Dragon's Gold: The Magic of Mindset

From Startups to Stability: Morgan Keim on Navigating Seasons of Change

• Justin Mills • Season 1 • Episode 33

Share episode

What do you do when your career looks like success on paper... but feels like it’s built on sand?

Morgan Keim built his career in venture-backed startups. Raising $400 million to scale the next generation of food tech companies. But beneath the accolades was a growing sense that he needed something different. Something sustainable. Something real.

In this week’s episode, Morgan shares how a personal pivot into real estate gave him, and the entrepreneurs he serves, more than just income. It gave them a foundation.

Here’s what you’ll uncover in this week’s conversation:

  • The “barbell strategy” that changed how Morgan builds wealth
  • How to invest in stability without losing impact
  • What venture capital taught him about mindset, failure, and freedom
  • Why more income isn’t always the answer—and what to build instead
  • How Morgan turned a food truck conversation into a business partnership
  • What it really means to do well while doing good

Tools & Weapons Mentioned:

  • The Almanack of Naval Ravikant – A guide to wealth, happiness, and leverage
  • Biomimicry – Using nature’s playbook to solve complex problems
  • Barbell Strategy – High-risk upside + low-risk foundation = resilience
  • The Phoenix – A symbol of reinvention and rising from the ashes
  • Mastermind Wisdom – “If you could be so lucky to go through a monumental failure…”

Send us a text

About Gold Dragon Investments:

At Gold Dragon Investments, our mission is to bring joy to others by helping them win the game of investing. Helping every client become the hero of their financial journey. We believe that wealth is a tool, but joy is the ultimate outcome.

Through meaningful partnerships, we strive to empower our investors to create freedom, and build lasting legacies of purpose, fulfillment, and wealth.

Join Us on the Adventure:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again to another episode of Dragon's Gold, the magic of mindset. Today we have the pleasure of being joined by Morgan Keim, founder of Ocean Ridge Capital. a real estate company built for entrepreneurs Previously raised over $400 million in venture capital for the food space and the next generation of food. Morgan, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Justin. Absolutely, my friend, my pleasure. Well, let's dive in. Where did it all begin? What's the origin story for Morgan Keim? The origin story. Well, the inception is I'm a Hong Kong born East coaster who followed a traditional New England path until I decided one day somewhere in the middle of high school that being in the negative degree wind chills and the sort of linear path of the kids in New England was not the right route for me. And it put me on a journey that sent me around the country lived down south for five years, followed a career originally kind of around the food and hospitality space, which eventually landed me out in Southern California where I am now. And the origin of my career is one where I always was trying to find how to use business as a force for good to solve major problems that we have in the world. And it took me a while to kind of hammer in on what exact vehicle I'd choose, but Ultimately, I found skills in marketing and in fundraising and sort of startup strategy and building as the core toolbox for reinventing a lot of things in the food space. So very, very different than real estate, what I do today. But it led me down a path of helping to start some of the most prolific companies in the food technology world to make animal-free proteins. to make basically plant-based foods better for you, more accessible, and really have the taste profile that people were looking for from animal-based foods without some of the trade-offs of environmental, maybe health and animal welfare issues. And so I started going down this path. I was very deeply committed. I was seeing wins. And these companies, they're venture-backed, right? So every time you go and raise some money, a couple hundred million dollars here,$10 million or whatever the size of the round is, the goalpost and the expectation of what you're set to show is so far out of sight, it's almost unfathomable. And I saw that from an early age. I really realized that this is a very high risk career path that I'm on. It's deeply impact driven, but there's a good chance that this might not work out for my family and I need to diversify. I need to actually have a barbell strategy where I can compliment the high risk, high potential reward, the one in 10 of these companies might IPO or exit and make you money, was something that's a lot more tried and true and a lot more stable. Because I always knew I wanted a family and I have two young girls now, I have a very happy family life. But I knew that even when I was 23, 24, this was gonna be this other side of my barbell. Safe, consistent, cash flowing assets, not swing for the fence type of bets. And I found that in real estate, actually starting as a passive investor in a number of value add multifamily deals at the time in Los Angeles. And so if you think about the origin and inception of where the investing that we do today in the affordable multifamily spaces, that started 11 years ago with the first venture, the first limited partner check that I ever wrote where I'd just scrape together everything I had. take a chance on myself to build another side of my barbell strategy away from my earned income and away from my strata of equity. Morgan, I love that. The piece about taking a chance on yourself, right? When you scrape together all that and you realize all the time, effort, energy you've put together to scrape together this nest egg, this war chest, as I've heard it referred to, and I love that. The idea is you put all that together and then you invested it in something that has a risk, right? It's passive income. You're not the one in control of this. And you have to put trust in the operators. big deal. It's a big step. But ultimately, you're taking a chance on yourself. You're trusting that you've gone through and vetted the potential operators. You trust the deal. You think that it's going to work, not just from a number standpoint, but also a comment you made earlier being a force for good, right? That it's going to align and it's going to align with your values. I think that it's such a important step to realize that At the end of the day, you have to rely on yourself to make those good choices. You have to weigh that risk yourself. And now in the position that you're in, you have the ability to do that for other people as well. Right. You can go through and vet and know that you're really making a difference in someone's life. The homes that you invest in, the people who lay their heads there at night, the potential investors who work with you. Just there's so many people that are affected by that. And so I just think that that's an incredible thing that you've been able to create now. And it came from something, it came from you taking a chance on yourself, right? I appreciate you recognizing that. And just as much of having fingerprints on taking that chance to go on a path that you want to go or write a check into an investment with the best knowledge you can at the time, it also reflects in what you can do today in the impact statement you want to make. So like case in point, the company that I run now, which is Ocean Ridge Capital, we've been working with entrepreneurs for the last, think about eight years now. as general partners as well as as fund allocators, primarily in the multifamily affordable housing space. So even within real estate, what we can focus on and what we can do is channel solutions towards an underserved market that's incredibly lucrative and it's non-concessionary, but it's also a market where, depending on who's counting, we're three and a half to five million affordable housing units short in the US. And by creating a service that basically brings more units online by taking what's already there and improving it to the current, to the standards that they need to be to have safe, affordable, nice housing to live in, you can actually turn a great profit, create amazing cash flow and sell for great appreciation. And it's for good, right? So like the point I think I'm trying to make here is it's very much This is a non-concessionary approach to mission-driven conscious capitalism. I love that. And it definitely rings true. mean, having apartments myself as well in the same state and to clarify, affordable housing, helping people get a home and get a foothold and helping people to level up that kind of impact investing. makes you feel good, right? Like you feel genuinely good about what you're doing and how you're helping people and you can do it at a profit, right? Which is amazing. So Morgan, one of the things that we talk about and with what you've explained and knowing that you've had 15 years of startup experience and investing in yourself and trying to create all of these things, that's not without its trials and tribulations. There's a lot of moments that can occur in that that are difficult to overcome. Would you mind sharing some of those moments with us and how did you overcome? I mean when you're in the venture-backed startup world and particularly at, you know, pre-revenue companies, you have basically a finite runway before you have to show what you're doing is going to work or it's game over. And so the stress levels that come with that and the personalities that are attracted to that or not and find themselves there can create a, you know, a pretty unique dynamic. And so some of the things I really liked about it is like, it's really heavy on innovation, it's heavy on changing the world. you know, there are funders that see that potential too, and they bet on you, and they say, gonna, we believe that you're gonna have what it takes to make a breakthrough here. Now on the other side of it, it's immensely stressful. It's unpredictable. I've seen people that have worked for 10 years and then had their startups just crushed, evaporated in a series of weeks due to some sort of a crisis or a market shift. And the fragility that founders, particularly in the venture backspace face, it's impalpable. Where you could do everything in your power, and these are problem solvers, you. These are imperfect action takers. raw entrepreneurs that don't take no for an answer and they figure out how to build something up and build it out of nothing, where suddenly, sometimes overnight, everything can change. And so a lot of what attracted me to my current focus of not just how I invest in multifamily real estate, in mobile home parks and things in the affordable housing space, but also as a conduit to entrepreneurs is creating a level where you're always going to have some defensibility. where the worst of the worst outcomes could happen in your startup domain and you'll still be backed by something that's consistent, that has recurring cash flow, that has strong upside appreciation potential, and just allows for a little bit more stability in what would otherwise be a highly leveraged strategy of wealth building so that you can be there with your family in weather any storm. Morgan, we talk about weathering that storm and thinking about, so everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face, right? And in that moment, when you are laying it all on the line and you are in this high stress environment and you are expected to provide proof of concept that this is going to work and that the investors that are putting their money in, whether it's on a startup. whether it's an entrepreneur and whether it's an apartment building or a mobile home park, or whether it's in oil and gas, or whether it's in senior living facilities, whatever the investment vehicle that you're looking at, you have to make sure that you will run into the wall. There will be things that will hit you that you never saw, right? Those right hooks that you never saw coming. How you get back up from that, it speaks volumes of your character. But having some diversity, having some protection and having some passive investments that are paying to be able to support that certainly helps. It's a balm or a salve, right? It helps to be able to overcome that challenge or at least soften the blow a bit so that you can get back up again and push forward. Yeah, absolutely. When we talk about these journeys that we go on and we talk about all these things that we experience, well, it's never alone, right? Always we go on these journeys with others, whether it be partners, mentors, people that we bring with us, we call this the fellowship. Is there anyone that you might cite on your journey that has been instrumental? So the fellowship, that's a great question. And I mean, it's obligatory to say, you know, the most important person on my fellowship is my wife and my kids. I mean, she's absolutely just unbelievable to understand the things that go into a founder's journey through the highs and the lows and starting something new. you know, all of that goes without saying. I've had some really strong business partners and one of them You know what's interesting? I was out in Breckenridge, Colorado doing some work with the Techstars Sustainability Accelerator. This is back in 2017. I met somebody named Anthony at a food truck. It was his food cart, basically. And I heard him on the phone talking to one of his friends about growth mentality, about... Like just some language that I immediately was like, who is this person? This is like, you're like, we're on the channel right now. And you he probably thought I was going to try to sell him a Congenwater and Amway subscription. But I went up to him I was like, hey, I don't know what your deal is, but like, let me crack your number after like I eat this shawarma. I'm like, let's chat a little bit about where you're going in life. I just want to like help support. Maybe I'll tell you. This person became a business partner like that I've had to this day. He sold his restaurant chain. He moved out to California. We started Ocean Ridge Capital together. He's been my operator. We started a fund in 2020 and bought 20 multifamily properties in the first two years of that fund where to this day we're operating them together and we've done so many other things in business. And having somebody that has a very complimentary skill set that's different than yours is probably what makes this work so well in a business context. I'm very much the visionary, very much the, you know, let me tell the story, let me be with the investors. And he's the put your head down. I want to get in the nitty gritty. We're going to stabilize these assets. We're going to work with the city and get this contract underway, you know, whatever those things are. And it just creates this really glorious dynamic to move further faster together. So uh that's some great mentors too. But I really like, I think those like those partners that you spend time every day working with can really kind of shape who you are in a way that it just sets you up to succeed. Morgan, you say move forward faster together. And I love that. And how amazing that completely by chance that you just happened to hear that piece of conversation. And then you commented on it, right? You had to take action because you could have heard it and said, that was neat. And, good, good luck guy. But you didn't. You had the conversation. You asked for the number. You said, let's take, let's take a call. And he could have thought you were crazy and maybe he did. But but obviously he got the number you and amazing things came from it. But you didn't know that was going to happen, right? You didn't know that was the door that was opening and that you would literally be talking to your future partner for years of opportunity. And I just I think that that speaks volumes to. To stepping into action to. feeling something and following your gut, following your heart, right? And never being closed minded, always being open minded, being able to be able to share your vision with someone else. And if it's the right thing for them, they wanna go along the journey with you, right? And the complimentary skills comment you made, I think is so relevant. Right, the 80-20 rule, you find what's your 20%, what are you so good at? Do it. What fills your bucket and makes you excited? Lean in. And then partner with people that augment the things that you're not great at, right, or that don't bring you joy, right? Find the things that they enjoy, let them do them well or excellent, right? And then you go further and faster together. So I just think that that's a beautiful thing and I'm so glad you were able to find a partner that you mesh so well with. Absolutely. And look, there are also seasons, right? There are seasons where that partnership has deeper layers and seasons where there are a little more like individual roads, right? But you find the way to keep kind of building along the road and supporting one another wherever you are in those different seasonal shifts. My friend, this may be hard. I know we touched a little on trials, tribulations, but oftentimes in our story, there is a moment we call the darkest hour, where you are inundated, overwhelmed, and it's hard. And the easy thing to do is to quit, to walk away from it all. Do you have a moment that you might share that resonates in that regard? And how have you overcome it? Yeah. I've had many dark hours on the journey and to people who invest in real estate particularly, it's very easy to say, it's passive income and it is so far from a passive activity and you never know when you're to get a phone call that's going to knock you off your socks. I'd say that one of the darker hours, mean, we've had We've had the revelation that to ultimately scale our impact of making a dent in bringing more affordable housing online, we've needed to scale the size of projects we've done. And so we've gone from targeting small multifamily in the Midwest to larger multifamily in the Sunbelt. And the learning curve and the trials and tribulations of buying distressed properties with high interest rate, bridge debt and things that you need to do to get deals done in this environment come with pretty serious consequences if you can't be successful, right? And that can be seen as a fear. It can also be seen as a motivator. So I'm thinking back to the last week when... The group that brought us together, there are some unbelievable entrepreneurs and operators in this group. And we were in a Mexico mastermind in paradise, they called it last week. And the biggest couple of takeaways I had from this was that everybody in that room had been not just down, but like had been down hard, like had been hit really hard, blindsided. lawsuit at one point, major deal implosion, major partnership implosion. Just everybody had gone through something and nobody was running from it. Everybody's very much embraced the notion that they had been down really hard at one point or another and yet they're there. They're showing up. They're paying all this money to be in a mastermind to show up and to bring that to the collective group because it's almost like we have a responsibility if we're going to be allowing investors to bring Capital to us that we need to be the best versions of ourselves and the ones that have really had the most pressure on them and even if they've if they've quote-unquote failed They if they own it and they're there and they're learning they're growing. They're the most trustworthy people in the room They've actually had the pressure test and they've had to show up And so hunter Thompson was giving a keynote the first day and he said something I'll probably stick with me for life But he said, if you could be so lucky to have the luxury to go through a monumental failure. And I was like, oh, like how could you look at it that way? It's so painful. And then I started to like really unpack it. I'm like, you know, I mean, it's like, you know, the pounds and pounds of pressure are how diamonds are made. And without that... You know, if you're in a stable, safe W-2 career, let's say, it's hard, but you might not ever have the level of pressure of an entrepreneur that's got the weight of the world on their shoulders and their hands are in their head at three in the morning, not knowing where to go next. But that's how growth happens. And that's how we evolve as a society. That's how we become better investors. That's how we become better to our family, that we go through these hardships. But to have the perspective of just embracing it for what it is and being like, is a really hard season. I love it. Like almost like I want to lean in because this is gonna make me who I'm meant to become. And so that was a really big takeaway from that experience. love that. Makes me think of anxiety versus excitement, right? Emotionally, they both evoke the same thing, the sweaty palms, the raised or elevated heart rate. And it's about the perspective that you look at, the lens that you look at it through, right? You can think, woe is me and this is so hard. Or you can lean in hard and say, yeah, this is hard and I'm going to overcome it. I'm going to achieve success and whatever that means, right? To overcome the challenge and whatever that challenge is to solve the problem. And I think that's one of the awesome things about entrepreneurs is the idea of the problem solving mindset, right? Understanding be solution oriented and finding out how do we overcome this? It's not, it's not if I can, it's how can I, right? What are the things I need to do to overcome this challenge? and then stepping into that, right? You talk about masterminds, right? You pay a ridiculous amount of money to then go and invest your time and to share your stories with the hope that A, you can impact someone else and help them, but B, also by virtue of helping other people by being in that same room, you hear, like you mentioned, that helped to inspire you and help you to push through and help you to realize, hey, maybe it's not as bad as I thought it was, right, for me. And that's really crummy that you had to do that, right? And hopefully you learn from someone else's experience so you don't make the same mistake. Or if you do, that it doesn't hit as hard, right? I think that that's an incredible lesson and an incredible takeaway is to find the beauty in the chaos, right? And to really enjoy that. So. And I think we have to be a little strange to actually enjoy it, right? But in a good way, right? Because that's, no one's going to do it for you, but you, right? And so you have to find that strength, that inner strength. And like you mentioned, the pressure, right? Pressure makes diamonds. And so that pressure is really what can help to forge you in the heat of that moment. So Morgan, I talk about Dragon's gold, the successes, the things that we've experienced, achieved, whether it be accolades, whether it be mindset, is there something that you might share as Dragon's gold in the journeys that you've taken? Sure. Well, one of the things that led me down this path that I'm on and away from my career and startup to do real estate investing and serve entrepreneurs full time was just the notion of believing that more income is not the answer, but freedom, ownership, and having control of your time, of your health. being able to spend time with the people you want to spend time with. And ironically, I don't know if I would have gotten there as quickly as I did if I hadn't read this book called The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. I don't if you've heard of this, but Naval is the founder of AngelList. He's a great entrepreneur, prolific investor. And this book is like a compilation of tweets. It's not even... Somebody pulled together some things, but he's a very insightful guy. He's really on it with health, wealth, and happiness. And in this book, he breaks down the three forms of leverage. And I never really thought about it before. But if you're trying to create ownership, and ownership equals freedom, then you need leverage. And leverage is nothing more than compound judgment. It's if you have good judgment and you have leverage, great things can happen. If you have poor judgment, you have leverage, not so much. So you really got to kind of work on that. But what he describes is like the first form, labor leverage. It's good, people are working for you. It's kind of your dad's like favorite form of leverage. You want to work at this big company, bunch of people, right? But the reality is it's not the best form. People can walk off the job. They got to replace them. It's lot of key man stuff. Next form of leverage is capital leverage. And that's great. And that's a lot of what we do in real estate. We leverage capital from banks, from investors to buy and we improve assets, we improve the value, invest in good markets, and hopefully we make a lot more capital as a result. That said, there are also some downsides to it. Capital markets can shut down. It can be constraining a lot of times at the peak of the best buying opportunities. And then there's sort of the top tier of leverage, which is digital or code base. That's what we're doing. There's no more of me talking today to reach any more people, right? You just find me and, you know, same goes for social media, same goes for AI and all sorts of different things that are innovating there. And what really reshaped how I think about freedom and my road to freedom has been how to compound leverage in as many ways as possible towards not just financial freedom, but also impact. and impact freedom and driving towards the outcomes that we're trying to make in making more affordable housing online in the US. So I think there's a lot of freedom if you can embrace different forms of leverage and understand the difference, understand the pros and cons of each, and then find a way to use those levers to kind of create more space for you to live life more intentionally. Mm. Living life intentionally? living it with purpose. helps to bring joy, right? So it's, it's not just about the money. The money is a tool and absolutely we need it, but we need it in order to live the life that we want. to have food on the table, to be able to provide for your family, to have a roof over your head, right? And people have different varying degrees or standards of what they consider wealthy, right? Being healthy, wealthy and wise is something that each of us aspires to in our own way. But having that time freedom, having the ability to choose and do what you want, when you want to with the people you want to do it, that's a gift that I'm so grateful to be able to help to bring to others and to myself and my family. And I think that you being able to experience this as well, talking about that book, Morgan, one of the things I like to talk about is, tools and weapons, right? Resources, things that you've used that have been helpful. And I'm really grateful for you to share that book. And I love that it was just a collection of tweets, right? But so much can be packed into just a couple of small sentences, right? To really make an impact. Is there anything that you might share that has been inspiring to you? Any books, resources, or tools that you might share with the audience? You know, it's interesting. This is a pretty off the wall answer, a little fed by my startup mentality, but I really, I get inspired by biomimicry, which is the process of leveraging nature's 3.8 billion years of evolution to solve whatever the problem is you have at hand. And so you basically say, you know, maybe, hey, I want to do something faster. You know, look to nature at things that are fast. What's evolved to be fast? And you end up kind of looking at the traits of what those things are. And you can actually find these really random and weird parallels that help you to think in a very different way. You see it in design a lot. You see products made through biomimicry. Remember those little like felt... sneaker things that you grew up with and you'd like rip them on and off. Like that's biomimicry because it was inspired by the thistle that sticks to you when you're walking through a field and they needed to wear shoes on the moon and you can't just sit down and tie your shoe when you're coming out of the spacecraft. There are a lot of examples like this. Bullet trains that are modeled off of the kingfish are birds that fly through the air. But it actually works for looking at like harmony in life and looking at entrepreneurial success. mean, like things that are a little more of abstract human concepts, we can still kind of look back and say, well, you know, what's harmony in nature? It's balance. It's, you know, it's thriving ecosystems. It's collectivity, you know, and you can find these different things. So those tend to inspire me, especially when I just want to jolt out of my reality surrounded by laptops and phones and all these different things. So I think about the idea that you don't have to reinvent the wheel, right? So I mean, if after billions of years of evolution, like if it's proven to work, like find a way to employ that, right? Let nature be your guide in that regard. I think it's really powerful and a cool thought process and lesson. Yeah, absolutely. Morgan, we talk about leaving a legacy and having two young daughters, right? Like, I'm sure that you want to do the best that you can for them and for your wife and just and for yourself and your family. And one of the things that I'm curious is, though, we call this the Hall of Heroes. If when you're gone and many years from now, the only thing left is a massive statue of Morgan time. And it can have a plaque on there can say everything or anything that you want. What would you have it say? I mean, I think it would be something to the effect of he did well while doing good or something like that. That's the fabric for me. And, you know, we talk about legacy and that sort of thing. For me, legacy is leaving breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs are grounded in ownership and assets, but it's not the product. It's the process that I care a lot more about. It's the legacy that my daughters saw that you can be both ambitious and grounded at the same time, that you can build wealth without losing values, and that you can create leverage for yourself and others. And also that other entrepreneurs see that too. That's really critical to my legacy. I guess I'm not the person that wants to leave a billion dollar portfolio when I pass. It's a testament to the value you created in this world and that's beneficial. But the real meaning to me is the mindset and the habit shift of the current and next generation of those that want to shape the world and seeing it can be done with your head and your heart at the same time. Thank you, Morgan. You made me actually think of Jim Rohn. So just thinking about how many lives he touched, right? Regardless of whatever assets or anything he had, how many lives did he touch? How many people did he help? How many people did he support in their dreams and vision? And he's the person I thought of when you were talking about that. just in leaving a legacy isn't just about... the stuff, right? It's not about assets. I mean, sure, you want to take care of your family and you want to help others, but what did you do to inspire others? What did you do to help someone else to achieve their success? Right. And I mean, that's a huge part of what this entire podcast is about is to touch on these stories, to help other people so that they can feel the inspiration or the ability to overcome the fear, right? To step out into it and take action. and hopefully achieve the success that makes a difference in their life and others. And it's interesting, right, you say Jim Rohn, because who came after Jim Rohn and heralded similar messages and followed in his footsteps but Tony Robbins? And so it's like the way I'd be able, that's a great example, because I think, know, who could be my Tony Robbins? Like who can you cultivate to follow on and to bring that to the next generation so that it outlives you, right? That's real legacy. Absolutely. love that. I love that. So Morgan, what's next? What's the next quest for Morgan Keim and Ocean Ridge Capitol? So at Ocean Ridge, we're actually taking a little bit of a transition away from being operators to being allocators in other deals. know, one of the things I found in looking at my own intentionality of how I spending my time is I'm spending a lot of it operating, doing deals, stabilizing them, flying around the country to do all that kind of work. And the reality is we're very good at that. But if I think about leverage and trying to reach more entrepreneurs that are looking for generational income, wealth creation, tax efficiency, my highest and best is actually spent communicating with them and being advocates for really creating a flywheel that can reach them, that can help them get out of the stock market casino, help them get a some of their Bitcoin earnings into something that's a little more tried and true these days, right? And not to say that we're all going to go, let's just put the whole portfolio in real estate, but just giving more of an option for those folks to have really strong assets, particularly in the affordable housing space. So what's next for us is right now we're in dialogue with, I think, 25 different operators. We've gotten incredibly good at doing diligence between the hundred deals that I've done as both an LP and a GP in various aspects. In the last 11 years, I've learned a lot about underwriting assets, about looking at operators, evaluating markets, and looking at structures and everything in between. I really want to take that as a conduit and say, rest on my diligence process and my battle-hardness. to actually help back some of the best in class entrepreneurs around us that are buying in different markets, in different asset classes, and ultimately be the conduit that helps entrepreneurs have exclusive access to those type of opportunities. So we're doing a lot of that sort of thing right now. That's awesome. Thank you, Morgan. Morgan, my favorite question to ask is, if you could be any mythical creature, what would you be and why? I it would, I don't know, I hope this isn't so cliche, but I think it would be the phoenix, right? You rise from the ashes. The amount of reinventions I've had, people wouldn't even see it. But I've had to constantly reinvent from graduating college in the financial crisis and realizing my degree was going to be worthless to finding a way of creating intentionality when... people weren't really prioritizing a lot of that stuff and to walking away from a high six-figure job in the food tech space to go be a conduit for entrepreneurs in real estate and everything in between. It's all sort of a reinvention process. the Phoenix is rebirth, right? And it's overcoming any sort of stagnation because you're always sort of dynamically moving along. So I think it's like having the courage to almost burn down the former self and to rise up stronger than before. love it, my friend. It's fantastic. It was a great answer. And cliche or not, it's, it totally resonates, especially understanding the things that you have to go through and hearing the one in particular, I think about when you mentioned that a moment ago about, going through college, right? All the time, effort, energy, money invested, everything there to come out of it and realize that all of that may be for naught. And you can't necessarily apply it in the fashion that you thought. what a huge shift my question, guess in that regard is, is how did you feel in that moment and how did you overcome it? How did you apply yourself pivot? Yeah, so in college it was interesting. I had this very strong drive to figure something out at the intersection of business and sustainability, and I'd done internships all throughout my time. The last internship I had was with the city of Charleston, South Carolina, in the Division of Sustainability. We launched this big green business challenge for everybody. in the city and a bunch of businesses participated and they saved a ton of money on their waste and their water. But they also had these really cool marketable messages that they then could tell people that made them feel mission aligned with what they were doing. And so I graduate and I'm like, where are the jobs? Why aren't you guys calling me? I just graduated. I'm kind of expecting. And I realized the world didn't work like that. At first, I got hit in the face pretty hard and I'm like, this is devastating. I thought I'd be working by month three, like I need the money. And then I realized, you know what? It's just about creating value. That's all the job is. Why don't I just create value for some of those businesses that now had these like sustainability success stories from the city? And I went to the list of like 53 or whatever participating businesses and I built up a client roster of about 10 of them. And we ended up doing all sorts of digital marketing, PR. I I started like a little agency to serve their needs, right? So was kind of creating value out of nothing at a time when it was really hard to find a job. And at some point I was noticed in that and had an opportunity to come out in the West Coast and do that type of work in a much, much bigger way for large national brands. But that whole process, right? The rebirth, the... creating value where it didn't exist. mean, that's what came out of the ashes of getting burned. I love it. What a fantastic way to close out this podcast, brother. What a good example. And I'm so grateful that you share your stories today here with us. Thank you. Thank you, Justin. I really appreciate you having me here. yeah, it's been a pleasure. My friends, thank you for joining us once again on our quest to inspire, educate, and empower you to turn your dreams into reality, one mindset shift at a time. We'll see you next time.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Justin Mills

Host
Head Shot

Aaron Iler

Producer
Head Shot

Morgan Keim

Guest