Brian Krebs, Korean Adoptee and 5X Founder: Life After Incarceration, Lessons on ‘Failure,' The Power of Relationships & More (Pt 2 of 2)

That's incredible. Okay. So speaking to relationships, I'm curious, does Pete enter back into the scene after you're released from prison? Do you start working with him again? I'd be curious to understand. Okay, perfect. So walk me through that journey of how you got back into programming.

Yeah, I got out. He was one of the first calls I made. I just kind of touched base, not really even hoping for anything. , just kind of, hope beyond hope, just, just seeing if, if he had anything or knew of anything, cause I needed a job, of course. Yeah, he, he said right away, yes, absolutely.

Come right back and work for me. So I did, , didn't last long though. Because was, it was something I brought up for sure. With his own support. I [00:02:00] pretty shortly thereafter broke out on my own, started my own consulting company, , and was still working with him on a lot of jobs.

He was my first client basically. So I was more of a subcontractor. He was getting the projects and I'd subcontract through him rather than being paid by him as his employee. Uh, and that just gave me a really easy, really solid jumping off point to expand. That, that consulting business of mine and that's what I did and the whole way through he was super, super supportive.

Yeah. That's amazing. Going back to your ability to, to be alone, I feel like so much of the reason a lot of people are hesitant to jump off and launch something of their own is because they're afraid of doing things on their own. So now I can absolutely see how this prevalence of, of being in this very spot so many times in your life made it a no brainer for you to kind of branch out and operate independently and start on your own.

There's also definitely there, [00:03:00] there's a lot of that. There's also, I've noticed, uh, people develop, I don't think it's necessarily like something inborn in us, but they develop over time, , uh, fear of failure. And by the time you're an adult, sometimes it can be pretty crippling in terms of your, clouding your decision making. And I just never really had much of a fear of failure. I always knew that at absolute worst, I could survive if I have to go back to the streets. I knew I could survive. A lot of people, would rightly so be very terrified of living on the streets. And I don't, I'm not saying that it's it's great, especially for women, by the way, who are much less privileged than me in that sense.

But I just never feared that. Field failure. I, I didn't really have things to fall back on, , like, living with my parents or, or whatever. At least by that time I burned that bridge a couple too many times

Yeah.

Just didn't have that fear of failure.

And that [00:04:00] has definitely freed me for sure to take risks that a lot of people just simply wouldn't

Yeah, I think that's so liberating I mean, I think failure is also such a, it's a relative term, ? Like we've talked about this. Like I love to think of failure as, especially , if we're talking more startups and product development, failure is just signal, , particularly if you have a product or service that doesn't get enough traction, someone will look at that as though it's a failure.

Somebody else will look at that as signal and data that precludes something we need to change, a pivot, right? And,

I will not lie, the way I grew up, I would have looked at that as a failure. But I think being somebody who has had to kind of start over so many times, starting over, probably at this point for you, just feels like part of the path, ?

It's not a failure, it's just, it's a pivot.

I was about to say failure, especially in startups is is [00:05:00] the status quo.

Yeah,

like you're, you're going to fail and, and in life too, right? We're, we're on a startup podcast here, so we can talk about this in the context of startups, but it applies to life, you are going to fail. And if you're not failing, it's because you're not taking enough chances.

right. You're not taking those calculated risks, which to some, to some people, I mean, it depends, right? Everybody has a different value system, but I think for people like you, that would be more of a failure, the notion of not trying at all.

So I'm so fortunate that you. That you have that way of looking at the world because it's absolutely helped me kind of reframe failure as well. So I thank you for that. okay. So you start your consulting business. Take me from there because I'm really curious because you do have some killer startup success stories that I want to get to.

And I want to understand how we bridge the gap between you just starting your consultancy and then getting to. Your first, second, third [00:06:00] startup, and ultimately you exited one of your startups. So I love to hear about that hero's journey.

essentially the, the consulting company was my first company and that really gave me a taste of like a legitimate business is, is really what it comes down to. I had like some decent instincts and soft skills that I'd built up, , running illegitimate businesses for so long. , this is my first taste of a legitimate business.

And, Pete really helped me learn the ropes. It's all because of Pete. And, , with that, I was able to like, make pretty good money. , not, not necessarily drug money that that's all it carries so much risk that your, your margins are just absolutely insane, but, , it was still very good money and it couldn't be taken away by, by the government.

So I was making great money and, . Eventually Pete and I sat down and it was really his idea. spam, spam was a big thing then. It's funny how we look at it now because it's [00:07:00] like, Google basically just filters your spam for you without you even thinking about it.

We don't think about spam now,

Only when I'm waiting for the email that I can't find, then I think about spam.

Exactly.

Like, oh, maybe it's my spam, uh, inbox, but, , there's. It used to be a big problem. Any method that used like heuristics to automatically filter out spam was in its infancy. It's really, really bad. So, we decided to go into. Consumer, , B2C product that was a spam filter, essentially. But we were way ahead of the the curve on on that and to be honest, Consulting is so different.

Services based businesses are so different from product based businesses. We didn't know what we were doing. Neither one of us. Kind of petered out. We didn't know how to raise, we didn't know anything. . And the next idea was mine. I was kind of a scratch your own itch sort of thing in development tools. , specifically version control [00:08:00] in when you're in software development, you want to version control your code. Because you always want to be able to roll changes back and just have a history

Okay. So that's what version control is. it codifies an archive of all the previous versions that you can return to.

That's it. Yep. You kind of get a nice little visualization of how each code file has evolved over time. You can roll back to previous versions. , it's essentially, a standard at this point in a developer's tool stack. We built that for databases. One of the few areas that at that time just existed outside of version control. So if you were modifying your database, you added a new table or added new columns to a table or something like that, uh, that was storing like pretty critical data for your app, your apps usually don't exist without some database storing the data. The data is, is, is half the value of, of most apps. So, so critical, but went completely fell completely outside [00:09:00] of the purview of version control. So there was a lot of people messing things up with no ability to roll it back or any even idea of what it used to be before the most recent change that broke things. So, , We started building that and, , that was more successful. , but we still really didn't know what we were doing and we, we sold it into a bunch of companies that we were working for as consultants. So we knew had this problem and that's how we gained traction, but we, we were bootstrapped. We didn't know how to raise, we didn't know anything really still. , but we did see some more success. , we were profitable. Yeah. We started expanding the team, , hiring some people that I still stay in touch with to this day. But in the end, it just, it also sort of petered out just to mismanagement, we just didn't know what we were doing. , profitability started dropping and I found it difficult to raise cause I just didn't know how to, I was going to these like shark tank type of things,

Hmm.

and, and just getting obliterated. By these [00:10:00] adults, , cause I had no clue what I was doing.

Can you quickly explain what it means to raise and why a company would need to raise

Absolutely. Yeah. , when I say raise, I mean, fundraise and, uh, we, we were kind of running out of cash our profitability was dipping, dipping, dipping, dipping over time, , because we weren't growing at a certain point and the low hanging fruit in terms of like selling our product into the companies we already knew really well, some of which we were contracted to do projects for. That was gone. So now we're trying to sell to people we don't know, and it was not going well. , so I needed to be able to pay, our staff. That we already had and, and continue to expand even, uh, from a marketing perspective, sales perspective, even, even research and development perspective, really, , which is where, most of our existing resources were.

And, I went to angel investors first, [00:11:00] just wealthy individuals. than funds and they're usually how people raise their initial fundraising rounds. I didn't know that, but , I was being kind of led by a few people that I had met. , and you just go into a room and pitch. , just kind of say, Hey, this is what I do.

This is my business is my product. , and this is how much money I need in exchange for this amount of, , of stock in the company. But I, I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to navigate that. And they were just ripping me to shreds really. Was unsuccessful. In, in raising. And, uh, it, it again, just sort of petered out right around the time that I had, I made my way to San Francisco. , so I'd skipped a portion of my life there after Baltimore. I knew I had to get out of that city, , if I was going to turn my life around.

Mm hmm.

I just left with very little word to anyone and drove across the U S with my [00:12:00] very, very few possessions, , and one friend. passenger seat, , to San Diego. , I didn't know a soul there. that's where I lived for about five years. And, , I was trying to grow my, my database of version control startup there. , all while kind of finding myself accepting and and even, eventually loving my own Asian ness,

Mm hmm.

around other Asians, which was absolutely transformative for me.

I was going to say, California in general is very much different from the East Coast in that way.

first time in my life that I, I was around that many Asians in the nightlife scene for the first time, the nightlife scene that I was used to. Very, very different, , in, in Baltimore. Just kind of being generally, , a member of, of like normal society, which I had never been before, , before I even started to try to make friends and go out in, in [00:13:00] San Diego, I initially. started essentially researching topics that I thought normal society talked about and knew. I was doing it in like a very weird, almost it feels like weird, like a serial killer sort of, of way, like,

Yeah.

reign

myself with these normal people. , so I know that I need to learn about, classic literature and philosophy. And, , art and, poetry. so I, I just immerse myself in these topics on like Wikipedia. And

really quick interjection. This is what Wikipedia told you people in San Diego cared about? I was going to say,

not tell me that that came from my own harebrained idea, uh, Wikipedia only gave me the information.

I think you're the only person I know who listens to the Philosophize this podcast and I know it's, yeah. So that's funny that that's where it led you.

[00:14:00] That that's where it came from. And as you just mentioned, these are many things that I are great loves of mine today. it's persisted, since my, my, early to mid twenties. It's where when I the time of my life where when I read some of my favorite books to this day, Anna Karenina, and war and peace, and, Anton Chekhov's short stories, a lot of Russian literature, I guess, apparently, , and, and all these great, great stories.

But zero people. know, once I felt ready to enter, society, , make my debut, nobody in this beach town

That's

so funny.

or

Yeah.

Bovary. , so that was pretty much for nothing, to be honest.

It didn't help my my social standing, that's

Mm hmm.

But I did join a book club was one of my first actions in terms of joining society. And As it turned out, it was just a bunch of people that were like [00:15:00] drinking too much wine and maybe conversing about the book for a few minutes.

These are how most book this is how the majority of book clubs are, I'm not gonna lie to you.

Did not realize that. Didn't know that. I thought they were gonna start, like, immediately quizzing me on War and Peace. That's how I went into it. That was my mindset.

Oh my goodness.

studied for, like, an exam, kind of,

You were more studious then than you were in high school.

Yeah, exactly. 100%.

Yes. Yeah, because I thought the stakes were high.

I was gonna say it's much higher stakes socially. Yeah, you've seen how much building social connections can advance your other goals in life.

I needed to barge my way into , I thought of it as like white society. I needed

Yeah.

my accent. I needed to stop saying yo, and I needed to basically change a lot about myself. in order to, make anything of myself have a shot. So that's the way I did it.

I went about in a super weird [00:16:00] way, but, I sort of did finally ingrain myself into what I thought of as like normal society.

But after five years of it, I realized that my company was going nowhere. I still didn't know what I was doing. And, I couldn't keep on going like this. I knew a lot of people in their forties, even that were still kind of hanging out on the beach every day and getting hammered.

So I didn't want that for myself. And that's when I decided to move to another city that, where I knew not a soul, , which is San Francisco. And, , That's kind of the next chapter of my life. That's where that started.

so you started over again, not knowing anybody. Again, this is, this is. This is incredible how many times you've done this through your life. Cause I moved to San Francisco. I knew a lot of people there. I had a lot of professional connections. So I'd be curious to hear from somebody who didn't have that foundation.

What was it like entering San Francisco?

Some important context. [00:17:00] When I went to San Francisco, I was actually not alone. I was alone in terms of not knowing anyone there. , anyone that lived there, but, , just after I left my, my apartment in San Diego, that coincided with my youngest sister's wedding. I went back to Baltimore for her wedding. And that is where I just happened to run into an old acquaintance, , named Sarah, who had just reached out just out of the blue on Facebook, telling me that, , a mutual friend had unfortunately lost her, her young brother, And, , there was a funeral. So I hadn't seen this mutual friend for a very long time or her brother. So I wanted to go to support her and, and her family and we went and I saw Sarah there, of course, as well. And we decided to grab lunch after. And she told me that [00:18:00] she was actually married to, um, a person who used to work for me. drugs. They were married and, , he was going through some struggles and their, , their marriage was, , suffering for it. And she was unhappy. And she basically told me that, there, they were kind of getting ready to divorce. She would love to just go out and see the world a little bit. And I told her that I was Leaving Baltimore soon. This was just sort of a mini nomad experience for me. Um, I didn't have a home, but I was going to make San Francisco my home soon. So if she wanted, maybe we could take a road trip from Vegas. I don't know why. I just really liked Vegas at that time. Through San San Diego.

So I could, you know, hang out with my friends one last time and then up the coast to San Francisco. And that's exactly what we did. We met in, in Las Vegas, spent a couple of days there. And then, uh, rented a [00:19:00] car, drove to San Diego. She met a few of my friends. , we had a nice time there and then drove up the coast to San Francisco where we spent maybe another week or two. then she flew back to the East coast. As it turns out, we continued talking and she eventually decided to move to San Francisco with me. , and basically been together ever since. Uh, she's the first person that I've ever loved in my entire life, including my family, and the first person I ever let love me. So, absolutely a She saved my life. That's what I say all the time to just kind of condense my feelings about, about her and the impact she's made on my life. , I now know how to love. I now know how to live, I would argue,

Hmm.

those

are one in the same to me now. Really, really absolutely saved my life.

Yeah. Love that. I love Sarah. , I [00:20:00] think, that's such an incredible, story. And I think it's, it's so serendipitous that you met one another when you did, it just so happened that you could offer her a lot of what she was looking for. And in return, you You know, she was able to offer you a lot of the emotional support and feelings of love, , that you hadn't gotten before.

I knew the story, but it's always nice to hear it again. okay. So you crazy kids are in San Francisco living there. You have no, you have no business doing so with how expensive it is. So how are you getting, yeah, I know I was in a similar spot, man, initially. So, how are you getting by, , especially when the startup at the time isn't getting a ton of traction?

What are you doing now from a product or a business standpoint?

, I was consulting

Okay.

It's always been my fallback ever since Pete came into my life. I have had this, , fallback plan where, , when I need to, I can go and do some consulting work and it's given me, , such [00:21:00] privilege. To make bigger mistakes, make bigger bets and, , have bigger failures that I've never had before.

, now. It's just much more unlikely that I'll ever end up homeless again, no matter what types of mistakes or failures I, I run into. , so that has been just an absolute privilege and a massive impact to my life in general, and the way I operate it. So that's what I was doing at that time. Uh, and, and obviously still trying to build this, this database and version control company. , but at a certain point. into my stay in San Francisco, it was pretty clear that it was just sort of winding down. And I started letting people go. After that is when I met who would eventually turn out to be my, my two co founders for a company called tap heaven, which would end up being my next venture. I met them just, socially at [00:22:00] first. Jeremy, just happened to be living also in the building. We met in the gym. And next thing I know I'm meeting his colleague. They worked at the same company at the time, Chris Maybe than a year later, I would say we had founded tap heaven. And this is where I really started to get my, my feet under me in terms of understanding the, the real ropes of startups, the startup ecosystem is so vibrant. In that city. , there's just so much capital they're being deployed. So naturally it's going to attract a lot of talent and,

So many, , investors there, when you say there's so much capital to be deployed. So many, like, angel investors, as well as, , investment funds, things like that. Yeah.

yeah,

great clarification. Yeah. There's just so much money there that is being invested into these companies. So, , yeah, we, we started this company in advertising technology that use machine learning. [00:23:00] Uh, that's where I had my first foray into machine learning as well. , because I'm, I'm always the technical co founder.

I'm always building the products, and yeah, we, we hit the ground running pretty well, actually with that company and, , three or so years later sold it to, , an ad tech conglomerate in, in Norway I spent some time in Norway. , during the merger, I spent some time in London where, the little sales office and, uh, then made my way back to the U S uh, to be with Sarah in New York. Uh, so yeah, that was, uh, uh, another really transformative experience for me, my first exit. , and my first like real taste of the world too, to be quite honest, because, , lived in Beijing, , to oversee the rollout of our product at a, at an important client, and that was an incredible experience.

Talk about [00:24:00] being around Asians for the first time in San

Right. Yeah.

, that was absolutely incredible. Uh, first time I ever was able to blend into a crowd

Mm.

the feeling of that is another one of those things that's really easy to, , just gloss over, right? Because it's so normal for, for many people in the U S , I had never had that experience before and, , was always super easy to single out. , we used to joke about it when I was locked up. Like, even if I was to manage an escape, they could just get on their walkie talkies and, you know, track down the Asian and,

dab me instantly. , and I always found it interesting in these spy films growing up, that this one person could travel to so many different countries under these fake passports, nobody would believe.

That I'm Russian or, you know, whatever these, these passports, uh, these fake passports just simply wouldn't work [00:25:00] for me probably. So I always, I always knew that. And, and it's always this, it's actually kind of an exhausting way to live oddly. , it's a bit hard to explain, , because it's, it's not even top of mind for me.

And yet somehow it does require energy to just kind of navigate a world in which, , the vast majority of people don't look like you. But, that was the first time when everyone basically look like me, it was much stranger, much more noteworthy if, if someone's walking around that didn't look like me, so very strange and, , freeing in many ways, only then did I actually fully appreciate it. , because there was, there was a weight lifted that I actually didn't even realize was there, an effort being made subconsciously that I didn't know that I was exerting. So, yeah, that was really interesting. , also the first time that I've ever in my entire life felt, physically or romantically desirable. that's another strange thing.

Interesting. Yeah.

I had always, , I [00:26:00] just thought that I was ugly. , for my entire life, really. In just societally in, in the U S Asian culture was just not a big thing. It's, it's really ramped itself up over more recent years, um, around the world, really not just the U S, but that was just not the case when I was growing up at all.

So, , specifically male Asians were considered very undesirable. so, , yeah, I, I just grew up just assuming that I was ugly and, you know, that, , it'd be difficult for me to date and, and things like that, which was in, in Baltimore, , but I suddenly found myself, , Sarah and I were, we're broken up during this time.

, we had about a two year. Break essentially, , my own fault. I dumped way too much of myself into tap heaven. And like, I find it easy, unfortunately, to just , get so myopically focused, and to her detriment and and the detriment of [00:27:00] our relationship, and I still feel bad about that. But during that period, was single and I got to experience what it was like to be desirable. And it was, , an incredible experience and it's, , a luxury.

Like I didn't necessarily need that. , but I will say it, , it was very impactful to me. It may, may sound a bit shallow, but, , , it's when I finally didn't feel ugly anymore.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, it,

as well.

it makes so much sense. I mean, a lot of us who present as, we're white passing right myself. , it's a luxury to grow up in a country where you look like everybody else, ? You're not anomalous. In any way. So I can completely, I mean, I cannot empathize, but I could completely kind of cognitively understand how you really didn't get to feel that until, and that's such a take it for granted thing too.

I think folks who are Caucasian and white don't grapple much with, I mean, we [00:28:00] know this, they don't grapple much with their race. , and it makes tons of sense that when you found yourself in that situation, you felt accepted. Desired is incredible, but even just to feel accepted and feel not anomalous should have been, , I could imagine it was such a huge milestone, but then to feel that extra layer of validation that even amongst people who look like you, you are one that stands out in a positive way and not a negative way that must have been so hugely impactful.

It was another step in my journey of just accepting myself, I

Yeah.

really what it comes down to. Because I still had when when hate, like race based self hate enters into you at such a young age. You're taught that it's not Okay, it's not good to be Asian. Uh, that you internalize that really, really deeply. So yeah, just another step in that journey.

Yeah. [00:29:00] Speaking to, to that, I'd love to understand. So we've already gotten up to the point where you've had your first successful exit, which is incredible. , throughout that period when you were in tap heaven, for example, and things were, I'm sure there were ups and downs as is the case with every startup, but was there ever a point in which you felt like your being Asian presented any challenges or, did you feel like it wasn't so much an impediment, , or and or beyond race, anything about your Criminal background, Did any of that pose any threats to your success at tap heaven? Well,

So

for the first question, I will say that I think that me being a man and presenting as male the social kind of acceptance of that the social benefit of that actually outweighed, in many cases, my Asian ness. I [00:30:00] became a much bigger advocate for, , Asian rights and, and equity late into my stay , in San Diego and much more, , into my stay in San Francisco. So I now know about the. So called bamboo ceiling and how underrepresented Asians are at executive levels of many large corporations. , but I personally being not a part of huge corporations, , felt that , my maleness often out in the privilege granted by that often outweighed any negatives, , associated with being Asian startups specifically within that context. , that said, , we, we laughed about it at the time, but there was legitimate, , concerns that, that drove us to this decision. When the three of us, , me being, you know, I would say pretty clearly East Asian [00:31:00] presenting, , , and my two founders, one being a black man and the other being a white man, , we're having kind of our initial discussions about roles and things like that.

This is pretty early on in the history of tap and probably before we had even actually, , fully named the company and incorporated. We had decided to, prop the white man up as the CEO we felt it was important to have as sort of the figurehead of our company, the face of our company, have that be a white man rather than,, an Asian or black man. So, , that was pretty telling as we kind of went through that decision making process. On the second question, oddly startups as, as a, just a general kind of area ecosystem for me was my best bet because, , I have a felony still to this day, and presents a lot of problems for a lot of people, [00:32:00] including friends I still have now that I grew up with when it comes to the job market. , I wasn't even allowed to vote, , for, , the, my first ever time when I turned 18, that I could have vote that election. , I wasn't allowed to because I was a felon. that affected my life, , in, pretty great ways, but. in particular gave me a path, away from those really stripped rules, and that's another reason why I gravitated towards it. At least a practical reason, probably a lesser reason, but definitely a reason. the only time it's ever actually cropped up at all is, is really twice. For the most part, once when I was a consultant at, , centers, centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, CMS in Baltimore. I needed a security badge because I was on a long term project. [00:33:00] And someone kept having to bring me in and escort me to my office. that was just a serious pain for both me and that person. So we went through the process of getting my own security badge and they do a background check that I had a felony and I had to get taken down to this like weird little sort of pseudo interrogation room and ask these questions. And they did actually grant me the badge though, interestingly enough. Once they've, you know, kind of heard me talk about it, it was a pretty long time in the past at that point, maybe 10 years,

and, uh, I guess I was able to talk around it enough where they trusted me with a badge.

you had accrued work history with them at that point too. Like they knew you were an asset, ? So

that

that helps a lot.

And I will say that, something very similar happened in the next case, which is when we sold tap heaven to the Norwegian [00:34:00] company, we were required, not all of us, but I was and one of my co founders were required to be Certified. In Norway to help with the merger. A lot of technology had to be kind of integrated.

A lot of teams had to be integrated. And, I was like the most experienced to do a lot of this integration, so as a part of the deal. They required us to be there and that required a work permit because we had to be there. The original plan was six months and it ended up being right around there in the end. Well, that work permit essentially, and it's the same in every country, really, they want you to prove that you are qualified to do this work than a Norwegian. what it comes down to. , the Norwegian person helping me with the work permit, The paperwork, you know, they're like, Hey, well, let's pull your, your college transcripts.

We need everything, to build this case. And [00:35:00] high school dropout. , I, I have nothing like Mike, the case that I can make is horrible on paper. So. , not only that I had to, I eventually realized that I had to disclose to the executives of the buyer that I was a felon as well, uh, I started realizing over the conversation that like, oh, well, this could be a serious problem suddenly. So I told them and I gave them some explanation. As to how it all went down. And luckily they were understanding they, they kind of said, okay, that's a long time ago, no problem. You're you, you know, with the context, I guess they kind of understood that my situation was, was a bit unique. So. They said, okay, we'll deal with this. We were going to have to disclose and we'll see what happens, but we're going to have to make an even greater case for your work permit now, for sure. So, uh, you know, we built the best case we [00:36:00] could. I did actually get my GED later on. I had that at least I've never had to pull that.

So I had to do a lot of searching to even find. way to pull my GED. I did in the end though. And I guess the case was strong enough, but the thing is very similar to what you pointed out in the first instance. I hadn't necessarily delivered value to Norway as a country or anything like that quite yet. There was a clear signal because this Norwegian company was acquiring mine,

Yep.

that I was the person for this job.

Right.

I'm pretty sure that's the only reason I was able to overcome that instance as well.

Yeah. Yeah. It's convenient that both of these instances were after you had kind of you had proven your value, ? So at that point you had people. In your corner, there was stakes there, right? If not you, then there, someone would have suffered a [00:37:00] loss in the situation, another corporation.

If these barriers had been presented earlier on when no one was attuned to everything you could deliver to the company or the acquiring company, it could have been a different story. But yeah, fortunately for you, you really able to demonstrate every, all of your value in advance.

Because so many

Yeah,

get that opportunity.

yeah, absolutely. We've covered so much ground. Arguably we've covered enough for two episodes, which is what I think this is absolutely just going to have to be because I,

yeah, I'm looking at the time like,

no, we can't distill, there's too much here. We can't, we wouldn't do it justice just in one. So thank you for being so, so generous with everything you've shared.

Before I let you go, , I guess I do just want to ask. For anybody else who's listening who is maybe contemplating this idea of starting from ground zero again, because clearly you're a certified expert and starting over, what would you say to them generally? [00:38:00] And then I would love to understand what you would say to other folks who have a history much like your own.

Maybe they are an adoptee, or maybe they're just somebody who didn't grow up with the level of access and resources, that, that people like me have. So, so what would you say to both of those groups of individuals if you could,

I think for the first group, if you find yourself to start over, and really, maybe this is advice I would give to anyone, but I guess I would say, especially those people, easier said than done, but do your best to not fear failure. You're going to fail, , especially when you have to start over from scratch. Right. It's so much more difficult to start from nothing than it is to start from something.

So the stakes are higher for sure. But no matter where you're starting, failure is going to happen. [00:39:00] It is. And the more you can embrace that, look at it as a lesson, right? Like you were saying earlier, rather than a, or a data point rather than, , an ending point, the more you are, are going to. Think clearly, , through problems, , and, and arrive at the, the best solutions, , otherwise, fear of failure, fear, just period does tend to cloud judgment.

So, yeah, I think that's the, that's the biggest thing. People are resilient. Often they don't give themselves credit for just how resilient they are. We've all been through experiences, no matter, what type of privilege we were born into, , harness that, you can bounce back, like for sure.

You have to, you do have to start with belief in yourself. , for the other, anyone that has been. been unhoused or has been incarcerated. I, [00:40:00] number one, please reach out. I, I love to speak with those people and provide whatever I possibly can in terms of support. Secondly, though, number one, you're not alone. And I thought I was alone forever. And in so many ways as an adoptee, as an Asian, oddly, which that's even more ridiculous because we're most of the world, as, a founder number one, you're not alone. So just remember that, , number two, those experiences that you had being in house being incarcerated, , living through even perpetrating violence or, or crime or whatever, mental health struggles, right?

Suicide attempts, all these things. Maybe you could even argue they're objectively negative experiences, but they shaped you into who you are they gave you perspective. [00:41:00] now that I'm here and it's so much easier for me to say this, , kind of on the other side of a lot of those experiences, but now that I'm here, I do look back and I realize that perspective granted to me by those experiences. early in life is maybe my most treasured possession this point. My most treasured possession of my relationships with, with other people, including Sarah is the perspective I've gained, which is so unique. While you're not alone, It is a unique thing. And that's your superpower. And you, you want to make sure you're using your superpowers for good, but when you're out there in the world, maybe in the startup world, maybe not, it doesn't matter when you're out there in, in the world. You have a perspective that [00:42:00] most people don't. people competing against you in school, college, if you're a bit older, in the workplace, they don't have that perspective and you're going to have a leg up over those people.

You are, those experiences are going to, always give you that underlying resilience and resourcefulness that most people just simply do not have because they haven't been through the things you've been through. , remember to use those superpowers for good. Harness them and use them.

I love it. Okay. I don't think there's much else I could contribute to that. I think that is a perfect synopsis and. You're leaving our listeners with such, such valuable intel, , and some practical guidance as well. , so fabulous. I think we're going to wrap up for today. We will include contact details at the end of both of these episodes, so you know how to get in touch directly with Brian, how to get in touch with the show.

, thanks so [00:43:00] much. Thanks, Brian.