Tom Digan

It was survival.

Tell them you have no money.

One of the biggest lessons, particularly from that moment, is selling people on your conviction.

In that moment, we were selling both the product that we were about to shut down, but we didn't really even have visuals yet for the new product.

So it was as much just selling the team and the conviction on what you were about to build.

I think the best example of that

a story about another friend of ours, we'll call him Bill, in March of 2020, trying to kickstart a round.

But no one's going to lead this round, naturally, because who would lead a round in our business at that moment?

And so I was about to lead another inside round where basically I'm pricing the round and passing the hat to all the boys and whoever would listen.

What happened there was now I need some more cash.

I don't think Braden knows how many times I wrote check into the business.

This was another example of being like, all right, the only way to get this going is to write the first check,

and lead with that conviction showing that you had skin in the game here again.

At this point, I'm trying to figure out how to sell anything that's not nailed down.

And so it's 401k, put that in, done.

What else can we do?

This story here is funny because I'm looking at the line items on the balance sheet, if you want.

I'm like, oh, permanent equity.

That's Patrick's friend, Brent B. Shore.

And Brent came and told his story on this podcast.