Earners.
What's up.
You ever walk into a small business and everything just works like The checkout is fast, the receipts are digital, tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before the line even builds. Odds are they're using Square. We love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just
feels seamless. Whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor at a pop up market, or even one of our merch partners, Square makes it easy for them to take payments, manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from one simple system. If you're a business owner or even just thinking about launching something soon, Square is hands down one of the best tools out there to help you start, run,
and grow. It's not just about payments, it's about giving you time back so you can focus on what matters most Ready. To see how Square can transform your business, visit Square dot com backslash go backslash eyl to learn more that Square dot com backslash, go backslash eyl. Don't wait, don't hesitate. Let's Square handle the back end so you
can keep pushing your vision forward. This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank, a lot of people think podcasts about work are boring, and sure they definitely can be, but understanding of professional's routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little, day after day. It's like banking with P and C Bank. It might seem boring to save, plan and make calculated decisions with your bank, but keeping your money boring is what helps you live or more happily fulfilled life. P and C
Bank Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. P and C Bank National Association Member FDIC.
You talked about the competition, which is interesting because not only do you have to know your business in and out, but you have to kind of know this is to almost create a competitive mode to be in the space. So like you're doing this by yourself right at this point, there's no partner with you, right, it's just you.
I had a early co founder who was with us for about four years, so it was involved in this early fundraising. We sparred a lot on this and traded notes and really played off each other super well. And then after they departed, then it was just me on all of my other rounds since then, I was always leading the fundraise, so you know, that's why I have a particular depth. And then I ended up writing a playbook.
I wanted to get to that. I wanted to get to that, but because I want people to really understand the amount of time that goes into this, the amount of sacrifice. It's insane, right, There's relationships that get sacrificed, friendships, all these sacrifices that no one sees on the front end, but like you're actually dealing with that on top of trying to create something that again is going to be a game changer.
Yeah, I mean everything I'm describing took in extraordinary amount of time. I mean, you know, both seed around probably span three years, doing small check after small check until he had enough traction to raise like an A round which was a little bit bigger, and then our B
and C and D round. We started to get institutional backers who would take big pieces of the round, but in the beginning they were long drawn out or raising on safe which is this an instrument called a simple agreement for future equity, few page agreements that we were raising money onto and you know, another thing that I did is everyone gets consumed with round size. What's the round size? For me? I've always I've raised incrementally, so
you know, for both. Initially I got a few. Once I started to realize a strategy, I got a few people to lean in. You know, it was like, we're gonna raise a million. That filled up pretty quickly, and then you know, we're like, yeah, might as well open
another million. As more people became interested or raised another half a million and so, and then uh, when you say, oh, we're you know, we're actually going to raise two We've already raised one and I are fifty percent complete, versus you know, starting around saying I'm raising two million and I have none. Right, I'd rather start around and say,
all right, I have a few people for leading. They're probably good for half a million, So we're gonna raise a million or seven to fifty k. So the next person I go to, the round's almost done already, versus how most founders saw off with just the go to some None of the round is done. If I'm going to talk to you about around, it's gonna be mostly done already before I'm like talking economics with you even
those people are forward leaning. I'm gonna wait till a few others are forward leaning, and then I'm gonna say, hey, we're doing a million, but I've got about six or seven hundred already circled up. You're one of my early conversations. I'm really excited to have you involved. Let's talk about formalizing your investment.
The tragic So, and you've raised a lot of money, just to put it in context with people, because you're speaking from first hand experience, right, So you talked about the time, but can you like say, like how much time for a founder that's looking to raise what should they expect they should expect to put two hours out of the day, they should expect to put twelve hours out of the day. Like what's the realistic expectation as far as the time commitment for a founder that is trying to raise money.
I mean, if you're trying to do it properly, it's one hundred percent of your life. That's the time for me, that's the time commitment. You know, And ideally you have a partner or a head of operations or a CTO that can.
Hold over the fort that's running the business, running the business. You should just be focused on.
You can't.
You can't split your time between running the business and raising money.
This is it. This is it. I mean, once you get the hang of it and pass a critical threshold and you're cool to just take some checks casually here and there. Once you're casual and you've you've already crossed the chasm, great, But until that point, you're one hundred percent. Get someone else in your company, give everyone a heads up that you're going to be off the grid for a bit. Fundraising. This is all you're focused on, one
hundred percent of the focus. And you know, spend a couple hours a day on the business, and so you know a lot of people get nervous about fundraisings, surely because they're not focused on it. So it's never going to happen. Because this is a thing that requires such intense focus. You need to block off everything else in your life spending on one hundred percent of your time on this thing. You need to go read my book, which not something I did. This is a labor of love.
What's a book. It's called Fundraising by Ryan Breslo. Start off as a playbook that I wrote a Google doc that I gave to my friends. This is a labor of love. I had no time to write this book, but I made the time because founders needed this wisdom, because I saw too many making the same mistakes over
and over again. And so you need to memorize this book, follow it to a t. You put your own style and flavor on it, of course, but really understand it and dedicate one hundred percent of your time to this.
So while you're doing the fundraising and you're one hundred percent dedicated to it, right before this is when you're creating the conscious Culture playbook, because you know that you're not going to be there on a day to day the way that you probably would be if you weren't trying to raise.
Yeah, so that came later for me, but I was creating a playbook on culture. I like systems. Systems scale. If your team doesn't know how it's going to operate what it values, it's very hard to scale your company. And so I don't like repeating myself. I like I like methodology and formula as you can tell for things that I know work. And so I had a great CEO. Coach's names Matt Matari's got a great book Machari Method
that everybody should read on ceoing. He gave me his method, which was my foundations of conscious Culture, and then I made it my own. I mean he taught it to me intensively for about three months, and then over the next five years, I kept the dog being like, this is what works, this is what doesn't work for me. And so I created my own playbook and then I ended up publishing that to the world on conscious dot org,
which we're doing We're going to relaunch. It's not where it needs to be right now, but and this is the playbook we used to build in scale Bolt and the conscious culture came from more of a spiritual aspiration to bridge humanity with execution. This is the marriage that I really wanted to facilitate, and I think conscious culture gets to that.
An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christine Noman, the United States
Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your next you will be fine nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned, and deported. You will never return. But if you register using our CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
Do what's right, leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families will be protected.
Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security,