most people don't understand that reality is totally manifested. Nothing happens without you making it happen. very little happens just out of pure circumstance or luck. Welcome back to the art of connecting podcast. This is your host here, Haydynn fike back for another episode. And today we are here with a good now friend of mine, Cam Doody, we've moved so much furniture together. I feel like we've just. Bonded endlessly. So I'm super excited to have Cam here. How you doing today, man? Doing awesome. It's great to be with you, man. So I work in the brick yard, which Cam is one of the co founders and leaders of, and I used to sit right basically across from Canada, so I could like throw stuff at him. And it was really cool because just sitting near Cam, I've learned so much about all these random things like Bitcoin and like, Just such, such a vast knowledge of, of amazing random things. It's just been so cool to get to be in the same environment with you, man, and see your energy. Man, I'm glad you're here. Yeah. You've you've added a ton yourself. Thank you. Thank you. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself a little bit, who is Cam Doody, and then we'll get rolling into the show. Well, I guess I I I'm an entrepreneur. I guess now formerly a venture capitalist. But I really don't see myself as, as a VC. The way that we look at Brickyard building Brickyard. How we think about investing. We're just builders. And so. I feel like my whole life I've always been drawn to solving problems. And I'm always kind of seeing inefficiencies and things and things that I would do differently. And, and I'm always sort of like not satisfied with, you know anything that I could. See being optimized and that can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing. But it naturally, I think put me in the bucket of entrepreneurship. I knew that what really motivated me, I knew early on money was not my driver. Power was not my driver. It was really freedom. And I think a lot of that had to do with conversations when I was really young with my dad. And the way that he talked about money. As just being a tool for freedom. Rather than like a tool to, you know, To to use for material pursuits. And you know, always. It admired. My dad and the way that, that he always would buy things like when it was time to buy a car, he'd go and buy a car. And it really, you know, he wasn't concerned about the price. It was just I need a thing and when I need a thing. You know, I've worked hard enough to be able to buy the thing. And, and so, so money was like this tool for having the freedom to be able to live life on your own terms, as opposed to becoming you know, a slave of it. And I think. You know, People fall into one of those three categories. You're either motivated by material things, money that's the game you're playing or you're motivated by status or power. Or the, the third bucket are folks that are motivated by being able to wake up every day and work on. And do things that they are independently. Of, of any other variable want to do themselves? And It really is just the ability to live life on your own terms. And so that has always been my, my core driver. I'm an ambitious person. I have goals and you know, I have a life in that I'm pursuing. But I'm not pursuing the things that I want out of. You know, You know, motive to keep up with the rat race or keep up with the Joneses or this or that. In fact, like, I think that really is, is terrifying to me when I see folks that are in the rat race. Because they don't understand that they're just totally a slave to it. And, you know, when you meet certain people that have done very well for themselves and if take appropriate risks, you've taken appropriate risk to, to be in the position that they're in. When it's motivated out of from a perspective of freedom, that's the only bucket that allows you to live with peace. You know, if it's power that you're. Pursuing, there's always going to be somebody that's more powerful or higher status. If it's money you're pursuing, there's always going to be somebody with more money than you. It's like an endless hamster wheel. But if it's freedom. That's binary. If you can reach the point in your life where. You are free to wake up and live life on your terms. You have achieved the thing, the core thing that you want. And you can always decide that, that you want to achieve more this or that. But if you're looking at all opportunities in your life from the lens of, will this allow me. Well, this will this be enslaving me or will this allow, you know, can I achieve these things and also be free in the pursuit of it? That's really the lens that I look at everything through. So I have this analogy that I use in my life, which is freedom, firsts. And I have people all the time that come up to me and they're like, oh God, you know, you could work for me and make all this money, you know, like, and I'm like, Yeah, I could, but I have lived this life philosophy of freedom first. So the question I have to answer to myself is if I take this position or take this consulting job or whatever it is, Is this going to contribute or take away from my freedom of time. Look in location. And if the answer is it's going to take away from it, it's a no. Yep. It's like how I look at, look at everything through the lens, not to say that that keeps me from committing to things because sometimes it's worth it. Right. It's worth the I'm gonna sacrifice freedom. Potentially today. To, to gain more way more freedom tomorrow. Yes, but I try to look at it with that lens because I've just come to realize with all the friends that I have is we, we have a certain amount of days on this earth. We don't know how many we have. We've got, we don't know if tomorrow could be the last right, right. So we've got to look at today as a gift and spend today the best that we can, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, I think. You know, the thing is, it's not like once you achieve freedom, it's not done right. Unless you, you know, you hit a lick that just allows you to, to do whatever you want for the rest of your life. You never, you're never concerned about. You know, being able to, to, you know, afford the, the type of life that you want to live. It really just comes down to. What's your time preference? You know, are you playing a one-year game? You plan a two year game when you wake up in the morning. What game are you playing? You know? My default is I'm playing 10-year games. And so. I know you talk a lot in your podcasts about your relationships and how you, you know, you surround yourself with people that allow you to to do things you couldn't do very self, but. If you can play longterm games with longterm people, you know, a long-term gain means that you are going to be in pursuit of something and you're going to be making sacrifices in the short term. For a life that you want in the future. But there's a lot of purpose in that. You're not, you're not like always clamoring to keep up with other people that you're looking at as a benchmark. You know, you have the mountain. You know, the, some of the mountain you want to climb way out in distance. And your purpose becomes, you know, just putting one foot over the next in your path to get there. But you're, you're setting that for yourself. You're not letting other people dictate that. So let's do this. I want to start with where we are. I mean, we like where you are and like talk about Brickyard and the day to day. And then I want to go back to like where you were, like what the startups and all of that kind of stuff, how you ended up getting into this. So can you tell people what brick yard is? And, and I, I go into this because you talk about like, You know what kind of game you're playing and who you're surrounding yourself with. And I think this is just an embodiment perfectly of like putting yourself around the right people and putting yourself in the right environment. So can you explain like what Brickyard is for the people that don't know in layman terms and then like, You know how you Came to be here, like how to, how to break or come to be. Yeah, Brickyard is a, we're a venture capital firm. This is a pretty unique sort of an odd bird in the industry in that. When we invest in a company. And we're focused on, on the very early earliest stages of company building. So we're investing, which is what's called pre-seed and seed stage venture capital, which is either your very absolute, very first check into a company. Or your, or your second check and do a. And into a company. And so we're backing companies that are very early on in their. You know, in their life cycle it's the highest risk, highest reward bucket and venture capital. And that, you know, when we find. A really early. You know, exceptional, early stage team in 10 years, if that company's a, you know, a two or$5 billion outcome. And we got in the company at, you know, three to$6 million valuation or something, You know, that's, that's you know, that can be a huge home run for our fund. And venture capital operates on something called a power law. Which, you know, in our current fund, we'll invest in about 40 companies. But we know that 95% of our returns are going to come from about 5% or less of our investments. And so venture capital is like, if you think about it like baseball, it's not about singles hitting singles and doubles. And having a high batting average. It's about hitting and it's not even about hitting home runs. It's about hitting grand slams. But in, in venture you're not limited to four runs. And so the way that we think about investing in companies is every investment that we make we have to believe that that if things go right. That one investment could return the entire fund. So right now we're investing out of a$20 million fund. You know, if we buy 5% of a company. You know, we, we believe that the 5% of that company could deliver at least at a$20 million return. To our fund. And, and so. It's less about building like a portfolio that all fits really nicely. Like we're going to take some risk here. We're going to take a little less risk here. Every investment that we're making you know, we we're, we are swinging for the fences on. And that's how, that's just the fun dynamics of early stage venture capitalist. Is you really have to look at it through that lens. So we invest in equity financing in to early stage companies. And all that means is we're buying a piece of accompany for cash. And these companies are, are using that cash to grow their businesses. And as opposed to debt financing, where you're taking a loan and, and you're, you're building your company that way. With, with venture capital you're, you're giving up a piece of your pie for cash that you can use to grow your company really quickly. Awesome. And. You know, obviously we have the office here in Chattanooga. So how, how did that come to be, how did this space that we're sitting in right now? Become what it is. So let's see back in 2012. I had started a company called bellhop that with my co-founder Matt Patterson. And whenever other co-founder. And we Our first check was written by a group called lamppost group, which is group in Chattanooga. But if they wrote a check in your company, you had to move to Chattanooga and build out of their space alongside the rest of their portfolio. And we had this really magical four year period where they wrote 10 checks and the. Into 10 different companies. We all built around each other in our earliest stages. It was a super high intensity, super competitive environment where we all like loved each other. And cared about each other, but we also wanted to dunk on each other every day. It, wasn't an incubator. Wasn't an accelerator. Wasn't like a 10 week boot Camp kind of thing. Like if, if you took a check from lamppost, you moved and put your head down until you you know, until you reached escape velocity. And seven of those companies today are you know, I think the smallest company of the seven that still remain is, you know, is over a hundred million dollar company. Wow. And so how did that happen? Well, it was just this really wild. Thread, I think that they started pulling on where what really matters in the early stages of building a company is a radical focus. And it just total commitment to to, to extreme execution hours in. But also the, having a community of people around you that. Understand. The pressures that you're under. And when you're only surrounded by other founders, who've raised venture and. Are are under those same expectations for growth. It allows you to, to weather the uncertainty and the volatility and the pain that really comes with with you know, building an early stage company, because everybody around you is going through the same stuff. And so it's not like. Teams are solving each other's problems per se, tactically. It's just being around other people that are taking similar risks and holding themselves to the same. You know, standard of, of execution that really just pushes you. It's the classic, you know, you're the average of the five. People that are closest to you. When you're only surrounded by other venture backed, you know founders and early employees, everybody's playing the same game and everybody is, you know, by definition. Being pushed really hard. And so. We bought I guess, you know, with bellhop, for example, we raised about$120 million over the last decade right before COVID we sold part of the company, Matt, pat, and I stepped out of the day-to-day the business and hired a executive team and to run the company. And so we kind of were free agents thinking about what we wanted to do next. And we just got the band back together from lamppost and decided, Hey, let's do this again. But this time let's go. A lot bigger. With larger funds and, and let's bring a lot of, of top tier operators from all over the country and world. To build in the same environment that we built in. And you know, back in 20 12, 13, 14 at lamppost. Wow. And so when, when you got that. Now, I guess let's, let's kind of go back now that we know what Brickyard is and have gone through that. I want to go back to the beginning stages of bellhops like, so you and Matt, pat, you guys were in Birmingham, right? And. So, what did that look like? How did, how did that company come to be and what was the big, what was the big idea behind it? Well, you know, we started with we had taken jobs. We'd graduated right in the middle of the financial crisis. And nobody was hiring. The economy was just flat. I mean, it was very weird. I don't think it's hard for people to understand what an economy really feels like when, when nothing is really growing. Everybody's in cost-cutting mode. There's a lot of uncertainty and fear in the market. There weren't a lot of people hiring. And we had taken jobs at a bank. I was like one step above a teller at a bank in a mall parking lot in Birmingham. And I was fresh out of college and I was like, wow, so this is what the real world is. And it was sort of a, like, Getting ride hooked in the face of if, if you, if freedom matters most to you, you better start taking your own financial independence really seriously. Because if you just stay in the Peloton of, of all the other kids rolling out of college and just entering some corporate 40 year corporate ladder This is going to be a pretty bleak existence. And I may never get to the point where, you know, I've fulfilled that, you know, check the freedom box. And so almost out of like anxiety in being in that like really difficult Work environment and the people that I was surrounded with in the bank, there were really wonderful people. Like I love them to death to this day. It just wasn't the, the path that I saw for myself. And and so that pushed us start thinking about you know, starting companies and, you know, fast forward about two and a half years later I We Came up with the idea of, you know, collegiate moving. Is this, this. Massive problem. Parents have to come in town once a semester to, move their kid. Out of third floor apartment and into another apartment on Campus or, or in the early days. It was, it was just moving kids into the dorms. This is right when the iPhone and come out. And we, we didn't even know what Uber was. I think we conceptualize that if you built a workforce management platform in an, you. In an app you could round up all these broke college students that were athletic. You know, Kids. And give their like muscle power, you know, give the rest of the, of Campus access to, you know, Dare. They're lifting abilities. And so. Instead of a hundred pound girl trying to lift a futon up three flights of stairs, there's two former football players. playing X-Box, four doors down. Yeah, she should be able to access them. To, you know, To pay them to move her stuff. And so we started moving kids into the dorms and the first year, we, we we had like a thousand dollars in the company and we were hoping to move like 20 kids into the dorms. We ended up having to move 400 kids into the dorms in like three days. And, and then we said, okay, we could do this at every four-year college in the country. And this could be like really big business. And so we expanded to eight cities or eight. Colleges and the Southeast. And did really well in our second year. But we realized like it was just so spiky that you really couldn't build a business around like the three days of kids moving in and out of the dorms. But around that same time, their parents started asking us to. load and unload their UHaul Like, Hey, you move my daughter in. Like, can you load our, U haul we're moving down the street or whatever. And we had to turn down, the first like 20 or 30, you know, parents that asked us to move and we're like, well, we only move students. And then one day it was like, let's just try it. Let's see if it works. It's like asking that question. Exactly. Yeah. And so we, the market kind of pulled us in to, you know, not just moving students, but becoming this labor platform where we had all these high judgment high EEQ. Individuals in college that were, ambitious and athletic. And, and now we, we turned into a a labor platform for any kind of moving help. And, over the course of about three or four years, we had, scaled to over a hundred cities in the us, and we're removing, you know, thousands of people in and out of you halls. And then they started asking our customers, started asking us to. To go pick up the trucks and we turned down the first. You know, a hundred or 200 customers had asked and finally we're like, well, why don't we just pick up the trucks? And so then when we started. Booking you halls on a corporate account. And then having our, our bellhop captains go pick up the truck, do the move, take the truck back. And in about a three-month period after doing this, we beCame a top five or top 10 customer for UHaul. Wow. And And then when you're after that, you know, this was, I think 2015. We had something like 2,500 UHaul's book for the month of June. And UHaul. I guess had decided that we were a threat to their labor marketplace that they had built. And so they just killed all of our reservations. So we had 2,500 trucks, 2,500 customers that had booked moves that we had no means of actually moving them now. And I'd randomly met this guy in, in, on vacation. Who was best friends with Roger Penske? I thought Penske immediately. Wouldn't you said that. Yeah. And it was just, this was one of those super lucky things. It just kind of happens. And I call him and I say, Hey, I need to talk to the Penske team, I need to move 2,500 trucks to Penske and like a week. And two days later. Executive team for Penske flew in to Chattanooga on a private jet. And we ended up moving all 2,500 moves to them. And then we realized like, okay, we, we can't rely on Penske. We got to actually take responsibility for our loan logistics. So we started running our own trucks. And our bellhops are starting or leasing our own trucks. And, and we were wrecking trucks and kids were taking the tops off trucks under bridges, and it was total nightmare maintaining these things. And it was just a totally different business. And and then we met, we were introduced to a guy that had a fleet of 26 foot box trucks that. He had 7,000, 26 foot box trucks and one customer, which is Amazon. And we went to him to ask him, like, how in the hell do you manage these things? Like, how do you train your drivers and keep them maintained and all that? And he stopped us like five minutes into the conversation. He's like, why don't you just onboard my trucks and drivers as your bellhops we'll do all the driving and your bellhops can do all the moving we'll just meet on location. And that was, we were like, huh, that's interesting. Let's try that. And within six months, It had this third-party trucking model had just taken over the entire business. And and that's what ultimately what allowed bellhops to scale nationally with a fundamentally different cost outlay than all the traditional movers. Where we could launch a city. We turn on our, our demand engine for our labor and for we close one or two carriers and within like six weeks, we'd have the. You know, the, the capacity of like every other moving company in the city combined. Wow. With no fixed cost. And so that's what allows us to scale. So anyway, long story short you know, we've been growing the company now since 2012. And with just a fundamentally different logistics model than everybody else and moving it's given us the ability to cram 50 or 60 years of growth into like 10. That's incredible. There's such an interesting thread all the way through this, though. Like you happened to have met someone on vacation that happened to know Roger Penske. And then like, There was this fund in Chattanooga. How did you, how did you get hooked up with the lamppost group? Like how did, how did you meet the founders of that? Like how did that come into play? We knew that in order to scale the company at the time we needed to build technology. You know, we had run the company in the first couple of years on like clipboards and walkie-talkies on college Campuses. And but we knew in order to scale it, we had to actually build some technology. And we weren't technical and but one of us. One of my co-founders. New Ted Allen, who is an entrepreneur in supply chain. Who had started lampposts just was a, this venture Group and Chattanooga and around the same time, like we were growing, the company was growing and kind of. Picking up some interest from some, some regional VCs in the south. And ultimately we ended up. You know, taking a check from, from lamppost and. You know, the rest is his sort of history beyond that. So it was like, how did you meet Ted? It was a friend of yours. Hidden, knew, knew him that he was good at. My co-founder Steven is from Vesta. Birmingham, Alabama. And so it was Ted. And so they were kind of like distant family, friends and. You know, they were one of the first folks that we reached out to and saying, Hey, we've got a company that's this, you know, seems to be really working. But we need some capital to scale it. And ultimately they, they loved what we were doing and, and wrote our first check. Gotcha. So in this whole process of growing, I mean, I can, I can imagine it's like, and that's kind of how it is a Goliath. Like it's kind of breakneck, right? Like you. You come in one day and it's like, we're doing this. And the next day it's like, oh, we're doing this because we have to shift. Right. It's like every single day. There's always something shifting. So, like how important was it to you to have people to call on like an and the connections? Like, was that really important in your business? Or was it more just like hard work? Like what was the, the, the you know, how did connections play into, into your business? If, if we want to segue into the importance of relationships, you know, I think one of the things that somehow I sort of understood early on. I'm very strong at certain things and I'm like super weak at other things. And almost out of necessity my whole life. I've had to surround myself with people that were like filled in my holes. And so, you know the moment I remember the moment that I really met Matt and Matt, pat, my co-founder Brickyard co-founder bellhops. This was like right after college. I kind of knew him in college, but we weren't really thinking about work. He went to work at the same bank that I did. And the first time we had like a real conversation with each other. I knew like everything that I was weak at, he was really strong at. And he's somebody that is just, you know, I had a lot of trust with right off the bat and It's like one of those people that you meet and you realize like, okay, this, this is somebody that's really special. Uniquely to, to, to, to me. And And I think he saw the same thing, sort of the yin yang. In, in, in me as well. And. You know, we're kind of like professional spouses at this point. I left the bank to go to a medical equipment company where we were basically starting a new company. And. Our operations manager was terrible. And I told the company, I was like, look, I can, I have a guy that can do this in their sleep. And ultimately we, I got him hired at the, that company. And then we built that company together for two years before we started bellhops and then we left that company. We, you know, we, we put in our notice on the same day. And then we left and started bellhops and we built bellhops and then, you know, it was when we decided to start Brickyard, like, we always knew that we were going to, you know, I'm going to be working with Matt for the rest of my life. And so then we started Brickyard together, but you know, he, he can read my mind. I can read his mind. He knows. You know, Things that he needs to pick up. And I know the things that I need to pick up and You know, that partnership is something that is just so important. And I think people play life on hard mode out of ego. Way too often. When really, you know, we're all you know, off balance. it's, it's very rare to have somebody that's just good at everything. Because ultimately it comes down to like, if you're going to find margin and winning in something, You can't just be okay at everything because then you're just, okay. You're like an average person, right? You have to be really, really good at a couple things. And you have to fill in those holes with other people that, that that are really, really good at their thing, you know? It's just really rare that you find somebody that's super world-class at you know, it. At everything. Under their purview. And so. I think the most important thing, whether it's business or, or person, you know, who you marry is a good example. It is, it's so important that you find somebody that is a strategic partner for you. And then building trust. With that person. It just makes life a lot more fulfilling as well as makes you a lot more effective. Got it. Wow. So how you guys met in college, you said you and Matt. Yeah, we knew each other in college. But he went to Alabama, went to Auburn. Steven Vlahos. So who's our third co-founder bellhops. Was Matt pet's best high school friend. And Stephen was my fraternity brother in college. So I kinda knew Matt through Steven And that's really how we met. We didn't get to really know each other until after college. Got it. But you worked at the same bank together? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So, yeah, I'd love to hit on like, As you were, as you were building up, right. Can you run, run me through some different scenarios where you can think of that you ran into a problem that you didn't didn't know you could solve. And then could you tell me, like maybe a relationship that helped you solve that? Cause I know I have several of those where like, I was facing something that I didn't even think I'd get through. And for the person that was able to get in contact with this another Tuesday for them, I know. I don't know if you have any situations come to mind like that. I mean, it's probably a million examples of that. You know, I think. You can either be behind the eight ball in like throwing out hail Mary's to hopefully find somebody that can solve whatever, you know, pressing problem that you have in that moment. And having a big Rolodex and a big network of people, like, obviously that helps. I think it's far more important though to, to take a proactive. You know, measure on w you know, what are my core responsibilities? And then filling in gaps in, in, in all of the problems that are going to be recurring in every part of your life, you know, every day. And then bringing that person in close that can really solve a lot of those things. I think like the Penske thing is a good example of just like a total hail Mary. You know, but that's almost something you can't plan for. Right. You know, I think you can, you can strive to build a big network of people and build rapport with folks. But as you know, you. You know, the older you get, the more you realize like people's lives, get busier and busier, the older you get and relationships that you aren't like cultivating every day. It's really difficult to just, you know, Uphold a really big Rolodex. You know, cause even if you call, you know, even if you, you know, have a, you know, somebody who's great. At one thing, but you don't talk to them for four years. When you need them in the call them, you know, they'll pick up the phone, but like their life's already busy with a bunch of other things. And if, and if whatever, you're bringing up to them, isn't immediately relevant or valuable to them. You know, it's, it's sort of a crap shoot on, on whether that relationship's actually going to pan out. So I think it's just probably the way I'd put it as it's always good to know, you know, a large number of people, but the real bulk of the benefit of, of being strategic around who you're surrounding yourself and your life, like who are you surrounding yourself and your life every, every day with. Because those are the people that are going to be helping you solve, you know, 99% of the problems that you need solved. Yeah, 100% of the people that you spend, the majority of the hours with those are the ones that are gonna help you get to where you want to go. I want to, I want to ask a question because you, you mentioned. How important freedom is for you in your life and how that was a very forward goal. You know, from the time he graduated college, For someone who maybe has graduated college recently and is just feeling that pole right there. They're in their corporate job. Maybe if they maybe they've been their corporate job for 10 years, but like what, what would you say? Like your first step recommendation would be to someone that's like, I'm over this, like I don't want to, I don't want this to be my life. Like, I want something different for myself. You know, I think one of the real core realizations. I have had is most people don't understand that reality is totally manifested. You know, Nothing happens without you making it happen. You know, very little happens just out of pure circumstance or luck. You know, luck certainly plays into, you know, Any progression of building anything? But it's, it's probably much more a function of, of, you know, just laying brick every day. And putting yourself in the situation over and over and over again. To get lucky, right? So I think the. I think how I'd probably frame it as is. Well, I don't, I don't need. Is that, is that on line with what your. Like w what's the core thing that you're trying to get at? Well, like the, the thing that I would like for the listener to get out of this is that someone that's maybe feel stuck, right. So when that, that feels like. They. Aren't living like they want, they want a life of freedom. Oh, well, where, where do you know, what would your recommendation be since you've been in the corporate, you built the company. And you've done. I don't think any, you know, no one's going to ever, if somebody has to talk you out of leaving your, your situation. You're probably not in a good position to. To leave or succeed in whatever you take on. Like you have to make that decision for yourself. Like, I don't want this. I want something different. And then actually take action. Don't, don't push it off until tomorrow or push it off until you're more financially secure push, push it off to until you hit that bonus or whatever. There's always going to be something holding you back, right. But, you know, No one should ever. Talk you into doing that, like being an entrepreneur is having original thought and taking that step of initiative. Where you wake up in the morning and say, you know what, I'm over this. And I'm going to bet on myself. You know, that has to come organically. And so I just say, if you have a pit in your stomach it's there for a reason. And you can either choose to live with that pit in your stomach. Or you can do something about it. Someone's listening to this right now. And they were like, Damn. That just hit. I guarantee you, I guarantee you there's someone that, that just hit. Man, I think too, it's about who you put yourself around. I think about this environment and the environment that I built for myself in my meetup and, and the people I put myself around when I travel. I am constantly pretty in my garden. If someone says, I don't think you can do that. I mean, they can, they can give me their logic on why they don't think that I can, but like, I don't, I don't really ever put myself around people that ask that question of like, well, you, you can't do that. There's nothing that you can't do if you have enough determination and you have the right people, in my opinion, like, well, that's one of the things, you know, The odds are stacked against the founder, the entrepreneur, the doer because what's actually really disheartening and all of it is. The second that you make that decision. That I don't want this. I'm going to actually do something about this. I'm going to go and do this thing. You you think that that's going to be met with everybody in your life, telling you how excited they are and cheering you on what that's actually doing is. You become threatening almost to everybody in your life. That also has a similar pit in their stomach, but hasn't mustered up the courage to do something about it. And so these are people that you love and care about. They care about you, But in that moment. it, it always fleshes itself out. You kind of get to see the true nature. Of You know, You taking action to do something, is, is threatening the status quo of the people around you. That just assumed that you were all going to kind of live with a pit in your stomach for the rest of your lives. And so you initially get a lot of this, like, you know, negative feedback. Well, This isn't going to work. Have you thought about this? I'm worried about you, you know, you've got kids, you know, like you gotta be thinking about your wife and kids here. Like, I understand like this could work, but this could be really bad if it doesn't and they'd start projecting all of their own fears for. You know, the reasons why they haven't pulled the trigger yet. And you just have to completely discredit all of it because it's all just. It being spoon out of fear. And it has nothing to do with, with that vision that you see, and you have to just kind of put that in a box and put it on a shelf and just move immediately past it. But just know that that definitely comes like it's It's and that's again, kind of goes back to Brickyard. When everybody around you is aligned on wanting the same thing, it's a lot easier. To get momentum towards something when, when everybody around you is, is thinking the same way that you are. Versus, you know, the person that, that has grown up around a bunch of other people that kind of have you know, wave the white flag on, well, maybe I'm never going to amount to much and, but that's okay. I'm gonna live a comfortable life and I'm going to be this. Yeah, or that. And, you know when everybody around you is sort of, of that mindset, it's comfortable to stay in that mindset. And when somebody around you. Kind of steps out. So it's, you know what I'm I want more. That's. It results in almost like a visceral reaction from the folks that. No deep down the same thing that you knew. No, but having arrived at that moment that we talked about earlier, that that moment of original thought of, I am not going to do this anymore. But then, you know, you get through it and you, you just keep pushing and, and, over time you get to the point where you start to become successful in whatever you're doing. And then your life changes and then everybody tells you, oh, I knew you do well. Of course. All the people that were telling you, like. Are you sure about this? Like, how are we going to make, how are you going to do this? Are you going to do this? Those are the people that come up and say, man, I just, I knew you were going to be successful. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. So we're coming up on our time here. I do want to ask one more question, like regarding that psych. Not necessarily a question. I guess just a statement I was thinking of as you were talking is Those questions can be good to the people asking you. Well, how are you going to deal with this? Ha, you know, what about this? What about this? To the person who's listening, that's thinking about starting their own business. Those are questions that you should find an answer to. In my opinion, like a lot of times it is people projecting their fear. But sometimes they can be very useful. And like, as I started my, my hard money fund and as I've grown my real estate business and all that kind of stuff. People asking me the questions that I hadn't really thought of the answer to can be really valuable because I can find where I have a blind spot. And be like, oh, that actually might be a challenge that I see in my business. And. So as you go on to get investors, your investors are going to ask you a lot of the same questions that the skeptics are asking you. Because at the end of the day, when you're getting investors, a lot of times you have to convince them to invest in you unless you have like, you know, I guess the next when you, when you, when you take a jump and you bet on yourself, And it's totally up to you, whether you succeed or fail your judgment on on your taste in problems. Is the reason why you will succeed. Everybody that starts something new has a way too many things that they need to do in, in any day. Right. And it comes down to how honestly are you looking at you know, the risks that you have taken on, how honestly are you looking at. How you spend your time and what you need to spend your time on in order to be successful. And there's sort of a radical accountability to it. Once you take that leap. You know, It's great to take in all of these questions that you're going to be peppered with from, from all sides, but ultimately it's, it's your job to, to be, to be honest with yourself, about which of those things are legitimate. And where do you prior to it ties us in the stack. And if you have the work ethic and you are, are devoting an enormous amount of time towards getting this thing off the ground. And you are not brushing the big problems under the rug, but you're taking them face on, you know, one of the things. That kills early stage companies most is like it's sort of this analogy of like, if you have a glass jar, okay. And you need to fill that jar with rocks and with sand. And the big rocks in the jar take up most of the volume in the jar. But those are your big problems, the big, hairy, scary problems that you don't even know how you're going to solve. Right. Or the sand piece, like if, you know, it's a lot easier to get easy wins and so human nature. Is that, you know, when you wake up and you look at your to-do list today, it's a lot easier to go knock out all those little easy, wins the sand on the list and leave that big rock for later. And then you say, well, I'll get to that tomorrow. And then you don't look at it. And then tomorrow you do the same thing and that big rock gets pushed off and pushed off and pushed off. Well, now, you're a year or two years or three years into building something. And you filled this jar halfway full of sand, right? But the, the biggest problems, the reason that your business should exist in the first place are these rocks. And you haven't put the work in to actually solve those major problems because you've taken the easy button of I'm just going to get the dopamine hit. So the easy wins as opposed to. I'm going to devote. I know this is going to be really hard, but I've got to crack this nut. If you, if you delay that long enough, you get to the point where you've exerted an enormous amount of effort, and you've done a lot of things. But the things that you have done. Don't actually amount to filling the whole jar. Like you haven't actually built something of value. You've you've actually crippled yourself now because now those big rocks, there's too much sand in the jar. And you don't have the ability to actually even fit those things into your jar. And And so it just comes down to the honesty with which you see the problems that you have to solve on a day-to-day basis. Don't, push those big rocks off. Those are the first things that you need to solve. And the bear. A bare minimum. You need to be at least making some progress on those big, hairy problems that you know are going to be really difficult to solve. And not just resorting to like the easy wins. I think you also have to write it down too. Like you have to think through like, What are those big problems? Right? When you're, if you have sort of business it's so easy for me, especially at the most. I mean, to just go and do what I did the day before. Right. Like, you're just working. I'm lame. Well, A little bit of brick every day. Right? But am I laying the brick in the right place? Is. Is it being, you know, is it useful? Am I putting the right mortar? It like using that reference, you, you, you have to constantly be thinking about like, what are the problems that I'm solving? Are they the right problems? And you can write that down and it's, it's also. You, you hinted to this, but having the people that see the holes, right? Like having those people around you that. Our good and other areas than where you're at, because they can go in with third-party eyes and say You're ignoring this rock. You're you're putting all the sand in, but what about this? Yeah, the good. The good news is, is that sort of implied accountability that, that happens when you go out on your own on something. Is. You're likely to be doing the work mentally to understand what are the biggest problems that you have to solve. It's the courage to actually choose to solve those things. That really matters. That's awesome. Oh, well, we've come up on our time here. So I want to ask the final question that I always ask. And that is what is a connection to a person or group of people that change the trajectory of your life for business. I think the biggest decision that I ever made was who I married. And You know business partners one thing, you know, your husband or wife is, you know, that's a lifelong you know, Decision. And so. Absolutely hands down. The most important decision I ever made was, was, was choosing to marry Hannah and my wife. And She is a huge reason why I've been able to be successful because again, You know, she's focused on a lot of the things that I'm not focused on in our family. And at the end of the day, like I pursue freedom because I value family over all else. And you know, he's done so much of the heavy lifting. On I'm focused on, on making sure that we are secure and we're set up for the longterm and, you know, we're making good financial decisions and we're creating that margin that we need for ourselves in the life. Hannah wakes up everyday thinking about me and my two girls and, really building a totally separate part of our life. So that's, without a doubt and like, It sounds cliche to say, but who you marry is the most important decision you'll ever make. I love it, man. Well, thanks so much for coming on to the episode. If people listen to this and something resonated with them, and they'd like to maybe learn more about you or reach out to you, what would be the best way for someone to do that? Some I'm on ex just Cam Doody, C a M D O D Y. Or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm active there as well. So either of those two. Alright. Awesome, man. Well, thanks for coming on the show. If you made it all the way this far, I just want to tell you, thank you so much for being a listener and for sticking it out. If you did get this far, clearly you got value from this conversation with Cam. If you could leave a five-star review on Spotify, if you're on Spotify, it's up there at the top. Click that five star. If you're on apple podcasts, scroll down to the bottom and leave the five star review and then share with a friend that's the best way for a podcast to grow. So. Thanks again for listening to Art of Connecting catch you on the next episode.