[M&A Series] [TIGER 21 Series] Business Development, Delegating Tips, and How To Leverage Peer Groups With Joh Olson

Joh Olson 10:57

Exactly. And so I mean, that was that’s one big lesson of entrepreneurialism, entrepreneurialism, in general, is how much time there’s no sort of ends of the time you can put in. And it’s not like a time, put in time get paid like w two job, it’s put an effort, see if it works for the customer, then maybe get paid. So that makes it interesting. So, it was meant to be a side hustle. But I think something we’re seeing, is we also have my wife as a restaurant group now as well. And I think what we see there is bringing professionalism and these lessons harder and lessons into areas where maybe people do have, you know, several different things going on, they haven’t tried this before. They’re not necessarily bringing, like a full quiver of business acumen to the business. And they’re just they’re trying, right, they’re grinding. And I think in e-commerce, you see that, in particular, where it’s a lot of people that maybe don’t have a lot of other experiences that they’re just sort of trying to start from, from really a fresh sort of deck. And they’re just okay, II calm, but maybe they haven’t even had a job before they’ve had a job that didn’t really have translatable skills. I think that’s one of the things that you see with her and us as a team is work ethic. And understanding that it’s really about the customer and what you can do to earn their trust, and you know, earn them coming back to you. And I think so many people start their businesses because they’re like, I have this cool idea or this cool widget, and I care about getting it out into the world. But maybe the world doesn’t care about it.

John Corcoran 12:28

Did you fear that at all before you started the business? Because you said you went to Bali, you saw this beautiful wood? And you kind of have this idea of well, maybe it would work as a watchband. Did you? Did you fear at all that, that maybe others wouldn’t feel the same way? Or did you do any research beforehand? To figure out like, will people even buy this?

Joh Olson 12:48

We did do research, you know, at the time, you know, looking at like Google search terms, what was working on social one thing that works about our watches in particular is the natural materials. So Woods stone, they’re sort of arresting, when you’re on the when you’re just sort of on the feed, and a watch goes by and has let’s say zebra wood on the dial, that just doesn’t look like the other watches that are out there. Very different, right? One thing, one hypothesis that we had is this visual component was going to work well on social media, we also had the benefit of having had a social, social media-driven sunglasses company before that. So we understood a lot of our customers behavior and their needs and wishes from that experiment that had sort of topped out at a certain number where we were like, Okay, this doesn’t scale how we want it to, this is actually the next experiment after the sunglasses company. So we learned a lot, we knew what the customers wanted. So we built something purpose-built for the customers, there wasn’t just hey, we have this cool idea. It was we know we’re doing this, it’s not working perfectly. We know our customers have these needs, in particular in gifting. And so we thought what works from what we’ve learned. And this was really iteration. It let’s say overnight, success is like a 10 year process absolutely fits into that, where it was experiment and iteration experiment and iteration. This just ended up being a reflect like a reflection point of starting a new company. This was on the shoulders of another company where we’ve done a lot of experimentation. We’ve had a lot of support from our community, friends, family, build that one too, you know, pretty respectable level. This took all the learning, and it popped, but not only sort of full disclosure, I guess, for the first three years of the company, I kept telling my wife, like, like, wouldn’t watch us like honey, like, you know, MD Ph.D. MBA and we’re doing this sort of little like you’ve got more in you you could do more. And how she proved me wrong was she did more with the thing that the customers wanted, which was these watches.

John Corcoran 14:54

Yeah. Now, you know the watch industry better than I do. But there has been some disruption with Apple Watches coming along. And also with people having a phone in their pocket that they can check the time on. What I’ve heard is that there are a lot of watch brands that have been kind of struggling with sales. Did that go into your calculation? Were you? Were you afraid that this is a, you know, a change that was going to affect your business? Because on the surface level, I kind of think like, oh, sunglasses, everyone needs sunglasses, not everyone wants a watch.

Joh Olson 15:26

We still sell sunglasses just under the same brand with watches forward. So we’re not gonna give up on that. Yeah, it’s true. What what the transition if you if you bring 100 customers in a room, and you talk with them about watches, there’s a few different reasons why people buy them, currently, especially young people. Almost none of those reasons are timekeeping. In fact, you could have 100 customers, talk to them about watches. Accuracy of the timekeeping, part of the mechanism isn’t really how young people buy watches in particular, it’s jewelry now. And for men, it’s 100% jewelry.

John Corcoran 16:03

Because men don’t have any other form of jewelry period. Yeah,

Joh Olson 16:06

you see the bracelet trend. And we’ve embraced that as well, and had great success with that. But men have so few options. And in this case, if it’s a gift from a woman, and the woman’s able to make an inscription on the watch, it’s almost like the only way you can give someone now a special gift that has like very clear messaging from the other person as part of it. So you’ll see guys that have our watches, I’ll take them off and they flip it over. The watch won’t be ticking at all right. It’s like your seven, and they scuba dive with it. And all they’re still wearing it off, and they show you the back and it’s like inscription around the gift. That’s the reason why they really wear it. And frankly, like their wife probably wouldn’t let them take it off if they want to.

John Corcoran 16:53

How amazing is that, though, that they’re continuing to wear your product years after it’s lost its most basic functionality of timekeeping. Yeah. Although the way you describe it, I’m stating it wrong, because it’s not that isn’t even the basic functionality. The basic functionality is the jewelry element to it, or the emotional attachment to it. And the timekeeping,

Joh Olson 17:16

emotional attachment to the gift is probably one of the best parts of the of the brand.

John Corcoran 17:21

Right, right. So we haven’t even touched on the point you had a newborn at home when you’re doing all this is I mean, that must have been just like, I mean, incredibly challenging having a young kid at home and trying to build up this business at the same time.

Joh Olson 17:36

There’s a there’s a great story here, too. So my wife, she kept telling me, I kept between us, we kept having this interaction where she said, if I get this company, this top line and these margins, Will you quit working at Stanford and come help me with this. And so I won’t list the numbers out there. They’re pretty substantial numbers. And I kept saying, absolutely get to that number. You know, and as in the early part of that we weren’t pregnant, right? Let’s say in the hundreds of 1000s of revenue, she was like, join me at this number. That’s like, I’m really enjoying working at Stanford, I’m giving back a lot. My team is amazing. At some point, it got to be in the millions. And I still was not keeping my promise to her to join her. What finally sort of broke that cycle is she said, I’m pregnant. We have nine months. And we’d like met your number like five times. What else? Oh, me to come and run this for a little while. So I did, I did take over the business, my biggest regret there. So I ended up running it for about a year while she started with our first son and I was CFO, but I sort of took the reins from her. And what many lessons which we can dive into. But I think the biggest regret was our due day or in that case, our inducement date was x and the date that I quit Stanford was almost exactly also x. And the hubris that I brought to this was one day, one day like this like billion dollar organization with several 100 FTE saving lives all day, every day. I’ll come over to this econ business and you just give me a couple of tips and we’ll be fine, right? Yeah, yeah. That was a mistake. And I’m reminded that mistake every every once in a while.

John Corcoran 19:18

What now what about so direct consumer, e commerce businesses, which I believe you’re primarily direct to consumer, ecommerce, b2b, just drive yourself that way. Maybe you’re also in retail too. But, you know, they kind of classically have challenges with cash flow, because whatever money you get in profit, often have to plow right back into whether it’s, you know, social media or ads or buying inventory. How have you avoided that challenge?

Joh Olson 19:47

Yeah, we’ve been lucky, I think in the patterns of growth and EECOM. In general. The nice thing is you get paid and then you deliver the product. And in our case, like if we had been buying Pull watches all along, that you know the price point of a complete watch. And then needing to do that in big batches, minimum order quantities, we probably would have had a worse time. But in our case, all we’re doing is bringing in parts of watches and minimum order quantities from all over the world, and then doing some production ourselves, then shipping. So we didn’t escape that problem completely. But we’ve never never been leveraged or or bootstrap privately owned. And so I really believe that the reason we’ve been able to sort of overcome the cashflow problem are two parts. One, my wife is brilliant genius, and very good at financial management and sort of engineering. And then the other is really controlling complete vertical. In any one of our watches, when we make it if it’s for sale, we have all the parts to make it. And there are some common parts of different watches. And sometimes, you know, the sort of supply chain problems we run into sometimes there’s different types of wood not being available from different parts of the world. And so that’s been one of our bigger problems is sometimes there’s wood shortages of maybe a best seller, because, let’s say teak, it can become popular, it can become popular in sort of pop culture, and then like home decor and things like that. And that ends up affecting what people are searching for on the Internet, what they buy from us. And so you have this interesting sort of bubble around certain types of wood. And sometimes our sales will follow that as well. So we’ve been very fortunate, I think, in how we’ve run the business from a cash flow perspective, but sometimes we would, we would run out of different kinds of wood and have to manage customer expectations around natural products. And how that supply chain can be somewhat fickle sometimes Yeah,

John Corcoran 21:47

yeah. Imagine I remember seeing a another Watch Company A while back that took stadium seats from old stadiums like original Comiskey Park original Yankee Stadium, they bought some of them and then they made watches out of them. So very talk about very cool idea. But talk about limited supply. Only. So you’re done. You know, yeah,

Joh Olson 22:11

we have a project similar to that with the Bay Bridge wood. So the Bay Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, very famous. But we have another really beautiful bridge that was recently redone. And we were lucky enough to have the wood guy here. That’s the big broker called us up and said, Look, I’ve only got like, I was able just to get a few pieces of this, I can’t think of who else would buy it. But you guys, and so we project around Bay Bridge, wood and cool. More that there was more than 100 years old. And so it’s comes from the redwoods north of here. So there’s all sorts of great story in wood. And yeah, sort of keep an eye on our site. I think we’re always doing something interesting. But the Bay Bridge would is one I’m particularly excited.

John Corcoran 22:48

Okay, we’re both here in the Bay Bay Area. And I hear that I’m like, oh, that sounds really cool. But how do you test that idea? Do you just go on instinct like, Oh, we’re going to just outlay the money to buy that wood? And we think it’ll work out?

Joh Olson 23:01

Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah, this point? Yeah, that is, right. Because I mean, partially, because those are relatively low risks. Now, just because we have some understanding of the market. But we also just look for story, right? If there’s provenance, and there’s a great story that you can tell, in this case, we know like, what Mills, the wood came from, pretty close to what region where the, like the tree probably was. And so there’s just such great story there that we’re certain that’s gonna find there’ll be people that have affinity to that story, whether they’re from this area or not, sort of understanding the provenance of how like a product was made. That’s a very rare sort of capability for any product to be able to go all the way back to some source, you know, over 100 years ago, especially natural, you know, goods. So we’re relatively confident is going to do well, that’s really

John Corcoran 23:51

cool. Can’t wait to see that. All right, I want to ask, you want to pivot to talking about some of your work that you do advising other businesses, because another case study that we chatted about beforehand that we want to talk about was a client of yours who was a CPA in Southern California. And she was experiencing some of the similar constraints, limitations, time challenges that we’ve voiced here today. And she kind of came to you with all those challenges. And just like pulling your hair out and wanted to get less in the business more in managing the business. So take us through your kind of your process of how you helped her from, from that standpoint,

Joh Olson 24:32

excellence and this will be a great chance to talk a little bit about delegation, and sort of people getting comfortable with that. So first, I’ll just set the stage a little bit with this story. So you did a great job, CPA, I think when she met us about 12 customers, and she was that was the max she there was no way she was going to be able to grow her business beyond that, or have any time for herself because everything was customer has needs. I fulfilled them. customer’s needs, I fulfill them. And so although some of the work is quite repeatable, it still was, were things that she needed to do. And so this approach that I generally take when I work with entrepreneurs, is I start with Calendar. It’s because time is the one resource that there’s just no way, you can’t manufacture more of that. So I look at the calendar, do this exercise around time boxing that most people most your listeners or listeners are probably aware of. But the idea is, where are your priorities? Where’s your leverage? And then you know, where in your zone of genius, and then where’s your time really invested, and making sure that you are move the needle so that you’re getting closer and closer to where your leverage is, and your most valuable, you know, sort of functions that you can be doing? Oftentimes, that’s business development, selling strategy, wherever your zone of genius is that sort of brought you there, or that you need to harness for that next level? We spent some time looking at that. So we usually go calendar first, then we go to communications, we’re looking at how are you communicating with your team? If you even have a team? How are you communicating with your customers? What’s inbound information look like? So we spend some time on that. So it goes calendar communication. And then where the big hit is, is in delegation. So we find is, once you get your own calendar and communication sorted out, you can make some room for other people to help you. And this is often the biggest thing that I hear from people when they get or go to get help, but aren’t successful is I tried that. And the firm or team or person who was meant to help me failed. That’s that’s commonly what you hear

John Corcoran 26:44

that a bad experience previously with.

Joh Olson 26:47

Yeah, it was all in it didn’t work, because they weren’t great. And almost always, when you do the tear down, and you look at the real story that happened, that leader wasn’t prepared for delegation, it’s one of the hardest things to figure out, you have to understand yourself very well, what you can and can’t delegate without sort of going a little crazy. And you have to understand all your team members really well. And you have to understand each task very well. And so this is where we really get into the really, metamorphosis, I think of leaders and where they start to achieve real freedom is when they can start to one harness their own sort of world that they control. But then start handing pieces of that puzzle. There’s a great article and HBR article, I can send it to if you want to link it into the notes for it’s called giving away your Legos. And it does a great job talking about usually what brought entrepreneurs or leaders great success as they built Legos was like, here’s the resources over here. And here’s what I want to build. And I take Legos and I build this cool thing, and people love it. And there’s some margin in there, we get to keep doing it. But the article states is that to really grow a business, so we can talk a little bit about exiting your business in a moment, but the first thing you need to do is grow and get yourself out of the business, you start giving those Legos away. So you need you know, if you’re building a little house, you know, window builder, you need a wall builder and a roof builder. And you need to be the one who says, Okay, this is a great house, but you’re not building every little piece of it anymore. And you need to feel comfortable with that. So this is where we really, I think, find the benefit for the people that we do consulting with is when we get to the leverage component, and you can see it really changing their lives. And when you go back to the CPA customer, she was able to hand off all every single duty that she was actively doing for her customers, minus her interface with the customers because the trust was with her. But she was able to delegate all of the actual work to other people. And in her case, several people who are offshore, she was able to over over less than a year, double the number of customers that she had, and the top line revenue of her business, while also she went and traveled and went completely off the continent with her husband for the first time ever, while doubling the size of her business. So that’s the power of delegation. And then if you take that story to the final iteration, she also realized the real value in her business as it was growing and it had great margins was to sell that business to someone who could grow it even bigger. And so she was able to exit that business, it just life changing numbers that she never would have thought of. And she was able to do all of that in less than two years.

John Corcoran 29:35

Wow. That’s amazing. I’m curious, though, it sounds like she there are a lot of kind of fundamentals that she hadn’t put in place yet. And what was it that made you suspect that she was capable of going on this journey with you? You know, because there are some business owners that they may say that they’d like to do this, but when push comes to shove, they can’t or they won’t or they decide it’s not for them? I’m so so what was it that you saw that spark that she had the potential?

Joh Olson 30:05

 I think for her, there’s a few fundamentals that I’ll reflect on that she had. One is people try this on their own, they try, they try to grow more that I can grow more, I can just give less each customer and I can get to more customers, I can have 14. So oftentimes, people have to go through the experience of trying to solve scaling or getting ready for an exit on their own, and realize, okay, like, fundamentally, I thought I could do it myself, I went through maybe a couple of years, I’m trying to do it myself. And it didn’t, I didn’t achieve the goals that I wanted to achieve. So oftentimes, it’s this spark that I know what I’d like to achieve. And I’ve tried it. And now I realize I’d like to have help to do that. So people go searching for a coach and a consultant, someone beside them that’s sort of traverse this path before. So that was true. And then in this case, is a relatively young woman. It was a relationship that he had, she had a personal relationship. She wanted to be able to get married and spend time together with her fiance. And I think now husband, I know it’s in the last few days, she was meant to be married somewhere, not in America. Well, while the team is watching her business. She she knew fundamentally, she was giving so much time to this, that it was putting her personal, the one relationship she really cared about in jeopardy, that that’s at one stage of life, I think we see something else. But similar at another stage of life, where people have events, people generally are older in their 50s and 60s, they have event A health event, or someone near them has a health event, and they realize they want control of their time, which by definition, delegation and being able to give away your leg, it’s important for that. So oftentimes, it’s for younger people, what we see is this, I’ve tried it, I know what I want to do, but I haven’t been able to get there helped me scale and potentially exit. And then as we look at maybe the other end of the story arc, it’s this sort of realization, there’s only so many days, hours, weeks, months, years left in my sort of healthy living. And I want to, you know, this idea that America has this ideal of work, work, work, retire someday, what we see in the customers that are really successful with us is they earned it. And they know that they love to withdraw from their business and have more time, personal freedom, but they don’t know how to get there. And so that fits into the idea of that final transition from owner to more like a board member, having a lot of influence and control on the business. And from that vantage point, being able to see who the perfect person would be to buy your business and hand it off to the next sort of generation for your business.

John Corcoran 32:50

Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about asking you a question about exiting specifically. But it occurred to me that everything we’re talking about here really is about building a business that is ready to be exited, because you’re talking about delegation, and putting team members in place and all that kind of stuff. But any other thoughts on how to prepare a business to make it ready to be exited? Because I know you have bought and sold businesses and help clients with that as well. So any other thoughts on exiting specifically,

Joh Olson 33:21

to things that that are interesting? Like really sort of juicy tidbits when you’re going to buy from someone is you talk with them are you sort of check out social media, and you can see they’re sort of on a boat all the time. That person figured out delegation, and they’re on a, so there’s some revenue and margins,

John Corcoran 33:42

and they have an AP on their watch run the risk, right? Exactly. Yeah.

Joh Olson 33:45

So when you see that sort of lifestyle component of a seller, that’s almost certainly a business where the sellers figured out delegation, they’ve scaled it to a certain place, they’ve achieved remarkable freedom. And this ability to not be unmatched in the day to day, when we see a business like that, you also usually will see a management team that’s like, also ready for the next chapter. And they have great ideas, they’re sort of ready to go. But the boss, the guy who sort of used to bring all the energy is like, you know, a woman is on a boat somewhere. So those those are great businesses to buy. And I think those are also businesses that have great leaders that have usually built a great culture, where they’ve delegated the right jobs to the right people brought joy into the culture, if you’ve got this prickly culture where nobody trust that anything can get done until they talk to the boss because they might get somehow injured. You’re probably not out on your boat. You’re like dealing halls and dealing with all the friction that you created by your leadership style. So that’s a lot of what what we believe makes a difference in our customers. We look for this sort of joyful culture and this capability to delegate and and a lot of people think, Oh, I’m a great delegator like I’ve got a Chief of Staff I’ve this that, but that but the trust and the delegation stops at that one or two people. So that’s also something we look for customers who have harnessed delegation, but they haven’t actually scaled it out to the level that it could be scaled out in their organization.

John Corcoran 35:17

Got it. I want to also ask you about TIGER 21. Because we teased the beginning, we talked about these peer groups. So first of all, for those who haven’t heard of it before, what is it? Why do people join it?

Joh Olson 35:29

The most, the thing that’s probably the least visible if you look at all of tigers, you know, what they share out in the world, this sort of the secret sauce I’d love to share with your listeners is there’s a moment in the transition from being an entrepreneur, to being a person who harnesses and grows wealth, that TIGER 21 is the premier organization in the world that understands that moment, we just had our cherry tree and Michael Sonnenfeldt, the founder of TIGER 21, he was exploring this concept. If you’re selling your business, and you have enterprise value, let’s say $20 million. That’s the dollar number that TIGER 21 looks at to say like, okay, like you’ve achieved wealth, that money is actually the least important thing that we look for in members. But we look for is people are going to contribute to their peers in this experience. And oftentimes, if you think about entrepreneurialism, and this sort of pivoting and changing and constantly reacting to the market, and to your customers, and then you think a little bit more about investing, if you take that same behavior that’s made you a success into the investing world. And I’m actually an example of this, I could talk more about it maybe another time. But when we first you know, and our business was growing, we have these great margins, we were just deploying capital in some of the most random and least productive ways, unfortunately. And my wife joined TIGER 21, she was, has been a member for about five years now. And one of the big things that our family and what she has learned is find your zone of genius as it relates to investing, and then stick with it. This idea of diversification makes a lot of sense. But it doesn’t mean go buy real estate, go do venture capital go do. Right, right, you got to find a lane, and you’ve got to find other people that are in that lane. And then you can develop your acumen and hopefully, sort of calm down some of those entrepreneurial instincts to be more consistent, and to be more focused on sort of the long game. And so this moment of, I’ve been a great entrepreneur, I built this great organization and community, now I’m ready to exit it. That’s your people are in TIGER 21, that’s where you’re going to find them because that’s who else is in TIGER 21 is those people that have basically achieved great value, add, you know, in the world, and that’s how that’s wealth can be sort of a measurement of what you’ve brought to benefit other people, and then you, you know, get rewarded for that. And so TIGER 21 really begins at that moment, where you move from entrepreneur to that next phase of your life. And some people think of it as like the Graduate School of Life. There’s great peer groups that serve entrepreneurs, TIGER 21 Is the peer group that serves the people to help them learn from other peers who have now moved on to that next level. And it’s, it’s really an amazing experience.

John Corcoran 38:41

Alright, we’re getting short on time. But I want to ask you, you know, as I’ve gotten involved in entrepreneurs organization here in San Francisco and served as moderator of my forum and served on the board, one of the challenges is leading leaders is not easy. So I want to ask you about what has that experience been like for you, as you’ve been the you made the decision to be a chair of a TIGER 21 group, and leading other leaders are used to being the boss using used to being the person who’s in charge?

Joh Olson 39:12

It’s a great point. And the thing that works for me, at least I see it in many of the other TIGER 21 groups, and I’m almost certain it’s true for you, too, John, is this idea of servant leadership? The idea isn’t, hey, you guys, you’re over there, and you need to get over here. For me, and I think for many TIGER 21 chairs, it’s really what can you learn from your other peers in this group? How can I facilitate a great conversation that benefits you on initiatives that you have and decisions that you need to make? So it’s, it is a form of leadership, but it’s really in the service of your members to be able to achieve what they need to achieve and to be able to develop that bond with the other people in the group their peers, their personal board of directors. because that’s where the magic happens.

John Corcoran 40:02

Yeah. All right, final question, a big fan of gratitude. And if you look back at your career, your journey, and you think about who you would acknowledge who you would shout out, for helping you along in that journey, you know, what are the peers? What are the contemporaries, any mentors, any members of peer groups, you’ve been a part of that you would just want to acknowledge for helping you in your

Joh Olson 40:26

journey. I’ll do I’ll do, I’ll give it as hard as they can. But there’s two big shout outs. And this one seems like a cop out. But in my case, it’s not. I’m just gonna say my parents gave me so much autonomy. And let me learn a lot of my own lessons from a very young age. And I think what they did was really special, I think maybe they were a little bit sort of counterculture in the way that they raised me and my sister and siblings. So I just, you know, very respect and thankful, thoughtful thankfulness to both my mom and my dad, and they still continue to do this provide great support and autonomy at the same time. And I think that’s something we’re trying to instill in our sons as well. So Mom and Dad, and then I’ll pick one nurse, just because there’s a really cool story, brief story. I was, I had left UCLA, I was emboldened with all the great things we’ve done there, and I went to a small rural hospital. And to the point you were making earlier, there were some very specific initiatives that the board had given me to deploy in this hospital. I knew how to do it, I had had the guidebook from UCLA, we’ve done similar things before. And I basically brought the book, you know, I was like, This is the road, this roadmap is what we’re going to do now. You know, 500, person, team, seven-person team, right. So the road book was pretty much useless. And I was just, I was banging my head against this thing. And I thought I was just this amazing leader as a young man. And one of the nurses Ida was her name took me aside. And she said, You know, there’s been three different leaders through this department in the last three years. And you’re just you’re faced with a choice, you can be like those guys, and you can keep running your program, or you can work with us who’ve worked here, she’d actually been born in that same hospital, you can listen to us, you can be the advocate for us, you can bring initiatives forward, and you’re going to be listened to in a way that we can’t be. And if you harness that, you’re going to be able to be the best leader that’s ever been here. And we’re going to be able to do these things. But we won’t be able to do them, otherwise you won’t be here. And that I ended up being there five years in Bar Harbor, Maine, like just really an amazing experience. And a lot of the credit that I give for that transition and embracing servant leadership was because it took me aside and have that Frank, you know, she really leaned in and had that conversation with me. I’d be a different leader today. If it weren’t for her.

John Corcoran 42:51

Take some courage to speak up like that and say,

Joh Olson 42:55

she has a badass woman. I have to tell you, there’s lots more story.

John Corcoran 42:58

Mainers they tell it like it is fiercely independent. Sorry, I lied. One last question. You said you own hundreds of watches. If you had to pick a favorite not one of your own from Treehut, which would it be?

Joh Olson 43:14

So I have I have a watch that is either the exact same vintage and exact same watch that Bruce Lee wore, it’s either his watch, which is what it’s meant to be. Or it’s it’s a watch from that era. That’s exactly like the watch that that he wore. And so I’m not certain of the provenance but basically, our son is named Bruce, my wife and I it’s a it’s a Seco 6139, which is not a fancy watch. But at the time it was and it’s not worth so much, it’s probably worth less than a few $1,000. If it’s his his watch if there was some way of proving that obviously be worth more. But this is a really beautiful watch. It’s from a very certain specific era, there’s not that many of them and I was able to get my hands on one. So firstly, sort of shines brightly in our family. I actually asked my wife to marry me under the Bruce Lee statue in Hong Kong Harbor. And we named our son Bruce. So there’s all these touch points with Bruce Lee. And then I have a watch that’s at the very minimum, exactly the watch that he wore and has a very, the band is metal, and has each one is sort of a half circle. So the band the watch itself, and the dial is pretty striking. But the band itself is also very unique. So it’s just a watch. I love, and I’m sort of proud to have it.

John Corcoran 44:40

Wow, that’s really cool. All right, Joh, this was great. Where can people go to learn more about Treehut and you and the work that you do?

Joh Olson 44:47

Treehut.co. That’s our watch brand that we’re talking a little bit about here. So thanks for that. If you want to learn about our work with being able to help you sell your business Pacific Partners, it’s based out in San Diego. But you can find find me and my my little bio down there. And then Remarkable Freedom is the work that I do to help people delegate in their businesses and find freedom. And people can find me on that site as well. 

John Corcoran 45:16

Excellent. Joh, thanks so much for your time. 

Joh Olson 45:17

Thanks, John. I really appreciate your great chatting with you.

Outro 45:22

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