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Building Success, One "No" at a Time: A Conversation with Reese Harper, Elements' CEO
6 Plays2 years ago
Founder journeys are never the same. Today we're talking with someone who started their career as a musician, had a layover as a financial advisor, and is now a founder of a startup that is currently raising in one of the toughest fundraising environments we've seen. Join us in today's conversation with Reese Harper, CEO of Elements, and investor Gavin Christensen of Kickstart (a VC firm for startups in Utah, Colorado, and the Mountain West) as we bring you both sides of a Perfect Pitch. In this episode, we'll talk about:
How Reese's content creation helps him understand his customer's better
Gavin's investor perspective on whether an entrepreneur should invest in thought leadership
Reese's tactical approach to attracting top-of-the-line talent to his exec team
Advice for fundraising entrepreneurs when an investor says "no"
Recommended
Transcript
Reese Harper: From Musician to Entrepreneur
00:00:00
Speaker
Founder journeys are never the same.
00:00:02
Speaker
Today, we're talking with someone who started their career as a musician, had a layover as a financial advisor, and is now a founder of a startup that is currently raising in one of the toughest fundraising environments we've seen.
00:00:13
Speaker
Join us in today's conversation with Reese Harper, CEO of Elements, and investor Gavin Christensen as we bring you both sides of A Perfect Pitch.
Exploring the Startup World with Perfect Pitch
00:00:31
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Perfect Pitch is a podcast from Kickstart that reveals the minds of both investors and entrepreneurs throughout a startup's journey.
00:00:40
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I'm your host, Karen Zelnick, and I'm excited to introduce you to today's guests.
Designing Elements for Financial Advisors
00:00:45
Speaker
I'll start out with Reese.
00:00:46
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Since 2020, you've been the CEO of Elements, which is a turnkey solution for financial advisors who want to provide a better user experience and more value for their clients.
00:00:56
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And before that, you founded Dentist Advisors and were a financial advisor for Northwestern Mutual.
00:01:02
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You're a mentor at the Associate Entrepreneur Founders Organization, where you help mentor students interested in entrepreneurship and technology.
00:01:13
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You have a love for the arts, including live music, theater, writing, and you enjoy traveling with your family, community involvement, and of course, outdoor recreation, which includes one-wheeling, which Gavin is a fan
Personal Insights: Hobbies and Mentors
00:01:26
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of.
00:01:26
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What else would you like us to know about you?
00:01:29
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Gavin is one of my mentors in outdoor tech.
00:01:33
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He got me on the one-wheel train.
00:01:36
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I'm now a semi-pro flight boarder.
00:01:39
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I use that term very loosely, but really enjoying the flight boards, plural.
00:01:45
Speaker
For the record, you sent me the text and I was like, that's so great getting a flight board.
00:01:54
Speaker
And then I think you bought two before I was like, maybe start with one.
00:01:59
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I mean, what an amazing experience it is to be on that board, on the lake, feeling like you're flying above the water.
00:02:05
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I mean, it's just... Totally.
00:02:07
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They should sell them in pairs.
00:02:09
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Yeah.
00:02:10
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They don't right now because it's like my birthday present for several years now.
00:02:14
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Yeah, same here.
00:02:15
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My wife and I have had conversations about how much more she still gets to buy.
00:02:23
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I splurged on this family toy.
Challenges in Financial Advisory
00:02:25
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But yeah, I came into my career being a financial advisor.
00:02:29
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I did start at Northwestern Mutual back in 2003.
00:02:32
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I started my own firm about four years later.
00:02:37
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I learned quickly that being a financial advisor was not what I thought it was cracked up to be.
00:02:45
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Meaning I didn't find there was as many mentors and competent service providers as I was hoping.
00:02:54
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I came from a non-financial background into the financial services industry, which is actually really common.
Transition from Dentist Advisors to Elements
00:03:01
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which tells you a lot about its professional pedigree as well.
00:03:04
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Because I was a music major for my undergrad.
00:03:07
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I did a master's in finance.
00:03:09
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But apparently, as a music major, I was qualified to be a financial advisor.
00:03:13
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So they were recruiting me hard out of undergrad.
00:03:18
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I was being employed by some other financial advisors, and I would see that it was the same answer to every question.
00:03:25
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And it started making me really uncomfortable.
00:03:27
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And so I left and after a few years of working there and getting some experience, I had enough confidence to start my own business.
00:03:36
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And that was Dentist Advisors and grew that for a long time and still own that today.
00:03:41
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It's just been a great experience.
00:03:43
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I learned a lot about how to...
00:03:46
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give advice to dentists in dental school, to really wealthy dentists that own large franchises across the country.
00:03:52
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Then during that process, decided that there was a platform to build and a piece of software that could emerge from that experience.
00:04:02
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And now I'm doing that at Elements full-time.
00:04:05
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Elements is helping financial advisors around the country lower the cost of giving really good advice.
00:04:12
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Thank you for adding that context for everybody.
00:04:14
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Gavin, it's always great to have you back on the show.
00:04:17
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I do want to clarify, though, have you guys been one wheeling together?
00:04:21
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We've done a few rides, I'd say.
00:04:23
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Kez, I heard there's a rumor that you may have tried the one wheel or thinking about it.
00:04:27
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No, I haven't, but I want to.
00:04:30
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I love stuff like that.
00:04:30
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You know, I wish that I had skateboarded more when I was younger.
00:04:35
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So really, the takeaway from this conversation to me is that I really need to step up my game with my, you know, outdoor electronics.
00:04:42
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I'm told that you are also a talented content creator.
00:04:46
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In fact, Elements actually provides a wealth, see what I did there, of educational resources on your blog and social platforms.
00:04:54
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So as a founder with limited time, what led you to devote so much time to
Content Creation and Audience Engagement
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this initiative?
00:04:59
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Well, that's a great question.
00:05:01
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Number one, there are some really amazing content creators in the world.
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And I...
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I feel like I learn from them every day.
00:05:08
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I think Genesis for wanting to create content was the leverage of being able to share something that has a larger impact on the audience that I care about.
00:05:21
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I didn't really think about it in terms of making money or anything.
00:05:24
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But when I have an answer, I have something I believe is important to say out loud.
00:05:30
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There's always discomfort of should I say this or not?
00:05:34
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There's always tension in life of like, am I going to say what I think is on my mind or am I just going to shut up and not say anything?
00:05:42
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The people that choose to open their mouth and say what's on their mind start to get feedback really quickly.
00:05:50
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And usually what we hear is that people disagree with us.
00:05:54
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That's the first thing is a lot of disagreement, a lot of tension, especially in a one-on-one conversation.
00:06:01
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Because we're not super good at communicating.
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And sometimes we communicate in a judgmental way or very critically, or sometimes we're a little harsh.
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And we've experienced tension of like, why don't I have friends?
00:06:13
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Or why do people seem to not like me?
00:06:16
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Or why does no one like my posts?
00:06:18
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Or why is no one reading my articles?
00:06:20
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That's the creator's journey most often.
00:06:23
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Occasionally you're Seth Godin, and it's just like, somehow, you're like the voice of God, and everyone just like reads you from day one.
00:06:31
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The rest of us didn't have that natural voice, that natural kind of candor, the brevity, the wit, the humor.
00:06:39
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Some of those are just gifts that people are born with.
00:06:42
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The rest of us are crossed to bear sort of like, can we speak up and share what's on our mind?
00:06:48
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Or are we just going to be silent for most of our lives and just not say what we think?
00:06:53
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And so as we learn to share and we learn to start talking, I feel like we get feedback, we start shaping the way we see the world.
00:07:00
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And we start developing so much more empathy for people around us.
00:07:06
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Because we see that the way we saw things was not necessarily the way things are.
00:07:12
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To me, that's why I love content creation, because it teaches me the truth about what a customer really thinks.
00:07:21
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I just have never really viewed content creation as building a business.
00:07:25
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I've just viewed it as learning about people that I care about that are in a very specific audience.
00:07:32
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And it just brings a lot of people with different ideas together and helps create better understanding and more empathy.
00:07:38
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So that has obviously deep implications into entrepreneurial strategy and go-to-market and demand gen.
00:07:45
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But it starts with just being curious and trying to learn about people that you care about.
00:07:50
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We've spoken before on this podcast about the importance of being curious and really understanding your customer and kind of finding ways to speak to them and get them to speak to you.
00:07:59
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And so I think content creation and thought leadership and that aspect is interesting.
00:08:03
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In addition to all the things you said about just being curious and getting to know people.
00:08:06
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But Gavin, I would love to know your thoughts on founders devoting time to thought leadership.
Thought Leadership in Vertical SaaS
00:08:13
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I think we're moving into a period where it's not always required, but often can be, especially in the broad categories that we'll call vertical SaaS companies, where you're essentially automating business for a specific industry.
00:08:28
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And so you're therefore getting really deep into workflow and industry and really helping people do their job better.
00:08:36
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And so
00:08:38
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really being able to speak in an intelligent way to their experience, to their way of viewing the world, their language, and how your solution helps them solve problems that are not technology related.
00:08:50
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One of the thoughts I had on some of Reese's comments is content creation has obviously been incredibly important
00:08:57
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changed by the rise of social media and sort of instant reaction.
00:09:01
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It's not for the faint of heart.
00:09:02
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There's a lot of ways for it to go sideways.
00:09:06
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What you don't want to do is end up with a message that's so nuanced, you're saying nothing.
00:09:11
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Yeah, and I think you can sense from my comments, that's one of the things where you can tell if you're not careful, you can be
00:09:19
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just word vomiting on your audience and it's confusing and it isn't focused and it doesn't support any of your business initiatives.
00:09:27
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I think for me, what's been helpful is having a daily writing practice for 30 minutes.
00:09:33
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And I just write what's on my mind.
00:09:36
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I don't just publish that.
00:09:38
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I don't just push that out.
00:09:40
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I do have a filter that I pass it by that knows me really well.
00:09:45
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And that helps me get a sense if anything I'm saying is so far off message, so far out of bounds that maybe it shouldn't be said.
00:09:55
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And I think that's really important.
00:09:57
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I really instruct that first person not to edit me too heavily.
00:10:01
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Don't be too scared to let me say the hard thing.
00:10:05
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I publish... I think podcasting is very different than written content, but I publish my first draft light edit into a private blog that's not in our corporate brand.
00:10:17
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I started just a year ago developing...
00:10:20
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a new audience because I hadn't been writing to financial advisors before.
00:10:23
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I was writing to dentists.
00:10:24
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My dental podcast had 30,000 dentists listening to it, but I didn't have any financial advisors who I was speaking to.
00:10:32
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And so I got to start building this new audience.
00:10:35
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I felt more comfortable having a private place where I could just say what was on my mind that people opted into and said, Oh, that's Reese's personal blog.
00:10:43
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They're just his thoughts as a financial advisor, speaking to other financial advisors.
00:10:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:10:48
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I publish to that audience rather frequently.
00:10:50
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But from that, we get a lot of our inspiration that then helps us establish a marketing cadence that's more in line with our product releases on our quarterly rocks that we're working on.
00:11:02
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So it's helpful to have a place where I can
00:11:06
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dump and a place where I can publish that's also a safer place.
00:11:11
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And blogs are going out of date.
00:11:13
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Blogs are not as effective as they once were.
00:11:17
Speaker
But for me, they're the best place for me to start working through my ideas.
00:11:21
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That's not just mired down and overly filtered and overly edited.
00:11:26
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Then I'm able to allow our business strategy to take from my vision and modify that.
00:11:32
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And I trust my team's input on that.
00:11:35
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So that's important for me.
00:11:37
Speaker
One thing I would jump in here and say is you heard about Reese's background.
00:11:41
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You heard about his career journey.
00:11:43
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We started in financial services, launched his own services firm, did really well with that, and is now building a SaaS company for that industry.
00:11:51
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This is a great illustration of you take an inventory yourself, say, hey, I'm not technical.
00:11:56
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I didn't have a CS background.
00:11:57
Speaker
I don't have a coding background.
00:11:59
Speaker
I may not even have a product background.
00:12:01
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But you can see how Reese has parlayed some strengths in communication, being a creator.
00:12:07
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And he's built, of course, he has a master's in finance.
00:12:10
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He's built a lot of the other rocks around quantitative ability and understanding this industry, the ability to execute.
00:12:16
Speaker
Just recognize there's a lot of science in building technology companies.
00:12:19
Speaker
There's a lot of art too.
00:12:21
Speaker
And a lot of the special stuff is combining those two things.
00:12:24
Speaker
And I think what you're seeing with Reese and many other entrepreneurs that we're fortunate to work with
00:12:29
Speaker
is they're able to combine those two in a magical combination and also find folks who fit.
00:12:36
Speaker
And Reese has done this recently with bringing on folks like Wade to really make the trains run on time, for example, or other key design and engineering heads.
00:12:46
Speaker
But it's cool to think about how his background has come together for this startup and how you might think about it for your own startup.
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really important consideration.
00:12:58
Speaker
I would have probably four years ago or five years ago would have not seen myself as a venture-backed founder, but found myself in the last year.
00:13:10
Speaker
I mean, we took our seed round from Kickstarter at the end of 2021.
00:13:15
Speaker
I've totally fallen in love with the industry of venture-backed startups.
00:13:22
Speaker
I would have been so nervous about that, so worried that maybe this background I had as a services provider... I have a large services enterprise.
00:13:32
Speaker
I would have felt like the speed and the difficulty and the heft of going into a fast grind would have been a little destabilizing.
00:13:40
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Maybe I didn't have the chops.
00:13:42
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Maybe I didn't have the expertise.
00:13:43
Speaker
And I think if you actually have a really clear...
00:13:48
Speaker
vision of an improvement or a change that you want to see made in the world.
00:13:51
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And it's a strong belief, a strong vision that's been shaped by experiences that you've actually had.
00:13:58
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People around you can feel that and they can sense it.
00:14:02
Speaker
It's been really incredible for me to watch how many people with different skills that are not my skills show up to support and back that vision because they see that it's something that should exist.
00:14:14
Speaker
That's a gift, just witness the goodness of all those people that come together.
00:14:20
Speaker
Gavin, you hinted at this a little bit, like Reese's ability to attract top talent.
00:14:24
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I want to shift gears into that because I think it's a really important takeaway for listeners.
00:14:29
Speaker
Could you speak to Reese's ability to attract talent and what you think it is that allows them to do that?
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah, you bet.
00:14:36
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When Reese met with us, he did a good job of meeting with us through some people we really trusted early on before he even decided to build Elements to kind of get our advice on pursuing that path.
00:14:45
Speaker
And we were impressed with him during that process.
00:14:48
Speaker
I was a pretty interesting founder.
00:14:49
Speaker
And the bet was, could he bring the product and engineering chops and marketing chops around him to scale a different kind of business?
00:14:57
Speaker
What we saw was great vision, which was very transferable between the one business to the next.
00:15:04
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and a real ability to storytell around that vision and attract people of rare talent, certainly in the services business, but even next level as he started to build the product-based business.
00:15:15
Speaker
What I always say about great entrepreneurs, it's analogous to kind of getting a fire going.
00:15:20
Speaker
here in the mountains in Utah, you know, it's cold, there might be some snow falling and the entrepreneurs are there kind of working the wood, the kindling, the flint and steel, whatever.
00:15:30
Speaker
And there's a lot of smoke coming up, even though you're like, that doesn't look very promising, but boy, there's a lot of smoke coming up.
00:15:36
Speaker
And, you know,
00:15:37
Speaker
And entrepreneurs do a great job of making a lot of smoke come out of an early fire, early flame when they really shouldn't.
00:15:44
Speaker
And one of those early smoke signals is definitely incredible people leaving jobs, leaving great careers, having great personal brands to follow the lead or the vision of an entrepreneur.
00:15:54
Speaker
And we saw that with elements consistently throughout.
00:15:57
Speaker
And that's been true of many of our best entrepreneurs we've backed is the ability to get incredible talent, advisors,
00:16:03
Speaker
and eventually funders to do the same.
00:16:06
Speaker
And it's based on these signals of like, wow, this person is leading somewhere interesting.
00:16:11
Speaker
It's actually kind of one of those really profound things you learn in backing entrepreneurs is that people want meaning in their lives, in their careers, in their personal lives.
00:16:20
Speaker
And we all have ways to make that and realize that.
00:16:23
Speaker
And a great entrepreneur takes a business challenge and problem and wraps it in very actual meaning.
00:16:30
Speaker
So it means something, it's important.
00:16:32
Speaker
something that humans care about, and then great people are drawn to that.
00:16:36
Speaker
And Reese, how do you go about, for lack of a better word, promoting that?
Vision, Talent, and Authenticity
00:16:42
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There's a lot of people doing this better than me.
00:16:44
Speaker
My feeling on this is that it's more about authenticity around your belief than it is how you're articulating it.
00:16:54
Speaker
When you've got two weeks of payroll left in the bank and everyone knows it, the question is, why are they still there?
00:17:02
Speaker
The odds are very much not in their favor.
00:17:05
Speaker
And somehow their talent is just like standing there still.
00:17:11
Speaker
It really does start with, does the founder actually have clarity of their vision?
00:17:16
Speaker
Have they done the work to articulate it to themselves?
00:17:19
Speaker
Have they written it down enough?
00:17:20
Speaker
Have they spent those 30 minutes in the morning I talked about doing a writing practice?
00:17:25
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That's what gets you to your vision.
00:17:27
Speaker
It's what gets clarity of thought.
00:17:29
Speaker
And if you feel like those conversations with each team member, each employee starts leaning towards compensation or starts leaning towards equity or starts leaning towards...
00:17:40
Speaker
benefits.
00:17:41
Speaker
And you can tell that this person isn't really content building the vision with you.
00:17:47
Speaker
They're caught up in a periphery part of the job.
00:17:52
Speaker
I immediately tried to get to the place where I'm like, what is it about this person's experience that I missed or that they haven't had that didn't get them onto the vision with me
00:18:02
Speaker
and get them aligned with vision.
00:18:04
Speaker
It doesn't mean they're not going to have great benefits or great compensation or a reasonable compensation package.
00:18:09
Speaker
But as long as you have that anchor, then I think people can just feel that and they'll go, you know, I don't want to know what it would have been like watching from the sidelines.
00:18:19
Speaker
I want to be there.
00:18:21
Speaker
I mean, we all want that.
00:18:22
Speaker
We want to be there when it happens.
00:18:25
Speaker
We don't want to be the ones that left.
00:18:28
Speaker
That's just human nature.
00:18:29
Speaker
And I think it's a beautiful part of startups.
00:18:32
Speaker
It's a lot of belief from investors to employees, to advisors, to consultants, to service providers that service the startup community.
00:18:42
Speaker
It's a beautiful thing to watch.
00:18:44
Speaker
Thank you for that very specific insight, Reese.
00:18:46
Speaker
That's what we're always really hoping to get to on this podcast.
00:18:49
Speaker
I want to shift gears again and talk about fundraising.
00:18:52
Speaker
It's always on founders' minds, but I think particularly right now in the environment that we're in, looking at what's going on, and you're actively fundraising.
The Grit in Fundraising
00:19:00
Speaker
So I would love to know what you're seeing, any insights you have that you could share with listeners.
00:19:05
Speaker
I would like everyone who's fundraising right now to know, I thought I was a good fundraiser.
00:19:12
Speaker
And this market has made me wonder if I'm a good fundraiser.
00:19:16
Speaker
This is a challenging market.
00:19:19
Speaker
I have deep conviction in my vision.
00:19:23
Speaker
And this market has made me question my vision more than any other market I've been a part of.
00:19:28
Speaker
So on one sense, it's been some dark days and some difficult times where you're like, dude, like...
00:19:34
Speaker
Why did they say no?
00:19:37
Speaker
It doesn't make any sense.
00:19:40
Speaker
And it's also been the most rewarding, the most fulfilling to kind of see like after dozens and dozens and dozens of pitches.
00:19:50
Speaker
It wasn't my first five pitches this time.
00:19:53
Speaker
I called one of my friends, Davis Smith, who's a founder at Cotopaxi.
00:19:57
Speaker
I was like certain...
00:19:59
Speaker
that I knew the answer to this question.
00:20:01
Speaker
But I just said, dude, how many times did you have to pitch to get a round raised?
00:20:06
Speaker
I'm going to try to quote him verbatim, and he'll probably have to clarify this with everyone that floods him on social media after this.
00:20:12
Speaker
But he said, dude, you'd be surprised.
00:20:15
Speaker
It really just always came down to one term sheet.
00:20:19
Speaker
He's raised for so many great VCs.
00:20:22
Speaker
You'd assume that this was like a second, third, fourth, fifth term sheet behind dozens of people that wanted to fund the rounds.
00:20:28
Speaker
But he just jokingly told me, he's like, I think I have more of a thousand people that I've had to talk to over all of my years of fundraising.
00:20:36
Speaker
I think the first lesson I've learned is nothing is going to make up for grit and volume during fundraising.
00:20:42
Speaker
It's just about volume.
00:20:44
Speaker
If you get 20 no's, that's just one more no towards a yes.
00:20:48
Speaker
If you get 40 no's, there's another yes there.
00:20:51
Speaker
The second thing I'd say that I learned a lot from this was pattern recognition in the nose is really, really valuable.
00:20:59
Speaker
Don't let anyone ever say no and not give you something substantive.
00:21:04
Speaker
You invested time in going through a process with them.
00:21:07
Speaker
They owe you something substantive.
00:21:09
Speaker
And make sure that you don't leave until they give you something a little bit more substantive than like, it's just not good timing.
00:21:15
Speaker
We'd like to stay in touch.
00:21:17
Speaker
Like that's not quite enough.
00:21:18
Speaker
You don't have to be uncivil.
00:21:19
Speaker
But sometimes I've had to be kind of assertive and just say, look, I realize it's you're slammed, you're busy.
00:21:25
Speaker
Can you give me a little bit more concrete feedback on the one thing that made you walk?
00:21:32
Speaker
I was able to take those one things from this fundraising process that we're going through right now, put them in my spreadsheet and start to narrow down and pattern match.
00:21:41
Speaker
Where are the one or two things that seem to be repeating in these no's?
00:21:45
Speaker
And man, that made it really easy to go find where the yeses were.
00:21:48
Speaker
Because when you saw a yes, and the yes didn't contain those no's, then there must be a reason why they're saying yes, despite those no's.
00:21:57
Speaker
So I found in this round, there was a class of investor and an investor type that had experience at my stage and with my customer that was palpably different than someone who was trying to get up to speed on my space and my customer.
00:22:15
Speaker
Some investors are just going to naturally understand your customer.
00:22:19
Speaker
And there's nothing quite as resonant
00:22:24
Speaker
as meeting with an investor who deeply understands your customer too, because they've sold into your customer, they know where the bodies are buried.
00:22:31
Speaker
They know where the lions are hiding behind which bushes.
00:22:35
Speaker
And that person will generally say, I still like it, but here's how we're going to get there.
00:22:41
Speaker
That's beautiful.
00:22:43
Speaker
I think it's an amazing process for founders to go through.
00:22:46
Speaker
And I love fundraising.
00:22:48
Speaker
I want to be done.
00:22:49
Speaker
I want to be done.
00:22:50
Speaker
But...
00:22:52
Speaker
I learned so much in that 90-day process that you go through that it will shape the business for the next decade.
00:22:59
Speaker
I think those are great insights.
00:23:00
Speaker
And I think it underlines just how much fundraising is an enterprise sales process.
00:23:06
Speaker
And you can't take the volume or the grit out of any sales process.
00:23:11
Speaker
I think that approaching it with curiosity and humility and saying, I have the chance to interact with all these individuals who are smart, accomplished individuals.
00:23:19
Speaker
Hey, they're VCs and they're flawed in all these various ways, but they're smart, intelligent people who are meeting with me and looking closely at my business.
00:23:27
Speaker
What can I learn?
00:23:28
Speaker
What can I gain out of the process in addition to money that I raise?
00:23:32
Speaker
That's the right mindset, I think, taken to it.
00:23:34
Speaker
And I think that more entrepreneurs need to have that approach of it's going to be volume and grit that gets us there.
00:23:41
Speaker
For Kickstarter, I've raised close to half a billion dollars and there's been a lot of no's.
00:23:48
Speaker
I always joke that for so many years, the last thing I need to do is give someone another reason to not invest in Kickstarter.
00:23:56
Speaker
We're at a better place to raise money now, but it's a lot of no's.
00:24:00
Speaker
You never know who says no once and says yes the next time you might need.
00:24:04
Speaker
And so play a long-term game, treat people right, be assertive in trying to get something of value for yourself.
00:24:10
Speaker
I think that's great advice from Reese.
00:24:12
Speaker
And recognize that this environment is uniquely challenging.
00:24:17
Speaker
Reese is an incredible fundraiser.
00:24:18
Speaker
He's got a great business.
00:24:19
Speaker
This hasn't been easy for him.
00:24:20
Speaker
I think it's good to recognize that this is uniquely challenging for everybody right now.
00:24:25
Speaker
So sometimes your best fundraise strategy right now is to not fundraise or find ways to avoid it, push it off, simplify, reduce, get money from customers because it is going to be tough for a while.
Morning Routines for Success
00:24:40
Speaker
I love that it speaks to that curiosity that you have and you mentioned the beginning and I know you do need to go, but we like to end the podcast asking all the founders the same question.
00:24:48
Speaker
So I would love to ask you, Reese, what's an effective practice that you've implemented in your work or personal life that you think has had a great impact on your success?
00:24:57
Speaker
I would say, I'll give you a threefer.
00:25:00
Speaker
They're short, but three things that all are in line.
00:25:04
Speaker
One, I never start my day before I've got my heart rate up to 150 for at least 30 minutes.
00:25:11
Speaker
So I'm never going to get into talking to people or engaging with other humans until I've made myself a really nice black coffee and exercised for at least 45 minutes.
00:25:23
Speaker
So...
00:25:25
Speaker
I want a morning routine that's exercise oriented.
00:25:28
Speaker
And I read a book for 15 minutes.
00:25:30
Speaker
I just don't let myself get into the hustle too quick.
00:25:33
Speaker
Second thing is I write every day for 30 minutes.
00:25:36
Speaker
Even if I don't want to write, I write and I get it out because it helps me document some patterns, maybe how I'm behaving and seeing the world and thinking, but also gives me a chance to think through the problems.
00:25:47
Speaker
The last thing I do is once a week, I will meet with somebody new who I've never really met with before.
00:25:53
Speaker
I will present them something about my business that I'm thinking about that week.
00:25:57
Speaker
And I'll just give them the facts and say, what would you do in this situation?
00:26:04
Speaker
Sometimes it's an email.
00:26:05
Speaker
Sometimes it's just like, today I met with a VC that about a month ago passed on funding our round.
00:26:10
Speaker
And I just said, well, you're in Utah, though.
00:26:11
Speaker
I'd love to meet and just keep the relationship going.
00:26:15
Speaker
Sometimes it's hard to meet with a VC that says no to you and want to be friends.
00:26:18
Speaker
But I wanted to lean into that and just met with them over breakfast and gave them a set of facts I was looking at and said, what would you do?
00:26:26
Speaker
You don't always have to agree with them.
00:26:27
Speaker
But man, this morning, I got incredibly valuable advice from this person.
00:26:32
Speaker
And it was very confirming of something I was contemplating, but I was thinking about it a little off.
00:26:38
Speaker
So those three things work hand in hand because after I have that meeting, I want to make sure and write things down.
00:26:43
Speaker
I think that just having a little bit of time to get your heart rate up and move helps you be able to process all of that feedback in a little bit healthier way.
00:26:54
Speaker
I love what Reece said.
00:26:56
Speaker
I'm a big believer in morning routine, setting the table for the day.
00:26:59
Speaker
And I love the idea of making time to write in a way that's broad based and open versus directed.
00:27:09
Speaker
It's a practice I would like to reinstitute for myself.
00:27:11
Speaker
I try to protect my mornings a little bit so I can have time to think more creatively about the business and across what Kickstarter is doing and not specifically on a to-do list.
00:27:21
Speaker
I know for me, the problems seem more over-comable and solvable once I've gotten through kind of the exercise process in the morning and competed on something generally lost, but feeling energized to take on these more long-term
Creative Routines and Closing Reflections
00:27:36
Speaker
problems.
00:27:36
Speaker
So I love what he said about writing and morning exercising.
00:27:39
Speaker
Those are really powerful, simple, but powerful tools that I don't know that many people who are successful who don't certainly have some of that in their routine.
00:27:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:51
Speaker
There's a group called Creative Mornings.
00:27:53
Speaker
You get together.
00:27:54
Speaker
It's been on Zoom since COVID, but you do a writing exercise together.
00:27:57
Speaker
You do something.
00:27:58
Speaker
Sometimes it's a half an hour, sometimes it's 40 minutes, and it's just amazing what it can do for your day.
00:28:03
Speaker
Thank you so much for being on the show with us today.
00:28:06
Speaker
I've loved all of your insights.
00:28:08
Speaker
There were so many of them and we are very grateful.
00:28:11
Speaker
So Reese, Gavin, thank you for being on the podcast today.
00:28:14
Speaker
Thank you.
00:28:16
Speaker
And of course, thank you for listening as we dive deep into what it takes to create the perfect pitch.
00:28:21
Speaker
If you want to learn more about our investor, Gavin Christensen from Kickstart, or our CEO, Reese Harper from Elements, we'll have a link to the company and a longer bio in our show notes at kickstartfund.com.
00:28:31
Speaker
You can listen to more episodes of Perfect Pitch wherever you listen to your podcast.
00:28:35
Speaker
And if you like what you're learning, leave us a reviewer rating.
00:28:37
Speaker
We'll be back next time with more insights from entrepreneurs and the investors who fund them.
00:28:41
Speaker
So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a thing.