the nervous systems that most of us are in fight or flight for almost all our days we're just running from, whether it's family issues, to work issues, to finance issues, whatever those things are. And the body's just in this constant stress bubble and obviously that's not good for the long term health of anybody. And so, you know, I exercise regularly. I got up this morning, went skinning. I live in Park City. So when skinning up at 6:30 in the morning, skinning up a mountain and you know, that kind of helps obviously part of it with the air and the exercise and so you know, diet, all the things, all the things help sleep and stress reduction, cold plunging and fret so on. You know, all those things are part of a tool set that helped me, I think physically not feel in a fight or flight. And then also understanding the person who's delivering the information, right? Understanding them, what is their personality, what. And again, in our personalities we're quite different and so not taking it. You know, I would always, again, when younger would take it when someone comes at me with an issue, I'm a problem solver. I'm always like, oh God, have you done something wrong or this or that? Like, I've got to. I would kind of take that burden of that stress on as like my stress. When the reality is that it's the. It's generally the individual who's coming to you has some issue in their life that's creating that stress, that's making it more than whatever it is. And it's not your job necessarily to take their level of stress, but to help reflect back to them and sort of bring it down for them and guide them to a course of kind of a solution. So again, I'm no psychologist or anything. I'm a regular business guy trying to get through the day and trying to build an exciting company.
- [33:53]
That was super helpful. Thank you. One thing to kind of tag off of that, but in a little bit of a different direction with scaling quickly. And then I'm thinking about just the reactionary side of things. Some memories that come back to me is thinking about team members who started to feel the stress of getting left behind or that their skills weren't able to keep up with the rapid growth of the company. What can we as leaders do to empower our team and make sure that people aren't getting left behind and they're accelerating at the same rate of the company?
- [34:28]
Yeah, I mean, that's an awesome topic. And there's two ways to think about it. One is there's only so much you can do for people, and some people are going to be the right on the journey and some people are not. And sometimes you inherit people, sometimes you try and pull people in that on paper are right, and then ultimately they turn out not to be. I think if you've got a clear culture and that's strong, you can weed out those people that you're bringing in who aren't going to be able to sort of either keep up or so forth. And then you also have to be respectful to those that maybe helped in the early days of a business and did certain things and help be a foundational player to get some stuff done. But frankly, the next level, it's just a different skill set. And those are the really hard conversations because you have people you love and have really kind of helped do certain things. But you can see that the company is either pivoting in a different direction or needs a certain different type of skill set. And sometimes those skills are very hard or they take time. And so you've got this fast growing company, you need stuff exercised at a very quick pace and you've got someone who again, culturally is a fit and you enjoy and like. But then you know it's going to take them a year or two or three years to sort of build the skills and that resonance and the intellect, not the intellect per se, but just that experience of getting that. And you've got somebody else who's outside the company who may have those skills and you want to sort of bring them in to help you on that journey and then you get that conflict between the old team member and the new team member and how does sort of management work? So I'd love to get a perfect answer from your group here or whatever on some approach that, I mean, we're facing some of those things now as we scale and we always will. And I think so long as I always try it, so long as you're upfront, you're clear, you try and explain, you create a path for success even if that's not, you know, what they think or ultimately is a role. So they're still growing, they still have the ability to learn. And then look, most people are all going to do something different anyway. They're not going to be with this company for 25 years unnecessary, per se. So in two years or three years, they may start their own thing or they may join another group and take all that experience with them somewhere else. It's not like this. You know, I've learned. I always thought, you know, each baby I was doing, each business I was doing was, that's the one. This is. And then there I am six later and it's like, it's not, it's not that. It's just those skills just keep accumulating and you join a different thing with a different idea and, and grow. So yeah, it's, it's, that's, that's a tough one.
- [37:01]
Yeah, I think it is too. And part of probably why Cameron, I don't know if you've heard of his, he launched a course called Invest in your leadership. So it's a course for, you know, executives to buy for the people, middle management or even anyone that's running a team to give them the skills and develop them and give them the resources so that they can keep up. So, yeah, I think it's a huge need and something that Cameron has recognized and there's a lot of talk in the CEO alliance about also. Okay, I would Love to kind of talk a little bit more about the dynamic between. His name is David, right? Your CEO.
- [37:35]
Yep. David Price. Yep.
- [37:36]
Beautiful. So it sounds like you guys do morning check ins, evening check ins. What, what is something that maybe you've noticed because it sounds like you were a founder of both of the last companies, that you're okay. What is the difference in now being working with someone as the right hand? What's maybe come up for you in that process? What's been easy? What's been hard? What has that been like?
- [38:00]
Yes, I have been the CEO. Founder, CEO. I'm a co founder, present CEO here. So it's different. It's definitely. I feel equally vested in the organization. I don't think through things about, well, he owns more or this or that. As long as I have enough. That's the most important thing. Comparing what you have to somebody else is the hardest thing in the startup world. Where you think he's got more, she's got more. It's like it's got to be, is this enough to keep you motivated and get you doing what needs to be done? That's the most important thing. So once you get through that sort of financial is this enough kind of conversation, then you're really down to just okay, execution. And he's got skills, I've got skills. You know, unfortunately for us, there's a lot of, there's a little overlap, but there's also a lot of differences. And so I think he respects me on those things where I have the skills and vice versa. So I think that, you know those, those are the things that go well. I think, you know, there's always, right, the. Well, I know better, right? I, I know better and I've been around the block and I've done this and I've done that. And so, you know, when your partner, CEO whatever is doing something and you do have that, I know better. It's hard. It's super hard because you're so passionate and you really, you want the right decision for the business. It's not really a personal, like over you. It's just, I really think this is. And so I think those are always the hardest things when you're, when you see something going on. And I think in my mind I've, you know, there's so many decisions that get made when you're growing quickly that I just let go of those in a way and I'm not keeping score. It's not like it's fine. He gets to make those decisions and I can give him the information and I just don't take it personally anymore. I mean I used to or used to think that where it's like he doesn't have my lens, he hasn't had my 25 years of experience of what I've done and I haven't had his 25 experience or whatever. 35 in his case of what he's done and that's given him his lens. That's why he's doing this stuff. And he's either heard you or he hasn't or whatever. But so long as you've communicated, you've done your best, laid at rest. He's a big boy and don't keep score and don't say I told you so, whatever. It's just like, look, he's going to make the best decision he can with the context. Just give him the context. You can do step back and then keep making the decisions that you can make. So long as you're making lots of good decisions on your side that you're totally responsible for, then you've done your best, right? I've gone through my last company where I really wanted to sell it and we missed the bubble and I didn't push hard enough to the CEO. It was then kind of the same dynamic. I was present coo, I had a medical doctor CEO and I guess everybody thought that this Covid thing would run and whatever and we kind of had some people interested in doing a deal and numbers were stacking up great and it was like, no, no, we don't want to sell. And it's going to come, it's going to be 3x this a great. I was like. And so I lost out on a big first potential personal outcome, financial outcome of that and kind of it is what it is. Those things are the hardest ones to take. Where you wanted to kind of take a different direction and you didn't have the voice or you didn't have the votes or the whatever to make that happen. And so that four year experience has now driven me into this experience and so I now take all of that into this experience and it's driving me to make decisions in different ways and so forth. So if you isolate it in just where you're at, it's hard. But if you take it in into that bigger lens of the overall life journey, it will guide you, ultimately guide you to success is painful and trust me, it's a lot of pain, a lot of pain going through and a lot of work had to be done to come out of that kind of Experience for sure.
- [41:37]
What would you say, talking about life, journey and experience, if you were to go back to your mid-20s and sit down face to face with ashley in his 20s, what advice would you tell them?
- [41:51]
I think follow your heart, listen to the universe. Don't think you have all the answers. Have great people around you, trust them. Don't try and take it all on yourself and make sure you're doing something that you're excited about. I'm working insanely hard. It's seven day a week, all that kind of crazy stuff. But honestly, it's. Of course it's work defined as work. Right. I get compensated for some of it. Maybe not as much as I would like to, but ultimately it's work on behalf of this business. But what we are doing is touching so many lives, is having such a positive impact. People get so excited by when they hear about it and get into it and it just, you know, it's, it's, it's awesome, right? So it's, it's more than just a passion project. It is a business, but it's also something that is mostly enjoyable. And so I know there's a lot of debate out there and I forget whether it's Bezos or whatever going like, well, not everybody can do what they enjoy. They just, you know, work is work and you just have to do your 10 hours and grind and whatever and get through and get paid. And that's, you know, that's part of it. So, you know, I think that's, that's okay for a bunch of people, but if you are an entrepreneur, if you are trying to build and you're, you're outside of that world, I think to put the commitment in and to make a difference, you've got to be sort of enjoying what you're doing and have a passion. And my CEO partner, he has a personal story. I'm not going to share it live here. Anybody can go to his website, DavidPerez Life, and read about his story. But he has a very traumatic event also in his life in the early years that it has sort of driven him into this life of service and giving back, and that's landed him here. And again, he's probably thought at various stages in his life that life sucked and God, what am I doing? And I'm on the wrong path or whatever. And decades later, here he is in this awesome opportunity to impact a huge amount of people and to give back in an extraordinary way. And so life is long. I guess that's the other thing. Retiring at 35 and First Company being a big success. And I think going back to my younger self is life is long, take those lessons, don't rush it, you know, don't rush life. And I think that's also part of what happened to my brother when he had the accident, he was rushing life, he was trying to accelerate, getting through everything quickly and that led to his accident and now he's a completely different person and has a different perspective on life. And so I think, yeah, to the younger person, don't rush it. It's not a competition, although it always seems to be. Everything's put up again, oh, there's 25 year olds times as much or doing this or whatever's got all these accolades and compare. Look how far you've come on your journey. Not looking ahead. Wherever you are looking ahead, there's always people who are better, faster, quicker, richer, handsomer, whatever it is, but they're not on your journey. So look back and measure the steps that you've taken from whatever it is you've come from and that's kind of more important.
- [44:45]
I love everything you just said. That was probably my favorite part of this whole conversation thus far. Those are even words I really needed to hear because yeah, I'm just, I feel like I'm constantly onto the next thing. What else can I achieve? What else can I do? And I'm just constantly reminding myself to just slow down and be the famous quote of we're human beings, not human doings. But I think it's easy for us achievers, especially when you're motivated and passionate to just the comparison game and social media and all the influencers and the people that we're just surrounded and bombarded by it. So it's so easy to compare ourselves to other people's journey. So thank you for that amazing reminder. We're going to wrap up here in a couple minutes, but just to kind of close out. Speaking of passion and excitement, what are you most excited about in the next three to six months for you personally in Lumati, your role there, what are you most excited about?
- [45:46]
Well, I'm a dad, so I've got three kids, so I'm always excited about stuff my kids are doing and it's always hard to get enough time to spend time with them given all the work in a kind of constraint. So I guess I'm excited that hopefully sometime this year we will get more resources in the company where it'll start to be not a seven day week all the time and there will be enough infrastructure to Help manage some of the scaling so that I can continue to develop beyond just this business Persona and keep growing myself with my family and the life that I want to lead for my own growth and sort of giving back and mentoring and spending more time doing this kind of stuff, which I love. And I. I struggle to reflect, I struggle to give back in this kind of sense because I'm just so busy just doing and getting stuff done and growing this stuff, which I love. But I think part of it is also then reflecting and sharing and helping others do the same journey. So more of this kind of stuff would be awesome. On the business side, I think we're going to get on the national agenda, meaning that we will be a known brand by many of these people on the call that may be listening in now, 12 months from now, haven't even heard of us now. And I think we're on that hockey stick trajectory. I think we're in the right path at the right time with the right social conscious. We've got the right kind of tools that are being used and we're helping some incredible people. I know we haven't talked much about our modalities and what we do, and we certainly don't have to, but some of the work we're doing is really helping people at a fundamental level in their lives to just get back to life as normal. And that's the most impactful thing that you can be doing to. To help them become better parents or workers or whatever it is. So I'm just excited to be doing more, you know, kind of more of that and. And then just, yeah, more team members, more process and. And so that we can kind of not quite be pivoting quite as quickly. You know, that's an exhausting process. I think we're getting just through the ends of that and we're going to. We've got sort of three main pieces of the business. They're all cementing, they're all generating revenue, they're all about to be profitable if they're not already. And that's kind of nice to see. So the boats are all kind of growing together. I'll ask you the same question. Why not? I know this was about me, but what are you most excited about over the next six months?
- [47:58]
Oh, man.
- [47:59]
Sorry to put you on the spot.
- [48:01]
Yeah, well, I wasn't expecting that, but thank you. I'm really, really excited about doing these interviews. These have been such a. Just an expansive, joyful thing for me to do. I love meeting people, I love learning. I'm such a spongebob. So just being able to. I mean, when I was sent over your bio, I was just like, I'm so excited to talk to him. So this feels really exciting. I also just moved to Austin, Texas, so I'm in the process of looking for a home. And I'm a big believer in normalization and just, you know, as soon as you kind of grow and you hit that next level, for me at least, environment plays such a big part in me elevating my identity even more so and kind of creating the capacity for me to expand into. And so I'm in the process of really elevating my living space and getting somewhere that feels a little bit stretchy for me, but that space that I walk into. And I'm just like, yeah, I'm excited to create here. I'm excited to bring events and community together. That feels like the most exciting thing for me right now.
- [49:03]
Cool. I'm going to layer on a story for you, given about Austin, Texas, and maybe some of your health background just to kind of like to be careful for, because we're working with two clients, one who moved there from the UK for two years and then developed some pretty difficult health issues. And a second one who was here and moved to Austin and just moved back after three months, also having some significant health issues around mold. And so I know that's in your background. And so I would just say wherever you're looking to move or whatever, make sure you're bearing that in mind. Do some environmental testing, because it seems like. I don't know whether it's a new thread that we're getting, but Austin, Texas specifically, maybe it's the weather, it does that. It's impacting people's health down there through mold and fungi. Maybe it's the heat and the buildings. And again, I don't have all the answers, but I'm just seeing that as a thread. I know you've got a little bit of that in your background, so just use that for what it is and maybe make sure whatever that home or house or apartment is as clean and clear as it is, it can be for your health.
- [50:03]
Yeah, thanks for filling me in on that. I could totally see that, being that Austin is so humid. I just moved from Scottsdale, Arizona. I traveled for two years, but I was in Scottsdale, Arizona for two years and super dry heat there, so I, like, got accustomed to that. And then here it's like you walk outside in the summer and you're drenched in like two minutes. So I could see why mold would be a thing here.
- [50:25]
Well, I want to leave on an up note, so leave us on an up note. Awesome, awesome pleasure here and you know, hopefully you have some viewers, some questions. I'm happy to answer any questions. My email is ashleyumati.com so more than happy to take emails from people on either the topics we've talked about here or what we're doing, the work at Lumati. If there's somebody in your network that you think we could help, who's on the journey, the health journey that we talked about, I'm happy to do that and just privileged to be able to share these stories and get the word out on what we're doing and my life story here. And thank you for having me.
- [50:56]
Yeah, thanks for coming on. This was amazing.
- [50:58]
Thanks so much.
- [51:02]
Savannah Brewer
You've been listening to Second In Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herold. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to, like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.