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Cyber Security with Sheldon Speers
404 Plays4 years ago
When you’re trying to get your business off the ground, the thought of protecting your data and systems against all the tech savvy bad actors out there may seem daunting. Making matters worse, a recent Forbes article reported that small businesses are targeted by cybercriminals over three times more often than larger companies. In protecting your company from cyber risks, when you don’t know what to do but you know you have to do something, that’s when you call Sheldon Speers.
Sheldon is the Founder and CEO of Tenax Solutions, a security consulting firm based in Des Moines, Iowa created with the simple mission of protecting companies from cyber security threats in the modern world. In this episode, you’ll learn how his persistence and confidence in his solutions turned 250 unresponsive cold calls in his first 13 months into a growing, trusted security firm serving clients of all sizes.
We’ll also talk about learning how to handle rejection, what it’s like to work with investors, the future of cybersecurity, and transitioning your role in the company to position for growth.
You can find more information on Tenax by visiting their website, https://www.tenaxsolutions.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Uncommon Life Project
00:00:02
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life, a life worth celebrating and savoring.
00:00:30
Speaker
Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Philip Ramsey. Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Uncommon Life Project where I'm your host, Philip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. Thanks for tuning in. We're grateful that you're here and we know that your time is valuable. So we really want to try to pack as much value as we can. And I cannot wait to get our guest on the show. Super blessed to have him in studio for the second time because I botched something the first time.
Sheldon Spears' Entrepreneurial Beginnings
00:00:57
Speaker
Okay. I just feel like we need to say that. All right. I appreciate it.
00:00:59
Speaker
you owning it? Yeah, it's totally me. And also, I'm actually not too mad because I really like this guest and I like this guy. So Sheldon, let's talk about his bio and then we'll get him in the show and we'll go from there. Yes, we have the one and only Sheldon Spears. He's a former security engineer turned entrepreneur and has launched the company 10X
00:01:20
Speaker
solutions here in Ankeny, Iowa. Welcome to the show. Sheldon. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me again. That's right. That's right. Okay. We got to go back to how did we meet and then you tell your side, I'll tell my side and then we'll go from there. Yeah, absolutely. So I was at DMACC here in Ankeny. It's a community college for those of you that aren't familiar. Go Bears. Go Bears. So I'm sitting there, you know, studying tech, studying cybersecurity and was always like business kind of minded, always,
00:01:48
Speaker
I wanted to start my own business and I fell in love with cyber security at the same time. In a D group, I was a C group leader through Salt Company. Phillip at the same church was an elder, came and talked to us about being financially smart, starting your own business, working for yourself. I was like, man, that's kind of cool.
00:02:10
Speaker
I started talking to Philip. We went out, had coffee, and then from there I was like, dude, I think I'm just going to quit my job. I have $4,500 in my savings. I think I'm just going to go. I'm rich. And I knew nothing about business. I didn't even know what a proposal was or a P&L or literally nothing. And in the most humble way possible, Philip was just like, maybe not yet. Go out, learn the industry a little bit more. And then from there, we just stayed in Dutch.
00:02:39
Speaker
That's right. But yeah, this is... It wasn't a no, it was a not right now. Definitely not
Challenges and Support in Entrepreneurship
00:02:45
Speaker
a no. And like, I think the first, like, first, for people who don't know what D groups and C groups are, it's basically like a leader of a smaller group of people studying the Bible, studying the Word of God. Pretty sweet. So Sheldon was doing that, so demonstrated that he had a high capacity for leadership, which, you know, I geek out about that.
00:03:02
Speaker
So I was giving this speech or little talk to a couple of leaders and I was talking about the talents, like how talents were given and you have to be good steward of your talents. And I remember just edifying all of them. First, I think there's a lot of back perspective or like negative condensation to having a community school, having a two-year school.
00:03:24
Speaker
And I just remember edifying them all. Like, what if you're the smartest people in this country who are trying to get your education as quickly as possible to go out into the real world? Which a lot of things, and people who have listened to the show already know that Brian and I have kind of this little chip on our shoulder about a four year college that you're like, hey, go find your life and go into a lot of debt. Just doesn't make a lot of sense. So I remember just edifying them of like, hey, maybe you guys are the smartest people
00:03:50
Speaker
here, just doing what you need to do to study what you want to study and get out and do something. And Sheldon and I connected, and that's when we had coffee. And I remember that faithful
Cold Calling and Rejection
00:04:00
Speaker
day when you were like, I got it. This is it. I'm going to do it. And it wasn't that it was a bad idea. In fact, I saw it was a really good idea. I just didn't want him to go out in the real world and just get backhanded.
00:04:12
Speaker
and not make it. Does that make sense? There is some kind of confidence that you need to get pretty early and cash flow is probably king, especially coming out of any college, two year, four year, doesn't matter. Six year. You just need a W. Yeah, six year. Shout out to my friends.
00:04:29
Speaker
So you just need some kind of success. And that's what I was like, man, coming out of college, a two year trying to run upstream. I could see that that getting really tiresome pretty quick, getting a no after no after no. And maybe that's not going to be the case. I just thought the risks were just too high. And so what you ended up doing after that, hold on, Brian, anything you want to say? Cause I feel like I'm just.
00:04:52
Speaker
No, the two year school thing, I mean, I think, yeah, it does get a bad rap and just her success story, had a success story out of that. And it's fun to have you here and, you know, just getting that out in the open right off the bat. And it's not like a negative or something that's held you back, you know? Another thing too, I think we should talk about is cause you were dating somebody at the time.
00:05:14
Speaker
Right? Yeah. Yeah. My current wife, your current wife. Yeah. Yeah. But like you were dating somebody and that was another, I think that another layer, another layer that like, yeah, made me think through that of like, Hey, like you're going to come out of that is going to start jumping into this business full time or trying to. And you also want to get married because you guys were pretty serious back then too. Yeah, absolutely. And I was like, dude, like you don't want to do this yet. Like make sure you got the like base layer. Cause there's somebody coming with you.
00:05:39
Speaker
It's not like he was alone. Right. Make sure that you got your cash flow and your base layer and almost like get your experience from somebody else. Because you had raw talent. You had leadership and you had talent, which anybody would eat that up. So, okay, sorry to take the funder away from you. No, no. Yeah. And so I took the advice. And so at that time I was working as a security consultant intern at a large payments company here in town in Des Moines. And then after that I got a job working as an application security engineer.
00:06:09
Speaker
And so I took that and then paid off my student loans, which wasn't very much because it was at DMACC, paid that off and then was just banking a savings for the time that I was going to jump off the cliff. But I was making cold calls in the morning. So in the morning, before I went into work at like 7 a.m., it was 8 a.m. on the East Coast, so I could hit some companies out there.
00:06:33
Speaker
After work in California, it's two hours before, so at five, it's only three out there. So I'd go home, rip through some dials. And then at
First Client and Learning from Rejection
00:06:40
Speaker
my lunch break, I'd take like an hour. I'd just go park in the parking lot at Target and set their cold call. And then from there, just slowly but surely, started getting clients. And then after that year at DHI, it was the company I was at. I spent another about eight months at a different company doing the same thing until finally I was able to quit my job and go full time with it.
00:07:02
Speaker
Oh, I love this. I love this because although I was like, hey, make sure you do this right, let's get a job at first, but let's don't lose the end in mind, which is you want to start a business. So what are things that you can do in your current job as you're getting money, consistent money? What can you do to then forward this company that you have a passion for?
00:07:23
Speaker
That's exactly what you did. Now, it is going to be a sacrifice, right? I mean, you had basically a full-time job and I would say another full-time job. I was going to say part-time, but it really wasn't. You're waking up at 6 o'clock in the morning dialing what would it be? That would be East Coast.
00:07:41
Speaker
or seven o'clock, because it's eight o'clock there, right? Right, right. And then over lunch and then after work, which is now what? Pacific. Five o'clock our time. Coast, yeah. Yeah, three o'clock Pacific time. Yeah. Yeah. And then you would have two hours to call people. Yeah. And then a lot of what, you know, if you're out there doing cold calls, like don't shy away from Saturday morning either, because like most- Oh, well just there.
00:08:04
Speaker
Most business owners are probably working Saturday mornings at least. The good ones. Yeah, do some cold calling Saturday morning because then they're like, man, this guy's cold calling on a Saturday. I respect him. So good. Yeah. I think that was a cool part of your story is just burning the candle a little bit at both ends and making it work. And now you're courting this girl who's now your wife. When did you get engaged in that period in this part of the story?
00:08:33
Speaker
It was about probably eight months after I decided to... Yeah, we got engaged about eight months after I started really going after the business. Nice. Let's talk through this. How many calls do you think you had to make before you got your first yes? I went 13 months before I got my first actual sign contract. Wow. Before I got my first meeting, I made 250 cold calls.
00:09:01
Speaker
Oh man, I'll tell you what if like when I have kids there's two things I'm gonna make them do it's manual labor and then cold call because that stuff builds character and like I was just learning to like get rejection and be okay with it and I'll take it personally and like I
00:09:15
Speaker
just keep going. I truly think if I didn't make those cold calls, the business probably wouldn't be running today. One thousand percent. I would have shied away from any rejection. Rejection's okay. If you get one out of every 100 people that you knock on the door, you're doing pretty well.
00:09:31
Speaker
Which is like, you know, I think in a lot of the direct mail and marketing campaign, it's like 2%. I mean, you're hitting two, 3%. You're doing it. Right. And so that mindset shift is so different. Yep. You have to have that view or you're going to go crazy. Yeah, exactly. What was the cold call
Business Expansion and Investment
00:09:49
Speaker
like? Bring... Hello? What would you say? So I kind of got it down to a science. I won't share too much because
00:09:56
Speaker
Oh, is that part of your secret sauce? Yeah, a little bit. Okay, don't do it. But it was just like, you know, you call and then what you call like the gatekeepers of the secretary, right? Like you can't, you know, I keep my murals in so I don't just lie and say, hey, I already have a meeting with the business owner, but like, try your best to kind of get around that. Or, you know, if you hit like the sales line, so like a lot of people have the automated stuff, you just go to sales.
00:10:19
Speaker
chances are if the company is under 20 employees the owners or somebody who's in charge still oversees sales so I could go to them and then you know I would I would be like it with a CFO or like the chief strategy officer or something like that to where they could actually make those decisions versus like you know if you go to a company that has an hundred employees I might just get to an account executive that can't make those decisions so
00:10:42
Speaker
And then you just say, Hey, here's my business. This is what I like to do. Yeah. Yeah. I would come to them with like a partnership opportunity. Um, so I started off in the maintenance service provider. So I'd go to them and say, Hey, here's how, you know, we can partner. Here's how you can make money. I'd always lead with that. So like, you know, providing value first and then asking for it second, um, we'll just ask to provide the value. And like most people just said no, but you know, some people said yes. And.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yeah. So tell us about the first yes, because that's the best. Yeah. So the first yes, it was with a company. So we met, he seemed like somewhat interested, but I was like, oh, like everybody kind of seems that way. Um, and then about three months later, they emailed us and said, Hey, you know, we want a partner, but we'd like for you to do a test on us first. Um, before like we'd refer you to our clients, I think it was like 1500 bucks, but like easily the best 1500 bucks I've ever made in my life. Like it was like, I'm rich. Yeah, it was a rich, you know, like,
00:11:35
Speaker
It was awesome. Validation, hard work, proof of concept, for sure. I think too the thing that was interesting just hearing how you answered those questions so quickly is most business owners, I would say like smart business owners, don't know their numbers very well. And I think that's one thing we noticed very quickly is like if we're asking the business owners for their numbers and they don't want to give their numbers up, it's typically like things aren't going as well as they thought it would be and they hide from that and then they don't
00:12:01
Speaker
They don't want to dig into the numbers. And so I just think it was kudos to you, like how quickly you knew your numbers and it's just so important, you know? Yeah, it is. Numbers are everything. Right. So you get your first yes, which is like cloud nine. Yeah. Proof of concept.
00:12:17
Speaker
So you know it's gonna work, you know there's value there. Where were you at headspace-wise going back to your job? Was it in the morning or was it over lunch or was that at the night time? That was in the afternoon when I got it. So you had to go back to the old office. Yeah, yep. But a little bit of uptick in your step, super excited. Okay, so then you go back and you have to work. How much longer was it that you worked? Because what we find is,
00:12:46
Speaker
You might have a little bit success, but there comes a point where you like can only take it to the next level. If you take this proverbial jump off the cliff or the bridge, like you have to go all in. There is no like, well, maybe I can, it can only scale so much if unless you jump off. So how much longer were you in that employee role before you jumped?
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, so it was 13 months to where I was working on the side, made the first sale, and then it was another 12 months before I actually made the jump in that next 12 months. So mind you, all this is happening during COVID. And what we do in cybersecurity, it's a lot of proactive. So a lot of people, if there are budget cuts, our stuff's the first thing to go.
00:13:31
Speaker
During COVID, it was really, really tough, especially being a new business. I was 21, trying to pitch these guys, like, what does this kid know? Over those next 12 months, I only made another two sales, but the last one that we made was a decent sized one. I was like, okay.
00:13:50
Speaker
ready, like COVID's kind of taken an end, I feel really good about it. And like you said, if you don't take that step, you're just going to kind of keep in that slow, slow, slow cycle and never really go. I was young, not really expenses. So yeah, just took it. How was your fiance at that bar? Now you're married.
00:14:11
Speaker
She was all for it. I think mainly so her dad's an entrepreneur and he started his own concrete company so like she got to see like from the time he went out on his own and like you know really hard times really good times like long long hours working every single Saturday so
00:14:31
Speaker
She kind of grew up and saw that and she was all for it. I think because we didn't have a mortgage, still don't have a mortgage, don't have kids,
Cybersecurity and 10X Solutions' Role
00:14:41
Speaker
no car payments, no student loans. It was time to take the risk. Set ourselves up for the time to take the risk versus six years from now that's probably not going to be the case. If there's a time to fail, it's when you're young. I want you to just give kind of a plug for 10X.
00:14:58
Speaker
doing penetrative testing and all this stuff like talk about the actual company itself because I know that there's a lot of listeners that we have that are small business owners are like what what's happening? And so I think that could be yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So tax solutions were information security consulting companies. So we provide anything from like offensive security solutions, which means we go in and actually find vulnerabilities to defensive cybersecurity solutions, which means we go in we active like
00:15:24
Speaker
kind of your go-to cybersecurity people for anything like compliance, vulnerability, remediation, like fixing security gaps or folks have new compliances that they're trying to meet, different things like that. We come in and kind of help them and augment onto their existing business versus going out and having to hire a security engineer because a company of like 15 people can't go out and hire a six-figure security engineer.
00:15:50
Speaker
even if they could, they don't want to. So that's where we kind of come in and work kind of that go to cyber security partner for folks that aren't $100 million companies. That's awesome. Okay, I love it. So okay, let's go back to now we've got your jumped in full time. This is the whole thing. What's the first day look like?
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, so I actually, when I first jumped in, I took a fishing trip with my dad to kind of celebrate. Yeah, I took a six day long, like full fishing trip just to kind of let it set in before I like really hit the grindstone. But then yeah, when I came back, I just kept doing what I was doing, just a more volume. So cold calling, I invested in some like,
00:16:30
Speaker
email marketing and different campaigns and stuff. When I got an investor, which helped a lot with marketing stuff and having some capital kind of behind me to go out and actually compete with big cybersecurity firms. And so yeah, then I just kind of kept doing what I had been doing.
00:16:50
Speaker
Right. Let's talk about the investor part of it because I think that's a really good way to grow a business. You can go debt, you can do it all cash, you can try the investors. So tell us how that worked and how did you pitch that? How did you structure that? All that stuff.
Future Goals for 10X Solutions
00:17:03
Speaker
Yeah. So before I actually quit my job, I reached out to this guy who's like one of my buddy's dads who I knew he was really successful. Just growing up in a small town, you kind of hear who has money, who's being successful inside.
00:17:17
Speaker
I heard about what he does and he invested a lot, chief revenue officer sales. I was like, oh, this could be interesting. I was going to quit my job either way, but I just told him, I sent a cold email. I said, back to the numbers thing, I laid out all of my numbers just in bullet points. He wrote back, interested, that's it. And so I was like, hey, let's set up a meeting. That's all we needed. That's all we needed. Thank you.
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah. So he gives me a call on like a Tuesday afternoon and was just talking about it. Um, I laid out everything. Um, I sent him, I created a pitch deck of just like the business plans, you know, what problems I'm trying to solve in 10 acts. Like what's my one, three, five year goal? Um, what numbers do I think I can hit? Here's kind of the growth plan of everything, you know, put in a really nice neat deck. Um, and so after that call, send him, send him that. Um, and then we had one more call just about it. Um, and then came to a deal. Tada.
00:18:10
Speaker
I don't know if that's how it always goes. It's not actually. Yeah, 100%. Success rate, deals. That's super cool. And I think we tell a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, I think 95% of businesses
Reflection on Sheldon's Journey
00:18:26
Speaker
fail just due to a lack of capital or a lack of capital.
00:18:28
Speaker
capitalization. And so, you know, that's so critical how you keep the keep the buckets full, so to speak, in that first five years, you know, as you ramp and it's just a constant reinvestment and, you know, trying to grow your cash base, but also your revenue base and employee base and
00:18:48
Speaker
Well, to me, it's kind of like this. I love analogy. So sorry, if you're the first time listening, it's just going to happen. It's like getting yourself a longer runway. Like you have a longer runway to make sure that the hanger is going to get off the runway. And so for you, it was probably peace of mind. One, you already jumped, which is probably nice for the investor.
00:19:06
Speaker
So the investors not like, so I have to invest in this before you'll jump. You know, it's kind of like, right? Yeah, but you were all in and he was just like, all right, I'll give you wind for your parachute a little bit. And so you had a longer runway to then start crafting out. What do you want this to be? And so it was just you right away.
00:19:23
Speaker
With the investor, I think another thing I'll say about it and encourage other folks is don't be so concerned about how much equity you own in your company and think about, oh, 10 years from now, what is this going to cost me? Because the mental fortitude that you get by having that investor and not always being worried about just being able to pay yourself or just meet ends. Having that investment capital allows you to focus on growth
00:19:51
Speaker
instead of focus on just, you know, meeting kind of that bottom dollar of whatever that is. Yeah, you'd much rather have like 80% of 50 to 100 million than like 100% of maybe 1 million. Exactly.
00:20:06
Speaker
What's his involvement currently now? Yeah, so he's our chief revenue officer. We meet every week and we probably talk at least every other day, if not every day, just about different deals, about the company, how things are going. He comes from a heavy sales background, so he gives me a ton of insight on sales and he's been around business his whole life. He's 56, so he has a lot of experience in this, so it's just constant wisdom that I could get
00:20:36
Speaker
You're just a sponge. Yeah, exactly. All right. So then it's you. When is your first employee and like what, how did you define what role you needed when you were ready to then take the plunge into that? Let's have two mouths to feed. This is great. Um, yeah. So let me, so
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah, we pretty much just put out a job description. And I had a few people in my network that I'd like to bring on. And so, yeah, I reached out to him. He said he would, and so he kind of came on. Another one. Not usually how it happens. Not for Sheldon, everybody. Golden touch.
00:21:13
Speaker
So you got him, he just said, okay, we're in. Yep, and then kind of same thing with the other guy. What was his role quickly? Chief technology officer. Okay, and then what was your role? CEO, founder, yeah, so really all that means is he handles the security stuff, I handle the sales and business stuff. There it was. Yeah, okay, yeah, good. But yeah, I mean, that's obviously freed up a lot of time and just put us on a road for growth, so.
00:21:42
Speaker
Okay, so all this is happening, we kind of talked a little bit, you know, pre the call, you're growing your business, everybody's kind of working from home, it's COVID, you're kind of almost forced into the situation too. You know, now we're coming out of that, you've got a large organization. How many people are working with you now? Yeah, like they're seven. Yeah, there's seven of us. Okay. That's a combined between full time employees like the investor and then a couple contractors here and there.
00:22:11
Speaker
Seven's not bad though. That means there's business coming in. It's probably easier now once you hit your first bucket to keep getting deals, right? Like, Hey, this is now you're tailoring it down to like, this is a specific thing that we're getting good traction with. Let's
Conclusion: Pursuing Uncommon Paths
00:22:25
Speaker
keep calling those kind of.
00:22:27
Speaker
Oh, yeah, companies. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the market has definitely told us kind of where to go. And we've been able to listen to that and then kind of tailor it in. Yeah, I mean, much, much and just like the infrastructure that we have built out like, you know, with more revenue and more employees comes like better website, better kind of public presence, you know, it looks like we have more experience because I mean, because we do, you know, client logos on the on the website, things like that. So yeah, perspective is a big deal.
00:22:54
Speaker
Like if you could look the part and you know you already have the knowledge, sometimes it's now I just need to look the part. Right. And then people are attracted to that. Yeah, it's good. Well, it seems like with where everything is headed digitally, does it seem like it's going to let up for the services that you provide and the vulnerabilities that are out there. Um, you want to kind of talk just about where you see the, you know, marketplace heading in terms of, you know, protecting oneself or one's business from, you know, threats.
00:23:24
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely So obviously everybody's talking about blockchain, right? We just brought on our first like blockchain client a couple weeks ago So I think I think that's big but without getting too technical I think you know two of the biggest things are like cybersecurity awareness for employees like you can have all the fancy tools and stuff but like you click on the wrong email. Yeah
00:23:48
Speaker
somebody calls you and tries to get your credentials. And if you give those out, it all goes back to the basics. So that's one is just general awareness for a company. And then I think supply chain is huge because all these companies have these different apps and these different SaaS platforms that have hooks into their organization. So you don't have to just worry about your cybersecurity. If your
00:24:13
Speaker
vendor XYZ also has access into all that data. Now your threat landscape has just doubled. If you have six different vendors that have access into all of your stuff, now you have six different companies that you have to
00:24:29
Speaker
somewhat keep tabs. I think that's a big thing that I don't think a lot of people have grasped yet. It's not just your cybersecurity, it's also the companies that have hooks into your organization's cybersecurity. So just a lot of vendor vetting.
00:24:46
Speaker
Hmm. Hmm. That's good. So what do you see the future of 10 X solutions? Like as you're sitting here looking at the next 10 years, what does it look like for the company? How are you leading that? Yeah. Let's start there. Cause I have more questions. You know that.
00:25:01
Speaker
Yeah, so this year we're building our platform, so 10XIQ. It's a vulnerability management compliance platform that we'd like to bring to the mid-market. There's a lot of tools out there for enterprises and things to do everything through kind of a SaaS portal in cybersecurity. So our big goal is to get that to market and then get that be a really good presence in 2022 going into 2023.
00:25:29
Speaker
And then expanding the markets that we hit, there's a few industries that we'd really like to tap into. Our goal is to hire three more people this year. And so probably looking at Q3, Q4 to do that. And then in the next 10 years, hopefully just growing and staying on point for sure.
00:25:48
Speaker
At what point, and this is probably something you can't answer, but let's just talk through it. At what point do you feel like you have to let the reins go to then grow to the next level? Have you ever thought through that? Thinking about how big the company could get and the need seems to be getting bigger, let's just be honest. At what point do you say to yourself, maybe there's somebody else to take us to the next level? Have you ever thought through that kind of thought?
00:26:10
Speaker
Yeah, I've always said when I turn 30, so I'm 23 right now, when I turn 30 is when I'll evaluate if I want to keep doing this and keep in the industry or sell or get out or continue doing it.
00:26:28
Speaker
that's kind of the point where I, and obviously that's such a long time away. So like, it's hard for me to, hard for me to tell right now, but I've always had like 30 is when I'll evaluate that until 30, I'm just going to keep my head down and grind and kind of try, try my best. Yeah. Just build and try my best not to kind of focus on that too much, but it is fun to sit here and like, right. Think about the what ifs. Absolutely. Especially when you have a successful thing going, right?
00:26:54
Speaker
And you're impacting not only your clients, but you're impacting now employees and you're having leadership things that you now get to pour into, which is always something I've seen in you. So I think that's really cool. And I think it's very mature. Just be like, all right, at this point, let's reevaluate. Not even like having an end point, but let's reevaluate.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean the that build part I mean is just there's so many hours that go into it. So I think Well, I'm 23. I'm young and can like put in those kind of crazy hours I don't think I'll want like I I don't think I know I don't want to work like this my entire life So I think that's why 30 is kind of my my okay. Let's reevaluate and see where we want to go. I
00:27:34
Speaker
Yeah, because your business is 24-7. Yeah. Threat watch, I feel like. Yeah. You know, it's nice in our business, the stock market's only open 18% of the time, which, you know, especially when it's down, it makes it helpful. Sure. You know, that there's, it shuts down. But, you know, that is the difference with, I think, your business and as you kind of related to the blockchain, like the blockchain doesn't sleep either.
00:27:59
Speaker
And so that's kind of a shift in our businesses going from open 18 hours, 18% of the time to 100% of the time, how do you manage that through weekends, through nights, through, that's kind of, it's kind of interesting to think about.
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's a lot of reading, it's a lot of research, a lot of just, yeah, communication, honestly. Yeah. Right. So like for the people who are just tuning in for Sheldon, which I get it, he's amazing.
00:28:30
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in. And I think it is kind of nice just to know like what uncommon wealth partners does. That's the company that Brian and I have started. That's the brand that we've started and our number one value is that you are your best asset. And like when Sheldon and I talked, I wasn't trying to think of like what Roth IRA can I open up for him? I was thinking more of like, what can we do to invest in the skills that you have and the knowledge and the experience that you've had in your past to then get you excited and then level you up?
00:28:59
Speaker
That's what we do every day we sit down with people we try to figure out what their experiences are what their passions are and we try to put like a road map around that to help them get to where they want to go in a quicker manner because at the end of the day if you wake up every morning and you love what you do chances are you don't really want to stop doing that and that's way better than maybe a big 401k account that you are super excited about but you hate your job every day.
00:29:21
Speaker
So that was a different mindset for us. And every day we get to sit down with our clients, potential clients, and scale their mind of like, no, but how's God uniquely gifted you? And so from the moment I saw Sheldon, I just knew that he had potential and he had a passion, not only just to pour into what he's excited about, but pour into others. And it's, it's shown. So like, this is so fun to interview him and, and get his story out because his uncommon is amazing.
00:29:48
Speaker
and his company's amazing and it's helping a lot of people and so great job taking the plunge great job thanks for taking my advice of just stay strong get that cash flow because it is a huge thing but also having the discipline and work ethic to then work in the morning noon and then at night for something you're excited about
00:30:07
Speaker
And then also leading now a family you got a wife and I can't wait to see what all that happens But you know kids hopefully in the future for you and also just a successful future for 10x and you know I'm gonna always be in the sideline cheering you on so
00:30:22
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think, um, you know, that speaks a lot to, to you guys. Like you didn't have to give me that advice, like to a 19 year old kid, right? But you did, you took time out of your day. Um, so that says a lot about just the uncommon wealth project. And it shows that you guys, you know, really stick to that. So it was really cool and some of the best advice I've gotten. That's cool. Awesome. Well, you've been listening to uncommon life project. I've been your host, Philip Ramsey and I'm Brian Dewhurst until next time, Sheldon. Thanks for being here. Go be in common. Thanks everybody. Bye.
00:30:50
Speaker
That's all for this episode of the Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.