Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Insights on Using Strategy to Respond to Fear with Davis Smith, Cotopaxi Founder and CEO
5 Plays4 years ago
It's not uncommon these days to see startups born out of a desire to do a little bit of good in the world. And the good news is that businesses motivated by a social mission have a real appeal to both customers who like the idea of putting their money to good use, and investors who love the kind of focus and passion that comes from a founder on a mission. But balance is the key. So how do founders keep their startups profitable while being true to the heart of their social mission? Today we'll find out as we talk to Davis Smith, Founder of Cotopaxi, a Utah-based outdoor gear company, and venture capital investor Dalton Wright as we bring you both sides of a perfect pitch. In this episode, we'll cover:
Identifying your startup as a B-Corporation and how investors view B-Corp companies
How being accountable to investors can actually improve your leadership performance
Responding to fear with strategy
Davis's experience with asking his executive team to take a pay cut at the pandemic's start
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Social Mission-Driven Startups
00:00:00
Speaker
It's not uncommon these days to see startups born out of a desire to do a little bit of good in the world.
00:00:06
Speaker
And the good news is that businesses motivated by a social mission have a real appeal to both customers who like the idea of putting their money to good use and investors who love the kind of focus and passion that comes from a founder on a mission.
00:00:19
Speaker
But balance is key.
00:00:20
Speaker
So how do founders keep their startups profitable while being true to the heart of their social
Podcast Introduction with Karen Zelnick
00:00:25
Speaker
mission?
00:00:25
Speaker
Today, we'll find out as we talk to Davis Smith, founder of Cotopaxi and investor Dalton Wright, as we bring you both sides of A Perfect Pitch.
00:00:41
Speaker
What is Perfect Pitch?
00:00:43
Speaker
It's a podcast from Kickstart that reveals the minds of both investors and entrepreneurs throughout a startup's journey.
00:00:50
Speaker
So whether that's uncovering what everyone's really thinking during a startup pitch or learning how entrepreneurs like you have managed their first major roadblock, Perfect Pitch offers an honest, quick, and tactical guide to help you on your startup journey.
00:01:05
Speaker
I'm your host, Karen Zelnick.
00:01:07
Speaker
Dalton and Davis, thank you so much for being here today.
00:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:01:11
Speaker
It's great to be here.
00:01:12
Speaker
Thanks, Karen.
Davis Smith's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:01:14
Speaker
It's going to be a lot of fun.
00:01:16
Speaker
And Davis, let's just tell everyone a little bit about you.
00:01:18
Speaker
You are the CEO of Cotopaxi, which is an outdoor gear company with a humanitarian mission, Gear for Good.
00:01:24
Speaker
And before founding Cotopaxi in 2014, you were the co-CEO of Baby.com and Dinda.com.
00:01:30
Speaker
Did I pronounce that correctly?
00:01:32
Speaker
Yeah, Dinda.
00:01:32
Speaker
In Portuguese, it's pronounced Jinda.
00:01:35
Speaker
Jinda.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, Jinda is an e-commerce company, very similar to Zulily, if you're familiar with Zulily.
00:01:42
Speaker
For example, in Brazil, there was a famous brand called Lilica Hipidica.
00:01:46
Speaker
But they end up not ordering the exact amount of inventory.
00:01:50
Speaker
So we would take excess inventory, we'd put it on our site, and we could sell it for less money.
00:01:55
Speaker
And so that was kind of the model for Jinda.
00:01:58
Speaker
Amazing.
00:01:59
Speaker
And not only are you a great entrepreneur, but you're a true adventurer.
00:02:03
Speaker
As I understand it, you've camped in the Sahara, floated down the Amazon, explored North Korea,
Dalton Wright on Meeting Davis Smith
00:02:08
Speaker
backed past South America.
00:02:09
Speaker
And then is this true that you recently led the first successful kayak crossing from Cuba to Florida?
00:02:15
Speaker
Yes, it was a few years ago.
00:02:17
Speaker
What?
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:20
Speaker
So recently as in, yeah, we're all skipping 2020.
00:02:23
Speaker
So that year, yeah.
00:02:24
Speaker
That's true.
00:02:26
Speaker
But yeah, I love adventure.
00:02:27
Speaker
It's a big part of my life.
00:02:29
Speaker
I'm excited to talk about it with Dalton as well, because he's been on a few of those adventures with me.
00:02:33
Speaker
That's what I hear.
00:02:34
Speaker
So you, Dalton, welcome back to the show.
00:02:36
Speaker
First of all, for those who want to learn more about Dalton's background and his passion for helping startup founders pursue their visions, you can see it in our show notes.
00:02:45
Speaker
But yeah, let's dive into the connection the two of the you have, because you know each other from Mexico.
00:02:51
Speaker
Is that correct?
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I first met Davis when I was actually trying to recruit him down to Mexico.
00:02:57
Speaker
I was launching a venture fund called Alta Ventures, and Davis was at the Wharton Business School between years.
00:03:03
Speaker
And so he had a summer that he was planning out, and we were lucky enough to convince him to come spend some time with us in Mexico.
00:03:10
Speaker
So I'd say, and this is just like coming from the heart, really, but I have tons of gratitude for Davis.
00:03:16
Speaker
who has inspired me in a number of ways.
00:03:19
Speaker
He went to bat for me on a number of occasions to pursue interesting opportunities that I had.
00:03:24
Speaker
And this all really started just as we were down in Mexico trying to figure out how to get a venture fund raised.
00:03:30
Speaker
One of the things that I love most about Davis is that he injects fun and adventure into everything that he does.
00:03:39
Speaker
It makes life light.
00:03:40
Speaker
It makes the workload go easier.
00:03:43
Speaker
And I'm not surprised that over the years since then, Davis, you went to build a company that's focused on encouraging adventure, appreciating the outdoors, and in the process, finding what we can do to learn about each other and be better together.
00:03:58
Speaker
I love the history the two of you have together.
00:04:01
Speaker
And I think it's going to be really cool to see the fun and adventure that you're talking about come out in this conversation.
00:04:07
Speaker
With that, let's dive right into the adventure.
Cotopaxi's Mission and Sustainable Practices
00:04:09
Speaker
Davis, Cotopaxi clearly follows a really strong humanitarian mission with our giving model and your sustainable product design.
00:04:17
Speaker
What led you to start the company?
00:04:19
Speaker
Why did you decide to make it a B Corp?
00:04:21
Speaker
So the idea behind this business, which is a benefit corporation or a B Corp, those two words, they actually mean something slightly different, but they're very similar and oftentimes used interchangeably, is that we wanted to find a way that we could sustainably alleviate global poverty.
00:04:37
Speaker
And we wanted to do that through a business.
00:04:40
Speaker
And I'd always known my entire life that I wanted to use my life to find a way to make a difference in the world.
00:04:47
Speaker
I always thought maybe I'd work in the philanthropy world, in the nonprofit world.
00:04:51
Speaker
And a mentor of mine when I was an undergrad, and he was a successful entrepreneur and had become a philanthropist, I tried to work for him.
00:04:59
Speaker
And he instead convinced me that I should pursue a path of entrepreneurship.
00:05:03
Speaker
And I'd never truly considered being an entrepreneur before that, but it put me on that path.
00:05:08
Speaker
And so I spent 10 years as an entrepreneur building a couple of businesses.
00:05:12
Speaker
My last one was in Brazil.
00:05:15
Speaker
And during that time, I just I really felt every single day as I was living in Brazil, this constant reminder of a commitment that I'd made to myself that I was going to use my life to help others.
00:05:28
Speaker
And I eventually decided that it was time.
00:05:30
Speaker
It was time for me to go do that.
00:05:33
Speaker
Originally, I wasn't sure how to do it.
00:05:34
Speaker
I wasn't sure if I needed to start a nonprofit, which I really didn't have any experience in.
00:05:39
Speaker
I landed on this idea of using a business to impact the world and to inspire others to do good and where we could sustainably have an impact.
00:05:47
Speaker
So I knew what Cotopaxi stood for before I even knew what we would sell.
00:05:52
Speaker
I knew that I wanted to build a brand that could inspire the world and that could show that there's a better way of doing capitalism.
00:05:58
Speaker
And then eventually kind of landed on this idea of building a brand that was about the outdoors and adventure and seeing the world.
00:06:05
Speaker
And Dalton, I'd love your perspective on that, because obviously, as you're funding a company, you look into a lot of different aspects where there are things about this business model that you were really excited about or that you were concerned about.
The Importance of Genuine Mission for Brand Culture
00:06:17
Speaker
One of the things that really resonated with us was just because we knew Davis, we knew that the underlying drive was actually genuine.
00:06:26
Speaker
And so that was always going to resonate with the brand and with the culture of the company that he was building.
00:06:31
Speaker
That was really important to us.
00:06:32
Speaker
So if you are going to be kind of a mission-driven organization and make that central to who you are, it better be foundational and core to who you really are.
00:06:42
Speaker
Because we knew Davis, that wasn't that much of a risk or a leap of faith that we were taking when we made that investment.
00:06:48
Speaker
And speaking of leaps of faith, Davis, was it a leap of faith for you to take funding from venture capitalists who often maybe their mission might not align with yours all the time?
Venture Capital and Strategic Partnerships
00:06:57
Speaker
They might be a little bit more focused on profits and things that don't align with your mission?
00:07:02
Speaker
When I built my first business, I built a business right out of undergrad.
00:07:06
Speaker
It was a pretty random business called PoolTables.com.
00:07:10
Speaker
It's exactly what you think it is.
00:07:12
Speaker
You sell ping pong tables.
00:07:13
Speaker
I'm just kidding.
00:07:14
Speaker
Exactly.
00:07:15
Speaker
So we sold pool tables on the internet, which is very random.
00:07:18
Speaker
But I built that business with my cousin and it was bootstrapped.
00:07:21
Speaker
We never raised outside money, maybe because we didn't know any investors, maybe because the business wasn't really that interesting to someone that might be looking to invest as a venture capitalist.
00:07:30
Speaker
But
00:07:31
Speaker
I'd heard a lot of things about what venture capital was.
00:07:34
Speaker
I kind of liked the idea of owning the business and having control, not being held accountable by somebody else.
00:07:41
Speaker
One of the things I learned in business school was that I didn't really understand venture capital.
00:07:47
Speaker
And as I built my second business and when I moved to Brazil after I graduated, we raised quite a bit of venture capital.
00:07:54
Speaker
And what I found was that there were some real advantages to it.
00:07:57
Speaker
I loved having a partner or having a group of partners that could help me think through the business in a different way that would challenge me on how I was thinking about it.
00:08:06
Speaker
And it didn't mean I didn't have control of my business.
00:08:09
Speaker
I still made the decisions.
00:08:10
Speaker
I just had other smart people around the table that helped me.
00:08:14
Speaker
And I found that being accountable to someone was actually a blessing.
00:08:18
Speaker
It was something that I needed more of in my previous business.
00:08:21
Speaker
And had I had that, I would have made better decisions and I would have had even a better outcome.
00:08:27
Speaker
And so when I was starting Cotopaxi, it was not a difficult decision for me.
00:08:31
Speaker
I knew how I'd done two businesses.
00:08:33
Speaker
I'd done them, you know, one bootstrapped, one with venture money.
00:08:36
Speaker
I wanted to build a business with venture money.
00:08:38
Speaker
I wanted other smart people backing me.
00:08:41
Speaker
I wanted other smart people on the table.
00:08:43
Speaker
I wanted to be held accountable as a CEO.
00:08:45
Speaker
And I wanted the financial resources that come with a venture backing that allow you to accelerate your growth.
00:08:53
Speaker
I have a question for you, Davis.
00:08:54
Speaker
When I think about a challenge that a CEO might be facing when trying to satisfy the different demands of stakeholders...
Balancing Social Impact and Business Growth
00:09:02
Speaker
I'm curious if you've developed any type of frameworks to make decisions when you're making resource-constrained decisions.
00:09:09
Speaker
And with the resources that you have, you always have an option of using some of those resources to pursue more of the social impact side of your business.
00:09:18
Speaker
You also could invest in growth.
00:09:19
Speaker
You can invest in hiring.
00:09:21
Speaker
I mean, any number of things that you could use your resources for.
00:09:24
Speaker
And you have investors, you're saying, but we also need to grow faster.
00:09:28
Speaker
And so I'm just, you know, I'd love to get your thoughts on, are there tradeoffs as a CEO when you're trying to navigate some of those things?
00:09:34
Speaker
Or is it the case that because of the business that you're in, where you're building a brand that has a lot of affinity around this type of activity, that there is no tradeoff?
00:09:43
Speaker
I mean, it feels like there has to be a tradeoff at some point.
00:09:46
Speaker
But how do you manage that as the CEO?
00:09:49
Speaker
This is a good question.
00:09:51
Speaker
And I've certainly struggled with that balance sometimes.
00:09:53
Speaker
When we started the business within the first year, I decided I wanted to hire a chief impact officer.
00:10:00
Speaker
We just raised a Series A. We didn't even have a marketer yet on the team.
00:10:06
Speaker
And I did have my board that kind of questioned, like, why are you investing in a person that's going to be giving away money instead of investing in someone that can help drive the business forward and drive sales?
00:10:17
Speaker
And I think this goes back to your question around the framework.
00:10:20
Speaker
For me, it was really around identifying core values that we stood for and making decisions that follow those values.
00:10:27
Speaker
We identified core values for this business before we'd sold a single product.
00:10:31
Speaker
We knew what we stood for.
00:10:33
Speaker
We tried to create intentional rituals and traditions around those values.
00:10:37
Speaker
And I knew that if we didn't build an impact strategy that would scale with us, that we would have nothing.
00:10:44
Speaker
That was the only thing that made this business really unique was the fact that we were building a brand and a business that was built all around making this world better, around giving back, around serving others.
00:10:56
Speaker
And we had to do that right.
00:10:57
Speaker
And if we did that right, we'd have the right foundations to go build a brand on.
00:11:02
Speaker
The investors, to their credit, they supported me in that decision.
00:11:05
Speaker
And oftentimes, I will work with my executive team on a decision.
00:11:10
Speaker
And we go to our board and we ask for advice.
00:11:12
Speaker
And we say, this is how we're thinking about it.
00:11:15
Speaker
Help us think through it.
00:11:16
Speaker
And we've made changes in the way we've thought about things.
00:11:20
Speaker
But our board has been a great resource for us as we've made big decisions.
00:11:24
Speaker
especially as you're trying to balance where to invest resources.
00:11:27
Speaker
And that's one of the biggest advantages that you have with a board.
00:11:30
Speaker
And I think whether you've raised venture capital or not, you should have a board.
00:11:34
Speaker
I wish I would have had a board with my first business.
00:11:37
Speaker
And I could have given a few really smart people a tiny bit of equity, and they would have been willing to jump on and help think through big decisions.
00:11:44
Speaker
We just didn't have that.
00:11:46
Speaker
I think that's an important part of building a business is having that infrastructure around you to help you make better decisions.
00:11:53
Speaker
That support system.
00:11:55
Speaker
So Davis, I'm curious what you've learned about your company's culture and yourself as a leader as you've tried to navigate the company during this hard time.
Cotopaxi's Response to COVID-19
00:12:05
Speaker
This last 12 months has been a really...
00:12:08
Speaker
great year of learning.
00:12:10
Speaker
When COVID started, we acted very quickly.
00:12:13
Speaker
And I think that might be the best thing that we did during this pandemic was how quickly we reacted.
00:12:20
Speaker
On March 13th, which was a Friday, we closed down our office.
00:12:25
Speaker
And March 14th, we closed our retail stores.
00:12:30
Speaker
And so we lost about half of our revenue overnight.
00:12:34
Speaker
Our Questable events, these 24-hour venture races we hold, were shut down, were closed.
00:12:39
Speaker
Our wholesale partners, REI and all these other retail partners, closed.
00:12:43
Speaker
And we sell a meaningful amount of product to other businesses holding events, conferences, giving swag to the teams.
00:12:49
Speaker
All that stuff got turned off.
00:12:51
Speaker
So it was a terrifying moment.
00:12:54
Speaker
So Monday, the 16th, I held an emergency all-hands meeting with our team.
00:13:00
Speaker
And I told them that I was nervous.
00:13:06
Speaker
I was very upfront with them and I told them, I don't know exactly what is coming, but I told them what we did know.
00:13:13
Speaker
I shared some information that I had gotten from Goldman Sachs that they'd done over that weekend.
00:13:17
Speaker
They've reported to a bunch of industry and business leaders around what they saw so far.
00:13:23
Speaker
I reported to our team the impact that we'd seen in the previous week to our sales.
00:13:27
Speaker
And then I promised them a few things.
00:13:30
Speaker
I promised my team that I would be honest with them and I'd be transparent and that I wouldn't be afraid to make hard decisions.
00:13:36
Speaker
I then asked the entire team if they would join me in giving up 10% of their pay.
00:13:42
Speaker
We actually had the executive team give up more pay, but I said, this will buy us time to help us make the best decisions and impact as few people as possible.
00:13:51
Speaker
And our entire team said, absolutely.
00:13:55
Speaker
We had a few people on our team that came to us and actually said, I'm willing to give up half my salary.
00:14:01
Speaker
I believe in what we're building and I want to make sure that we succeed.
00:14:05
Speaker
Then we immediately just started taking action.
00:14:07
Speaker
We rallied the whole team to come up with ideas.
00:14:10
Speaker
We brainstormed 100 ideas as a team around ways that we could cut costs, ways that we could have social impact in our community and give back during this time when others needed it more than ever, and around ways that we could drive revenue and build our brand.
00:14:25
Speaker
It was really a pivotal moment for our team.
00:14:27
Speaker
Instead of cutting back on our giving, we actually doubled down.
00:14:30
Speaker
We gave, as a percentage of revenue, a higher percentage this last year than ever before by a meaningful amount.
00:14:36
Speaker
I think, again, it just reinforced, I think, to our customers, to our employees, and to ourselves that this was what mattered most.
00:14:43
Speaker
And I think it was something that became a strength to the brand.
00:14:48
Speaker
I mean, Dalton, I don't know about you, but I got chills as Davis was talking.
00:14:52
Speaker
And I am getting kind of emotional here as we talk about this.
00:14:54
Speaker
But I do want to hop to Dalton and ask as an investor, what is your perspective on that and hearing that?
00:15:00
Speaker
Because obviously, you do need to focus a little bit on revenue and that type of thing.
00:15:05
Speaker
I'd love your insights.
Values-Driven Leadership During Crises
00:15:07
Speaker
My reaction to that is that this is evidence of why this is an enduring brand and why there's likely to be a community around this brand for years to come.
00:15:16
Speaker
People remember how you behave when things get hard.
00:15:20
Speaker
It either proves the strength of your values and your commitment to those values, or it forever undermines them.
00:15:27
Speaker
And so, you know, in moments of crises, I think great leaders find ways to make their companies even stronger.
00:15:34
Speaker
And I would say that Code Epoxy's commitment to their core mission and those values has strengthened the company.
00:15:40
Speaker
I also know that the company continued to grow.
00:15:43
Speaker
You responded with manufacturing face masks and responding directly to needs in the market.
00:15:50
Speaker
That's hard to do under normal timeframes, but to do that in a crisis is remarkable as well.
00:15:55
Speaker
And so I think as an investor, it's a lot easier to maybe take a more altruistic approach when the company is also growing because it's performing well, right?
00:16:05
Speaker
And that's one of the beauties of Code Epoxy is that it's performing well while staying true to its mission.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:12
Speaker
And I will say during like March and April, as we were kind of making these decisions, the outcomes of that year of 2020 were a lot more uncertain.
00:16:21
Speaker
We had a board member that actually said, okay, I want you to plan as if you're going to be half the size you were last year, which was honestly a terrifying thought because it meant letting go of a lot of our employees, which just made me ill.
00:16:37
Speaker
I went to bed with tears in my eyes several times that first week.
00:16:40
Speaker
It was hard.
00:16:41
Speaker
And I think one of the most valuable lessons I've learned as a CEO is the value of having great people around you, whether it's on your own team or other just friends or mentors.
Leadership Focus During Crises
00:16:52
Speaker
And I had a CEO friend that sent me an article that she had found, and it was a game changer for me.
00:16:59
Speaker
It was this article that talked about the way different CEOs had responded in the first two weeks of the pandemic.
00:17:05
Speaker
And they had interviewed all these CEOs and then they broke down these conversations and put them into three different categories.
00:17:12
Speaker
There were the fear-focused CEOs that were consuming many times more amount of media than the other groups.
00:17:19
Speaker
They were using a lot of words that were fear-focused.
00:17:23
Speaker
There was the unfocused CEO, which really had not made any changes, had made no big decisions, was kind of head in the sand, wait and see what happens.
00:17:31
Speaker
And then there was a strategy-focused CEO that was optimistic, that was not just consumed by the media, that was using words like opportunity and using words like buy.
00:17:41
Speaker
And...
00:17:42
Speaker
When I read that article, I saw some of myself in the fear-focused CEO, and I saw some of myself in the strategy-focused CEO.
00:17:50
Speaker
But what I decided was I did not want to be that fear-focused CEO.
00:17:54
Speaker
And I sent the article to my entire team, and I challenged all of them to ask themselves if they were being fear-focused, unfocused, or strategy-focused as an associate, as a manager, as a director, a VP.
00:18:05
Speaker
And we made a decision as a team that we were going to be strategy focused.
00:18:09
Speaker
And again, it was one of those pivotal moments, I think, as a leader where we rallied together around the right things.
00:18:16
Speaker
And sometimes you have to put your fear aside, but you have to have the discipline to tell your team, this has been a challenging day or this has been a challenging week.
00:18:26
Speaker
But we're going to put those things aside for 30 minutes as we talk about something that matters more.
00:18:31
Speaker
How are we going to execute on X, Y, Z?
00:18:34
Speaker
That's certainly what we did during this last year, talking about masks.
00:18:38
Speaker
This was one of the big reasons we started the mask program is we looked around the world and we said, masks are important, but the people that are getting masks are the people that can afford them.
00:18:48
Speaker
And so we thought, how could we donate masks?
00:18:50
Speaker
And we thought, well, if we made masks and we donated a mask for every mask that we sold,
00:18:56
Speaker
That would work.
00:18:56
Speaker
And we'd had customers reaching out to us saying, will you make a mask?
00:19:00
Speaker
We would wear the mask.
00:19:01
Speaker
We love your brand and what it stands for.
00:19:02
Speaker
And so we've sold somewhere around a million masks.
00:19:06
Speaker
It's been obviously a game changer for our business, but also something that allowed us to have an impact in an area that we were really passionate about.
00:19:15
Speaker
I was furiously writing notes as you were talking about that.
00:19:16
Speaker
I think there are so many good leadership takeaways from that.
00:19:20
Speaker
I love your willingness to say, hey, I don't know.
00:19:23
Speaker
We're not going to lean into the fear.
00:19:24
Speaker
We're going to create space for it so you can feel it, but then we're also going to move forward.
00:19:27
Speaker
So thank you for sharing that.
CEO's Role in Team Confidence
00:19:30
Speaker
And Dalton, I would love your perspective as an investor and what leadership traits you saw come out in Davis during this time.
00:19:37
Speaker
I think a couple that Davis just highlighted was that he was proactive in responding to the situations and didn't wait for the situation to unfold.
00:19:45
Speaker
You never have as much information as you wish you had in the startup world when you're making decisions.
00:19:51
Speaker
And so you have to be able to make decisions with the right amount of information and in the timeframe to actually have those decisions make the impact that you hope for.
00:20:00
Speaker
So I think the fact that Davis was able to proactively address burn rate questions in
00:20:06
Speaker
I just think we've touched on this, but the job of the CEO and the founder, the visionary, is to provide that constant, steady direction of where the company needs to go.
00:20:16
Speaker
What true north is?
00:20:18
Speaker
And does the founder embody the values of the company?
00:20:22
Speaker
And do they stick to those?
00:20:26
Speaker
when the world is on fire.
00:20:27
Speaker
That's such a confidence builder for teams to know that the CEO is being transparent.
00:20:33
Speaker
So this isn't, they're not spinning and managing me.
00:20:36
Speaker
They're inviting me to be part of this process.
00:20:38
Speaker
And we know where we're going because this is a 5, 10, 20-year mission that we're on.
00:20:45
Speaker
And at any point in time, there will be the vicissitudes of politics and occasionally a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.
00:20:53
Speaker
But if you know where you're going as a company and the leader is the one that is the keeper of that vision, I think it allows the entire team to actually get stronger as they respond to adversity together.
00:21:05
Speaker
Dalton, I completely agree.
00:21:06
Speaker
I think there have been so many wonderful takeaways, especially about leadership during this conversation.
00:21:11
Speaker
And that article that Davis mentioned, we'll get the link to that and put that in our show notes.
Purpose and Continuous Learning for Growth
00:21:16
Speaker
Davis, I have one final question for you.
00:21:18
Speaker
And that's, what's one of the most effective practices you've implemented in your work and personal life that's had a great impact on your success?
00:21:28
Speaker
If I could, I'd maybe say two things.
00:21:30
Speaker
The first is that I found if you have purpose and a clear mission behind everything that you do and you build your life around those things, then you have more success and you're happier.
00:21:43
Speaker
The second thing I would say is constantly be willing to learn.
00:21:48
Speaker
One of the best decisions I've made in the last year was, or in the last 18 months, was hiring a CEO coach.
00:21:54
Speaker
I wish I would have done that 10 years ago.
00:21:56
Speaker
It has been transformational for me as an individual, just personally and as a leader.
00:22:02
Speaker
And so surrounding yourself by people that can push you, that can drive you, looking for opportunities to learn and to stretch yourself and grow as a CEO.
00:22:11
Speaker
And every single year, being willing to rehire yourself as CEO and saying, what does the business need out of me this year that I didn't need last year?
00:22:18
Speaker
And what can I do better as a CEO?
00:22:20
Speaker
And so
00:22:21
Speaker
Those are probably the two things that I'm a big believer in and I've probably really shaped the way I lead.
00:22:27
Speaker
Davis, thank you so much.
Podcast Conclusion and Leadership Insights
00:22:29
Speaker
Dalton, also thank you for being part of this conversation.
00:22:32
Speaker
I thought it was so enriching, so inspiring.
00:22:35
Speaker
And I love, Davis, what you just said about surrounding yourself with people who push you and drive you.
00:22:40
Speaker
Actually, that's one of the reasons I love this podcast is because I get to speak to people every week that push and drive me and are inspiring.
00:22:47
Speaker
And I love the leadership takeaways from this one.
00:22:49
Speaker
So thank you both again for being with us today.
00:22:51
Speaker
Thanks, Karen.
00:22:53
Speaker
Thanks, Dalton.
00:22:53
Speaker
It's great being here with you.
00:22:55
Speaker
That was fun.
00:22:55
Speaker
Thanks, Davis.
00:22:56
Speaker
Thanks, Karen.
00:22:57
Speaker
And of course, thank you for listening as we dive deep into what it takes to create the perfect pitch.
00:23:02
Speaker
We'll be back next time with more insights from entrepreneurs and the investors who fund them.
00:23:07
Speaker
So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a thing.
00:23:09
Speaker
We'll catch you next time.