In The Thick of It

If you're early, you got a super innovative,

super cool product, and people want it,

it's not necessarily going to help you cross

the chasm without you solving a problem. Right?

And I think that's where I always learn.

Now, as an entrepreneur it's like,

what problem are you solving?

And is it big enough?

Welcome to In the Thick of It.

I'm your host, Scott Hollrah.

How would your perspective on life change if

you were uprooted from your homeland as a child?

That question confronted Peter Matejcek when his parents

fled communist Czechoslovakia in 1984, defecting to the

west when Peter was just nine years old.

After months in a refugee camp, they

made a new home in Canada.

In this episode of in the Thick of It,

Peter shares how that childhood trauma shaped his optimism

and motivation to help others as an entrepreneur.

From starting his own computer repair business

to launching an interactive video production company

years too early, to now operating a

video creation service for small business, he's

persevered through failures and learned difficult lessons

about sales, funding, leadership, and more.

While the entrepreneurial path hasn't been easy, Peter

credits his persistence to a passion for empowering

people that traces back to the hardships he

experienced at a young age.

Joining me on In the Thick of It

today is Peter Matejcek with INHouse Video.

Peter, thank you so much for being our guest today.

Scott, thanks for having me.

Super excited to be here.

So your growing up was interesting.

In fact, probably very different from

any of our other guests.

Why don't you kind of just lead off with that?

Yeah, sure.

So I was born in 1975 in Czechoslovakia, so

in Prague during pretty much the height of communism.

And so my parents decided to defect

in 1984 when I was nine.

I had no clue.

They couldn't tell me from, obviously, just I

was old enough to be interrogated, so that

was kind of an interesting thing.

And then we ended up in a refugee

camp for three months in Yugoslavia and then

landed in Ottawa in Canada just before winter.

Good canadian winter, and it was good.

I spoke three languages and none of them were English.

So, yeah, that was kind of my, hey, welcome to Canada.

But, yeah, English is not one of your.

So that was kind of my

start to a very interesting life.

Hearing you say Ottawa the way that you did,

you've clearly adapted to the dialect very easily, right?

Exactly. Yeah.

I mean, I can't spell.

My grammar is horrific.

I think that's why I'm in

video, because that doesn't count.

All my customers and everybody

knows, no, Pete can't spell. It's okay.

But yes, the English language.

You kind of do have to pick that up. Yeah.

You said you spoke three

languages, none of them English.

What languages did you speak and

do you still speak them?

Yeah, so I still speak Czech actively with my folks.

That was the primary.

The secondary language was a mandatory was Russian.

You had to do that.

Part of the communism infrastructure.

And then I picked up Polish and a lot of.

We ran the refugee camp.

There was kids from everywhere.

And so Yugoslavian is kind of

a little bit similar towards it.

But I had three fluent ones and

unfortunately, like Russian, you lose relatively quickly.

But I do still speak. Yeah.

How similar are those three? They're not.

Not at all. No. Russian.

I think like Czech and Slovak are a little bit.

The Polish has some.

It is the slavic kind of

languages, but Russian is relatively from.

And Czech in itself, I think

it's like the 7th hardest language.

It's got crazy things.

So you speak to somebody differently if you know

them or you don't, that's one of the things. Right.

And then different things will have

feminine, masculine, neutral, like for objects.

So it's quite a complicated task. Right.

But yeah, they're quite different.

Nine years old, moved to Canada.

What was that first day of school like,

being the kid that didn't speak English?

Yeah, I've done a lot of

work in therapy around that one.

That's a lot of that stuff.

I definitely remember seeing my first fruit

stand and my first station wagon.

That stuff just didn't exist. Right.

And I remember in school you're just like.

You're like, I have no idea what's going on.

And I remember specifically learning. So ESL.

So every time there were kind of

English that you went to ESL.

English is a second language.

And I specifically remember it was really

hard to learn the word the.

I just couldn't get it.

It was just like one of those things.

You couldn't get it.

So I remember those little snippets, but I

think it took me until I really.

I remember we moved to the west coast when I was

15 and grade ten was like the first time I kind

of felt, hey, I'm into the little bit of the culture

still, like, listening to lyrics and music in English.

Forget it.

I think I learned that maybe ten

years ago, but that was like.

I just remember sitting down like, I

have no idea what's going on.

You just love, like, you're clueless.

Do you remember what you were

like as a student in Czechoslovakia?

Yeah, definitely.

It's fear.

It's a fear based system.

So my parents weren't in the communist infrastructure.

They were quite against it.

That's probably another podcast.

So you're fear based?

It's a fear based system.

Fear of the government.

Of course, in grade three, I wasn't allowed a's

because my parents weren't in the communist party.

Wait, so you're saying if you aced everything, the teacher

was still not allowed to give you an a? Correct. Yeah.

No.

So it's fear.

I think it took me, not until like five or

eight years ago, I managed to calm my body down

of not getting spike of anxiety when cops drove by,

because I distinctly remember when I was seven years old,

being in a tank just in the middle of the

street, and this thing's fully loaded.

It's like, hey, come on in.

It's like you're in this big tank as a kid.

You're like, okay, it sounds cool.

No, it's a fully loaded, ammunition driven

tank with guys with machine guns just

driving the middle of the street.

That's norm.

So I remember even in high school, I think

I skipped two classes my entire high school career.

It's just out of fear.

It's like you don't do it, you don't talk.

It's a fear based mentality, right.

So I think that was. It was.

I think I had great teachers and they were there

and a lot of kind of good friends and stuff.

But learning was like, you're there to learn,

you got to learn, you got to rigor

shade, otherwise it's not going to end well.

How long did that fear last?

I know you mentioned still reacting if you

saw a police car or something like that.

But in adolescence, did that fear follow you

all the way through your primary education?

It's still here. Okay.

It's interesting, I had like five events

between the age of seven and nine.

I got really interested in the last,

like, five to ten years of neuroscience

and childhood kind of behavior stuff.

And there were, between ages

seven and nine, five events.

So my grandfather passed away relatively quickly.

That was one.

I was kind of isolated. I had meningitis.

I was isolated in a hospital for a week by myself.

And so it was a white room with bars

on the window with nothing but a ticking clock.

Not good.

So it was just this fear based.

And then my uncle got killed by the KGB.

That was another one.

So this is like a movie and a couple more.

And then, of course, emigration. I lost everything.

I lost the friends and everything,

and then I lost the languages.

So what happened was in my psyche was a fear of loss.

Integrated it, which actually

also impacted my businesses.

It's a fear of loss

that's integrated in the subconscious.

And even to this day, I'm trying to live not in

chaos, because my body as a kid was used to chaos.

Like, everything's going to fail.

Everything's going to go away, the loved ones.

So this subconscious fear based.

So I had a fear, like writing.

I went to university and I wrote papers,

and I was like, yeah, I was sweating.

And back then I'm like, I don't know what's going on.

It was just a four fight or flight scenario. Right.

And so it was an interesting thing that literally probably

in the last, like, three or four years, and I'm

48, that I'm really now starting to rewire, understand it.

And so it's a gift and a curse.

I think I'm also meant to help people that

in that future, because I've done through so much.

So that's kind of my next

quest of training and learning.

That's what I'm really excited to.

But to answer your original question,

I see subconscious patterns coming up.

I'm super hyper aware of them now.

But that's still from the past of

growing up where you're growing up.

And it's also because it was generational.

Like, my parents got affected by it, my

stories of what that system does to generations.

So you have all that stuff, and

it's been a pretty good battle.

I say the biggest battle in an entrepreneur, from

my perspective, is between my left and right ear.

I think that's the case for most of us.

Right, exactly, yeah.

Do you ever think about what life would

be like today if you were still there?

Yeah, it's a good question.

It's interesting because in 1991,

everything kind of fell.

Is that when it became the Czech Republic?

Yeah, that's what officially.

So, like, in 1940s, kind

of communism started coming in.

In 1968, communism said, screw

you, we're locking everything down.

That was 1968.

So in a matter of, like, two days, two or

three days, that was it, they locked it down.

And then from that 1970s, you got

30, 35, 40 years of communism. So everything fell.

But it took a long time to review that.

So, honestly, I don't know.

I think it wouldn't have been good because my

mom wasn't allowed to go to medical school because

her father was not in the communist party.

My dad couldn't go to university, had to do

it night school, because his parents weren't in it.

So for sure, we were spied on, so we were targeted.

Right.

So any years a kid you don't

know, how does the system work?

If I know now how the system works, you can work

with the system, but I don't think it wouldn't have been

a pleasant situation because I would have just had to do.

You're just forced to do something because

of your beliefs or your history.

Like my grandfather had a very successful

company of building appliances, had 150 employees.

Woke up one day and lost everything. They took him away.

They threw him into jail. So thanks.

No, can't do that.

Grandmother died of a heart attack in

the hospital, and that was it.

So that year, as soon as you have that, nobody

could have foreseen that 91 was going to happen.

And I think it would have been a really hard life.

And my parents started from scratch, from nothing.

And I know why they did it, because even though

my upbringing was hard and everything, it was just.

It's not freedom, right?

And I think I talked to a lot of immigrants.

Either you understand or you don't.

Texas understands it. Right.

So. Very good question. I thought about it often.

I think it would have been a dark road.

And then after 91, lots of upheaval, right?

Lots of opportunities if you

take advantage of the system.

But that's not how I roll.

I did a study abroad trip when I was in college,

and after our coursework was over, that was all in Italy.

And there was a group of us that backpacked around.

We spent several days in Prague. Beautiful city.

Loved it.

But I don't know, maybe it's just

the westernized mentality that I've got know,

the spy shows that I've watched.

But there was something that still felt a

little bit eerie and I will never forget.

All over Europe, in the big cities, there

are t shirt vendors and people selling all

kinds of memorabilia, souvenirs I will never forget.

There was one shirt that said,

the KGB is still listening.

And I'm still not sure if that was meant to

be, like, tongue in cheek kind of funny, or if

it was like, nope, this is for real.

It's very much for real. Yeah.

The stories my parents told

me, and they were interesting.

My parents were in theater.

It's like a black light theater for, like 13 years.

And they had an opportunity to actually travel.

And I remember my mom telling me stories how they

traveled to Russia, and they're like, the hotel room that

you're staying at, they would freak out the KGB because

they would stop talking because everybody's listening, so they would

stop talking in the hotel room, and then two minutes

later, they're knock on the door.

It's like we're moving you to a different hotel room.

So please come with us.

Because they thought the mics weren't working.

Wow.

This is a story after story after story, and it's real.

It's not a movie.

And this is normal life.

And I think for the longest time in me, I was like.

I was telling these stories to friends,

and then, yeah, this is what happened. Blah, blah, blah.

And then I remember distinctively, this is about five or ten

years ago, I'm like, man, my life was screwed up.

That's not normal. Yeah, right.

Like, you got this realistic.

It's like, that's not normal. But yes.

So all that stuff wouldn't be

surprised if it's still there.

Right, but surveillance systems. Yeah.

Reminds me of.

I never read the book.

There were a lot of classics that somehow I didn't end

up having to read growing up and never had to read.

1984.

And a couple of years ago, I decided I

wanted to see what this was all about.

And I went through it.

And as you're telling that story, I'm

hearing big brother in the tv. Yeah.

Separate podcast.

Orwell was right about something. Exactly.

All right, college.

Where did you go to school?

I went to Simon Fraser

University, so it's in Vancouver.

And I studied communication, which I shouldn't have

because I can't spell and can't write.

So all I wrote is papers, but

I learned how to work the system.

That's, I think, where I firstly got

my twisted love of procedures and processes.

Because I love processes.

This is the second time

you've referenced working the system.

I have a feeling this is a theme for Peter.

Exactly, right, yeah. Efficiencies. Right.

I'm all about.

I never understood it, but

I love efficiencies and processes. But, yeah.

So I went to school, did communication.

I enjoyed media and all that stuff.

I think that's what kind of traveled

it, but it was not supposed to.

I graduated.

I got okay grades, but I like writing.

My dad's a writer.

I enjoy writing, but it's not my strong suit.

So I think that was a little bit of a struggle.

And I was on the snowboarding team,

so that was a lot of fun.

You had a snowboarding team?

Yeah, we had an NCW snowboarding team back then. Yeah.

So it was pretty good. Wow.

What time frame would that have been?

I took, like, six years to do uni, so I took my time.

So graduated high school 93.

So it was 94 to 94 to 2000. Okay. Wow.

I'm surprised that they had a snowboarding

team at that point, like, snowboarding was

just kind of early, mid 90s.

That was like the infancy of it.

And by the mid 90s, they've already got an actual team.

Yeah, I started riding, really riding in 1990.

You were early on that. Early adopters.

Yeah, we were even back in Ottawa.

I mean, this was when I was

15, I think it was Montreal. Blah.

You had to have a license to

ride a snowboard on the mountain. Wow.

Because they're like, this is a dangerous sport.

You're not allowed to be here.

We're incredibly fortunate.

We typically get to go skiing once a

year, and I feel like snowboarding has actually

started to decrease in popularity, at least the

places that we've been used to be.

I'd see way more snowboarders than I do now.

Are you seeing that up in Vancouver?

Yeah, I think what happened.

I grew up on skis, went to snowboarding, was an

active skier, and snowboarded half and half, then really just

dove into snowboarding just because the gear and I think

the comfort of the boots was so good.

But now I think in the last, like, five

years, the skis has gone wider and lighter.

The boots are better, so I

think it's coming back to it. Right.

They're shorter, they're different.

They're almost a version 2.0.

So definitely see that.

I tried to get back into skiing a couple of years

ago, but I'm like, yeah, no, I love the board.

I actually switched probably two years

ago from boarding to skiing. Oh, yeah.

And maybe the ski boots have gotten better,

but the rental ski boots definitely have not.

I hate walking in ski boots,

snowboard boots, all day long. Everything's good.

Yeah, exactly. All right.

Six years to do college, you

get out with communications degree.

You mentioned that wasn't what you should have done.

Looking back, what do you think would

have been a better study path?

Like from a business or a personal perspective?

Yes, both.

From a business, finance.

That's a really good business model. Money.

Personally, I don't know.

I always loved acting and creative in theater,

which I have never really done, but I

would have probably kind of gone down that.

I think the creativity is.

I found creativity in business, but it hasn't necessarily been

the right thing to do at the right time.

Now it's helping out. Right.

But at the beginning, you know how it is.

Like, you could be creative, but

business is sometimes really not.

It's a systematic process.

Do you think that's from your parents?

You mentioned that they were both actors.

Yeah, for sure.

Just being naturally. Just creative.

I have a lot of creative juices, which I think are,

sometimes I don't feed them as much as I should.

So that's kind of the lacking that's kind of missing.

But everything happens for a reason.

That's why I live by.

So when I look back at why it

happened, I know exactly why things happen the

way it happens outside of your business.

Do you have a creative outlet today? Do you paint?

Do you do photography?

Do you draw?

Anything like that?

I love bowling.

I want a bowling league.

So, I mean, I don't know how creative that is, but

hurling a 15 pound ball at pins feels really good.

So that's a good one.

Obviously, skiing, creative wise, get back a

little bit, back into the guitar.

That's kind of one of my goals for the

next little while, to really dig into something.

But I think one of those things I need to.

I love the outdoors, I love working out.

Mix the kids in, mix the businesses, and

mix seven and a half hours of sleep.

And all of a sudden time just. It's a full day.

It's a full day.

Walk me through.

Right after you got out of school, what did you do?

Yeah, it was interesting.

I worked as a marketing minion

for this little tech startup company.

And that kind of, I was

like, wow, this desk stuff sucks.

Nine to five kind of really sucks.

I was not really meant to do that.

I don't think I was a really good

employee at all, to be quite honest.

And then I did another one.

I worked for corporate Express,

which was staples, actually.

They bought staples and did a

little bit of ecommerce stuff.

And that's when I noticed, too.

This was back in 2002.

They had this online shopping portal, and

I was like, okay, let's automate it.

Let's get all the sales reps to be

able to use it and do it.

And all of a sudden I worked myself out of a job.

And then I'm like, hey, maybe I'll try sales.

And I really didn't like that.

And then I actually ended up breaking my back

to snowboarding on a really small, stupid jump.

So after that, I'm like, I'm not going back. I ended up.

I was always, like, into computers, just kind of stuff.

So I'm like, maybe I'll just help fix computers.

So that was kind of my first, in

2002, I think was my first thing.

I ended up being Pete the computer guy.

This is on your own?

You're not working for, like,

geek squad or somebody else?

No, yeah, this is on my own.

I think my first computer I took to fix, I think

I charged like $50 and it took me 20 hours.

The next one takes you ten and so forth.

That kept going for a while.

And then I moved to kind of

Kelowna from Vancouver and started that here.

And it was a good little kind of business, super small.

But that was kind of my

first taste of kind of entrepreneurship.

I'm sorry, you said Kelowna.

That's where you live now? Yeah. So Kelowna, BC.

It's about 4 hours east drive of Vancouver, Canada, which

in canadian terms, 4 hours is like next block.

It's really small.

That's like. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

All right, Pete the computer guy, was

that actually the name of your business?

That was the name. That was it.

Pete the computer guy, yeah.

Registered incorporated.

That's on the tax id.

Yeah, that was it.

I even got to the point where I had so

many friends ask me to help fix their computers.

So I used to wear a shirt to, well, I

did two things when I used to go to parties.

One, I had a usb stick with me

because I'm like, yeah, let me fix it. Wow.

While I'm drinking beer.

And then the other one, I got a t shirt

that says, no, I will not fix your computer.

So I started wearing that.

There's a bumper sticker that I love.

I haven't seen it in a while, but

it says, yes, this is my truck.

No, I will not help you move.

I think that's the equivalent for your.

Exactly it.

That's exactly it. Yeah.

You don't strike me as the computer nerd kind of guy.

You definitely don't strike me as the guy that

carries a usb stick in his pocket to parties.

Has pete undergone some metamorphosis or what?

Yeah, you know, it's funny.

So I think I never, honestly, I think it's

got, I never started businesses from, hey, I'm going

to grow something to make money and bring value.

I think that's like, you look, go

backwards, like, oh, what would I change?

It's like, yeah, no, pete, you got

to understand, the business is about value.

It's not about trying to help

somebody as much as you can.

It's about like, hey, Mr. Customer, what do you want?

What are you going to pay

for and what problem you solve?

And I think trying to teach that to

my kids right now, I'm like, hey, look,

money is important, you, value of time.

This is how it works.

This is how the world works.

It's not what they teach you in school.

This is reality.

I had always a thirst to help people, and

I think subconsciously was also to help myself.

But when I was pete the computer guy, I

was like, I did this stuff, and I was

never thinking about, where can you take it?

How can you scale it?

Like geek squad or nat.

It was like, back then with my ex, we

opened up a computer training center because when I

went to people's houses, I was like, I felt

guilty just sitting there waiting for updates.

And they're like, what are you doing?

I'm like, updating. What does that do?

And I'm like, well, what do you want to know?

So I just started asking questions.

I'm like, what do you want to know?

They're like this and this and this.

And everybody was asking me the same thing.

And I'm like, why aren't these people?

And back then, this is like 2004, every

single computer, it was a manual, right?

It was like 150 pages long. It was like, there was no

YouTube, no nothing back there.

So I opened up, I'm like, hey, let's open up.

Right click. Computer training.

I ended up training about 1700 people over

a two year period and logged about four

and a half thousand hours of training.

It was basic computers and excel and how to

online bank, and I just dumbed it down.

But lot of heart, a lot of pain.

Just really bad business model.

I'm thinking, like, Windows XP. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, we were Windows XP. Windows Vista.

I had this, like, my dad's an

architect, so we designed a classroom.

It was like a semicircle and had six people,

and they had a screen in front of them.

And then I had a screen in front of me

so I could see what they were doing and so

I could teach simultaneously six people on an individual basis.

And it was good.

Maybe if we were in a bigger city,

would have done, but it was a struggle.

It paid a little bit, but

it didn't really make any money.

Lost a whole bunch of money.

It was a good, kind of good learning experience through

that perspective, but it was just a lot of heart.

And that actually transitioned to, I'm really tired.

How do I automate this?

That's the automation piece.

And I created Huestream, which

was an interactive video company.

And then Huestream was because I'm like,

hey, people are always making these. I.

So I created all these tons of videos and

I put them into like a simulator environment.

But of course it never went

anywhere because it's way too early.

But I had a mentor at that time

who came in and said, what is this?

I literally created an interactive video platform where

you could upload videos and you could click

on different things, and it would lead to,

like, choose your own venture story.

And this was in 2004, 2005.

And so Huestream was created, and that was

kind of my first crack of like, okay,

this was a little bit bigger, right?

And we got some people together, but it kind of

always transitioned to kind of like, hey, I was never

really looking at, what problem can I solve?

It's like, how can I help somebody better

and how can I help people more?

But I never really understood,

what problem am I solving?

That's kind of the thing you

learn with Pete, the computer guy.

You start off literally doing house

calls, is what it sounds like. Is that right?

And through that, you developed this

idea that people need to learn.

And did you abandon the break fix

kind of stuff at that point?

Yeah, because we went full tilt on to the

computer training, so all the customers that I had

initially became the first customers on it.

And then I created a partnership with somebody else who

fixed the computer so we could still handle that part.

But it was all full tilt on the computer training part.

Did you keep a customer list of all those houses

that you'd been to to fix things and send them,

like, direct mail or were you doing email?

How did you find those customers for training?

Well, it's a great question.

I think after, first of all,

we did the typical failures.

Radio didn't work, but then

what worked was an editorial.

So we had a paper write an article of

us, and then we put, like, a free class

in it, and that brought all these people.

So that was the only way.

Every month we did took a half a page ad in

the local newspaper and put a free class in there.

And I ran the free class, and then at the

end of the class, I said, hey, here's some packages.

And I learned the super hard lesson as an

entrepreneur, how to sell with fear of loss.

It sucked.

But you're like, if I don't sell these people,

I don't pay my mortgage, it sucks, right?

That's what they don't tell

you in entrepreneurial school.

You hit those really dark moments. You got two options.

Either you die or you sell.

So I learned how to sell these packages.

It was like, hey, we had a techie pack

and this package, and here's the value of it.

And then we sold it and then create

enough revenue for that month and deliver the

packages and just did it again and again.

But it wasn't not enough volume.

There's not enough people in the town.

It was too small.

And it just didn't.

And we never hit, like, business.

I never took it from a business perspective or increase

the cost of it, because my thing was, I was

like, I just wanted to help people as much as

I could, keep the cost low and do it.

And that's still a mentality, actually, I carry

today, which is ironically helping now, but that

was kind of the lots of heart.

I mean, lots of really good stories that I

have from people saying, man, thank you so much.

I can communicate with my kids.

I saw my pictures of the grandkids.

Like that stuff you remember every time I go

back and go, hey, we lost all this money.

But I'm like, no, I changed 1700 people's lives.

That's the way you got to look at it, man.

That's great perspective.

One of our guests was on several months ago, Clayton Flurry

owns a meat market in the town that I live in.

And one of the things that he talked about that just

really motivated him was he wants to be that place, and

is that place where a family comes in after their kids

flag football game and they're getting an icy.

And he's having conversations about, how'd the game go?

How'd you play?

And building those relationships and being a place that's

kind of a center in the community and.

Sounds like your takeaway was kind of similar.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that's where, if you look at

it, I forget the last statistics, especially in BC,

you got 90, I don't know, 90 plus percent

of all those businesses are those, right?

That's the backbone of the

western societies, these small businesses.

It's not the Googles or the facebooks.

Those are the Fortune 500.

That's why they call it that. Right?

And I think it's the backbone.

So definitely there was.

I remember for years, even after we

shut her down, people remembered right click.

And I got little stories and newspapers, and so I often

come back to that now because it's so easy, as, you

know, as an entrepreneur to go, man, that sucked.

I failed here, I lost this, I screwed up

here, versus, like, what actually happened, what worked, and

how much of an impact did you make? Right?

So, right click was the training company.

Pete, the computer guy, was the break fix.

You wind that down.

Right click was the training.

What was the demographic of your typical customer?

Oh, baby boomers. Okay.

Yeah, baby boomers.

It's a really hard business model to teach

them, but I have patience of job.

So it was just baby boomers.

It was an older generation just scared of computers.

Right.

That's kind of where it was.

You just used the word, and it's a word that when

it comes up, I always want to hone in on.

You talked about patience. Patience.

Do you consider yourself a patient person? Yes.

To a fault? Sometimes.

Not for myself, but if I'm helping somebody,

if I'm training somebody, if you're hiring a

team member, you're giving for sure.

Yeah, 100%.

Is that learned, or is that

something that's just innate in you?

I think I've always had it because I think from

immigration or that stuff, you just become a natural observer.

Right.

Your heightened sense of observer is like, are you going to

be my friend or are you going to eat me?

So you kind of learn to be patient.

In every single relationship I think I've ever had,

I've valued, even if it's not good for me.

So I think that's just a natural of who?

And now I'm really trying to balance it out.

How much patience can you give and what's

a good amount and to focus it.

So I think it's a good thing. Right click.

Lasted a couple of years.

About two years, yeah.

Went hard for about two and a half years, yeah.

And was the ultimate reason that you

shut that down, that just the financial

aspect of it wasn't going to make.

Yeah, no, exactly.

I remember the accountant telling me, like,

hey, man, this is not making money.

I'm like, oh, I'm not hearing that.

The classic not listening to that.

But then, yeah, it was just not making money.

Not at all.

Going back to that patience piece, it sounds like

people outside were speaking into the business and speaking

into you and saying, hey, this isn't working.

You need to do something else.

Was there that patience aspect of you that's

like, no, we just need to keep going.

Need to give it a little bit longer.

Need to give it a little bit longer. It's going to turn.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

I think that's the entrepreneurial rose colored glasses that

often need to be ripped off later in life.

And what was the final moment?

The straw that broke the camel's back,

or whatever you want to call it.

What was that final moment where you

said, okay, yeah, this is it.

Did you have, like, a lease that ended and

you're like, okay, this will be the last day?

Yeah, that's a good point.

I think what we ended up, I ended up

doing this whole demo thing online, and we had

a website, and then it created the interactivity, and

then it was like, hey, we got to find.

I had that mentor, come in.

It's like, wow, this can be used for business.

What do you mean? I'm like, cool.

And then it just happened.

I'm like, okay, well, we know how to shoot videos.

I was shooting a lot of videos back then just

for it, and I never did anything with it.

I'm more of a creator, right?

Like, I'm a process creator and et cetera.

So sometimes that gets into the entrepreneurial mindset

versus to look at all the bits and

pieces of a business from a health perspective.

And I think it was like, I picked up a project

with the local university that was like my first one.

Like, hey, we have this interactive thing,

and it was like a recruiting thing.

And it was like, all of a sudden I

made five times more revenue than I did in

an entire month from that one project.

And I think that just kind of led to that.

And I'm like, okay, let's just

do these projects that we did.

And they were like just bigger video productions.

They were interactive, and it was way

more lucrative from a revenue perspective.

I think I even had a developer back on staff

back then, and that kind of made the transition.

So after we started focusing on

that, it was just natural.

I'm like, hey, we're going to let these packages go.

And hindsight, 2020 probably could have sold something to

somebody because it had a good base, it had

some form of revenue, but it was just like,

no, off to the next adventure. That's interesting.

It was out of a new passion. Yes.

That caused you to shudder the other. Exactly.

I think that's a great way to look at it. Yeah.

And when you talk about doing video

production, are you actually behind the camera?

Are you editing and splicing stuff together?

Are you mastering audio and creating credits?

Help me understand more tangibly, what

did that look like for you? Yeah.

So I was kind of like the interactive architect.

So if you look at interactive video back then,

you basically look like, let's say you have ten

minutes of footage and you divide it back then.

This is kind of always a little bit ahead of my time.

I had bite sized pieces of information, right?

So I knew engagement times was

the number one thing back then.

So when we had a project, we're like,

okay, hey, we have these 20 video clips.

They're like 20 1 minute video clips.

And then I ended up hooking up with a

proper videographer who could also do the editing.

I didn't do much like, I know how to edit a

little bit, but I was never really a pro at it.

But my job was to kind of script and

define the structure and produce it with the customer,

and then to say, hey, why we're doing it

and who the kind of the personas and what

they want to give them that engagement part online.

And then we would hire subcontractors and ultimately

we had a full team on staff to

be able to produce them and edit them.

I was having this conversation with somebody.

I've actually had it multiple times in

recent months thinking about this podcast.

For example, today there are tons and tons of

tools that are very affordable, very easy to use.

It's very approachable.

There's all kinds of physical equipment that you can

get that you can go to best Buy, target,

Walmart, Amazon will have it the next day.

And a lot of it is

actually very reasonably priced, very affordable.

And there's also tons of training available online

to help you do these things better.

I guess where I'm going with that is it is so

much easier today for somebody to be a content creator.

And I recognize that the content that you were creating

was a little bit different than what we think of

today when we talk about a content creator.

But I mean, conceptually, there's

really not that much difference.

Do you feel like there has been a major shift in

what's available to people today, or do you look back and

go, it's same stuff, just different companies doing it?

I think for sure the tools have gotten simpler.

I think the distribution has gotten simpler.

Just generally, if you're looking from a video perspective,

the pipe of the Internet is much more used

to as we're doing video now across the globe.

I think where I always looked at video, I

never looked at video as a piece of content.

I always looked at video as a communication medium.

And I think that's where I think there's still

people, I think in the business world, they're still

not looking at video as a communication stream.

They're still looking as individual assets versus like,

if you look at my kids, they're not

thinking that video is a piece of content.

They're like, well, it's a video.

Like, I'm snapping you, here's what it is.

So I think that's the big change.

And I think there's still a

continuation that's going to happen.

I think a lot of, especially businesses, are

going to still be waking up of how

much video content they need to create.

Like, it's not one or two, it's

like three to five, a right.

I think that's still going to be the next one.

I think ultimately it's an attention game.

It's an attention society.

So I think the fundamentals, for sure, I think

AI is going to rapidly help with that, too.

But I think you're still going to have

to create the content and be the person

on the screen or share that value.

So I think fundamentally, it hasn't really changed, but

some of the for sure tools or the understanding.

Yeah, but also I think sometimes it can work against you,

because sometimes I'm like, I'm a video guy, and I go

on YouTube and like, what are the newest cameras?

I'm like, I just spent 3 hours and I'm lost.

You could never keep up with it

because tomorrow somebody will have something new.

Exactly.

Yeah, I've been shooting all, most of my

stuff is on the phones for years now.

I have the dsLrs, I have the big things, but those are.

I have also a tech museum, so

most of them end up there.

I'm a techie, I'm a gadget nerd.

And yeah, there's a graveyard somewhere in my

house, actually, there's probably a couple of them.

Amazing. Yeah.

Let's pause for just a second.

On the work front, you've mentioned

your kids a couple of times.

Where in your business journey did you

get married and start having a family? Yeah.

So in 2001, kind of the first business started, and, yeah,

I got married in 2022, and then we had kids.

About three years after that, Abby came, so

it was right in the thick of things.

And I think both her and I worked on

the businesses, which wasn't necessarily smart at that time.

We didn't know, like, we were kind of all in.

But ever since then, there's been plenty of

times where I wanted to throw in the

towel and go get a job for sure.

I think that's a normal thing,

but that's been the journey.

How did having kids change how you looked at the

business, or did it change how you looked at the

business or being the guy without the steady paycheck?

Yeah, I think it should have.

It didn't.

Why do you say it should have?

It should have for sure.

That's one of the things is what I could have,

should have done differently is looking at things from a

realistic perspective, being able to look forward and see, hey,

is this a financial, is there stability in this?

Is there something we should plan for

if you got kids coming in?

I think part of, actually, the immigration part was

living in a state of fear, of loss.

You're in a complete state of fight or flight mode.

So it wasn't until literally, I would say probably almost a year

ago that I learned how to look forward to one or two

years or plan one or three years ahead of time.

I was very 90 days focused and I think, so

having kids was like, yes, no, we're just having kids.

Let's do it. They're not going to affect her.

And let's end. You're in.

I think it was great because a

lot of times you work at home.

I've been working remotely at home

even for almost a decade.

So that's always been good that I've been there.

I didn't do much traveling, so that was a good thing.

But financially, for sure, there was

definitely hardship in that side.

But I think me and my ex, we always had a really

good idea or that kids just don't slow down your life.

Right. They're part of it.

You make them integrated.

And we had three of them.

We even have one with special needs.

So that kind of put everything.

Three is a lot of work.

So you just kind of do it right.

You like a little bit blur and do it.

I've got three myself.

And I agree, three is a lot. Yes.

You mentioned making the kids part of it.

They're part of the life.

Were they involved in the business at all?

I think there's a couple of times where the young

kids came into the business, but they weren't really.

I think once we got the kids a little bit older, Huestream was

just a full on b two B, kind of a tech company.

And so there was not really much that they

could partake in that stuff, I think, for sure.

They hung out by the office a bunch of

times, but that's probably the extent of it. Cam.

All right, back to Huestream.

You were ahead of your time.

Walk me through the life of Huestream.

It started with this project with the college,

and then one thing led to another. Yeah.

And it was just this interactive video.

I think we were doing pretty good at the height of it.

I think there's like ten of us.

And I had some really good

senior staff kind of around me.

But you make the classic kind of mistakes

when you first kind of get people together.

And I think I talk about mistakes quite

a bit because they're beautiful learning things and

that's what you got to do.

But it was completely way ahead of its time.

It wasn't really solving a problem, but the stuff

that we got was like, whoa, this is cool.

Can we get one of those?

But that's not solving a problem. Right.

And back then I was like, look at these stats,

I remember this one company we had, they were awesome.

They were a great customer from our perspective, and

they were a customer for years and we did

a bunch of projects for them, and substantial ones.

And I remember doing this lead generation interactive video and

I'm like, look, they were getting like nine and a

half minutes of engagement time on a landing page.

Okay, that's huge.

Nine and a half minutes.

And I'm like, and so this was, I don't know,

this was 8910 years ago and I'm bringing the reports

to these people and they're like, oh, that's great.

I'm like, you have no idea what that is, right?

So I was always living, having add, so always

living in the mindset of a short attention span.

So I'm looking at these numbers,

I'm going, this is incredible.

People are engaging in this content that much.

Again, if people don't understand

it, don't see the value.

So it was really like, we try to scale.

We were in a lot of universities, that was a tough

because they had really twelve to 24 month sales cycle.

So it was just too early, which has

been my problem most of my career.

And I would say not until now.

I'm like, okay, cool, this and this and this.

Go, hey, Mr. Customer, what do you want?

Okay, let me give you that.

Instead of telling you where things are going, right?

So, yeah, always early. Always early.

What have you learned from

that experience about market timing?

It's everything.

It's everything, everything.

Timing is everything.

I mean, if you look know, I

remember hearing the great story mean slack.

Look at slack.

There were IRC chat, there were like hundreds of them.

You know, if the economy didn't

crash, would have not taken away.

So there's, timing is everything, because if you look at

some businesses that are just like taken off, the messaging

is right and it's all to do with timing.

And I think that's where the business I'm in now.

It's good.

I think the timing is good.

I got good validation from, we just had the

pivot to in house video, which was, I actually

started in house video eight years ago.

It was basically about to provide like low

cost video solutions on a monthly basis and

helping people shoot videos on their smartphones.

That was eight years ago, way too early.

So I'm almost doing the same thing now,

except obviously it's more advanced and it's different

stuff, but it's all around timing.

And I think when you look at a

business going, it can be a brilliant idea.

But if the timing is off, then it doesn't

really matter because you may get the early adopters,

but crossing the chasm, you can't cross it. Right?

And I think that's the holy grail because that's

why so many small businesses are small, is because

I think the biggest challenge is scaling.

But if the timing is not there, it doesn't

matter what you do, it's not going to happen.

And it's nothing to do with how smart you

are, how team, or how much money you have.

It's just not going to happen. Right.

So I'd love to know what you're thinking

about today as your next business idea.

And let's get Doc Brown and a DeLorean and

a flux capacitor and let's just send you like

five or ten years into the future and I'm

sure you'll be the next Bill Gates 100%. Yeah.

You got that?

That's a good question.

To honestly do it is that I think

in house video is awesome where it's going.

I look at it now, it's a great business.

It has beautiful potential growth.

It solves a real problem.

I'm super passionate about it, which actually

I haven't been in a long time.

So kind of got that rejuvenated, kind

of like, hey, this is cool.

It's actually working.

But my passion lies, I think

it's for sure helping people.

I think my passion, if you look at what I've

always been obsessed about is self growth and just going

through my own crappy journeys that I had to get

through, and I learned a lot through it.

So I'm like, man, I love to be able to

use that stuff where my passion is teaching, I love

process, I love execution strategies, and I'm like, how do

I apply that with what I really do?

I think there's huge benefits in self, mental

health and mental growth, and I think AI

has a huge component to do that.

I think there's going to be AI therapists everywhere in

your pocket to help you transform your mindset, to teach

you how to work out your mind, to teach you

how to get through the things that you can.

Because we got mechanics, we got computer

text, we got data, scientists, stats, people.

You have everybody to help you with everything.

But then still the mental health from a perspective

of understanding how the brain works and to do

it, it's a huge thing to help people.

So, yeah, I mean, I've used chat gt before

on a regular basis for my own therapist.

That's pretty amazing, right?

So that's where I put my stuff in there.

You got some developers working on an app wrapped around that,

and let's sit on it for just a little bit.

Let the market get ready, and

boom, that's Pete's next big idea. That's it.

And I think that's the passion one is like, I

don't care where that know if you can help people.

You hear that a lot, right? Like, when you get to.

I follow a ton of entrepreneurs who've done

bazillion beautiful, more things than I have.

And when you get to it, I think you always kind

of hear this common occurrence is like you're just trying to

help the world be a little bit of a better place.

Because at the end of the day, right, you

hear that I don't have Ferraris and all that,

but I've heard it from people going, yeah, cool,

I have a Ferrari, and it's nice to drive.

And then you're like, okay, what's next?

And if I look at it, like, what is really driving

me to do what I do, to sacrifice, what I sacrifice

to try to fix my own brain is like, man, I

think at some point I got to help people.

That's kind of it.

So it's definitely, at the age of 48, got me a

new spunk in energies to be able to continue that.

But I think artificial intelligence to

help you live a more.

I don't like the words happy because

that's just one emotion, but more content.

Life is going to be a massive component.

You talked about helping people.

On the topic of people, was huestream the

first time that you actually employed other people?

Yeah.

Like, full time for sure.

Yeah, we had part time instructors at. In house.

Sorry, in house at right click.

But Houstream was the first time where we had some

NRC, we had government grant know, we were bootstrapped.

We were trying to raise some funds,

but we never ended up doing it.

But, yeah, that's when we had

a team and project managers and

producers and obviously, like, shareholder structure.

All right, you hire your first employee.

You've been self employed at this point for how long?

Probably like six years.

Six, seven years? Yeah.

Man, time flies.

Walk me through the thought process.

What was the point at which

you realized, I need more hands.

I need to hire people.

Yeah, I think it was also just from

my, you always heard, I think I never

had the problem of controlling stuff.

I had kind of like the opposite.

Like, oh, hey, you can help create.

Let me empower you, and let's do it together.

But it was like, in video process.

I was an amateur.

I was definitely not a pro.

And we also had a full platform,

so I was not a developer.

So I worked with developers.

So that was the key component and I

think project manager, that was obviously when there

was just too much work to manage.

And I was never really good at taking things to 100%.

I can get them start the idea, start

the process, but not to finish it.

And then also some senior people.

So I was like, that was my first.

I was like, hey, I'm not the best CEO. Maybe I'm not it.

I'm a product guy, actually, at the

core of who I am now. I'm a product guy.

Like, now I understand, obviously the business perspective and

what to do and how to drive it, but

that's just from pure cheer of experience.

But back then I even had a CEO and

we had advisors and different people to fit correctly

into the puzzle of trying to bring things together.

So I think it was just like, hey, what don't I know?

Where do I need help and what am I good at?

And what am I not good at, right?

And being able to bring those people together, hiring

your first employee, I think, is a really difficult

thing for a lot of people to do.

But you actually, as the owner founder, you brought in

a CEO to run the company that you owned.

Yes, man, walk me through that.

I think that a lot of people, for no other reason

than pride, would have a really hard time doing that.

I think it takes a ton of self awareness

to say, I'm going to own it, I'm going

to keep things going, but I'm going to get

somebody else to actually sit in that chair.

Yeah, no, I think that's a good point.

One thing I've always believed core still to this

day is always hire smarter people than you are. Right.

And always put in people that will naturally

do things better or had more experience.

So I think that's the key component.

Where I really looked at was like,

okay, this person has more experience.

They've had worked in a company.

And I realized, I'm like, hey, I'm a product guy.

I'm like, okay, I can see the vision.

I can create these things, but how are we supposed

to run sales process or sales pros or financial modeling?

I'm like, no.

And I really don't had no desire to do that.

I should have learned it, definitely,

but it was not in it.

So I never looked at that as a problem

because I was like, I've always stood by it.

We were definitely gunning for

an exit which never happened.

But I was like, well, a smaller piece of

a pie is better than no pieces of pie.

So nothing happens.

You're like, you're not going to get anywhere.

And I think I learned that

from other people and et cetera.

You hear those stories because we always hear those

massive, beautiful stories, but out of those stories there's

10,495,000 that don't work, that are regular stories, but

they still have all the same patterns, right, of

bringing people together and doing it.

And it was good, we won a bunch of awards, we

made some headlines, et cetera, but it just never got anywhere.

You ran Huestream, you had

Huestream for about five years.

Does that sound right? Yeah.

And same as what I asked earlier about, right

click, what was the moment that it was, okay,

this isn't going to work, or was it a

whole new passion, just like the creation of Huestream?

I think it was just reality

was sitting know you're burning money.

We took personally, I took on a bunch of debt.

Some of the executive staff weren't

really getting paid that much.

They were burning their own savings.

I didn't know how to properly lead.

I think we were quite small, and I think that's

where not my mistake, but to run a small, innovative

startup is like, you had to have done it, right?

You can't come from a larger organization doing 20,

30 million in revenue and then come into a

startup and know, hey, I know the big stuff.

No, it's a completely different ballgame.

And I didn't know that.

I didn't know the scrappiness of it and what it was.

So no offense to the team, the existing team

there, it was just the writing on the wall.

These contracts are taking forever.

We're not making enough revenue.

It's the classic things.

And like, okay, what are you going to do?

And then people kind of started to leave in

and I had to start laying people off.

And those are the dark,

dark times of entrepreneurship, right.

That nobody talks about.

That was like, oh, crap, the writing is

on the wall and you're leveraged and, yeah,

what are we going to do now, right.

Not to be flippant about it, but kind

of seems like it died a slow death.

Yeah, for sure.

How long was the downward trajectory?

Demise? The downward.

Yeah, I think it's about a year,

probably, because we had pretty long sales

cycles and they weren't just coming in.

And there's definitely stuff we could

have done, like going back.

I know exactly where we would have taken the company,

but you know that now you don't know that beforehand.

Hindsight is 2020. Exactly.

You said something a second ago.

You talked about you had taken on debt and

that senior folks in the company were eating into

their own savings and not taking much of a

paycheck was kind of my interpretation of that.

How did you motivate the people to stay?

Because for a lot of people, if I'm

not getting paid, I'm out of here.

But somehow you managed to keep them on for

some amount of time, making significant sacrifices themselves.

Yeah, I think I was, and I'm trying to

get that back in my life right now.

An optimist at heart.

So you want to have that optimism,

you want to have that vision.

And I had always this passion and vision and, okay,

we can do this and we can do that and

we can do this and we can do that.

I think that also allowed me to

close deals that I probably shouldn't have.

I remember closing some six figure contract over a

phone, just being like, yeah, this is great.

This is what you need to do.

And they're like, okay.

I'm like, that shouldn't have really worked, right?

That was not a sustainable, predictable sales model.

So I think a lot of time, my passion and

my energy kind of brought the wrong filter to reality.

And I think that just happened to the people around

me and all that stuff until kind of reality.

Or the numbers, like, yeah, these numbers suck, right?

In tech, salespeople are somewhat notorious for

saying yes to whatever the customer asks.

Of course it can do that, right?

Yeah, exactly.

The story you just told about that six figure deal,

you landed with a little bit of charm, was that

one of those, yeah, sure, it can do it.

And you're going back to your developers

and like, hey, guys, I need you

to work the weekend to incorporate this.

Or was it a different.

No, it was kind of a different.

It was just like we were able to sell

this newness and the vision of this whole interactive

technology that kind of nobody else had.

And it was so unique that people were buying

it, but they were buying it from a sense.

I had kind of the privilege of working

with some big companies like Microsoft and IBM

and Lenovo's and the big stickers where they

got budget to play, to just try things.

And that's not a reality of where

you're buying something to solve something.

And I think that's where also my enthusiasm, back

to your original question is I was able to

keep these people and customers and everything around was

from that creativity and that enthusiasm.

And like, yeah, we're closing these deals.

With these big companies, I'm like, yeah, but

in reality they're just testing things out.

You're not really solving a problem.

It's really hard to find other.

So I think that was a little bit of a

detriment to the whole thing where I think if you're

early, you got a super innovative, super cool product and

people want it, it's not necessarily going to help you

cross the chasm without you're solving a problem.

And I think that's where I always learn now as

an entrepreneur is like, what problem are you solving?

And is it big enough? Right?

What was it like shutting down the business?

What was that like emotionally?

What was that like in terms of the logistics

and the things that you had to do?

Did you have to refund money to customers?

Was this a subscription model?

And people had prepaid and now

the service is shutting down.

What was that time like?

Yeah, it sucked.

All of it, right?

Everything sucks in that.

I think the hardest part is letting people go.

That hurt the most, right?

When, you know, they got families and even though they

get some subsidies from the government, it still sucks.

And I've had to do that

unfortunately more than I like now.

It's obviously it's part of

the journey that just happens.

But the customers were fine because

they were one off projects.

We kept the technology running.

They had like a twelve month contract

that they sometimes paid on it.

So we kept that going.

So we never really left customers in it.

And if they were kind of upset, we

said, hey, here's all your video assets.

And we even partner up with different companies

that doing the same kind of thing say,

look, you can use these guys.

So I always take care of my customers.

I've always taken care of customers even if I

got to give them stuff away for free or

help them out because you don't want to burn

any bridges and you don't want to do that.

And that's also what brought me back here because some of

the customers I've had unknown for a decade, and I'd phone

them up and like, hey, I got this crazy idea.

They're like, sure, let's do it right.

So we always took that, I

think, financial burden for sure. That sucked.

In fact, I still might be

paying for some of that stuff.

If you're going to look at, I'm sure it's in

there somewhere on the books, but yeah, no, that sucks.

It doesn't matter how you look at it.

And then the thing is once you make the decision, like

you got to make the decision there's no going back.

There's no wavering.

So I think once you make the call, you're like,

and the conversations suck and everything, but I don't know.

There's no other way to learn.

Like, you don't find that in business school.

Shutting down a company, letting people

go, letting the dream go.

Yeah, you can't teach that in books that you got. We.

I've always heard that, too, Scott, I

don't know if you heard that.

Most people, entrepreneurs succeed

after three failures. Right?

Like, you got to burn and die three times.

I'm like, I'm right on it, and I could see it.

Like, I'm right on the money.

I'm like, I can 100% tell you why.

It just makes perfect sense because now you're like,

okay, I'm not going to do that again.

I'm not going to do that again. Okay.

If I do this, you just know.

So that's an interesting journey I was going to lead

into this next kind of portion of the conversation with.

You seem like a glutton for punishment, but what you

just said, no, I think that was incredibly valuable.

You took what you had learned and you had a

new vision for something else, and you were undeterred.

I think a lot of people would have gone and

got a regular, steady paycheck after this, but you said,

no, I'm going to take what I've learned, and I'm

going to go do this next thing.

Walk us through what in house video was, and I guess

kind of how it may have gotten birthed out of Huestream.

Yeah, I think it got birthed out of

one financial necessity because I was carrying back

then quite a bit of debt load.

And then when I looked at the debt load of what

I had to get paid every paycheck, and I'm looking what's

left over, I'm like, this ain't going to work.

Which is a beautiful entrepreneurship motivator.

That's a good way of looking at it,

because I think a lot of people would

look at that and they'd be paralyzed.

Oh, I definitely was paralyzed.

But I think I realized, and I do a

lot of journaling, and I write that quite often.

I was like, I am celebrating not giving up,

and I'm 48, and I'm still not giving up.

And I think that's the whole point.

My father is 88. Okay?

That man, he's stressed out most of the time,

loves this wine, but that guy will get on

a boat, he'll camp on his own.

He still skis black diamonds.

He's always fixing something, but he's never giving up.

But the dude's 88.

90% of his friends are gone.

Under the ground, I see so many people

that are in their 70s are nothing.

This guy will, he just bought

a red Tesla last year, right?

So I think that's part of that is just not giving up.

So when I was like, huestream, everything disappeared.

I'm like, crap.

And I'm like, hey, what do I know?

I know video, okay?

I know how to create video quite

well, and let's use smartphones, because that's

the future of using smartphones.

Because back then, it's like, even now, it's like,

hey, you want to show somebody up and film

some videos and have a video director or whatever?

It's like 20 grand.

I'm like, for 20 grand, I can create 30 videos, right?

So I saw where that was coming.

I saw where the smartphones were going.

So that was kind of an innovation.

And I knew video, and then I'm

like, okay, what do I need?

I need monthly predictable revenue. I'm like, perfect.

So let's do these monthly models again.

That was like service as a software, right?

Which is now you have that, right,

like a service as a software model.

So that's coming into fruition kind of now.

So I did that.

Yeah, that was, like, almost ten years ago. Wow.

It's been that long.

So it was really out of necessity.

And then it's like, the skill set that I had, I knew

kind of editors or I knew how that model worked, and so

I just kind of kept going in the video base, I think,

out of pure necessity from a financial model perspective.

All right, walk us through what in house video does.

This version or last version? This version.

Now, let's start with the first.

Yeah, the first version was, we were basically going, hey,

listen, how do we bring more video content to companies

and make it cheaper and better and faster?

And that was by utilizing smartphones.

And then we would do the editing for them.

And then we even got to the point where we tried

training companies to do in house video on their own.

Because I always loved to train and empower people.

That was always kind of my passion inside

me was to help people make better.

And again, it was just like we had some early adopters,

but again, it was just a little bit back then.

People were like, we're not

shooting with the smartphone.

We're not using broll.

We need a professional videos.

And I'm, like, looking at youtubers, I'm like, no,

you don't you're going to get your ass kicked.

I'm like, why would you spend 20 grand on a

video, spend $1,000 and give the 19 grand to YouTube?

That's smart.

But again, now people get it.

Now people understand it.

So back then they still.

I remember I was at a Microsoft

conference once shooting, this was years ago.

I was shooting everything on an iPad while

all these video production crews around me, I'm

like, I'm shooting on an it.

Are you going to get more views than.

So, you know, again, that kind of philosophy that

kind of kept going and kept going through.

It was a pretty good little system.

I did a lot of stuff, a lot of work with Microsoft.

We did a lot of training.

I trained a lot of companies how to do internal stuff.

And then now I think we're in a really cool

pivot where we finally kind of achieved the goal.

Where we are now is to really scale it

and to provide unlimited editing and unlimited kind of

videos for companies on a low monthly fee.

Because I worked really hard in the last

couple of years to set up a model.

I got a full remote team in Pakistan and virtually, and

it's a process game and it's a beautiful thing to be

able to do things remotely now in the world.

And we're executing on the latest tools and latest AI stuff,

and that's kind of where my brain and geek goes.

So now I'm like, man, I'm really good at this stuff.

After 15 years, you're like, this is my

superpower and I'm going to kick some butt.

So that's the kind of like, now

it's really kind of like, cool.

So 2024 is all about scaling and growing, and

that's been going on for like 15 years.

So I think now, after all those ups and downs,

you're like, cool, I know what I need to do.

I made my last decisions not.

But, hey, Peter, this is a good idea.

But competitive analysis, what are they doing?

And does it work from a financial perspective?

Does it work from a KPI perspective?

Oh, check, check.

Let's go.

And that stuff, the only way you learn it is

going through all the things in the back end.

Earlier, we talked about your college education and you kind

of threw out maybe finance would have been a good

place to start had you gone that route.

Do you think that you would not have had

some of the challenges that you had earlier on?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I think if I tell entrepreneurs now,

it's like, where would you go?

I think first of all I said, pick an industry you

like and go get a job because you're going to learn

the logos, they're going to learn their lingos, you're going to

learn the process, you're going to learn the problems, and then

if you want to do something, do on your own.

And I've seen that a lot of successful

companies where people have gone that route, right?

When you have the relationship and et cetera, I

don't know if that's ever going to be me.

But again, you can start a business being, hey,

I'm going to start a business to make money.

Well, then you're starting very simple businesses.

A simple business makes money.

You're going to lease vehicles or, I don't know,

what's the great business I keep looking at is

the rental lockers for all your stuff.

That's a phenomenal business, right?

I mean, here, get a bunch of lockers, get a bunch

of land, put it up, and it's full all the time.

That's a good business.

It's not innovation, but it's a really good business.

And I've often looked at that.

I'm like, should I start thinking like that? Sure.

Now I do a little bit, for sure, because

obviously you need the financial stuff about it.

But I think I'm always going to innovate. It's not me.

It's not who I am.

So I think going backwards, it's kind of hard.

What would you say to go backwards?

But it'd be definitely a different kind of life.

And I think it'd be like my dad always

says, like, you got to work on your own.

You can't trust anybody.

That was my business training.

And you kind of like, okay, work on your own.

Don't trust anybody.

That's not the right way you want to do it.

I'm trying to teach my kids.

I'm like, look, you look at the value.

What problem are you solving?

So my youngest comes out, it's

like, dude, I got this idea.

I'm like, cool, okay, what problem are you solving?

Nothing. It's like, there you go.

It's not going to work.

Or if you want to do something

passionate, well, that's a passion project.

Look at that.

There's a ways to even.

My oldest daughter right now, her mom's

a realtor, and she's phenomenal at understanding.

She's 18 and her understanding of contracts and clauses, and

I think she still holds the record in her middle

school for the highest sales because we started teaching our

kids going, hey, here's a profit analysis.

Here's how to do it.

Is it worth your time?

And I think those are the

lessons that I never got taught.

So if I went back, it's like,

okay, what am I trying to do?

Am I trying to be passionate and creator, or

am I trying to be a business person?

Am I trying to create value and make money?

And I think those are very two different things.

And you hear that, don't start

a business to make money.

And you're like, no, that doesn't make any sense.

Like, yes, it does.

Today is a canadian holiday. Nobody's working.

I had six meetings and I'm doing this.

I don't think about holidays anymore. Right.

It's a different thing.

So I don't know if that really answered your

question, but I think it's like the journey that

life takes you for, you have to embrace it

because you kind of don't have a choice. Right.

Until you start making your own choices. Yeah.

It's a good way to look at it.

As far as your team goes today,

you've got an offshore group in. Yeah.

Talk to me about setting up shop on another continent.

Yeah.

In Pakistan. Yeah.

Why Pakistan?

Like, how did that come about?

So it was a pure economical perspective of one to

7th ratio of where we needed to produce content and

give the services to our customers at a reduced rate

than they can do it internally, full stop.

That's the business model from that perspective.

So you need to support.

You need to edit videos and support it because

video is really intensive in terms of tasks, and

you have to do that cheaper than they can

do it internally, otherwise the business doesn't work.

So you have to look somewhere else.

I ended up being in Pakistan.

I've used upwork forever, found great

people, designers, and I happened to

find somebody there through somebody.

And it was in Pakistan, it was great.

And I started learning the culture

and started learning the people.

And then I learned the women are amazing.

My entire team is all women.

They're phenomenal, they're brilliant, they're highly

educated, they work incredibly hard.

They're so gifted, which I think sometimes western

people now take for granted what work is.

And that's also that you learn when you're a

business owner, you're like, no, these are people.

You need them to work.

You can be a nice guy, but you're not.

I have no problem letting people go anymore.

You can't learn that.

You look it from perspective.

But I knew other companies

were doing it, successful ones.

So I saw the business model from that perspective and

then I said, okay, can we make it work?

The technology is there, the Asana is there, the

conferences are know, the Internet pipe is there.

I just happen to have also a great partnership,

which is, it's, it's an editing house, and I

know the owner, so him and I have been

working together and we created this partnership just out

of just symbiotic relationship and it just worked out.

Everything's done over Zoom, right?

Or Google Meet or.

I've actually never met them yet.

I look forward to it flying there

once, but I've never met them.

But we talk every day.

We have our KPIs, we're growing.

Our customers are really happy because we

can prove point from the data perspective.

Like, it's all data.

It's like, here's the value.

And it just happened.

And to the point where I'm super optimist

with my customers, like, here's what we pay

the team, here's what I get paid.

Here's our business model.

If you can do it better than I can, can we hire you?

Because it's not easy, right?

But it works.

And I think that's also the I really look at now.

It's like, what problem are solving?

It's like, well, product, great video content,

cost effectively and quickly, and the team

to support it, that's it.

That's what we're doing.

And I think that's where the ten or

15 year journey of entrepreneurship, you kind of

get to that and then now you can

make decisions are like, okay, that doesn't matter.

That matters. That matters. This doesn't matter.

Hey, you're doing it to 80%. Good enough. Awesome.

Keep going.

You're rocking.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

So I think out of business necessity, where video

came and where the markets went, and I always

knew, like, even three or four years ago, I'm

like, everybody's going to know upwork. Why is that?

Like, agencies have used that for a secret forever.

I'm like, why would that be a secret, Mr. Customer?

You got upwork.

You can hire them directly.

What's the problem?

You don't want to manage them? We'll manage them.

For where?

And I love transparency.

I don't hide anything.

I should be more strategic. I'm like, I'm not.

I don't hide anything.

So it just kind of naturally came up.

I learned the culture, I learned what's important to them,

how they value family, and I keep empowering them.

They're like, what about if we make a mistake?

I'm like, don't worry about it. Just, who cares?

Nobody's going to die, but we're

going to lose some money.

I'm like, no, it doesn't matter.

So I'm like, empowering them.

It's super cool to see that.

What's important to them, it's a

whole, they work so hard.

I'm telling them, stop working.

I told one of my senior, I'm

like, you check your email, you're fired.

Because they don't have that.

Understand that concept.

So it's been awesome. And I'm really passionate.

I'm like, I want to grow to a

company of 100 beautiful people, mostly women there,

because I just want to empower them.

And I think it's going to happen and I think we have

really good visions and it was kind of meant to be.

Do you see yourself expanding into some

other geographies to have some diversification?

Your labor force, different parts of

the world are kind of volatile.

And does that ever cross your mind? 100%.

We do a lot of celebrations, right?

We do like daily huddles, right?

And you start off with celebrating.

What are you celebrating?

And my team says, yeah,

I'm celebrating electricity today.

And I'm like, right, wow.

I have nothing to complain about.

I'm like, kids, come here. Nothing.

I'm like, here, come here. What?

Your ps five is not working

because your controller run into batteries. Come here.

I'm going to show you what the real world is.

So knock on Wood.

It hasn't impacted much.

But you're right, the politics

stuff, they're sometimes in there.

Every time I talk to them, I'm like, yeah, I'm good.

We're happy.

I have nothing to complain about.

But as we grow, for sure to do other different

contents from that safety perspective in terms of doing it.

But I'm also a super redundant kind of guy.

So we're so process heavy and oriented.

I don't have, like, one team

member can do everybody else's job.

I did that.

I love technology from being a little bit of a

geek guy, so I love servers and scaling servers and

I'm like, why can't we do that with people?

Why can't we do that with procedures and processes?

So in the last year, we didn't kind

of really acquire any more customers on purpose.

We just really processed everything to the point

where everything's driven by KPIs and we can

go, hey, if some person'sick take the time

off, like, they have massive families in Pakistan,

like, really big families, right?

And so somebody's always kind of getting

sick or something, and you have to.

We're not messing with that.

If your family needs you, you stop.

You put your laptop down, and the

rest of the team's got you.

That's why we got Asana.

That's why we got slack.

That's why we got procedures

and processes and playbooks.

It's all in there.

And so that's always my vision for it, and

I think that also keeps our customers in it.

But in the future, for sure, we can go.

Know the Philippines is a good place to go.

Lithuania, that's also a great place to go.

We even have, like, South Africa,

and some of those ones are.

I've done some testing in South America

and different things and different cultures, but,

yeah, I think it's a global workforce.

It's awesome. Yeah.

And it could be all done right.

Technology, it's all there.

Did your team start by finding people on upwork?

And you sent one project off, and it went so well.

You said, hey, I want to do more with you.

And from there was it like, who do you know?

Yeah, once I learned the culture, and then once

I learned the right people to get and where

to get them and what we're looking for, and

then it's like, who do you know?

And they know a lot of people, right?

Like, western culture is really

hard to find people sometimes.

Well, their families are so big. They know it. Right?

They know each other people and who they work with.

So we've been super lucky to be able to

do it, to find great people, and especially at

the early stages when one day, one week you're

doing this, the other week you're doing that one.

And they've never seen digital tools, and

now they're like, pros at Asana, task,

KPIs and metrics in a heartbeat.

That's another thing that also came out.

So it's a beautiful thing.

And I sometimes get on these

huddles and they start talking Urdu.

That's their language, Urdu, right?

And then I get on the call and

they stop and they change to English.

I'm like, no, keep going. It's cool.

I want to hear you guys, because

they're like, just like, get it on.

So we're total multicultural.

I'm like, I'm the only english dude.

And it's awesome. And especially.

Even now, like, the editors on the full team, sometimes

they don't speak English, but we have such processes and

ais that it doesn't really matter where a person is

and what they are, and especially with YouTube.

And if you just believe in people, and

you give them like, I've always treated them

like, no, whatever you guys need, let's make

sure you're sleeping, make sure your family's good.

And that's the first place.

And they love it.

I'm super honored to have them.

What are the biggest cultural differences?

Oh, I think the female work ethic is extraordinary

because they do everything, and then I just want

to empower them because they empower me. Right?

Like, that's how it works.

I think, again, it's just like we in the

western culture, yes, we have to keep the freedom

going, the whole nine yards, but we're very lucky.

So I think that the cultures that they

live in, sometimes we went to all working

at home because just from a safety perspective,

women traveling in the evenings, it's not safe.

There's those culture things.

They have regular brownouts and regular things that

are coming out that you're just like, wow.

That just still happens quite often everywhere else.

That's a big culture shift.

And I think one of the biggest ones was

like, I do a lot of empowerment for them

to believe in themselves to make decisions, because that's

another thing I've learned is here.

It's like, people are like, of course I'm right.

And they're like, no, we don't believe that we're right.

And I'm like, no, you're always right. I always tell.

We have a laughing joke.

I'm like, what's Peter going to say?

Yes, because give me your idea.

We have like, hey, if it's

a problem, give me three solutions.

And what do you think you're going to implement?

I'm like, yes, right.

So I think that was a culture shock.

It's a great one because I love to

empower, but that was, like, their belief in

saying, hey, it's okay to make decisions.

And I'm really trying to, like, one of the things that

I'm actively trying to learn how to do is to make

leaders, not managers, which is harder to do than I thought.

But once you turn them into it, like, how

well it's running, how well they're doing, it's amazing

of where people have real, they've had no understanding

of technologies or saunas or workflows or Google drives

or any of that nature.

They came from a paper based educational system,

and then within months, they're driving strategies and

doing things for massive organizations worldwide with much

faster turnaround and accuracy than anything else.

I think some of our biggest problems right now

is just sometimes we can't get the spelling.

Right from the editors. Right.

Sometimes we misspell the stuff on videos

that it drives our customers nuts.

I'm like, look, if that's the worst thing that

we're doing, misspelling something, I'm okay to do that.

That's okay.

That's a mistake that we can kind of work on.

So I'm in awe as to what that side of the

world, how awesome they are and how hard they work.

Right.

From a workflow standpoint, do

you handle the customer interaction?

You're the face to the customer and

then you're conveying things back to them?

Or do you have your team in

Pakistan actually interacting directly with customers?

They run the calls fully. Yeah.

They run the calls fully, yeah.

I had to put definitely a

couple of strategic people in there. Right.

So natural people.

I have, like, a perfect mix

of more creatives and more structure.

And you put them together and you give

them a good process, they do it.

And of course, I'm always available. Right.

So my clients always know it.

In fact, I usually get on calls, I'm like, hi.

And they're like, KP, can you get off?

Because we need to get work done.

So I'm actually slow down the process.

But no, even this new package that we're launching,

Niab, she's one of our customer success manager.

She's going to be the creative, she's

going to be a remote video director.

She's phenomenal. Right.

So I think it's just also, I mean, I've been

in video for such a long time where I've been

able to process everything to the little detail.

So then I set them up for success.

I don't set them up for failures.

I taught them how to ask questions if they

don't know and just really have confidence and accuracy

in how to communicate with a client.

And those are kind of the basic stuff.

And I think also me having all those thousands of

hours of training helps, so I can articulate the things.

But no, they're running calls and

they're doing everything, and then they

interact with the entire editing team.

And we have, I mean, the total of us right now is

about a dozen with the creatives, and it's a humming system.

I think last year we produced about 400 or 500 videos.

And on average we have about 3000 tasks

a month in Asana that we plow through.

It's a machine and it's just getting started.

What parts of the job do

you enjoy the most flowcharting processes?

I don't know.

I think creating something ooh there's a problem.

How do we solve it? Right?

I think that feeds my add brain right now.

I was talking to one of my mentors and I was

telling them about like, hey, I think I need to help

people in the future heal some of this stuff through the

anxious attachment cell or the stuff that I went through and

I really learned because I see a process in my head.

He's like, dude, ever since I know you've

been creating processes, that's all I've been doing.

And it's right, like, I have these

kitchen cupboard, there's this acrylic stuff and

you can write whiteboard markers.

I've filled that thing so many times, right?

I'm like, okay, that's where I get lost.

So I think that's the stuff I really enjoy.

Obviously, talking with customers and empowering them

is awesome and empowering my team.

I think at the end of the day, if you make

somebody's day better and you empower them, there's nothing better.

Right.

That fills your cup.

But, yeah, processes. Process.

I kind of love the process stuff.

What do you enjoy the least?

What do you wish you could just

have somebody take away running the company?

Yeah, it's a good question.

I think the financial stuff, yeah, it's getting okay.

I definitely started to embrace a little bit

of the numbers and you got to go

perspective writing my own content and marketing.

Like right now we're just redoing the website and the fastest

way is for me to write it because I'm in it.

I see it, I know what it is.

And especially working with Chat, you can do it.

I hate that stuff.

But I know now I'm like, I just got to grind through it

and get to it to get where we want to get to.

I would say sometimes emails or sometimes doing the stuff

that is just a mundane task where just my brain

doesn't have enough dopamine to do, but I'm learning to

just lean into the stuff that's difficult and hard and

do it and push through it to rewire the brain.

But yeah, I think there's the 20, 30% of

stuff you're like, yeah, and it'd be nice.

Like, I can vision having a bigger team and

you have somebody marketing and stuff and you have

everybody, but at the end of the day, you're

still going to have to make decisions.

You're still going to have to do the hard stuff.

So that's kind of what I'm

learning now as an entrepreneur.

It's like, dude, I'm either going to embrace

it or I'm going to do something else. Right?

Because I think at some point, the stuff that

drives me nuts, I'm like, yes, I can get

rid of it, but I've heard that, too.

Gary Vee always said, it's like every time you

open your phone, there's going to be problems.

There's always are.

The bigger you get, the more problems there are.

So I'm like, at what point are you going to go?

I'm just going to enjoy the problems.

I'm going to stop whining about it.

I'm not going to enjoy the problems.

And I think that's kind of where I'm in my

life right now, where I'm like, you know what?

I'm just going to see if I can switch

my mindset and obviously still work towards the stuff

that I do not want to do.

I definitely want to outsource that

and buy back my time.

As Dan Martell always says, this

won't be true for everybody.

People in the medical profession in

particular, you made a comment earlier.

You were talking about your team, and they were afraid

to make mistakes, and you used a phrase that I

actually use around here from time to time.

Nobody dies. Right?

Man, I think that when you have that mentality,

like you talked about, that every time you open

your phone, there's going to be problems.

If you can couple that with the mentality that

nobody dies, at least again in our world.

Yeah, exactly.

I think that makes it a lot easier to

deal with the problems, or at least the mental

aspect of how you deal with the problems. Right?

Yeah, no, I think it's 100% correct.

I think personally, I made problems way bigger than

they were just from my fear based background.

It's like making a customer mistake or if

some customer said something that was negative.

Now I'm like, tell me what's wrong.

Tell me where we're messing up. Right.

If you're not going to tell me,

I'm going to send you your survey. Right.

So, yeah, I think, especially with the team

in Pakistan, sometimes making mistakes for three or

$400 is massive deal for them, for us,

is like, well, it's part of business.

Nothing's going to happen.

Or if we reedit a video or if we

got to do it and we got great partners.

So I think that is, know,

what's the worst case scenario?

And I think this is also just from a

human, like, we always imagine the worst case scenario.

And I heard that that was

from what's his name, Jeffrey Hazlett.

He was the CEO of Kodak, and he actually

said that I met him a couple of times.

He goes, yep, if somebody make

a mistake, nobody like, right?

And his mistakes he was talking

about, they're like millions of dollars.

So it's like you kind of look at it going, nobody's

going to die, and we're all going to learn from it.

And I think that's a big thing to kind of live by.

Definitely.

Three kids.

What do you think they'll end up doing?

Will they go on to start their own businesses as well?

Would you advise them against it?

Would you do like your dad did and

say, don't trust anybody, go do it yourself?

So my oldest one, I think, is going into

real estate because her mom's in real estate.

And if you look at the time versus output

from a revenue perspective, it's a really good business.

So I think we talked about that.

Plus, she really likes it.

And I think the other two kids, we're talking about

what my youngest, we talk about what he wants to

do, and he's still kind of floating back and forth.

But we do talk about quite a bit

the importance of money, finances, which I think

that I certainly where money is important and

people say, well, money doesn't buy happiness.

I know, but it does help a lot, right?

And I think that what I teach

the kids was like trying to.

There was a couple of times where we

teach the kids lessons, like, hey, cool, you're

going to help us with this chore or

something, and here we'll give you the money.

And then you're like, that's it.

I worked that hard for that.

I'm like, yes, there's your lesson.

There's the value of what you're doing.

Or a couple of times they

start to understand it going on.

Man, that's really expensive.

If you look at this economical state,

I'm like, okay, you're 13, you're starting

to understand it and then combining it.

I think people say there's

that misconception, not misconception.

It's like, okay, follow your

passion and follow your stuff.

I'm like, no, 20% of the time is going to suck.

But there's definitely, like, you can choose

what careers or different things to do. Why?

But I know my youngest one is starting to

see is like, no, I like the freedom. I like the time.

I like to be able to not control my stuff.

And I'm like, so he's getting it.

But I'm like, all right, buddy, but

let's learn how to create value, right? So I'm pregnant.

So, like, if you're going to start

something, it's got to have value.

You're going to have to solve a problem.

And I think those are the things

that I keep teaching my kids.

Those are the kind of the real

business lessons, timing, value, and you're solving

a problem and people want it. Right.

And there has to be also competition.

If you don't have competition, it's not a good sign.

You're not Google, you're not Facebook.

Forget that.

You don't focus on the stuff.

So I think that's a little bit of a

different conversation than my dad had with me.

I think about the story you told about being in

school in Czechoslovakia, and even if you aced the test,

you weren't able to earn a top grade.

I think about entrepreneurship where there are

no caps, there are no limits.

You put in the effort, and it doesn't

always work out, but oftentimes it does.

Do you think that that experience, maybe not just that

one isolated kind of part of being there, but do

you think that that has been the big driver, the

big motivator for you to continue this entrepreneurial journey?

Yeah, I think so.

I think I'm wired from that experience

never to stop and never give up.

And I think that quest to kind of heal the

child has been so strong, and I think that's part

of that whole journey when I started this company or

kind of a couple of revisions, you're quite privileged where

when you got a team behind you.

And I went through some hard times where I literally

had to dig in and I work with my therapist

and I had to re change some neuropathways in the

brain one by one, which means every two or three

minutes I have to stop and do specific exercises.

I did that for two weeks, and I

maybe worked 1 hour a day, right?

And that was the gift

from the entrepreneurship journey.

So I'm like, can I ever give that up?

I'm like, no, I'm not going to give that up. Right.

And I think that's also what's driving me, and I'm

for sure, and I've seen that before in the past,

is like, the people who've had really, and I've heard

this before, it's like, you can only go as high

in life as you being low. Right.

And I know people that are just like this normal.

Nothing wrong with it, absolutely

nothing wrong with it.

But I'm like, I can't do that.

My life's like, now I'm just embracing it.

That's the embrace.

And I think that's from the past,

from the trauma, from the learning.

My parents had a bunch of successes and a

bunch of failures where we're like, yeah, we're selling

the house because we can't afford the mortgage.

Let's go.

My dad even, too, he was, what, mid 50s when we

had nothing and he had to go back to Czech Republic

and start something and sure enough made it happen.

Right?

So that's another thing that you

obviously see from the outskirts.

And I think I've really, in the last year, really

started looking at all of the failures in life as

beautiful gifts and learning things and going, man.

And it's like, now I ain't giving up.

I'm just starting. Yes.

Body's a little bit more tired in the morning when you

hit the gym, it's a little more creakier and all.

A little more yoga. Right.

It's like, okay, more sensitive to food

now you got to eat clean.

But I think the mind is just getting started.

I imagine that with right click and

huestream, there were probably some dark days. Yeah.

And you talked a second ago about you can

only go as high as you've gone low.

If you could go back and talk to

yourself, knowing what you know now on those

darkest days, what would you tell yourself?

Very good question.

I think that one is when you first are

in it, you think, this is it, right?

You're in it and you're like, this is it.

This is the lowest point.

This is how it's going to be.

There is no end.

And in reality, the upswing is right around the corner.

Right.

It's like when people talk about recession,

we're going to hit a recession.

I'm like, yeah, the average recession

lasts like six to eight months.

It's not that long, right?

Yeah, it's a crappy time. It's not that long.

People are going to resettle, whatever.

It's not going to be uncomfortable,

but it doesn't last that long.

It doesn't last decades.

And I think if I went and said, look,

when you're in that, look around, let go of

the rosy color glasses, look at the truth.

So the questions that you're asking yourself, if

they make you feel uncomfortable, get to them

because that's going to show you the truth.

Like, lean into the discomfort.

Know that the stuff can change in a week.

And it usually does.

It usually changes in a week.

It changes fast.

And then that, I think what I would say, and,

hey, you're going to have this again and again.

And again, and it's not

only entrepreneurship, but it's life.

And I think that's the whole thing is like,

what I always teach my kids is like, look,

happiness is one out of 17 or 20 emotions.

Sadness and feeling guilt or feeling shame.

You don't want to stay in there, but it's

going to happen, and it's okay to feel those.

I had a phenomenal therapist one day told

me it's like, emotions are like a wave.

And where we really screw up as adults is

we try to force the wave not to break.

And you're holding up all this water and

you're spending all this energy just trying to

go, no, I'm not going to feel it.

It's not going to break on me.

Versus, like, let it break. Feel it.

It's going to last probably a couple of hours.

It's going to suck. And then guess what?

You're going to feel way better.

So I think that's like going back to entrepreneurship.

Look, learn from it.

There's always a lesson.

Everything kind of happens for a reason.

Open your eyes.

Yeah, it's going to suck.

So get off the booze, make sure you eat well, get

a lot of sleep, exercise as much as you can, and

you will get through this a lot quicker than you think.

So that's looking back, and there's

a lot of great wisdom.

I love that image of trying to stop the wave.

You can't stop the wave. No.

Let's talk about looking forward.

What's next?

Yeah, I'm really excited about in house

version 362, whatever version we're on.

I even got to over the guilt going back.

I'm like, I've changed the company name so many times.

Like, no, I'm going back to in house.

I'm really excited for this model.

I think for the first time,

everything's like, it's the right place.

I made the decision by data.

It feels good.

I've never been this energetic in a long time, and I

think that's a lot of the self growth I've worked on.

But I'm also seeing a vision where this is

not an end all and a be all.

I want a great company.

It's going to produce a lot of great people.

It's going to do financially well. I can see it.

And then I'm like, okay, then I

want to really lean into potentially helping

people because I love creating content.

I've created so many courses.

I'm thinking, I'm like, why did I go through this?

Why did I go through training? Failure.

I had a great marriage for 18 years. Didn't work out.

I got these three kids.

I'm an emigrant kid.

I got PTSD.

I get add, I got all these stories.

I never given up.

And then all of a sudden, I'm like, I have

a phenomenal team, and I can grow a phenomenal company

that knows how to acquire customers online, focuses on video

content, and we can dominate in video.

And I've created, like, thousands of

videos, and then I've trained people.

I'm like, okay, I got to combine them, right?

And I love neuroscience.

I love all these things.

I don't have phds or anything,

but I have several therapists.

Tell me, Peter, you have two honorary phds

because you come in here so friggin educated.

I'm like, all right.

So I just got to believe in myself, okay?

So I think those combinations really what it is

is that's kind of what I'm like, man.

I feel like I'm just starting again, and

I feel like I got a ton of

energy and passion, and I'm also committed.

Like, financially, it's a good driver.

You're like, okay, that's always a good thing

to go, but there's just a lot of

good things happening that are colliding at the

right time, both from my perspective and everything.

And I think also having a digital media company behind

me will help me accelerate helping a lot more people

on a broader scale, which I love to do.

What that exactly looks like, I don't know.

I have some ideas, but I told myself I

cannot start editing until 2025 because, no, I need

to focus on 2024 for scaling in house.

So it's simple scale.

Those are my two words that I'm focusing on.

Simple scales. Simple scales. Fancy fails.

But I'm seeing, hey, what, quote unquote, a purpose

is or why I've gone through and what I

naturally love to give and to help people.

And, yeah, it's some pretty exciting times.

I'm sure there's going to be hard times.

It's going to suck.

Get up at 05:00 in the morning, go to the gym.

It always sucks.

But I think there's some good stuff happening.

Peter Matejcek, thank you for being

on In the Thick of It.

Thank you for having me, Scott.

It's been a true pleasure.

That was Peter Matejcek, founder and CEO of WorkflowX.

To learn more, visit WorkflowX.io.

If you or a founder you know, would like

to be a guest on In the Thick of It,

email us at intro@founderstory.us.