Brian Carbaugh

And I take a lot of energy from that.

It feels presumptuous for me to be even answering a question like that.

It's not like I'm in a position to be waxing experiential necessarily here three or four years into my journey.

A couple of things that come to mind right away, just as I look at decisions I've made, mistakes I've made.

Yeah, I'd say number one, take care of yourself, right?

Be resilient, believe in yourself, believe in that idea.

But just know that, you know, these are going to be long days.

Like all of the laws of nature are really lining up to crush whatever your idea, whatever your dream is, right?

Like the startup space, there's a whole lot of reasons why early stage companies don't make it.

For the founders that had that drive, had the fire, the landscape has so many examples of companies that beat the odds and founders who had the idea and had the passion.

the belief in the convictions so be true to yourself follow that conviction follow that belief be resilient right have those go-to behaviors that you can tap into whatever they are so that you can reset yourself a little bit right you can get yourself back into that sort of flow state

as an entrepreneur and as a founder quickly when setbacks happen because they will right you're going to meet investors who might look at your idea and go that's just not the right fit at the right time or we're over index in that space or you're going to have setbacks you're going to have customer churn early on you're going to have your heart set on landing that one design partner and for whatever the reason is it might not happen so to be able to bounce back

believe in yourself.

And honestly, I had someone tell me, I think it was about six months ago, I came in, I was talking to the folks on the Andesite team.

Someone goes, that's why you're the CEO.

And I was like, I don't know, I would kind of smile.

And he goes, no, I mean, the chief energy officer.

And not that I'm there to be clapping up everyone with sort of false praise, but to say that

for that person i'm talking to on the flight um people are going to be looking to her right or to him and that vision that belief that's got to translate sometimes and manifest itself to the people in your team in a way that's empowering and inspiring you've got to get that conviction so i'd say go for it be ready for the ups and downs maybe invest in some sleep monitoring technology see what impacts your sleep and what doesn't but be prepared to jettison all that right away when it keeps telling you every day that something disrupted your sleep odds are it's the fact that

You're in a startup, but it's a tremendously rewarding place to be.