Andrew: Hey there freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy where I think I do interviews with entrepreneurs where I am empathic, where I get to because we’ve got video turned on. I know most of you don’t watch video but I do because I’ve got video, I think that I can find the spots in the entrepreneur story where we can go deeper, where they’re comfortable saying things that they would feel uncomfortable and not in the other situation.
And still when I interviewed Brandon Evans a few weeks ago I found out afterwards from the person who introduced us that I was being weak that I didn’t ask about how he got fired, that I didn’t asked enough about his divorce, that I didn’t asked enough about the transformation that happened in his life. And I thought I did a good job, Brandon. I thought that as I was looking at you and talking to you about your divorce I could’ve sworn that I saw something in your face that said, “Andrew, back off, I’m not going to give you anything. It’s uncomfortable and I could’ve sworn the same thing happened with the divorce.”
And I said, “You know what, I got a solid interview with an entrepreneur who created Crowdtap, which did influencer marketing that actually worked. I talked to him about how he raised millions, how he made millions, and how he was fired. I thought we got some great stuff here, if we don’t go into the divorce, maybe that’s okay. I don’t have to drag people into my personal mission.”
But apparently, Brandon was willing to go deeper into it than I was. Apparently, I miscalculated. And so I invited him back with this premise. I said, “You know what, you’re an entrepreneur who’s been through it, who has a credibility to talk about the challenges of being as systemized, as anal, as driven as we are, and can talk about how that played a positive role and the challenge of that and can talk about what happened in your life that caused you to lose this vision of yourself, which is the perfect wife, the perfect business, the perfect everything.”
So I invited Brandon on here. We have no agenda. I’m just kind of going to rip with him and understand that. It’s a kind of conversation we might have if we were just sitting, two guys over a scotch. The only thing I probably wouldn’t do is introduce him as the guy who currently runs 1Heart which backs heart-led founders and helps them built . . .
Brandon: I used to run Scotch.
Andrew: You’d used to run Scotch tasting too?
Brandon: Scotch brands, yeah, I ran as brand manager for some single malts and kind of got back in the day.
Andrew: You know what, I was going to suggest we bring a scotch over but I’ve got another conversation after this, so we’ll miss it. But I will say 1Heart, actually, what’s your one sentence on what 1Heart is?
Brandon: We help heart-led leaders build conscious companies. So we’re focused on both enabling entrepreneurs to follow their heart and build more heart-led companies and also providing a support system and resources that enabled them to do that.
Andrew: You know Brandon, I must not . . . I know I have a heart, I’m fully passionate but I must be completely heartless because I talked about you a lot after the interview. The thing that I kept saying was, “He also runs these Ayahuasca events for entrepreneurs where he take some to new places and they do Ayahuasca.” I completely missed that the business actually does much more than that. All right, let me talk about my two sponsors and get right into this. The two sponsors are HostGator and Toptal
All right, Brandon, here’s the thing, let’s just setup the premise. You raised how many millions over the course of building your business?
Brandon: The last one, Crowdtap, we raised $15 million.
Andrew: Fifteen?
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: Total sales at your height was how much?
Brandon: Close to 20 million.
Andrew: Twenty million.
Brandon: That year.
Andrew: Okay. And then you were fired. Now, let’s go back before all of this, and you had a vision for yourself. It seems like you had a big one, a grand one. What was your vision for yourself of where you were going to be at this stage or 10 years from now in your life?
Brandon: Yeah, I think like a lot of entrepreneurs. I mean I thought about it, you know, very metric-spaced, very sequential. You know, I saw myself maybe making a certain amount of money, running a certain size company, having a certain type of wife, and . . .
Andrew: How much at your height? I’ll tell you the truth, for me, I always assume that I’d have at least $400 million and probably a billion dollar company, 400 million was how much you would have to have to get into the Forbes 400 list when I became a fan of it. And I was bummed, not bummed, I was almost depressed when I couldn’t get to that, when I . . . everyone thinks that I had a great success with the first business. I was feeling like a failure, like a loser. What was your vision to that, your version of that vision?
Brandon: Yeah. I don’t know if I had the exact number but I definitely saw myself as having enough money. I mean for me, money was always a bit about what I could create with it less so than material goes.
Andrew: So what could you have created at your height? If you did this right, this life as you planned it when you were younger?
Brandon: Have the ability to start impactful businesses that I want to start without investors and without anyone to kind of . . .
Andrew: Like what’s an impactful business?
Brandon: Well, my definition now would probably be different. I mean . . .
Andrew: What was it back then? I want to know the dream that toppled down, that forced you to figure out who you were.
Brandon: Back then there’s probably like a lot of being on the cover of Fast Company, you know, those types of accolades like being Steve Jobs or, being one of these people that people talk about as being super innovative, starting all these companies, building all these things. You know, there was definitely a piece of it that was like about me. Not, I mean, I guess it’s all from an ego standpoint but it was more about my potential and like just feeling like I could do all these things and it would take being on the cover of that magazine to prove that I actually live that potential life.
Andrew: So being on the cover of the magazine wasn’t an end goal, it was so that you could prove to yourself and the world that you could then go to the next step and the next step was the end goal, and the end goal was what?
Brandon: Well, that was part of the end goal.
Andrew: Okay.
Brandon: I think I was proving to myself that hey, this is one of those guys. This is one of those guys that changed business that changed the way things are done that can just make me . . .
Andrew: Why do you think . . . I’ll tell you why I needed that, I’m looking you’re very good looking guy, you’ve got style. I don’t. We’re wearing essentially the same shirt, right, but still, no.
Brandon: We’re look a little alike.
Andrew: Here’s why, because I felt like such a failure in New York City where everyone look good, where everyone had money, where everyone was doing big things, I did not want to be just a nobody in that world especially when I read these books about people who did become somebodies. So for me, that’s why I had to be on the cover of Forbes magazine just like Ron Perelman was on the cover of Forbes magazine because I’m not going to live in these people’s shadow. I have to be there. What was it for you? You don’t have that?
Brandon: Yeah, there’s probably a bit of a Napoleon complex too. I mean I’m not . . .
Andrew: Because of your height, how tall are you?
Brandon: 5’6″, 5’7″.
Andrew: And you always felt insecure because of that, walking into a room and having to look up to talk to people?
Brandon: Yeah, there’s I think a piece of that.
Andrew: Yup.
Brandon: And I think I’ve always been a leader but it’s always been kind of leading from behind or people don’t necessarily maybe recognize that immediately. It’s also my personality, I’m a little more introverted so I’m not someone that’s going to go in and light up a room.
Andrew: But you wanted to? You wanted people to look at you anyway?
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, I think there’s an element of that and at the end of the day, I mean I wanted people to follow me. I am a leader and, you know, I think when I’m with people for a long enough period of time, I think they recognize that and those traits come out. But I think for me, I guess I always want it to be easier like I wanted to walk into the room and people know I’m the leader or I wanted to, you know, have the money sitting in the bank account so I could start the company I wanted to start. Everything I had done I’ve almost begged for it or, you know, every job I’ve had I’ve written passionate emails about why I should be there and called and I’ve always fought for the stuff I have.
Andrew: And it feels like at some point in your life you should just not have to prove yourself anymore, have people feel like you’re proven.
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: I see, and so that was a big reason why you wanted to get to Fast Company and so on. The wife, you told me before we started, “I had this vision for what my wife would be like, what she would look like, what she would do.” Why do you think that was? For me, again, going back, beautiful women in New York, super smart, you can’t even say, ‘Yeah, they’re beautiful but they’re dumb.” They’re super smart. They’re incredibly accomplished, right? And so I could either be the guy who has third rate, a hundredth rate, whatever it is which I . . . I wasn’t even that guy, I couldn’t even go and talk to them. Or I could be the guy who’s that but says, “One day, one day I will work my way to that.” What was it for you then?
Brandon: I think, I mean, I think part of the problem, and this has been the big breakthrough and big challenge, and journey of my life now is as an entrepreneur or just as a highly analytical person, everything was in my head trying to figure out answers and solutions and I was very good at figuring out a lot of solutions to things and when you get good at that and you start to depend on that and whatever the problem was I always knew I could get myself out of it, I could talk myself into this, I could . . . and that’s just not the way to look at a relationship. And I think the more you use your head, the more you try to analyze factors and is this right, is that right, and trying to figure out with your mind, the further away you actually get from connecting with your heart up.
Andrew: I see, you’re saying this isn’t just I needed to have this type of level of woman. It’s that you’ve thought that way. Some people I find think like chess players, others like spreadsheet jockeys and so on.
Brandon: Right.
Andrew: You’re saying whatever that was, I don’t know the label, you just had to solve the problem. The problem was how do I get the best, the best wife and the best wife means the looks, this, that. I see. And so you were going towards that, all right.
Brandon: Well, I just thought I could figure it out. I thought I . . . not sort of the best looking but it’s, I could figure out the person for me through my mind. And there’d be this checklist or there’d be this questions I would ask or there’d be these things in our life that would be there or wouldn’t be there, and that was all just, yeah, it was a puzzle. And that’s ultimately, you know, what became the huge struggle.
Andrew: Can I ask you something?
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: When I’m that deep in my head I can’t perform sexually. When you’re that deep analyzing, can you actually still perform?
Brandon: Yes. But it wasn’t happening. I would say I was able to shut it off at least for some of that period. It was more every day when I’m just thinking about things or when I’m sitting next to her and we don’t have something to talk about and like I’m like why aren’t we talking or why aren’t we connecting . . .
Andrew: And you’re trying to manufacture the moment even?
Brandon: Yeah. And then that became even harder because then your mind is working and you’re like, “Okay, well, why don’t we have this in common or why are we talking about this?” The funny thing is I married a foreign woman. She’s actually from Israel and I always wanted this deep connection of like we come from the same place and we know the same things and the same TV shows and we had none of that. And somehow I got to this place where, you know, enough boxes were checked and like I was always trying to figure that out and I was always trying to like why aren’t we connecting, why isn’t this happening, why isn’t that happening. And . . .
Andrew: And constantly this was going on in your head?
Brandon: Constantly, yeah. And it was almost with this dialog of like, should I be with her, should I not be with her . . .
Andrew: From the beginning?
Brandon: Pretty much, pretty early on. And then definitely as we started thinking should we move in together, should we get engaged, should we get married, and stay married, so those conversations became prevalent and really kind of paralyzed and debilitated me I guess in a bit.
Andrew: All right, before we go into the debilitation and the resurrection was there a period that you look at and you say, “This is me at my height”?
Brandon: Before that.
Andrew: From back then was there a point where you looked back and you say, “This is not the mountain top but I remember standing as high as I could, as comfortable as I was in my own skin and then at some point I fell down”? I’ll tell you for me.
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: For me, it was I remember specifically, I was with someone who I was dating and I remember we were in the bathroom of some hotel getting ready to go to the day and I remember saying to her, “Some people work their whole lives to make a million dollars, I now produce that multiple times a month.” This is insane, isn’t it, like we finally took that moment and for once I didn’t say this is insane but it’s not enough because then there are other people who make hundreds of millions of dollars a month, what’s wrong with me. It was at that moment where I finally said, “I got to this level” and we then had some difficulties after that but I got to this level and it felt really good, and in my mind that is that point of appreciation. I had that sip of happiness that some people have a lot of. I had it for a second. What was it for you? I sensed that you had some of that.
Brandon: I mean truthfully right now is the most I’ve . . .
Andrew: But before this, was there a period where there’s a dream that the young Brandon had actually was realized even for a moment? No?
Brandon: I struggled. I mean I had those moments when I, you know, we sold to private equity, I became a millionaire in my early 30s, we sold the company for, you know, then sold the full company a few years later, made a lot more money. So I had those moment s but I think we talked about it a bit last time, I struggled to really take that in. It was always on to the next goal, on to the next thing.
Andrew: Wow.
Brandon: And it wasn’t that I was I mean I guess it’s a bit of not being grateful but it wasn’t like, you know, I appreciated it. I’ve never like not appreciated it. I just struggled to say, “Okay, this is it. This is what I was here for. You know, I achieved what I was trying to achieve or, you know, this is the life that I want. I was kind of always building towards something which was this particular relationship, this particular freedom, this particular group of friends and I was always kind of trying to . . .
Andrew: But you’re still on the path and then what came first? What was the part that made you feel like, “Uh-huh, I just lost my footing”? Was it getting fired? Was that the first one? Was there another indication?
Brandon: Well, I think the relationships maybe started it before that because it was, at that point I think right around that time we met, I think we sold the company. I had a significant amount of money, I didn’t really have to worry about it right now, you know, for the time being at least. And then I had the girl and the relationship and it was, I started just looking at and I knew I wasn’t fulfilled, I wasn’t happy. I started struggling to like envision this life with her. I just envisioned this life with myself and really kind of lost track of, was I really this, you know, am I really the person I need to be or do I understand the life I need to lead to have this level of fulfillment, and . . .
Andrew: If I understand you right, at that point, some people would say, “Hey, I’m not happy, I’m walking away.” Other people would say, “Hey, I’m not happy, but I’m in a marriage committed for life. I’m committing and doubling up.” You were the kind of person who said, “I’m going to power through it.” But at the same time you realized, “Wait, this is not the life. I didn’t want a life where I powered through something,” and that became the conflict. I’m the power through it, make it happen type of person but at the same time I didn’t want this vision of being with someone who I have to power. Wow, I see.
Brandon: Yeah. And I’m a super loyal person. I [inaudible 00:14:58] I, you know, I’m good to my word almost, pretty much all the time and so, yeah, that was the struggle. It was like this divorce almost went against everything I stood for in my life to that point.
Andrew: How long were you married?
Brandon: Nearly a year until we kind of determined to break it off. We actually ended up living together for another six months as we’re broken up and then [inaudible 00:15:25] you know, I . . .
Andrew: So even two years, that’s not that long. Why is it that you couldn’t do you think say, was it to your mistake, to your part of my life, I’m just going to keep moving on and forget about it? Why did it become more dramatic than that?
Brandon: I mean for me, there’s one, this element, it felt like it was redefining me. I wasn’t the person I knew myself as.
Andrew: I’m not a failure and I failed, is that it?
Brandon: Yeah. I’m not a failure and I failed. I don’t let people down. I don’t give up on people. I don’t give up on myself. All of those kind of going through my head and then at the same time there was this whole aspect of I got to this point at my early 30s, you know, I was 33 I think when I met her and started thinking, “Oh, you know, I’m going to be an old dad. I’m too old for this. And you get . . . ” You get all these things in your head which is kind of funny because I’m 40 now and I don’t feel that way at all. I feel young. I feel like I have time. I can live and do what I want to do.
Andrew: But back then it felt . . . but when you were younger you felt like you had already gotten too old.
Brandon: Yeah, and we build this story around, you know, from the people around us, from the media, from whatever. We build the story and we believe these things to be facts and I can get . . .
Andrew: Is that your first big failure like at least in your head?
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: It was.
Brandon: For sure.
Andrew: So up until then everything would work okay. And so I remember telling my wife before we got married, I feel like those old Warner Brothers cartoons where the character would go off a cliff and keep on walking, keep on walking, keep on walking, until he looked down and realized, “Hey, I’m not standing on solid ground anymore,” and as soon as he looked down he would fall right down. And I’m like that in conversation as long as I feel comfortable and in the moment and don’t question myself and looked down, I’m fine. I feel like at that point you looked down and you realized, “Hey, I’ve been just walking on air here? Maybe this whole thing was not existent below me.” Is that it?
Brandon: Yeah. I mean there’s this . . . I think it’s a, you know, again, as an entrepreneur I think there’s this path of like always looking forward and like always creating the next thing, and always looking at the next thing, and when I had jobs that I didn’t, you know, they got, you know, I get really excited. I usually come in and kind of set the world on fire at my job initially. I think all of my jobs, I’d got promoted within six months.
I would kind of move very quickly and then all of a sudden as soon as I got bored, as soon as that wasn’t kind of what was fulfilling me next, it’s like you just keep looking forward and you can jump to the next thing and you don’t have to worry about kind of fixing or looking at yourself as to why that was the case. And it’s, you can kind of keep just projecting and moving forward and I was pretty successful at doing that and I think that hid a lot of, or not hid but it prevented me from really having to go do the deeper work and look at myself and examine things, things at a deeper level before that point.
Andrew: And so at that point you said, “Maybe something is wrong here,” and you started to look. Can it be that maybe that’s the mistake? I’ve been thinking about my life too. Maybe the mistake is not that . . . maybe the mistake is just that you started questioning yourself and that what we need to do is keep looking forward. Instead of this analysis. Can it be that this whole thing that you and I about to talk about that change your life for the positive to the point where you’re willing to come on here and talk, could it be that that’s the mistake? That maybe what you need to do, what we all need to do is just not look down, not look at the failure, not examine our hearts, not examine ourself, let’s say, keep on fucking marching dude because every minute you stop is the minute to second guess yourself and get shot.
Brandon: That’s not my experience and how I see it. And I also would never view it as a mistake. I mean I truly believe every . . . you know, the divorce . . . I write a lot on Medium, I wrote an article “The 7 Spiritual Laws of the Divorce” and I truly believe it’s one of the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It has been just a spiritually enlightening experience just what I’ve had to face, where you have to go through, how you, you know, all these conflicts that we talked about . . .
Andrew: Because you found yourself.
Brandon: Yeah, and I put you up against who are you and what does this mean and like who do you want to be in the future and there was just so much that that kind of ignited within me. I think that’s a way with . . .
Andrew: I’m not challenging you. I’m just trying not to go back and doubt it but I won’t doubt myself and say, “Why did I punk out of this interview?” But so I’ll say who cares who we are? Who cares about having even a good life right now? Wouldn’t we all . . . I’m going to say me. I’d rather have more money, more impact, bigger company, and die a tired old man who never understood himself than to go through life navel-gazing and understanding myself because at the very least I survived forever if I leave a legacy of that, right?
Steve Jobs died, I’m still using this freaking computer. We drive through New York City, we still have to go, I forget the name of the freaking street because it’s been so loving, you still have to go around the train station and look at Cornelius Vanderbilt’s statue because he changed the world. He puts tracks everywhere and yeah, he was a dick and I don’t think he fully enjoyed himself but he built something. So shouldn’t that be the right way?
Brandon: You know, I guess to an extent it goes down to our own personal values. I don’t tend to believe that, I mean just coming from my perspective. I tend to think that that’s a story that a lot of us make up. You know, at the end of the day I believe everyone wants to live a fulfilling life, a life filled with joy. They want to be around people that love them and that they are loved. They want to do things that ultimately matter and I think that a lot of the research, and if you read some of the articles about people in hospice and what they say in their last moments, it’s never like I wish I would have made a little more money or I wish I would have built a slightly bigger company.
It’s always about the relationships and people and the love. And so I do, you know, I do tend to . . . and just with my own personal experience, I do tend to think that that is kind of, I don’t want to say the path, but that is where I think more and more people are getting led. I think that is what when you talk about seekers and people like looking and searching and going on journeys, it tends to be more about how do I find my own kind of flow and purpose and how do I tap into what is really authentic to me.
And I think a lot of us are doing things that for whatever reason we developed early in our lives as what was important and I was on this track from before high school. I thought I was going to be an entrepreneur. I knew I’d be successful. I was actually in my yearbook voted most likely to be CEO and most likely to be rich and unhappy, which I guess I achieved both at one point. But, you know, that was high school. I mean I didn’t know anything about myself and it took me a while to learn about myself. And I think I’m not inspired by a lot of the millennials and I think a lot of these people, a lot of people I meet are really going on this journey much earlier. You see people in their early 20s, in mid-20s and trying to figure this out and I think it’s ultimately going to be amazing for our society as these people, these entrepreneurs grow up and are able to kind of create after this, you know, after they’re going to go into this period of their life not having to necessarily create everything before.
Andrew: I looked it up, the Guardian has an article about top five regrets people have before dying.
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: Why don’t I talk about my sponsor for a moment and then going into it, because I’m already like 3 minutes and 10 seconds late. That’s the kind of calculus that’s going on my head. All right, I don’t even know that anyone would want to buy anything that I promote right now considering the things that I’ve just said but I’ve got to be open about my beliefs and let the sponsors follow what they may.
But here’s the deal, guys, if you need to have a website built and hosted like I’m looking at 1Heart, it’s the number 1, the word heart, 1heartjourneys.com, that’s Brandon’s website. The whole freaking thing is one website and a Typeform form. These are not the type of things that you need to hire a designer for. These are not the type of things that you need to get carried away with, a lot of new entrepreneurs will sit and they’ll go and spend forever designing a site, just one-page site. In fact, you could probably rebuild this whole thing in simple WordPress with a theme and there tons of them that are out there for free and then you could get going and focus on your business.
So if that’s the direction you want to take in your business, I’m going to urge you to go to hostgator.com, number one, because they’re paying me, number two, because I’m using it and I’m a happy customer, and number three, because they just work and they won’t charge you too much money. So if you need a website built whether it’s one pager like I just described or even a more intense WordPress side or anything else, you could go to hostgator.com. If you go to the special URL that I’m about to give you, they’re going to give you 62% off their already low-priced to get you started and you’ll be tagged as a Mixergy person which means that I will always be there to make sure that you’re taken care of, hostgator.com/mixergy, hostgator.com/mixergy.
By the way, Brandon, what I’m doing right now is I swear to you, in my head I’m going, nobody cares about the discount. They only will subscribe through your link or care about your sponsor, if they care about you. Why are you being so open about this feelings that you shouldn’t even be open about like care more about money than happiness and all of that stuff? You’re clearly turning people off and I have to find a way. So my thing of doing is, what I do is I shift my attention away from that. I spend some time thinking what do I really care about and then once other thoughts come in, I shift away. Would you say that’s a mistake?
Brandon: Which part of that? Shifting?
Andrew: Shifting saying here’s what I stand for. And any of the straight thought that comes in when I’m not ready to evaluate my life, I’m shifting my attention away. I’m not going to let my head as I’m doing this interview go into all the things that suck about it. I’m not going to second guess myself in a conversation but I will take some space at some point and question myself, my vision, and my right to not care about happiness as much as I could about generating more sales.
Brandon: No, I think that’s a good approach. I mean, you know, if you’re having those questions, if you can take that time to do that I think that’s great. I think it’s very hard to do fully in a moment. I think the way I’ve been able to do it more is just trying to talk less from my head and more from my heart and there’s times like when I do talk in front of groups when I do, you know, we do the 1Heart Journeys a lot of what I really have to consciously do because it’s not my nature is to get out of the head and just say, “Okay, let me flow with what’s coming from my heart.” And that tends to be right. It’s the head that always gets, you know, always has the wrong answers. I mean it has the right answers too but it’s always, you know, it has . . . I kind of always say I can talk myself in and out of everything. So who’s right? Who’s right?
I mean, and that’s what I did for years with my marriage. It’s not hard when you do . . .
Andrew: Do you do that work too?
Brandon: Yeah, absolutely.
Andrew: How?
Brandon: Well, just, you know, every company I’ve started it’s like, I could easily see every way it’s going to fail and every way it’s going to succeed and that was a constant, you know, it’s a constant battle. It’s like I can, you know, my business partner caused me to shredder. I mean I could shred any business plan and find every way it’s going to fail but at the end of the day if you’re building a business, you have to find every way it’s going to succeed. But you’re not really ever able to shut that either voice off. So it . . .
Andrew: So it was helpful to say, “I’m going to analyze all the ways it could fail and deal with it, all the ways that it could work it could deal with it.” What wasn’t helpful was endlessly going through cycle?
Brandon: Yeah. And I think part of that is just a misalignment like the more you align with your heart, your purpose, that becomes a little quieter and your voice is becomes a little quieter. But it’s definitely a continuous battle even now for me. It’s, you know, are we . . . a lot of what we’re doing now, we’re really trying to focus on, how do we help people, how do we create value. Our 1Heart Journeys is a very, it’s something I wrestled with significantly because bringing entrepreneurs to Ayahuasca is just a big responsibility. You know, these are life-changing experiences and I’m not a shaman. I’m not as really trained in a certain way of this.
So even that battle of are we the right people or should we be doing this and, you know, at the end of the day, I almost canceled our first trip and I actually spoke to a shaman who I’d worked with quite a bit and I told them my struggle and he said “Because you have the struggle it’s exactly why you’re the right person for this.” It’s because you can self-assess, because you can kind of view, you know, take a step back and make sure that you’re approaching it from the heart space and not just trying to say, “Okay, this is a good business model and this is what have you.”
Andrew: I want to get into in a bit how you ended up with drugs. Let me finished up what I was saying early that I forgot and I’m going to come back which is the five things according to the Guardian which, you know, trusted or not. Here are the five things that people say before they die. Number one, I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me. I totally get that. I’m afraid at times that I’d, not so much, when I was a kid that was a huge fear. Now, I don’t think that I’m paralyzed by it. I don’t think that’s a big issue. But here’s another one, I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. Maybe that’s going to be one of my regrets. We’ll see. I can see that. I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. I don’t know about that for me. Do you feel that like you wish that at times you had the courage to express your feelings more?
Brandon: Yeah. I mean I think it’s a big thing, yeah. A big thing I’ve been working on is just coming from the heart like what do I feel versus like what do I think and what do I . . . you know, I think what we think is it tends to be more tied to ego, it tends to be more tied to are we looking good, are we right. If you can actually just dip a little bit deeper into like what is it you’re actually feeling like what is actually coming up for you. And that’s been definitely a hard thing through my life.
Andrew: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends, number four. And number five, I wish I had let myself be happier. All right, I get it. You know what, I thought I was going to just crap all over this list but instead it touched me. Because you know what, I do remember the reason I named my dog Tucker was after that first company I remember saying, I really admire this movie about the carmaker, Tucker. Preston Tucker was his name.
And in the movie he was always happy, no matter what. They basically shutdown his car company, no one is driving a Tucker car anymore, but he was always singing, “Hold that tiger . . . ” like getting his family all excited, bring everyone into whatever he was doing. And I said, “You know what, I did well and I still wasn’t like enthused. I was always, angry and like fed up, whatever happens I’m just going to be the hold that tiger guy, you know, who’s going to be that excited, and so I’ll name my dog Tucker just so I can remember that.”
All right, you then were fired, why? I know you talked before about how they wanted the company to go bigger, you didn’t want the company to go bigger, but now they were getting into the change inside of Brandon Evans. What change in Brandon led to that?
Brandon: Well, I mean before that happened I definitely was one foot in, one foot out. I was trying to figure out really an escape route to some extent. I had built this great company with people I loved. It was growing 300% year over year. We were voted by Crain’s one of the top cultures in New York, and so, I love the people I worked with, I didn’t want to let anyone down. But at the same time I kept feeling like this in authenticity, I wasn’t connected to what I was looking to do. I knew there is something different, somewhere else I needed to be. And then, you know, the investors started asking me or questioning me, “Why are you not excited about raising a $20 million round.” We were sort of on that trajectory at least from a revenue standpoint and why are we not going to go out and just raise a huge round and try to build a unicorn and take advantage of that opportunity.
And I just wasn’t there. I think part of that was obviously my personal, you know, where I was personally and then part of that was just when I looked at the company, I didn’t see that outcome. I didn’t see the right acquirers, I didn’t see the right place for that exit, which would have to be probably half a billion plus once you raise that type of money. And I looked at the time commitment in years more that I would have to put into it and I was probably 37 at that time and I’m like okay, I’m going to be mid-40s or early 40s by the time I leave and I knew that wasn’t the kind of the legacy that I wanted to leave and it just started this, you know, kind of existential crisis I guess along with . . .
Andrew: You started already exploring, did you start doing or trying drugs at that point or did that come only after?
Brandon: Well, I refer to it as plant medicine but it is a natural. It comes from nature. Yeah, I started probably, yeah, while I was still at Crowdtap and while I was still with my . . . I actually came to it through my ex’s cousin who had tried it and was just this amazing spiritual person, a mother, and just kind of really trusted her and heard about her experience and was going through these different challenges and was looking at how do I tap in, how do I connect, how do I kind of get to that next level of myself and that was what initially kind of got me there.
You know, I’d been doing, I’d study Kabbalah for five years for a while, before that I’d been increasing kind of my yoga meditation practice. I’ve been doing some other things but for me Ayahuasca was really the tool that kind of open things up for me.
Andrew: Did you smoke weed before or any other plant medicine?
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: You did. And how did that impact you?
Brandon: I mean, I was always found I could tap into a different level of creativity with weed. I wouldn’t say it was profoundly life-changing but I do feel like it opened me up to a lot of things. I mean the time I remember I smoking the most weed was when I was abroad, in college in London and I had a good friend and we were kind of the only people on the program with good weed and we smoke nearly every day. We didn’t have a lot of responsibilities. And that was when I really started like reading and getting into more deep books and things like that.
So I do believe in the power of some of these things that open you up to different perspectives because I think . . . and people can open up in many other ways. It’s certainly not required but I do think, you know, we can have these blinders and we can . . . you know, at that time all I read was business books, all I wanted to know is how to run a company and you can just kind of go straight forward in the path or you can have things that maybe opened up . . .
Andrew: And that even back then a little bit of weed with your friends or a lot of weed with your friend opened you up a little bit more?
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: It did. All right, and then Ayahuasca, what was the experience like?
Brandon: I think the first thing you noticed is there’s this heart’s [denied 00:34:31] connection to I call it the universe, call it a higher power, and the oneness of everything. And once you get into that perspective and hence the name of my company, 1Heart, you know, when you get into that perspective, a lot of your decision making potentially changes. When you think about the fact that we are all connected both people, other organisms on the planet. And you see that or most people that I’ve come in contact that have done the medicine see that pretty definitively and it’s not like hearing it from in church or at temple. It’s actually this really experiencing that feeling and that experience yourself and it’s hard . . . you know, I don’t know, another way to kind of replace with that can do for someone.
Andrew: Maybe your old self could identify with this. As I hear that I’m intrigued and I like to think of myself as a kind of a person who do it and at the same time I feel like, oh, loss of control, that’s really scary.
Brandon: Yeah. Well, absolutely. I mean the medicine . . . and it’s really about trust and surrender, you know, that’s which is the heart is . . .
Andrew: I’m not good at that. Were you good at that?
Brandon: I wasn’t, no. And it’s funny, because we took this group of people, you know, these entrepreneurs and there was also people at the retreat that were not entrepreneurs and you can definitely tell the difference like when I saw this, you know, our group kind of come in, you could see the skepticism and you could see the New York . . .
Andrew: This is . . . the event is 1heartjourneys.com, I talked to you about it last time and I kept referring to it as referring to it as the Ayahuasca event and it’s more than that though. I’m intrigued by that and so you’re saying, I thought it was all entrepreneurs getting together here, you’re saying there are few people who are not entrepreneurs who came out for the event too.
Brandon: Well, the place that we held it at, we didn’t have it exclusively so we . . .
Andrew: I see, so your group was entrepreneurs but there are other people there.
Brandon: Yes. So we’re about half the venue and I just noticed the contrast and it was interesting, the owner of the retreat actually came up and said something. He’s like, “Yeah, these guys are so hard . . . ” you know, like they’re so in their heads.
Andrew: Yes.
Brandon: And that is what we are and I think for me, you know, anytime I hear fear now, I mean fear is something to face. You know, we have the ability to kind of repress fears but that stays with us somewhere. You know, it’s stored in your muscles, it’s stored in your body, that fear is they’re doing harm to you whether you want to have it actually come up and out or you want to kind of keep it within.
And what the medicine does more than anything I’ve experienced is gets it up and out and there’s talk of . . . you know, part of the medicine is people do throw up, people, they call it purge. Part of that purging is you’re actually purging emotions, you’re purging that fear, you’re purging the judgment, you’re purging some of these things that you’re holding into your body, holding on tightly too because you define that as who you are you think that’s an important piece of it.
But once you rid yourself of that I mean my experience is just been the amount of joy and gratitude have been these emotions that people, you know, kind of talk about that I was like, “Okay, no, I’ll never going to walk around and say how grateful I am every day and it just started happening, and I do it every day, all the time, and it’s not like a gratitude journal that I forced myself to do. It just became, you know, part of my life and it just, you know, I started feeling it. And, you know, that’s what I think is possible when you start to release some of these other emotions and some of these other, you know, which is largely fear that kind of rules us, and the opposite of fear is love.
And so, those are, you know, you have the opportunity to hold onto fear or to hold on to love and you can think about that in every business meeting you have or every person you meet, you know, do you want to approach these relationship from you know a place of fear and worrying about how they’re going to screw you and what are they going to do to you or do you want to approach this relationship as to a place of love and what do you have in common with this person and what can you build together and what possibilities can you create. And there truly is that duality and it’s, you know, I didn’t see it either and, you know . . .
Andrew: And so why is it when you got fired you didn’t think freedom? You know what, I didn’t have the guts to day I’m done with this. I knew there was a better life, I’m done. Why did you instead feel upset, lost, like you’ve lost something?
Brandon: Well, I did feel a sense of freedom. I mean I do remember when I was told it I almost . . . you know, I kept smiling to a bit because I knew I needed this and so there was a relief for sure but that relief didn’t . . . I didn’t have a destination at that point and I was used to having a destination and the plan and I didn’t have that. So that became scary, that became fear, that became who I am I if I’m not Brandon, the guy who like, you know, is successful of what he does and builds companies and has people working for him, you know, what am I? And I’m still dealing with a bit of that and part of, I actually wrote my first article, “Lost on Purpose,” on my 40th birthday.
Andrew: That was your first one, I didn’t know that. Okay.
Brandon: Yeah. It’s still the article that I’ve gotten the most reads by far. But the reason for writing that was like I didn’t know how to redefine myself in the world. I knew I had like family and friends and people that looked at me in a certain way and I didn’t know how to get my story out and be like that’s not who I am anymore and I will . . . and so really that article became and it was something that actually came to me the medicine repeatedly in the last ceremony I had on Ayahuasca was literally the only thing that it told me was I needed to write that article. And, you know, that just became such a huge thing for me and kind of transitioning, allowing myself to be what I really had already become but I was till kind of trying to play these roles that all these other people saw me as.
Andrew: Right. I should talk about my second sponsor. So you and I met through Sachit Gupta who knows you through apparently that Miami Startup scene is being led by you and a few other people. I think, there was a Miami Startup. When you first move there I felt like Sachit was out there in isolation. He left San Francisco and he went to this place where I felt like he was just going to lose himself, and then he introduced me to you and others. Now, the reason that I’ve got sponsors at all here really is, used to have a bunch of small sponsors, didn’t really pay much attention to sponsorship and Sachit said, let me turn it into something. And I said, “All right, I trust you. Do whatever you want.”
And what Sachit did was, Sachit always does this, he went out to say who is doing this well, let’s go talk to them. And so he talked to Sam Parr of that Hustle Con, the conference and he said, “Who are the big sponsors I should be going after so I’m not wasting my time with the small ones?” And the two of them talked and they realized that selling to people who sells stuff for like 10 bucks, 20 bucks a month is going to be an issue. We need to have someone, because whenever I have a huge audience at Mixergy. It’s always going to be like these diehard entrepreneurs, so we have to sell the right product to them. And we realized, you know what, they did. I have nothing to do with it, that the right companies are always hiring and they’re always like searching for the right place to hire and for Hustle Con they had some kind of recruiting headhunting company as a sponsor and they said, “Sachit, you should look for that. If you really believe that you have an audience of entrepreneurs, they’re going to need to hire from someone.”
So then Sachit went to see who was my past interviewees who had a company that, I hope I’m telling the story right, had a company that did headhunting or finding or recruiting and it turned out I interviewed the founder of Toptal, so he reached out to them and he said, “Hey, was that actually even helpful for you to be on Mixergy? Did you had any customers?” And I guess they did and so they ended up buying ads from us and they’ve been buying ads from us ever since because we have real entrepreneurs and real entrepreneurs have an issue where they want to hire smart developers. And the place to go hire smart developers as we’ve proven here on Mixergy is Toptal.
So if you’re listening to me and you want to go hire a developer, go hire from Toptal, they will get you set up with the best of the best developers. First thing that’s going to happen after you press that big green button on their website, the one I’m about to give you is you’re going to get to talk to someone, you’re going to tell them what you’re working on, you’re going to tell them how you operate as a team, tell them a little bit about your personality because they don’t just want to find the right person who can do the right thing but find the right person for you, the one you could work with, and then they’ll introduce you. If you like, you could get started off within a day or two. I know when I heard from them I was always able to start right away.
So here’s the URL where you’re going to get 80 hours of Toptal developer credit when you pay for your first 80 hours in addition to a no-risk trial period of up to two weeks. That URL is top as in top of your head, tal as in talent, that’s toptal.com/mixergy, toptal.com/mixergy.
It’s kind of weird, Brandon, to interrupt this like heartfelt conversation with commerce.
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: I have some ads where I do killer bang up job and I have to be honest, today’s two ads I did not do a killer bang up job. I was just wasn’t in the right mindset but I still refuse to record the ads and stick them in. I want it to feel like it’s part of the conversation and be part of the conversation and be part of the conversation. All right, I’m a little lost now to be honest with you because I feel like I got it. I got how you where you were. I got where you’re going. I wonder, do you feel like your younger self would think that you’re a success, or would your younger self feel like you’re a traitor to the mission. I ask myself that all the time.
Brandon: Well, I’m going to be talking. I mean, I think our five-year-old self and our child self, you know, always is fulfillment and love and joy for us and somewhere along the line we create these expectations on ourselves whether they’re from ourselves or from our parents or from society, of what we need and what we want and I think part of our journey and our challenges is kind of getting back to that childhood self of . . .
Andrew: You mean the happy self?
Brandon: Yeah, the happy self, like the connected self, the self that just wants to give love, be loved, or wants to play with everyone, partner with everyone, somewhere along the line it becomes, so let’s be everyone, let’s be competitive, let’s take these guys out of business. You know, that’s not the natural state. You know, we’ve created that state and I was as competitive and still I am around everything. So, you know, I certainly recognized that but I also don’t think that that separation creates the level of happiness. And so, yeah, I think at the end of the day, I mean if I’m thinking about what I want for my kids or what I want for my niece and nephew or I found some family, I mean, it’s . . .
Andrew: Do you have kids now?
Brandon: I don’t.
Andrew: You don’t but you mean they kids that you’ll have in the future and you still want kids.
Brandon: I do, yeah.
Andrew: Why do you feel so comfortable talking about all of this publicly?
Brandon: Well, if my journey can help anyone and one other person then I feel that’s a kind contribution, an important contribution I made. And just seeing from our writing and the people that I have already made from this trip that we had and we had 24, I have 25 people that tell us they had literally life transforming experiences, miracles, happen in a week. So there’s nothing I can do. I’m running another businesses, we’re doing other things, there’s nothing I do that feels more impactful than that because I’m there, I’m seeing people’s lives changed and to whatever extent that, you know, that’s what I’ve made my mission and that’s what, you know, kind of keep . . .
Andrew:Here’s what you did, you took 25 entrepreneurs and creators you’ve set on your site to Costa Rica. They did medically licensed Ayahuasca at a resort? Do you guys do anything . . . what else did you do beyond that?
Brandon: Yes, breathwork, there’s yoga, there’s massage, mud baths, really anything you can think of. There was detox and cleansing, they have farm to table organic food. And this resort it’s not in kind of the jungle of Peru.
Andrew: No.
Brandon: It’s a purely luxury resort. You have 60-year-old, 70-year-old people there in addition. You know, I’m trying to get my parents to go still, so it’s something I believe in for anyone. It’s certainly not an easy path necessarily. I mean the medicine makes you work and . . .
Andrew: The medicine makes me work?
Brandon: Yeah. You face difficult things, you may have physical, you know, purging and different things that happen, so there’s . . .
Andrew: You mean throw up.
Brandon: Yeah. It’s not a party drug, it’s a . . .
Andrew: Am I going to poop?
Brandon: You may.
Andrew: I might.
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: Okay. I see, guys, if you have a colon dehydo . . . wait, colon hydrotherapy tool. I’m guessing that’s why.
Brandon: It’s part of it too. Yeah. They have a . . . yeah, cleanses is part of it. It’s really I mean when you come back from there I’ve never felt healthier in my life. You come back and you’ve literally . . .
Andrew: Because all the junks are out of your body.
Brandon: And there’s a diet that goes along with it that you tend to eat before and after a pretty vegan or close to it. You tend to cut all caffeine, there’s a lot different things that they ask you to do before and after that help make the whole process more successful. But for me it’s what . . . we just agreed to do this quarterly so we’re doing one, another one. We haven’t announced yet, in the end of July and we’re going to have one towards the end of the year that we’ll probably be announced probably by the time this has aired. And it takes a lot for me and for my partner. We’re going to these things quarterly, we’re doing the medicine with the group but for me there’s nothing that energizes me more both from the impact that we make with people and then the medicine itself just kind of recharges me, reconnects me, and that’s kind of what I’m looking for at this point from the vacation.
Andrew: And when you say somebody has a life-changing experience what do you mean? What’s an example of someone whose life was changed and what happens that changes that?
Brandon: You know we had someone quit her job. I mean it could be anything from, you know, quitting your job and realizing what you want to focus on next. We had one guy that actually stayed down there in Costa Rica and stayed at the resort longer.
Andrew: Really?
Brandon: Has kind of figured out this, you know, the kind of this new path. He already was somewhat of a . . . was a digital nomad but runs a very large business but kind of figured out kind of a lot of areas where he wants to go next. We’ve had a lot of people who had breakthroughs as far as why they weren’t able to love themselves. I mean, it’s kind of a big theme. A lot of the pain that we get in our lives tends to be things that were closed off for whatever particular reason. And that affects us and the business, it affects the relationships.
There’s a lot of relationships that get healed as you are able to kind of view people in your lives and what they’ve done to you or what you feel that they’ve done to you in different ways. And so I think towards the beginning it tends, you know, there tends to be . . . and there’s healing throughout but there’s a lot of healing that happens. For me, there’s also a lot of insights that happens, so there’s a lot of stuff that whether its articles I want to write or what businesses I should be part of.
I actually had a very profound experience with my new girl, you know, kind of knowing that my new girlfriend and I were really meant to be together in this last experience. And so there’s a lot that you can kind of really examine and you’re kind of seeing through some of the bullshit that you kind of have in your head going back and forth and you’re really able to kind of breakthrough some of that clutter.
Andrew: You knew whether you were going to be with your girlfriend forever? That means it would be otherwise you’re not, she wouldn’t be your girlfriend anymore.
Brandon: Correct. But we know we had dated for a month at that point and it became as clear to me as anything has ever.
Andrew: From that? Wow.
Brandon: Yeah, it’s the relationship as well and the experiences we’d had together but that just kind of accelerated it and made me kind of realized beyond a shadow of a doubt, which is interesting compared to, obviously my previous relationship and going back and forth for years and now, you know, some of that it’s just the work I’ve done and the growth that I’ve had between now and then. But, you know, it kind of all contributes to that and then, time becomes less relevant. We actually had two soulmate . . . we had two people meet on our trip that are soulmates. They basically discovered that within I think the first few hours of our trip. They were living on separate coasts in LA and Miami. They’re now together, committed to each other for life from this trip. And that happened even before they even did the medicine but just bringing them together, you know, was amazing.
Andrew: You know what, I don’t how to easily weave this into the conversation so I’ll just kind of forced it in. I’ve got a spreadsheet in front of me that I didn’t realized you created, the Founder Compensation Calculation. I’m glad somebody is talking about this. This is like the worst way for me to end it but I’ve got to bring this up. Do you remember . . . do you know what I’m talking about?
Brandon: Yeah.
Andrew: Do you remember the conclusion from this?
Brandon: Yeah, I read an article titled, “Why Being a Startup Founder is a Minimum Wage Job,” and I did a bunch of research and put together that spreadsheet as part of that article and showing different compensation levels for founders.
Andrew: You pulled it all out of CB Insights?
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Which I love that. I largely love it because it’s founded by a Mixergy fan who messages me from time to time about my work but they have great data and so you said, “Look, I see the average salary. It’s doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the average salary you’re saying for seed-stage entrepreneur is $60,000. So then what you do is tell me if I’ve got this I’ve got this right, you then divide it by the number of hours that they work per year and you end up with an amount, an hourly rate, but then you also include the hours they work before where they were making even less than $60,000 in that hourly rate, right?
Brandon:Yeah. Yes, so we also put stats which I believe are from them as well is for how long people bootstrap their company, how long it takes them to get to seed to series A, and we look at the different stages and then we created an average of people that just bootstrap their company, they’re making basically close to zero, and people that bootstrap and get to seed, and then we have the failure rates at every level as well. So when someone bootstraps and fails to seed here’s what they’re going to make, if they get to series A and fail there.
So we had kind of different levels and I don’t have those numbers in front of me but, you know, it’s a very small percentage that you really going to get to series B to even be making any type of kind of real income compared to what your market value would be otherwise and then, obviously, without an exit of some sort most likely most of these people are not reaching incomes that are close to what they would have gotten, whether they’re working for an investment bank or a lawyer, whatever the other option was for them or working even in Corporate America.
Andrew: Yeah. I’ve got friends who work in Corporate America, I look at their numbers. I see it, it’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable especially once you get into their . . . they get into their late 30s and 40s and you realized all these entrepreneurs walk around thinking that they’ve decided everything in their lives and make a lot of money. I’ll put myself in there, I don’t know they were making as much as some of these people.
Brandon: Yeah, and I don’t know that’s what we should judge ourselves by. I think my point in writing the article was more around helping create and what we’re really focused, so one of these is how do we create a system that allows more entrepreneurs to succeed that’s not just focused on unicorns and I think a lot of those numbers and the percentages that the get to each level has to do with something that I faced as well which is if we’re trying to create these unicorns, if we’re just pumping money into these companies and trying to get, and that’s the end goal for where investors return their money, what about all the $20 million, $50,000, $100,000 million companies that could be started? And a lot of those happened to be companies that maybe could add a lot of value and help people in the world. How do we support those companies from happening because they still need to . . .
Andrew: I see, so how do we so that? You’re investing now in companies, right?
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: So then what’s the model that allows us to do that?
Brandon: So our model right now, I mean a lot of it, in short is collaboration. That’s a lot easier said than done. I think our model right now is to partner with founders and help them build companies. So we have kind of a startup studio almost holding company type model where we work with founders and we put a smart CEO in place or they come to us with the business idea and we say, “How do we put our resources including ourselves behind that and help them build this company?” And because we’re more active and we’re taking much larger percentages we don’t need to see the same type of future churns.
Andrew: What kind of work do you put into it?
Brandon: We’re hands on. So right now it’s just . . . we’ve started two companies and then 1Heart Journeys is really our third company. So the whole company is called 1Heart, its 1heart.com. And then, you know, we have started a company called “Guided” which is we’re bringing live coaching to enterprises as a benefit. So that’s one of our focuses and then we’re starting a super foods company called Superwell that will launch sometime in the summer and then 1Heart Journey is kind of a personal passion project that my partner and I run ourselves.
Andrew: At Superwell you guys run it with other people?
Brandon: Yes. So there’s a CEO for Superwell and there’s a CEO for Guided and we’re basically cofounders with them. We’re helping them build their businesses. We’re helping, you know, we funded it in early stages. We’re helping them kind of hopefully get, you know, avoid some of the mistakes that we’ve made in our careers, helping them find the resources that they need. So it’s very hard for an entrepreneur to know what is a good designer, what is a good developer, what is, you know, how do I run accounting.
I mean there’s so many different skills that we need so early on and one the strategies tends to be like let’s raise a bunch of money and try to hire a bunch of people and figure it out. I think there’s other ways to get there. It’s a part of what we’re trying to do is really kind of create a mentorship, really kind of a mentorship model and it’s also a mentorship in life. So part of our model is also to provide coaching to our CEOs. They’ve all gone through a coaching program that we’ve all participated in. They all probably will be on a 1Heart Journeys at some point.
You know, if they choose which I think everyone has . . . there’s a couple that haven’t been on it, you know, they’re planning to go on the next one but we believe in kind of creating that environment and the how do we create collaboration between those companies. So, you know, if we have a bunch of health and life coaches that we’re working with and with the super foods company how does that all synchronized. So we have a group, we built out influencers in the health and wellness fitness. How do we leverage that across businesses, because a lot of times we’re creating assets, we’re building companies. We’re hiring people and then the business fails and you’re kind of scrapping that and starting all over so how do we create that structure where we can kind of continue to grow these assets and spin up business more quickly.
Andrew: And are you as obsessed now with the spreadsheets and the numbers as you were before?
Brandon:No, I’m not. But you face it every day. I mean we were still like we need funding. We’re still facing some of the same challenges and you’re up against it every day. I think what I found is more of a roller coaster. I mean it’s always a roller coaster but I find like it’s kind of riding the waves a bit more and so they’re trying to kind of get more into the flow and feel like what really feels right. And there’s been a lot of times where we’ve just very quickly iterated and, I don’t want to say pivoted but there’s a lot of iterations that happened as we try to continue to realigned with what our values are, what we believe as a company and you fall into some of those traps. We see ourselves going off into okay, now, we’re trying to build a billion dollar company and raise a bunch of money. Is that what we really want to do? Is that’s what’s right for the business? And it’s this constant dance, I guess.
Andrew: Yeah. All right, the website, for anyone who wants to check in with you, it’s 1heart, the number 1, numeral one, and the word heart, 1heart.com, or 1heartjourneys.com and if anyone is in Miami, do you do events? Do you go to events? What’s a good place for them to see you in person?
Brandon: Yes. So my partner and I in 1Heart we run a group called miamimade.org which is what Sachit is a part of. And so we kind of brought together a lot of the founders in Miami and have some great events. They have a conscious element to them but everything from happy hours to kind of morning breakfast meetups to cooking classes and . . .
Andrew: To meditation, I’m looking at the homepage, there’s meditation right there too.
Brandon: Yeah. So, and we believe in . . .
Andrew: Well, hang on. I just hit the page and hit the play button, hang on I got it mute it. There we go, all right.
Brandon: Yeah. So I mean our main event is called “Thrive Together Tuesdays” and the idea is that we want to help founders thrive in business and then a lot of that is also in life. So if they don’t learn some of these tools, if they don’t know how to manage stress, if they don’t have a support system that becomes very difficult. And in Miami it’s probably harder than in New York and San Francisco where you find people all around you that are in startups. With Miami, we wanted to more consciously bring people together so that they have those same resources.
Andrew: All right, miamimade.org, and I want to thank my two sponsors who honestly some days I get a lot of value out of me, all the days I have to be honest they didn’t get that much for me today but I think in the end they end up better than any other podcasts and frankly, they’ll let me know. They’ll let Sachit know, not me, they’ll let Sachit know if they don’t. The two sponsors are hostgator.com/mixergy and toptal.com/mixergy. They’re great companies even though they didn’t have a great spokesperson today.
All right, Brandon, I think we did great here today. I’m glad that we . . .
Brandon: I do too and I think your sponsors will be happy.
Andrew: I hope so, but I don’t know what it is. For some reason if I feel it, if I think it, I have to let it out in these interviews and this one maybe more than others. All right, thanks so much and I hope I get to see you in person sometime.
Brandon: All right, thanks, Andrew. You’re welcome to come on our journey as well.
Andrew: I’d love it. Thanks.
Brandon: All right. Take care.
Andrew: Bye.
Brandon: Bye.
