Buying $1.5m of Earnings Without an SBA Loan

And as much as I thought that VC was a people game, yes, it is. But those relationships take many years to, to develop and so I just felt I didn't have a real edge in looking through the next 20 years in that. And you know, having grown up on a ranch, you learn how to problem solve very quickly, which you don't really think there is value in that early on.

But thinking back now, you know, your cattle are missing. You know, you can't just put that into Claude and figure out where they are. You got to figure out a very detailed operational plan of, you know, they're in these camps.

You know, it's kind of process of elimination and a lot of that is just hands on thinking through things you can see, look and feel. And again, big part of that is, you can go and look for the cattle. Again, you can't put an AI, you got to motivate your team to go and look for the cattle.

And so those core, core pieces that I grew up with, I realized were a strength of mine and I just wasn't able to use them as much in my former career.

The other thing I recall you mentioning from our pre call is that you were, you were exposed at, in South Africa to American, I think, but maybe from many different countries. Small business entrepreneurs who were clients and customers. You offered safari tours, correct?

Yeah, yeah.

And so there's, there's actually a pattern here of people on acquiring minds, maybe being in a very white collar environment or in your case, a ranch in South Africa, but thinking that entrepreneurship looks like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or something. And then, then there's this moment where they're exposed to small business owners, small business entrepreneurs, and it can be a bit of a light…

Yeah, so I think the origin story there is, you know, we, we, we ranched cattle and sheep and eventually moved into the safari business. And by virtue of that, you know, most of our clientele came from the U.S. and you know, I had heard about America, thought about it and you know, didn't really take it seriously.

Fast forward 20 years from growing up in that environment, I ended up being in the US And I would still go back to the ranch. And you know, I followed this path where I thought that that was the, that was the dream, right? White collar banking, venture capital, private equity.

And the reason for that was what was drilled into me at a young age was get an education and get a real job that doesn't depend on the weather for grain and fe, because he can't control that. And going back to the ranch, I would, you know, now in my adult period would meet some of these, these clients that would come over and we would kind of compare notes, sit around the fire.

And they'd hear my story of following, you know, kind of what society deems as successful, whether you're on Wall street or Silicon Valley. And I would look at their notes and you know, they'd be H Vac owners, construction, you know, property owners and plumbers. And you know, obviously not the sexy jobs that your parents tell you to do out of college or, or out of high school.