Being a Founder Will Reveal The Worst Parts of Yourself

Sean Weisbrot: Mark Stouse is the chairman and CEO of proof analytics, ai, a company that uses analytics to help companies make better decisions about their go-to-market strategies. I wanted to talk with Mark because I feel like AI and analytics are creating this data-driven world and. I thought it would be important to take a step back and talk about the human side of running a business, especially one that, uh, relies so heavily on sales. In this conversation, we talked about what it means to be a founder. Why should someone. Become a founder, what are the things that you should be able to handle if you want to be a founder for a long time and so much more? I really liked this interview because I. I got to share some of my experience, some of my anxieties, some of my fears, some of my doubts, things that I've talked about in some of the episodes, and you'll hear more about that, uh, with this interview with Mark. So without further ado, let's get to the interview. So. I've been a founder for a number of years, and so I'm quite biased in my understanding of what being a founder means. What does being a founder mean to you? Well, you're certainly setting the

Mark Stouse: tone for the entire enterprise, the entire team as it develops, you have a really disproportionate effect on the culture of your organization. Uh, if only because you were there first, um, I mean, you're gonna be pretty much the one constant that everyone is going to have unless and until you leave the company yourself. Um, so I think that, that, that's, that's really, that's really it. You know, I mean, it, it, I think that the, so many people become founders. Not really understanding what it really means to lead. Um, there was, there was a great piece of research that was done about 18 months ago. Um, and I, you know, and I have, I took a lot of lessons from it, but it wasn't really about MySpace or about marketing or anything like that, but it was, it was all about the fact that. A lot of people become founders and they really, they've never really led anything. They, they have been managers. They may have even been people managers, but they've never actually been entrepreneurial or entrepreneurial, uh, inside of a large company. And, and so it's, it's a, you know, they get thrown into the deep end of the pool or they throw themselves in the deep end of the pool. Um, and it, and it's, uh, it's a big swim, right? I mean, as you and I were talking about earlier, uh, you know, we have tended to lionize, uh, what it means to be an entrepreneur, what it means to be a founder, uh, with very, very little. Discussion of the reality of it and the fact that what we're lionizing represents way less than 1% of the situations, right? The so-called I'm killing it, right? Or we're killing it every day, right? I mean, that is a very unusual set of circumstances.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I can't recall any day really that I felt like I was killing it. I just felt like every day there was some sort of problem that needed to be dealt with, and you just do your best to tackle those problems and figure out which of the most important problems to tackle. But I, I think saying that any given company is killing it on any given day is probably far, far from the truth. If, if, if I am to extrapolate my experience to anyone else's.

Mark Stouse: Yeah, no, I mean, uh, before COVID. I was a part of, uh, three or four, uh, founder, CEO type, uh, groups that met in person very, very confidential. Um, two were in New York, uh, one was in San Francisco, one was in the valley, one was in Miami. Um, and I think one of the greatest things that people struggle with as founders is the need to. Manage what it oftentimes is a huge gap between confidence in reality, you know, and so you would, you sometimes you would see guys walk in and it was, you know, tech bro mania, you know, killing it, killing it, all this kinda stuff. And then once the whole session started. You know, they were in the proverbial fetal position, uh, and it was, and it was not a psychologically healthy place at all. Um, you know, and I, and I think that we, we really have placed an unnecessary, or we have accentuated to an unnecessary degree, the burden. On founders and, and founding CEOs because they, they have felt like that if there was any crack in their armor, any, any reality in what they had to say that they'd lose support, investor support, team support, whatever. Right. Um, and so they oftentimes not only find themselves drifting into. A lot of, of not so great mental places, right. But they gradually found themselves drifting into making statements that were not really representative of reality and, and, uh, getting into trouble with that legally or otherwise. Right. Um, and, and it's a, it's, I mean. You have to always realize that you are still responsible for what comes outta your mouth. But man, I'll tell you what, it's, it's a, uh, uh, you know, one of the oldest truisms in the world is it's lonely at the top. I think that, that in the last 10 years, uh, being a FA founder, CEO is, can be really that way. And, and I would have to say that a lot of people who became founders, um, were not cut out to be founders. And it's not about how good they are and, and how competent they are and all that kind of stuff. It's not a, it's not a judgment in that sense at all. It is really about is, is you're going to walk a path of pain and suffering as, as a entrepreneur. And if you're open to it, it can make you a vastly better person, better human being. But you always have to ask yourself, is that really the best way for me to improve my life? And, and is that the path I need to be on? Is that the, is that really what I'm called to do, so to speak? Right. Um. And if the answer is yes, then it's yes, and it, and you'll also have the grace for all the suffering, uh, that goes with it. But if you, if, if it's not, if it's just something you did for the, kinda like the, not the best of reasons, not the right reasons, um, you won't be able to stay in saddle.

Sean Weisbrot: I used to think I wanted to be a startup founder. And I had, I previously had a business that was socially successful. It, it was a, a live event program, um, that was very socially successful. I went broke doing it, and then I started a consulting company that was wildly successful, but very lean. And then I decided, mm-hmm, I want to be a a B2B SaaS startup founder. Because that's how I'm gonna go 10 x from here and spent four plus years and it was just panic attacks and misery most of the time. And now I'm going back to the consulting because I am far happier being lean and providing services to other companies rather than trying to build my own product that people will want to invest in or something like that. I would rather. You know, you were talking about first time founders not being aware of their gaps. I would much rather invest in a founder who's never been a founder before so that I can teach them how to minimize their suffering, because I went through a tremendous amount of suffering and didn't have anyone to help me figure it, figure out how I could reduce my suffering. So I hope that I can invest in people. And minimize their suffering so they can get as quickly as possible to a place of satisfaction with their professional goals and their personal goals, and be able to make the kind of money they wanna make without having to, to hurt themselves in the process, which is what I went through multiple times. And so I, I like being, yeah, no, I think

Mark Stouse: I, I really agree with that. I think that, um. You know, it's masochistic to not seek to reduce your suffering, you know? Um, I do think that, uh, a lot of people tend to define pain and suffering as an entrepreneur, purely in terms of like cash flow problems or, you know, product problems or stuff like that, right? Um, there's a, there's a lot more than that. You know, you, you're dealing with, with people in a, for lack of a better way of putting it, a very primal sort of situation, which tends to bring out the best and the worst in you and them. Um, and you'll discover as an entrepreneur things about yourself. That you didn't really know were inside you that, uh, surprise you, meaning in a, it's a good thing and shock the hell out of you. Meaning you're like, damn, I didn't think I could do something that bad. Right? And you'll be able to justify it, which is always a dangerous proposition, right? Uh, but that's what most people do. I mean, founders tend to be of above average intelligence. So rationalizing stuff is not hard for the average founder, but it's a, um, it's a, you know, I mean, you, you, you'll, it's a, it's a, it's kind like therapy, right? In a sense. Um, y you know, a maximum of psychotherapy is that if you, if you start. You move down rapidly into the valley of the shadow, so to speak, and if you stop at that moment, stop the therapy, you're actually worse off than if you'd never begun. And I think that there's a lot of truth to that in, in being an entrepreneur, being a founder, you, you, if you are going to do it, you need to realize that in order to. Fully realize what is good in it, uh, and what is good in you. In that situation, you're gonna have to finish the race. 'cause if you stop in the middle, it's a problem. Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: I was not happy that with my last company, I was forced to stop because we ran outta money. I would say that that's actually, in terms of

Mark Stouse: what I'm talking about, that's not. Stopping in the middle. Right. That is an end to itself. So you went all the way to the end where you ran outta money, right? Um, and you learned a lot from that. And you were able to flip that into that consulting startup that did really well,

Sean Weisbrot: and well, the, the software company was after that. So I had the, the event company that failed. And then, but, but I learned a lot from that for sure. Then I had the consulting company that I learned a lot about as well. And then I had the software company, the B2B SaaS. That's the one that we ran out of money as well. So one, one company ran outta money. One company was very successful, one company ran outta money, and now this one is consulting again. So I, it seemed to do well with service companies and not well with, with like, uh, product. Yeah. So.

Mark Stouse: Yeah. And, and you know, I mean, one of the things I can tell you, having, you know, looked at a lot of analytics over the last 20 years on this, um, it's a, it's a staple of data science, okay? That 65 to 70% of any given situation that you're trying to model is externalities. Let's call it the wave that you don't control, but you are seeking to surf. Um, and so the, the, let's call it the circumstances around a startup is vastly disproportionate. Um, and its influence on what happens. Can you, if you really know what you're doing in a big way and you have a lot of support, right? Can you still succeed in a situation that is not optimized from an external perspective? Uh, yeah, sure. Does it happen a lot? No, it doesn't, you know? Um, and so it's, it, it, uh. I mean, when people ask me, Hey, what are the two, one, or two big things that I've learned from all this, including from the analytics, it would be getting your ICP really straight is super crucial, and the market timing is even more crucial. Um, and the problem is, is that you can't really know. Whether you're, whether the market timing is perfect or not, until you, you're looking at it in the rear view mirror, right? And so that's the reason why a lot of startups run out of cash is they, they actually just started at the wrong time. They'd started at a different time, right? It might've gone completely different.

Sean Weisbrot: That's why I like the idea of serving companies because the wave doesn't really matter so much, you're just providing to those who wanna ride the wave.

Mark Stouse: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I would say that software companies are the same, right? I mean, what is software, but automated process in a sense. Automated service. Right. So I, I, I would say, I would say it, it, it really. Again, this is where it all comes together with, with the ICP, you know, um, we struggled for a long time before we got our ICP straight and, and when you get your ICP straight, it is kind of weird, uh, in a really good way, but it's kind of weird because it feels like all of a sudden everything works. How long did it take and, uh, uh, three years. Yeah. And how long has it been since then? I mean, uh, couple years. So I mean, it, it's, uh, um, you know, right now we're, we're growing at about, we're we're almost doubling every year for the last two, two and a half years. Before then, it was not pretty What. Made you wanna stick with it? You know, I think it, it's all kinds of things, you know, um, some healthy and rational and some probably not all that great, you know? Um, I'm not the kind of person that walks away easily. It, it is probably both a strength and a weakness. Um, most of our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses, you know, all at the same time. So I, I also really started to really see that it was a market timing issue, and I knew that if we could stay the course long enough that the worm would turn, um, it really started to turn not just for us, but for anyone in the analytic space. Um, in kind of like, I don't know, the mid 2020 when people started realizing that the ramifications of COVID were radically changing their business. No. No matter what business that was. And if they couldn't understand exactly how that was happening and forecast into the future, that they were up a creek. Um, and then when the economy turned. Say 18 months ago, the volatility and the high velocity of change in the marketplace really, um, took what was already moving as a result of COVID to a whole new level. Um, and then the cost of money. Um. I mean, it, it, it's not just interest rates. It's not just debt, it's the cost of, uh, equity investment, the cost of the acquisition of new net new revenue, all of the, all of that has soared and what that, and it's also a lot harder to get today than it was two years ago. So what does that mean? It means people become much more risk averse. It means that companies all over the place are rediscovering the business case, um, for a budgetary investment, which includes a historical analysis, a forecasted co causal analysis going forward, includes all that kind of stuff, right? When it, when money was super cheap and super easy to get, you know, people kind of were far more laissez-faire. Hey, you know, we'll be experimental, right? And, and, uh, and if it doesn't work, you know, we can always get more money. Well. That is not the case anymore.

Sean Weisbrot: Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far and I hope you're loving it. And if you are, I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of we, and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story, and what we do requires so much love. So that we can bring you something amazing and every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back to the show now. That's why I am launching a consulting service, specifically focused at cost optimization because I recognize that a lot of companies are gonna have a very hard time, and so I feel like if I can help them to get back parts of their budget that they were wasting from before. That it can be a very valuable service. And I've spoken to a number of exit strategists and fractional experts and, uh, CFOs, you know, external CFOs, and they all seem to agree with me that, you know, like a lot of people will say, Hey, let me help you to sell more stuff, right? Let me raise your revenue. But no one's coming in and going, Hey, let cut your costs for you. So a lot of people I've spoken to have said that it's a fantastic idea. So I'm, I'm in the process of building that now and I'm really excited about the idea.

Mark Stouse: Yeah, I mean, the thing, the, the, the biggest reason why, uh, companies default to that, right, is you can alter your cost profile very fast. Um, and, and it's a, Hey, I need to cut by this amount of money per whatever the period is, right? And you either get to that or you don't get to that. It's very cut and dried. What is, what is interesting and, and can be problematic. About it is that if you don't understand the, the causal linkage between the money that's that you're spending and the value that you're getting back and how long it takes for you to get it back, um, you can find yourself, uh, cutting today, achieving goals today that cost you dearly. Year, two, year three, year four. Um, marketing expense is actually a great example of this. It doesn't mean that marketing shouldn't be cut sometimes if it's absolutely necessary to live, to fight another day, but you need to do so with great intelligence about what it's going to mean for you further out, because. All, all, all money we spend has a time lagged effect. Um, all of it. Some of it is not very long, but some of it can be really long, particularly in B2B. Uh, and so when we model the long term effects of budget cuts or budget increases, right? You, it's one of the things that turns that whole conversation. Very rapidly into a business conversation as opposed to. A functional one.

Sean Weisbrot: Yes. I, I've definitely seen that happen before when I was starting or when I was running my startup and I was the one funding it still, there was a time where I was paying $30,000 a month out of pocket to keep the business running. And so I had my COO go through the numbers and he was like, we're spending on, we're just, we have too many people, not enough efficiency. We're paying them too much. And so he went through all of those things and so he was able to help me. We, we didn't have to let go with like maybe two or three people, but we were able to cut the, the budget down significantly, which was important because I, you know, I, I had a lot of money to be able to invest in it, but like, you know, it's not like something I could invest in for 10 years before we had revenue, right? Because when you're doing a B2B SaaS like that, and we were trying to compete with Slack, so it's something that you need millions upon millions upon millions of dollars before you get to profit. You know, probably $10 million invested before you get profit on something like this when you're trying to compete against a market leader worth, you know, $30 billion. So, uh, I just, I didn't have that kind of money available to be able to invest, so we had to cut costs in order to be able to stay afloat longer. And eventually we got funding from other investors. But, uh, it was a very expensive lesson to me before we got there. Absolutely. I think that

Mark Stouse: that, that, that's one. Um, I mean, so we have a, a very much of a hybrid model in terms of capitalization. Um, we raised about four and a half million. Uh, and we have combined that with bootstrapping and a lot of our raises. So we have never done classic. A round, B round, C round. 'cause we'd have no VC money at all, uh, in the company by design. So we used family offices, which for us was way better. Um, and the, the way it worked was that we had commitments of on investment and those, those were divided up into tranches. For each investor and they were triggered by different, uh, goals realized. So if we got to a certain level in the product or we got a certain revenue level or whatever, it would trigger, uh, the, that next trache of investment. And so it kept everything very, you know, the equilibrium was maintained, I think. Far more successfully overall than, than it often is. Um, it also really, uh, allowed us to, you know, 'cause the way that we did the deals, each tranche came in at the valuation of that moment. So it, it, it also prevented, um, too much dilution. Uh, and you know, by taking cheap money early on, lot of cheap money early on, so it was just a, it, it, it, uh, it, it has worked generally really well.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I think we may see more of that. I interviewed a guy a year or more ago from Singapore who worked for a company that loaned money to companies that had raised VC money. So basically, hey, you raised $10 million. We'll give you an extra 2.5 million and it's a loan, and that way you have extra cash. You just pay us monthly, you know, from the, from the 10 million you start paying us, or from the, I guess the 12.5 that you have, you start paying us back on a monthly amount, and that way we've got some stable return and you've got extra cash to spend without worrying about. The dilution from that extra 2.5. Um, and I thought that that was really interesting. I haven't really seen too many companies do it. Um, and I, I think it's something that should be explored. Although then at the time, this was before interest rates started rising, so maybe it's not such a good idea now. But

Mark Stouse: yeah, and I'll say, I'll say this to the, the terms and conditions make all the difference. Um, in fact, there are, there's a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of predatory lenders out there on, on startups that if you read the, the Ts and C's, uh, or more importantly, if your investors read the T's and C's, they will probably not, uh, support you taking that loan. Right. Um, it, 'cause, it, it in many ways de positions them, you know? Uh, now, I mean, I, I'm aware of some situations where founders have successfully used that kind of loan scenario as leverage on their investors, but that's also a, that's something that's pretty fraught. That can really change the chemistry that you have with your investors. If you do that, um, you may get to a point where you feel like you have no other option but to do that. Um, and I'm not gonna sit in judgment on anybody, um, like that, but you just, you always have to remember that there is a price you pay every time you play hardball. You are, you are, you are virtually guaranteeing. That the person that you have played hardball with will have an opportunity to return the favor.

Sean Weisbrot: Especially from my experience. You, you said that in Asia, like I think it's probably a lot more prevalent that they'll, they'll take their opportunity if they can, even if it hurts them just to hurt you back.

Mark Stouse: Yeah. No, I think that that's true. People are, people are people. Right. Um, I. We act against our own best interests all the time. All the time. So I have, yeah, I will totally agree with that statement. And I don't think it's just Asia. I think entrepreneurs or the, let's call it the entrepreneurial culture, the entrepreneurial environment. Um, MA is magnetized for people who take things very personally. And again, that could be a, a really, really good thing. It can also be a really, really terrible thing. Um, but I think that you see more of that kind of behavior that you're talking about amongst entrepreneurs than you do amongst professional. Managers and even CEOs of large corporations, um, they are typically not as personally invested in whatever is going on, and so they kind of look at it more pragmatically. But the average entrepreneur takes it very personally.

Sean Weisbrot: So you mentioned larger company CEOs. I remember in our previous discussion we said that we were gonna talk about Fortune 1000 CEOs. What can you tell me about them? How are they different from your average founder?

Mark Stouse: Um, my experience with very large Fortune 1000 CEOs and CFOs and people like that are that they are chess players for the most part. I mean, there's always gonna be some variance in all this, right? But in general, an entrepreneur is not a chess player, right? Um, an entrepreneur is a full contact, um, pick your sport kind of person, right? Um, not a cerebral. In general as what I really mean by that, I'm not talking about intelligence, I'm talking about perspective. I'm talking about maybe a better word than cerebral, is dispassionate. They tend to be more dispassionate. Um, they are. They're working multiple time horizons all at the same time. Dave Cody, who's somebody that I used to, uh, work, uh, around, uh, a lot at Honeywell. Um, he was the chairman and the CEO of Honeywell International, which is the holding company for all of the big Honeywell businesses. Um. He, he used to say, so he had several things that he would say all the time 'cause he considered them very important and one of them was anyone can manage for the short term and anyone can manage for the long term and anyone can manage for the medium term. Those are easy. What's hard is doing all three at the same time. He was exactly right and it's not something that you can intuit either. In his case, he was a heavy user of analytics and he was constantly looking at the forecasted impacts of different things on the business across, you know, kinda like year one, year two, year three, sometimes the timescale would be like. Three year, six year, nine year type of timescale. Um, and, you know, I mean, it, it was just a co it is just a completely different situation. And one of the things that enables that is that unless the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company is stupid and the board is stupid and a whole bunch of other people are stupid, you're not going to get into massive cash constraints. I. Those kinds of enterprises. Um, and so they are, they're not really worried about a lot of the things that worry entrepreneurs, you know? Um, when I see an entrepreneur want to begin to use our analytics platform to model risk factors and cause and effect and all this kind of stuff, right? It's typically because if they make the wrong choice on something, it can really hammer their cashflow in some really bad ways. And so that's the risk, the main risk that they're seeking to mitigate. Um, if they, if you look at a Fortune 1000 company, that's not the risk that they're seeking to mitigate. They've got enough scale. They've got a large finance and accounting and organization. There are a lot of levers that they can pull to optimize cash flow and all this kind of stuff. What they don't want to do is spend a large amount of money on something that doesn't get them anything at all or very little, or maybe even is just a loser. Where the EPS impact the profitability, impact, the earnings per share impact is huge. They, the CFO will not wear that, right. Um, that's just not an acceptable outcome, particularly since he's gonna be on the earnings call with his CEO. Telling people about it. So that's, it's just, it's just different scenarios, it's different perspectives, it's different problem sets that really define the difference between the two.

Sean Weisbrot: It's a really interesting comparison. I never really thought of it like that, and I, I never really had to be in a position where I was thinking about all three at the same time. Because in the first one, the event company, we were always focused on month by month, right? Because we, we were organizing one event per month. We would have 700 people attending each event, and we knew we had 30 days to plan and market that event, and we never had enough cash to be able to think beyond 30 days. So it was constantly stressful because we. Sometimes we had enough to pay the bills and sometimes we didn't, and that's how we ended up going broke. That's how I personally ended up going broke, doing that business. And then with the consulting with that, that second business, I never had to think about any sort of time horizon. Because there was no need to grow. I had four, four people that I worked with that were subcontractors. So if there was a service that I personally couldn't directly provide, I had them provided for me. And I, you know, I paid them what they asked for, and I took the rest for myself. So there was constantly, uh, enormous amounts of cash coming in. No need to think about growing the business. Four people, you know, four subcontractors and me running the company itself. Like it was very, very, very, yeah.

Mark Stouse: But, but I, right. But I would, I would, I would say that it's not just about growth, it's about sustainability, right? Yes. So if you're not looking far enough down the road, if your headlights can't reach far enough out relative to, uh, new incoming revenue, for example, that. Support sustainability, even if it's flat, even if there's no growth. Right. You still have to be able to maintain your setup, you

Sean Weisbrot: know? Yeah. I mean, if, if you're, that part was easy. Um, I was looking at. It's like it was in the blockchain space, right? So I was already aware of the macroeconomics, uh, of the world. I was also aware of the market, the blockchain market itself. So I was able to ascertain what was happening and, and what time horizons there were for success and sustainability. It was like, uh, March of 2018 that I was like, something's happening. I think by June of 2018, this is done. I think the market's dead. I. And, and I called it quite well. And so by June I had my software company, like I had the, the idea for the software company and I already started thinking about it. And like by August I was hiring people. But I basically, because I was so lean with that other business, I shut it down completely. I. There was no, I did see no route to sustainability on that business because the entire market I was serving just basically like, you know, closed down.

Mark Stouse: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's actually one of the reasons why consulting is so popular is that you can spin it up very quickly. You can get to several million in fees pretty fast. Right. Um, you can also shut it down really fast. There's not as much, uh, when you use this phrase, you know, kind of like with air quotes around it, you know, there's not as much carried interest, so to speak, um, in, in that, uh, kind of thing as there is in a, in a business with a heavy asset base.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, well, so I, I knew that I wanted to build something that I could have for years to come, and that's why I wanted to get into software. And I knew I had the cash to start a software business on my own. But I had none of the skill set to do so. I had zero technical background, zero technical skills, no understanding of product or ui, ux or, or wire frames or, right. You asked me about any of the stuff. Now I could talk about all of it, right? 'cause I spent years doing it with that business. But before that, I had no, no understanding and, um, I was investing in my future because I believed it would be a business that I would run for 10 or 15 years. Obviously that didn't happen, but I still learned significantly from it. And, and so I'm, I'm happy to be going back to the consulting because I like that idea of I can serve people because it's the, the time, as you said, timeline to, to generating millions in fees is quite fast. And I did that with that business and so I know I can do it again now where the software business was just years of suffering, where the consulting business before it was very fast to make money. I, I had no operational structure. I had no SOPs. I had no team in house. It was very lean, very fast. And so, but, but now this time I've, I've watched the market again and I know, you know, I can see time horizons, I can see the macroeconomics, I can see those things. So I feel like I'm way more naturally suited to consulting than I am to. To building a product, even though I, I thought it was what I wanted to do after doing it, I realized it's not what I'm good at, so I shouldn't even try, but I can invest in people who are good at that and I can support them.

Mark Stouse: Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. And I think, I think the other big factor right now, right, is that, um, affordability on the client side is customer side is. Really a very, very significant concern. You're already seeing significant commoditization, price-wise, um, in, in SaaS. I think you're gonna see more. I think that the, like the way that SaaS has been is for the most part, gone. It's not, it's not to say that there won't be a few that still pull it off for some period of time, but there's just a general, there's a lot of, uh, factors coming together, uh, that, that have an impact on this. Um, the growing gap between the capabilities and capacities of teams and the power of new generations of technology. So their, their inability to maximize the value from the new tech because they just honestly don't have the skill sets necessary to do that, that is increasingly a problem. Um, you know, the, one of the cascading factors on remote work is that more and more CFOs in particular that I talk to. Um, or saying, you know, what, what do I really get for having FTE, right? Like, if I did it correctly, legally, appropriately, why would I not make, why, you know, on a phased basis, why would I not ultimately make, you know, 90% of my teams contractors and. Change the, the, the comp mechanism, uh, or the basis of the comp mechanism fairly substantially using analytics, right? So you're kind of getting a, a base fee, you're getting a short term variable fee based on an attainment of certain KPIs, and you're getting a longer term, uh, variable fee based on your contribution, you know, as shown in the analytics. Towards actual outcome and value creation. Right? So actually it's really great for the, for a consultant, for, for a contractor, because so much of the value of what you're doing is heavily time lagged. In many cases. You're not even at the company anymore when the value of what you've done starts to really take hold. And so it creates a little bit of an annuity for you. Allows you to monetize far more of the value that you've created than you have historically been able to do. Right. So to give you a sense of this, when we do this for, you know, large consulting firms or ad agencies, PR firms, whatever, you know, they are so focused on trying to show value. In the, kind of like the one to two quarter range that they only capture about 5% of the total value. They only identify it even, um, they're leaving 90 to 95% of the total value of their services uncompensated in perpetuity. I mean, when you look at it on that basis. Um, consulting is a bad business. Now from a cashflow perspective, it can still be a really good business, and that's why a lot of people who found consultancies go on and they do really well personally and build up wealth and all that kind of stuff, right? But imagine if they could increase. Their realized value and thus their billing right from 5% to 50% even, which is, you know, relatively speaking huge, but only getting paid for 50% of the value that you deliver still sucks. But I mean, so this is kind of where it's all going. Increasingly, it's. There's a lot of factors that are kind of networking together to propel this along. You know, another big one, which is tied to affordability, uh, and the, and the balance sheet and all this kind of stuff is, uh, large companies that have, uh, a lot of real estate on their books, meaning they own the buildings in which their team's office bad. They hate that. It's like a giant anchor. Right. Um, companies that have really expensive leases, somewhat similar situation, you know, um, and so there is, they are entertaining ideas today that they might not actually entertain if everything was looking far rosier than it is, but since it's not, they are definitely entertaining it. And a lot of these things that they're entertaining intentionally or unintentionally, doesn't really matter. Um, are are setting companies on a new course. Uh, and there won't be, you know, particularly the longer they stay committed to some of these, um, what, you know, what might be considered right now temporary measures. The, the, the more unlikely it is that they will ever come back from.

Sean Weisbrot: So what's the most important thing you've learned so far in life? Whether that's personal or professional?

Mark Stouse: Never lose sight of what's really important. We are constantly barrage with things that everyone else says are really super important. Uh, and in some cases they are, and in most cases they aren't. And so, uh, I think you just have to really, um, really stay very, very clear about what the non-negotiables are, not only in your business, but in your personal life. It is, um, when you get that wrong, it's very, very difficult to be successful. Back almost impossible to be truly successful even if you have made a ton of money, right? There's a lot of people who have made a ton of money, who are absolutely unsuccessful as human beings and are utterly miserable at age 60, right? Uh, and would give a lot of what they have for an opportunity to go back in time and do it differently. That's the one or one of the very few, uh, kinds of exchanges that are literally impossible. Right. You will, you'll never go back. Right? This is, this is where, you know, like the, the whole thing, which is not new at all about, you know, hey, you know, things used to be really great. We need to go back to that kind of time. Right. It's a, it is a, just a total fallacy, right, because. I'm not saying they might have been really great for you. They also may not have been great for other people. That's kind of almost like a separate issue. But an absolute issue is, is that no matter how good or how bad, uh, 1985 was for you, right? You're not going back. You, there are no redos. Um, you have to just keep going forward. And I. I think that's the, that that hinges that the success or failure of that whole thing hinges on understanding what's really important.