Down, But Not Out

Ep. 11 How Never Settle Survived After Losing Half of their Revenue Due to the Pandemic

June 01, 2022 Nick Hollinger Season 1 Episode 11
Down, But Not Out
Ep. 11 How Never Settle Survived After Losing Half of their Revenue Due to the Pandemic
Show Notes Transcript

In early 2020, the world was struck by uncertainty, and almost every business was impacted in one way or another. Never Settle was hit hard by their clients closing their retail stores, budget cuts, and layoffs. Listen to learn how Ken was able to manage internal costs to combat lost revenue and come out stronger in the end.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Down, But Not Out. Today I'm joined by Ken Kelly. Ken  started his entrepreneurial journey 15 years ago after leaving his job as a  Management Consultant at Accenture. Ken is now the CEO and Co-Founder of Never Settle,  a Denver-based digital agency working with over a thousand clients and a million users working with  both enterprise and small businesses. Ken has built Never Settle to be a globally recognized  technology and marketing solution provider.  Ken, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me. Awesome so I don't know if my introduction sufficed but give us a backstory on yourself and  Never Settle cool yeah I like talking about others more so when you say  much easier yeah you know my back story would would be I was the first person to go to college  and I had really incredible professors that that encouraged me to get into management consulting  I always kind of want to start my own my own thing my family was somewhat entrepreneurial  my mom had started a little restaurant my dad was a mechanic he started a mechanic shop and it was  just kind of in my in my blood and once once I went to college I just had a professor saying  you got to go learn first so that's kind of where I started and then through a series of events you  know life pushes you into these things and you see doors and you choose to open them or not  and I've started a handful of companies and the most recent one would be never subtle which is  digital and a creative agency where we do B2B work for businesses whether it's  app development web development e-commerce branding marketing design things like that  and we started that it'll be 10 years this coming fall so. Awesome and then how many early on- like walk through that story a bit you graduated did you  go straight into management consulting? I looked up your profile a bit and it looks  like there was one or two in between one or two companies in between management consulting after. So I actually I got a job while I was in college where I got hired into management consulting  and I had a the same professor that told me I should go say don't start right away so I  actually went to Europe and I backpacked through Europe by myself nice ever been out of the country  you know opened my eyes so much to diversity and life and people and just culture and really fell  in love with traveling through that trip and came back and started right away and while I  was working and I did management consulting for a handful of years and then I transitioned and I got  recruited into a tech startup in Silicon Valley and I moved out to california and I did that whole  thing and I ended up becoming a co-founder there and raising money on sandhill road and  going through that hyper lifestyle and ultimately coming back to Colorado taking another executive  or an executive role at a tech startup in Denver and then I walked away from that because I didn't  agree with the direction the company was going and as an owner my you know my name  is on the on the tax forms where you know I'm responsible for how we're treating people  and nothing was illegal but there was just things that the majority owner was doing that were  unethical in my opinion and so that was actually the genesis for Never Settle so me and a couple  other founder partners we actually walked away and two of us two of the three that walked away  started one company Never Settle and then another guy started at another company and and for me I  was doing some soul searching in that time and just saying what do I really want to do and I was  also I was three months away from getting married and really excited to to start this life but now  I have no job I have no money it was a startup someone you know I'm not getting paid anything  and I I tell my wife like hey I think I'm gonna do it again I'm gonna start over again  like are you still in and she's my fiance at the time right and she she said okay. She just trusted you but it still backed out right she could have. Yeah you could tell she was scared like a little nervous but she stayed with me  and and in that process I had people saying like what do you want your company to be about like  what are you to do I was like I'll do anything I just care how we do it like that's actually  I care more about how we do it than what we do and I had skills and technology because my  career technology consulting like that's where my career was so those were the doors that were  easily open to start getting paid to do work but you know going through this thing of like  unpacking the layers what were all the broken things I saw being part of a massive company  and a management consulting lifestyle and then what were all the broken things I saw in  Silicon Valley and tech startups and then in this little you know startup here in Denver  what are the things that that were really broken and what were the things that were really good  and how do I how do I learn from both and in that process came to this idea of like we just never  want to settle like that was kind of my life's axiom at the point at that point was like I just  I'm a guy that never wants to tell I want to make the most of every moment of life I want to live to  the fullest my friends were like that's what you should call your company like that's what you're  about that's what you should name it and I was like I was like you're right that is and so for us  it was can we lick we could we run a business in a way that we would Never Settle on our  principles and doing the right thing even if we lost money even if you know unless we lost  status or clients whatever that may be but would we be willing to like hold  that to our integrity like our integrity would be our guiding light and for us and my partners we  were we're Christians we're believers and so for us like we wanted that Never Settle  principle to be could we walk within a biblical standard like could we hold to that standard and  and obviously that is a huge question and there's ways that we fail every day  but that was kind of the genesis of the company was coming out a handful of broken  things especially the last company and saying we don't want to do that again can we can we do  it differently and so the agency was birthed and I would say you know our identity was more just  like hustling we're just trying to figure out what are we doing and that was you know that's 2012 and  you know we're almost 10 years 10 years into it and a lot's happened since then but that was  that was how I transitioned from those those other companies into this  awesome that's some good backstory there I like to starting with a with a purpose of what you want to  be and then figuring out what you're going to be right that's important and a lot of company a lot  of people don't realize that that is an important part about business they have a good idea  but early on you have to set what your your guiding light is what your your mission is  because you could do a lot early on with a good idea and it not be who you want it the  company doesn't turn out where you want it to go in 10 years or in 15 years or something like  that then you end up being dissatisfied with with what you've actually created  and you could have made money or you could not but you might have not have made that money  in the right ways right and and the direction you wanted to go but I think that's a good segue  into Never Settle walk us through kind of the early days and up into your your down button auto  story those early grinds getting your first client tell us a bit about that yeah we started just  with people that I knew and knowing the service I could offer and and and just directly reaching  out to them but kind of serendipitous a major client and a friend and I left out some roles  and things that I've done in my career but one of the things I've done is I've raised  some money for various things and projects and one of them was this big film that I helped  raise some funding for and the CEO that ran the media company behind that reached out to  me and said hey can I know you're in technology and this was literally the day that I left that  previous this my the company before Never Settled yeah the day I literally I gave my resignation  I relinquished through over a series of a few months I ended up letting go of all the debt  and everything I invested and the equity to just have a clean break and just say  I just want to start over I want to be fresh I don't want to have any ties to this  and walking out the door basically with nothing and I'm literally walking down  the road and kind of freaking out what did I just do and I get a call from this guy who runs this  massive media company and says hey Ken I know you're in technology we have a lot of needs like  do you think you could help us we have you know 20 clients that need need help in websites and  e-commerce and all this stuff so that was a huge blessing and was really what kind of kick-started  the company and then from there you know just learning to we we've built a lot of technologies  we've built we've tried you know we have a few tech products that we sell whether they're like  plug-ins or SaaS solutions and you know I would just say like we didn't have a clear identity like  of who we were and I wish I would have invested more time in the beginning to understand what  kind of business are we building remember it was so many years down the road where people would say  what do you do and I would tell them and i would think that I was being really clear  and they'd like and then they would let me know like I have no clue what you're doing you know my  mom would say like like i just tell my friends you do stuff in business but I don't know what you do  and it's and that's on me that wasn't clear on it and I would say that that limited a  lot of our growth like it wasn't until we really clearly were able to establish  our identity of what we s of what we do how we do it was most important to us internally but to keep  our team employed and to grow and all these things having a crystal clear distilled vision of exactly  what we do and like like how it helps other people was really important and I'd say as we started  start realizing oh we're in the agency like okay we're an agency what is an agency and  starting to define that that's where we started seeing some additional growth  and yeah yeah that was that was what kind of led to that and I'd say there's a thousand ways that  we've taken swings and missed and that's been best best learning thing for me I mean I study a ton  read a lot of books with advisors we obviously try to do things based on best practices but  further along I would say the last three years we've taken more swings than we have in the  previous seven years and being able to fail quickly and I've that used to drive me nuts  and I felt like it was just this phrase that was I got it but I didn't really believe it  it's not I'm trying to fail it's just we spend more time doing things than thinking about them  so we come up with a strategy we try to implement it and then we learn from it really quickly  versus taking a year to implement the strategy or spending a ton of time on a 10-year plan  when like we don't know what's going to change in 10 years right that's like that's going to get  into the story but covet changed a lot of things like if we had a 10-year plan it would have been  pointless because of what kova did to the market for us yeah yeah I think with startups and or even  larger companies their environments are changing so quickly that a year plan two-year plan is often  all that suffices and even those things changes so quickly you can you can have a rough  idea and that's one of the the principles of like a lean startup right of the lean startup is fail  fast just test out things spend less time planning and more students doing because you'll learn more  from the doing and as long as you're going on a direction you'll have to move and pivot but  as long as you can continue to do that that's the best way to go about it  well that also another good segue into you mentioned the last three years and we had  talked before and part of your story or your story has to do with the COVID-19 pandemic that  obviously shocked the whole world but walk us through that that down bonado moment yeah so we  were we were starting to get some healthy growth say we consistent we had kind of consistent 20 to  30 year-over-year growth our team was growing and it felt like man we're starting to get traction  we understand who we are we understand how to find our target client we're getting a lot of referrals  and had really big plans for what 2019 would look like and even January kicked off amazing and  and then you know COVID hit and for us it wasn't necessarily we weren't personally impacted  directly because of kovid because our team is is remote and you know we have office space in  denver but we have people that work all over the country and for the most part people work  out of their homes and so for them like we were able to keep them employed and give them a job  with the exception that the whole world's connected right like we're all connected  and we always we forget that so easily just just thinking about you know how many how many  thousands of people maybe millions of people have put their hands on like today we're using Zoom  and my computer your computer like the people that manufacture that and shipped that and everything  like we're so connected and so if something breaks in that chain it really does have an  adverse effect on the entire pipeline right and for us what that looked like is we had a lot of  clients we serve a lot of clients in e-commerce and marketing and retail and they all have these  physical locations but now their stores are closed they're panicking or we have we have  services businesses you know we do we do SMB and enterprise but basically most people that had  a physical presence had to close their building down right yeah and when they when they did that  the one of the things I think that COVID did specifically for our clientele was the first  thing that happened was fear and I think people were really scared of what was going to happen  because it wasn't defined and so the thing that we saw was a huge amount of clients came  and said like we're cutting our budget in half or we're stopping we're pausing we're doing whatever  and we were in this really interesting place because we were we were we don't want to sell  ourselves but we do care about our clients like we really want to steward their resources really well  and for a lot of them it was you know if they had an e-commerce platform and say a  retail platform and their retail was closed it was we were trying to befriend them and also  educate them like this is it's probably really wise if this entire revenue stream shuts down  to not also shut down your only other pipeline that you can sell through  and maybe even and I would say I'd say there was like there was a couple clients that they  could see that you know everyone talks about you know buy when the market's low sell when  the market's high very few people can can do that because we're emotional beings and fear it's and than saying it yeah they override logic and so we saw a couple of clients that  were like oh yeah they're like we're tripling our budget like and they and they saw the opportunity  and what's interesting is those businesses are doing incredible and i would say  in regards we did as well like we we invested into  keeping the business going we didn't try to just like shut it down right so or slow it down  so in that though so many clients pulled cash away from us and I'm sure lots of other places  that you know our our revenue was cut probably more than in half in a matter of 30 days  it was it was it was dramatic and it was quick and we have all these people on payroll and for us as  a services business 90 of our budget maybe 95 of our budget annually is going to people so yeah  so our biggest concern is we're going to lose these people and we and you know for us it's it's  getting like how do we do business well we want to take care of the people that work for Never  Settle like we want them to be thriving in their home want them to have a good job that they like  and it was really clear like we that our burn rate is you know double triple our revenue rate so  we're in like we're we're going to be in serious trouble and so we got together as a management  team and the thing that came out of that meeting like the guiding light for us was like okay  what do we have to do to make sure that we lose nobody and so that was so we had this like crystal  clear vision of like what's most important right now it was like we don't want our people to lose  to lose their jobs it's not like they can go get another one quickly like mass layoffs  and and then once we got clarity on that then everything else was actually pretty easy and  what i mean easy to implement like it wasn't complex it was very hard but it wasn't complex  and for us what we landed on is as owners and executives there's four of us we were gonna  relinquish our pay so we'd get rid of that that bill for all four of us and then we'd go to our  team and we'd say we're gonna ask everyone to take a 30 pay cut and you know the team was  a mixed emotion of like thank you and you know that i stole my job and this is going to be  really hard for me so so we present we present this to the team and say hey we have some news  it's good and bad the good news is no one's losing their job the bad news is  we're all gonna we're all gonna team together to ensure that that doesn't happen  and so we're we're gonna defer our pay and we're gonna ask you guys to defer 30 percent of your pay  and that was I mean that's really hard you know I'd say like a lot of you know we have people  like I don't know what everyone's budget is but I know that was very hard for some people like it  was it was it was a it wasn't a small cut for them and that was enough to bridge this gap as we were  trying to figure out how do we how do we build the business back up how do we reacquire that revenue  but without without that like pivotal moment like we would we would have collapsed really quickly  yeah because of that and I'd say I'd say the team was it brought unity to the team that was probably  one of the best benefits is we said hey we're we want to be like family we want to we want to  take care of one another so we're all going to do it right we didn't just say hey lowest performer  we're going to cut the bottom 20 of the company we just said we're gonna do it together as a family  and we we tracked every dollar we didn't pay them we tracked every dollars for that and we said  you know we don't know when we can do this but we're gonna put into a deferral account  and when we can pay you back we will and fast forward you know it's been two years a little  over two years probably but last year all that was paid off every single person got every single  dime back that we asked them to defer including people that had left the company in in the last  two and a half years like we still maintain that for them and making payments to them even after  even after they had left Never Settle so you definitely lived up to the mantra going in then  with that if it has more clear evidence of that so you avoided layoffs completely by the sounds  of how long did the deferral process go on for like how long was that gap that you talked about  yeah we so we that was one of the hard things is everyone's like how long they asked that question  we're like I don't know and our best projections were like six months  and it was over a year you know which was really hard because now we're showing up and  and we're not meeting our expectation we we we're clear we don't actually know what we hope  it could be six months so we probably deferred almost a year's worth of payments and then it  took us another you know once we stopped deferring payments we just got people back gradually back  up to their normal salary or normal pay and then after that it wasn't like we just started paying  back deferrals right because that was there's this huge expense we incurred so then there was a gap  before we started making those payments but it was probably a two-year process in total that it took  us to do that and one of the interesting things for us as a team coming out of that so we've  like last year was the best year we've ever had and the team rallied together and we did super  super well and it was really encouraging to come out of you know an event that had a high  likelihood of shutting down the entire business to rebounding into one of our best years ever  and then you know this this last month has been amazing as what like the beginning of 2022 has  been amazing and things look good and I'm not putting all my stock in that but like it's a  significant event of where we're at like we it was like a leapfrog event it's like we're  kind of going here and we had this like major collapse that was looking like it was going to  close the company and then we get through it and we like jumped up here and now we're back  on that same trajectory but it's we we had a huge gap that we've jumped in this last year  which is really really encouraging one of the things that happened in that was I think COVID made people reflect on a lot of things people were isolated and they had to think they couldn't just  be busy with doing stuff and during that time  for a ton of reasons people realizing I need to be closer to my family I need like I actually really  like I don't like technology I'm really interested in music or whatever it may have been we had a  like after after the first year we probably had 15 of our staff like resign  and not on bad terms it was like i was all this stuff of like i just realized i you know i've  been thinking about my life and I'm just not that interested in being in front of a computer  and so it was like great you know it was hard but it was like great but what was really interesting  is that when we and this is this this this feels challenging to say on on a podcast but but  you never you never want to rank people right but if we had if we had to stack people like  highest performers the best people on our team stayed and the people that were great people  but weren't the best of the best of our team were the ones that like ended up leaving and so then we  had this really lean team but was the best of the best and all of a sudden we're able to do  everything that we were doing before with less people and that was that was really interesting  because you don't you don't know where you're unhealthy in the business until sometimes until  you lose those pieces and so I thought we were going to have a major collapse and it was like  we're actually doing better and for us that's in in it the thing to clarify there is we limit our  work hours to 40 hours a week so we don't let our staff work more than 40 so it's not like we  had less people we said okay we'll pay you over time or work twice as hard like it was within  the same container with you know 20 percent less people and we were doing the same amount of work  as before which was really helpful that increased our profitability that helped us pay back those  deferrals honestly and then it set us on a new trajectory of okay we got to get what can we learn  from this like how can we hire better what does that tell us like all these things you know so  it was definitely a catalyst moment for us that i would have never expected and going into it was  very intense you know when you're looking at we're going to shut down the doors we don't  find a solution to this and I don't even know if this solution is a good one you know yeah and  you don't know how long it's going on for back to that question right that's about that gap  i remember the early days you can say the early days now because it's been almost two years okay  of course 19 where everyone was just in limbo and like you our clients there were a number  of them that were just like I don't know where the world's gonna be in a month or two or three  so we're just pausing and the world went pause and we went plateau we dropped a bit as well  and we didn't know how long that was going to go on for and without some changes that we had  made and some government funding like it would have been tough to to make payroll as well yeah  did you ever get any of those clients back that paused or like early on had left are you still  working on some of them yeah I don't think my team would probably know better than me I don't think  that we lost any permanently lost any one client well that's good I shouldn't say that I take that  back cause I'm thinking about people that had shifts in their business and stuff but it was  it was probably less than two percent you know two like it was very it was a very small small number  and yeah so it felt like it felt like things just were paused and then after that we had we actually  had a lot of people that I think with enough time started realizing oh man I gotta get on the game  like I gotta get in this game on e-commerce specifically because my competitors they're  like they're blowing me away and that's and this is my this is my only pipeline like I can't sell  to people directly so I got to figure this out so we ended up doing a lot of work for people  converting a lot of businesses into e-commerce they were physical sales converting e-commerce or  subscription type products simply whether it's a digital subscription to get access to this  information was coaching training education or subscription to a you know a male a meal  product a a male in product like a a supplement or a food thing or you know something but you get you  get it every month or every quarter and so end up doing a lot of work in that particular space yeah  i had to help some agencies in town that did see that dip originally and then however long after  their their retail side clients were like hey we need to actually double down on this right  and I know myself looking at purchasing some from some of my favorite local shops restaurants what  have you you look at brand new retail ecommerce stores that they have set up that they've had  to do during covet right yeah they didn't have before so definitely a time of opportunity but  like we talked about it's it's hard to stomach that early on I think this is gonna be a big  risk yeah should I do this when you don't know how that how long that cap is gonna go on for  yeah we took you know we took some swings that did not work out so one of the things we saw  was restaurants in particular and I you know my mom like I grew up working I started working in  a restaurant my grandparents restaurant when i was five like just sweeping and trying to make  dough I think my grandma was just an incredible person and allowed me to be there right but I  grew up in restaurants worked through them all the way through college and I have a heart for  the services industry and I love going to restaurants and stuff and all my favorite  restaurants they can't they don't have a solution to like to you know to maintain  their business and we saw an opportunity like we could create an app or a simple conversion for  anyone's website to get to allow them to have online ordering and people could order online  and then pick up in the restaurant and we did we built a solution for restaurants a solution for  churches so that they could like digitally stream their services if they were you know  some churches close their door some didn't but if they did they would have a solution  and there's something with fitness oh yeah like all the gyms that close so being able like getting  the the gym owners to just do digital workouts so work your classes yeah yeah yeah stuff like  that and we built these three solutions we tried to market them try to sell them and they were  total flop like total flop and we took you know we took a big swing on that and it didn't it  didn't pan out and that's okay but what ended up happening was another idea so what we realized is  one of the challenges for small businesses in particular  is cash flow and a lot of these small businesses don't have you know the restaurant that needs to  sell now needs to do delivery or whatever that is they don't have 10 to 20 grand to do a new  website like they're cash strapped and so through failing through those three those three ideas and  opportunities we came up with this idea called always fresh and we came up with a way that we  could we could build someone a ten thousand dollar website for three hundred dollars but they would  pay every month three hundred dollars and so if we can keep them past 18 months to two years  it's a it's a long-term investment for us so we're not like profitable the gate but we're  offering so much value that it makes it easy for someone that's cash strapped right now in a really  tough economy to say yes and so this new item came out called always fresh we kind of launched a sub  brand under Never Settle to build these always fresh websites and they're and they're it's more  than just building the website the reason it's called always fresh is that every month they get  a few hours of support where they can get you know our designer marketer or seo person can help them  and invest that time and then every two years they get a brand new refresh on their website  because that's one of the things that are is difficult with the website is it just gets  outdated very quickly and so you make this huge investment and then a few years later it's already  you know it's been dated so we've created a plan for them to be able to always have  a fresh presence online which is really important at this this you know day and age so that that was  a really great idea and it's still that's still really young right we're still maturing yeah still  really young that's not that hasn't been a game changer for our business but I think long term it  could be really powerful for us as we keep getting just these small incremental revenue and we keep  these clients long-term keep them happy and we're giving them more than they than they're getting  and that's why they're staying with us right to them it's it's a their their value is there so  that was you know another way we we failed in this process but out of it came something really good  yeah there's you miss every shot you don't take right so you gotta keep swinging you gotta you  gotta keep going in there I know we've taken a ton along the way a lot of them don't work out  but it's the thousand things you do thousand little things you do and maybe three of them  actually work out and become something yeah I think that's a definitely an important lesson  throughout the process and we'll wrap up here quick but I got a few wrap up here quick soon  did you did you think about walking like when you went in to talk to with the other owners  and you had that conversation did you lay out what your options were  and if so were one of them did it ever cross your mind of just walking away  no but that's like my that's my like nature is to you know to never quit and  in some some areas I've obviously kept things alive way too long like products or companies  that need to be stopped or closed that's because I get personally invested into them i shouldn't  but i do and then and then i'm like i'm a believer like i'm a hopeful person so I always believe that  tomorrow can be better than today and so I believe there is a solution to this problem and so for me  it was just like we're facing this but I will do whatever it takes to not have this happen  and I didn't have the solution I don't remember who came up with it or how he did but  to that's my memory was just it was a team you know a long team discussion and out of that we  came with this singular focus of what we really want is we don't want anybody to lose their job  so how do we solve that and you've talked about the team a few times I don't know if you've ever  gone at it kind of alone but did having those other people sit in  that room with you that kind of took all the weight off of your shoulders help a bit I think so in the beginning it didn't for whatever reason because I was always  responsible for finance and sales so I was responsible for bringing a new business and  then keeping the finances going I definitely felt like I carried a burden on my own and it wasn't  because my partners weren't like it was it had nothing to do with them it was just like I felt  like it was my responsibility which you know I have very little control of anything in life like  there are so many things that external factors that impact our success and  but I did own that personally and it was unhealthy and when coveted probably  six-seven years in the business and I would say I was definitely in a place where it felt like  we were more aligned in a partnership and we were just going into it saying like how  do we do this I know we always did that but yeah I didn't feel alone in it for sure good Yeah I know a lot of - I'd say half the stories that I've heard are people that are sole  founders and half that have a co-founding team and it's an interesting question to see  if you bring someone with you does that make it easier right does that make it  sharing the burden right does it does that help and how honest are they with their  not only just their family team but also their actual their employees their team there as well  so it's always an interesting question to hear if that makes it easier or not yeah  the last question we've talked about quite a few lessons along the way anything else any anything  from this experience that you'd want to pass on to another founder that's going through a tough time. You know I don't know if it's necessarily about the tough time but it's  I would say the best piece of advice I could give is how to ensure you weather the tough time and  it just it was hitting me when you were talking about companies that have founders or co-founders  and companies that are sole proprietors and i have a lot of friends that own businesses and they're  by both scales right and yeah and now friends say I don't know how you do that with people  like I just want to do my own thing I have no clue you do it and then I have friends that are like  oh my gosh you'd be so nice to not be alone in this right and it's everyone wants to pick and  shoot when they want partnerships and not but I think finding partners is an incredible asset to  any business and I think just the the philosophy of like you can share the weight right you can  share burden you can bring diverse expertise like I think together is better so bringing people to  do life with and partnership with I think will has a better chance of success with the caveat  of I think the most important decision you'll ever make in forming a business is who you partner with  so like very early on decision yeah yes and that's and that's the thing I've seen  a lot of friends go through really hard dramatic circumstances because they chose the wrong partner  and everyone's awesome when things are going good but you need to be off when things are going bad  and you can't vet that out up front right and to me it's literally oh it's like right below the  weight and importance of marrying the right person legally in the government side they actually see  you the same you share a tax form just like I share tax from my wife if she does something bad  the government's not coming for her it's coming for both of us we have equal responsibility  and same thing in the business right so who I partner with is really really important  and just like finding a spouse like a wife or a husband is you want to find someone that's  going to be there for the long haul right tell death to his part basically and so I think that  lots of people have entrepreneurs we're excited by new ideas we're excited to start something  we want to get it started it's just like okay I know I got to have a partner and they make  that decision too quickly and they don't do enough due diligence and betting to really  find out is this a person that can go through hard times with me because if you're starting  a business you're gonna have some significantly stretchy moments and you're gonna need someone  that can like weather that storm with you so to me it's about setting up to to weather that storm  not necessarily how to prevent it or what to do after it I think that's a great lesson and yeah  pretty much what the other answers that I hear from those other founders as well  is that bringing a team with you and the right team that's a very important caveat there  is is incredibly important if you're going to make it or or not in the long haul so  thanks Ken that's all for this episode so thank you for sharing your down but not out story to  everyone listening I hope you enjoyed this episode if you did please leave us a review  also subscribe to the show to be alerted of new episodes and finally like and share  this episode on social media help us spread the word of Down, But Not Out bye everybody  bye Ken thanks again. Thanks again.