Todd

Today we're talking with Ray Hespen, Ray is the founder and CEO of property mill. Property Meld is a SASS platform for property managers to manage maintenance. I've known Ryan for most of his entrepreneurial journey, and excited to share with you his experiences. So sit back and enjoy this episode. Well, welcome Ray, it's awesome to have you on the podcast, man. Thanks for making the time.

Ray

Thank you so much, Todd, for having me. Super excited to be on today. Oh, good,

Todd

Good. Well, why don't we start the bidding beginning a little bit, I think you come to entrepreneurship through some different doors that maybe some and so maybe talk a little bit about your background from, you know, kind of what you did in college to ended up being the CEO of property mill?

Ray

Yeah, I always say that I took probably one of the most unconventional approaches. But then as you talk to other entrepreneurs, you realize nearly all of them came from an unconventional approach. So a little bit about my background. So I originally went to school as a mining engineer. And candidly, it was like, I kind of just chose that engineering. Because I got picked to do it. There wasn't something originally super passionate, I ended up falling in love with it, but went to mining engineering. And then I went out into the world of, you know, being a professional in the industry. And it wasn't very long, probably a year before I wasn't even doing engineering, I was just doing team leader ship stuff all the way up to moving around, and I was a plant manager of a cementitious material facility in Baltimore. And then I made the very next logical step, which is decided to start a software company. So kinda no real clear path there. I don't know what I was drinking at the time. But

Todd

yeah, that's right. But you know, one of the things I think it's interesting about your journey is it started with a human problem, it was a problem that you had, and so maybe pivot from, you know, doing your job to, you know, transferring from job to job, and then some of the problems you had, you know, that really kind of led you to, to property management.

Ray

So, I think sometimes, at least in the moment, you may not think that something is quite as much of a gift as it is it is. And so, a lot of my early professional career was after the the housing crash in a way to nine. So as you can imagine, it was in the construction materials. It wasn't a fun time to be in that business. They were printing money when I was in college. And then as soon as I got out, it was like, We got to figure out how to cut costs. And so I probably spent the last the six years, figuring out how to live without figuring out how to get more resource out of the same thing, making sure quality safety, you know, kind of limiting constraints. And so as I went through that, I ended up getting the opportunity to go jump from plant to plant I was wanting to move, I was willing to kind of do do some of that. And the big thing that I was learning at that time, even though maybe I didn't notice it that I think I'm thankful for later, is the fact that I learned how to like systematically solve problems that ended up reducing the cost ultimately to do that, right. And so then, when it kind of came through, and kind of the idea or genesis for property meld came through, my co founder, David Kingman, called me one day, and he was telling me about his very terrible rental experience. He sat there and had a maintenance request happened to a few of them. And he tried calling the office and, you know, did all the stuff. And it was terrible. And so I went and did some research central I called property managers. And it was like, it is terrible. For the renter, I lived it, I moved around a lot. It's terrible for them. Is there also a business case for these property management firms that they also hate it and it's super costly. And so I was able to kind of, you know, use what was kind of the problem solving of what was considered a relatively negative time are some of the things that I got to learn during that to kind of map over and go, Wow, who our customers are today. The property managers don't like it. It's not efficient. It's not that residents don't like this. And so yeah, it was born out of a human problem, but kind of later identified, it was the parallels between the two, my industry growing up and software that I kind of realized. It was kind of training for me even though not directly.

Todd

Yeah. It's cool with that story is it was kind of a personal problem that you experienced, both you and David experienced, and then you kind of started from there. And I think that a lot of good startups start with I experienced this problem and I want to solve it and make it better. Maybe pivoting a little bit. You mentioned David Kingman, I mean, you know I think your story about having two co founders is good. I think there's a higher success rate with two co founders and you have some different skill sets, maybe talk a little bit about your relationship with David, how you guys met, and then like the different skills that you bring to the table?

Ray

Yeah, so I think if you ask him, and I think he's right, we met in AP Physics class in high school, we both had to say after class, and we were grouped up and ended up realizing, you know, there's a lot of a lot of things we liked about each other. And so anyways, we've known each other while went to college even a little bit together for a while. And what we ended up kind of staying in touch. But we had a lot of trust and stuff, other things built up. And we always kind of like talked about this, I do have starting a company both have the same passions, and so on. So when we did start a company, one of the one of the greatest benefits, and I'm not sure everybody gets the luxury of having this, but we had an immense amount of trust built already, which is super important. But I think the second thing is we use it, we've kind of tried to figure out and identify like, what do we what do we each do like at first I used to be like, I'm the gas pedal, he's the brake pedal, he really hated that, because it didn't, he's not the brake pedal, he just kind of keeps me in check. And so it was like, I'm the engine here. He's the steering wheel. But as we've kind of evolved as leaders, we've just realized kind of the, the dichotomy of our skill sets and our passions, really complement each other. So, you know, I consider him an intellect. He's really good about how do you make sure and kind of provide autonomy to teams and create some accountability, where I've got probably a little bit more gifts in the human psychology elements and the customer, we end up kind of like bashing some of them together. But it's, I could not speak more highly of what having a great co founder does, not just from come compel, you know, kind of like skills, but just, you know, there's really hard times and startup and having somebody that you got some trust with, and that will ride out with you is, was and is critical. So,

Todd

yeah, maybe I'll put a stronger point on it, I think you bring. I mean, today, you're the CEO, and you basically, are in charge of kind of the business side, and David's really in charge, the product and the technical side. And so I think broadly, you bring some very different skills that are pretty complimentary together. And like you said, you have some of that trust, you've kind of worked through a bunch of things. And I think, you know, it really helps be a good team early on, right? I think you probably played some product management type roles early on trying to interview all these customers about what their problems were David was building some of this. And really, how did you get go from this concept of the problem to building a product to convincing somebody to actually buy and basically try it out? Like, where did the pain Who was your first customer? What was the experience of like, just really trying to convince him to take a flyer?

Ray

Oh, man, so first of all, so we had a business plan of how fast we were gonna get product adoption, and customers. And I laugh, I laugh at it today, because we expected so much so quickly. But then we underestimated how much it would grow later. So it's kind of a funny thing. But I think like, the first thing is like realizing how hard it is to get those first 10 customers and get like some assemblance of an MVP out there that people will pay money for. And so the great dichotomy of kind of our relationship was really around this idea that he was building. And I was trusting him to build it. And he was saying, you go sell it and give me feedback on what we need. Right. So that was kind of the the relationship that we had there. So I mean, I tell people all the time, like, whatever, however long you plan on it taking, it's going to take longer. And that was my experience, you end up finding even something as simple as your pitch on how you position your software, like what do you even call it? What kind of software? Is it, the price that you stumble upon? Yeah, you make you make calls, and the bagno already got that and you just that iterative process of like getting inching to that next gate or opportunity. So it's like, they'll take the call. Now, they'll listen to the problems. Now I can show them the demo. Now. They want them to buy each one of those are like a little miniature battlefield of iterations. And sometimes that involves building product. There's an obstacle we can overcome

Todd

With some casualties along the way, I'm sure a

Ray

Lot of casualties is that God is brain cells and yeah,

Todd

Yeah. Well, good. I mean, you got through it. You got your first 10. And today, you think about the scale and it's like, I don't know, how you think about scale. I mean, it's like, you know, I probably met you, you know, seven years ago, somewhere in there six, seven years ago. Now. And you know, you were doing, I don't know, somewhere in the neighborhood 150 $200,000 a year, couple employees. And you know, I think I think about where we were then versus where you are today. And like the amount of scale and the challenges along those lines, I'm sure you would say, you know, there's there's themes so that there's different challenges. How do you break that up? How do you how do you learn to scale going from, let's say, the first 10, to the first 100, to the next 1000.

Ray

So when you keep scaling, and you're kind of mentioning a lot of dead bodies along the way, I think this is this is where, you know, I've got kind of a really painful upward trajectory sine curve, kind of into this, right. And so I think the first thing that I think was really helpful for a mentor to tell me it was super early, but they said, your first 10 customers, you will basically kill yourself to get the first time. But then once you get the first 10, you can get the next 100 Easier than You got the first time. And so I think finding whatever that product, the message, whatever, that's where you're, you're going to struggle a lot. But then you kind of get to that point where you're talking about scaling. All right, I've got a general assemblance of like, how do I do this, but then you got to start answering some of the more important questions that like, I'm selling this by myself, and with a process that I know how to do, how do I take and replicate myself? Or break my portions of jobs into people and go do it? But I think that's like, the first thing is like, how do you take what you've got, and try to like, build a machine that you can go and get some people to go do and I think that was one of the most difficult parts for me. And what I failed on a lot was to actually find ways to get that systematically done well.

Todd

And do you I mean, I think there's a couple of things embedded in that one of them is, I would say, there's a step between, and this maybe goes to your first 10. But it's like you keep iterating a message. And at some point in time, the marketing, the positioning, the pricing, the discussions, you start to see the patterns, right, like you're like, Okay, 80% of the time, this is kind of the same thing. And then then it's a difference, what I think you're saying is, there's a huge difference between you interpreting that environment where you think that's repeatable, versus bringing somebody on the didn't have all this experience that you just did to get there. And so there's a Delta on like, Okay, I'm seeing it as 80% the same thing, and I can iterate from there. But it's a super different thing to like, bring somebody in cold that maybe doesn't know the industry hasn't been in the same journey to basically replicate that. And that means assets, tools, all that sort of stuff.

Ray

Yeah, and my first two sales people, I ended up trying to do remote, not having him sit right next to me and try to like learn everything. Those first two people didn't make it not because they weren't capable, I don't think but I think there's probably an over over kind of emphasis on how simplest, simplistic the processes, but your job is to find a way to get it out of your brain. And I think, like, you're right, there's step one, get the message that works, what gets passed the, to the to the no to looking and saying yes, and then going, alright, like, what did you do there? And how can you give everything that you've learned to other people to go and do that same thing. So just as a context, so we've got today, I think, 30 people in our sales department or in our revenue generation, but I will tell you getting the first successful salesperson to be selling on your own was like, probably one of the most challenging things to actually make happen.

Todd

Do you think your engineering background really helped you in that? I mean, it's almost like process engineering, right? I mean, it's like it's steps, it's boxes, its gates. And I think as an engineer, you already think that way, and so you're applying it to a system. And I think that type of methodology or thought process probably deconstructs this into something that's a tangible block that you could kind of continue to iterate with metrics

Ray

You know, I do think it's helped as I've scaled I think I think part of the initial and then I couldn't like going back I don't think I was probably smart enough to pick apart what I was doing well and like what was happening there I just happen to have like a input output that was getting past the gatekeeper and I didn't know why it was happening. I think initially, it was like how do you copy paste my pitch like it was it was that and copy and paste the objections you're going to hear with like the rebuttals right like how do you come back and so I think that's what it was very much initially, is getting people to go through the same be exactly like I'm doing and then just replicate. Now, as you scale you're talking about you can't carbon copy, I'm not doing as much sales anymore. You can't carbon copy me and the market might have changed in and everything else, I think there was a point there probably around, you know, maybe one to six, five to six sales people that I really started having hiccups around. I couldn't get everyone to run that playbook somehow. And it just was creating vast efficiencies. And so I think that's where kind of that engineering mindset and going, how do I break this down into pieces? What are you trying to accomplish? Each section? I think that's where it really took off. So it was probably early, pretty early stage, but okay,

Todd

I mean, that makes sense. So you've talked a little bit about hiring and stuff and talking about it, you know, like, at some point in time, you start to have enough success, where it's not just you and David and one other person, you're starting to add some folks. And that's positive. And, you know, it just seems like the amount of work multiplies you get to bring people on, but like critical hires at the beginning, like talk to me about like, Are you hiring generalists, or you're hiring specifics? You know, does that change as you scale? How good are you at the process of hiring, and we've gotten better over time, like, I think there's a whole bunch of stuff here that like hiring good people at the right time makes a huge difference. If you screw it up, it makes it so much harder.

Ray

I had no clue. Todd, like, I think, you know, early on, and you're a broke company, like I was a broke company. And so it was like, you're sitting there trying to convince somebody who's a professional, to say, I need you to quit everything you're doing, I need you to give up your comfy lifestyle, I need you to sit there and come in and maybe work for what is less, and what was less than market value and take a bet. And with a company that may not be around three months, right. And so I think like then it was thinking through, and I was really trying to target and sell what we were trying to do. And that was huge, because it's really hard to get people in the door, right? Especially competent people who are willing to kind of take a gamble with you. And so I think at first it was almost seemingly sales in just like, please come and try, right? You have to be somebody that I think can do it. But like, just come on and bet on this. Right? And I think that that worked? Well, but it didn't, because you ended up being optimistic about who's willing to, as opposed to who's the right person. And so if you kind of take that further, then you start to realize and kind of pick up patterns of who's making the company and who's not, what are sort of the common themes that they have, what are some of the core values, sort of ways that they operate that start to become like you're getting an idea. And now it's become what I'd say is a lot more thoughtful. And thankfully, so because, like I said, if it was a lot of a lot of dead bodies, while I was trying to try to learn that skill.

Todd

I guess one of the pieces that you talked about is I think like communication in startups and as founders, like that's got to be a given, right, if you can't get you know, early people excited about your vision about what you're doing, regardless of their domain expertise. I think that's a non starter. And so and I think, you know, whether you call it sales, or whether you call it motivation, whether you call it a having a vision, I think that's a critical skill. And I think as you think about where you started, and versus the maybe the toolbox of communication has gotten better and broader, where you kind of know audiences and kind of what they need, there's a different message internally to your folks than there is externally to people to prospects versus investors. Talk to me a little bit about like, just your communication style, because I think you're gifted in this area, you use it. And I think it's a key element to the success you've had. But I think you've had to develop it over time.

Ray

Yeah, I'll actually give huge credit to this to mentorship. I think wildfire has been really helpful at this. And it allows me to kind of like had some tooling, I do have a kind of an engineering brain and I do enjoy talking to people I enjoy that experience. And so I think like my whole elements is going like really getting crisp on what are some of the goals you're trying to accomplish? I think a lot of the times when you're good at selling something or whatever, you're shooting from the hip, and you're like, I'm just gonna have an answer for everything and just really think on my heels. But I think as you're trying to get more crisp about a message landing, whether it be to a prospective employee, a big customer, or maybe some investors is like, really taking time to think through the goal. And then thinking about these mental gates you're trying to get through and again, I think there's some great toolbox items picked up for mentorship in there, but the ability to set a goal and then think through some gates you're building and then you can map it back to who do you Who are you talking to? Are you talking to an investor who's trying to make a great return? Are you talking to an employee that's, you know, really fed up with their job or or wants a different career or wants a different path? Is it that prospect that's terrified of making a change. And so the ability to really get that process down, allows you to plan and really get that message driven home. And I think that's a, that's a huge part where I think, mentor ship, candidly has really helped me kind of unlock that.

Todd

So maybe that kind of summarize that. I mean, it's it's more deliberate is basically I think what you're saying it's audience dependent. It's message dependent. It's trying to solve the problem and realizing that you have a communication and a tool and a message to carry to get you through to, you know, move something forward.

Ray

Yep. And you think about what serious things in life do you just wing? You know, and and I think once you realize how important communication is, and you know, what you're trying to do, the aspect of actually planning it is becomes very obvious, although it doesn't seem so at first. Yep, I totally agree.

Todd

You just recently hired an executive, you know, in engineering, and one of the comments that he made, I think, to you was something about the effect of, you measure a lot of things. And so I do think this is a cultural trait for you. And I again, I'd be curious if you think this is more engineering and kind of what you ended up doing postgraduation, that drove you. But you're a pretty metrics driven from a corporation. And so how do you think about this early on? When do you start to introduce these metrics? How many is too many? You know, I think a lot of people would say, oh, measure everything. And it's like, well, no, you can't do that. You got to find a balance based on where you are from a scale perspective. And I think a lot of this at least, I think you would subscribe to kind of the Peter Drucker, you know, mentality of, you can't improve what you can't measure. And so maybe talk a little bit about that, because I think it's been a key success to kind of the way you've looked at how you continue to grow and scale.

Ray

So, super, super good observation. I think, you know, even though I am an engineer, like picking what to measure is like, really hard, and I think requires, you know, at least for me, a lot of bumping of heads to figure out what's important, and what actually do you need to move? You know, I think as you're first starting, you're just trying to get product market fit. And so trying to be like over analytical is problematic. You just need to be qualitative, which means you just need to understand what the customer the prospect saying and figure out and interpret what that means and go fix product. Right? Early on, it wasn't how many calls Am I making? How many surveys that people fill out or anything like that it was very, very qualitative. But I think as you start to go a little bit broader, and you're trying to define success of like roles. Somebody's supposed to do something, I hired a salesperson, I hired a developer, I hired somebody to help implement. That's when you really need to start thinking about what does success look like in that role. And oftentimes, everyone will have their own version of that meets, I worked hard, no, you didn't work hard, who's going to who's going to determine whether that's true or not. And so the faster you can get, at least to known elements of measurables, that are important, especially as you scale, the faster you can have great conversations with employees, team members, the faster you can give them a Northstar of what excellence looks like. It allows it to be very clear about what everyone's job to be done is. And so even though I am an engineer, I would say the vast majority of people at property meld are not, but they love a scoreboard. Everybody wants to know if I'm doing good, or am I not doing good. And by creating measurables, it allows us to remove the ambiguity of what success looks like.

Todd

Maybe a different way to think about it, too, is I think it's taking out the the the like, it's not about activity and what you're doing and working. It's about output, right. And so I think like these measures, and I think you've had people that have worked hard, but didn't get the output that they were looking for, for the role, and it wasn't like they're bad employee is it could be trained properly and not focused on the right stuff. But I think, you know, I think it's a pivot for for all startups on saying, I'm really measuring the outcome, not the activity.

Ray

Yeah, and I would say, you know, just just in general, like it's taken us a bit to get super tight on measurables. Like, early on, like, I think you should rely on your gut, you ended up getting your kind of idea there but it's eventually translating the gut to allow you to, like give other people direction on you may not have the same guy as me. But here's a number that should look like this, right. But I'll say like everybody cares about output If you're a salesperson, how much should I close? Now? I think you start to get to where like, what are the numbers that matter? Most that says, Am I doing a good job or not? And then I think as you get more mature, you can start figuring out what what activities and behaviors influence that outcome. Like, I don't make enough calls, there's no way you're gonna get enough sales, like calls does not equal sales, but not enough calls. No, you there's no chance of getting sales. And so I think as you mature, you start going from like those numbers that matter the most to giving direction to people to say, if I do these things, then chances are, I will have a really good outcome. So I think there's kind of an evolution, you go from gut feel to like super critical numbers to how do you actually start figuring out what behaviors lead to those numbers? And I think that's kind of the maturation of measurement.

Todd

Yeah, that's good. It's a it's a good nuance to it. So I appreciate that. We've mentioned culture a couple of times in this conversation. And I think this all kind of comes back to a lot of this, which is what you're trying to build, you know, culture means different things to different people. You I think, as founders, you kind of define it yourselves by your activities, behaviors, and what you kind of, you know, what you value? It's one thing when it's a small team, it's another thing when you got 5060 people, and so how do you? How would you describe kind of the meld culture? How would you think like, what is that, you know, like, what did you and David really care about, that you think you could translate to? And then as you think about hiring and scaling, how do you preserve and reinforce good behavior, and basically tamp down and basically tell people, you know, maybe this isn't the right thing, especially when you have a wide range of agents, right, you have people that are super young, professionally, to, you know, more experienced people that have had experiences elsewhere.

Ray

Yeah, I, so I'll just kind of start out by just saying, in general, I drastically under appreciated the concept of culture and core values, you know, I think, and that's maybe part of the engineer, I just assumed everybody, you do your thing. And if everybody does their thing, the machine works. And then when the machine works, you build a business and create great, whatever. But I learned over the years that that really doesn't work. And the culture and the core values are almost kind of like the self regulating mechanism that of everybody kind of operates in a similar way. It's almost like a self policing. And so if you were to think like about a football team, for example, you've got a culture of winning, or you got a culture of working hard, like you're gonna watch some of those football players when, you know, maybe somebody is not doing or they're not working out, or they're not doing whatever the other fellow football players will sit there and go, Hey, I don't want to lose, because you're freaking dinking off. Like, that's the self regulating kind of idea of a culture. And so I think as we've matured as a company, you know, it was really an it really was an evolution kind of kind of started as, let's work hard, let's just figure it out. Let's break stuff, let's just get customers, let's do whatever we can. And then it was let's scale failures, okay, we got to experiment, it's okay to learn. And then we evolved into, hey, we actually have to hit numbers. That's how we stay alive. That's how everybody does, you can fail, but it needs to be very short lived. And you've got to do that. And so I think we've kind of in I don't know if it'll continue to evolve. But I think we've kind of ended up the point that you're allowed to miss and allowed to learn. I think that's an expectation. But I think the important thing is, what are you going to do to compress that time to as low as humanly possible. And that needs to be aggressive. So sitting there saying, I'll figure it out, you know, next month, next year, is unacceptable. When you're trying to scale very quickly, you have to fix problems very fast. And so I think that's kind of the culture that that we've really brought in to property model.

Todd

What do you think it is specifically, though, when you're like hiring for somebody new, like so you bring in somebody new and you're in the interview process? Do you ask them cultural alignment questions to get make sure they're a good fit? Or do you basically look for domain expertise, and then we'll put you in the situation and you basically will be self corrected, or you'll get bounced.

Ray

So there was a great person that started a business and I was talking to him about something. And he's in South Dakota, and he's like, Have you ever been at work and you've walked you watch somebody do something and there wasn't anything technically wrong with it, but it just pissed you off. He's like, that is a core value. So if you were to say for example, it's five o'clock and you're still working and there's a customer with a catastrophic incident. Somebody says, Hey, listen, my time's up. I gotta go. And you're like, technically, yeah, that's what we've asked you to work is this time, but they walk out on the customer and you Are irate. And like you're learning what your core values are. And so so when you kind of start to identify those really give an idea of like, when we operate a certain way, or what our core values are, then yeah, you have to hire for them, or else you're gonna have oil and water in your organization, just people getting angry, because we're not all operating the same way. And so I think we kind of had to learn and articulate what those core values are. What does it mean? And I think at that point, that's where you're actually able to start hiring. So for me, I don't I probably don't ask core value questions. I know a core values are and I try to ask questions, ultimately, that give me indications of what do they do in their regular life that indicate their core values? So for example, it's really easy. So one of ours is humility. And sorry to be long winded on this answer. One of ours is humility, which means you've got a white belt mentality. So if I was there and say, Are you humble? Of course, everybody's gonna say, Yes, I'm the humblest of the humble. And but if you were to sit there in a meeting and find something that say, like they're talking about a past employer or past, whatever, what is their chance that they're right? Like they're right about this particular thing? And you're wrong, you're going to watch real quick if somebody's willing to consider the reality that maybe they're not right. Or they get to see their physical reactions of like, there's no way I'm wrong. And there's different ways you can do that. But it's creating parallels. But long story short, validating some of those things is super important. For you put them on your team.

Todd

Yeah. Yeah. Because a bad hire is expensive. There's no question about it at any level. So yeah, you know, I think there's a misconception maybe a little bit about entrepreneurs as doing it, just slugging it out and building something alone. I think the ones that are successful, I mean, it takes, you know, mentors and people around them in a network to really get it done. I think in a lot of cases, most of us, as entrepreneurs haven't seen all these patterns we haven't seen, we haven't done go to market. We haven't scaled companies before some of us have. But I think like it takes other people's perspectives. And so maybe talk to me a little bit about your role of how mentors have helped you kind of shade challenged, you maybe give you some ideas of patterns that have worked elsewhere that you're applying to your business. I think sometimes this is a lot of mentors, I think if you do it, well, you try to sync, you know, behind the founders. And so I think sometimes it's not always seen, but I think it's a critical element to a lot of times the success of an organization.

Ray

Oh, I 1,000% agree, I'm, I'm incredibly thankful that I was able to get the founders that I was able to get. And I give so much of the credit to wildfire, and what you guys all did, to kind of help shortcut. And I think the I think the big thing is, if you think about a business, it's going to take you longer than you think it's going to take more resources than you think it's going to take more grit than you think. And so there's like a saying that every entrepreneur is like a foot from gold, which means most people quit right before the end. And so if you think about, you've only got so many miles in the gas tank, that's what you've got, when you start, if you think about that element and going, I'm going to drive to this destination, but you don't have a map, you don't have a framework, you don't have Google Maps telling you anything, you could run out of gas before you get up to the destination. And so I think what mentors and kind of encircling yourself with really intelligent thought experts is like, they most likely have screwed up before they've learned some very powerful lessons. And they're able to sit there and be in the passenger seat and be like, Hey, I know what's going to look like that going straight is the right thing. But that's actually going to take you off to Timbuktu. And you're going to lose X amount of miles. mentorship, I look at as almost kind of shortening the road to getting to that destination. And that is really, really critical when your resources are limited to having some success, whether it be your own personal mental survival, your grit, cash time. Mentors really helped shortcut some of those processes. And that can be the difference between legitimately having a business that makes it and doesn't.

Todd

That's good. Do you think that's changing or has changed from like, when you think about, you know, mentors that helped you three employees versus, you know, people in the middle? I just, I think I think about this as the same as kind of good boards, right, they probably should have some variation. Because the types of problems you're trying to say that you're trying to tackle need to change. And if that mentor is really in their sweet spot in one area, maybe it doesn't scale to what you're doing. So I don't know what your experience is there if the people that you kind of relied on earlier the same that you're doing today or if that's changed over time.

Ray

So I think the important thing is, so if I was to take a snapshot of myself six years ago, I, like I don't even want to look at myself six years ago, because boisterous annoying is like good. Beyond optimistic, probably too much so. But I think the element is like, everyone's at a certain place, whether you're looking at an employee, you're looking at yourself, like you're at a certain place, and you need to develop in some certain things next, right? If you're a CEO, and you're sitting there going, I want to have a big company. And you're, you're saying, Okay, I'm just going to think big strategy and like, go do all this stuff, that none of that matters. If you can't get distribution, like you have to go get sales. And so that might be the first thing you have to learn. So I think the big thing is making sure that you have mentors that complement the problem sets and are able to assist in the problem sets that you're currently dealing with. And I think even more importantly, I think that's something that wildfire has done really well, is like looking at what problems are coming ahead, mentors should know the next thing that's coming ahead and be like, I'm going to start working on you with this. Because that way, again, like the road shortening, you can already start being on that direction. And so I absolutely think you match the mentors. And if you're fortunate enough to get a mentor that can keep scaling with you, I think that's best, but you might end up much like boards or whatever, being kind of changing the pieces around as you go based on what you need. And who's going to challenge you and look ahead for you.

Todd

Yeah, I think it's good. And I think that's a critical component where sometimes I think people underestimate the role that that can have in helping them. And like you said, it's just, you know, can I help you read the map a little bit better? Can I understand what mistakes I've made so that you don't make those, you're gonna make other ones. But that's gonna happen. You know, maybe the next one is talking a little bit about you have traveled around and lived in a bunch of different locations in the United States. You grew up in Wyoming, and then you chose to come back to Rapid City to build a business. And so I don't think that's where most people think about building a startup. And so I'm curious about why. And you know, and I think you had that in your mind pretty early on about like, you wanted to get back to this region, and then build something enduring in this location.

Ray

Yeah, so super great question. So just a little run up for anybody listening just to kind of get an idea of where, so I grew up in Wyoming went to school to school mines here. rappin always loved it, just as a young person loved kind of the outdoor activities, the freedom the, you know, to be able to be in a lake in 25 minutes, or be downtown me, right. So I always love that. But after that, I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I did a small stint in California, I was in the Chicago area for a little bit. And I went to Baltimore. And so you know, I think I, as I used to joke, I kind of dated the country a little bit. So I got to understand what I like what I didn't like, and there was always something sitting there going, that's actually a really cool place. There's a lot of incredibly intelligent people that work insanely hard, that I want to live there and to, you know, how can I capture some of that brainpower? And so that was one of the reasons, you know, kind of initially moving back. And so I think that that, but then it's like, you know, what are the different things that, that ultimately this area kind of allows. And so I've got a mentor, super, super high up executive at a big name company that, you know, was talking about the superpower of communities like this for startups and technology companies. He's like, you know, I was in I forget what town it was, it was some small town and Vermont. Startup, I think they became a billion dollar company. And he's like, there's something fantastic is when you put something here and put something special here, and you have all these people that are truly capable of it, that they want and gravitate, you're not nearly as competing as you would in Silicon Valley at some of these things. And so you can almost create something of a superpower by being in a community like this, that's got a ton of mentor ships that are looking for things, you've got the community resources, that probably you don't have another things and on top of that, you have people that want to be what at at your place doing what you're doing. And so between all of that, I think, not learning that until later. I've realized it's a bit of a superpower of people who want some of this experience and they're willing to jump in and roll up sleeves on like a lot of other places. That that I've been I'm not not saying people in all those towns don't work. That's not my intent.

Todd

No, but I think it's different. You know, it's like I did my startups in the 90s. And then I think about like the, you know, kind of business culture, startup culture that we had in Rapid City when you started. And then you think about where it is today, you think about like building a pipeline to the school mind. So you can get better engineers, you think about the advent of elevate our economic development organization and kind of what it's doing. You think about, you know, some of the business friendly tax situations that we have in the state. I mean, there is not only the quality of life here, but there's a bunch of aspects that I think lead to what you're talking about, which is like saying, there's a lot of opportunity here, if somebody wants to invest and has a great idea that can execute and build into a sustainable business.

Ray

Yeah, and I would say, even though I'm in rapid, Todd, and certainly we've been imported talent, for sure. I think one of the very special things, at least in the segment that we're playing just from the talent front, I'd put our team up nationally against a lot of software companies. And I and I, and I say that earnestly, you know, it's just kind of the grit, the passion, the hard work, how fast they want to learn, and just recognizing the opportunity. So that's one, and you're right, the business, this communities want you to win, this community wants you to win. And there's a ton of advantages to that. You go to a lot of other places where you're kind of like small fish in a giant pond, nobody cares about you. When you're a startup in a community that's really trying to push technology and software and entrepreneurship, it makes life so much easier. And you just have a ton of additional resources that I would not have access to had I jumped to one of the hubs. Yep,

Todd

that's good. All right, two more questions for you. One, that's probably a little cringe worthy for you. If you have to go back until your yourself before or your first year that you're starting six, seven years ago? What would you tell yourself? What have you learned today that you'd love to like, basically go back to that individual Intel? Because I think a lot of people that listen to the podcast are basically in the early journeys of that. And so what kind of words of wisdom would you tell your yourself 70 years ago?

Ray

You know, I would have told myself, I don't know if I would have listened.

Todd

That's a different thing.

Ray

Yeah. Let's, let's go with just telling myself assuming I listen. I think one of the big things is when I started as an entrepreneur, you know, in corporate, I was told that I was very, you know, this is my own narrative of myself, I don't know if this would actually be said, but I was like, You're a high performer, you gotta go do cool things, you're really young doing the job you are, you're special. And I think I took a bit of that ego to startup. And I think it cost me a lot of speed of learning, learning. And so I think if I was to go and talk to myself is like, you're gonna get kicked in your teeth a lot harder than you think. Take the help of the mentors. And know that your ability to recognize those challenges in yourself, and be able to iterate them will probably be one of the differentiating factors of your success. And so I think being coachable. Whatever I had to tell myself to be coachable. That's probably what I would have tried to go back. I got I had to get hit with a baseball bat a couple of times for me to finally get the lesson. But I could just save some time.

Todd

I appreciate the the honesty in that one. I think, you know, I think it's good. I mean, I think we all have to be honest with ourselves. And there's always things that we could do better. And so I think, I think that's good. I think it's really good message for other people that are starting in that journey. I really do. And it's hard, right? Because I think as an entrepreneur, you've heard no so many times already. And you're like, No, I can go figure it out. And so it's finding that balance of like, I'm gonna go get this done, but I'm gonna listen to other people to like, make it better, but like, what do I listen to and what I don't it's a super tough skill.

Ray

I would say be verbose and just know that nobody's going to listen to you until you figure out the message. Like you have to be find a way to be whatever you think is right, like you're gonna push way harder and you can't listen. But when when it's coming to your own skill set and your ability not what you're trying to do your own skill set and ability. I think that's where but you're right. I should hopefully didn't talk past Ray and being like, hey, you need to listen to those customers, or prospects that said, you know, there's, there's no need for this. Dang it. Maybe I should listen to him. No, that's the one. That's

Todd

good. Okay, the last one I was close each podcast with is a little kind of slice of humanity. I think it's like, it's what's the kindest thing anybody's ever done for you? And so I don't know if you got a chance to kind of think about that and come up with a story but I think it's always a great way to close these out.

Ray

Um, the kindest thing, thing. Tom Todd, so, um, you know, I would probably say in general and I'm gonna overlap because I can I can name multiple examples of this kind of thing. People gave me time when I had nothing to give them back anything. And so I've talked to business leaders, I remember when I was first starting property, Mel that was in Baltimore at the time, and I had a CEO, and I'm giving an example of this. But I had a CEO that took four hours of his day of a 200 person company to tour me around his office. And it just because I was an entrepreneur, and he wanted to help, and he would hop on calls super busy. I've had people like yourself, jump in, I've gone on to do I, whatever, it's a path forward, let's map through some problems. I'm expecting nothing in return. And so I think there's multiple of those examples where I had nothing to give anybody. And they still chose to give me time expertise. And is, when you realize the gift that it was, and especially when you really realize how much time they had. That's, it's incredibly special to me.

Todd

And I guess, so I appreciate you saying that. And I think it's true. I think what you're already starting to pivot, though, is doing the same thing. Right. You're you you've recognized that in your own life, and I think you're finding opportunities to give back. I mean, we talked about a school mines opportunity, just you know, today. And so I do think it's important that we continue to do that. And we're lifting up the next, you know, group of people that are coming through, because that's the only way this is gonna work. And I think that is kind of part of our our bond is, as is people as entrepreneurs, is to continue to keep moving forward.

Ray

Maybe they felt bad for me, who knows?

Todd

No, I think it's all good. They see potential as what you hope. Right? You know, and so, all right, I think it's good. There's a ton of nuggets in here. I think that you have gotten I mean, your story is awesome. I mean, I think just the the journey you've been on, you know, and I think you know, who knows what inning we're in, I think you've got a lot of opportunity and growth in the company. There's gonna be more challenges, but you're the foundation and the journey that you've gone to get here is impressive. And it's been fun to be part of it. And I really appreciate you taking the time to share some of your wisdom with us.

Ray

Hey, thanks, Todd. Appreciate it. Appreciate Wildfire.