From $4/Hour to $4 Billion Net Worth

0:00 If I told you that a kid flunked out of first grade, I don't think the first thing you would say is That's a future billionaire. But you probably would have joined the crowd of people that made fun of me for being dumb. Today he's known as this guy you see on the cover of Forbes Tech Entrepreneur, this billionaire, sun god, because of all the work he's done in the solar industry. But the crazy thing about Hayes is that his story is very much a started from the bottom story. a lot of great leaders that are level five leaders, there's daddy issues, there's learning disabilities, or there's a near-death experience. Hayes pretty much never does podcasts. I pulled the friend card, I asked him to do this, because I think he's got a story worth telling. I've never told that one before, definitely on camera, but You're in the eye of the storm, right? Like the oh wait. Subprime mortgage crisis. You're in the mortgage business. I would like literally throw up in my driveway before I could go see my family every night. You said

0:49 The difference between rejection results is just how long you stick with it. A lot of people quit when it gets hard. Sometimes you don't even know you're quitting. You just come up with a reason why you think you need to quit. What was it like? Meeting Yuan the first time. Um well when I met Elon for the first time Got Karo No

1:10 Be what I want to I think what's interesting about your story, because I have all the research here. And if I just zoom out and I just think about it, I think How does a guy who flunked out of first grade end up, you know, one of the Miss Macy's class. Yeah, m th shout out to Miss Macy. Uh how does that guy end up You know, where you are today. Super successful.

1:34 built a 10 billion dollar company. You're doing what a lot of entrepreneurs want to do, right? Like if I think about how I got into entrepreneurship. Like what would have been the win? The win would have been I'm having fun. I am building a company that matters. You know, I'm having the success. I'm doing it with talented people. You're you know, one of your co founders like a fourth grade friend. So that's kind of that is winning to me. And you've done that. And so I think what's exciting to me is to hear

1:57 I guess how you approach this, how you've gone from The guy Can flunk out a first grade to to make that happen. If I if I had met you when you were a kid, maybe twelve, thirteen years old, fourteen years old. What'd you call yourself like? Were you really ambitious then? Were you really smart? Oh, you if you would have met me in in grade school, you probably would have joined the crow of a lot of people that made fun of me for

2:19 You know, being dumb. You know, I I would go to this room called the resource room. And the resource room for kids that couldn't read. And so then I would go And I would write all my letters backwards and they would like give me a Dick and Jane book to read in the third grade and I would struggle through it. And it was it was so dyslexic, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've I've I have dysgraphia and a form of dyslexia and I didn't no one knew what it was in those days. People just thought you were stupid. And people just thought that you you you just couldn't read and you couldn't keep up, which is why I flunked the first grade. So

2:52 It's not fun when you flunk the first grade when all your friends that go to the second grade make fun of you every year for basically twelve years of your life to know you're the kid that flunked the first grade. We're all friends in the first grade and then you didn't go with the rest of the kids. And so I had a a lot of um self confidence issues, I would say. I had a lot of questions about you know, whether or not I was even gonna be able to provide for myself at at that moment in time. I overcompensated with sports. I guess I overcompensated with

3:23 Um, you know, trying to be be a dynamic person. I don't know that I overcompensated in in the best ways, but I had a couple of teachers that took me under their wing. There's this one guy, Ron Edwards. He was the uh gym teacher. He was this amazing guy, man. And um You know, you gotta imagine, I don't have a father. I'm raised by a single mom. And he kind of stepped in and he would be like he knew I loved football. And he would say, look, Hayes, do you want to go in at the time the St. Louis Cardinals were there and there is this uh

3:52 quar quarterback, his name was Jim Hart, and there was this running back, his name was OJ Anderson. And that was like my outlet that I was like a fast runner, you know,'cause I wasn't good at school. Like man, I gotta I need something. I needed some thing that I can anchor on that maybe I'm good at something and it was the only thing I was good at was the forty yard dash. But he would take me to these banquets where I would have the opportunity to meet Jim Hart or OJ Anderson. And it was just kind of a lens for

4:20 Oh, okay, these guys, maybe maybe there's a way out. And so now if you meet somebody who Maybe as a kid who's dyslexic or has a learning disability like that. What's the perspective you have now, now with the benefit of hindsight, yeah, uh, about those same kind of like quote unquote limitations.

4:38 Well it's interesting. Now when you sit down with With people Um that have achieved extraordinary outcomes. And Jim Collins wrote a book about this called Good to Great. He talked about level five leaders.

4:50 And I had an opportunity to have lunch with Jim Collins at Stanford. Like it had to be fifteen years ago. And this was an unlock for me. And he goes, Hey, you're a level five leader, you know, you're operating on this frequency that allows you to, you know, create these businesses and do these things. I'm like how what is a level five leader? What's the Well Oftentimes with a level five leader.

5:10 they have a great deal of compassion and empathy for people. They'll off they often give up to go up. They have the ability to empower people instead of micromanage people, recruit top talent, and put them in a place that allows those organizations to scale. And so the reason is for this, if you dig a couple lay lower is oftentimes

5:31 They have a learning disability. Many times they're on the spectrum. And so people that have Osbergers or they're on the spectrum when they're in in school, they get made fun of a lot too. This this turns out this big T trauma where all your friends make fun of you and you don't have a lot of friends and you're an outcast as a young person. wants you to do things later in your life to gain affirmation.

5:54 Um and get respect, especially if you're a male and you want male affirmation. The second component of that that often you'll see Is Uh Daddy issues.

6:05 Okay, a lot of great leaders that are level five leaders. have pretty severe daddy issues. They had a major falling out with their father. Maybe it's a situation like me where my father left when I was two. So I don't really remember meeting my dad. I didn't meet him until I was, I think, you know, around thirty years old. And so When you dig into somebody's level five leaders, you go, Oh There it is. There's he he's looking for male affirmation, he's looking for respect.

6:31 Um, he's that's why he grinds and does the hundred hundred hour weeks to gain that affirmation. And the third one oftentimes is Uh it's a near death experience. Or It's a um career ending injury in sports or something along those lines. And that will force that individual to make a greater sacrifice. That and and and it also forced them not to quit in the face of a pretty significant amount of adversity, which unfortunately uh you know, a lot of founders and leaders do.

7:00 You you said a phrase in there, you said they they give what'd you say? They give up to get up? What did you say? You gotta you gotta give up to go up. Give up to g so when you're really bright. Let's say you're the guy that gets a thirty five out of thirty six on the A C T, or you get a you know, fifteen fifty on the on the SAT and you get Yeah, you get to brag about it, you know, at the at the cocktail parties about what you did. And you realize like I'm the smartest guy in the class. Okay. M by the way, my two business partners, Jason Walker and Matt Dawson, were the smartest guys in the class. They had all the tassels when we graduated from high school, all the tassels we graduated from college. I wasn't stupid. I'm like, hey, I want you guys on my side, right? And there's lots of other people in my life where they were the smartest person in the class. The smartest person in the class oftentimes

7:44 It's not ego. It's actually Um, they're just very competent and they get frustrated quickly with other people that it takes them longer to learn things. And so what do they do there? So forget it. I'll just do it on my own. Right. I'll do it more efficiently. I can do it faster. Why would I take an hour to train this individual on how to do it when I can do it myself in 15 minutes? Well, the problem is they keep doing that same task over and over and over for 15 minutes and they never give up to go up. And they end up becoming a control freak. And then they wonder why their business isn't going to scale because they have to be involved in everything. thing all the time. Right. And so someone that has

8:20 Um dyslexia. as an example. Well, you learn to surround yourself with really smart people, right? They can do oh wow, you're amazing at bond math. You're like the best math mind I've ever met in my entire lifetime. I'd like to start a company with you. You're brilliant. And so you start to surround yourself with all these really talented, amazing, extraordinary minds that are good at different things. And instead of trying to do it on your own, you're celebrating that talent around you. Have you ever heard what Ari Emmanuel says about this? What? So Ari who runs CAA now Endeavour. Uh he's he also, I think, was dyslexic. And so they're somebody was asking, they're like,

8:59 How do you read contracts? Your whole business is contracts, basically. You're you're a talent agent. Like your every day is contracts. He's like, I sit in a room with people who are amazing at contracts. He's like because I couldn't. He's like I literally could not focus enough to get through it. So I just built I built in a machine of people like

9:17 Who can I bring in that will bring that to the table in the same thing, like I respect them, I value them, I need them, and they know that and we because of that, I'm able to have my zone of genius, they're able to have theirs, and we built a great, you know, team from that. Yeah. You worked with and for Larlison.

9:35 And with Elon. Both of whom I would say are like kind of legends in the in Silicon Valley and as as leaders, longtime leaders of companies. Um What what was their style? Is it similar to what you said? Do they have their own play style that's totally different? And give me a sense. How close proximity were you? Yeah, I I was probably like six levels away from from Larry Ellison because literally I was a kid in a cubicle

9:58 that was um a good botherer of database administrators. I would basically have my headset on. I would call you, I would bother you to buy buy Oracle seven dot zero They're like, oh man, you're so good at bothering people. We're gonna let you manage twelve other people and teach them how to bother people. Yeah, yeah. It's like, hey, can you teach the other 12 people how to bother people and and sell Oracle eight dot zero? I was like, Yeah, no, no problem at all. And then they're like, wow, you know, we're thinking about not selling one or two products, but like three hundred products. So by the end of it, you know, I I was there about eight years. You know, I I I was fortunate. I was a global account manager. I could sell the whole suite of products. And different things. But what I learned the most was one, what phenomenal products do. The fact that you could sell air for eighty, ninety million dollars and all you ship was a CD blew my mind. I just couldn't believe this whole concept of software.

10:50 And and and the talent. of people that could come together. to deploy those assets at that stage in like the information age. It was the biggest wealth creator at the time when I was there. It was between Bill Gates and Larry Ellison on who was the wealthiest individual in the world at the time. And so I was super inspired by Larlison and very inspired by the collective talent that they recruit and and surrounded you with. What's his superpower, right? You said at the time maybe one of the wealthiest people in the world. Vision, he could pivot. I mean, well, you know, obviously we just started with as a database company and there's a handful of other database companies at the time. It was like Sybase, Informex. uh you know, um SQL Server with Microsoft, and then some of those started to drop off or we acquired them, but the superpower

11:35 was his ability to have big bold vision and ideas to go, nope, now we're gonna be an applications company. No, now we're gonna be a middleware company. Now we're gonna go acquire some of the hardware providers. Now we're gonna become a software as a service company. And being able to persuade an organization of that size at the time to shift those gears. And and people it was such an aspirational, inspirational place to work with such urgency. Like ever no matter how much we grew. you know, just the urgency to close out a quarter or the urgency to close out a year. Um you just saw the grind factor and the givea shit factor from a group of people.

12:15 It was next level. Right. And so I I learned like I learned how to grind. I learned like, yeah, this is why you come in on a Saturday. This is why you get in the office at five thirty in the morning. This is why you skip your lunch. This is why you go to training. And so a lot of people candidly, they were gonna go play basketball at three o'clock in the afternoon because Larry built out all these amazing facilities with basketball courts and six restaurants and all these things. And I was like, nope, I'm gonna go back into training class. I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna go learn about, you know, negotiation skills. I'm gonna go learn about all these various courses you could take to to learn about the technology, obviously. So if you were a feverish learner And you were driven by growth. Um it was it was just a platform where you could run as fast as you could. And his mindset was

12:58 I don't care if you're 23 years old. I don't care if you went to Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale. All I care about is your numbers. Hit the numbers, get promoted. And so humbly, every year I got promoted in this company. And they would joke that, you know, when I would join the team, they go, okay, we know you're going to be our boss next year. Um, but it just came down to work ethic and your ability to post up numbers. Um against your your peers. It was very competitive. The bottom twenty percent got cut.

13:26 The top twenty percent got promoted and you could look around and it didn't matter age, race, You know, anything. It just came down to performance. It's like a pr it's like a pro sports team. More than it is like'cause you know, you people describe it like oh, we're a family or you know, they try to create like comfortable environments, but it sounds like this was more

13:45 competitive and meritocratic in terms of the the culture. Absolutely. And it it was it was high risk, high reward. I mean if you if you performed, you were compensated accordingly You know, I made a a tremendous amount of income as a young individual there. And what you started to see is the confidence build amongst all these other individuals on what they could achieve when they were pushed to the to their peak performance level. And so you started to see people like Um, you know, Craig Conway l leave and go run PeopleSoft at the time, which was our biggest competitor on the HR software side of the business. Tom Cebel left. He built this amazing software program we use to do all of our customer resource management called Oasis. And Tom Siebel left to do to go start Cel Systems. And um and he created a great company. Another gentleman left to go start uh Net Suite. Mark Benioff leaves to go start Salesforce.com. So you see all these individuals

14:39 And and learning and and believing in themselves and their ability to perform regardless of their background or where they grew up. From a kid that grew up in Creevecore, Missouri with his mom in an apartment while she worked three jobs and and you know, walked to the washer and dryer every day to You know, the the the guy that you know d had an undergrad from Harvard and it and went to GSB at Stanford. You were all equals. Right. And then you watch these people and their ability to go launch uh their own companies and in some cases Larry was very supportive. And you know, he was a big investor in Salesforce.com as an example when Mark left and did that. And then the others he acquired. He acquired PeopleSoft back. He acquired Sable Systems back. He acquired Net Suite back. And so it was just really interesting to see collaborative alphas. Like a group of people that just saw themselves as as the ability to kind of create technology within the valley and the level of respect and admiration that we all shared with one another. Right. Hey, I got a quick break'cause I want to tell you something cool. So our sponsor for this episode is HubSpot, but instead of

15:44 the ad telling you about HubSpot. They just want to do something that's useful for you. So they did some research and they found that a bunch of people in our community uh have side hustles. They start a business on the side, they get it going, and then it becomes their main hustle over time. And so instead of just telling you about the features of HubSpot, they wanted to give you something that will be useful for your side hustle. And so they've put together a database of AI prompts. So things that you could put into chat GPT or your favorite AI tool. that will help you with your side hustle. So check it out. It's gonna save you a bunch of time, I think.

16:13 It's a um prompt database that you should be using. to uh make your side hustle more successful. And you could use this as your little personal little cheat sheet, your tool set to be a better operator with your side hustle. So you can either scan this QR code that's on the screen. Or get the link in the description to get the AI prompt database. All right, back to the show. Thanks, HubSpot. You also get the itch to leave to start your own thing.

16:39 Well you see all those other individuals leave, you can't help but be inspired. But you have a cushy job at that point. It wasn't cushy, I gotta tell you. Yeah, I was I was making good money. I was making really good money. When you're making seven figures And you're like I don't know, man. Twenty five, twenty six years old from a kid in Missouri like What'd you do with the money as a young kid, by the way, did you nothing. I I couldn't believe it was real. I just kept it in my bank account. You know I put it under the match. I was I was sharing an apartment with Matt Dawson and in uh down the marina in San Francisco, running the Golden Gate Bridge.

17:12 every day and Matt and I started to whiteboard all these crazy ideas in our apartment. What was on the table? What what's on the whiteboard? Oh, you would laugh, man. So like so we loved Tahoe he and I built this home in Tahoe and there's this guy, his name is Randy Palmean. And Randy Palmean had hot tub company. And so Matt and I had this idea, I was like, man, we could just buy Randy Palmean's hot tub company. I'm sure Randy's like a little checked out. He's getting older. He's ready to sell it. And I mean, the annual recurring revenue of these hot tubs and the maintenance of these hot tubs could be a great business around Lake Tao. We'll we'll snowboard in the winter. We'll wake surf in the summer and we'll just take care of the hot tub business. We almost did it. We were we had we talked to our our fiancees at the time, they're our wives now, and we were like, Well, do you guys think you would move to Tahoe with us? We could all live in this one house that we built. up in Kigswood Estates, you know, this house Matt and I built up there together. And we'll raise our kids there and we'll just sell um hot tubs and we'll maintain hot tubs.

18:14 Let's put it this way, the the wives shut that one down. Mostly the living together was the problem. Yeah, yeah. They're like, uh no, we're not we're not doing that. We thought about starting a car wash. We put a bunch of time and energy into hey, we could start all these different car washes together. And then ultimately what we decided was And this was based on kind of a background of learning that you could remotely sell. Anything. Once you realize you can sell really complex items like we were selling from a software perspective, you can do it virtually over the internet. You're like, okay, you can sell anything virtually over the internet. It was a huge breakthrough moment for me in my career. And that led to everything else that I did. And so ultimately I said, Hey.

18:54 What if we took Matt and Jason's background in residential mortgages. And we just digitized it. We just created a virtual um technology platform that allowed us to sell these mortgages and other financial products. Maybe it could be insurance or other things virtually. So you were like I could take my sales

19:14 Playbook. Not maybe not playbook, but my sales experience of like I could sell the stuff over the phone and through the internet. But now let's find a product that might work for it. Not hot tubs, but mortgages. What Was that

19:27 I guess what was the sales model back then? Is this is this like Google ads didn't lead into a phone call or is no Google ads. There's no Google ads. There's bar barely the internet at this point in time. What was the model? What were you doing? Yeah, so so here so here, let's just go back in time. So ninety seven, ninety eight is when the internet really starts to catch its it's some tailwinds, right? And so you start hearing about like dot com verticals and this is all the big dot com companies start popping up. Well, really when you look back at the internet in those days and what was going on, the internet was a way to sell things

19:59 um online. Right. It was like, hey, do you want to do a trade? Maybe you want to do that on um e trade. Right. Uh, do you want to uh you know, you remember Web Van, I don't know, right? If you want to buy groceries or anything, you can buy them online and web van will deliver them to you at books on Amazon. So it was basically like hey, now there's this virtual retail environment where you could sell anything. So that led you to think Okay, well what are complicated things that everybody needs in the world? That you could basically bring to the virtual e-commerce world. It's what people are doing today with a Gentic AI. It's the same thing. How do I take a complex business that's very people intensive, maybe it's insurance company, maybe it's a mortgage company, I'll just bring a Gentec AI into it and I'll automate it. Well that's what people were thinking about in ninety seven, ninety eight.

20:48 And so our idea. when I left in two thousand and three, right? Because what happens is Dot com crash happens in 2000. Everybody gets wiped out. 85, 90% of everybody gets wiped out. Google launches around ninety-eight, ninety-nine, once everyone gets crushed and becomes Google. But that was my window where I said, okay, I've been here eight years. I've seen a lot of people come and go. I've seen a tremendous amount of success. I've seen a tremendous amount of failure. I think now I've got the maturity to think of a big enough idea that can really scale and basically I can take advantage of the internet wave. The information age had already happened. Those guys had murdered it and became the wealthiest people in the world. It was jobs, it was Gates, it was Andy Grove, it was it was um you know Larry Ellison. And so now it became the internet age. And I was like, okay, and I basically created a bad version of Quick and Loans.

21:42 Dan Gilbert and Quick and Loans did it a lot better than I did. Same idea, same time. Dan was a little ahead of me and executed it significantly better. Well, they bought into it, right? So that that that was kind of like the the or they they they kind of branched out of into it and they had a tremendous amount of capital and they really invested in technology in a thoughtful way. that allowed their organization to scale and bigger build a bigger brand. D Dan was older than me, he was more mature than me. He he was just a better entrepreneur than me, period, at that point in time. I was like a a thirty year old kid, you know, with the big dream trying to figure it out with my two best friends from the fourth grade and my sophomore year of business school. And you guys self fund it? Did it work right away? Were you We totally self funded it. I think we put each put in like fifty grand or something along those lines, you know? And so If it it well we

22:35 Humbly, we created success very quickly. We decided to move to Sacramento, California from the Silicon Valley because we were going to do these cheesy radio commercials. And um I got stuck doing the cheesy radio commercials. I'm so embarrassed by it to this day. I literally like, hey, hi, I'm Hayes Bad. Oh God, it was so bad. It was like I had this breathy voice and I would be like, Hi, I'm Hayes Barnard. You know, call me. And you know, get a rate in the fours, which is like the the you know, interest rates were in the fours for like 10 years. So I just said the same rate for basically the decade of my life. And then the my last line was, I'm so confident I can save you money, I'll even pay for your home to be appraised. And this is when like Wells Bargo or Bank of America or all these players, yeah, they're charging six hundred bucks for an appraisal. And I thought, Hey, okay, that's a nice thing to do. I'll give you the appraisal for free.

23:24 If um if if you just give us an opportunity to do your mortgage online for you. But it was um it it's just funny the things you do, Sean. Oh my have you ever done anything like like when you look back at your life and go, I cannot believe I actually did that. But It was like a stepping stone for get you to to another stage in your life. This business was a sushi restaurant chain. So even worse, like, you know, we were This is before DoorDash, before Eats, we were del it was like a delivery only'cause we We didn't want to sign a ten year lease. We were like, We don't even know if people want this concept to try to build the Chipotle of sushi. And so I used to go

23:59 Not door to door, but floor to floor in a skyscraper'cause I realized The front desk lady. orders lunch for everybody in the office. The most viral way to Teach everybody in the office that we exist. Like if I could just schmooze the first front desk lady

24:11 I can get like a flora business. So I would just put go in the elevator, I'd sneak in because I didn't have a badge. Yeah. And then I'd push one and I'd get up and I'd smooch her. Then I'd go back and then I'd push two and I'd go up like a fifty flo uh floor building. But again, it's like Our business idea was terrible. Objectively. Uh it was clearly a terrible idea. But you know, that type of selling was actually like pretty interesting and then made all bunch of mistakes and then the story was kinda good and it led

24:36 You know, the next guy who met me was this like guy who just sold his company for five hundred million dollars and he found our story so amusing that he was like I just want you guys to come do something with me. And I think if we had not done something Interesting or amusing. That made him literally like laugh. I don't think he would have wanted to take a bet on us. Like he kinda just saw, like, okay, these guys are hustlers.

24:55 You're kinda stupid, but like, you know, maybe point it in the right direction, they'll do something, or at least they'll bring some good energy to where I'll you know, they'll make me feel young and alive again. I don't know what his reason was, but it led to the next opportunity in the next. So people always say, like, you know, how'd you make it? I'm like Well, I started carrying golf bags at the local country club when I was eight years old. I would carry one bag when I was eight years old. By the time I was nine years old, I would carry two. And I would walk in your line and I would talk while you were putting. I was like a total knucklehead. Like a total but they like kinda liked me. They were like, hey, I like this kid. He rides his bike here. for like an hour to come carry two golf bags at the Bell Reef Country Club. There's all these rich guys, the Bell Reef Country Club that I got to go, wow, you guys are members of this like super nice country club in St. Louis, Missouri. And then I would get twenty bucks a bag and they would buy me a hot dog at the turn. And I'm like, okay, cool, man. I did that eight to nine. Yeah. Live and large. Dude, if you give me twenty bucks Like today I'm happy. Exactly. And so like when I think about the waterfall of all my gigs or the things that I did, then I went to go, I was a sandwich artist at Subway. And they wouldn't let you work at Subway until you're like 18. But like I got this guy, Jim Condom, that that was the manager. I'm like, look, man.

26:07 Um I just please, I promise you, I'm really mature. I've had this job, I've been working for a while. So by the time I was fifteen years old, I'd ride my bike to Subway. I was a sandwich artist. And so I I like I'd make the best. I'd carve the boat back in the day where they carve the boat and the bread just perfectly in there. People wait in line, they'd be like, nope, waiting for the kid. The kid gets more black olives. He gives you more more more uh you know, pickles like I would work there till two in the morning. When I was like fifteen years old. And then I went to um this is another funny one. I worked at Amico. I was uh I worked at a gas station. So I'd be the guy that would come out, I'd check your tires, I'd fill up your tank, I'd check your oil, I'd wash your windows. And then when I really when the when all the all the uh the grease monkey guys would give me a nod, you know, these guys were amazing. They were incredible mentors of mine. They'd be like, Okay, Hayes, you can do an alternator.

26:57 Or you can do a headlight, or you can change the, you know, you can plug a few tires or take it off. So I l I'd clean these guys tools, they'd make fun of me, they'd just be capping on me all day long. And I'd get their and then uh if the tool had a little bit of grease on it, be like, nope, do it again, kid. You know? So we had this funny rapport and then they would leave the whole bays. just trashed and Jason Walker and I Would literally go in there and we would race how fast we could clean the bays. Right. And so it's so funny, if you think about that as kids. Jason and I would clean the bays, we'd put the soap down. I'm like, dude, we can clean these bays in 15 minutes today. Well, of course, naturally later in my life, I'm like, we gotta work together. We can read each other's minds. We work so efficiently together. But it started in a gas station. in Missouri, you know, with a bunch of guys that would just we had the best rapport with this awesome group of people at at the Amaco on Olive and Fifi Road, you know? And so it just goes on from thing to thing, you know, whatever, working at on a farm after that. But it gives you this ability to kind of have this humility.

27:59 And have these stepping stones in your life where you meet people where they got you go, Okay, you know, this this these are the things I need to do to be successful. I learned so many lessons from these people. I was like, Hayes, everyone he meets I was like, it kinda has a nickname for him right away. And it builds this rapport right away. Yeah. Because look, I live in Silicon Valley. There's a lot of rich and successful people there. There's not a lot of people who have the like fun to hang charm that you have. Oh, I want to steal a little bit from your game. on that. You know, you it's oh what's up, big country? Oh what's going on here. So like a Ben is in my phone now as Ben Big Dog Levy, right? It's like I'm just giving nicknames out now. That's gonna it's gonna be my thing. Is that something you intentionally picked up from somebody where I picked it up, this guy Zek Seeger that I used to work for, okay So Zek Seeger, he was like the black sheep of the Seeger family, and the Seeger family owned all the car dealerships in Missouri. So what does Zeke do? Zeke loved to gamble, he loved to drink beer.

29:01 And he loved to play golf. So he started he had a family farm and he started a driver rage on the family farm. And I was the Johnny come cut the grass, make sure that that all the T lines were set right. But Zeke had these nicknames for everybody that worked for him. And I'll tell you, he taught me one of the greatest lessons of my life. And and this this one is is I pass this one on to my kids. So I did everything as fast as I possibly could,'cause I learned at the gas station just do it fast, get an attaboy from your boss, you know, get the gold star, go on to the next day. And so Zeke brings me in.

29:38 And he had all these nicknames for everybody. And uh so I'm this is my second summer there. He said you're fired. And I'm like What Zeke? What like what's going on? And he'd have his little he he called him his little girls. His little girls. So he had this little Budweiser in his hand.

29:53 And he said, um, yeah, you're fired. You're out of here. And I said, what? And he goes, every day you come out here and you run around and you get all these little things, you know, done real quick. You go out there and you weed eat the railroad tracks and then you you you you pull the weeds out of the sand traps and you set the T lines and you do it faster than everybody else. And I said, Oh, thanks, Ezek, I really appreciate it. He goes, You know, the problem is you come in here at eleven o'clock every morning after you get everything done and you ask me what you should do.

30:23 For the rest of the day. Hey, Zeke, I got all that done. What do you want me to do? You do it every single day and you've done it for a year straight. He goes, You're fired. And I said, But Zeke, I'm not leaving. I mean, come on, man. You can't fire me for something like this. And he goes, No, you're absolutely fired until I don't wanna see you for the rest of the summer. You don't come in here and don't ask me what to do again.

30:44 And I'm like okay. So I was angry. I went out there and I picked those balls. And then now at 11 o'clock every morning I'd look around. I'm like, okay, I probably need to go take the hay and move the hay up into the barn. I probably need to go out there and clean the barbecue pit. So I didn't talk to him for the rest of the summer. I was like, I'm not gonna go in there one time. I'm not gonna get in there, you know, whatever it may be. So he brings me at the end of the summer. Your last day, right? You're going back to back to school. I said, Yeah, this is my last day. And he goes.

31:12 You coming back next summer? And I said, Yeah, I'd love to come back next summer. And he said, You're the boss. And he gave me this big ring of keys. And he goes, There you go. And I said, What? And he goes, You're the boss. I said, All these guys are ten years older than me. And he goes, you're the boss of all of them now.

31:26 Because you know why? You didn't come here and ask me what to do. You knew exactly what to do. And that stuck with me for the rest of my life. When I worked at Oracle and Larry Ellison, I never went to Dean Panziga's office once and asked him what to do. I never went into Hillary Koplau's office once and asked him what to do. I thought, okay, what would they want me to do as the boss? And when you do that. You become the boss. Yeah, you think like the boss, you become the boss. You become the boss. Yeah. And so it's the person that goes in there looking for the out of boy, looking for the pat on the back, looking for the affirmation or hey, what's the next thing you want me to do? They're never the boss. Right. It's BYO. You bring your own clarity, uh right, versus being a a sort of direction taker uh at all times. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people get that wrong. Yeah.

32:08 Yeah. So if we go back into the to the story for a second, so you you leave You're doing the radio ads. So the business was working. You Start to build this business.

32:17 Now a mortgage business sounds like A good business to be in. But There's always bumps and and bruises on in in in any kind of roller coaster here. So

32:26 What happens with that business? Well eight happens, you know, the the financial crisis. So, you know, on Douglas Boulevard where our office was, I think ninety five percent of mortgage companies went out of business. You know, a lot of people didn't have their hedge position right. They blew themselves up there because interest rates had increased. Then also it did the people that did subprime mortgages were done. We were lucky. We didn't do a lot of subprime mortgages. We didn't do any reverse amortization mortgages. So I wanted to ask you about this. So so you're you're in the You're in the eye of the storm, right? Like the O eight crisis.

32:58 Which is subprime mortgage crisis. You're in the mortgage business. I'm in it. About this. I'm curious like W A, what happened from your perspective, what's your kind of like layman's explanation of what actually went wrong? And then B, how did you not fall into the same trap that many others did? It seems like You know

33:17 there was an incentive to give these subprime mortgages out you're gonna make more money. Every mortgage sales guy in the country at that time wanted to sell reverse amortization mortgages and wanted to sell subprime mortgages. Stated loans was the big thing, right? Let's just have someone make up their income and then we'll give them a any any loan we can. Stated loan, you yeah, I'm good for it. Yeah, yeah, I'm good for it. No, you would basically say, uh, hey, Sean, what's your income? And you would say, Oh, I make two hundred thousand dollars a year. Okay, great, two hundred thousand dollars a year, you qualify for this loan. So what happened at the end of the day, there was a bunch of loans that people received that they shouldn't have received. Okay. Okay. The underwriting criteria wasn't tight enough. That's what happened. That's why the crisis happened the default rate skyrocketed, people walked away from their homes. They're like, hey, I don't know. I I have uh no equity in this house at all. Uh who cares? I'll just walk away. I'll I'll take the the light fixtures out of here. Right. And uh you know, whatever else putting a lot down then basically. They were putting nothing down. So nothing down, stated income. Yeah. And so that felt really, really wrong to me. Like morally

34:17 I was like I have a saying the devil doesn't tempt you with spinach. Okay. All right. And so you're like, you know, it's like, oh, you know, like it's uh and then the guy the the sales guys would come in, you know, the mortgage guys, hey man, you know, if people want red cars, we gotta sell red cars. If people want hamburgers, we gotta sell'em hamburgers, Hayes. I heard every analogy under the sun. I'm like, we're not selling hamburgers. We're not selling red cars. I don't know how this movie ends, but those people don't deserve those loans. And so we're gonna walk away from the volume. And we did. We walked away from a tremendous amount of volume. We walked away from a tremendous amount of people that wanted to come work for us, take advantage of our cheesy uh radio commercials and the brand that we had created for ourselves. and sell those loans because what do they care? They'll just sell those loans until that company blow up and they'll go on to the next company. And so I give Jason and Matt a ton of credit here. Jason has a brilliant mind for underwriting criteria and he has huge ethics. And he basically said, man, it's not right. It doesn't smell right. We shouldn't do it. And Jason and Matt were experts in the industry. And I said, Then great, we're not doing it.

35:22 And so it was a it was a hard decision at the time um because you're right, everybody else was doing it. It was the only reason we survived. There were so many buybacks from other companies. They just said, Hey, we can't buy them back. We're out. And we we had done some stated loans and we had to buy some of those back, but it wasn't at all near the magnitude if we would have done subprime loans and we would have done those kinds of things. You sort of look wrong. Until you look right in that situation. Right? Meaning like you're just growing a little bit slower than other people or you're leaving money on the table.

35:54 Until Finally the crash happens and then it's then you're validated for that strategy. But it's like Most people are not willing to be r to to look wrong or be wrong. You know, for three hundred sixty four days. Yeah, for the one that was right, you know. A lot of times it's more than three hundred and sixty four days. Sometimes it's three years. You know, there's been about five companies that went bankrupt recently.

36:20 In that space. And Look, we raised pricing I think sixteen times because the the Fed had raised rates so much in a short period of time. And it was hard because we lost a lot of market share for a period of time. People said, Hey, you know, if you guys Are are gonna have to increase your pricing, but the bond math didn't work. The unit economics didn't work. And I was like, look, if the unit economics don't work, at some point the music stops and you die. You blow yourself up. And so, you know, w the reason that we're a healthy company and we survived was for two reasons. One, the diversification. And two was because of the discipline.

36:55 And the devil doesn't tempt you with spinach. And and the the second piece to the mortgage piece, just to go back to it, is what happens after oh eight is Look, I had to lay off four hundred people. So we had a couple, I would say fifteen hundred employees or something along those lines and I I was so depressed, man. I would like literally throw up in my driveway before I could go see my family um every night. I was so, so depressed. They say you're never real CEO until you go through a near death experience and I went through mine there. I would go to this rock and like literally pray, just get me through this and I promise you I'll do good things for the world. And so What I did was diversified. I launched an insurance company next to the mortgage company that allows us to save people money on their homeowners and auto insurance. I then had the idea to get into the energy business and save people money on their electrical bill. And the way I did that was through the residential solar business. So that diversification

37:48 is a good thing at times. Um, it forces you to kind of diversify the risk within your company, but you've got to have the unit economic discipline on the front end and and have a a good sense of ethics and and the right thing to do, you know, when when other competitors may or may or not be willing to do that. So where do the where does that strategy come from at that point? Where do the where do the ideas to do Insurance, energy. 'Cause you're in the middle of a You're weathering a storm. You're laying off people.

38:16 When I was little, I uh accidentally almost burned down my house. Um for like You know, it's like everyone comes everyone in the neighborhood's looking at you and it's like He tried to Make a cookie and almost burn down the house. Like you know, like the mortgage industry almost burned down the house uh of America. Totally. So you're in a tough spot. Where do these ideas come from at that stage? Man, it's when your soul's getting crushed is when you get the download.

38:37 At least that that that's was it for me. When I worked at Oracle, I would run to the Golden Gate Bridge most mornings. And I sat in a meeting there um where uh with HP. We had just done a really big uh deal with HP. And what I realized at the time was

38:53 You know, yeah, they they maybe needed this software as a CRM solution. It was a new CRM solution for Oracle, but likely it was a horse trading deal that I was a part of for some reciprocity between Oracle buying um, you know, a lot of HP servers and laptop computers and printers. And then in return HP saying, Hey, you know, we're gonna take a risk here and buy buy a CRM solution from Oracle. And I just felt a little bit like, man, is this what I'm gonna do with my life? I'm gonna be in these rooms, I'm gonna work with legal groups for like a half a year to get these deals done. And then it's it's about it's a trade, you know, in some way, shape, or form at the end of the day. And so I wanted more meaning in my life. I wanted to and so I thought about, hey, what what's important to me. Okay, my mom and I never owned a home. We rented our entire lives. I watched her paid four hundred bucks a month in rent our whole lives. If we were always strapped, I always watched my mom work three jobs. I was always like, Mom, can't you get educated and buy a home? And I was just clu talking to a good friend of mine um just a few days ago. He's from the inner city in St. Louis, and he said, Hey, as you realize

39:56 our people. when the way we grew up we'll never buy a home unless someone really sits down and educates them. And that was my dream was, hey, could I create a mortgage company that could educate people online, that could educate people in a non-threatening way, where they could learn about the ability to uh own a home instead of renting their whole life, the American dream of owning this home, right? And so I found meaning in that. And I found an other group of people that found meaning in that. Of course I hired a bunch of processors and underwriters that were single moms because I was raised by a single mom. Of course I asked my mom to move from um, Chicago at the time. She was taking care of her mother out to Sacramento to come work with me and be along my side. And uh, you know, she just retired this year, but she was with me for whatever was fifteen solid years or more. And then

40:42 that led me to think about, well, wait a minute, what if I could ed educate people on their homeowners insurance and auto insurance and how to protect these assets? And then I found a lot of, you know, I I candidly I had um a vision for what could I do that really solves a big problem around this that also is tied to a big bill inside of the home? And that was the vision for it's the electric bill. and it's clean energy and I can electrify the home. And that is an amazing opportunity. And so I would advertise with the cheesy ad. about hey, I can save you money on your biggest bills and people would call in and we would save them money on their mortgage payment, their homeowners and auto insurance and their their their electric bill. That create diversification, but it also allowed me

41:27 to see what three separate entities underneath one holding company could do to make an impact in in homeowners' lives. Right. I want to read your quote that I really liked. Uh You said The difference between rejection results is just how long you stick with it. And this is like, you know, on one hand it's like okay, this is kind of just like fortune cookie advice, but for some reason it hit for me. What's I guess where'd you get that and I guess like what's the kind of like unpack that. What's the story there?

41:52 Look, I think a lot of people quit when it gets hard. And you you sometimes you don't even know you're quitting. You just come up with a reason why you think you need to quit. You become master salesman to yourself To point you in the other direction. Yep. Yep. You know, and they you want to run it by all your friends that you know they're gonna tell you to quit. You know how you do that. I know the five guys that'll tell me I should quit. So I'm gonna go call those five guys, and then they'll tell me it's okay to quit. And then I'm know I'm I like that this is I'm blessed for quitting. Um and so what happens to a lot of companies is All companies, they go through really challenging, difficult times. And it's inevitable. If you run these companies, these these companies are just riddled with problems, right? That's what they are. And you're always constantly solving the next problem. And in some way, shape, or form, they're all cyclical. They always face some massive headwind. It could be a policy headwind. It could be a financial headwind because of interest rates. It could be a headwind because of terrorists. Whatever it is, you're gonna face one.

42:47 And so the key in those moments when you're getting your soul crushed is to find a way to get through it, to find a way to not quit and make sure the team stays together and not quit because the valley is the value and no one realizes that when all your competition dies. Um, and they they're they're going out of business one after another because of maybe a bad decision, or maybe they lost the team because people weren't inspired anymore, or maybe it just got too hard and people were fed up with it. That is the moment where your company is actually creating value. Now it wouldn't show that in your stock price. Right. It wouldn't show that, you know, in in in your board meeting necessarily. But That's the difference. You know, I just went through a really crazy difficult cycle in residential solar over the course of the last

43:32 Really two and a half to three years. Usually these cycles only last about a year. This one was two and a half to three years. Now we've diversified significantly and made a bunch of investments and and innovated in really big ways, but the valley is the value and Ninety nine percent of people quit. in the in the moment. They're like, oh, you know, maybe I should just join the board, or maybe I should just kind of do something else. Because again, winners have options, you know? If you got a little money in the bank, you're like, ah, you know what, man, I'm just gonna go do something else with my life. Like this too much of an opportunity cost for me to sit here and slug it out. But as you grind it out during those moments There's two things that happen. One is you gain tremendous market share. And respect from your board, okay, in those kinds of moments.

44:18 And the second thing that happens is You see yourself as a different person in the face of adversity and the muscle that you created and what you had to learn to get through that moment, which makes you a stronger executive for the next wave of pain that's gonna come your way. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know, HubSpot helped Tumblr solve a big problem. Uh Tumblr needed to move fast. They were trying to produce trending content, but their marketing department was stuck waiting on engineers to code every single email campaign.

44:45 But now They use HubSpot's customer platform to email real time trending content. to millions of users in just seconds. And the result was huge. Three times more engagement and double the content creation.

44:56 If you want to move faster like Tumblr, visit hubspot.com. Alright, back to the show. When you were at Uh Solar City. I I mean Solar City's kind of a controversial company. Like I remember

45:08 From the outside it was like this incredible company, then Tesla's gonna acquire it and then it was like But wait, is it a g is it in good financial health? Is it not in good financial health? There's a lot of like I guess narrative around it. Did you learn anything about kind of like the internal storytelling that's required to not only get yourself to believe, but but the whole team to believe when there's a lot of noise on the outside.

45:28 Yeah, absolutely. Don't don't listen to the noise. Like I I have thin skin, which is why I don't do Twitter, which is why I don't do podcasts. When like I don't want to read all the comments of people that say, Oh gosh, that guy, this and that. I don't know why. Like I care. Like some people don't care. I'm like I actually care. Nobody cares. Some people say they don't care. I but I care. I I I really care. And and um And so I'm not I'm not good at the public thing. I'm not good at putting myself out there, you know, which is why I don't do any of the self promotion or anything along those lines,'cause I'm not man enough to take the blows that that come my way. I'm embarrassed at saying that, but that's that's really the the truth of it, if I make myself vulnerable. And so well for me is I don't read it. I don't read the articles. I don't I don't look at X all the time and and all the comments and things along those lines. I keep my head down. I stay focused on on on and try to feed my mind with the right things. That's why I don't watch scary movies. You know, I I I really don't. Like if I watch a scary movie, it's like stuck in my head for a month. I'm like I'm not man enough to watch scary movies. I just want to watch happy things. Like I wanna watch a comedy. I wanna I know I wanna watch something inspirational, some great documentary. So I'm just really careful about

46:37 about what narratives Yeah, and it also comes down to who I'm gonna hang out with. Like it's weird, man. Like w you know, when I met my dad I I like there's a part of me I would see things in my father. Okay. And so it's like And I didn't like it after I hung out with them. I was like, ooh, wow, man, like I I do some of those things too. Like that is that DNA based, is that like you start to question who you are as an individual. Right. And so you gotta be really careful with the kind of people you spend your time with and what dialogue that you're having with them because proximity is a powerful thing, man. It cuts both ways. Right. What was it like?

47:12 Uh meeting Elon the first time. Would you have suspected Then when you met him, that like kind of the The rise, basically. I mean now he's I don't know, the wealthiest guy in the world. He's created

47:23 These like world changing companies. Yeah. I'm just curious, what was your kind of impression at at that stage? I thought I had a great work ethic when I was working with Larry Allison or had my own company. No company has the work ethic. and the commitment and the sacrifice factor than than an Elon company. You know, when you go to work for those companies, my son works at SpaceX right now. He's doing his second year internship down at SpaceX. Out of all the companies in the world that I would hope my son could go work for, he's you know, 19 years old. I'm like

47:55 Go go ear for Elon, man. Go go see what it's like at SpaceX. Go down in a Boca Chica. Go light some rockets off with Mark Jerkosa, some of the greatest engineers in the history of the world. See what it's like. to have that level of work ethic, that give a shit factor. You know, I mean like when you're in those kind of environments it's like look, you're playing with live ammunition, man. You gotta you gotta you gotta play full out. And you're in the foxhole, it and it's time to go to war. We're the warriors of light. You go hard or go home. That's just the way that it is. Because think about it. We're the most highly shorted stock in the history of the world between Tesla and Solar City. Everyone said we were the next Enron. Right. We were done. The articles, you know, were crazy. You think they were they were, you know, now they're a balance between the two. At that time.

48:39 We were all the biggest morons in the world, right? Because we were the you know, the clean energy guys, the sustainability guys. And there's no way we could ever create a a company of any value. Um, well, that's that narrative is is changed. But you know, just to be just very direct. It was very, very obvious to me that Elon was the ultimate alpha. And he had a leadership skill.

49:03 And a magnetic energy. To get human beings to make the necessary sacrifices to build the most important disruptive impactful technologies in the history of the world. Like when I just, I worked so hard, I never stopped working for nine years of my life. I'm not kidding you, I just wanted him to be happy. You know, I wanted I w and he was always so kind to me and he's always so grateful to me. And you know, and I would always get a kind nod in the boardroom.

49:31 But like I just wanted Lyndon to be happy. I wanted Pete to be happy. I wanted, you know, d E to be happy. And there there was a s a sacrifice that I think everyone, everyone makes when you work at those companies, a sense of pride and commitment and sacrifice that's necessary. Based on the Being driven by growth. and be around peers and alphas that are gonna gonna push themselves to be the best they can be and driven by contribution. and and the difference that you can make in the world.

50:00 Yeah, I have this phrase that uh You don't know what level ten looks like. So basically I have this theory which is really this podcast actually helps me do this, which is In any area of my life, I think at a certain time Oh, okay, I know what the spectrum is. I know one is

50:15 the bottom. You know, sometimes I I fool myself into thinking, I'm a ten at this thing. And then you go meet somebody who totally breaks your frame and you're like, Oh, that's what like That's that's that's what it I call I call it level level eleven. It's like oh I didn't even realize the knob actually goes further. Like you could just crank this baby up. So whether it's like work ethic or even storytelling ability or it's you know it just how sharp they are. 'Cause'cause you know, work ethic's a part of it but like you know.

50:44 one of my companies got bought by uh Twitch. And I got to work with this guy, Emmett. Emmet's the founder of Twitch. Yeah. And uh people are Oh, what's that bit like? And I'm like I I can tell you a lot of things, but Yeah. One of the things that was very obvious to me, I was like, Oh, this guy's oven burns a little hotter. Like this guy's just genuinely

51:00 much smarter than me. And so it's not like and and I didn't I hadn't really encountered people at that level of like incisiveness, of of sharpness of the building. You know, we uh they do Amazon, so you write a six page memo and you come in and the first ten minutes is a silent read. So I'm reading this thing. Within like three minutes he's done with the paper. He's highlighted the one he's found the w needle in the haystack, like the one thing that actually matters worth talking about. And he's waiting for the rest of us to catch up. And it's like okay, so so I like I love saying level eleven. In fact, this is why When we came out here, we did your morning routine with you. Yeah.

51:34 'Cause you're kind of like a level eleven of like energy. Like you're energy rich. I don't even know how old you are, but you're you're way more energy than me. I think I'm like twenty years younger than you. You have twenty times more energy than me. Five, fifty two. So I'm like I thought of a pretty high energy guy. Yeah. And have like a certain vivaciousness for life, but then you see Oh, that's eleven. Okay, good. Yeah. Now I can recalibrate. I'm I'm actually at a seven. Cool.

51:55 But now that I've seen it That's like a uh a very important thing, literally just to see it. And so, you know, I hope with this, you know, the when when I do this podcast, it's like we talked to so many people done whatever, five hundred, six hundred episodes. The goal is that you break some people's frame. Yeah, and and what what is the commitment and sacrifices necessary? Like you think about it, right? So they they buy my company, the first one, Paramount Solar, roll it into Solar City. I this big first big exit of my life. What did I do the next day? I packed up my stuff. I moved into a studio apartment in San Francisco by myself. Remember, I'm married. I have a wife. I have three kids. I'm like, I will see you guys in a year.

52:32 I'm going down to Silicon Valley. Don't worry. I'm gonna do this. I'll buy us a house. I'll figure it all out. Kids are in school, all those kinds of things. I ate a burrito four nights a week at you know one in the morning in my little studio apartment in you know South San Francisco before I went And and built an organization. We grew that organization from, you know, maybe at the time there was fifteen hundred of us max. I I think I brought four hundred of the fifteen hundred and we grew it to a twenty thousand person organization that did twenty thousand residential solar systems a month. And um, you know, it became the largest solar company in the history of the world. But it's like that intoxicating energy that you're feeding off of when you sit around Lyndon Rife and you see his spirit and you see his energy. And it's like in literally all every moment of every day, I don't care if we were mountain biking, I don't care if we were kite surfing, I don't care if we were on vacation in Cabo, we were talking about work. We were talking about different ways we can engineer things, different ways we could create things and do do things. And it was amazing just to be around those kinds of people where you're absorbing that energy and that competitive spirit to do something that no one's ever been able to do before. Especially when the rest of the world thinks and there's no way it's gonna work. It's I'm gonna make a guess. You tell me if this is right.

53:50 Prior to that,'cause you said I found my tribe. It's like for a while it's like you don't really quite fit in, you're sort of an oddball. And then you finally meet a group of people. Core wired the way you're wired, who think the way you think, who talk the way you talk, and it's totally normal to be your weird. It's gotta be a good feeling, right? Like it was that how it was for you? Totally. When I was in Missouri, um I was a fish out of water, man. And I was depressed. Like I was I was frustrated listening to the conversations around the kitchen table. I was frustrating listening to conversations on the field. There was this level of your skepticism, um self-doubt.

54:27 uh highly medicated minds that d lacked ambition they were like, man, you're just too excited about life. Chill out. Have a cigarette and relax. Okay. You know, life isn't that great, buddy, you know, and I just I knew I needed to leave. I knew I needed to pack my car up and I I would have gone further uh than the Silicon Valley if the ocean wasn't there. I mean honestly, I I didn't come home for a long time. I I stayed out west for a very, very long time and And the reason was I was all of a sudden around people that were believers. I was around people that were excited about things, that weren't getting caught up in what they were gonna have for dinner at night or the two cups of coffee they needed in the morning to get themselves going, um, or the smoke. I was like Oh man, this is incredible. And then I was around those people at Oracle, obviously, you know, really, really bright people operating on a high frequency. They were hyper motivated to do something with their lives. Then you kind of graduate to, hey, I'm a founder in this world of the of the Silicon Valley with other peers and founders. And then I got plugged into That group of Whoa.

55:30 These are these are the greatest founders in the world. This is this is Sergey Brenn. This is Larry Page. This is um you know, the the all the PayPal mafia, the Luke No sicks, the the Ken Howry's, you know, the like all of a sudden you were around this peer group of friends that you spent time with. And you're like, I can do anything. Right. I can do anything. If I if I hang out with these guys and I feed off this energy every morning

55:54 I I can do anything. And and honestly I still feel it that way today. I'm I'm I this is why I love spending time with people like you I love the young energy. I love to, you know, there's a there's a guy, his name's Keller, he's the founder of Zipline. I just went and visited him at his office a couple weeks ago in San Francisco. The drone delivery. The drone delivery. I just I want to be around Keller. You know, he and I went on a heli trip together. We went uh snowboarding together, we became friends, and he's like, Man, come visit. my office. I got a lot of things to do. I wanted to go to Keller's office and visit with Keller and just see his operation and what he's doing. And so I'm really thoughtful about trying to find other people with great energy, great ambition and drive that are trying to do impactful things to the world and bring them into my life. So if

56:39 Through that door came like twenty seven year old you. Right. We we we you get a second year.'Cause you're busy yeah and you're doing things and you're already in what you're in, you're doing what you're doing, you have your company. If twenty seven year old you comes in and he's got All the time in the world. And he says, All right.

56:56 What's the blueprint? What's the Hayes Barnard way? of doing things. Which where should I go point my hair, where should what where should I direct my energy? What do you think you would How would you explain your way of doing things and what ideas specifically, like what problems do you think are worth Solving that you might plant a seed and in the head of twenty seven year old you.

57:12 Man, it's such a that's such a good question. I would with with the gray hair that I have today. I'd probably drop in with them and I'd say, look. You're gonna be addicted to success. Okay.

57:23 you're going to be addicted to productivity, you're workaholic. Because you're constantly trying to prove to everybody that you're enough. Okay. And so you're gonna take on a lot. And it's gonna at times it's gonna feel like the weight of the world's on your shoulders and you're fighting for

57:38 clean energy tax credits and the big beautiful bill in D C and meeting with senators and and you know, the the all all the things But I need you to think about more than one level of wealth and one level of success. Which is Financial success.

57:55 Right. I need you to think about Time success. And I need you to think about Mental health success.

58:04 And I need you to think about physical health success. And I want you to think about friendship. And community success, because I'm afraid that you're gonna sacrifice Those other four Pillars of success.

58:17 For one. Which is Financial success. And you gotta realize, man, like When you grew up like I did and your mom's got her head in her hands and she's crying about whether she can turn the air conditioning on and she's this amazing woman, all you want to do is help. All you want to do is carry a couple of golf bags and put forty bucks down on the kitchen table to make sure that you guys can turn the air conditioning on. All you want to do is someday hire your mom to come work for your company and say, Hey, we're good.

58:44 It's okay. All you want to do is give your wife the life that your mother never had. Give your son the life that you never had. And you're willing to make this crazy level of success, so you have the financial means to make sure that they can go to that private school. they can go to that, you know, university that they want to go to someday. Well that causes you

59:04 To make this massive amount of success. And give up. Maybe any time for yourself. Or maybe maybe your mental health suffers because you you grind out and your adrenal grams are shot and your doctors are like, hey, man, like we got to get you on med so that you can get your thyroid back in order because you've blown it out.

59:25 And so I'm at a stage now where I would tell that twenty seven year old guy I'm like look, man. The goal is to also solve for happiness. You don't need to be a martyr. Right. Okay. You don't need to just like devote your life to all these other people and all these other things and die miserable. Okay. At some point in time, I need you to make sure that you're working out every morning. You're doing the breath work. You're you're you're doing the swim, you're doing the hit work out with your friends, you're laughing, you're playing.

59:55 But because as you create more success It just it gets really, really difficult the amount of people that start targeting you and coming after you. Right. Someone will watch this podcast and go, Man, that's a really nice couch. He shouldn't have that nice couch right there. And at times I think, Man, I probably shouldn't have that nice couch. Maybe maybe I don't deserve that nice couch. You know? And so it's just this whole mindset that I think you have to think about where you're a really driven person on, hey, why are you doing it?

1:00:25 Um what are you doing? But but it's the how component. How do you start politely declining? certain things. How do you not have FOMO for all the things that you feel like you need to show up for? Because I'll feel like I need to be in two cities in the same day and have two different meetings and do it in person. And you just burn yourself out on the whole thing. And so I need to learn, tell that kid, take time for yourself. Create space.

1:00:48 Give yourself an opportunity to kind of rev down every once in a while. you'll be better off in the long run. You know, we need you around for the long haul. Right. Yeah,'cause you've you've been around the You know, whatever the dinner table of success is. Like the top of the top.

1:01:03 been around a lot of those people. You don't need to name names, but I I I would imagine that a lot of those people Or bit of a martyr in the sense of They're not. that happy or maybe loving their life in the way that

1:01:15 One would assume. when you have a certain level of success. Is that Has that been true from your your experience? Yeah, I would say um Most of the really successful people I know.

1:01:27 There's a also a meaningful amount of sadness. in their life, you know, because of the sacrifice. Maybe it's a lack of connection with their kids. Maybe it's a lack of connection with an ex-wife or you know, they kind of regret, you know, the way they they they interacted at certain times because you're reving in the conference room and you're battling all day long in these intense discussions. It's hard to come back home and then just be like a chill normal guy. You know, like you're never a chill normal guy. You always have last intense look on your face. You don't smile as much, but Man, is that guy okay? Like he needs to chill out a little bit. And so Um you know, for sure.

1:02:00 W those level of sacrifices you you you gather more demons in your life. And and and and it's sad to say that, but Money doesn't make you happy. Money doesn't make you a better person. It's like really important. The more things that you have. It's actually more stressful. You know, it like and and and people that maybe don't have a lot of things would say, Oh man, you know, how how trite of you to say something like that. But The reality is

1:02:25 the only thing that matters in the end of the day is are the relationships that you have, you know, and the love that you have, those those deep relationships that you that you carry on. Who's the exception? I'm sure there's somebody out there that's that's found that uh you know the these balances, right? I have a few North Stars. Yeah. There's like Man, I I'd like Michael Dell's like

1:02:48 kind of the biggest North Star I think I've ever met in my life. You know, his marriage. Well, his marriage with Susan is is amazing. His wife is incredible. She's her own force of nature. What they do philanthropically, what they do for the world, they're very humble. So you're not going to be able to read about it or anything. But the impact they make in the world, their children You know, like their son Zach Dell is like I I I say to my son Luke, hey, can you spend time with Zach and read the books that Zach read and talk to Zach because he's like a pretty amazing guy, but it's the humility that he has, you know. Now he he politely declines the things. He's taught me that and and and he creates space for himself to read and relax. But he didn't go crazy. Like a lot of people that create Michael Dell wealth, they go crazy.

1:03:32 And um and they they lose themselves in this intoxicating environment of winners have options and you can have anything and do anything. And um instead He's the kind of guy that just becomes more humble, becomes more of a giver, become more focused on on the impact that he can make in the world through all the Now he still plays big, don't get me wrong. You know, he's a bold leader and he takes big swings and big bets. I mean this isn't a guy going through the motions and uh you know, and but he's somebody that has this level of humble hum um humility about him that that I I respect and admire.

1:04:11 Tell me about the uh the blue ocean strategy insight you had. 'Cause we haven't even talked about your current Company. The main the main company, yeah. Which is uh kind of a juggernaut. But talk about this insight you had.

1:04:23 Well what do you do after um you know, we sold Source City to Tesla? Elon was great. He wrote me a really nice letter, um, you know, to the any any and you know, he kinda C the Tesla board about it and And so you're kinda like, Okay, you know, I I exited there gracefully, I think, as much as you can. You know, I think people always want you to come back and do different things and there's at times I I feel guilty that I that I didn't go back and help at times, but Where where do you go from there? You're like, Okay, well, the insight that I had was we were by far the biggest solar company in the country. We had forty percent market share in the entire United States. And so I was recruiting a lot of people from our competitors and we were building um, you know, the the the largest manufacturing facility in the Western hemisphere for solar panels and Tesla had built a gigger factory.

1:05:09 And we're at this stage where I was like, man, I I'm very passionate about sustainability. I'm really passionate about the deployment of these solutions. I had been burnt out on sales a little bit. I was managing around a 10,000 person sales organization. Um and so it's a lot of text messages from sales professionals that um that want to raise I'm I'm joking, but you know, they want to talk about their comp. But it was I was just like I was like, how do I do something that's not really sales focused, but technology focused and I can deploy these solutions. Okay. And so I was coming off a big high. And I thought about I read a book called The Blue Ocean Strategy. And so we were in a little bit of a red ocean strategy, which was like, hey, beat your competition, beat your competition, just beat your competition. And I was in a in a mindset where I was like, What if I can make my competition our biggest partner instead of our biggest competitor?

1:05:58 And so I looked at the premise of policier strategy. What does what does it mean? Yeah, it means if you can h make sure everybody wins. in an environment where literally even your competitors win. that creates a flywheel that allows that organization to scale. So red oceans is like testosterone and you run a solar company, I run a solar company, I'm better than you, we're gonna sell more than you, we're gonna win that customer. Blue ocean strategies is like, hey What do you need? Like, can I support you in some way, shape, or form? Red Ocean would be like, okay, let's imagine um you and I are both gold miners and we're out there, you know, panning for gold. Blue ocean is like, I'm gonna be the guy that sells the picks and shovels to everybody. Right. And so the mindset was if I can enable the entire ecosystem from all the panel manufacturers, to all the battery manufacturers, to all the different um installers in the marketplace, to all the sales professionals in the marketplace, and empower them with a B2B marketplace and platform that allows them to have access to capital.

1:06:55 access to each other. in an environment where they can transact with consumers, where the consumer wins. They electrify the home, they lower their carbon footprint, they save money. The installers win, where they can all install any panel or any any battery solution in the marketplace. Um, and all the manufacturer of these products win because they get access to that marketplace to the the ability to deploy these assets. Boy, that would be a cool business. And that was the beginning of the idea of Goodleap. It started with point of sale financing for solar, which quickly led to Wait a minute, we should finance all electrified solutions in the home. HVAC

1:07:31 Uh energy efficient windows, roofing, smart thermostats. um, you know, synthetic grass turf, basically anything that allows us to kind of lower that carbon footprint in the home, that would be that's a blue ocean strategy. And so now the banks are winning and the financial institutions are winning because they're getting their eight to 10% return on the assets. All the installers are winning because they have access to all these great products and great sales professionals and all the sales professionals are winning because they have access to the installers and the products. So that that was a blue ocean strategy and a marketplace business that allows us to grow pretty quickly. All right, this episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over two hundred thousand companies. Shouldn't be surprised, because I use it myself for not one, not two. But I have eight different Mercury accounts. So I have seven for uh different companies that I'm a part of, and then I have

1:08:21 uh my own personal account'cause now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. Uh and the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder. It's an entrepreneur. Um you could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past And didn't like all the different rough edges and and annoyances and decided to, you know, actually fix it himself. And really any type of entrepreneur you are, if let's say you're an agency, well, one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices, easily create them, send them to customers, and stay current on your balances with all your customers. Well, you can do that inside Mercury. And so I think that Mercury's great. Highly recommend you check it out.

1:08:58 And uh thank you for sponsoring the show. For more information, check out Mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. Can you tell the dad story? Because you told this I you told this privately, so you don't have to say it if you don't want to. But it was I think I sent you a note after this. I sent you a voice note. I was like, man, that That story really moved me I had my own yeah. bad issues, you know, that that are going on, but the way you told it

1:09:22 But secondly, I think it's really powerful. There's a lot of people I think have Stuff like this. I I don't know. Personally I I would love to hear you're open to share. No, no, I'd look I'll totally share it. So it's it's an interesting story. So r now remember, my dad leaves me in in uh in St. Louis, Missouri. My my mom and he and I moved from um mm, Illinois to Missouri. He worked for merits. So he was like a guy that would like um uh take people on incentive trips, you know, so he's a

1:09:49 He was a drinker, you know, he had he had a lot of problems with alcohol. You know, he had he had you know, under I don't know, I want to be respectful to my father and all those kinds of things. But long story short he left and and they separate. When you're at a young age. Yeah, I I was about two years old. Okay. And um and w I don't know where he went. We didn't hear from him. But as a kid, you know, if you're a decent athlete or you're doing things you really hope that maybe dad calls and goes, Hey man, I saw that. Wow, I saw that article in the paper or You know, and you always think about who your father is and and maybe what the situation was. My mom was amazing. She never said anything poor about my dad. So I didn't know much about my father and it wasn't a focus, but I became a man of the house at a pretty young age and And that wasn't awesome for my mom because I would run her boyfriends off and I was trying to be a little alpha dog around the apartment and things like that. I you know, I'd regret that too.

1:10:37 Um but Basically I finally when I'm at Oracle And I quote unquote made it. I was like, I want to find my father.

1:10:45 And I sat next to this guy, Kelly Cook. He was a good old boy man from uh Oklahoma. Kelly Cook played football at Oklahoma State. So he was the fullback for um Uh Barry Sanders. And Thurman Thomas. Can you imagine? Dude, this is Kelly Cook, man. This guy's the man, all right? And so Kelly was my I call him Big Papa. Yeah, I got my nickname. He call me Playa. All right. He's called me Playa, I called Big Papa. And so I said, Big Papa man, um I wanna I wanna find my dad. He goes, You know, we this internet thing, we can maybe find him on the internet. And I was like, You think we could find him on the internet? He goes, and and he goes, Yeah, man, let me let me see if I can figure it out. So

1:11:22 Not I swear. It wasn't like a day. before all of a sudden Kelly's on the phone and he's waving me over, he's waving me over and and uh and he's like I got your dad on the phone man. I got I'm like, what? You got my dad on the phone. And so he's talking to my dad. Hey, Jim, oh yeah, you're Jim, you're from Illinois, right? Yeah, Jim, that's what I thought. Yeah. You uh so where are you working right now? What's going on? So so my father at the time, he's talking to him about a suit, about a size of a suit. Uh and the and the length of the arms and the I'm like, What is going on, man? What is he having this conversation with this guy about? So he g hands up the phone and he goes, Hey, you're not gonna believe it.

1:11:58 Now I was working at Redwood Shores now at Oracle's HQ. And he goes, Your dad You don't believe this, man. Your father is in Palo Alto and he works for Patrick James clothing shop.

1:12:10 He found them through tax records. And I was like, really? He sells clothing like across from Stanford, uh right there. Um, I mean, it's maybe fifteen minutes down the road. Okay. And I'm like, Kelly, come on, you gotta be kidding me. He goes, No. Well, that rocked me for about three months. I'm like, my dad is fifteen minutes away from me. What are the odds both of us are here? in uh you know out in the Silicon Valley. Well, I put my best suit on. I went down there. Got a big deep breath and I was like, All right, man, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go meet my dad. I'm gonna go in there and make it happen. So I'm kinda looking in the store, I'm like, is that him? Is that him? Ex I didn't have any pictures or anything.

1:12:45 And I walked in um and I said, Hey, how you doing? And they said, Great. Um, and I said, Is Jim Barnard here? And they said, No, Jim doesn't work here on Wednesdays, you know, it's like what it's Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays or something. I'm like, Oh man, okay. And I think subconsciously I wanted a reason to come back. And so I was they go, Well how can I help you? And I was like, Oh, um Uh w uh at the time I bought custom shirts because I have a thirty-seven inch long arm. Okay. I said, Can I get a couple custom shirts? They're like, sure, no problem. What's your name? Well, I use my best friend's name, Jason Walker, uh, you know, from the fourth grade. I said I'm Jason Walker, oh hey Jason, how you doing? Anyway, I buy the I buy the shirts and at the end the guy's like, hey, they're X amount. Um how do you want to pay for it?

1:13:27 I'm like, oh man, well, I can't get him a credit card that says hey is Barnard. So I'm like, hold on a second. I left my wallet in the car. I go to the ATM, I get the money out. I think it was like$150. I go in and I'm like, hey man, um, you know, I just had cash. Is this okay? He's like, yeah, Jason, you got a phone number, cool. We'll call you in in those days it was like a month and a half before your shirt's done, okay? So I'm like all right. So now you can imagine a month and a half, I'm sitting there making my phone calls at Oracle, doing my whole thing, and I'm thinking, Man, am I gonna meet my dad? Am I gonna meet my dad? Put my best suit on. They call, they leave a voicemail, your shirt's are ready.

1:14:02 I go back. Well this time I can see him. This time I'm like, Oh man, that's definitely him. When you see your dad for the first time You're like, okay, that that's his face. Now he's shorter than me. He's a little fuller than me, but that that's his face. And uh I'm like, Oh boy, okay, this is it. Well he comes out

1:14:22 And he's got a cigarette in his hand. He's he's it isn't lit yet, and he's got the lighter And it's dusk. It's about five thirty at night'cause I driven down that that after work and he goes back. And he goes back in the back alley. And uh like, Well, he's in that back alley back there. If I'm ever gonna go back there and I don't wanna embarrass him or anything. I'm gonna go there and and meet him. And so I get out, I can see him in the rear view mirror. So my car is parked this way.

1:14:48 He was kind of behind me, so I was kind of looking in the roof view mirror. So I get out of the car. I'm ready. You can imagine. Okay. I'm like I'm like thirty years old. I've made it, making good money. I got my my suit. Want my father to be proud of me. And um you know, big big moment for me. And so But I'm shaking. I'm like I'm my heart's pumping.

1:15:08 I go around the corner. And he Oh shit, you startled me. And he's having his cigarette. I said, I'm so sorry. I I didn't mean to startle you. Um, I just came back here to introduce myself to you. And he said, um, well great. He goes, My name's Jim Barnard.

1:15:23 And um I took a deep breath. And I was like, uh my name's Hayes Barnard. And um He he had that.

1:15:33 cigarette in his hand. His hands started shaking. And You know, you could just see it you could just and he just looked at me and he just said, Son. Yeah.

1:15:45 He's like I'm so sorry. And I was like, man, don't don't be sorry at all. And he buried His head in my chest. I wrap my arms around him.

1:15:55 And I just held him. You know, for like twenty minutes he cried in my chest, my whole shirt was covered. in you know his tears and snot and the whole thing, man, you can imagine it's really powerful. Now in the moment I'm like, he probably thought, this guy come from Chicago? Did he come from Missouri? Like like what is this kid doing out here? And um So

1:16:16 You know, I said, Dad, it y it's okay, don't be sorry, don't be sorry, don't be sorry. You know, I just wanted to meet you. And he go, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. And I I said don't be sorry, you know? And so Sorry, I'm getting a little emotional. We um we go inside and this guy I bought the shirts from, his name was Dwayne. And he goes, Hey, J Jason, right?

1:16:36 And I said, no, no, my name's Hayes. And um and he said, Hayes. And uh my father, um Said uh Hey, Dwayne, he'd he'd work for him for about f fifteen years at Patrick James selling clothes there. He said, This is my son.

1:16:50 This is this is Hayes Barnard. And he said, Jim, I didn't know you had a son and he said, Well, yeah, I got a son and uh d this this is him And so that was it. You know, I I kinda met my dad there and he said, Hey, d by any chance do you like football? You know, I I got uh forty nineers tickets and I was like, Yeah, you know, I I uh I do like football, Dad, and I'd love to go to a forty nineers game with you. And then that that was it, man. I learned a lot about my life after that, which was amazing. You know, there's all these super interesting things I learned about my life when you meet your father when you're when you're thirty years old. Yeah. You know, yeah.

1:17:23 The one thing that strikes me there is like you weren't resentful. Yeah. Upset. Like I mean like That seems unusual to me. Well, I had realized by that point in time probably the best thing that ever happened to me was not having a father. I know it I know it sounds terrible now, but I didn't have when I was a young boy, I was angry. You know, why don't I have a dad and why do we live like this and all those kinds of things. And then as a um as an older man you realize that having a mother in that situation and the drive and the responsibility that it gave you was probably one of the greatest gifts that ever happened in my life. And so

1:17:57 I was there really more probably because I was looking for affirmation from him. I wanted him to be proud. I wanted him to see how hard I had worked and the things that I had done and have a level of respect for me. that um for f for some whatever reason it was just important to have that that affirmation from my dad. And so I got I got that closure, you know. He I I didn't get a lot of time with him. He ended up passing away.

1:18:21 But he definitely had an opportunity to get to know me, to get to know my kids, to get to know my wife, to get to see me and some of the things that I had done and We expressed a lot of love and respect for each other. And so For me, it's like sometimes that's your opportunity to show a tremendous amount of compassion and empathy for someone. He did the best he could, man. He had addiction issues, he had some challenges, he had his own issues with self confidence.

1:18:47 You know, his his father passed away really, really young. His father was a severe alcoholic. His grandfather was a a severe alcoholic. And so he was adopted by this guy, Hayden Barnard. which was this renowned doctor in Hensdale, Illinois, when he was twelve years old. His real name was um James Neal. O'Brien was my father's name.

1:19:08 But at twelve years old, they changed his name to Jim Barnard. Um, and that's why he named me Hayden Barnard, because the guy that adopted him was this guy His name was Hayden. Hayden Barnard. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. I appreciate you t telling that story. Yeah, you're welcome, man. Yeah, it's good. Thanks for asking. It's I've never told that one before, definitely on camera. Yeah.

1:19:30 Well, I mean I think one of your The things you try to do is you what what is what'd you say your life mission is connect the hearts Yeah, yeah. Connect hearts of others, create positive change in the world. How do you do that without Sharing your own. stories and your own vulnerabilities, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of people out there that probably didn't have a father or had challenges with their father in some way, shape, or form. And so

1:19:53 Um you know. It it honestly. It could it's a valley for a lot of people when they're young, but it's probably a spike. for people later in their life. You know, yeah. You you told the lay in the dirt story. I love this story. Yeah. What's that story? Yeah, look, look, OA was a very, very difficult time for me and I was really, really hurting And so I had this idea. I'd heard from a friend of mine, Brad Tukesbury, went to this organization at the time. It was called Building with Books. It's called Build On Now. And he had gone to Africa and he built a school and he came back. And Tukes was like this awesome guy I worked with at Oracle. And uh Tukes was like, look, you should do this, man. You'd find a lot of meaning in this. And so

1:20:31 When I was like, you know, had the victim mindset, the woe is me, oh man, I've had to lay out these people. Oh man, I'm really hurting right now. I'm in this tough spot. I went to my executive team and I said, look Crazy idea. What if we all go to Africa and we build a school? And they're like, what, man, we're struggling right now. We just laid off four hundred people. Why in the world will we go to Africa and go build a school with some organization called Build On? I'm like, I don't know. Tukes went, he said it was amazing. I think we should raise some money from our friends and we should go lay in the dirt and we should get grounded. And and it just called me.

1:21:06 Long story short Everybody's like, we're in, let's go make it happen. Uh we raise a little money. We fly over to uh Bamako, over in West Mali, Africa. We tr we we load up this like van. With uh with a goat on top. Literally we strapped a goat to the top of this van. We all got our backpacks and we drive sixteen hours out to the Zaramburu tribe. Uh why did you need a goat on the van? Well I didn't know. I had no idea because the handler's there's a bring a goat. I'm like we gotta bring a goat. I've never been in Africa. Like this is this is interesting. And so we get there We meet the chief, we got the translators, they're doing a whole thing. We learn then we slit the goat's throat

1:21:48 You know, because in this part of the world you drink the blood of the goat and that's the ceremonial thing and you're welcomed into the village and then a big deal, they cook the goat,'cause most of the time they just eat this grain, this mullet, basically, every single day. And then I lay it in the dirt and This woman Awa Um, I was in her hut. So they just welcome you. You dance in the village every night, you sing. These people are so happy and alive. Now it's sad. They die by the time they're thirty years old because they drink poison every single day and and um all these other things. But They're very, very happy people. And so I with my brother in law were laying in the dirt in this tent and then everybody else has their own little kind of like hut. It's like a mud hut kind of kind of situation.

1:22:32 And um All the cucumanja spiders are around you, man. You know, you you you go to the bathroom in this little hole and then when you open up the hole, there's all the cucumanja spiders in there as well. The headlamps on you're like, Oh man, you know, your whole nervous system's being shooken up. But about Every morning about two thirty AM you can hear Awa. She's shaking that grain, man. And you're thinking, man, she's shaking that grain for me.

1:22:57 You can sh you can just hear it. Sh Sh. And then you're like, wow, man. Like she's up there two thirty in the morning, she's shaking that grain for me. And then all of a sudden you hear hacking something, she's hacking the wood. And then she's she's lighting the fire for you.

1:23:11 Um and I'm like, what's she lighting a fire for? Why would she be lighting a fire at like three in the morning? So every morning for seven nights you're thinking about this. And then all of a sudden I would come out in the morning. And the bucket of water would be over The fire Because so I could bathe in the morning with this bucket of warm water. Well I figured out on the second day, I said, Where do you get the water?

1:23:33 And she's like, Oh, let me take you. I thought she was gonna take me around the corner. We're gone for five hours. We walk like literally like Five miles.

1:23:43 Where All this livestock basically lives and uh she puts the water on her head. And then she walks back another four or five miles. Every I go you do this every single day, and you do this for my bucket of water so that I could bathe. And I would bathe.

1:23:59 In the morning and at night. Before I would go to bed. And the guilt. Uh I it was almost like Wait a second, whoa, man, this is like really messed up. And so, you know, I just I just had this epiphany, man, like the fifth night I'm laying in there.

1:24:15 I was like Okay, we're building the school, but it's almost all boys in the school. We're the girls. fetching water. They're filling their buckets.

1:24:24 versus you know, filling their brains in the classroom. And uh I was like I there's gotta be a way for me to figure this out. Now at the time I was diversifying in the solar business. I thought, man. What if I could put solar on all these schools? And we could get Intel and other players to donate the laptops.

1:24:41 We could extend the hours in the classroom so the women can get educated too. So I Kids can get educated. And so I just had this lightning rod moment, man. Like I just have these big downloads at at certain times in my life from like, okay, I need to start a foundation. that's gonna basically find a way to light up all these schools. And um and and so that that was the moment. That's how I came up with it. Wow. Yeah.

1:25:04 And so you go back and uh You kind of had a model that was like the Tom's model, right? For for when we sell solar here in the US, then we can give solar In Africa, yeah. That was the The sort of the blueprint.

1:25:17 Well let me explain how wha how it went down. So the solar company takes off quick. You know, we become the second largest solar company. Maybe it's the third. There was like Sunrun, there was uh Solar City and Us. These are kind of like the three players of residential solar in the United States. And I was partnered with Sunrun and I was partnered with Solar City. Like you would sell it, they would install it, right? That's right. You you nailed it. And so and then we were good at financing as well. So we started to launch our own tax equity funds, our own financing funds. This is a new way where we could basically we used of um structured finance solutions to offer zero down solutions for financing for people to electrify their homes, to to put solar on the on their home. how you struck the deal with um Solar City. Well so so we're doing about forty percent of Solar City's business at the time.

1:26:10 Um and less and Sunrun, but both companies, the woman that founded Sunrun, um her name's Lynn Uric. She's amazing woman. And and Lyndon, who was the CEO of Solar City, who's Elon's cousin, I had a great relationship with both of them and they both came and said, Look, we'd love to buy you. Okay, we'd love to buy you, we'd love to roll you in, we'd love to make you a part of the organization and what we're doing. And so we had a lot of discussions and I was like, Well do you want the insurance company? Do you want the mortgage company? Like no, you you can keep your other two sad companies, you know. I'm joking. I'm joking. But but you we want the we want you and we want the solar business. And so after some thought Lynn and I had become really close personal friends. Our families were vacationing together. Our kids were really close friends. Our wives were really close friends. His brother Pete, um uh, you know, what also I became very close with him and his wife and his kids. And so we were becoming a family.

1:27:04 They said, Hey, come on, man, you know, we're gonna IPO this company and we really need you to be a part of it. Um, or we'll IPO it and then we'll buy you like a week or two later. And so I said, Hey, I'm open to it. You know, let let's think about it. You know, we had met with Elon, we had discussions with him and and talked about how we could build the biggest solar company in the history of the world and what this could look like and all the things that we could do. And so I was going to build a um a solar system down in uh for school for build on down in Nicaragua. And I said, look, would you come with me? Would you come with me to see us put solar on a school in Nicaragua and the impact we can make? I have this big vision for putting solar on all these schools. Well, Linden was awesome. He goes, I'm in. Let's go make it happen. So we went down to Nicaragua.

1:27:49 We build the solar system for the school. Lynn and I sit on the roof. It's like this is unbelievable, man. This is this is a really, really cool thing to do. And I said, what if for every megawatt of energy we deploy here in the United States, we put solar in a school somewhere in the world? And he was like, I love it, man. Let's get let's make it happen. Let's do it through a five oh one C three nonprofit. And so in three years we put solar on like two thousand five hundred schools in in several countries uh in the world. That's amazing. Yeah. You're doing some amazing things right now with uh with your philanthropy and w around water.

1:28:22 But your organization named Give Power, you've talked about how you're doing solar panels on schools. So where where'd the shift go from solar panels to Water. Well so three years later I go back to all these places in the world, whether it was Nepal. or Nicaragua or different parts of Africa and Kenya.

1:28:38 And I realized that we lit up all these schools. And then when you walk into the schools, this this made me sad. It was a bunch of guys with their cellphones plugged in. Or people play video games on laptops. I'm like, great, I bought I brought video games to the developing world. You know? I brought I g I gave these guys cell phones. Didn't have cell phones when I was there the first time. The first time they saw my cell phone and you would like take a picture of them and they were like Whoa, that's me. They've never seen themselves in a mirror, realize. You know, I mean, these people are amazing. They brush their their teeth with a stick. Um, and now all of a sudden I brought cell phones to this area, because we brought power to these this area. I was like, this wasn't a great idea and go figure. I was so stupid that um the women weren't sitting in the classroom till seven o'clock at night. They were exhausted. They were still going and fetching water for f you know, whatever it was, five hours a day. Right. Um and so Awa was still doing her thing and her daughters weren't in the classroom. That was that hit me pretty hard, to be honest with you.

1:29:36 I was like, wow, we've done whatever it was at the time, two thousand five hundred, two thousand six hundred schools. And yes, it was great. We brought electricity to school and the school had light, but it didn't accomplish the mission that I wanted. And what I realized was we need to invent a Magic water box. Basically.

1:29:54 We've gotta find a way. To bring the water into the village. In a way. Where Yeah.

1:30:01 women are in the classroom. They're not fetching water. and uh and it's healthy, affordable water. So how could you do that? And now at the time now I've I've really got this solar thing under my belt. And we were starting to do these things called microgrids. Sometimes wealthy people will call us and say, Could you do a microgrid on my island? I'm like, well, I don't know, maybe well, our engineers were brilliant, they can figure this out. And I was like, well wait a minute.

1:30:24 If we can build microgrids for people on islands off grid with this new battery storage we had invented and solar This is kind of interesting. What if we could bring it to the developing world? At the same time, a friend of mine in my neighborhood in Tiburon had invented a water pump for yachts where he wanted to travel around the world on his yacht and have that water pump pull water out of the ocean so he could drink healthy water all day without having to stop. I said, How'd you do it? He said, I did it with a solar panel. I'm like, ooh, wow, that's super interesting. So I found this guy his name's Kyle Stefan, who's the president of a company called Spectral Watermakers. And we went to him and we said, look, crazy idea. Can we marry you and your genius with these pumps?

1:31:04 With these amazing engineers that we have that work with us at Solar City and Tesla that really understand battery storage and solar, and can we marry that together to be able to produce healthy, affordable fresh water out of a brackish well or out of the ocean utilizing reverse osmosis and D cell. And they were like can't be done, it's too grid intensive, is too expensive. Um

1:31:28 Good good luck. You're naive. You're you're you know, you you have no idea you're not a good enough engineer to understand that this is impossible. It's too expensive, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, Well, look, I am naive. I want to try. Um, you know, let's give it a shot. And so we spent about a year trying to build that system, maybe a year and a half. We couldn't get it to work and then finally we cracked a code. And I was like, Well we let's put it in a container. We can ship it anywhere in the world. We will drop these things all over the world and we'll produce healthy, affordable, sustainable water for people.

1:32:01 off grid in these communities where we've done these schools. And now we've done that, you know, many times over. And that was the breakthrough. And the insight was, wait a minute. Okay. We could kind of almost turn this into an economic model like Milkman in the nineteen sixties, where we change the model where women can actually make money and earn a living by distributing this water. And what people don't understand Like after it's clean, basically. Yeah, absolutely. Instead of carrying the dirty water back.

1:32:30 Take the clean water and become distributors for this. I can right yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and so there's a lot of people that have these causes, they say we need to address migration issues. We need to address these socio economic issues, women's rights issues, education issues, health care issues. What I realized the breakthrough epiphany that I had was You can't address migration issues until you address the water issue. You know, when Like Greg Brenneman, who is on the board of Home Depot, this guy's an amazing CEO. He's an incredible philanthropist. He was like the CEO of Yum Yum Brands for a while, Bain Capital.

1:33:06 um continental airlines. He and I went to Honduras. And we flew around Honduras together. We went to all these different locations that had b issues with migration, water scarcity, all these things. And he had the breakthrough with me where he was like, You know what? We gotta solve the water issue, man. Otherwise people are gonna move. I might go, Greg, look at me. You and I are pretty capable guys.

1:33:26 Imagine you and I grew up here. We live here. Are we gonna leave? If we're drinking poison every day and everyone's dying by the time they're thirty. He's like, We're gonna leave. I said exactly.

1:33:34 So water is is the unlock. Water is the foundation and fundamental thing that now allows you to say, okay, now we can educate the women because they have the time. They're not fetching water all day long. Now we can change the socioeconomic model. where people can sell the water and distribute the water within the communities like Milkman and Light in the nineteen sixties and their tuk tuk and r all these other cool contraptions they build to distribute this water. Now we can talk about Healthcare issues. And so because we're people are drinking fresh, affordable water and they're they can stay alive, but you can't stay alive if you drink poison. And so that's that's why I'm really passionate about it. It checks a lot of boxes for me. Yeah.

1:34:14 That's it. That's amazing. I went to Africa, I went to Ethiopia with uh Charity Water. And we Uh it was like 'Cause you even even when you hear like oh they've they have to walk to get water

1:34:25 Walk. 'Cause it's basically It might just be scorching hot, first of all, like you're in a like a desert. You're walking and then you're carrying like a farm if everyone's g gone to like a personal trainers had made you do a farmer's carry where you're carrying like forty five pound dumbbells on both sides and now walk for four hours. Right. So they had us do like the carry Oh my I mean how does one man do sixty steps and I'm like I work out five times a week you know and this woman would just

1:34:53 throw it up on her head and walk for four hours. It was in I mean It's like the ultimate sales pitch. It's like If you could just get everyone in the world to try that walk one time, yeah. Uh you know, everybody would be like, Yeah, we gotta solve this problem. Yeah, no, it's and and and Charity Water is a phenomenal organization, water.org, like all these people are trying to solve the problem in different ways. Ours is you know There's two billion people in the world that lack access to electricity.

1:35:18 They're the same two billion people in the world that lack access to sustainable water, that have water scarcity issues. And so this is not about just Water filtration. Or you know, distributing water. This is about

1:35:33 dignity, man. This is about hope. This is about opportunity for humanity in these areas. And capable people like you, I'm telling you, Sean, if you laid in the dirt with me, And I just got back from a trip recently. I was over in Kenya. Um I did a trek over there with 20 UT students and then I went to Mimbasa and I got in the Bowser and I delivered water and I raced the guys with the with the, you know, the the whatever the thirty jugs of liters of water in there. Um You just realize like I'm alive when I'm there. I I can see I'm not in the vitamin business when I'm there. I'm in the life saving business that I'm when I'm there. Every drop of water that we distribute, we did you know, we save a life. And we've got the unit economics, as you know, it's all comes down to math. We've got the unit economics down to a penny a day.

1:36:19 A penny a day for someone. And so A penny a day. You can provide healthy, affordable drinking water for a heat for one person. For a day. It's a penny a day, man. And we maintain these systems for basically we sell the water in the areas for half of a cent. Okay. And that allows us to take care of all the operations and maintenance. It allows us to pay for all the people that work in the in the in the area that that work on the on the system for us, that maintain the system and those kinds of things. So it's got real teeth to it. I mean, this thing is a real economic model that scales. And and so I'm I'm really happy with the team. It's an extraordinary group of people that have really thought through, okay, now how do we go scale that? How do we go, you know, deploy as many of those systems as we possibly can all throughout the world for these people as fast as we can. And people go, Well, you know

1:37:12 What happens with the salt that goes back in? These systems produce about 75,000 liters of water every single day. So one system produces 75,000 liters of water every single day. And we design them at a scale in which it's a very small amount of salt. it goes back into the ocean. And then we can now we've invented other systems where we can pull it right out of a brackish well. The the little hidden secret that most people don't know is a lot of these boreholes that are drilled, they go brackish and then they sit there and then and then no one does anything with them. We can take our systems, drop our lines in there, we can uh decell that water utilizing reverse osmosis and we can deliver that healthy water to these communities as well. Water's life. It's it's pretty cool. So if somebody's inspired, what's the right way to kinda get involved or Give. Well w w what's the call to action? Yeah, look, I mean you can go to the Give Power website and and uh it's just givepower.org and and you can kinda see ways in which you can give and and those kinds of things. We're trying to come up with

1:38:08 all different types of way where where people can participate. We sent about thirteen hundred people on treks. um over the last few years. So I want them to see it. I want them to go. Like you could you shouldn't have to sacrifice your entire life just so you can have a glass of water. And you're there and you see you when you roll your sleeves up. And you get your hands dirty. and you build one of these systems, you see how technology can transform communities overnight. Like not over a year, like instantaneous, the moment the water comes on.

1:38:38 Everybody's alive. Everybody's like celebrating and dancing and singing. And all of a sudden the kids are healthier and everybody's d vibrant and and it just creates a tremendous amount of optimism and hope and opportunity. Hey. Dude, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you, Few Man. I feel like I can rule the world and no way. Be what I want to I put my law in it like my day song on the road, less travel, never looking back. My friends, if you like MFM, then you're gonna like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

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