Reflections on Spreading Ideas & Entrepreneurship with Tats

But then I started to question does this product even need to exist, Right? What's the point? What is the point of spreading this plastic stuff? So, getting older, I'm thinking about kids and their future and I needed better alignment, so I needed to feel better about what needed commercializing. I have no problem with entrepreneurship profitability I have no problem, but you need to create alignment right With. Are you making a positive impact?

Welcome back. We are picking right back up where we left off, with Mr Tats talking about his world-class skills. You probably noticed at the end I asked him about his super-duper skills and he was kind of caught off guard. Tats and I also get into his strategy in terms of being an early adopter on new platforms. We were talking more about the social media stuff that's out there and I was surprised to learn that he's been a baller for a long time. I think he got involved and linked in back in 04. In the way he talks, tats is very gracious and not braggadocious at all when he talks about the things that he's been involved with and contributed to. He's been playing in big, meaningful ways for a very long time, so it's no surprise to me that he is super selective about where he spends his time and he tells us he finally spills the beans about the super selective criteria that he used to sign up and join the emotional bungee jumpers. Y'all are going to like that, and I want to give a special shout out to L&M family member, the Himalayan Haas, mr Matt Graves. He is the founder, author, editor, producer of the Construction Curiosities newsletter and you got to check it out. The dude's got game. The content is entertaining, informative and engaging and super quick. It's an easy digest. You'll get a letter every Saturday morning or an email every Saturday morning with the newsletter, and he's also like welcoming in guest writers. So I had the opportunity to submit an article and it just got posted and, coincidentally, that may be the link that I put down in the show notes for you to sign up. Anyways, sign up. That's the point Matt Graves says. Jesse is one of those guys that I chat with on a fairly regular basis and every time I do I'm left feeling like I want to run through the wall and go change the world for the better. Mr Matt did owe my friend and for the rest of the jumpers out there. That is the point. I hope you listen to this conversation, the second half, part two. So if you haven't heard part one, go back and catch part one. But I hope this conversation with my friend Mr Tats gets you fired up and motivated to bust through some of them walls out there. Here we go to. Mr Tats. You mentioned that everybody has a world-class skill. What is your world-class skill, tats? And all you have to do is name the top 10.

I don't have 10. Let's call it. I have an interest and a curiosity around finding people and their potential. So, I get a kick out of learning about people's super power and I get an extra kick out of it if I know what it is before they do and if I can help them, because I look at an individual, I try to listen and see what their potential could be in three years and I can sometimes visualize what that could look like. So that's one interest. And the second interest is if you look at Seth Godin's idea virus book way back in the day, I've always been fascinated on how ideas spread, like when we launched our company, we were very lucky where we got on the show Dragons Den and we piggybacked, we lobbied, so there was some effort on our part, some tactical stuff, but at the end of the day we won the competition. Peter did a brilliant pitch which gave us 12 million views before YouTube was as dominant as it is now and also it gives $100,000. So basically that gave us a really big boost. And I'm always fascinated why some ideas spread and others don't, and why. How do you facilitate that Right, or how do you get better at it? It's called strategic luck, but how do you get better at it on average? And I'm always interested in people that are good at it and I'm always interested in the anatomy of why certain things take off and sometimes there's no reason, but I like to study it yeah.

So I heard two, two world class skills.

World class is big for me, but I think because I love it. Yeah, I've developed some skills around it.

Yeah, and it's both around, and for me it's landing, nurturing potential and nurturing ideas or cultivating those things. It's so fun. Where did that come from, Tats? Wow?

I have no idea, but I've always loved the idea of maybe it just came from the sporting side. I've always loved the idea of improvement, like if you were to just sit there and grind a skill. It just gets better and better. It doesn't matter who you are Like. I've always liked to be in areas where you can see improvements. I have all these projects right that are like here's an improvement project and then, and my wife's a little bit like that my kids are a little bit like that as well where it's like, hey, I'm going to learn this thing for this time and different projects have different time frames right, ten years, some are 20 hours, right, it, wouldn't it be cool to be able to do this? Right, solve a Rubik's Cube or whatever, right. And then you dig in with your kids and I just become more aware of when I get older. I just look at what my kids are doing. I was aware they learned that good, bad, and the ugly is that, yeah, it's probably my temperament and one of the things one of the kids does is always has a project to learn something. I was. Yeah, I probably got it from me. Contagious yeah, so as long as the project is productive, then it's good. Just don't go down the wrong rabbit hole Totally.

Now you mentioned like the little improvement ideas and things you work on, and I know I follow you on TikTok and you regularly put out like For me. They lend us advice. Maybe they're just your thoughts about self-improvement and different things. What is your experience with social media?

I don't know where this came from, but I always thought there was two ways to become an expert. One is you can study a mainstream topic for 20 years, right Like, let's say a broad topic like marketing and after 20 years maybe you're an expert. Or second option is you can jump on something early and then grind harder than anyone else for two years and be the expert just because there's nobody else. And I jumped on LinkedIn in 2004. And it was before most people were on LinkedIn outside Silicon Valley or California and I didn't know LinkedIn was gonna be the one. Originally it was a bunch of different social media platforms. There was 12 that I was investigating. I narrowed it down to three which I thought would win and LinkedIn was one of them and I just experimented. I tried everything. I tried outreach and those early days I got invited to the founder's advisory thing where they're asking us about what do you like about the features and the advantages of coming in early are I got to speak. I'm a horrible speaker, but they couldn't find anyone better. So I got invited to 40 speaking engagements and my speaking was poor, but I was the only one that really knew anything about it at the time. So for the first two years I got expert LinkedIn person and I met. Every time I did a speech I said, hey, if you wanna hook, I can hook you up. Just connect to me. So I was getting piles of business cards after each speaking engagement and I grew my network to thousands. All opt in and that is the advantages of going early, that is the advantage of putting your hand up and trying, and the only price you have to pay is the willingness to look silly. I look silly often, so maybe I just I get used to it, but it does suck. But I'm willing to look silly and hear the crickets. And I remember when I first started my specify podcast and we're talking about the coding industry and a little bit on construction and some of the stuff with roofing and especially on the coding side, there was nothing, there was absolutely nothing. And I was joking once where the my family doesn't even listen to it right, so I had no audience. I was doing it for myself and probably for a year and a half no one knew what I was doing, right? But then now you see, it's quite common. But for the first, while I had all the benefit Like I had all the benefit People thought it was a radio show and I had unlimited, where it's quite common for people to get invites. At the time People thought they would ask how many shows is syndicated? I'm like syndicated I don't know how many people are even listening to this thing, but I learned a ton. So that's the advantages. If you're willing to look silly and pay the price with pride, then you can make huge strides in personal development and in improvement, right? So I know that entrepreneurship is a social exercise. I heard that and I'm like what does that mean? And I don't know who I heard it from. I think it may have been Malcolm Gladwell, because he has some fairly good insights. But basically, let's say you start a business and then some people tell their family, some people don't. But let's say you don't tell your family, you don't tell anyone, you just start a business, right, because you want to be embarrassed and you fail, right. And then it gets a little bigger, and then your family knows, and then your friends know, and then your friends from high school know, and then there's an industry and then you have a reputation. And then what happens is you get more and more visible. And then in the beginning you're willing to make mistakes, but you become more risk averse. It looks silly. And then more and more people, and then you get way more conservative and you play more defensive. And what got you there in the first place is throwing things on the wall, taking in the face, asking stupid questions, but then, as you go up the thing, you start to lose that ability to do that. All of us in some way, unless we don't absolutely care, and the trick is the people that can that have a higher focus and purpose. You have a very strong purpose. I think you can keep taking in the face, asking the stupid questions and moving up, but then, if not, then your ability to learn, take face plans and iterate basically diminish as you get more established or known man yes, so you jumped on LinkedIn back in 1990, 1998. So 2004, 2006. So that was just out of when it came out of Silicon Valley.

Okay, so super, super early I was looking at kind of the history of your podcast. You've been podcasting five year, five plus years, yeah, which wasn't super early for podcasts.

I originally had a podcast about 10 or 12 years ago which was not it didn't go anywhere, just a few things, but relative to the industry. That's the key that you have to remember, and I think sometimes people obsess about being first. It's not about being first in the world, it's just like how are you applying it to your industry? And that's why many times people are like, oh, I don't have a solution. But then well, what are there any other industries that you looked into? So I always like learning different things in different places, and there was an old NBA basketball commissioner that used to learn this is where before the internet was more popular by going to a magazine rack and reading magazines that he would never be interested in or never come across, or just random stuff, just to expose himself to new ideas. Because honestly, let's say, there's two trade shows next to each other. Just think about it. If you just cross over the street, go to that trade show, the solution that to your six month or six year head of key problem could be sitting there. And because there's a lot of people that are smart. And if you look at the history of inventions, very few inventions happened in isolation and it's just who got to the patent office, who got the thing, who actually got it commercialized. Those are the people that got the credit, but if you look at any given time, there was three, six more groups working on the same problem. So expand the circle, ask questions, right? Yes, extremely curious. I like to think that whatever challenge that you're going through, someone out there has gone through it, has seen it or has the solution for it, I think. I think that's a cool way of trying to problem solve.

Yeah, 100%. And you know me. I'm 100% about community. I know the stuff that hits in my head. It ain't me, it's because of who I hang out with the questions I ask the people that I reach out to, then it's all. This makes sense.

Let's try this, I try right. I'm not always great at it Because, like anyone wants to get comfortable, like, wait a minute, I'm too comfortable, let's have some fun, let's shake it up. So when I saw you having your emotional bungee jumper thing is that looks? I have no idea what it is. It seems crazy. I'm just going to put my hand up and see what happens. What's the worst that can?

happen and you're like you haven't resigned from the group, which is meaningful to me because I've been able to get more connected with you and with the entire group. That's just random idea. Let's try this out. There's major purpose behind it and it's working Like people are interested, which feels good, but, more importantly, people. It can be a transformational experience and I've been able to see that with people in the group and it's oh man. I got to put my foot on the gas with this thing because it's super meaningful. Now again, that was one of the ideas that stuck. It was lucky. Not every idea has been that fruitful. And so if we go back to when you started your, you were selling pairs old brown, beat up pairs. Then you're running an agency company. Now you're CEO Costagra Products, published author, like inventor. You got a lot going on and first it's genius.

Right, he's the genius, I'm just trying to help. And then I just see I'm trying to help. Basically, I'm just trying to accelerate ideas. Well, peter's skill is one in a million. Like I've watched him operate and come up with ideas and I know what his process is Like. He basically just just goes into this mode where he just is so focused he forgets to eat what they did thing right. And then it happens and he iterates like crazy. So I see the process. I just it's just. You can't replicate it. That's his superpower, right, my job is to make sure that as much of the stuff that he can because he's got a vision to make the world a better place and the stuff that we're doing with our products plant-based high performance sits well with me, because when I ran that agency and then we were launching lots of products, so I got to see the vision of spreading ideas right, because one day there's an idea and then it's eventually, if it's good, lucky then it gets to 2,000 stores. But then I started to question this is product even need to exist? What is the point of spreading this plastic stuff? So, getting older, I'm thinking about kids and their future and I needed better alignment, so I needed to feel better about what needed commercializing. I have no problem with entrepreneurship, profitability, I have no problem, but you need to create alignment With are you making a positive impact? It doesn't need to be perfect, but you helping in some small way make the world move in a better direction. I just felt that was just a way, better way to live your day.

Yes, yes. So one thing you and I were talking before we started recording about the highlight reel and how that is connected to mental wellness. Can you expand on that for us, sir?

Absolutely. I think entrepreneurship involves more mistakes than highlights and the stories that you hear in the you know a lot of the websites sometimes could really focus on zero to 10 million in six months. And certainly there's those situations, special situations, where everything seems to come together, but 99.99% of the time it looks like you start something, you don't know what you're doing, you fall in your face. You have a small way. You fall in your face twice more times than you have a small win, right, and you know if you A are extremely persistent or, like me, have a short memory and my wife gets upset sometimes that's helpful but or a very strong purpose Based on those are the ones that you know don't create these massive companies but can carve out a living on what you're doing. So I think just understanding that those are like lotto tickets for entrepreneurship and that the standard result is what an average entrepreneur feels is the struggle, the uncertainty, the shame of not failing at certain things, and I think I like to talk about that because I felt that going through it and I've gone through enough ups and downs to not let those sort of ups and downs affect me the same way, but that sort of pit in your stomach where you just you don't know what's going to happen and you're just thinking about people that you're going to let down and stuff like that. It really sucks. So that's why I like I don't try too hard to encourage entrepreneurship. I'm extremely supportive if that's what you want to do, but I don't like to paint the perfect picture. It's certainly not for everyone and I honestly believe more people do it. There's a lot of people that do it that shouldn't be doing it and probably would be happier just to have a job and then be able to shut it off after the day was done.

Truth, truth, I feel you, 100%. The sacrifice. How do I make a post about the sacrifice without sounding like a whiny boy? How do I make a post about all the rejects, all the proposals that got rejected, without sounding desperate? Right, it's their realities, but how do I post about that? And so, for me, I try to keep it as real as I possibly can. And there's a lot, you nailed it. There's a lot of hours, a lot of learning, a lot of things that they're not highlightable, they don't fit the reels as well as some of the other stuff does, and it's easy to beat yourself up. It's easy for me to think because I suck. Maybe there may be some truth to that, but it's more. I just lack the experience and knowledge right now, and so now I got to go build it or buy it, and I'm not in a position to buy it, so I got to build it, and there's time, sacrifice, et cetera. So I think I see a thread that I've been wanting to ask you about, and we haven't touched on this first before I go there. One of the things that I really appreciate about you, tats, and I aspire to this at some point in the future, maybe 30 or 40 years down the road, but you are extremely humble. You have massive accomplishments in your life and every L&M family probably noticing. Any time I bring it up, you shift the focus to somebody else and I appreciate that because I can get bigheaded and trip over myself a lot. And so your perfect example, I think, of accomplishing, conquering, making things happen in a big way and just carrying yourself in a very human and approachable way. So I appreciate you for that, tats, because it really does give me something to look up to Now. I also know that you were a competitive tennis player D1. You're now a competitive, world-class pickleball player.

Oh no, I hack in both, but yes, it's been a fun experience.

And so there's some technical and launching products, starting your business, everything. There are some technical aspects associated with all of those things that you had to master to be able to play at the level that you played at, and I've seen you, in our calls, get very focused on technical excellence. So my question is this yeah, how do you manage maybe I'll say manage or reconcile this prowess around technical excellence and personal connection? Does it detract from the personal connection you have with people? What does that look like for tax?

I see technical excellence versus I think I know where you're heading at. I'm an introvert. So I think and I'll use an example on how big of an introvert I was Most people that meet me now think I'm very social. Yeah, you're totally. But when I was in grade eight I went to a school that had to take band or drama and I just hated the idea of drama. Right, have to act in front of people, how embarrassing. So I ran as fast as I could to a band class. I thought I didn't play an instrument. But my parents are very musical, my sister, my dad, very musical, and I'm like maybe I can pick this up because drama. I don't want to do that. So I showed up a band class and looked around. Sure enough, it's one of the few classes you don't go there to learn. You know what you're doing. And so that was a little iffy. But I thought, okay, I'll pick an instrument that looks easy. I picked the trumpet. It's only got three keys. Oh yeah, they realize that you had to make all the sounds yourself. And so here I am. I picked the trumpet. I don't know how to read music. I'm so disruptive because I'm such a beginner. They threw me in the band equipment locker room to practice by myself. Right Now, as an introvert, I'm so embarrassed, right, Because you're being singled out, Everyone knows you're in there. And I don't know how the soundproofing was in the band equipment room. Maybe not great, but they would hear me go hey hey like horrible noises. Right they're muffler right. And so hanging my head in shame and I thought myself maybe it's not so bad, Maybe the semester will be over and I'll never have to talk about this ever again. And I remember, just before the semester is over, the teacher came in and says in order to pass this class, you have to perform in front of the entire school. Oh no, With the other bandmate. The teacher left and I think I couldn't feel my feet right Because I'm just so numb. And I ran to a friend of mine and said what am I supposed to do? And he gave me this very sorry look and says pretend. So concert day comes. And I thought, well, maybe I can pretend. Yeah, as I'm looking out the entire school, instead of 20 drama students, I'm looking at the entire school and I didn't have the skill or stomach to even pretend. So I made a complete fool in front of my entire school and I realized that, for me at least, when you run away from something, there's a good chance you're running into something worse.

Yo man yes.

So I've tried to do my best to challenge things like that. So I took Toastmasters, I did speaking. I got roped into doing stand up, which was terrifying, terrifying. I have a video on it too. I don't know why I have a video on it. Oh, you got to share that. And I didn't sleep well for three weeks because it was from zero to whatever. I just wanted to get coaching quietly, one to one, coaching on the quiet, and I guess you are performing, and for some reason, before my brain could kick in, because she was so clear, I said yes. Before my brain could kick in, no, I regretted it. I regretted it after I said it and I was like, oh no, but I could tell you it was such an amazing experience. I have so much respect for people that do comedy because you can't be a little bit funny If you're funny or not, and you can't fake it, and the standard of being funny when people are expecting you to be funny is very high, right, yes, so rewrite after rewrite and then maybe it's funny. And it gave me a great respect for people that put themselves on the line. That's one way, because even the best comics, they fail, right, they have jokes that don't fail and they basically put themselves in the line of fire for the time and go over and over. And I thought that's probably the best. Closest feeling to entrepreneurship is you're putting yourself out in the line of fire all the time and guaranteed every single week. I have mistakes I have to reflect on and do better, whether it's my communication or something I did not handle it and I have to grow from that or how we dealt with the customer, or how we did this or how we did do that. It's a humbling experience but I appreciate it because I learned something every time. Yeah.

So you have an extremely high threshold for practice, getting the reps in learning incrementally from each rep, and maybe in athletics it's not as embarrassing. What do you think about that?

Well, athletics is more embarrassing right In a business. You can hide in there and people may not know if you're doing a good job or not. In athletics, you go out there, you win or lose. It's very cut throat. So in that way, it's entrepreneurship. So I think, going back to your question which I have not answered I don't think is you were talking about the technical side and the social side of it or whatnot. And you are right, I had to learn team building. I did not understand team building. That's why it took me so long to learn how to delegate is I was not good with people, shy. I had to learn that. I continue to learn that now. You cannot accomplish anything without a team and you have to be of service to a team and you have to be able to formulate what type of people get along and how you can when you have to step in, when you have to step out, but you're serving all the time and that has not come naturally. I had to learn every piece, every step of the way and, yes, sometimes I get very quote, unquote, technical right or overthink the situation. So I spent all this time planning, scenario planning where a quick action would clarify things much quicker. So I've done a lot of coaching around that to learn to pull the trigger quicker and then learn and iterate versus plan. So whenever I get plan mode, I notice things, I notice more notes, I notice more things. So every once in a while I have to go through a purge where I look at it, I look at what I've created I'm gonna delete, get rid of, minimize 90% of it. So I starting to, over the years, understand the tendencies. When I start to fall off and get too far and especially I think last day I think was being a little technical Someone put it right in my face. That's what I was doing and that is what I appreciate about the group is people that are willing to put me in my place and not say things that make me feel good, but respectfully tell me that I suck. I so appreciate. I'm not just saying that I so appreciate, because I prefer that than going around thinking that I'm doing a great job. I have people in my company that are very candid. I know what they're thinking when I suck. They tell me right to my face and I try my very best not to discourage that, penalize that or anything. Reward it and it hurts, right, I have to recover from it, but I want it because I know that if I don't get it, then eventually I'm just gonna disappear, because that's how you become irrelevant.

Yeah, beautifully said, Tats. And yeah, those folks that are courageous enough to tell you you suck or you poor form, those people are treasures out of doubt. Man, this conversation has me like amped up for your segment on the decentralized conference that we got coming up. So I know it's gonna be juicy. So I have one closing question. This one's super easy, Tats, it's a softball. What is the promise you are intended to be?

I just wanna make sure that I just leave the world a little bit better that I came in. So when I look at all the things that I do the podcast and all that stuff my kids are watching. They have access to these information. If I took everything I was doing, I put it all out there in the front of the paper and my kids saw it. That they'd be okay with it is what's always running through my mind. What did I?

tell you my buddy, tats, got game. He's been rolling deep for a long time and still carries himself in a super humble, approachable manner. I hope that if I were ever to become as accomplished as Tats is, that I can have the same type of. We'll just say not be so, jesse. Anyways, hope you got a whole lot out of that conversation. Quick reminder there is a part one, so go back and check that one out, along with the rest of them, of course. I wanna give a shout out to the sponsor of this episode, which is, if you can't guess, it's Emotional Bungie Jumpers. You know, there at the very end, Tats was talking about the group and getting direct feedback. That is one of the many skills that we're actively building in the Emotional Bungie Jumpers group and you know there's this trusting that grows because we hang out once a month on the fourth Friday of the month at 2 pm central, we get to learn a lot about each other, we get to learn a lot more about ourselves and because that trust keeps growing after every rep, the feedback that we share and the feedback that we receive is that penetrating, kind of painful but also oh-so-good type of feedback. So if you're interested, there'll be a link in the show notes. Sign up, be cool, and we'll talk at you next time, peace.