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Built to Last
Candid conversations with entrepreneurs on life and business.
Join us as we uncover the habits, mindsets, and strategies that help organizations and people thrive for the long haul.
Built to Last
Episode 4: Real Decisions in Business and Life with Constantino Papadopulos from Enterprix
Levi, Colby, and Constantino explore the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, business culture in different countries, and making tough decisions—whether it’s changing markets, exiting a partnership, or stepping away from leadership
https://www.linkedin.com/in/constantino-papadopulos-a85620b/
https://enterprix.us/
Quotes Worth Sharing
"Most businesses should buy, not build. But for the 20% that need to build—get it right from the start."
"A business partnership is like a marriage—you need to talk about the hard stuff before it’s too late."
"The more I say no to, the clearer my priorities become."
"The business was suffering because we stopped having hard conversations."
"Most businesses in Mexico didn’t see IT as an investment—they saw it as an expense."
"My journey in business was a mix of chance and necessity."
"I was forced to step back—my body demanded it."
"We pick and choose what we admire from different people's lives—but nobody has it all."
"I don’t want to feel like I’m never doing enough—I want to chase excitement, not stress."
Breakdown
Starting in Business: From Industrial Machinery to Software (2:00 - 8:30)
Expanding to the U.S. Market (8:30 - 14:30)
The challenges of selling IT solutions in Mexico vs. the U.S.
The first international client from Australia.
Lessons learned about market demand and positioning.
Technology: Build vs. Buy (14:30 - 20:30)
The eternal debate: should businesses develop custom software or buy existing solutions?
The reality of long-term software maintenance and hidden costs.
When customization makes sense.
The Business Partnership Breakup (20:30 - 32:00)
Why Constantino and his partner (also a family member) decided to split.
How they managed the transition without damaging relationships.
Lessons learned from handling difficult business decisions.
Stepping Down as CEO (32:00 - 40:00)
Why Constantino decided to delegate leadership.
The challenge of letting go and trusting the team.
Cultural Business Differences (40:00 - 50:00)
How Mexican and North American business cultures differ.
Entrepreneurship, Health, and Work-Life Balance (50:00 - 1:00:00)
The struggle to maintain health while growing a business.
Long-Term Goals and Personal Definitions of Success (1:00:00 - 1:10:00)
The evolving definition of happiness for an entrepreneur.
Welcome to built to last the podcast where entrepreneurs share real stories about the triumphs and challenges of building enduring success, hosted by Colby Jardine and Levi Lawrence. This show is as much about learning as it is about sharing. Every day is a learning curve, and Colby and Levi invite you to join them as they uncover the habits, mindsets and strategies that help organizations and individuals thrive. All right, I'm really excited with this conversation. I think we solidified the name of the podcast, and hopefully the intro has clarified that. But we're still early enough that it's been a discussion. What we're trying to do is talk about business and beyond the things that interest us and we're super curious about both on building better businesses and doing work better, but also how we live better. Because we all have kind of interesting and different ways of looking at life. I find the people who are all owning businesses are leading. So today I'm going to let him intro himself. This is your small foreshadowing there. Constantino, I'm not going to do it for you, but Constantinos coming from, and what excites me about this conversation is we've done work with Constantinos company. We were introduced through, you know, a mutual connection and friend. But we come from different countries, have different cultural backgrounds, and so some of the exploring I hope to do is around, not only some operational stuff, because I'm interested in that, but like some of the cultural pieces of being a business owner in different cultures. And so I'm super excited. And so before I go too much further, I was just wondering if you want to introduce a little bit about who you are and what your company is, and then we'll take it from there. Sure. Thanks. LEVI So, I'm constantinopolos, Mexican, born and raised, I founded business. We have two businesses. One is called Quick ups, which is a Mexican company that does it development, mostly near shoring. We do CRM, ERP a little bit, and we have a team down in Mexico that we manage and operate daily. And we have the US portion of it, company called enterprix, which is IT consulting mostly. We leverage the fact that we have both companies. We try to have the best of both worlds, meaning a global market with top level solutions, and having the advantage of near shoring cost advantage structural and elements. And I've been doing this for eight years now. This is my life. It's been quite a journey. Excited for what's coming up in the future, but glad to be here. Great to talk to you, and excited for this. I didn't realize that that we were the same age the company age. We're going on eight years. That's funny. I didn't realize that different journeys. I'm sure I'd love to just while we're still on the topic of you how, why did it get started? What was the was it just you saw an opportunity, or you were a client of one, or you just wanted to create your own job. What was the what started it? So my journey in business was kind of a mix of chance and necessity. Pretty much. I started working. I graduated 2009 the middle of the financial crisis. I went to college in the States. My My goal was to work in finance in a big bank for years, a couple of years, get some experience, and then see where like took me. But during that period, there was not much to do. I come from a family that or a culture that's very family focused and very business focused as well. My My grandfather migrated from Greece over to Mexico, started a very successful entrepreneurial career over 40 years, locally and in the region. And my dad, which is was one of the four brothers that kind of took over the business. He always wanted me and my brothers and sisters to to get education in the States. I always liked the idea. So that was, that was the what I did. But unfortunately, I had to come back to Mexico, not a lot of opportunities in the States, and I ended up starting a business in a completely different realm. I did industrial machinery, forklifts, rental sales out of an opportunity that came across. Was from from a friend or a friend of my father's actually, and I devoted a good six, seven years of my life to that. I enjoyed it. I didn't realize how misaligned that was with my interest and my skill set until I ended up doing what I'm doing now. So to answer your question, I I hired a couple of companies to develop an application, a software to manage all the operation for the forklift business work orders, kind of a CRM sales process that went over to inventory pretty much in ERP. And after a couple of fail attempts, I I talked to my brother in law, yeah, that that was the the idea I talked to my brother in law. He was not married to my sister at the time, and he has a night or he, yeah, he has an IT background. And we talked. I said, I'm looking for something. He pointed me in the direction of Soho. I didn't know anything my I've always liked it and computers, but I have, I had no coding or software engineering background at all. I took a couple of courses, and over a year, I built a full on application where I ran my business. And at that point, I realized how much I liked both the process and the defining the structure and the processes and the problem solving of things, and I learned coding to a good degree. I'm not an expert, but I'm dangerous enough to to know what I'm doing, and I was very happy with it. I started talking to friends about it. I got a friend of mine who has a pest control business. He was doing everything on paper, and I showed him what I did. He loved it. I built the the solution, the application for him. And at that point, that was one of the the aha moments where I said, alright, you know what? I think I I like doing this. I see the value in this. At that point, I decided to talk to my brother in law and say, Alright, I think there's a business opportunity here. I don't know where, I don't know how, but I see potential. Let's, let's start exploring it and see where this takes us. So that's how I ended up in this business. We worked. He had a full time job. I was running my business at that time, we started getting some friends and family to get involved. We built probably 10 or 15 different solutions. He was doing more of the of the coding part of things. I was doing the process analysis and and bringing down the business side of things to solutions in the software. We were working late nights, weekends, to a point where it got to making a decision. I was clear that I wanted to follow that path. And I talked to him, I said, I want to do this full time. Do you want to try this? Test it for a year, see where this takes us. That was 2017, and we, we partnered up and started the business. That's That's how I got into this world, and you must have exited your other one. I sold my business a year after I just left it aside. I went there probably Saturdays and a couple of hours late afternoons, but I left it and this became my full focus for for a good year and a half till we kind of developed it. How did you how did you kind of separate your brain space, or how did you make that transition? I think it was, it was a process from from the moment that I started building the application for my business, it gradually took a lot more attention to to that side, more than the operation of the other business. Then when I when we started doing applications or software for other either friends or family or some of our initial clients, I saw that it was demanding more and more time. At the time, it was only two of us, so our time availability was limited, and that kind of took me to a place where we had to decide I couldn't handle both, and I had a preference for this, how I manage it with late nights and probably missing a lot of details, which was not ideal, but it's probably definitely. Definitely, but, yeah, that's, that's, that's the way it went. And I mean, looking, looking back at it, there were some pretty dark moments where there was a lot of uncertainty and some big decisions to be made. But I'm, I'm glad it was the path that I took interesting. I have all kinds of things I want to add. I guess so. One of the questions I want to ask is, when and how and why move into the US. But I guess the way I want to frame is that, did you need to or was that like, Did you run towards it? Or were you running away from your current market? Like, what was the decision like? What brought you over? So it was a good coincidence of two of two facts, right? One, naturally, we started with the local market and the Mexican market, and we had some very good projects. But the culture, in terms of business, and in terms of it was not ideal, and we were suffering from it. And I'll give you a couple of examples. For instance, the the awareness from businesses, especially small and medium businesses, of investment in it, and the benefits that it produces in in efficiency and profitable and profitability, they're not valued, or were not valued at that point, to a place where, where they were willing to invest right? So to summarize it, there's, there's some pre built software that you can get for a couple 100 bucks a year. You own it, and that's the operating system that you use. There's not much advantage in using it, but it takes care of the basics. And they've businesses used to focus mostly on selling or operating. They didn't see a lot of value there. And then another point was that the software as a service market was starting to develop in the States, and it was something that culturally, it was not something that that was accepted or a good fit for the Mexican market. So we had to kind of push for it a lot, instead of, instead of having clients see the value, we were kind of convincing, and it took a lot of time. So at the same time we had we went to an expo, an event that saw who makes every year, called soholix, and that was a big eye opener for us. We saw a huge market. We saw a very good product for a niche of the market. And we met people there that didn't have a good partner or a good company to build and help them develop the system where they needed to do it. And at that moment, we said, All right, let's let's try our first international client. Our first international client was from Australia, so a big time difference. We worked with them for about, I don't know, six, eight months, saying late nights, weekends, but that was the big change. Like that opened our eyes to to the big market and the value that the US and I think most of the global market now sees, but it was not the case at that moment. And from that moment on, we decided to focus solely on on the US market. We've had clients from Canada, from the Middle East, from Europe, from Australia, like I said, and Mexico, we do a little bit of work, but we we try to, to go where the markets finds most, the most value on on what we do. We don't want to to push a lot if the if the client doesn't see the value in it sounds pretty familiar. Yeah. So what I'm hearing so like, for transparency, and I think, I think, you know, this is like we've been making efforts and thoughts for quite a while to go into the US market ourselves. The missing piece, though, is that we are not aligning ourselves with something like Zoho. Would you like? Is that where most of your early international sales came from was through that alignment the recognizable brand information, Yep, yeah, I think, I mean, it's very difficult, and we tried it a couple of times, but finding a good fit in terms of a client and the company without having an element to match. It's difficult. I mean, you can do it through networking. You can do it through word of mouth, but getting it to scale is not as easy if there's not some kind of common ground. Well, to start with. So break that down. Colby, yeah. No, that makes it. Makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. So Okay, keep going tell us more. I mean in terms of of the timing, I'm talking about 2019 so we started getting our first US clients, young and in naive and yeah, no, but by that time, we had a team of probably 10 people working already. We had an office set in place. We we had a business to operate. What started with us two had developed into a business, and then COVID happened, and that was a big shift in everything, but I think it was more of an opportunity, and I'm not going to say a blessing, but, but there was a lot of need and value seen on what we did. So I have a I don't know if I've told you this story before, but we were working with a company in New York developing their their ERP for operations. And was probably November 2019, around that time where the news about COVID in Asia and and first cases in the States. And the owner calls me and says, You know what? I don't know when, but very in a very short term, I'm sure they're going to close us down because of COVID. I need to get a phone system in place so we can operate remotely. And it was probably a month project where we moved everything they had, like physical locations with their salespeople. We transferred everything to a VoIP telephony system. And a month after, New York was closed for a couple of months so, and at that same time, a lot of people had to go in and work remotely, systems, even, I mean, like zoom or video conference was not as widespread and as accepted and like, like they were during that time, we had experience, because we had been working a couple of years with everything remotely. So during that year, year and a half of COVID, we grew from 10 up to probably 35 people in the team, and it was a challenge. Definitely. Hiring was a challenge, training was a challenge, operating was a challenge, but a good challenge. I think we made the best out of it. And I think even though it was some, some crazy times, something to like a good, a good memory to to reflect back on, yeah, we always, I don't know where you heard this, Levi, or if you just made it up, or I don't know where I might have heard it, but high quality problems, yeah, yeah, there's still problems, but they're just like, they're better than ones you could have. Yeah, sure, that's fascinating. I'm Wow. My mind is going in a lot of different directions. It's funny how aligned we are, in a lot of ways, with kind of changing our market. Like we started off as kind of, like a niche kind of marketing firm, and then at we felt like we were all, like, there was a marketing company opened in Atlanta, Canada every six seconds. Was a stat that I made up. It was just like everyone was doing it. It was very confusing for the clients we needed to, you know, be different. So, like, how could we, you know, instantly provide more value and be excited about the work and kind of differentiate ourselves and not compete with 20 year olds as a cell phone or 15 year olds as a cell phone, right? Yeah, because, I mean, like, you said, like, I think Atlanta, Canada, you know, there's a lot of opportunity for for growth here, and so we do find ourselves kind of, I guess, how could I put it? Like we're, we're almost like, educating on what's possible, and like, the timing has to be right for the client to make these decisions, and like, process improvement and technology and all that sorts sort of thing. So, you know, that did drive our decision, of, like, Okay, well, we can, we can grow this at a bit of a slower pace locally, but like, Let's go pour rocket fuel on the US market and see what we can do. Yeah, it's interesting that. Okay, yeah, cool, yeah, my question, and there's no answer, but it's like, what is like, it's, it's been important to me. Maybe I'm making stuff. Maybe it's my ego, but the one of the things we promise our clients is we don't go in with the technology. Preference is we start with them and where they are and only apply technology after. And so we've been hesitant because of that narrative. And it has been like we like that. Methodology, but it's hard because we don't align ourselves openly with known solutions that have predetermined lead generation, all that fun stuff, so we're like word of mouth and marketing our story and but what is that Zoho solution? If we don't want to be tied or perceived as tied, we don't have to be tied, but the perception is there, yeah. And it makes it, like, our sales cycles very, very long for these types of projects, and, yeah, and like, I think that that might even make it longer, you know, yeah, definitely. I think it's important to recognize where, where the solutions you can bring to the table are valuable or not, very early in the process, I think it was a learning experience for us. At some point, very early on, we were trying to push solutions that were not ideal, and it was a very important lesson for us to learn, both for ourselves and and our clients, and something that provides value right up front and we we've never hesitated in pointing potential clients on other directions. We do it either locally or internationally, with our network. And I mean, there's, I think there's a big enough market for everything and everyone, as long as you do a good job, and it's just a matter of recognizing where your big value add is. Yeah, and have you, have you noticed, like, like, have you found kind of your niche in like, you know, there's manufacturing, there's professional services, there's like, have you kind of figured that out for yourselves? Or how did you approach that? It's a tough question, because I think our competitive advantage if we if I can summarize it in two or three elements. One is the the fact that we have our own internal team that works locally in our office. We don't subcontract, we don't have remote workers. Everyone that's part of our team, we hire, we train, and we all work in the two offices that we have. So it's being that one of our advantages are our value is very focused on what we know. So we kind of have an issue where we get better and better at what we do, but it's hard to bring in new new either platforms or new elements to to the the products or services that we can provide. So that's one, and in terms of niche, it's this is difficult, because, given that we do have developers and we work with platforms that are flexible enough to to adjust to different business types? I've never been able to answer that question industry wise, right? So we've done projects from healthcare to financial services to retail to pretty much everything and anything. So I think our niche is where three elements come to come together. One is a client that recognizes the value in investing in software and solutions that aligns with the platforms that we work with, whether it's so that I mentioned, or some of the others that we work and a client that needs some customization, integration component of the platform, where it brings more value than either a vertical that already exists or an out of the box solution like any ERP in the market. So it's when those three elements combined together, where we bring the best value, starting from understanding the business, coming up with solutions and recommendations, and then transferring all that into into the system and the implementation. I want to come back to, like some of the more like story driven, but I do have one little debate I've been having, and it's a business technology debate that we can land on both sides up. It's actually a funder, just funder, and that is the word discussion, if we are on opposite sides. But I, you know, I came from very small businesses, and I've, you know, we've grown in complexity and sophistication, but I still have this strong bias where most businesses, my own personal opinion, most businesses should not be building because they're not gonna be able to keep up with the change. They should be buying off a shelf and have something that's managed externally, and learn how to use it, and we can tailor it and customize it. But then I have a lot of people I talk to is like, well, you need your intellectual property. You want to build it. That's where the value long term is. And. I'm like, I have that debate often, and I just Pro. I have had something built and put it in the app store. I've gone through some of the frustrations, and then things stop working, and I have continuous problems. And I just like the build versus buy, you kind of do both. So is there like a leaning towards one of the other. I definitely agree with you, with the fact that most businesses should just buy, and probably 80% or 75% of businesses should just buy the added value of developing or integrating to the or the ROI that they get from it. It's not worth it, and we recognize that we're not, we're not looking to service that 75 80% of the market. It's that other market that they either have a very clear competitive advantage, whether that's on the sales side, on the operations or in some part of their process that needs to be translated from a paper or from a from the head of the founder, or whoever it is, onto the system that becomes their operating platform as they as they scale. That's the niche market where we, I think, where we work the best. And I think it's important to recognize it. A lot of the businesses out there that do the same things that we do try to push solutions that are more in terms of implementation of of the system that's out of the box, which is great. That's for the 80% of the market. But that's not where we try to to focus on and IT Pro it probably matters about like, the like, how intentional is the owner of this business being when they go to choose these things? There's like, I like the idea of owning my own thing, but what does that actually mean? And what's the plan long term around owning your own thing. Because I think a lot of people are just like, No, no. I think I like this idea and there's stuff that's built, it'll be fine. I don't have to continuously yeah and yeah. I think, I think that's probably where a lot of people might land, where there's a bit of, you know, attachment to ideas with no real long term plan around us. I wouldn't mind taking this somewhere. It's business, but also personal, which very fitting. And I told you I was going to ask this, and I didn't get the story earlier, on purpose, but you've made a couple interesting moves that I've seen just from the outside. And the first one I just wanted to ask about, I'd love to hear how you navigate it, because it sounds like you did it really well. I've seen it done it very poorly. Is you split up as a business partnership, and there was a family relation, and you just mentioned that family is really important in Mexico, and, and I was on the receiving end of that communication where you said, we have a quick word for you. And we were doing, we refer you to as our technical partner. You're part of our extended team on specific projects, and it's like, we need to talk to you. And I was like, I was like, What is going on anyway? It was, it was a very interesting delivery, and I sure you did it for all your other clients, and it the ripples haven't been really noticeable, but I'd love to hear a little bit about how that decision was made and how you manage it so effectively, because it's a thing a lot of people do poorly. Yeah, and I think we were very intentional from the moment we decided to partner up, it was all with the best intentions and with the best interest of each other in mind. I mean, we definitely went when we told our family that we were starting a business together, we had pushback from everyone, but it was an opportunity that we both wanted to take, and it was a great ride for for both of us, and I'm sure my my brother in law, Antonio would would agree on it. I think throughout the growth of the business, we were both very valuable in different areas, but it got to a point where both personal preference, risk tolerance, and pretty much life goals, I would say, Were misaligned. So I'm I'm probably six, seven years older than him. My position is in life is different. My personal goals and dreams are different, and that started to create, I'm not going to say a gap, but a difference in the vision and and the route that we wanted to take the company to. And we tried two or three different times to to either separate the responsibilities leave one of us make. All the decisions or the other. We tried both, actually. But as time went by, it was just clear to me that it was not sustainable and it was not the best for the business in the long term. It got to a point where instead of bringing the issues or the discussions to the table and having a healthy conversation and discussion. We're just putting them off. And it was the business that was suffering. So I kind of had a good amount of time to think about this and process it. I had to leave town for a couple of months, and it was during that time that it was clear to me that it was important for the business to have one head and one vision, whether it was his or mine. And we talked about this internally, it's not that mine or his was better. It was just trying to take the business to a different place. And both were valid. So with that good intentions and the best interest that we started, I I sat down with Antonio and told him, You know what I think this, the business is offering, and it's in our best interest to to to fix it in a friendly way and the best way possible. It took us about two or three months looking at different scenarios. I think that, like you said, the fact of family being very important or very valuable was definitely of help during that process. So we got our my brother, for instance, involved. We had his father involved, not in terms of the negotiation, but kind of explaining the personal side and the issues we saw, and having that open conversation kind of define it to a point where it was, it's either you or me that keeps the business going. And in the end, it was me an agreement on both. It was hard. It was definitely a hard decision. We just had our Christmas party last week, and it's it's tough for me not to see him, because there's a lot of his input and his values still, and I will never stop recognizing his input. But I think for the best interest of the business, it was a decision that had to be made with its its hard moments, but in the end, I think he's doing well. I'm doing well, and it was the best interest for us. I'm a chunk older than you, I believe, but you are much more mature. That was, that was beautifully said, Yeah, double click and underline. I don't know how to do that in a podcast. Yet, but it's, I have seen that done so poorly, and your line around not lying, you're the what you said around the, you know, important discussions or big topics were being put for, put off, like we it's open. We have three managing partners at Iron House. And you know, we've had conflict, as I'm sure all partners do, and we got good advice. So we went through and it we now have one of the pro step. Steps is, and mostly I asked COVID. He's like, What are you not saying today? If we just institutionalize some of these things to make sure, because we know that happens when things get busy or hard, that things just go one set double down in our world, that we're 100% virtual, so we don't have a chance to run into people. So it's easier to avoid. Yeah, and stuff you know, stuff like, you know, you talk about stuff building up over time like that can happen even faster in a virtual world, and start to tell yourself stories, and everyone's telling themselves stories and and those stories are not true most of the time, but yeah, very real in your own head when you're in the dark like I am right now. Yeah, that's you said. You said something that you recognize his efforts and the things that have lasted in the business like that is such a great thing to say. Hopefully you mean it too well. I do. I really do. Yeah, I've never heard somebody say that before. You know, you see, like, you know, all these tech companies that have started off with the partners, and they, they'll never, ever recognize, you know, the things that the other people have done, and they'll figure out some, you know, way to dismiss it if someone asks them about it. But like, can you tell me a little bit more detail about those, those things? Things that you feel still Sure. I mean, for instance, there's, there's, we had different styles in terms of operating. I'm more of a risk taker. I'm I'm not afraid to to go after big projects or bigger claims. Antonio was a lot more down to earth, risk averse. So for instance, a lot of the management process, people call that responsible and concern, right, right? I've tried for almost four years. I still can't figure that part out, but I'll keep trying. For instance, all the management process, the way we manage our cash flow, our budgets, all that part is something that I learned from him, or I didn't apply it well in my past experiences and caused some big headaches at the moment, so that's a very clear element that I recognize and I value, and I would I thank him still to this day, a lot of the technical team, the processes, it was something that was completely new To me. And I think there's a big element of Antonio's work and his vision on how things work. I mean, even the people, given that we're all like I said, working in the same space, we people still ask about him. I was in the Christmas party he had. He and my sister, they had a baby last year. Everyone was asking about them. So I cannot say this is my business. It's both our good and our bad, our good decisions and our bad decisions led us to this place. And I won't stop saying that there's a big portion of his, of his mind and his way of doing things in in the business, and, of course, everything that we that I recognize that's good, I'll keep adding and and, yeah, trying to grow. Yeah, partnerships are such an interesting thing, of, like, you know, it's necessary to have the push and pull constantly, but then how do you do that over long term in a healthy way, with saying the things that need to be said? And, you know, the personal side, the business side, the whatever, like, it's a it's a marriage, and, and you're trying to grow. And there's just a lot of complexity to it, and I find that we found a pretty good stride as of late. And yeah, it's been, it's been, but it is interesting. And, like, I've had other partnerships where it's gone like really, really poorly. And family was involved in that too, and that made it much more difficult. My first business partner was my wife, and I'm still married, so I'm going to take that as a big win, yeah, big silver lining, because I went through like, a business failure, like, full on, and it's like, well, that survived. So that's got to be pretty telling. Yeah, same, actually, like, the the, you know, I had of, I guess it was a partnership that just wasn't, that wasn't papered for me, and it was a lot of effort and a lot of lot of risk and and brought family into it. And then, you know, my fiance, Cana was with me at the time. Pretty fresh relationship, first few years. And then that happened, had to move back to my parents place. Like, it all went like, really badly. And so we're on the other side of that, and it's good. I gotta choose my words carefully when I talk about, hey, we're thinking about doing this. Oh yeah, that's a whole other podcast on Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I think those are the support systems that that we need in place. And I also think that it's I did have a couple of bad experiences with partnership in the past. I used to work with my father for a couple of years. I ended up just leaving in a in a friendly way, as friendly as possible. But there was family there involved as well. So it was the things that I didn't do well in the past experiences that led me to, I think, manage this last one, very, very well, yes, yeah. And to have like to look back on, you know, when you're younger and you're first getting into business, and like, you kind of have your natural talents, but you haven't developed any skills to, you know, take that to the next level. And, you know, there's maybe some ego in the way where you just don't understand life. And, and, yeah, that totally happened to me, too. Yeah, certain amount of road ration. Life experience to get performance for sure. Yeah, I want to talk about the second topic. There was two, because I outside I think you did really well. The first one was validated. The second one is you. From my understanding, we haven't talked about this. I've heard it from other members of your team, that Constantino is no longer CEO, and he's delegated that role, and he's refocusing his efforts, probably not as well communicated as the other one, because I was like, there was a good 48 hours where I thought you were dying, and that's why. So and it was just like, Oh my God, what's going on? Because we did our projects together. But I that change. I have seen more people screw that up, if that like trying to get out too soon and delegating, can they? So I'd love to hear the real story around you giving away the it's relatively recent. This is a long term, long time. Yeah, and you're looking healthy now. So yeah, spill the beans. Let's go. Alright. So I mean, one of the big differences that I had with my partner was where I wanted to take the business in terms of me operating it right. I recognize that I'm good at a few things, but there's a lot of more talented people at a lot of things, and I really mean that it's time tested. I mean, I've tried everything, and there's evidence for all of this, but it was something that a big difference in terms of the vision of where we want to take the business. My dream is to put together a team of people that are committed and very capable of doing everything that I can do as good as they can, and that's the route I'm taking the business on. So probably not as well planned, or the timing was not ideal. Again, there were a couple of elements working at the same time. First, I was out of the office probably four or five weeks with a health issue. My work life balance was not good at all, so I had to stop. The body just pretty much demanded for me to stop. And that caused me to have to leave operations of the business kind of to aside a little bit delegate a lot of what I was doing. Then, at the same time, going back to partnerships, my dad, who I used to work with a while back, came to me with one of my brothers with a business opportunity that demanded a good deal of my attention. Over the last couple of months, travel, negotiations, pretty much everything, business affair. So with with both things happening at the same time, I just kind of decided to start moving that process earlier that I was planning on recognizing that there'd be some pain, growing pains along the lines, but I'm pretty happy with where we're at. There's a lot of areas of improvement I recognize, but I think it's something that if I don't start now, or if I didn't start it at that moment, I would have just pushed it and pushed it and pushed it. I enjoy being part of the operation. Probably not the best place where I can add value to to our clients or to our business, but it's great to solve and be meetings and and learn new businesses or new processes and bring out solutions. I do love it, but I think I'm ready to try and jump on that, on that new decision, or new scheme, where, where I leave operations, or some of the operations, to to the team and see where that takes us. Interest. You already found yourself dabbling into areas that probably shouldn't have you in there. No, not recently, because my time has been very, very limited. So I was, I was in in Europe for probably 1520, days last month, time dear friends. So I haven't had the chance right now. I'm I have a bit more time. I think I'm very clear on where I can add value, where I can provide support to the team that's taking over. And. So I'm very excited to see where this takes us, because over the last eight years, it's been either me or Antonio or whatever we come up with. But now I'm I'm ready to to open that table and the decisions and and the projects to to the rest of the team. Very cool. And how did sweet Rodrigo take this? I think he the timing is very well. Yeah, I have this new I have this new thing I brought into the world. Yeah, I was probably not ideal in terms of phrase 15 times already, but I think I mean Rodrigo is part of our team, and I We met through Antonio, actually, and I've always seen his talent and his value as a great asset for the company, and I think he, I mean, at least I knew what he can bring to the table probably a year and a half back, but we were still in that process of having two minds fighting over where to take the business. So it was a conversation that we had probably a year ago. There were some complications along the way, some people that left the company we had to to replace and train, but it was something that we planned on probably a year ago. And I told you, we had our Christmas party last week, and it was great for me to see that the team is now Rodrigo team, right? I mean, it's still me, but there were some new faces that I hadn't met before, but the the entire structure is not going to say loyal, but it's, it's built and it's designed, and it's aligned with with his vision. And I'm, I'm ready to do everything and anything I can to make it work, obviously, for the company, for him and for the rest of the people involved in it, so selfishly, and I love that this podcast just gives us a selfish platform to ask questions that we're curious about. Are you allowed to tell us? What do you fare? What's exciting? Or is it too early? No, I mean, it's, it's a company that sells technology to certain areas of the government. We had our first deal with the guard the army forces in Mexico. It's technology, pieces around equipment. It's nothing to do with, I don't even know how you called it, like fires or anything. That'll be the new to the title of the podcast. I think are you an arms dealer? Question mark, yeah, no, no, no. I think I'm not in the right country or the right time in my life to get involved with that. So no, but it was, it was an opportunity that that came across with my brother and my father. They they asked me to get involved. I don't know. I think, like I said, the timing was not perfect, but looking back, I'm glad it happened the way it did. We're going to have to fix a lot of things along the way. But like I said before, if, if it didn't happen at that time, I would probably still have that project on, on the drawer, planning on it. I don't think there's ever a perfect time for for changes like that. Yeah, I love the, I jokingly say, the business affair. I heard that from somebody, and I'm sure I'm stealing it, but it's just so it's funny, but it's really can be a distraction, especially if you're not going into what I was wide open. One of the reasons why, you know, we sought out and we merged companies and wanted, like I wanted a partnership. I didn't want to do alone, and I think we were the same as all three of us all have other things. It's like we need to keep that monkey brain happy. So one thing is never probably going to be enough. And so by having three managing partners who own this company, which is, you know, we have, we have written words on paper describing our commitment of capacity and competency to this thing. But like, Colby, owns a small company with an E commerce front and his niche, and I do speaking and facilitation and coaching, and, you know, Aaron, our other partners down a bunch of different side things, and we just need that a little bit. It's like an open relationship, Yep, yeah, and, and it's. It's like, it's something that I've always needed and wanted. Like, I didn't know that entrepreneurship was an option when I was younger, like, through high school, and just my perception of the world that never got opened up to me and like, I, you know, the whole kind of monkey brain add type thing where we're always chasing things. It's like that goes back to that push and pull partnership thing. It's, it's good, and it's good to be surrounded like Levi and our are both a part of peer groups, like business peer groups, and like, having that sounding board too is just like an accountability board, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it's great. I mean, we're, we're so lucky to to, you know, have you always, kind of, are you like you seem like a very optimistic kind of type of person. I feel like there's a lot of similarities between you and I, and I still thinking I gotta make a trip down. That'd be a shame. But yeah, have you always, just, have you always, when did you feel like entrepreneurship was like, Oh, this is my thing. So funny story, by by way of chance. I ended up going to college in the number the number one ranked entrepreneurship business school in in the US by chance, but you went for finance. I went for finance, but I ended up majoring in finance and entrepreneurship. So entrepreneurship was a concept that was completely foreign to me, until I got to to college, and it was like a very proud Bucha. Batch that the college had. So I think throughout my college years, I I bought or I liked the idea, to a point where I said I wanted to to pursue that, probably not after I graduated. I wanted to have some experience, but at some point, it was definitely something that I was trying to achieve and but like I said, right after I graduated, it was, it was the only choice part of a study that we did in my on my honors thesis when I graduated, was analyzing the entrepreneurial activity across the world based on different factors. But one of the factors that that was in play was opening a new venture out of opportunity or necessity. So I we did a whole study on it, but in the end, I ended up being an entrepreneur of of necessity. There was nothing else on my plate. And I think it was at that point that I recognized that I that was the route I wanted to follow. And I feel that being optimistic is a primary trait for entrepreneurs, if we start thinking about what can go wrong, the risks, the hard times that no nothing would ever get done. So at first I was very naive or very idealistic in terms of of how things work in the world, and it was through my my first probably 10 years in business, that got me to a place where I have to be optimistic, knowing that there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of headaches on the road, but there are definitely some very sweet moments along the way, and we have to enjoy them as we get them, because it's not it's not an end goal. There's always something else. There's always some urgency or some issue to fix, and it's we have to to enjoy the those moments, whether that's in business, personal, whatever it is that's become a kind of like a mantra or a central idea around my life? Interesting, yeah, I I was thinking like you mentioned you mentioned you had a bit of a health scare, like entrepreneurship and health has kind of become a very popular topic. You know, it's there. There's so many, you know, guys preaching the 4am cold plunge sauna breathing routine. You know, you're, you know, I find it a little bit nauseating, to be totally honest. Like, I've, you know, how do you manage that? Like, we all kind of have our thing that can shut our brains off and and make us, you know, dissociate for a little while. But, like, how have. Who managed your kind of health and and very badly. That being said, like I've, I've been that, that previous business that I was in, it was like the worst health I had ever been in, because I was traveling so much all over the country and and, you know, not surrounded by people that cared about it. So, like, I had always cared about my health growing up, and then it just easily got pushed aside. But now, now that I've got, like, good partners and like, I can manage the time a little bit better, I can take it more seriously. But how, how are you doing that, and how has it shifted since the bit of a health scare? So I've always wanted to have, or I've always recognized the value in terms of having a reasonable or a healthy work life balance. The thing is, I'm the type of person that always tends to please others and leave myself behind, and there are a lot of others in involving my life. I have a wife. I have four kids. My business, I have so i Four, yeah, so it's, it's been a work in progress. There's, there's always cycles. So, for instance, I had my first two children. They were born from the time the first one was born till the second one was four years old. My life, my work life, balance was a disaster. I gained 30 pounds, not exercising, not sleeping well, stressed about business, up to a point where I I felt so bad that I decided I had to change something. So I started the cold plunge exercise meditation, and it was great for a couple of years, three or four years, definitely the best I felt in my life, not only physically but mentally, doing the routine of reading and journaling in the morning and then exercising. I definitely, definitely see a value there. Then my wife gets pregnant again during COVID, and it all started again. So I'm pretty much out, or almost out of that. That same stretch, I'm again, 30 pounds overweight, not sleeping well, traveling, some habits that are not ideal, drinking and things like that. Nothing major, but everything adds up. And if you add the stresses and the time constraints in life, took me to a point where I was not feeling well at all. I had a couple scares, took me to the hospital. Thank God, it was nothing major, but the doctor did ask me to to slow down for for a little bit until they found out what was wrong was that, I mean, a physical element topped off by anxiety and stress and pretty much all the health emotional issues. So it's tough. I'm trying to get back on track in terms of my routines. Definitely, there's the more I do it, the more relief I feel, or the better I feel, in terms of my clarity, my health. But it's, it's always been, and it's it is at the moment, hard for me to say no to other things, to focus on me. I feel guilty. I feel that I'm I'm leaving either less time for the business, for my family, for my kids, for friends, whatever it is. So it's a struggle. I don't know how you guys do it, but well, even before we go there, the like Colby mentioned that you hear it all the time, all the stuff you should do. And I get influencers and business owners and LinkedIn articles and reels out the wazoo about, like, Do this, do that, which is all fine and dandy, but more people probably should be sharing these real examples. Like I've told you this Colby, but like, when my first business closed, you know, I was in the hospital. That's why, because I could no longer force it to work through heroic efforts. You know, these things. But, like, I, I'm open to talking about that, but I don't bring it up all the time. It's got to become a little bit more commonplace. Like, yeah, that's, that's why I believe in the I believe in the peer group, or at least having people you can talk to. Because, like, it's, yeah, I can see the photos of me at that time. I can tell you that I wasn't healthy, of course, like, there's evidence based criteria, finding the thing that works for you, like, the reason I said earlier that some of it feels a little nauseating when you see all these influencers. Like, you know, there's, there's, there's stuff going on in the background there that we don't know. And. And, you know, everyone has their stuff, but, I mean, like, finding something fun to do. Like, I've been fully engaged in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for a while now, and like, I, you know, stopped kind of going to the gym because I'm enjoying that so much, and I get camaraderie around that, and it completely shuts my brain off. And it's great. And I did the, you know, I didn't take a hot shower for six months. I was like, it was only cold showers, and our water gets real cold over here, I've taken cold showers and Mexican cold shower. It's a Canadian cold shower. Yeah, I've taken cold showers in Mexico and Costa Rica and different in South Africa, and it's just, it's lukewarm, and so over here, it's quite a dedication and, and, but it's like, you know, that was, like, a phase that I was going through. I was testing something. I'm always kind of playing around with different health hacks and that type of thing. But like, finding something that you can do long term, and it's okay, like, you don't, you don't have to be the 4am grind, you know, running, you know, however many miles per week, and stuff like that. I just, I find it's very difficult to always feel like it's never enough, let your that you're never doing enough, and finding peace in in what you enjoy doing. And you know, I think it's, it's important, it's a mature thing that that starts to happen if you can kind of shut some of that stuff off and be like, no, no. This is for me. No, not for all these other people that think I should be doing things a certain way. And it happens to me, like, ideally, I would go to the gym for two hours and and do, like, a full routine and but I don't have enough time. But then there's an internal debate where I say, alright, if I, if I don't go there for two hours, why? Why go? Let's just skip it, even if 20 hours of Treadmill are an improvement. And that part for me has been a challenge waking up in the morning and doing even a little bit that's not ideal, and not what I would prefer, but it's some improvement, and I think we're very tough on ourselves and the comparison out in the world where we select or pick the lifestyle Of a person, the traveling style of one and like we just want the best of every world, and it's not realistic. And even for us, we're, I think, more mature than a than a teenager or a younger person, it's difficult to to find happiness, or at least be comfortable with what you're doing or what you have the I embarrassing confession I have because it's easy, like your example of two hours, I can't make the whole two hours, so I'll skip it. My excuse lately, it has been very effective at keeping me from doing things that I know I should do. Is putting on socks. Okay, I I don't have to leave the property. I can go for walks. And I just, I just don't have to wear socks most of my days. And so I have to put socks on when I go, like, especially in the summer, like, I'll just go to the park, put socks on and anyway, so, like, the treadmill is right outside my office. That means socks and sneakers. It's like, I haven't worn socks this week, right? Different in winter. It's just like, that is the first time I've ever heard that that is really interesting. Yeah, it's just, it's just, it's happened a few times, and I'm like, is really the only reason I'm not on that treadmill, or I'm not going out to do that thing? Is, like, I don't really want to put socks on or shoes for that matter, right? Yeah. And I'm looking for excuses at this point, and I know I can realize it, our mind is very good at making excuses and believing that rationalization superpowers. It like Constantino, you've, like, we're all fans of Tim Ferriss. You've, you've been down from that route, like, I was a really excellent routine that is very hard to make excuses for is the 150 kettlebell swings consecutively, and you're done in three minutes, and you are toast in a three minutes. And with a 50 pound kettlebell, 150 swings without dropping it and and it's like, there's so many things that we could be doing that takes no time and give you a clearer head, but it's just, it's yeah, it's, it's funny, the the things that will tell ourselves Yeah, I have the kettle bell. I have the gym in my house, and I used it at some point, I think, in various approach to doing like, the high impact, least amount of time things is great. I mean, no wonder he's where he is. But still like, like socks is, is a good enough excuse. I'll make something even like sillier if I need to. I. Yeah, yeah, that's good. I I would mind shifting topics a little bit. Are you gonna go for it? One of the questions I was hoping, or the itches I was hoping to scratch, is I got a chance like we have different we live in different countries, we have teams in different cultures. I'm a really, really big fan of understanding culture and how teams work and building stronger teams. And you gave the privilege of me facilitating our onboarding session into our culture to your greater team. And since then, I've wanted to have a conversation around what from your because you've been working with us, you've been working with clients you've lived and worked in the States. What are some of the big cultural differences? I'm trying to remember, like Rodrigo even mentioned, there was a word that we use all the time that he's like, we don't have a word for that, quite a bit accountability or something. Yeah, he's like, he's like, the way we use that as a term. It's like we don't actually have that, like, I have to work to translate the way you mean that. So it's not just effectively micromanage, like the healthy side of accountability. Yeah, I think the closest word translated for accountability is responsibility, which kind of mean the same thing, but not that much, but cultural differences, I just love to understand, because I love understanding how different cultures and teams work, and so I don't know if maybe it didn't be like did it resonate? Was it similar what we do for our team? Did it resonate with your team? It does. I mean, I think culturally, there are some major differences. But then there's also like we're close enough to the States and to the American or the North American culture, where, even though we don't live by it, a lot of people are aware of it, so more culturally, in terms of music, TV, taste. I think the the US and the Canadian, I mean, the North American cultural role seems very familiar to to us, at least in in the part of the country, where where we live. But even even then, there's in terms of the work and the and the business culture. I would summarize it in in a way where I think we're 15 years behind, like, I'm gonna need double click on that one. I don't know if you, if you go back to 2009 or 2005 where the I mean not the internet, but like the systems and online shopping and and even remote work was not not a thing. That's where a lot of of the business and the work culture in Mexico is overall, but at the same time, I think there's a very heavy work culture and that accountability and responsibility that leads our team, and I mean the Mexican workers overall, to be very committed to work, very flexible in terms of being open to solve or to go that extra mile, to to to achieve a goal, or to have a happy customer, and they're very eager to learn. So I think probably we can reflect it to tourism, like if you if you go to Cancun or Cabo, I think the service culture there is, is something that that foreigners recognize and like, and that kind of translates to to the to the business and the work culture in in Mexico, but that comes, obviously, with challenges. Language is a challenge even, I mean, I went to school in the States, I half of the year, or three months out of the year I'm there, and still it's, there's an accent, there's references that I might not understand, and if you go wider, well, it just increases. So we in terms of of the our business specifically, I think it's, it's a good mix, because we try to, we don't try to mimic or to pretend that we belong. We were very straightforward with with our setup and what we what we offer, and if, if there's value for for a client. It's overall, then great, if not. And I mean, I think the the world has just become very like just one, one place. We have competitors from Asia and South America and Europe, all over the place. So I feel that we have that great mix of being close enough but not being a part of with the service component on top. Well, I wrote down you said the word near showing earlier. I don't think I had actually used that term before. That's the most used term in Mexico right now, interesting. It's funny because we just recorded a conversation about outsourcing, so it's just going to be offshore, offshoring versus that's kind of a funny tie. What you just said about your culture and the like is a bit of a pleaser and work ethic and get stuff down and overcome obstacles. It was true, and we've talked about this, and it's not super sensitive, but one of the early because we've learned a lot working with each other, it's been over a year and a half or more now, and one of the earlier ones is that I, my role was effectively telling the client, yes, we'll figure it out, And I needed your team to tell me no. And so there was, we had to have a couple honest conversations around like in this meeting, I know that I'm, you know, we were the one paying your bill, so technically, I see that we're a client. But we have to shift this mindset, because you accommodating me is it doesn't means we're doing things that maybe don't necessarily need to be done. So you need to be bad cops. We need to have that. So when I believe that the reason why we did the onboarding and culture, which a lot of our core of our onboarding and facilitation, we do is around Pat Lencioni, is five dysfunctions of a team. And you know, having enough trust that you can have healthy conflicts and have peer to peer conflict. And so I did. I was like, I need to be able to argue with your people and then not fold. I think that was the polite way I put it to you and Antonio, I was like, I want them to argue with me. Can we fix that? I don't think we ever got that. I think Rodrigo tries, but I am an speaker. I think is my problem, alright? I think it's cultural. It's cultural, like, I don't want to say it, but there's, there's a sense I'm going to say it for myself, not not for the rest of Mexico. I don't want to hurt anyone with my word to be canceled. There's a, there's a, I feel certain a sense of inferiority with Americans and Canadians, not personally, but culturally, right? And I think you can see that in different places, in politics, in sports in I mean, it's not a topic that I want to go down and explore, but it's, it's difficult to to bypass it. And I think it's also an age issue. I think we in Mexico, we're having that transition where probably 5045, to 50 year olds are very old school, if, if I may, um, and for instance, my my my dad, my uncles, or even younger people, they Don't use a computer, they use a cell phone, but that's it. They don't believe in technology. They like to do things pen and paper, and that's great. It worked for them. That's fine. I think we are in that middle transition where it's half and half. I'm more of an early adopter, and I love trying out new things, but we're in that mid middle group, but then younger guys, which our average age and team is probably 2425 year olds, so they see it is, it's, it's a whole challenge. Because, you know, millennials and centennial, there's different challenges there, with with how they work, what they value, and it's been a whole topic of of discussion and testing out the best route to go. But so it's that mix of trying to be very service oriented, and then that kind of in for not inferiority, but trying to respect if, if that's a better word for for that. And then you add a client level, it's, it's a three components where it's hard to say, You know what, Levi, or any other client, you're wrong. That's not the best way to go. It's just tough. And that's something we try and train on. It's definitely. Bit of a an odd ask like it, because, because we think, if we think of you guys as partners and like and to shift the mentality from client to partner, where there is going to be that kind of healthy conflict back and forth. It's like, well, we could do this, this and this. It's like, it, I could totally understand that. It's a brain shift, especially if you speak so confidently, like, I have no idea what I'm doing. I now introduces, like, I actually don't know what we're doing. This isn't me saying what we should do. We're just throwing some stuff on the wall and then, like, we're more of the figure it out people and like, owning up to our mistakes and course correcting is something that we do all the time, and it's like, I had a, you know, because the these kind of digital transformations that we've kind of thrown out that term, but I had a guy tell me one time we were struggling with something and and he He He said to me, he was like, Can you name a digital transformation that has ever gone smoothly, ever? And I was like, Oh, I guess I, I guess that's probably true. He's like, name, name one large company that implemented an ERP system, and it went well. And it's like, okay, well, if I can just put to rest that this is going to be difficult, we are going to shift things halfway through the project. Most likely it's like, you know, it, it front, front loading that conversation in the beginning has become more important to us. Yeah, I suppose, yeah. We are for long term results, not that system going in place, yeah, which plays highly with the scope, as we all know. Yeah, your thoughts of the culture just got because I get because I speak a lot, and I speak assertively, and I'm loud, I think out loud, like I know all these things, but sometimes it still gets set in my pants, around like I sit, sits me down. I gotta think about it like we had somebody the other day, and it was an Asian culture, and somebody warned me that if when they say something, if you immediately respond, if you don't allow a pocket of silence, it indicates disrespect, and the more respect you have for them, the longer the period of silence should be. Wow, I want to say it's Japanese, but I actually don't remember. I have to look that up. But it was like, it's ingrained in the culture, and it's just part of it. And I was like, Oh, I am, I am disrespecting everybody. I am like, nano seconds of silence, I am like, if I hear a silence go off for two minutes, I'll find a way to kill him. Yeah, so it's just an interesting yeah, just like that sets you back. Yep, as I go, I that's a course correct. I think I have in control, but it's hard shift. Yeah, doing international businesses is, you know, you find cultures that come off as as cold and and that's not the case. I love the German culture. When I lived there, loved it, so the oil just today, I was on with India, Germany, and now you, you're in Mexico right now, right right now. Yeah, yeah. It's just our lives have changed. But yeah, there's so many, you know, Canadians have the have the, what is it? The stereotype of of being overly polite, and that's been something that's been kind of criticized in the media lately, where it's just like we're just brushing everything under the rug and hoping nothing happens. Do you agree with that stereotype? Yes, yeah, I think. But it's not a positive thing. A lot of people talk about it as being so polite and friendly or weak or all those things. But where it comes into like, I say it to a lot of people like, I coach newcomers to Canada on their LinkedIn profiles. It's just something I personally do. Personally do. And they come in and they I forgot what's going with that had a good topic. Oh, it was like the Canadians being overly polite. So, oh, the language and nobody. Everybody's very sensitive talking to people from different colors of skin and cultures and accents and and so I've become kind of a person that I'm comfortable at least acknowledging the things that people are thinking and like lean into the conversation around like, here's the questions that they're asking in their heads that they'll never ask you on paper. Just feed them what they want to know, like accents, like just because most Canadians I know subconsciously, and I'm this is from a this is not a study, and I'd love for somebody to read get this far into the podcast to argue with me. I would love that, but they would rather avoid a conversation that might be on. Awkward, because that will be impolite, then they would have the conversation. And that's why, when I talk to people from other cultures, especially where community is really strong, they come to Canada and everybody's super friendly, but nobody ever invites you over. Nobody ever builds a real friendship, nobody ever has a so we're we're both simultaneously polite but very off putting, and click ish and closed loop. And a lot of people, I know they're doing is like, Oh, I I don't, not gonna know how to pronounce their name, and so I don't want to engage, or I I'm going to ask a weird question, or I don't know where they're from, or I'm going to and that's enough, because I might put my foot in my mouth and then add it to a zoom call. It's even worse, because now they don't want to even, like, interrupt somebody. Yeah, I've seen super light. See it. Yeah. I think it's I agree. I think there's politeness in our culture, but in different way, probably not so much in conversation or in verbalizing it. But if you come live in Mexico for three months, you have someone invite you over on Thursday for drinks, on Saturday to their family, lunch or dinner, whatever it is. I think that's, that's, I mean, it happened to me even with as I've moved to a different city in in Mexico. The same day I got there, I had a group of friends invite me out. I had a soccer team to play every week. So, yeah, it's the different or the other end of of what you were mentioning, where I grew up, there's still people who moved there when I was 10 who were still the new people. Wow, because everybody else is six generations. It's also population density, right? Like, our capital cities get 100,000 people. I had 8000 people and the place I grow like, it's just, like, it's just hard to it's easier to isolate when you have so much space, right? And like, it only gets for for like, we, my fiance and I lived in South Africa for three years, and over there, like, you know, you get a you add in the dynamic of safety, I, like, you know, making new friends, when, when, when there's safety concerns too, right? Like, you know, everyone's in gated communities and, like, there's not a lot of bumping spaces. If you randomly start talking to somebody, they might be like, Whoa, what's this person want from me? Yeah, it's just and then after the age of 30, to to make new connections is always difficult, but, yeah, cultural differences, I feel like I've crossed the gamut of some of the conversation topics I wanted to do. Did you have anything you wanted to talk about, or bring concertina or questions? I do. I want to. I want to pick your brain. Okay, so we've, we've talked about all these different aspects, business, health, relationships as of now, what you know and what you've experienced, what, what does success or the the end goal look like for you, let's say in 20 years. And I want to put it in years so much, because I think our time, our lifetime, will will extend with lots of things. But if you look back in in let's say, 20 years or 30 years. What combination of all these topics that we've talked about? What do you consider success? Okay, see you later. I go through and I facilitate, but I've also gone through a kind of recurring exercise around like writing your eulogy and talking to your 90 year old self and what do you want? Like life planning. So I kind of have the where I'm at and saying them is aspirational, because I'm like, if I so, I'm going to, by the way, I'm explaining this, giving you time to think, because you're going to do this first COVID. Just so you know, the where I get to is, I guess, a quick story, the I got some really hard advice once, where they started off by saying, What do you value? And they had a whole workshop on, what do you personally value, not your company. Maybe your personal company is an extension of you, but what are you? What are your core values? There was a really managed workshop, and we got through, and everybody had like, these are the five. And there was things to help you select. And I got there, and they got really specific, and they pointed at them as like, Are you sure you value that? Because other stuff you. Out isn't representing your values. So I had health as a value, you know, I I had no efforts or goals related to health, and I wasn't in good shape, and I wasn't I was like, I was probably hung over. It's like, well, you don't actually value it. Like, that's you're telling yourself that you can't actually value something without and harsher Lee, harsher delivery than it needed to be, but it sent it home was like, Well, I don't actually value that. It's Show, don't tell, and real values are shown, not told. And so that's that's core. So anyway, I would love to give a response, but I want you to go first COVID. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going through this level of clarity as as we speak. This has been the past few, well, a couple of months. I've always been in this like continuous improvement mentality, but without a lot of intentionality. And now I'm trying to narrow that, that that scope a little bit to my goal is to know what I'm saying, No to and and and WHY SO to SO. I'm still sorting out what my major priorities are and where I want to get to, I know for a fact that I want to always chase excitement. So that has brought some clarity to the decisions I'm going to make. What excites me, what not necessarily what makes me happy, but what gets me excited. What will I forget to eat for and I'm still answering these questions, like, this is work that I'm literally was doing on the whiteboard last week with my fiance and doing it together. So I met with this, this great guy. His name's Warren rustand. He speaks at a lot of EO events and mentors a lot of people. He's basically James Bond. He's like, he was the right hand man to President Gerald Ford. He was in the NBA, worked at the CIA at some stage, I think, as well. And he's just, you know, he's got a $2.1 billion company, like, unbelievable guy. He's 83 travels the world, speaks all over the place. And he, he said to me, this was two Yeah, this was like two weeks ago. He said to me, the number one thing you can do right now is make sure that you and your partner are aligned. My fiance, like, start there and start to build this together, what your priorities are, and do it as a unit, and so that this is what we're doing right now. We're we're making decisions that we otherwise wouldn't have made because of alignment. And so exactly where I see myself in in 20 years. I can see bits and pieces of it, but I don't have the level of clarity to like to say exactly what it is like at this moment, but I've got some principles and some some things that I'm doing on a on a regular basis, and being okay with it changing, like, like Levi, when you said health, you know, some of the things that I want to write down are, are probably Things that I shouldn't focus on, because, like, I think other people's influence is creeping into my life often, and every time you open your phone up, there's something creeping into your life. Well, maybe I should have that, because it's going to impress influencers for a reason. Yeah, exactly. And I've, I've made so many decisions as, like a P as you know, I'm a thoroughbred people pleaser, and I think I'm getting a bit more comfortable in my own skin, to be making my decisions, to saying no to those things that I shouldn't be focused on. That's a big enough leap for me lately that I know I've got a bit more confidence that I'm going to find that, that path, that place that I want to end up. So that's probably how I'll answer that right now, is like, I'm, I'm, you know, I can give you the prioritization exercise that, that one show notes, yeah, I mean, I mean, I was going to send it to you, yeah, like, it was an interesting because he, he's responsible for, he wrote the scheduling process for all presidents that they, that they still follow. He said, except for Trump, he doesn't follow it. But because they, they would, on average, get 150 requests for their time per day. So they had to figure out, you know, what's the big picture. And so he kind of helps entrepreneurs with that same process. And I've heard lots of different methodologies of how to get there, but this one really did click with me. Me, yeah, that's probably how I'd answer that I wrote down that we had. Are you a gun dealer? Arms Dealer? Now, it's like Confessions of a thoroughbred people pleaser. Yeah. Tagline, potential for the did that, did that. I know it was a roundabout way, but any thoughts on that, I love your answer. I was asking more for the thought process and the and how you're tackling it, or how you how you want to tackle it, more than the and the answer, I, like you, mentioned that the answer will change if you do that exercise tomorrow, if the world change, if anything happens, it's, it's, it's more of the thought process and the struggle that I wanted to learn, because it's, I love the fact that you mentioned being aligned with your partner, because it's, it's something I've I've struggled to do. I try to, but my wife doesn't really believe in in those exercises. So I'm, I'm going to give it another goal, but thanks for sharing it. My wife would rather put a knife in her eye than go through those exercises. Me at this well, I'll just be before we before you answer. Levi, so my fiance has been in school for 13 years becoming a vet, right? So. And meanwhile, I'm dabbling in all these kind of entrepreneurial self improvement mindset things. And like I go and I come home from one of these events I go to, and I just blurt it all out with zero sensitivity to where she's at at that moment and and you know that I've learned to to choose and choose my words a little bit better, and ask more questions, and, and, and now, now it's like, now that she's graduated, and like, she, you know, she's a vet, so she's interested in, you know, we're going to acquire clinics and all that type of stuff. It's like now she's bringing up stuff where she'll go work in a clinic, and she sees all these improvement things that she can do, and I've gotten more buy in, but it was all timing. It was, it wasn't something that you could ever force on somebody, nor should anybody. But yeah, now it's now it's becoming this really collaborative conversation where we're like, you know, we're feeling more aligned than ever, and that it's just timing, I feel like I now I need to clarify just so like, wife doesn't get this in context, but she's a strategic director. We've become more aligned in talking about these things she doesn't like, and I know a lot of people don't. She doesn't really want to be planning that far ahead. She doesn't really want to do the visioning. So I'll stab at my end. Actually, I have one more comment on the wife, spouse side there, because it was related, I think to what you were saying, Constantino, is I get these moments in time where somebody says something to me that I do completely blindsided, and I just, I mentioned earlier, just sits me down in my chair, and one of them was like, I've been doing, you know, since 2008 in business entrepreneurship, and joined my first peer group and started going events in 2011 and, you know, I moderating, coaching and leading other peer groups from 2014 on, and about 2018 it was before COVID, 18 or 19. My wife said something along the lines very close to this is your constant need for ongoing improvement and try new things. Communicates to me that you're not happy with today. And it's like, in my head, they were completely disconnected. They were like me trying new things and excited, and like, reading the books, and, you know, I did the slow curve, and I tried all this stuff from Tim Ferriss book, and I tried this, and I'm always excited about what's next. And she said just, you know, all that communicates to me is that you're not happy with today and what your status is now that is inadequate. That's like, so the language changed. I forced it like, that's not what I mean. So obviously it's a communications problem, yeah, yeah. So it was just that that sat me back. It's like, all right, I'm obviously, you know, need to get that through. I do want to answer this, because I love these conversations. I'm glad you prompted it. Where do I want to be in 20 years? Or how do I think about it? First of all, I don't want to know. The idea of having a defined thing I feel would be very limiting, which I talked a lot of people are very goal oriented, and I'll enjoy that. I enjoy a good debate. Case you didn't know, and I've worked really hard at this, and they sound a little wordsmith because I've been playing with them for a few years now, and they're kind of principle based and they they're filters that I feel like help me make decisions. The context for the first one is that my first business had a lot of opportunity. You know, won a lot of awards. It was eight years, you know, two people to 40 people. And, you know, the year I closed, I had CBC, or the CBC, I news print and articles and videos and documentaries written about us and but I was never about the money. I'm still like, I'm just the paycheck or the big exit is just not in my DNA. It was like I'm solving a problem, or I'm making an impact, or I'm doing something nobody else can do. Those were the drivers, very socially oriented business. It's a local food connection farmers and people and food security. And so I ever since then, and one of the reasons why I wanted a partnership with, you know, less so you Colby, but Aaron is very money oriented. Not that he's like a greedy guy, but he's just always aware, and that's a driver for him, and that's he once told me, that that's his scorecard that he like, is he competitive with himself? He's like, That's the scorecard that I can measure and and I need that my life, because my goal is, my principle is, I want to be in the future in a place where money is a tool and not a constraint. And I've never been able to think of money as something I can use as a tool to do a thing. It's always been the limitation, barrier, constraint or risk. And I don't know what that is. I think about that often, and what is that? But that's a big driver. It's one of two, and the other one that I've had, and I've, you know, I've got a tattoo of it, for part of it, on my leg. I want to live. I want to be able to say I've lived a life of no regrets. No regrets has been a common element, and the clarification on that is I'm equally worried about regretting things not done, and so I want to be able to do the stuff that I want to do. So yeah, live a life no regrets things done or things undone, and to have the money. So that's a tool, not a constraint. For the two deciding great, that's great, I appreciate, and yeah, they're not being followed very well. Money is still a constraint, not that I have around that, that the fact that we're even having this conversation, there's going to be, you know, 90 plus percent. This is an assumption. 90% ish somewhere around there of people will never think about things this way. And, yeah, I guess, the fact that we've even gotten to this point where we've had people in our lives that kind of ask us these big questions or or push us or, you know, just make us think differently. Every time I go away on one of these trips, I come back going, huh, you know, and seeing different cultures and seeing how other people do things and like, travel is a big, a big driver for me and Levi too. Yeah, so I guess, yeah, just the the Met, what I was going to say, I just lost my train of thought. There was, I think it was, like early days when I first got into, like, any sort of improvement stuff, listening to Tony Robbins, and that was kind of my first exposure to OG, yeah, I still go back. I found I took a big break, and I kind of went back to it not that long ago. It's still great. But he said something that really, really stuck with me to kind of take it easier on myself. Was measured, measuring your life in 10 years, rather than, like, looking back on the past year. And it's like, if I look 10 years ago versus now, this is like, unbelievable how things have changed in a great way. And so now I'm just trying to think of like everything in those, like 10 year blocks, and I find it's just like little bit less pressure. Thanks Tony. All right, what's your what do you want to be in 20 years? You can't ask the question without giving an answer. No, of course not. Of course not. I i think a combined element of both of your answers. No, I mean, and it's, it's very I want to, I want to free them in terms of time and money, and not for the sake of it, for what it brings. I think that I value, and I'm just really using the words COVID used right now, but excitement, and it can be exciting as having a full day of just sitting down and reading in a coffee shop, which I haven't been able to do in a while, or travel or I mean, the excitement. Um, can convene in very different forms, and and and elements. Um, I, I do want a very close connection with few people and that that aligns with saying no to a lot of things. I've never been someone that has that many friends, but I'm I'm very close with a few people, and it's that people that I want to be very intentional and conscious on who those people are. And as of now, it's my wife, my kids. It's a closed or a small circle, and I want to be that's more of a long term, but I want to be remembered as someone that's kind very I think that's the best word for it, always being thoughtful and open to helping others. So I think there's no greater legacy than people thinking of you, of of being kind with what you have, whether that's time, attention help, maybe not even money, because that kind of deviates the attention, but someone that's kind generous at that point. Yeah, right. So those are my three working topics. I mean, health is part of all of this, and like I've been reminded of that over the last couple of months. But if I want to live long enough and free enough to do all these things, that's what I'm trying to focus on, just to make it and have the freedom and the strength to to do all of these things. Yeah? Kind of feel like we've come to a really good tie to bow situation. I do too, yeah? I mean, I could probably go for another four hours, but it's going to be, yeah, we can open up the whole topic of how you're going to run two businesses while having four kids. Having four kids, and why the hell did you have four Levi and I, Levi and I both don't have kids, but Aaron. Aaron has kids and and it's been an ongoing topic of like, it just never feels like the right time. It's just like, do we want? Do we not want? We're actually in different cases because you and kayna are having that discussion. Aaron, our partner, has two like, you know, pre teens, and my wife and I made the decision 10 years ago that we're not and so they're actually three very different head spaces, which is interesting to have in our team. Yeah, yeah, it is. And they're all exciting and valid. It's how you kind of manage what we what you decide on, and how you pursue it. For me, it's definitely a challenge. It's like, every minute that I'm not in the office working is devoted to them, and I love it. I have no, no regrets on what I spend my time on, and my effort and my money on, but yeah, for I don't know how it happened. We were very good with two and then somehow we ended up here. But it's, great. Blame it on COVID. You're fine. How? How old are your kids? 10? A girl that's 10, a boy that's eight. Sorry, put you on the spot. Yeah. Girl, that's 11, boy eight, boy three and boy one. So we have like three teens and two babies. Whoa, wow, I'm really good. And one of my private pleasures is giving unsolicited, bad parental advice to parents. As a non parent, I told rod ego that, because he has a brand new one, it's like, I love to give advice just completely unsolicited and warranted at all. Like it's just so much fun. Yeah, I know it's appreciated. I did that. I did that the other day, a guy just just had a baby, and we were all out at a golf simulator and having a few drinks and and we were all given advice to him. And the only thing I could add is, because I have a dog, and I was like, Well, if the dog throws up at night time, you just leave it till morning. And on that note, yeah, anything anybody else wants to to say before we break it down? That was I. I really enjoyed that conversation. I think we covered some really great topics. Yeah, same. I really don't care if anybody listens to this, but I'm glad if anybody's listening they did at this point. Yeah, and yeah, there's, there's lots, there's lots more conversations we can have. And I'm sure there's, like, other specific topics we could jump into for for a few more of these. Is, you know, if, yeah, there's, there's a lot of alignment here, and and we should be doing more together. And, yeah, Rodrigo and I've been trying to push you two busy butterfly folks into a room together, because you're both more involved in the business development. We're both in the weeds. It's like, you guys just need to spend more time together. Yeah, yeah, I have an idea, but I'll, I'll take that, I'll take that offline. Yes, that's my circle. That's my reaction to most things. It's like the answers, yes, yeah. Now, what is it? Thank you very much for joining us. Constantino, that was a lot of fun, and I hope that other people get to listen and get some value from this conversation. Thank you. I really enjoyed it too. 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