When was the last time you made it through an entire evening without checking your phone? If you can’t remember, you’re not alone.
According to research from Zippia, the average American spends upwards of five hours a day on their phone – a habit most of us wish we could break. Our latest podcast guest has created a solution to help us disconnect to reconnect.
Heath Wilson is the Co-Founder of Aro, a technology company that leverages the science of habit formation to help families put down their phones and focus on what matters most. As a veteran founder and father of four, Heath has so much wisdom to share on being a present parent, setting boundaries as an entrepreneur, and how to define your own version of success.
WILDFLOWER SHOWNOTES : shannaskidmore.com/health-wilson
When was the last time you made it through an entire evening without checking your phone? If you can’t remember, you’re not alone.
According to research from Zippia, the average American spends upwards of five hours a day on their phone – a habit most of us wish we could break. Our latest podcast guest has created a solution to help us disconnect to reconnect.
Heath Wilson is the Co-Founder of Aro, a technology company that leverages the science of habit formation to help families put down their phones and focus on what matters most. As a veteran founder and father of four, Heath has so much wisdom to share on being a present parent, setting boundaries as an entrepreneur, and how to define your own version of success.
WILDFLOWER SHOWNOTES : shannaskidmore.com/health-wilson
Heath Wilson (00:00):
I was driving home one night in 2016. I had an old Bronco Ford Bronco. So I was sitting up high and I was looking around and everyone was on their phone. Now, put aside the fact that it's dangerous to drive with your phone, but I went home and I wrote this rambling manifesto of all the things that were wrong with our bone usage. Put that in an email folder, forgot about it. And then it hit me one day. I looked around and I said, wow, this has gotten worse, right? And I went through a couple different life experiences. I was in a mentoring group, then I led a mentoring group with a bunch of men, all high performers. And you get to this month where you start talking about what's keeping you from being the person you want to be, husband, father, you know, name it. Everyone pulled out their phone, everyone, every guy. And I thought, oh goodness. Like these are supposedly the best of the best. And they're struggling. It's just got to be a problem for everyone.
Shanna Skidmore (00:46):
You are listening to Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast episode 50. When was the last time you made it through an entire evening with without checking your phone? If you can't remember, you're not alone. According to research from Zia, the average American spends upwards of five hours a day on their phone. And Forbes states that 91% of adults keep their phones within an arm's reach all day long. A habit. Most of us wish we could break. Our latest podcast guest has created a solution to help us disconnect. To reconnect. Keith Wilson is the co-founder of ro, a technology company that leverages the science of habit formation to help families put down their phones and focus on what matters most. As a veteran founder and father of four, Heath has so much wisdom to share on being a present parent, setting boundaries as an entrepreneur, and how to define your own version of success.
(01:38)
If you dig professional bios, here goes. Keith Wilson is the co-founder of RO Technology Inc. A tech company that aims to help people put their phones down and live life uninterrupted. An entrepreneur, visionary, culture builder, and idea generator. Heath co-founded Eves prior to RO and sold the company to NASDAQ in 2018. His experience in data-driven solutions, coupled with his role as a husband and a father of four led Heath to help develop r. As co-founder of ro, he has committed to helping people, companies, and families create healthy relationships with their technology through passionate leadership and expertise. Okay, formal introduction over, this is a good one. Let's dive in. Hey, it's Shana and this is Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast. For the past 15 plus years, I've had the honor to hear thousands of stories from entrepreneurs around the world. As a former Fortune 100 financial advisor turned business consultant, I have a unique opportunity to see the reel.
(02:35)
Behind the highlight reel. I'm talking profit and loss statements, unpaid taxes, moments of burnout, and those of utter victory. Or as my husband says, the content everyone is wondering but not many are talking about. And now I'm bringing these private conversations to you. Hear the untold stories of how industry leaders, founders, and up and coming entrepreneurs got their start, the experiences that shaped them, and the journey to building the brands they have today. Stories that will inspire and reignite encouraged to redefine success and build a life in business on your own terms. Welcome Wildflower. I'm so glad you're here. Hey, Heath, welcome.
Heath Wilson (03:10):
Hello, hello.
Shanna Skidmore (03:11):
I'm so excited you're here. Most of these we don't do video, so I can see you and that's really fun. So it's going to be super fun and conversational. He tell everybody who you are, just give a little bit of like a, hello, Ooh, hello. And then we're going to kind of kick it way back to your first business and life before business.
Heath Wilson (03:28):
Okay. So Heath Wilson. I have been married for 21 years to my wife, Misty. We met in Atlanta. We lived in Atlanta for a long time. Along the way, we'll talk about the business, but along the way we also had four kids, two of which is this kind of crazy, I wrote a blog last week about this, two of which are now seniors. We'll be seniors in high school in a few days. And it occurred to me that I have one more year with them, which is amazing for them. I'm excited for them, but also terrifying for me and my wife and PA and for her in particular. Cause I do think she'll, she'll go into the fetal position when they leave. But yeah, it was a reminder that time is short and we don't have that much time left and really got to be intentional over the next 12 months with them in the house. So yeah, we've got to, yeah, decent sized family. There's other stories there of infertility and adoption and other interesting things along the way. But yeah, that's who I am now. Live in Knoxville after being in Atlanta for 20 plus years. Go glad to be back. I'm an east Tennessee boy. I grew up in Johnson City, so feels kind of like home.
Shanna Skidmore (04:25):
Yeah. So it's fun for everybody listening. This is fun story. Heath and I met through another podcast guest, which is great, but we actually live in the same town, so we got to have coffee before we ever did this. That's right. Which was really fun. I know. That's fun. Okay. Twin boys,
Heath Wilson (04:42):
Boy girl, twins. Yeah,
Shanna Skidmore (04:44):
Boy, girl twins. Yeah. And then, okay, you have two boys, boy, girl, twin. Yeah, graduate. So this is their going into their senior year. You noticed. So interesting and heartbreaking. I heard a long time ago, Heath, maybe you've heard this, somebody was like, you have 18 summers with your kids. And I'm like, I mean, thank you. Thank you for the reminder, but that's a lot of pressure. Let
Heath Wilson (05:04):
Me further depress you actually, because I did some math. So if I get 45 minutes with them each week, week night, let's call 45 minutes family dinner. They're busy. They play sports and studying all that kind of stuff. If I spend four hours with them on the weekend, add all of that together over the next 365 days. I have a total of 25 days left with them and I can't even more depressing and kind of cool, but 90% of the time you spend with your kids happens before they're 18. And I have no doubt that the next 10% of their life's going to be awesome. But man, I'm really focused on these last 25
Shanna Skidmore (05:35):
Days and somebody told me, I love that we're talking because we're in such different seasons of life, like family wise, and I'm so grateful to hear from wise people like you being a mom who had her babies in her late thirties, her baby one baby, Madeline. It's just been really sweet to just think about that intentionality with time. And I'm grateful. I know not everybody, my sister had her kids at 19, so she's kind of in the opposite realm. And I just am grateful for those reminders and that I can slow down in this season of business, which isn't always easy to do to put on the breaks, but know this time is really short with her. So I haven't told you this Heath, but I am taking June and July off.
Heath Wilson (06:20):
Awesome.
Shanna Skidmore (06:21):
That's amazing. This summer to be with Madeline. Isn't that fun? It's incredible. So that's why we're recording this before season one ends, but it'll come out in season two. And so it's been fun to live out. One of my mottos is kind of a Dolly Parton quote, but build a business around the life you want to have, and I'm just grateful that I get to do that. So anyways. Okay. I love that you were one of our first guests, maybe our only guests so far that has a business outside of the realm of what most people think of as a creative business. I started my career in the creative industry, so wedding industry photographers, graphic designers, we have PR and ad and marketing. But you started in the finance world. Yeah. So will you just tell us about life before business, how you got into finance, and then just how you started your first business?
Heath Wilson (07:15):
Yes. Well, let me start by saying I love creatives. My sister is an artist and a photographer as well. So I've always been envious of people that can create things, whether that's with their hands or with their mind. And I probably fall into more of the category of creating things in my mind and then applying that to business. So life before my first business was actually pretty short. I only worked for a couple years out of college before I kind of fell into an opportunity. And a couple gentlemen that I worked with at the time, we went out to lunch one day, we said, man, everything we do at work seems to be a bit backwards and archaic and stupid. And that led to a business plan, which led to a decision to either go to graduate school or to start a company. I was 26, so pretty young, really didn't know much about anything. In fact, I knew nothing about everything candidly. But this was the late nineties. We were kind of caught up in the.com craze and we said, well, let's go try it. What's the worst thing that can happen is we get a job afterwards. So yeah, we started a financial technology company all centered around investment data, not personal finance, but more of institutional finance. So we worked with pension funds and endowments and foundations, another very, very large pools of money to help them understand their investments and make better investments.
Shanna Skidmore (08:27):
So you worked with the institutions, not the investors?
Heath Wilson (08:31):
We worked with both. So actually we worked with the institutions, we worked with the asset managers and we worked with the, I call 'em the middleman, but the consultants or in the personal finance land, the financial advisors that were in between.
Shanna Skidmore (08:43):
And you were rating, reviewing, giving information about these funds.
Heath Wilson (08:47):
It was more of just we were the portal to get all the information so that people could make their own decisions. We didn't have star ratings or anything like that, if you're familiar, Morningstar. Ours was more of just we're going to provide all the data and all the tools so that Mr. Consultant or Mr. Investor can make better decisions.
Shanna Skidmore (09:03):
Before starting your company, what type of you were in finance, but what type of finance were you doing?
Heath Wilson (09:09):
Well, I had a finance degree, so I went to Tennessee and graduated in finance. But honestly, I think I took finance just because I thought I could make more money than marketing. I'm probably more of a marketer than a finance guy. My first job was in Chicago. I worked for a little limited partnership trading firm. We traded oil and gas partnerships. And then when I moved to Atlanta, I worked for this consulting firm where I got deeper into that whole pension fund industry. But I mean, again, only kind of two or three years of experience before leaping out into the unknown and trying to build something on our own. And it wasn't really a finance business per se, even though all the data was investment related, it was more of a software business and an information business than anything.
Shanna Skidmore (09:46):
Was this the first idea that you had when you sat down at lunch and were talking with your friends? Was it like, I want to build this business, or was that an iteration that came later?
Heath Wilson (09:57):
I would say it was very accidental. In fact, I usually refer to myself as an accidental entrepreneur. I don't have the stories of having lemonade stands and mowing grass and all that kind of stuff. When I was a kid, I don't know that I ever thought I would be an entrepreneur. Now, my dad was a financial advisor. He did that for 40 years. So if you know that business, they're pretty much entrepreneurs because they're building their own book and bringing on clients. So maybe indirectly, I kind of grew up in that world, the entrepreneurial world, but I didn't set out to try to do something on my own. So it just kind of fell into place. But once it started, the spark of entrepreneurship just kind of stuck with me, and I've never gone back. It would be really hard, and we may talk about this, but it's really hard for me to live in the corporate setting and work in a corporate setting. Yeah,
Shanna Skidmore (10:41):
Yeah. Well, Kyle, my husband, we met in finance because a marketing degree went back to school in engineering and it was similar. He loved engineering, but he has such an entrepreneurial spirit. It's like your brain is working
Heath Wilson (10:55):
All the
Shanna Skidmore (10:55):
Time differently. Tell me, okay, so what year did you start your company? That was
Heath Wilson (11:00):
2000. We wrote a business plan in 99, started in 2000, we ran. So we started as four people, four, four co-founders. That business, by the grace of God, grew to almost 500 people, a hundred million in revenue. It was massive global offices. We lived overseas for a couple years. Just an incredible, incredible timing, incredible success story. We made some good decisions and certainly made a bunch of bad ones along the way. But yeah, it grew well beyond what we had ever dreamed of and learned a lot of things. Everything from how to raise money and private equity and all that kind of stuff along the way. But man, such a fun. In fact, we just moved a couple weeks ago and I went through, I don't know, two or three or four 10 boxes of memorabilia from the last company. And it's funny, the things you save and the things that you value most, if I'm being honest, I threw away 90% of it. But it was still fun to look back and say, wow, I remember. I remember those tough days or those awesome days or the days we celebrated or the days we huddled up in the war room trying to fix this issue. Or the next,
Shanna Skidmore (12:02):
Okay, I'm going to take you way back. First five years, what do you feel like went really well and what were one or two massive or small hiccups? Yeah,
Heath Wilson (12:15):
What went really well is that our team gelled. And this honestly was a bit lucky. I don't think we knew it at the time, but the four of us each had different strengths and weaknesses. And because of that, we were just a really cohesive team and we worked our tail off. So those two things kind of got us over the hump in a lot of ways. I mean, there's funny stories of things that went wrong. I recall, I mean, I recall us being down for the last few thousand dollars and wondering if we were going to close the doors. And that happened a few times. But I also recall one time when our servers went down for days at a time and we're just trying to figure out why is this happening? And I'm trying to read code. I've never had code in my life just trying to figure out things.
(12:53)
And finally we figured it out. But there's those moments where you think, oh my gosh, is this it? I mean, even nine 11 at the time, that was 2001. That was our industry. Those buildings housed our clients. So when that happened, we thought, who knows what's going to happen to the asset management industry? And we're a startup. Do we have time to weather this storm? Yeah, there's so many fun stories. There's other stories of competition be belittling us and other things along the way that kind of forced us to take the David versus Goliath mindset. But yeah, whenever I'd see my ex co-founders, all we do is tell those stories because they're so much fun to reminisce of the highs and the lows.
Shanna Skidmore (13:36):
What would you tell somebody? What would you tell me, Heath and everybody listening, what kept you going or what looking back are you like? I'm so glad I did it this way. And because entrepreneurship is hard, and you just mentioned, I mean, you probably had to build out a massive software system. I could never read code. I mean, Kyle does our SEO and ads and code, and I'm just like, my brain hurts. Looking at what you're looking at, I have no idea. As entrepreneurs we're asked to do so many things that aren't always our skillset. So what would you say to anybody who could not imagine building a hundred million dollar business? And you didn't even imagine that probably to take an idea and keep running with it. What kept you going?
Heath Wilson (14:23):
I mean, early on it was just the will to succeed and to prove that we could make something out of nothing. I think once you get into it and you actually see that there's a market that's receptive to whatever solution or service you're providing, then it gives you the confidence to say, all right, let's actually, let's push forward on this even further. A little bit of a, I'm serial optimist, so I always believe things are going to work out. I think that can be a weakness as well, in that you may not see the signs that whatever your ideas may not be working. So it's part pushing through and then it's part being observant enough and open enough honestly, to listen to either the marketplace, whatever marketplace you're in, and reading those signals. Because the last thing you want to do is spend five years of your life working on something that doesn't have a future. So just understanding those signals and bringing others, that's the other thing, starting a business on your own is very tough. I had three other people around me, so when I was high, they were low, or when I was low, they were high. So that just made it so much easier for us to persevere and if I have so much respect for solo entrepreneurs because man, they're taking it all on their own and it's hard. The highs and lows of starting a business are daily, not just over the course of a quarter, but daily.
Shanna Skidmore (15:43):
And now they're doing it with the input and feedback of social media, which I think is extra loud
Heath Wilson (15:49):
For sure. Definitely. Definitely developed a thick skin for sure. And in the social media world. Absolutely.
Shanna Skidmore (15:54):
Yeah. So how did you guys come up with your business model? How did you come up with your pricing? Is that something that evolved over time and were there moments where this isn't working, we need to completely change course?
Heath Wilson (16:06):
Tell me about the growth in the first in the business. Really interesting. So again, we started in 2000. So this was before software as a service as a term existed. But when we started concepting what we were building, we thought, well, we're creating something that has value every year, so we should charge for it every year, as opposed to the typical way of charging for software. So we started a SaaS business before it was even a thing. It just felt right. So that was more gut and intuition than anything. From a pricing standpoint, we wanted to be seen as a premium vendor, not the cheapest vendor. So actually, even though our product was probably we not as good as the competition at the time, we priced it as if it were better, somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cause it forced ourselves to get better. So that again, was kind of a philosophical approach to pricing.
(16:50)
And then along the way, I mean, you know, go from the early clients and you learn some things 10 or 15 years into the business. We actually went through a very exhaustive pricing study where we had consultants come in and help us think through it. But early on, a lot of it was gut and intuition and market feedback when people are buying it and buying it. And you're saying, all right, well am I charging enough, right? Yeah, maybe I need to charge more. And if people aren't buying it, then maybe it's price too high. I never forget, I had a landscaper back in Atlanta and he said, Heath, I just can't keep up with business. I said, well, you're not charging enough. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, until someone says no, right, you're not charging enough. So maybe that's a good barometer. Finally, when someone finally says No, maybe you push the
Shanna Skidmore (17:28):
Limit. Yeah, no, I tell all of my clients, I'm like, if you're booking 70% of the people coming into your door, that means it's time to raise your price. That's a good sign. Hearing no is hard. And I'm like, you want to hear no more than you hear? Yes.
Heath Wilson (17:42):
That's great advice.
Shanna Skidmore (17:43):
Thank you, Heath, coming from you. Thank you. Okay, I want to talk what you're doing now, but I just want to hear how long did you stay with your first company? Looking back, were there any massive turning points in that company? And then I would love to hear, I know I've given you a lot of questions, but I would love to hear when did you know it was time to kind of phase out
Heath Wilson (18:07):
All really good questions. So all total, we started in June of 2000. I left at the end of 2018. So 18 years, which is by the way, a long, long run for a startup, especially one that has private equity funding. We brought on a private equity investor in 2008. You ask about turning points. That was one of those turning points. We had gotten to a point where we needed to expand globally. Our clients were asking for it. I think at the time we may have been 20 people and we said, what? That seems hard to go global when you're 20 people. So we needed capital, we needed an investor who had done it. So we brought on some private equity and they allowed us to expand internationally. So that was a massive turning point for the business. The fact that we went from a medium-sized company in Atlanta to a company with offices in London and Hong Kong and Australia and Dubai and all over the place.
(18:51)
So big turning point for the business. I think at that point we probably figured we had another five to seven year run ahead of us because that's the typical timeframe on a private equity investors payback. But it was such a good investment for them that they just told us, they said, candidly, we can't put our money to work anywhere better, so just keep doing what you're doing. And the company was growing, it's still growing at a pretty rapid rate. And then around 2016, we had been doing running hard for 16 years, which feeds into the second part of the story on the next business. But we kind of came together as a team and said, look, we're just tired. We travel all the time. I'm mile on Delta, all these things just not around much. Again, had lived overseas for a couple years and we just said, maybe it's time for us to look at the next option for the business. And we spoke to our investors and said, we think we need to sell it. So now what's interesting about that is we actually thought that we'd be acquired by another private equity investor and have another five to seven years ahead of us. But a strategic corporate acquirer came in and bought us and that sped up the clock a bit.
Shanna Skidmore (19:55):
Was it an interesting process to sell your,
Heath Wilson (19:58):
So
Shanna Skidmore (19:59):
Interesting. You're like, you're kind of your baby.
Heath Wilson (20:01):
So interesting. Well, let me tell you, for anyone listening, if you ever get involved in a sale process, it is exhausting. So I basically spent six months in New York. Bankers were in New York, a lot of the potential buyers were in New York. I remember going on a 21 day, supposed to go on a 21 day vacation with my wife, which I promised for years. I was in New York, 17 of those 21 days. And the four days I was home, I got home at one or 2:00 AM So it was pretty miserable. So that's a tough process. But to your question, there is something about, we were talking about kids before we got on the call here. The business was almost 18 years old at that point. So in some ways it felt like we were kind of pushing it out to college to live on its own. So
Shanna Skidmore (20:43):
They gave me little chills, Heath,
Heath Wilson (20:45):
He's right.
Shanna Skidmore (20:46):
Yeah,
Heath Wilson (20:47):
I know. It had grown up and it was ready to move beyond us and be independent beyond the founders. So yeah, it was hard letting go of our fifth baby in my life. But I spent some time working for the new acquirer and I just realized this is no longer mine to shepherd. It is theirs to shepherd and I've got it in good hands and the people that are staying around are having in good hands. And more than anything, I knew that when the founders lose passion for it, that's going to filter down to the rest of the organization. I just couldn't do that to the company. So that's when I knew, it's when I started to lose passion for coming to work. That's when I knew it needed to go in someone else's hands.
Shanna Skidmore (21:25):
Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about numbers and money for just a second. I would love to hear about your relationship with money growing up now with your company, but particularly growing a company you probably never imagine imagined or fathom getting to the point that it got to how that shaped how you think about money. So let me just frame it with what would you say your relationship with money was growing up, pre-business and then what you learned through growing such a large company?
Heath Wilson (21:56):
I had such a great experience as a child. So we kind of two interesting experiences. So my dad was a financial advisor. I mentioned that it took him a while to become successful. And the reason I mentioned that is for probably half of my childhood we had very low means. And then the other half of my childhood, we were on the high end of the means. So it's almost like barbell of my experiences as a kid. But along the way, and this never wavered when we had a lot with little money, when we had a lot of money, my dad always gave money away. So I grew up with, I wasn't really attached to money cause I just always saw that he wasn't attached to money, which I think was just such a great lesson to learn, particularly if you all of a sudden have excess resources.
(22:39)
So that's kind of how I grew up. The business certainly grew well beyond our expectations and with that comes financial rewards. And thankfully having that instilled as a child, I've kind of the same way. It's always been easy for me to write checks to others. I've never thought when I could go buy this with that or do something, go on a trip with that. It's always just been easy for me to focus on that give aspect first. And therefore I don't think money has as much power over me as it could have. And in some ways, yeah, it was kind of a, I dunno, rags to riches story in a way where all of a sudden I have, we close the transaction and I have money wired into my account and all of a sudden I'm wealthy by any standards and can go do things that I thought I would never be able to do. But because of that upbringing, my lifestyle hasn't necessarily elevated to what you would think. Right. It should. Yeah. And I hope to instill that my kids as well. I mean we love the whole save approach to money, particularly because it breaks the power of money in our hearts.
Shanna Skidmore (23:39):
Will you explain the save spend for anybody who may not know what that is?
Heath Wilson (23:43):
Yeah. Years ago, our pastor at our church in Atlanta, I'm sure a lot of pastors I think have this approach, but that was his give, save spend. So with every dollar a hundred dollars, whatever the number is, take the first 10%, give it away, next 10% save and then live on the rest, give, save, live maybe is a better way to say it. And whether that's putting it into a 401K or some kind of retirement account where you don't worry about it, it definitely breaks the power of money because you never see it and you're doing some good with it. And we all know this, if you have money on you, you're going to spend it right. And it's very hard to give scraps at the end. So just getting into that rhythm of starting with others than starting with the savings for your family before you start spending your money, I think it's just a good routine.
Shanna Skidmore (24:29):
I love that. What would you say is the best thing that you have learned about money?
Heath Wilson (24:33):
It doesn't solve everything doesn't fill whatever hole you have in your heart. If there is a hole, when I sold my first company, I could have retired, but I wanted to contribute to society, which is why we started a second company. And the goal for the second company was never to make more money. The goal was to build something that made an impact in people's lives. So short answer to that is certainly it makes things a bit easier. It doesn't solve for a lot of other issues.
Shanna Skidmore (25:00):
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so this podcast is called Consider the Wildflowers. I love that and I think that means a lot of things to different people, but one of those is in a world that kind of asks us to do everything really well. Home life, work life. You worked hard, you ran for 18 years and I'm sure it felt like maybe a little bit of a relief when that was done. But I want to talk about your transition, your new company, but how building the first business kind of affected life, and then why that led into what you're doing now. So we just kind of talk about that life work harmony that you maybe didn't have for a long time. Why you seek it now. I would love to speak on the work life harmony. I like to call it
Heath Wilson (25:55):
Someone much wiser than me once told me that, you know, can't be good in every area of life. So you have to choose where to sacrifice. And what I learned in my first business is I did not choose myself. I let the business choose for me. And because of that, I was way too busy. I traveled way too much. I neglected time with my family. And I could only see that in hindsight, even though my wife was great at reminding me along the way. But it's true. I think maybe whether it was ego driven or whether it was a responsibility to our people, I'm not sure, but I just worked too much. And I tell entrepreneurs this all the time. I'm like, look, my company would've sold for the same amount and I could've worked and traveled 30% less. I'm certain of that. So knowing that I took some time off after selling the business, my wife and I said, let's at least take one year off, one year to get your feet underneath you and kind of reconnect with what's important.
(26:49)
Now, the funny part of that story is 45 days into the one year, she sat me down again and said, Heath, you're driving me crazy. You got to go do something. So that prompted, that was the permission I needed to go do something else. But I've been very purposeful this time around to not repeat the same mistakes because honestly, the new business frankly was built on some of my personal failures of being available for my family, being attentive, being present. I'm a visionary, so I'm always thinking about the future. And my wife is always great at saying, yeah, that's great. Let's talk about five years from now. But can we actually talk about what's happening right now at the dinner table? Right? Yeah. So it's a challenge for me to stay focused in the present. A lot of what this new business is about is helping people stay present, stay available to those around them,
Shanna Skidmore (27:36):
Tell everybody the new business, what it is and how it came to be.
Heath Wilson (27:40):
Yes, the new business is focused on families and it's all around how to help us better manage these wonderfully captivating, infinitely powerful devices that we put in our pocket, these beautiful smartphones that are attention seeking and distraction causing and relationship tension creating. And I'm not sure that's a good phrase, but
Shanna Skidmore (28:03):
Our needy best friends, our
Heath Wilson (28:04):
Needy best friends, our extra appendage. So my story is, again, this is way back in the Blackberry days. So I had a Blackberry then iPhone and all these things, and I was constantly attached to it. But then you start to see the world through your kids' eyes. And for me, I looked at my kids and I said, oh no, I'm going to give them the same infinitely powerful device. I'm been a terrible role model. If they use it, I've used it. This is not going to go well. So that'd led me down a path of research, say, all right, what is out there that can help us create a better relationship? Not, we weren't trying to create a parental control app. We weren't trying to limit usage. There's plenty of stuff that helps you do that. Ours was all built around. Look, we've only had these things for 15 years, but our relationship with them is just not right.
(28:47)
We feel like we always have to be available. We feel like the emergency call is going to come in all the time. The way we live our life right now is in some ways very fear-based because we are constantly connected or can be constantly connected to everyone around us. So we thought, let's build something that makes it easy for families to put down their phones. We'll gamify the whole experience. We'll make it fun. We'll reward them for their time off. And more than anything, we'll help them start to build a better rhythm around the relationship we what they have with these devices.
Shanna Skidmore (29:15):
Heath, what I love about, I love so many things about this new company and your idea and your passionate and just who you are. I love that you're not trying to vilify our phones. It's like you always have said, or I've heard you say, and I watch your video on your website. It's not that our phones are bad, we're not saying they're bad. It's being intentional with how you're using this powerful
Heath Wilson (29:38):
Tool. Yeah, I'm not giving my phone up. I like, it does a lot of things for me. So we are, we're a technology company, we're pro phone. It really just is about helping create better habits because a lot of people say, I'm addicted to my phone. It's not an addiction. When you have an addiction, you need to abstain. If you're addicted to cigarettes or alcohol or other things like you need to get that out of your life long term. We need our phone, we need our phone to work, we need our phone to do other things. We need our phone to stay connected. So it's not an addiction, it's a bad set of habits. That's all it is When you realize it's a bad set of habits that gives you agency and control to change those habits. And the great news on habits is we have plenty of science that tells us how to create good habits and how to get rid of bad habits. So everything we built as a company is built around the habit formation loop and understanding all the phases of it and building those into the product. So again, that it makes it easy for people to start to get in this rhythm and habit of putting down their phone.
Shanna Skidmore (30:30):
Yeah. Okay. So how did the new business concept come about?
Heath Wilson (30:34):
I was driving home one night in 2016. I had an old Bronco Ford Bronco. So I was sitting up high and I was looking around and everyone was on their phone right now, put aside the fact that it's dangerous to drive with your phone, but that again, this was seven or eight years ago. But I went home and I wrote this rambling manifesto, all the things that were wrong with our phone usage, put that in an email folder, forgot about it, sold the company. And then it hit me one day. I looked around and I said, wow, this has gotten worse. And I went through a couple different life experiences. I was in a mentoring group, then I led a mentoring group with a bunch of men, all high performers. And you get to this month where you start talking about what's keeping you from being the person you want to be, husband, father, you know, name it. Everyone pulled out their phone, everyone, every guy. And I thought, oh goodness, these are supposedly the best of the best and they're struggling. It's just got to be a problem for everyone. And I, I laughed when I tell people this today, I was like, look, if I just started this business five, 10 years ago, I would have to convince you that yeah, you're using your phone too much. I don't, everyone knows today. Yeah, we see it, we feel it, we hear it. We've been phone snubbed, all those things. So phone
Shanna Skidmore (31:41):
Snubbed, I've never heard that. So true. Yeah. Yes.
Heath Wilson (31:44):
So that's how it started. It was just this recognition that we're all struggling with this and there's an opportunity to help people get better. And frankly, that's where it was for me. It started with, I knew I needed to be better for my family, and because of that, I wanted my family to be better as well. So I wanted to bring up this next generation to say, Hey kids, you don't have to be as bad as your parents. Because the truth is, most of us as parents are the worst because we get to explain it a way that we're adulting and we're doing logistics and carpool and all these kind of things. But the reality is our kids don't know. And when we see them playing games or on social media, we get upset, but at the same time, we're probably on our phone the know checking emails late at night. So yeah, this is an entire family problem. This isn't just a kid problem. And the fact that it started with my failures illustrates how much of an adult problem it is.
Shanna Skidmore (32:35):
Yeah. So did you come up with the concept overnight and tell everybody what the company is?
Heath Wilson (32:41):
Yeah. It's called R O A R O. So that is a word from a New Zealand tribal language called Maori. And it stands, the word actually means to notice, to take heat or to turn towards. And really that's what we're all about, is getting people to just notice those around them, to turn towards those that are most important. And the whole concept of the business is we're going to create a system and a solution in your home that consists of a beautiful device. I'm going to call it a box just to make it simple, but a beautiful device, fabric wrap box with beautiful bamboo on top tech packed, and then an app on your phone. Those two work in tandem. Let's say I come home from a day at the office, I walk in the house, I've got a beautiful invitation in front of me to say, Heath, it's time to be present.
(33:21)
When I drop my phone into the RO device, it automatically starts tracking all of my time off, time away. So this is kind of the opposite of Apple screen time. We are tracking all that intentional time that you're putting into your life. And this is the stuff you're proud of, right? Yeah. When you look at screen time, you just, you're frustrated, you're shamed, you know, spend this much time on your phone. When you look at your RO time, you're like, look at me. I did seven hours of family dinners over the last week, or I read for this amount of time, or I watched TV without a second screen. And believe it or not, most people don't do that. Or I didn't sleep with my phone beside my bed for five days in a row. These little wins. That instilled this sense of pride that, hey, I control this thing. It doesn't control me.
Shanna Skidmore (34:02):
Yeah. Will you talk about the early days of ro? Yes. How you were building out the concept, and then I just want to hear about how it's going now.
Heath Wilson (34:10):
It started as a shoebox, actually. It started as a shampoo box. My wife had a shampoo box, by the way for, you can't see me on, listeners, can't see me, but I have no hair on my head. So me using a shampoo box was quite funny actually. But I stuck some cords in the back of the shampoo box and I thought, I just want to see if having a station becomes a cue to put your phone in. That worked. I had a journal beside the shampoo box and said, Hey, I wonder if I'll write down the time that I spent in there. What I did, that lasted about 30 minutes before there was too much friction. So then it hit me, there has to be a seamless way to record your activities. That led me to an app that led me to gamifying it, which is everything from being competitive to nudges, to encouragement, to badges, to everything in between.
(34:52)
The second iteration was what I call the elevated cigar box. We had a local woods Craftman build us 50 beautiful walnut boxes. We tested that with 30 families. We learned a couple things. The visual cue matters. It's the same reason if you have an exercise bike and you put it in the basement, you're less likely to ride it than if it's on the main floor in your line of sight. Yeah. So we learned that work. And then the big thing we learned was we'd ask everyone to say, how did you feel at the end of what we call an RO session? They all said the same thing. They said, I'm so proud of myself. Which I always laugh because it's a bit ridiculous and embarrassing that we're proud of ourselves for putting down our phone, but it's the truth, right? And that just illustrates how pervasive the issue is. But with that learning, we said, all right, let's go build it. And by the way, I knew nothing about hardware, nothing.
Shanna Skidmore (35:40):
Yeah, I was to ask you, I mean, okay, wait, what year did you start? Give me a timeframe. Yeah,
Heath Wilson (35:46):
We started iterating. So I 2019 right before Covid. And then the first year, honestly, it was more of a passion project. We were just trying to solve it for our families. And then once we did that beta test, we thought, all right, we might be on something here in earnest. We probably started really building the company in mid 2020.
Shanna Skidmore (36:04):
Okay. But building an app, all of these things, I mean, how did you figure all that out?
Heath Wilson (36:11):
We just found people that knew what they were doing. So I mean, thankfully I had some colleagues from my old business that I could tap on the app and the software side, and a couple of them have joined RO already. But on the hardware side, we outsourced that to someone who had built a bunch of products, which was a great experience. But everyone will tell you that hard. The old statement is, hardware is hard. And I always tell 'em they're wrong. I'm like, no, that's so wrong. Hardware is excruciatingly, frustratingly impossibly overwhelmingly hard. It's shocked that we got to market, especially in the middle of think back to Covid supply chain and all the crazy world that we lived in for the last few years. But we did, we persevered, we built this, again, it's a beautiful device. We knew it had to be beautiful and it had to be wife approved because it lives in a kitchen, it lives in a family room. It's got to be visible in order to start the visual cue part of the habit loop. So if you know, go to our website, you'll see it is a beautiful fab, almost looks like a home decor piece or somewhere in between a,
Shanna Skidmore (37:09):
I don't have one yet. I'm getting one. Come on. Keith, what is your marketing and distribution? I would be interested to hear that. Will you share, if you don't mind? Yeah. How are you doing your marketing and distribution?
Heath Wilson (37:20):
We found two channels at work really well thus far. First is we've just been telling the story. So any podcast we can get on, we tell the story. And whenever we tell the story, it resonates with people because again, everyone is feeling this tension and everyone, everyone has good intentions. Most of us just haven't aligned our actions with those intentions. And this is a way to align those actions and intentions. So podcasts has been great for us. We've seen a massive take up in the faith community. And my co-founder and I came, we met, actually met at a men's breakfast at church at 7:00 AM randomly on a Friday. So it's kind of a fun story as well. But massive take up in that community. We are solely focused on family. So all of our messaging right now is very tailored towards the family experience. And then we've gotten our feet wet, and we're learning the digital marketing aspect as well.
(38:06)
So one of the debates we had when we started the company was, Hey, do we really want to be on social media if we're telling people to get off their phone? And then it hit me one day, it's like, we've got to fish where the fish are. It would be like a church saying, we don't want non-believers to come to church. So we are on social media. We are getting better at communicating the message both organically through our own social media accounts, but also just in ads and highlighting what we're doing and how we're doing it. And then most things, people start telling their friends and we get invited to something else. We're on stage here, we sponsor an event there. So it's just kind of fun to see how it accumulates over time.
Shanna Skidmore (38:41):
Yeah. I want you to get in with interior designers.
Heath Wilson (38:45):
Yes. We actually, I'm glad you said that because I think if I had life to do over again, I would've been an architect or an interior designer, just cause I'd love same how things look, but we actually worked with an interior designer on the design of the box because we said, Hey, you help people build these beautiful kitchens and family rooms. What is going to live in there without being standing out an ugly piece of furniture?
Shanna Skidmore (39:07):
I often, this is such a side note. And then I want to talk about one more thing before we go into quick fire round. I have often felt kind of guilty about how much aesthetics I have a finance degree, psychology degree, and an art degree. I don't know if you know this. Wow. Yeah, I know. I always say I just couldn't figure it out. And now it makes T total sense. And in the beginning how I mentioned you were maybe our first guest who maybe isn't in the creative S ground. I air quoted that for everybody listening because I always say my husband's an engineer and he is the most creative person I know. So I think creativity is a part of who we are as humans. So I absolutely think spreadsheets can be creative and all the things. I think that's my creativity. But what I was going to say there is I often feel guilty for how much I think about the aesthetics of a home or an office or a box to put your phone in. But aesthetics especially, maybe not to everybody, but definitely to me, I feel affected by the environment that I'm in. I can feel chaotic, I can feel calm. So I just want to note how awesome it is that you have thought about how this box looks because in something that can feel very vain, why are we worried about how it looks? But I truly believe in our minds looks and appearance and aesthetics matters and it affects our day-to-day life. So
Heath Wilson (40:29):
Completely agree. And by the way, there's no shortage of shoe boxes on the planet. So if shoe boxes worked, yeah, we'd all put 'em on our kitchen counter. But I bet that you don't want Nike Swoosh sitting on your kitchen counter
Shanna Skidmore (40:43):
Unless you're my sister, because man, the girl loves her some shoes. Heath, how are you building, coming from your experience, an 18 years of hard hustle and what you learned there? How are you approaching this new business, which you're equally, if not more passionate about in a way that you want to, you'll look back and say, I'm, I'm proud of how I grew that company.
Heath Wilson (41:05):
So when my co-founder and I started talking about culture, I said, ho, hold on, let's, let's go to dinner with our wives because first we need them to speak into how they want us to lead this business. So we almost kind of created a, I don't know, a set of non-negotiables, if you will, that we could all agree upon. So that's one, just making sure that your partner is completely on board and not just setting boundaries, but also emotionally ready to be there for you on the ups and downs. And then the second part of that for me was because my kids are older, I wanted them to be part of this business because the last business, in fact, even today none, no one in my family can actually explain what I did the first time around. So yeah, now it was more complicated, don't get me wrong.
(41:49)
But this one is great because I'm having conversations around, and of course we use it at our house, so it's kind of a thing. But I have conversations and ideation with them around, Hey, what do you guys think about this? Or what if we created that or would you use, because they're 16 and 17, right? They're not late forties like me. So they're world's very different. So yeah, just making sure that they fill part of the organization this time around is will be a huge win. And then not repeating the same mistakes. I mean, a good example is travel. I've just got to be, and it's not that I'm not going to travel. I need to be more communicative if I am going to travel. I mean, there were many times my last job where I would just all of a sudden, oh yeah, I'm going to whatever, Boston tomorrow or the next day. It's like, well, you could have told me yesterday or at least a week before, but everything was on my terms. So making sure it's on our terms this time around instead of my terms.
Shanna Skidmore (42:40):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. That's so helpful. And my follow-up question, I have so many questions. Sorry. My follow-up question to that is, do you feel like those boundaries will decrease or slow the growth of the company?
Heath Wilson (42:53):
I don't think so. I mean, this is a values driven company and honestly, if we don't operate that way, we're hypocrites. We're telling people to be present. We're telling them to spend when they're with their families, spend time with their family. Don't be checking. Don't work at night if they don't have to. So if we're not practicing what we preach, then I feel like the company is going to suffer. And I would argue that culture is the most important thing in a company, probably even more so than product or pricing or anything else. And if we're not demonstrating it from the top, then yeah, then we're just going to be blowing into the wind because people won't believe that we're sincere about the mission.
Shanna Skidmore (43:27):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think that's one of the hardest things, maybe not said or spoken often, but felt is that if you have boundaries or if you don't work 80 hours a week or time constraints and boundaries can hinder the growth of a company. And I'm like, maybe yes, the fact that I work less right now because Madeline is little, I've chosen to do that. I know that I could probably get a lot more done if I worked more. However, if you mentally burnout, then that's also hindering you. So I just love that you're kind of building two different companies two different ways. So thank you for sharing that.
Heath Wilson (44:06):
Yeah. And honestly, I don't have the energy I had when I was 26, so I don't even know if I'm physically capable of working the same hours, even if I were willing to sacrifice everything with the family, which I'm not, of course. But so it's also understanding your limits and your limitations. And part of that is what stage of life are you in? If you have a young child you're describing, or in my case, I'm just unwilling to work 80, 90 hours a week.
Shanna Skidmore (44:29):
And I love that. It's like that's what I try to share with all my students and clients. Success looks different to every single person. And if we don't define, like you said, you let the business, your first business kind of drive how you showed up. And if we don't define what success looks for us and this season, whether you have little kids, no kids, the world will define it and especially the business world because it still is a more culture. Yeah, this is so good. Okay, let's quick fire. Let's do it. Put you in the hot seat. It's going to be sad to wrap up. I have so many more questions about partnerships and all the things. Okay. Okay, let's quick fire. Keith, what is one thing you would be embarrassed if people knew?
Heath Wilson (45:08):
I dunno if I'd be embarrassed, but maybe I would be a little embarrassed. I love, in fact, my favorite genre of books and movies are dystopian futures. Okay. So anything from zombie apocalypses to nuclear or for whatever reason, that's just what I enjoy.
Shanna Skidmore (45:26):
That is hilarious.
Heath Wilson (45:27):
It's kind of a weird, it's elevated sci-fi in a way.
Shanna Skidmore (45:31):
Yeah. Do you like the movies too, or just the book? Both.
Heath Wilson (45:34):
Both? Yeah. I like 'em
Shanna Skidmore (45:35):
Both. Yeah. Okay. World War Z. That's the only one
Heath Wilson (45:38):
In mind for me. Amazing. I mean, my wife, if she heard you say that, she'd laugh because I watch it. If I happen upon it, I will watch it. And she's like, have you seen this 83 times? I'm like, yes, and I'm going to watch it again.
Shanna Skidmore (45:48):
Avatar. Did you like Avatar? I
Heath Wilson (45:50):
Liked Avatar, yeah,
Shanna Skidmore (45:50):
Absolutely. I mean, that's a different kind. But I didn't watch Avatar for years and years cause I was like, I'm not a sci-fi. Like I loved it. I loved Avatar. Okay. Any regrets or wish you could do over moments?
Heath Wilson (46:02):
I mean a lot, right? I mean the whole premise new business is trying to, in some ways make up for some of those regrets. Yeah, I mean if I were offering some advice to the listeners, it's like you just said, you don't have to work all the time and you've got to, in fact, a lot of the research now says that to create some space is the only way to think creatively. And as you mentioned, not just putting something on a canvas, but thinking about your business and where that's going. Even if it's something very specific, finance, accounting, whatever, you need that quiet space in order to think creatively. So just having a busy calendar, that's not a sign of productivity, that's just a sign of being busy.
Shanna Skidmore (46:43):
Yeah. That's so good. What is that quote? I'm going to find it and I'm going to list it at the bottom, but it's that idea of why you're busy. The is praised, the mosquito is swatted.
Heath Wilson (46:54):
I haven't heard that.
Shanna Skidmore (46:55):
I'm going to, I'm going to find the quote I'm going to send to you. I'm going to read it at the end for everybody, but it's just a really good idea of why are you doing what you're doing?
Heath Wilson (47:03):
The other thing I've leaned into is, and we talked about this a bit, but at least from a calendar and a timing standpoint, schedule your non-negotiables. So that could be, it could be date night, it could be a exercise, it could be a walking the dogs. But whatever those are for you, schedule those because otherwise they'll fall to the wayside. And the last thing you want is to look back over nine months and say, gosh, we haven't been on a date once. Yeah,
Shanna Skidmore (47:29):
Yeah.
Heath Wilson (47:29):
That's because you didn't schedule it.
Shanna Skidmore (47:30):
Yeah. That's so good. Schedule. Okay, third question. Big win or pinch me moment
Heath Wilson (47:37):
With the new business. The big win was the first time someone bought it that we didn't know because you create this thing and you think people are going to love it and you hope people are going to, I should say, you hope people are going to love it, but you never know, right? Your mom's going to buy it and your brother or whatever, but will someone that I've never met that has no idea who we are, will they buy it now? That's everyone that buys it, which is amazing. But yeah, that was the first pinch me moment that Oh wow. People actually think this resonates. Quick follow on to that is we're starting to hear stories now from our members. From our members, and I mean they will, they'll bring you to tears. I mean stories like an eight year old who looks at her dad and says, dad, that's the first time you've ever watched a movie with me without your phone or a four year old, you're hiding her mom's phone in what she calls the box thingy.
(48:24)
And she said, why did you put it in the box thingy? She said, because you play with me more when it's in the box thingy. We're starting to hear stories like that every week. And I mean, it's just amazing. And I think about my family. I mean, if I can just be there when my teenage son or daughter wants to finally have that vulnerable conversation and I'm available versus not looking down, I mean, wow, what a difference we're going to make across the world. Or the husband and wife that're struggling. And I always tell people, if your marriage is struggling, just put down your phone. They'll probably solve 50% of your problems. Right? Yeah. So I mean, we really do think there are, there's restoration and renewal with this business. We think their marriages say, we think there are families that just live differently. We think there are kids that won't have the same level of captivation with social media. We think there will be girls that don't have the same issues with body image from Instagram. There's, there's so many permutations that can happen if we start to break the chains of our phones.
Shanna Skidmore (49:18):
Yeah, I'm like crying over here because I'm so passionate about what you're doing. And as someone who has chosen, and again, social media isn't the villain, but I chose in 2017 to run my business off of social media, which we've been thinking about more lately. And like you said, go where the phish are, if that's still the right move. But just the difference, the decrease in phone usage has made in our life and our business, in our marriage, in our home. I have no doubt you're changing lives with what you're doing. So thank you. Thank you. Okay. Number four, best advice or just really good advice that you have received
Heath Wilson (49:58):
Real quick. So this wasn't meant to be advice, but I had a construction job when I was 19 or 20. I was 18 anyway, my first day on the job, an older gentleman looks at me, he said, son, how old are you? I said, I'm 18. He said, only 50 more years of this. And it hit me at that moment I thought, oh no, I'm going to college and I'm going to make better grades. And I made this last semester. So it was an indirect way of saying get your tail to work, because working in construction for 50 years will be tough. The actual piece of advice that led us to start the first business was an older gentleman, way more wiser than us, said, guys, go do it. Lemme tell you why. Because if it fails, you can go get a job. You're imminently employable right now. You have very little in terms of commitments, I was single, it's not car payments, all that kind of stuff. Like life was pretty easy and it gets a little bit harder as you get older and have different commitments and responsibilities in your life. So that was definitely the thing that prompted us to get going.
Shanna Skidmore (50:53):
I love it. Chase the dream. What are you working on now or one resource that you would like to share?
Heath Wilson (51:00):
I mean, RO is my number one thing I'm working on right now. And it's so much fun every day, so much fun. And I've, it's fun to work with people that I love, people that I've worked with before. I have a friend that was a college roommate that 30 years ago we met and now he's part of the team. So that's just so much fun. I've been reading a bunch, guessing I'm a little bit older than most of your listeners, but I've been reading a bunch around community and kind of second half of life and really what leads to happiness. So I've been thinking a lot around how can we create an environment where there's more collisions with people instead of coming home, closing the garage door and just sitting out our back porch. So that's not a good answer to the question, but it's just on my mind of it feels like as a society, we're a bit more isolated than we used to be, and how can we, not only in our families be more connected, but how can we carve out some time for others and kind of nurture the friendships that we have and start some new friendships that we don't have?
(51:58)
So that's just something that's kind of nagging in the back of my head. A have you been a good
Shanna Skidmore (52:01):
Way reading a book? Is there a book you read
Heath Wilson (52:03):
A bunch of books. David Brooks writes a few books on the topic of, let's call it significance in the second half of life, but he's also written some articles on, and there's a guy named Author Brooks, not related, but he writes one on what defines happiness. And a lot of it is just community, right? And I think we thought social media would be that, and of course it's not panning out that way, but just trying to think through how can we, especially as look, we're few years away from being, we don't want to say open nesters with kids out of the house. So I mean, it's going to be really quiet and I want to make sure we've cultivated the friendships and relationships and communities so that we're not trying to live vicariously through our kids when they're off to school.
Shanna Skidmore (52:45):
Hey, is Ro a subscription service?
Heath Wilson (52:47):
It's a membership. We really wanted to get rid of the upfront cost. So it's anywhere from 12 to $18 a month, depending on how long you subscribe for. It's for the whole family. So that's not $12 per person, that's for the whole family. So if you've got a bunch of kids, one price, that does come with the device as well. So we want to price into that same kind of streaming music or video range. And the takeup has been amazing. It really has overwhelmed and so blessed to be where we are. Just a few months into the business. We just launched in November. We sold every day since we launched, except for December 28th of all weird days sold on Christmas, bizarrely enough. So yeah, it's been a fun early ride and we're just trying to
Shanna Skidmore (53:26):
Figure out, somebody on Christmas was like, you need to get off your phone,
Heath Wilson (53:30):
Guaranteed. We had a lot of Mother's Day purchases as well on Mother's Day where I think the same thing happened. Yeah.
Shanna Skidmore (53:37):
Yeah. That's awesome. I'm grateful for what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you for putting this passion project into the world. It's amazing. And thank you for sharing your story. It's amazing to hear entrepreneurs do incredible things every single day, and I'm so honored to get to have this podcast and do what I do just to hear those stories. So yeah,
Heath Wilson (53:58):
Thank you.
Shanna Skidmore (53:59):
Okay, before we send it off, I want to ask you, what would you tell yourself on day one of starting your first business?
Heath Wilson (54:07):
Have the benefit of hindsight? So this is somewhat of a similar answer to what we've been describing, but actually I'll do a little twist. And this is something I've learned more recently and that is I am not that important. And I think it's a good perspective to have because if you have a successful business, a lot of people are going to tell you that you're important and you're going to feel important, especially if you're leading a team or a big team or a bunch of offices like you that the ego starts to creep in. So just constantly reminding yourself, you're not that important. I think as good as a leader. And then the second part of that, and it relates to the second business, is I put my phone down a lot. And I have realized by doing that, that I'm also not that important.
(54:48)
I'm not the president, there's just not, world's not going to end. We're not going to go to war. I'm just not that important. And I think the beauty of that is one is just leaning into that because humility's way more attractive than arrogance, although that's not the intent. But in the second part of that is at least with your phone, you start to train's the wrong word, but you start to condition those on the other end of the phone to not be concerned if you don't reply immediately. And we've gotten into such an immediate reply world to where we even feel guilty if we don't reply to someone when they text us or contact us. So in some ways it's nice reminding yourself of that because you start to give other people the permission to say, well, gosh, he doesn't respond immediately. Maybe I don't have to respond immediately to those around me. So in some ways, just trying to take some of these best practices and kind of help spread them across two others, I should say.
Shanna Skidmore (55:42):
Yeah, thank you for sharing your story. Thanks for coming on. This has been a blast. I love just getting to hang with you. Awesome. And what you're doing, and thanks for coming on the
Heath Wilson (55:51):
Show. And if anyone wants to learn about ro, it's at GO R O G O A R o.com. We sell directly through the website there so you can learn all about what we're doing there and a bunch of videos and blogs and all kinds of cool stuff we're working on.
Shanna Skidmore (56:02):
We will have everything linked in the show notes, so we'll make it easy for everybody to go over. I literally going to talk to Kyle when I hang up and we're going to order ours. Yes. I'm so font can't wait. Fabric bound, neutral color. Let's go. There you go. He Thanks so much.
Heath Wilson (56:16):
Yes, thank you, Shanna.
Shanna Skidmore (56:17):
Hey, wildflower, you just finished another episode of Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast. Head over to consider the wildflowers podcast.com for show notes, resource links, and to learn how you can connect with Heath A Little Sunshine this week from our Wildflower of the Week, I've binged every episode and have enjoyed the ins and outs of every conversation. Shanna has a way of asking the hard questions that are asked in a genuine and loving way, so that we can hear and learn in ways that have never been shared before. I look forward to every episode. Thank you, Mr. Little Z Sleep, and thank you for each and every kind word. Your reviews means so much. One final thought for today from Mary O'Connor. It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The be is praised, the mosquito is swatted. As always, thank you for listening. I'll see you next time.