A Founder's Life
Join me as I explore the powerful intersection of entrepreneurship, health & wellness, and parenthood. In each episode, I’ll be interviewing inspiring individuals who excel in one or more of these areas, sharing their stories, insights, and lessons. My goal is to provide valuable takeaways that can help you thrive both personally and professionally.
A Founder's Life
Why Entrepreneurs Must Accept Uncertainty - Bart Davis - S6 -E7
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👤 Connect with Today’s Guest – Bart Davis
Website: https://512financial.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bartdavis512/
Many founders never planned to become entrepreneurs.
In this episode, Bart Davis shares how a traditional career in accounting at PwC unexpectedly led him into entrepreneurship and eventually to co-founding 512 Financial, a fractional services firm helping companies with finance, accounting, talent, and operational support.
Bart discusses the moment he took a leap from the corporate path, working alongside experienced entrepreneurs to scale and sell businesses, and how that experience ultimately gave him the confidence to start his own company.
We also talk about balancing family life with entrepreneurship, protecting time for what matters most, and why founders must accept that many outcomes will always remain outside their control.
What you’ll learn:
• Why many founders become entrepreneurs accidentally
• The opportunity that led Bart to leave a traditional career path
• How fractional finance teams help businesses scale and exit
• Why protecting family time is critical for founders
• The importance of accepting uncertainty in entrepreneurship
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Welcome to a Founders Life. I'm your host, Leo Castetler. On this show, we dive into the real stories behind the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and how we pursue a more balanced and meaningful life along the way. This podcast is sponsored by Thanks, helping founders like us scale with reliable remote talent. Email founders at Thanks.com. That's T-H-A-N-K-Z.com with the subject line of founder's life to receive preferred pricing. Now, I'm excited today to be joined by Bart Davis. Bart, would you introduce yourself to the audience?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thanks, Leo. Appreciate you having me on. Bart Davis. I'm the co-founder and CEO of 512 Financial. We're a fractional services firm based out of Austin, Texas, and doing all things accounting, finance, people, talent for uh for our clients.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. Do you want to talk a little bit about your journey that brought you to starting your own business? And then a little more about what your business does for your clients, so how you're helping them and what a typical client looks like.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. The journey I think is um it's not unique necessarily, but I I wouldn't not have ever thought of myself as especially entrepreneurial. I'm an accountant by by education and and trade, and uh we tend to be not especially creative, pretty risk averse. And so I think this was probably not what I saw in the cards for myself earlier in my career. But effectively, the the story is I I started in a kind of a more typical uh career path as a public accountant and CPA with PwC in Houston. I was auditing oil and gas companies there. And not too long into that, despite enjoying it-ish as much as you can enjoy the grind of public accounting, um, I got introduced to a guy named Joel Trammell here in Austin. And Joel at the time was the lead investor and board chairman in two lower middle market software companies, to you know, 10 to 15 million apiece in revenue. He had been outsourcing the accounting function to a group that with a similar concept, a shared services model, but one that offshored most of the work India. And it was a cost-effective model. There were there were components about it he liked, but there were the the the output was not what he felt like he needed in order to be able to scale and decision and eventually exit those businesses. And so when we got connected in uh it was around Easter of 2014, he just he described the problem set and that he needed, you know, someone of my kind of skill set and makeup to come do what that firm had been doing just for those two companies until we could eventually get it to a point of selling those businesses. And Joel, very different from me, very entrepreneurial, has has had some large successes that you know he and his wife built a few companies and scaled them and exited for for uh you know 200 million, I think was the bigger one, but that was not the only large one. And um, so it just kind of felt like an opportunity that that didn't present itself all the time. And so I would kind of was looking at, I've got, you know, the the kind of the typical path, PwC. There's a there's a very specific career trajectory that appealed to my accountant brain. But again, there was this thing of like, I don't know that stuff like this is gonna come along all the time. And so I jumped on that opportunity back in 2014 and we did it just for those two companies or andor affiliated companies for the next seven years. Um, so we sold the first of those original two in um the summer of 2018, and then we sold the second of those original two in May of 2021. And that second sale was sort of the impetus to look at my four-person team and look around the Austin marketplace and kind of go, I think we're good at this and we should be doing it for for you know the market. And so it wasn't, you know, it was something that we had done before. I had a team, we had a couple of legacy clients. It felt logical, albeit still risky, to kind of go out and start, you know, start the business. So um that's that's the story in a nutshell.
SPEAKER_01You know, it it's funny, I would say at least two-thirds, if not more, of the people that I chat to on this podcast are accidental entrepreneurs. So they didn't aim to be, um, but they fell into it for one reason or another. In the end, they they realized they were good at it, or they got fired from a job, or they, you know, whatever reason, they sort of accidentally ended up as an entrepreneur and end up building a business around that. Pretty successful businesses. And talk to us about how family looks for you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I uh so I've been married for coming up on 14 years, met my wife in college in San Antonio, lived on the same hall freshman year, started dating sophomore year, rest is history. And then we've got two little girls. One is five, one will be two in June. And they certainly keep my me on my toes, as as I'm sure that you or any other parent out there can imagine.
SPEAKER_01Lovely little ones. I can barely remember that. My mine are 20 and 23 now.
SPEAKER_00Goodness, yeah. I know it goes fast, so I've been told, and so I've seen so far in these last five years.
SPEAKER_01But it does. And all ages are fun, is what I would say. Yeah. As I mentioned too earlier, I've just come back from two weeks in Japan, of which ten days of it was uh with my son. So I did the marathon and then uh spent ten days, and I just love that time with my kids. Yeah. I think quite like it. And how does uh health look for you? And health, you know, really you could define as mental health, physical health, nutrition, sort of any aspects that that really are an important part of your life.
SPEAKER_00You'd say I've kind of learned to re-emphasize the the physical fitness component recently. You mentioned running the marathon. I I did a good bit of running earlier in my life when I had more time on my hands. I I ran a full marathon and probably a dozen or so half marathons. It's probably been five or six years now since the last kid, there's a there's a correlation here. You know, training for for that takes a good bit of time and uh also gets harder because now you're pushing the stroller around. So anyway, I kind of like so between between that life change and um and starting the business, which we're not too far apart. Our first daughter was born in January of 21. We started the business at kind of late 21, beginning of 22. Um, so I sort of took my eye off of the ball from a from a physical fitness perspective. Not that I, you know, became a slob or anything, but it definitely was not a huge priority that it had been before. And I have probably in the last, I don't know, nine months or so sort of reprioritized the physical fitness side. And, you know, I feel like it's made a really big difference on my productivity from a work perspective, you know, energy level, focus, et cetera, that I did I didn't notice. And and if and I thought that spend taking the time, whether it be a workout, you know, a workout at lunch, whether it be one early in the morning before the girls wake up or things like that, I felt like that would be taking away from networking or you know, or product productive on undisrupt disrupt disrupted time. And so I I yeah, I I I deprioritized it for a while and I didn't notice that it was impacting productivity, but now in hindsight that I'm trying I'm getting to get into the gym probably four or five times a week, and like I can absolutely feel the difference, not just in like how I feel physically, but also how I perform at work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no question. I'm a big believer in healthy body, healthy mind, and I think um it does affect everything. You know, it does affect, you know. Uh yes, it affects how you can show up as a parent. To be honest, as they get a little older, it's a great influence. And I can say that as someone who, by the way, 20 years ago was 95 pounds heavier than I am now. So I'm by far the health and fitters I've been in my life, and my kids have seen that transformation. And I've seen how that has influenced them. You know, they they uh fitness is important to both of my kids in the different forms it takes. So yeah, I think it's important. And what do you like to do for fun?
SPEAKER_00You know, fun is not a thing there's a whole ton of time for, although maybe just like fitness, I need to sort of rethink how the the prioritization goes. Um, you know, I'm I'm a big, big sports nut. I grew up in uh in Wisconsin. I mean, you know, the Packers were effectively my religion growing up. So the the Packers are a big the Packers in all things Wisconsin sports. I'm really excited for March Madness coming up. You know, Packers, Badgers, Brewers, Bucks, like I'm still all in, although I've now lived in Texas for about as long as I lived in Wisconsin, but all that is uh all that is very stuck in my blood. So you know, to the extent I can either get two games when when one of those teams happens to be you know in Texas or maybe even maybe even make a little trip out of it. I like to do that. I that probably the the nerdiest habit I have is I I like bird watching quite a bit. So that is something that when I have time and I can get the little, I can get the baby, you know, if she just falls asleep in the car while we do a few loops or something, and I can I can check out some birds. So that's one that um that I try to do as much as I can. And then, you know, and then obviously just spending spending quality time with the family. We like to travel when we're when we're able to and when schedules allow and all that good stuff as well.
SPEAKER_01And how do you sort of make sure that you balance everything? So, you know, you're working hard as all entrepreneurs are, but you know, you want to make time for your family, you know, important to make time for fitness and a little bit of fun here and there, but in whatever form that takes. Um and and how do you make sure that you balance all of that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think uh well, so one thing that I did pretty much right away when we had a kid, which I did not do when we were when it was just myself and my wife, is really, really protect six to nine in the a.m. and the p.m. And that may not sound like a lot, but like that's kind of you know, that's what we have with our kids realistically, right? Like they're in daycare from nine to five, they wake up early, um, and and my older daughter tends to go to bed kind of late. But so that's really those are the windows of opportunity that we have on a typical workday to spend with them. And those often also can be times for networking, you know, breakfasts or happy hours or whatever. And so I used to do a lot of those things. And uh so it was a it was a conscious decision to go like, no, like, you know, if I'm I'm I'm not taking the early morning meeting, I am not going to the happy hour, I am not, you know, with with with obviously there's there are limited exceptions to any rule, but like in general, whereas my work days had a tendency to stretch out on either side for either an event or just because of busyness or time zones or whatever it might be, um, that that has been something that has become very kind of very sacred time in our house is like the the wake up until daycare and daycare until bed is just like not really touchable time.
SPEAKER_01I love that. What has been for you a pivotal moment in your life?
SPEAKER_00I mean, certainly having kids, you know, the the having kids and also having the first kid in the middle, kind of in peak COVID was uh was pivotal. You know, I it I think for us, fortunately, it it went very well. We had jobs that were flexible. Um we really enjoy spending time together, you know, the two of us. It it wasn't like we, you know, we got shut into our house and went like, gosh, like this is too much. But it was pivotal, you know. We I think we I think we sort of rediscovered some things about you know about each other in that time. You know, we we did like silly, goofy stuff like whipped cream trick shot videos and you know, just stupid little you know, challenges that you see on the internet just to keep ourselves sane while we weren't allowed to go anywhere. And uh so yeah, you know, I I look back on it, I think, I think COVID was really, really challenging for some people, um, you know, from a mental health perspective. For us, we kind of thrived in it, and I think it made us really appreciate what we have and you know, what we have in each other, and then and then with the family additions and um and again the flexibility that like during that time we built an office in our backyard where I sit today. And like that having that ability is something that we didn't take for granted. We um yeah, I felt extremely fortunate through that, I think in a way that maybe we might have a little bit taken for granted before that.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, I think COVID, as you said, definitely some challenges for people and some positives. I mean, for me, I just loved the time with my kids, you know, my kids generally, but especially with my son. We built a routine where we spent three hours a day to continue until he went off to college working out, weightlifting, boxing, dinner, watching some TV. It just became a routine that that continued. So yeah, I think uh there definitely can be some silver linings in uh some of these things as well. And what's one piece of advice you'd give to an aspiring entrepreneur?
SPEAKER_00You know, I think I think it's just like uh eyes wide open and be willing to accept um that there are there, you know, as as hard as you can work and and uh as much as you can control, there are some things that are out of your control, and there has to be some level of maybe not comfort, but at least acceptance with that, you know, because I I mean I I had especially in the early going, even though it was it it's always for the most part gone pretty well, I still just got frustrated, you know, with like I know I'm doing I or the team are doing certain things right, and you know, the outcome isn't exactly what we had in mind, and like why the hell not? You know, and uh so yeah, I mean that may be overly simple, but I do it's like there's uh yeah, there's a lot that's that's not in your control. There's a lot of decision making without all of the data that you would maybe like to have, because if you wait until you're able to find every piece of data to make that decision, that the opportunity may have already passed by you. So I think things in that sort of of realm would be my would be my advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.
SPEAKER_01Excellent.
SPEAKER_00And how can people find you? Uh so we're very active on LinkedIn, um five uh 512 Financial, obviously. Um and then our website, 512financial.com, which as of probably a couple weeks from now is about to get quite the facelift that I'm very excited about. I I we uh we made the decision to hire a CMO recently, and she basically said, Hey, look, like I or any other CMO worth their salt is not gonna come on full time until you do something about this website, which hurt a little, but after I, you know, took the ego part out of it, um we've uh we've seen a ton of progress in the last uh three or four months on that, and uh really excited for that to be revealed. But you can find us there for now. It it's got it's got a lot of good content as is. It maybe just doesn't flow the way that it uh it should, and that will be resolved in the next couple of weeks here.
SPEAKER_01Nice. It's not one you designed personally, is it?
SPEAKER_00Oh no, no, no, no. No. This uh we we hired the pros for it. Yeah, no, I would not. The way that it was before was more along the lines of how it would look if I designed it personally, and uh and yeah, it wasn't it wasn't good enough, which is fine because I am not a marketer and and that's okay. Fair enough.
SPEAKER_01And uh Well, thank you for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Leo, I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01And uh thank you for listening to today's episode. And if you enjoyed the conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the channel, tell your friends and leave a review.