Life as a Story

Tim Ludwig: Steve, thanks for joining me. I’m really excited to have the chance to sit down with you and hear some of your stories. And I think you’ve got just an amazing life story to tell and I’m excited to get into it. 

Steve Wiesner: Tim, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. And yeah, congrats on the initial success. I think this podcast has been great. I’ve been listening to it on my runs. And yeah, I think you’ve got something really good going here. So honored to be a part of it. 

Tim Ludwig: Thanks. I appreciate that. As I mentioned, when I was going through our notes and reflecting on our conversations, you have a lot of stories. Some people just sort of narrate things and it doesn’t really come across as sort of this packaged little narrative, but yours are filled with stories, so I want to make sure we get to a bunch of them during our conversation today. But to start, I was curious maybe just sort of at a broader level, what were some of the reflections you have on your early childhood? You grew up in Canada and maybe like pre-adolescence. 

Steve Wiesner: Yeah, I think, and first of all, by the way, that’s the benefit of being old, is that I’ve accumulated a lot of stories over the years. So, happy to share them. I think my view on life generally is that life is a story, and you just want it to be as interesting an adventure as it can possibly be. And I’ve lived a non-traditional sort of career path, but it’s been an adventure and it’s been exciting and one big interesting story. So, in terms of recollections going back to when I was a kid, nothing exceptional. And I say that in a really good way. I had a pretty boring childhood. And my wife and I laugh about this all the time as well. We think we’ve given our kids the gift of a boring childhood as well in many respects, which is mission accomplished. When I was very young, I had a very middle class upbringing, grew up in Ottawa, Canada, government town. My dad worked for the government. My mom was an accounts payable clerk, just traditional middle class background. And I think as a child, I was really blessed frankly to have just a very secure and stable environment when I was young, very young. Always had a little bit of an entrepreneurial kick, as you and I talked about. I think there was always, since a very young age, I was always starting little businesses and little ventures. You and I joked about the fact when I was a kid, I was really into music when I was really young, and this is really dating myself, but this was in the 70s. I was a big fan of Kiss, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. And I had the Kiss posters up on my wall, and even as a young kid, I would have little Kiss concerts where I would be like a Kiss cover band, and I would invite my family down. I would charge admission for people to come in. But that was kind of an example of very early on how I think there’s always been a bit of an entrepreneurial fire in my gut and it started to manifest itself at a really early age. But very lucky, when I was very young, I had a very good family environment. 

Tim Ludwig: So which member of Kiss were you when you would put on these shows? 

Steve Wiesner: Probably Paul Stanley. And it’s funny because when we moved to LA, this is actually really cool and I hadn’t mentioned this to you, when we moved to LA back in 2001, we lived in a cool area, and there was a grocery store just down the street from our place. And on two separate occasions, I was standing in line behind Paul Stanley, which was so- I mean, I haven’t listened to Kiss probably since I was a kid, but it was really cool to be right next to this guy, buying whatever, a loaf of bread. And I never worked up the guts to say anything to him. I’m not one of those people who would like talk to celebrities like that. But yeah, it was really, really cool to bump into Paul Stanley all those years later. 

Tim Ludwig: One of the other things that you shared is that growing up in Canada, like there was a pull towards the US for you after a certain point. Maybe not quite getting that far, but what were your impressions that you remember about the United States as a child? 

Steve Wiesner: Big, big, big, big. Everything was big. Again, in Canada, as a young kid, it was just so quiet. And again, there’s a lot of benefit to that, but I was always one of those folks who looked to the US as being somewhere that you could go to chase your dreams and to accomplish really big things. And I don’t just mean financially, I mean, of course, that as well, it’s 10 times the market that Canada was, but more just in terms of a vision. Like people, and I want to be careful not to make any anti-Canadian statements, I love the country dearly, but there was just a grander vision that a lot of people in the States, at least in my view, had that had a great appeal. And I always knew in my heart of hearts at some point, I would end up working in the US, and it ended up happening. And I’m really blessed to have had that opportunity. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, it’s interesting, I mentioned I was born in Canada but don’t really have strong connections there. And so, just, it’s curious to hear about the perceptions of Americans from the Canadian perspective because I think the American perspective, at least my American perspective, is that they’re, for all intents and purposes, sister countries with very similar shared outlooks on everything. And I think the gap might be a little bit wider even based on what you just said than I think our perception is as Americans. 

Steve Wiesner: I think that that’s right. And it’s interesting, again, I want to be careful how I put this forward. But in our negotiations training workshops at Watershed, we, as you can imagine, talk a lot about cross-cultural differences and cross-cultural considerations when it comes to negotiations. And I often, in the workshops that I’m involved with, will often discuss the fact that even as a Canadian coming to the US, those cultural nuances can be very material. And I’ve got to tell you, in certain respects, I think my career success was slowed a little bit by some of those traits I have as a Canadian in terms of the way that I approach difficult conversations and conflict, and in many respects, Americans are much better suited to just dive in, and I don’t want to say be more aggressive in their negotiations but certainly be more direct, etc. Us Canadians, we aren’t always wired that way. And there are some very material differences. So when I go to the UK, I go to Australia, I go to these former Commonwealth countries around the world, it’s very noticeable to me those little nuances that Commonwealthers have that Americans don’t necessarily recognize or share.

Tim Ludwig: Interesting. So I don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but it’s interesting to me that you say that the Commonwealth countries have these common traits, which means that probably that emerges from Britain, right? 

Steve Wiesner: Yes, correct. I think that’s absolutely right. And it’s funny because even when I came to the States, my sister lives in the UK, for instance, a lot of my peers, people in my generation, in many respects, it was easier to move to the UK than it was to move to the US back then. And part of that is, I think, driven by the fact that we’ve got a common heritage and a lot of Canadians have relatives who are originally from the UK. And I think that from a cultural perspective, there are a lot of similarities there as well that Americans don’t always fully appreciate. Americans, and I’m American now as well, so nothing I’m saying is meant to be anti-American, Americans, we often underestimate, I think, those cultural differences that even are in place even versus a country like Canada, let alone other countries around the world. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, I buy that. All right, so you had this bucolic, sort of pastoral, nice Canadian upbringing in Ottawa. 

Steve Wiesner: I would refer to it as boring. 

Tim Ludwig: And then around age 12, your family had to adapt to some rather large changes due to a couple deaths in the family and the divorce of your parents. And I wondered if you’d elaborate a little bit on that because that was certainly one of the pivotal moments in your early life. 

Steve Wiesner: Absolutely. That was a wake-up call for a real life in many respects. And it was a really challenging time for everybody in the family, me and my sister, of course, but my mom and my dad also. And it wasn’t- I was very lucky in that it wasn’t a situation where the family meltdown was driven by a lot of fighting and arguing and abuse or whatever. I mean, it was nothing like that, but it was still very unsettling – that’s not the right word – very disruptive, obviously, to a 12-year-old mind when the family dissolves like that. And I think that it had a lot of different impacts, especially given the fact that, as mentioned as well, there were a couple of folks, my grandfather and my uncle, who had passed away around that time as well that really magnified that personal angst that all of us felt. It was a very difficult time. And I think in a lot of ways that, from a personal perspective, influenced who I was was to become and frankly maybe from an entrepreneurial perspective as well, which is I responded to that uncertainty in that unsettled environment by trying to exert control wherever I could possibly exert control. And look, we all know it’s somewhat of a fool’s errand, there’s only so much in the universe that we can control, but I think at a very early age, I was one who really just tried to grab the reins and limit uncertainty by trying to control whatever I possibly could. And it was hard. I mean, I had some real struggles trying to adapt to that as I got a little bit older. My studies suffered in many respects. I started to party at a very young age in ways that were not healthy or constructive. And my grades suffered. I had a really tough time in many respects. And I think it all did stem from not fully understanding how to deal with that loss, loss of the family and loss of those relatives. 

Tim Ludwig: So one of the things that I was reflecting on that I couldn’t quite connect the dots for me, not that dots always need to be connected, but you talk about you developed a strong sense of a need for control, but then there were these, from the outside perspective, like school performance was suffering, you were getting involved in some less than wholesome activities and things like that, which to me seem sort of out of control. So, I’m curious, what were the parts that you were really trying to control? Like how did that manifest itself? 

Steve Wiesner: So, it’s a great observation and a bit of a break in the narrative that I will heal in a moment. I think originally control was, it was very difficult again for a 12-year-old to exert control in that context. And I think at that point in time, that realization started to impact me in a bunch of negative ways. I think where I really started to take the reins, so to speak, and exert control was in a positive way, which was several years later and this was one of those transitional moments, my goodness was it ever. I was struggling mightily in school, basically on the verge of failing out, as I mentioned, was partying a lot, even at a very young age in ways that were very destructive, and yes, those things are out of control in many respects. And then I remember my sister got accepted to the University of Western Ontario, which is a great school in Canada. And especially back then, it was a very good school and a great program. And my sister was always, she always had her act together. She was the head girl and the head of student council. She had great grades. I mean, she was awesome in so many ways. And I remember I was at a bar, even at that young age, with a buddy of mine named Grant. And I remember saying to him, as I was struggling, almost failing out of high school, that, wow, my sister got into Western, and he knew my sister well, and he said, oh, that’s great. I said, yeah, it’s such a great school and going to set her up beautifully for the future, et cetera. And I said something along the lines of, not exactly the path that I’m on. And I remember he looked at me, without really skipping a beat, and he said, you can do that. You can do that. And even speaking to you now, it kind of chokes me up telling that story because in that moment everything changed. Everything changed. And like literally, I’m actually kind of physically shaking a little bit just recounting that to you. And I remember within a couple of weeks, I may be off a little bit on timing but not by a lot, I told my parents that I was going to change schools, which I did. I got out of that old high school, went to a completely new high school which was academically very vigorous. I changed friends, not Grant obviously, but there were a lot of other friends who I sort of pushed out of my life because I needed to get my act together. I started going to the local university to study in the library, which was completely and utterly opposite of who I was. And at the new school, I combined three years of studies into two years of studies. So, I skipped a grade. And I didn’t graduate top of my class, but I was pretty darn close. And I ended up getting into that university. And that university ended up leading to Columbia Business School. And all of that happened because of that conversation with Grant. That night, it changed absolutely everything. And I hope he appreciates or understands, I’ve told him, I don’t know if it necessarily resonates with him, that he understands how much of an impact that conversation had, but that conversation changed my life in profound ways and set me up for everything great that’s happened since then. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, that’s amazing. Four words in the right moment to the right person, and I mean, your pivot sounds like it was almost instantaneous, I mean, a couple weeks, whatever it was, but there’s virtually no delay between you receiving that message and just doing a total change in your whole outlook and your life. And clearly, there was a lot of unspent capacity there because compressing high school, getting to like- that’s a remarkable turnaround, like there was a lot of potential there that was not seeing the light of day to that point. 

Steve Wiesner: Well, and God bless my mom, who I’m very, very close with to this very day. I mean, we had some really tough times, and I think that she saw that potential, she knew that potential was there, and she saw me pissing it away. And it took Grant Belford inadvertently, unintentionally kicking me in the ass to make me realize it as well. And kudos to my sister as well. I mean, she may not realize it, but she was tremendously inspirational for me as I thought about what that path was going to be. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, I think some of it, it reminds me of relating to feedback, when you give somebody, especially that you know well, really authentic, clear feedback, it’s such a gift. And Grant clearly knew you well and knew that you were not living up to your highest potential and was willing to speak truth to you. Like that’s a hard thing to do. It takes courage to do that because there are risks involved. And he just brought it. And you could have had any number of reactions. And look at the outcome. It’s just remarkable. 

Steve Wiesner: It is. I’m still dear friends with his brother. I’m still friends with Grant, although we don’t speak often. He lives in Japan. But I’m dear friends with his brother who lives here in LA as well. And yeah, that family holds a very special place in my heart for lots of reasons, but one of them being that Grant utterly changed gears for me, and I will forever appreciate that.

Tim Ludwig: And I said this to you in our last conversation, and it’s one of the things that’s stuck with me most since then because I’m not very good at it, so you’ve been a mentor to me through sharing your stories here, but your willingness to be open to hearing the words of others is exceptional, in my opinion. I’ve probably had more advice come to me that I have tuned out over my life than just about anybody because I’m so headstrong and willful. And it’s a real example from you that you’ve given to me about the power of just having a little bit more humility in those moments and trying to be receptive and open about those things because this is one small story, maybe we’ll hear a few others, but you’ve sort of collected a number of these people and stories in your life, and sometimes they were there for a short period, like maybe a single conversation, other times, there was a real relationship there. But you do just an amazing job of not only taking that advice, but also remembering the story later on, which is something that I’m also horrible at. 

Steve Wiesner: I’ve been very fortunate on lots of levels. And I think the thing is, and this does relate to entrepreneurship in many ways as well, in that you have a crowd of people out there, and by the way, this is not meant to be a judgment or criticism in any way, but you have some entrepreneurs who are very motivated by the fact that they want to be the boss. They don’t want to report to anybody, they don’t want anyone telling them what to do, et cetera. That ain’t me, man, and that’s never been me. Maybe it’s me more than I realize sometimes, but generally speaking, if there’s anything, frankly, I’ve missed in this entrepreneurship journey, it’s having people like that who I can go to who can give me direction. And in my startup, for instance, I had a tremendous, tremendous roster of investors and advisors. I mean, such wonderful, wonderful people who were so supportive in so many ways. But sometimes I wish that they had been more involved where I could have really leaned on them to get more advice. And maybe it’s on me for not asking. But yeah, I think again, different entrepreneurs are motivated differently. Some people don’t want direction, they want to figure it all out themselves. I’ve always been very receptive to people giving me guidance and thoughts and perspectives on which way to go. I love it, maybe to the point of annoying people sometimes, frankly, in that I always want input. But yeah, anyways, I think that that reflects my life story, which is I have had some very influential people at critical moments in my life provide me with really good perspective. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah. You mentioned college before; that’s where I want to go next. There were a couple of stories from college that stood out to me that I think had sort of life-altering impacts for you. And the one I’d like you to start with is your mini golf marathon. 

Steve Wiesner: Yeah. It’s funny, I LinkedIn messaged a buddy of mine from college a few days ago just to check in and see how he was doing, and he specifically mentioned this mini golf marathon. This is a crazy one. When I was in my senior year, I was part of a fraternity, and I was the philanthropy chair and was trying to think of creative ways that we could actually raise some real money and have a real impact as opposed to some of the typical fraternity philanthropy stuff which tends to be one of the least important departments or functions for a lot of fraternities. But I somehow came up with an idea. There was a shopping mall in the northern end of London, Ontario, which is where I went to school, undergrad, and inside that shopping mall was a mini golf course. And when I say mini golf course, I’m telling you, this was an epic mini golf course. It was like playing Augusta. It wasn’t like pyramids and windmills and cows that you had to sort of hit through the legs. This was like a real golf course. It had water features. It had bunkers. It was amazing. And so there were a number of times over the years that I lived there where we would just go up and I’d be at the mall for whatever reason, we’d play mini golf. Anyway, so it came to me that one night when I was thinking through what I could do, why don’t we do a mini golf marathon? And we would raise money. I picked MS as the charity. And I basically did pretty much everything, at least in the beginning, where I went out, I knocked on doors, I had people sponsor me, I pitched to the MS Society, first of all, that I was going to do this, went out, raised money, went to all the vendors inside the mall to get their sponsorship, so they would give us food and they would put stuff onto our t-shirts, etc., went to Guinness because the Guinness Book of World Records was going to consider this as a record attempt, although they didn’t in the end because they didn’t want to do longevity events because people could take drugs or whatever to keep going. So, I did not end up technically getting a Guinness Book of World Record. But for 72 hours one weekend, I played mini golf. And it was wild for lots of reasons. Number one, we raised thousands of dollars. I can’t remember how much now. It was so long ago. But we raised thousands of dollars for the MS Society, which was wonderful. And again, a cause that I think is just a great cause. But it was also hysterical because the local news was sending a camera crew, we were on the radio, we were in the local newspaper. And at the end of the event, one of my feet swelled up like a watermelon. I don’t know, I can’t remember what it was, but I had some, I don’t know if it was a hairline fracture or whatever it was, but being on my feet for 72 straight hours. And I remember I went to the ER after everything was done just to have them check it out, and I remember the doctor saying, you’re the mini golf guy? Because he had seen me on TV the night before, which was hysterical. So, it sounds silly and goofy, and it is silly and goofy, but my fraternity brothers still remember it to this very day, which is hysterical, and what was really great about it was we raised a lot of money for a great cause, but when it came time for me to get my full-time job… 

Tim Ludwig: Oh, don’t go there yet. 

Steve Wiesner: Okay, I’ll come back to that. That has a big impact on that story. 

Tim Ludwig: I know, we’re going to get to that in due time. So the next one I want to hear about is about campus charter. 

Steve Wiesner: Yeah. I mentioned my entrepreneurial kick starting when I was very young. I started at driveway sealing- So I was in home services actually, now that I think of it, in high school. Started a driveway sealing business in high school, me and a buddy of mine who ended up being massively more successful than I am going off and starting hedge funds, etc., amazing guy. But he and I started a little summer business. But when I got to Western, this was my junior year of college, I started a charter bus company that I called the Campus Charter. And it was modelled somewhat after something called the Tricolor which was at a competing university in Southern Ontario. But the Campus Charter was different in that we were running buses between London, Ontario, which was where my school was, and Toronto. And the way that it worked, if you wanted to go home, and the massive majority of kids who went to my school lived in Toronto, Toronto is kind of like LA, there’s a lot of sprawl, and typically if you were to go home from Western, my college, to get to Toronto, you would have to take a bus or a train. So, you’d have to go from campus to downtown in London, then you need to take the bus or the train which was say two hours, two and a half hours to get to downtown Toronto, then you would need to spend another 45 minutes going to one of the suburbs. So what I started to do is I said, I think we can do this where we pick up on campus, so we eliminate them having to go to downtown London, and we have a bus that drops off in the western suburb, the northern suburb, and the eastern suburb. So kids don’t need to even bother with downtown Toronto. And it was great. People loved it. We were running more, we were getting increased ridership every week. This predated the internet, so I was literally hanging flyers in dormitories for demand gen. It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. But then a couple of things happened. Number one, most importantly, was a Sunday night, I guess it’s probably November, and this had started at the start of the school year. And here I was 19 or 20, I guess I was 20 years old at this time. I get a phone call on my apartment phone at I guess it was around 11 or 11:30 at night from a very, very upset driver. And what had happened was a cabbie had followed the bus basically from the freeway, the highway to campus, caught on to the fact that we were eliminating the need for people to take a taxi from the bus station to campus, and he went after my driver with a baseball bat. Luckily he did not physically hit him, but my driver was really hysterical. Like it was a very, very bad tense situation. The students all saw it. My driver was unbelievably inappropriately rattled and that was really hard for me to handle as a kid that age. Like I never would have dreamed of something like that taking place. 

Tim Ludwig: I was going to say, that’s a real-world business experience for a 20-year-old or however old you were then. 

Steve Wiesner: And Tim, I still refer to it this day as baseball bat risk. So when I’m looking at a deal or a potential acquisition, I always say to myself, what’s the baseball bat? What is the completely unimaginable risk here that I need to be thinking about? Because it can happen. And so to this day, I talk about those baseball bat risks. And then the final piece was we got a cease and desist letter from Greyhound, actually, saying that we were running a regular bus line, which effectively we were. So they were justified in doing so. And once that happened, combined with the fact it was November, I hadn’t bought books, that was the end of the campus charter. But it was an amazing experience.

Tim Ludwig: So you pissed off both the taxis and the Greyhound company in one fell swoop. 

Steve Wiesner: Exactly. It was nuts, man. 

Tim Ludwig: Both of those stories certainly point to some entrepreneurial tendencies. That one, did I get this right, that there was some connection between that and the Campus Charter and your wife, your future wife? 

Steve Wiesner: This is Steve Jobs 101, and I heard on, I think it was Eric on a prior podcast, mention one of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes, which is the dots lining up and how you can’t see those dots lining up looking forward, only looking backwards. And when I look at the Campus Charter, the failure of the Campus Charter was the best thing that ever happened to me without anything even coming close. Because the failure of the Campus Charter, as painful as that was financially and otherwise in the moment, ultimately gave me the most amazing business school essay I ever could have dreamed of. That amazing business school essay got me into Columbia. That experience at Columbia, getting my grad degree there, got me to Wall Street, and that’s exactly where I met my wife. So none of that would have happened if it hadn’t been for the Campus Charter and me getting an 11.30 p.m. phone call on a Sunday from this panicked driver. All of that led ultimately through causation or fate, whatever, to me meeting my wife and having an incredible family. So, things work out the way they’re supposed to. I genuinely believe that. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, I do as well. So, after college, you’re starting to feel the tug towards Wall Street. I think you worked for the family business for a short period of time afterwards and then got into Columbia, hooray. Like, what better place if you’re interested in finance and things around investments. When you got there, you were still relatively young compared to your peers, which I think is important. And so, coming back to a little bit of storytelling, on your first day, and sort of going back to also some of the cultural differences between the United States and Canadians, like you got sort of a quick wake up call about what it was like to be in the Big Apple and in this new environment. 

Steve Wiesner: Did I ever. So, the first day at Columbia was such an amazing day on so many levels. I mean, I was awestruck. I loved New York City at that point in time. It was just such a great experience. I met friends who continue to be friends to this very day. On that first day at Columbia, I met these folks and was blessed. But exactly, there was one experience, and I will not name names in this format, where my very first day, sitting in the auditorium for orientation and everyone’s in a great mood and everyone’s super friendly and I got people on both sides, of course, and I turned to the guy on my right, I introduced myself, he introduced himself, super smart guy, I think went to Penn undergrad if I remember correctly and then obviously Columbia now, really super smart. And I asked, where did you grow up? Again, in Philadelphia. Great, that’s really cool. I’ve never been to Philly. What’s it like? He explains it. He’s like, oh, where are you from? I said, I’m from Canada. He said, oh, Canada, interesting. Whereabouts? I said, Ottawa. He pauses, and he looks at me, and without one ounce of aggression or disdain on his face, just with a genuine look of curiosity, he says to me, are there any educated people there? Quote, unquote. And I remember looking at him, and of course, my eyebrow immediately raises, and my head sort of cocks to one side, and I’m looking at him, thinking, is this a joke? Like, are you slamming me right now? Are you- and I’m trying to- and again, there wasn’t a look at all of hostility in his face. It was genuine curiosity. And I, of course, said, well, it’s the capital of the country. And I can’t even remember, frankly, how I responded because I was speechless in that moment. But it did open my eye to the fact that, again, you’re not in Ottawa and this is a different world that you’re in. And it did reinforce, obviously, some negative stereotypes that I had grown up with right out of the gates. It was a fascinating experience and definitely an eye opener in terms of the experience to come. 

Tim Ludwig: This next story that I’d like you to tell doesn’t really have a connecting thread, at least as far as I’m aware, with some of the other things we’re going to talk about here, but it’s just a fun story. And I think the context around what this part of the market was like at the time is also instructive. But there was a brief period of time when you were considering becoming a short seller. And you had a mentor, an alumni mentor from Columbia that you were talking to about this idea, and I’ll let you sort of take it over from there. 

Steve Wiesner: Yeah, this was amazing, and I’m really going to date myself with this story. But I was very interested in equity research generally for lots of different reasons. I actually did an internship while I was at Columbia for a high net worth who did some really interesting stuff. He was doing pipes, structured equity investments in public companies. He was doing short selling. Because it was his own personal capital, he could basically do whatever he wanted, which was such a cool experience for me trying to build up some credentials to get a full-time job. I fell in love with research, and I was pretty good at it too in my own humble opinion. And in that experience, I started to do some work with folks he was connected to who were very early pioneers in the short-selling business, the Feshbach brothers. And so very early on, I was having conversations on conference calls, having discussions and talking about ideas with these very prominent short sellers. And short selling back in those days was very different than it is today. I mean, today, it’s an institutional play. It’s typically often done in a very massive scale. Back then, short selling was very focused on almost being like the vacuum cleaner of bad equity stories on Wall Street. Short stories were, companies that were potential shorts often were really scummy companies with really scummy operators, outright frauds, outright criminals, frankly, in many respects. So back then, when you were shorting companies, it wasn’t, oh, I think Google’s overvalued. It was I think this company is a complete and utter scam, and that needs to be exposed. And I think the best analysts were shorts because they had to be private detectives for all intents and purposes. And as people who know a lot about the short selling world know, it’s asymmetric risk reward. I mean, your downside is infinite. Your upside is 100%. And a stock can only go from 22 to zero. It could go from 22 to 2200. You had to make sure that you were right in your analysis. And so I loved it. And I really seriously considered going into the short side as a career choice. And then I was talking to one of my counselors on the alumni counseling board at Columbia, a guy named Peter Loeb. And Peter was a sweet guy. He came from a white shoe Wall Street pedigree and was just one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. And I remember telling Peter about how I was so intrigued by the short side and just seeing the look of discomfort on his face. And he said, you know what Steve, I think I’d like you to speak to a friend of mine who can give you really good perspective on what that career choice really means. And so he sent me over to see Michael Steinhardt, who I guess they had worked together years and years previously, and Michael Steinhardt, for those who don’t know, Michael Steinhardt, George Soros, Julian Robertson, they were really the three pioneers in most respects of the hedge fund world. And this was back in the day where, those three were making hundreds of millions of dollars a year, they were in a different stratosphere than everybody else. And so, I went over and sat down with Michael Steinhardt for 90 minutes in the middle of a trading day where he basically said, quote unquote, I wouldn’t want my son to do this for a living, in terms of shorting stocks. And the reason he said that was, again, because your tires are going to get slashed, you’re going to get death threats, like you’re dealing with very bad people, and there’s better ways to make money. And I took that advice, and he scared me straight in that conversation. It was remarkable.

Tim Ludwig: So here’s the connection that I just put onto that then, going back to my comment before about you being really good about hearing other people’s advice. You had built a lot of, I think, conviction around short selling. You’d already put effort into it. Like, there was a lot of sunk cost there for you. And it wasn’t a stupid idea. Intellectually, it was interesting to you. You had the capabilities. You were building the network already. And then from this one conversation with somebody that you’d never met before, like reason came to the fore again, and you said this is not the right path and abruptly switched again. Like, it seems unusual to me, especially as a headstrong MBA who’s probably pretty full of himself, at least in some measures, to listen to anybody else’s advice in that moment when you’re already demonstrating that you have the capability and there’s an opportunity is unusual. 

Steve Wiesner: I think that one breaks the pattern a little bit because it was Michael freakin’ Steinhardt. Like he was such a legendary figure. It was pretty easy, and literally the whole purpose of that meeting was Peter trying to scare me straight and using Michael to be the messenger and, man oh man, was it effective. I think it was good advice. I remember another friend of mine who was a trader telling me, and I’ll spare you the graphic the way that he told this story, but would you rather bet on something positive or bet on something negative? And the way he framed it basically was, look, number one, there’s a bias for markets to go up over time, as we’ve obviously seen, but number two is profiting from failure takes a very different kind of psychology than profiting from success. And I think that’s basically what Steinhardt was saying in that moment as well. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah. I don’t disagree with the reasoning. I just think it’s pretty incredible that you actually listened.

Steve Wiesner: It was fascinating. What a meeting. 

Tim Ludwig: So coming back to grad school, like we said before, you were young, and that I think maybe disadvantaged you to some of your peers when it was time to seek full-time employment, and so you were struggling, and we’re going to come back to the golf story now. And interviews are happening, but it’s just not lining up, the cards are not falling in your favor in a lot of cases, and I imagine there was some anxiety that was starting to build. But you managed to get an interview with one of the preeminent shops on the street, DLJ, and I don’t know if it was sort of, what do they call those big days when you go in and it’s a… 

Steve Wiesner: Super Saturdays. 

Tim Ludwig: Super Saturdays. And so, you make it to far enough in the process that you get to have these experiences and you have this story in your back pocket that you didn’t even know you were going to need to tell. And so, why don’t you tell us about Javed Khan and what that interview experience was like? 

Steve Wiesner: Absolutely, and first of all, I do want to just to emphasize a little bit, being as young as I was, graduating on one hand was a tremendous asset, on the other hand, it was a tremendous liability because I was always the number two. They were like, hey, we love your energy, we love your success, we love your grit, but hey, this guy worked at Chase for six years before he went to Columbia, and we just have to go with the experience. Totally understand, but it made it very challenging for me to get that first opportunity. And so, that DLJ Super Saturday and the interview with Javed Khan, and I’ve got to reach out to Javed because I’m sure he doesn’t remember this at all, but it was, again, one of those transformational moments. I remember it was late. I was his last interview that day, and so he had interviewed, let’s say, a dozen other people over the course of that morning, that afternoon, into that evening, and I remember walking into his office in the bullpen, I’m visualizing it as we speak, it was kind of dark. I remember Javed was tired, you could tell that he was tired, as was I, but he was even more tired because he probably had another all-nighter ahead of him at the same time as well after all these interviews were done. I sat down and we spoke. We went through the 25 minutes, and I sounded just like everybody else, and we were sort of leading to the same conclusion, which is why would I hire you over all these brilliant people who are just as smart as you are, who have grades like you do, test scores like you do, but at the end of the day, they’ve got a lot more experience. He said, you’ve got to tell me something that’s not on the resume. And so, I told him the mini golf story. And I paused before I did it because I thought this is a- I can’t believe I’m going to tell his dumb story. But I said, what the heck? What do I have to lose in this moment? Because I just felt the interview going in that direction anyway. So, I said, damn the torpedoes, and I told the story. And I remember when it happened, I know this is not on video, but Javed’s glasses were like this, and I told the story and he kind of looks up like this. And he says to me, why the F isn’t this on your resume? And I said, because it’s a goofy story. Who cares that I played mini golf? And he’s like, this is something that no one else I’ve ever interviewed could say. You did something that nobody else can claim to have ever done, whether it’s dumb or not doesn’t matter. Like I’m going to remember you now. And let’s face it, ultimately in that situation, even though it was a dumb thing that I did, it showed creativity, it showed philanthropy, it showed stamina, which was tremendously important for that job, so inadvertently, in telling that story, I told him a lot about my traits that would ultimately make me successful in that job. And again, transformational moment, Javed that heard me out, asked me that question, and that I had the guts to tell the story because I think that was the difference maker that got me that position. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, I think it also speaks to a little bit of irreverence in some capacities, which if you’re going to work really long hours closely with other people, like that’s good to have as an element in the mix too, so that you’re not just nose to the grindstone all the time, but there’s some levity or some creativity that comes in every once in a while. And the comment about, I mean, those situations for the interviewer are grueling because they’re doing it all day long and everybody does just start to bleed together, and we just had our daughter go through the college application process a year and a half ago or whatever it was. And you see the dramatic climb in the number of applications at so many colleges now, and the application staff has not increased commensurately, I think, with all that, so they’re just drowning in applications. And our advice to our daughter was, you just need to figure out how to stand out a little bit in this process so that instead of getting two seconds of somebody’s time and attention, they put you into a pile where maybe they’ll spend 30 more seconds after they’ve gone through all the other ones. And it’s exactly what you were saying, like at the end of that day, Javed was beaten down and just needed a little something different that would make you memorable, sort of the sticky note on your application that says like this is worth coming back to. 

Steve Wiesner: Exactly. Yeah, our youngest son is going through the same process with college right now, and absolutely, it’s a very demanding process. But it’s all about telling a story that lands with people, and I didn’t plan on doing it, but I did because he forced me to, and it worked, it did. So hopefully, your daughter will have the same success in that regard. 

Tim Ludwig: When you and I were talking about this before, you said that one of the mindsets that you had in the earlier and maybe even the mid part of your career, because you were young in most of the situations you found yourself in, was you’ve got time. That was sort of a prevailing mindset. And then in hindsight, you sort of came back around and looked at that and felt like you’d stuck around too long at things. What did you mean by that? 

Steve Wiesner: Yeah. It’s interesting, going to Columbia when I did, I was the second youngest in my class. George White was younger than me by not that much. It was kind of funny how he became the kid and I was like the grizzled old guy. But we were the two youngest in our class, and we were very young. And again, that was great on so many levels, but it also made it hard to get a job, and it also instilled a mindset of I’ve got time because I was always the youngest. Since I turned my act around in high school, and I was young for my grade, but then I skipped that grade as well, so I was very young for my age, and I always looked at that as being an asset. I’m ahead of everybody else. I’ve got at least two years on everybody else being at the same spot. I think that that became very dangerous, and I think it got compounded by the fact that I had some pretty significant career success early on because it instilled some complacency. We all know that time is your single most valuable asset, and I think I went through a lot of years in my life where I did not look at it that way. And that was a very misguided thing. And where I think that really came home to roost, and it’s come home to roost in lots of ways, but one of the ways was with my software startup. When things started to go sideways with that software startup, I think that made me much more inclined to continue slogging away at that, even though in reality, the facts on the ground would have told me I should have shut it down much, much earlier. Because, quote unquote, in my mind, I’ve got time. No, I didn’t. And I had so many pressures, self-imposed pressures in many respects, to try to fight and make that thing successful. I used up that time. And then all of a sudden, you wake up and you’ve got lots of hair that looks like this, and you realize, you know what, you don’t have the time that you think that you do. So it warped things in many ways, and I think that that cost me substantially when it came time to make tough decisions around that startup. 

Tim Ludwig: Is it still something that you have to be mindful of as you engage in things to make sure that you sort of check yourself and reassess whether or not you’re over committing for a period of time? 

Steve Wiesner: It is a habit that I am aware of, and so I am very vigilant about it. I still think I could be better in terms of time management, but I think that awareness and that self-awareness has made it easier to say, hey, urgency, urgency. You’ve got to be acting with urgency here. You don’t have an unlimited amount of time, and snap the fingers and let’s get going. So, I do think I can revert to that sometimes, not as badly as I used to by any stretch. 

Tim Ludwig: You’ve characterized it as sort of a negative, but what are the positives that that has brought to the situations for you?

Steve Wiesner: In terms of the age? 

Tim Ludwig: No, no, this notion that I’ve got time and to be patient and let things develop as opposed to rushing them and maybe prematurely taking action. 

Steve Wiesner: I think that certainly I am much more inclined to analysis, but I don’t necessarily think I’m inclined to over-analysis paralysis, but I think it does make me more deliberate in terms of looking at opportunities, for instance, on the deal side. I’m not in a rush to get a deal closed yesterday, and I think my mindset combined with just life experience shows that some things you just can’t rush. And we talk about this in negotiations training. Time kills all deals, but great deals take time. And I think you need to find the right balance between urgency and a bias for action and conscious deliberation about where the baseball bats are. Where are those risks that I’m not thinking about? So I think that if there’s been a benefit, it’s been that. It’s helped me be more astute or savvy about finding that right balance between urgency and deliberation. 

Tim Ludwig: So you were building, sort of going past the first job interview, you built a long 20 plus year career in finance. And I want to talk about the chapter when that was coming to a close because there were sort of a trio of large-scale events that happened in pretty short succession. There was one that was out of everyone’s control with the exception of a few people, which was September 11th, which was a shock to the economy and certainly our society, the birth of your first child, and then the merger of your company that resulted ultimately in a number of layoffs of which you, at one point, became a part. So that’s a pretty compressed time period to have big things like that going on. So could you narrate me through that period of time and what that experience was like and what you were dealing with in terms of feelings around all of that? 

Steve Wiesner: Yeah, what a whipsaw. And that was probably more around the midway mark of the career, but it was a whipsaw because we had moved from the New York office, I moved to San Francisco, and I was part of the Tech M&A group in San Francisco. So in 1999, 2000, I was in San Francisco during the pre-bubble burst technology boom, Dot Com boom, and it was absolutely energizing and wild and amazing to be part of. And then of course, yeah, things obviously blew up and the bubble burst. Companies started to shut their doors and disappear. 9/11 obviously happened and DLJ got acquired. We got acquired by Credit Suisse. And I’ll tell you, that part of it taught me so much in terms of the way professional services businesses operate in the context of M&A because, in that case, a bank was acquiring another bank. But that’s helped me in my career, especially as I’ve acquired Watershed and understood what’s involved in acquiring a professional services business. But 9/11 happens, the bubble bursts, the firm gets acquired, my eldest son was born two months after 9/11 happened, and ultimately, I ended up moving from San Francisco to the Los Angeles office for DLJ and I lasted about a year there before I got turfed out. And last in, first out in many respects but there was a big layoff at the beginning of 2012 or 2002 rather that I was part of. And it didn’t take me off the path in terms of financial services. I mean, there’s some startup things that I did. I was a fundless sponsor for several years right out of the gates, which was an amazing experience. So I really continued down the financial services path for a bunch of years after that. It was really 2012 where I started purely the entrepreneurial journey. So, kinda crazy how time flies. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, I lost a decade in there as well. You just said the same thing I did, 2002, oh no, 2012… So, and you were a fundless sponsor before that was a known term for the most part. You were at the vanguard of that whole movement, which is kind of cool. But eventually, there were signals for you internally, I think, that it was time to choose a different path, which is also hard because you were pretty invested in that career. You’d spent a long time in there building networks and skill sets, and I think you just got to the point where you just said this isn’t as fulfilling as I need it to be anymore. 

Steve Wiesner: I lost my fire and it happens. I mean, the industry is a pyramid for a reason. A lot of people start, very few people make it to the very top, and sometimes people get pushed out. Other times people just, they just don’t want to be there anymore. And I don’t want to say this in a way that in any way, shape or form disparages investment banking or private equity. Those were two remarkably amazing gifts that I was given in terms of my life and my career, the skills, the relationships, the network. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am to have had those opportunities. But I was kind of on a hamster wheel, and once you lose your fire, it’s pretty much impossible to get it back. And that’s where I was in 2012. It was time for a change, and I dove into that change headfirst. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, you reignited some of those early embers around entrepreneurialism and went out and Peloton was the name of the business that you started there. What was the story of that coming together? 

Steve Wiesner: So I was in Banff, Canada, with my eldest son at Canmore, technically, Alberta, and he was young at the time, and of course, when you’re that far north, it’s light until 10 p.m., 11 p.m., and I remember he had gone to bed, and I was sitting there with a notepad, and I was sketching out a bunch of dumb ideas. And this one idea, which was not a dumb idea, was related to the fact that the deal market was very inefficient, and people would spend 40 years of their life building a $100 million business, and then they would hire a banker to sell it, and the best foot forward that a banker could do was to send people a hard copy of a sim or a crappy PDF, and it just didn’t do the business justice. And so Peloton was really a live documents business that we built that digitized the SIM process, the marketing process of an M&A deal. And it allowed for visibility and transparency in terms of who was doing what, kind of like a DocSend, but before DocSend. It allowed for you to embed videos and dynamic content. It was an amazing product. And that’s what we built. So I put a team together, raised some capital. We spent a bunch of years building out that product. We ended up having a strategic investor come in. But ultimately, it was one of those situations where the problem just didn’t justify the effort and the investment. And even though bankers and private equity folks thought it was a great product, it didn’t move the needle enough that people were willing to completely transform their deal process. So this is where my wife often says you’re 10 years ahead of your time, and I used to think that that was a compliment. It ain’t a compliment. I mean, this product was way ahead of its time. It was an amazing product. But if the market’s not ready, you’re going to be DOA, which is ultimately what happened to that business. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, and that was an experience where you felt like, again, maybe you’d stuck around a little too long, and there was a friend that shared after the fact that he believed you’d kept going out of guilt. Was that true? 

Steve Wiesner: That was a shattering comment that he made, a dear friend, and he’s absolutely right. He was an investor in the deal as well. A lot of the money that I raised was friends and family money. I’m blessed to know a bunch of people who’ve made a lot of money in their lives and in their careers, but that doesn’t take away the fact that the unbelievable burden that you feel as an entrepreneur, anytime you raise capital, wherever it’s coming from, but certainly when it’s coming from friends and family, is crushing. And when things do not go the way you expected them to go or want them to go or can will them to go, it creates a sense of angst that is like nothing I’ve ever felt before in my life. And as I mentioned earlier, my investors were wonderful. I don’t know that I ever got an agitated, angry phone call, even in the darkest times of that business, from any of the investors. And they didn’t need to call and yell at me because I was yelling at myself because of the fact that I wasn’t able to will this thing to success. And yeah, even talking about it now, it’s still- So on Twitter, like I’m kind of one of these old guys who’s always urging caution and maybe I’m an Eeyore type for some people. The reason for that is because I went from being unbelievably successful in my career at a very early age, making a tremendous amount of money, meeting with billionaires, working with billionaires, to the point where one year of Peloton, we did $49,000 of revenue. Devastating because you think that you’ve set yourself up for success. You think that because you’ve been successful in one thing, you’re going to be successful in the next thing, and it creates a hubris and arrogance, I don’t even know what the word is, where you think you’re going to be able to force it to happen. And it doesn’t work that way. I had every advantage I could possibly dream of starting that software business, and it still failed. I knew the industry. We surveyed 350 private equity professionals in advance of starting to build that product. I had access, I had relationships, I had access to capital, and yet it still failed. And so, when I hear people going out, John Matzner style, his comments about PGs and whatnot, when I hear people going out and levering themselves to the hilt and PGing this and diving in head first into these ETA deals, it makes me really nervous because those baseball bats can come to life really, really quickly. So I bought a company. I mean, I’m all in on ETA, I’m fully supportive of it, but I’ve also had my you know what kicked so hard so many times, I just hope people learn from that, man. I genuinely do because it turns your life into a pretzel, it puts tremendous stress on your family, your investors, it’s a very difficult road to traverse. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah. I don’t think I could punctuate that more. Because even hearing the words, it doesn’t do justice to the feelings that are associated with all of that. Like it is crushing to go through something like that and to feel the guilt and the embarrassment and the burden of having taken other people’s money and not seeing it returned to them and the people that you brought on the journey with you as employees and the customers. I mean, there’s just- it is just crippling, I think, in a lot of ways. And you can talk about it as much as you want, but of course, people starting out, you have to be Pollyanna-ish and optimistic to want to be an entrepreneur. And so, you can hear all that, but unless you felt it, it just, I think it doesn’t register, which is one of the great ironies, I think. Like, all that experience is, for the most part, lost on the people that would stand to benefit the most from hearing it. 

Steve Wiesner: It’s true. And sometimes I get tired of it. I think it’s important to communicate it. 

Tim Ludwig: So how did that experience lead you to Watershed, the business you own and operate now, and what’s been different about your approach this time? 

Steve Wiesner: That’s a great question, and luckily, there’s a positive shine over all of this. This has been such a great scenario and situation. I’m just thrilled to be affiliated with this company. So, the pivot actually happened probably back in 2016, 2016/2017. When we had that strategic investor come and put money into Peloton, we had to onboard, train, and certify a lot of sales reps because they were basically going to be the boots on the ground sales team for that deal marketing product. And so that got us into the sales training business. And we developed a very unique approach to sales training, etc. And then that also got us into more leadership and communications training. It got us into a whole bunch of different aspects of the training business. And we did some really, really cool things in that regard. And in 2000- so we closed August 29th of 2022. So early 2022, I can’t even remember how I got the teaser for this deal, but I got the teaser for this deal. I met with the owners virtually, immediately connected with them. They’re wonderful people, and you just knew right away that there was just an alignment that they were looking to retire, and I was looking to step up our training business. I was the right buyer for them and they were the right sellers for me. We worked on that deal for, I guess, six months or so, got that thing done in August, and it has been a wonderful experience. We’ve got an incredible team, tremendous facilitators, some of whom have been with the business now almost 20 years. It’s a negotiations training business. We’ve been building that team globally because it’s a global business. We’ve delivered instruction in 40 countries. We work with Fortune 100 companies primarily, so they’ve got global reach and we have to service those companies on a global basis. We’ve been building out a global team, which is great, so we’re up to about 20 people. And it’s been wonderful. Very, very happy. And the lessons, if you’ve got another three hours, we can talk about how I’ve applied all these tough lessons to this business, and I’m still making mistakes, I’m sure, but overall, I think it’s been a remarkably successful start to this relationship. And I’m really happy to have gotten involved and acquired a business like this. 

Tim Ludwig: That’s awesome. And it’s great that you can take so many of the prior lessons and apply them to not make the same mistakes again and sort of fast forward through a lot of that stuff and just focus on the parts of business that we all want to enjoy the most, which is growing the team, building the culture, satisfying clients. 

Steve Wiesner: Exactly, exactly. It’s been great. So, I don’t want to say all is well that ends well because this ain’t the end. There’s a lot of runway ahead for this business, but at least from a deal perspective, I think I was very fortunate to find the right deal at the right time, and so far things have played out well beyond plan, which is wonderful. 

Tim Ludwig: I’ve got a couple more questions, but the first one is, I’m curious what you feel like you’ve learned about failure through all this? You’d written some things to me about the role that failure has played in your life, and it wasn’t negative. It’s sort of the glass half full view of failure. So, what are the takeaways? I mean, not everything you’ve done, nor that anybody’s done, is always successful right out of the gate. So, what are the lessons that you’ve taken from that? 

Steve Wiesner: So, as mentioned, Steve Jobs 101 for me is the dots lining up, meaning in the moment, as catastrophic as things can feel and as terrible as the circumstances, everything happens for a reason. And it is our job as entrepreneurs, it’s our job as people, as human beings, to try to parlay those tough lessons into positive outcomes. And that’s lesson number one, lesson number two, and lesson number three. It’s just been such a huge learning in my life. The second one I would say, which is somewhat related, is, and this maybe relates a little bit to your point earlier about a little bit of Canadian humbleness, being willing and able to recognize when the time has come to pivot and to not be so invested with what you’ve done in the past that you’re willing to turn the wheel and turn in a different direction. Now it sounds somewhat in conflict with the comment earlier about you kept the business alive out of a guild, but it actually isn’t. If you look at the way Peloton evolved over the years from a software company into a sales training business, etc., we were always very aggressive about realizing when those headwinds weren’t worth the fight and to change directions in line. And I would say, to a certain extent, pivot is looked upon as a pejorative and negative way by some people. And I understand the conflict because you’ve got to stick to your guns, etc., like you don’t want to quit too early, but I’m telling you, most businesses, especially startup businesses, at some point in time, you are going to have to pivot that thing, and if you’re too committed to the initial vision, you’re going to miss the opportunity and potentially have a catastrophic outcome. So be opportunistic, be pragmatic, and be willing to pivot when the time is right. I think I’ve been very good at that, and I’m proud of that, frankly. And that’s all because I’ve had to pivot because things have failed, things haven’t worked out as per plan, so you’ve got to be dexterous. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, that first point about taking the long view is psychologically and for mental health, I think, so important, just to be able to look past the horizon a little bit and say this will work out. I’m not sure how yet, but it will work out. 

Steve Wiesner: Absolutely, 100%. And the final thing I would say, too, we talked about this a little bit, is with regards to my running. I think the failure in the business, as I was really struggling with that software business, I started- I’ve always been a runner, a cyclist, a runner, I mean, that’s the name Peloton, and obviously not the Peloton with the exercise bikes. But I’ve always been into fitness. But when the business really started being challenged, the startup, I started running more and more and more, almost a little Forrest Gump style in that I just kind of kept on going and stretching out the miles until ultimately I was up to 50Ks. And ultimately the reason that I did that was partially because I needed to convince myself that I could do hard things again. Because when you start off with such great momentum in your career and then all of a sudden you hit this terrible downswing because of the startup, you sometimes can forget what you’re capable of. And for me, running really allowed me to reconnect with that confidence that, you know what, you can do hard things. You can do things that are much harder than making a sales call. And that was another positive outcome of that failure was to get me reconnected to exercise and physical fitness. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, I love that. The other area I want to get your opinion on is mentors. You’ve had a number of them. Just what are the takeaways for you in your life on the role of mentors? 

Steve Wiesner: So critical. I am so blessed to have had relationships with so many folks who have had such an impact on my life, to your point earlier, some of them transient, some of them just kind of one-off meetings where someone says something that just has such an impact. But I think one of the tougher parts about mentors and advisors generally is often they’re well-suited for one particular chapter of your life. And this is why, for instance, when you’re a startup and you’re putting a board of advisors together and you’re immediately put into a position where you think you’re going to give out equity, etc., be cautious about that because the person who’s going to be mentoring you or advising you on day one of that startup, when you’ve pivoted four times and now you’re on year five, they may not be able to add much value anymore. No fault. That’s not a criticism or a judgment of them. It’s just circumstances have changed. And I think that that applies generally to mentors. Be grateful for what they’re contributing in the moment. Be generous and reciprocate any way you can. But don’t feel badly when maybe some of those folks end up moving out of your life because circumstances change. And their circumstances change, and your circumstances change. It’s kind of like Steve Jobs again. Everyone serves a purpose in the moment, and I think you need to look at your mentors in a way that you recognize that they become friends with a relationship that hopefully will surpass that advisory or mentorship period. I think it’s a little ham-fisted the way I said that, but I think you’ve got to just be cautious the way you look at mentors and also don’t place too much on their shoulders because sometimes they’ve got other aspects of their life that they’re trying to manage as well. Your startup is not their sole concern. 

Tim Ludwig: And final question, given everything about your life’s journey so far, what aspect of it has been most surprising to you? 

Steve Wiesner: I think it’s the extent of the jagged line from a career perspective. From a life perspective, I’ve been blessed forever, man. I mean, again, going back to my childhood, to my family, I mean, none of my business struggles ultimately have detracted from me having a blessed life relative to 99.9% of the world. But the surprise to me is, we’ve seen that meme before with what people think success looks like, but what success actually looks like. I just look at that and I say I need like a poster board sized representation of that image because my ups and my downs have been so radically sharp. And it’s like Jerry Garcia, again, dating myself, but when life looks like easy street, there’s danger at the door. And that works in the opposite direction as well, darkest before dawn. And just recognizing when you’re super, super high, recognize you may be about to trip on your shoelaces or the world may be about to throw you a curve ball, and similarly, when you feel really, really low, recognize that tomorrow’s another day. But this entrepreneurial journey, the finance journey and the entrepreneurial journey have just been characterized by steep slopes, steep slopes up, steep slopes down. 

Tim Ludwig: Love it. Well, thank you, Steve. This was really enjoyable. I’m glad we got to do this together and share the time. 

Steve Wiesner: I’m very grateful for the opportunity. Again, you’re doing great, great work. I’m really excited to continue to follow the podcast, and thank you for including me and having me as a guest.