Lacy Garcia
speaker
108 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Lacy Garcia’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Seeing this as having applicability across companies the industry. You know, you don't have to go and seek outside investment. We'll talk a lot about kind of side hustles or the self-funded and there's pros and there are cons to all of them.
I mean, if you are someone who's listening to this and you're thinking about this passion project that you want to turn into a full-time job and or you would turn into, you know, something that's supporting your lifestyle and maybe you want to grow it, but you don't want to grow it that big. I mean, there's no reason if you can do it
to seek external investment, to give up sort of your equity or whatever, unless you want to scale it. And because there's outside capital comes with prices, right? It comes with less ownership, less autonomy. There certainly accelerates your ability to grow and scale for sure. So there's certain pros and there's cons. So I think it's not a one size fits all solution.
And depending upon where you are in your personal life, your personal finances,
your goals for this venture whether or not it's something that is going to be a passion project that grows and and it's more of a lifestyle business or if it's something that you're like i really want to change an industry and i want to provide a really scalable solution right you got to think through first what your goals are and then what works for you on i think it's the pillars right it's like what are you trying to achieve from a business perspective
What are you willing to kind of give up to get? And then also, realistically, what does that mean for you as a person? If you're not just somebody who all you can do is work 24-7, right? But you have a family. You want some balance. You know, what does it look like? So thinking through all those pieces of the puzzle, because there's pros and there's cons to all of them.
No, very, very much. And I'd say, because I think that I was raised in the old school entrepreneurship model where you, one of the things that was a success point was being able to raise external capital.
So it was, of course, we're going to go and we're going to raise external capital and we're going to, you know, and granted for what we were doing for the technology platform that we built and what we needed it. So it was appropriate and it's been totally worth it. But I look today at companies like Leap Academy and what you're doing. You don't have to raise external capital.
I mean, I think that every startup, one thing that I wish that I've been more hyper-focused on from day one, and I tell every founder, is forget everything else. If you're starting a company and growing a company, figure out how you're making money. Get paying clients.
And especially if you're doing something that's mission-driven and there's thought leadership and there's impact and there's all this.
But the reality is at the end of the day, if you want your company to be around, whether it's self-funded or it's funding your lifestyle or you've got investors, figure out how you are, you know, you are monetizing, you're driving revenue, you're proving out your business model. put more focus and more emphasis on it sooner rather than later.
Because I think startups were not looking to get to profitability. No, you're just getting to a milestone and then you're raising more money and then you're getting to the next milestone. Scale, scale, scale, yeah. I actually think every startup should be thinking about that from day one and making decisions within that because realistically, at the end of the day...
You know, that will enable you to make better decisions and not raise unnecessary capital, not spend money on things you shouldn't be spending on and have more measured and more strategic growth. And I think that it doesn't have to be that you need to go out the gates and raise capital You can do it. You can self-fund it.
You know, there's other, obviously, I want to get into the kind of other types of funding and the venture-backed debt and these other things that you can do. But I really do think it is something that it's also like a new way to look at it. Like it doesn't have to be that you're institutionally backed. To then turn it into one of the fastest growing companies You're a proof point of that.
I mean, I think that the number one thing is most people are burying their heads in the sand a little bit on certain things and they just don't have all the answers. The reality is there's so many smart financial planning strategies efficient tax planning vehicles out there.
Like, for instance, I say to people who either have education, kind of dreams of their own, or children, it's like, if you're not using a 529 plan, like, you really shouldn't be, right? There's certain things like that, but most people don't know what an HSA is or a health savings account is, but those are, or if you've got money in savings, but it's not in a high-yield savings account.
So there's some things like that that are just, you don't even realize, right? that you could be growing more money, more tax efficiently, right? There's just money that you're giving up. I mean, I also say down to like people who are in corporate and have a 401k match, if you're not maxing it out, you're just giving up money.
And I'm one by somebody who didn't max out my 401k in my 20s, but I didn't do it. I didn't realize that. As I said, I told the story of, I didn't realize how important it was because I was more concerned with funding the next thing that I wanted, like in the next six months, the next year. And I'm like, that was really? So there's things like that.
But in general, I just think that putting anything off, saying you're going to get to things in six months, You don't save, you don't grow or protect wealth if you put it off. And I think most everybody has some element to something that they're going to get to. And I've done that. It's like, oh, whenever I get through this and that, and then I'll go ahead and I'll finally go set up that 529 plan.
It took me like an extra three years and it should have enough, right? It's like, I should have done it immediately because I have more money in it today. So that's my number one thing is that anything that's like in the back of your head that you're trying to push down, that you're saying, I want to get to it like next year or this, just go, you know what?
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