Show Notes

Brett Gelfand built a multimillion-dollar cannabis packaging empire by 25, then nearly lost it all when an entire shipment of containers arrived soaking wet and unsellable. Instead of folding, he pivoted — eventually creating the cannabis industry’s first specialized collection agency and a credit-reporting platform now used nationwide.

From his early leap from executive assistant to CEO during Colorado’s cannabis boom, Brett shares unfiltered lessons on when to cash out, how to trust your instincts on partnerships, and why solving problems beats chasing passion.

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🌟 Highlights

Spotting the packaging gap in the cannabis market
Landing an exclusive deal with Canopy Growth
Surviving the “wet container” disaster that almost bankrupted him
Pivoting from packaging to collections after an exit
Building a credit reporting platform for the cannabis industry
Why passion is overrated compared to solving real problems

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⏱️ Timestamps / Chapters

00:00 — Intro & setup
03:34 — From executive assistant to CEO at 24
08:12 — Building PAC case and finding product-market fit
11:45 — Landing Canopy Growth and the wet container crisis
16:28 — Lessons from reinvesting everything vs taking profits
22:07 — Transitioning to collections and credit reporting
27:41 — Why passion might not matter as much
31:33 — Trusting your gut on partnership splits
35:18 — One friend's sauna business vs eight dreamers
38:52 — Using AI tools and staying sharp
41:19 — Wrap-up

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Brett: I had a executive assistant title, which basically meant I was like the ultimate pledge. I did everything for my boss, who was the CEO, from picking up his kids from school to raising $20 million from investors.

[00:00:18] Eric: Welcome to Growth Under Pressure. I'm Eric Josovitz, founder of AdaptCFO. Here to pull back the curtains on what it takes to scale fast from near crisis moments to epic turnarounds, the leaders of the fastest growing companies in the US unpack the solutions that got them through their toughest moments.

Ready? Let's get started. Brett, what's going on, man?

[00:00:41] Brett: Eric, how are you?

[00:00:43] Eric: Good. Good. So let's go ahead and jump in. I've seen you in many different ventures, many different industries from professional services to manufacturing and e-commerce. And now in a credit reporting, how do you do it

[00:00:59] Brett: going with the flow, I guess I it's funny 'cause it sounds like a lot of different things on different components, but it's all involved in this crazy world of the cannabis industry, though I've just been.

Taking strides and letting the kind of water flow since I got into the industry after college and started from building a cannabis operation in Colorado to then starting a packaging business because we realized there needed to be better solutions for packaging, which then also led me to realizing there was a big issue with credit and collections.

So just been jumping through those hoops as I've seen the problems arise.

[00:01:36] Eric: Yeah, that's interesting. So you really just take one, one at a time. You ideas pop into your head based on the path that you're on and you just jump in create a business. You're just like, let me just spin up something real quick.

Kind of

[00:01:51] Brett: I guess early on I always wanted to be my own boss. Growing up my dad always told me, never work for anybody. Constantly I was trying to get away from the norm of, getting a nine to five job or some sort of hourly pay in high school. I ended up DJing on the weekends and DJing bar mitzvahs and then weddings and then college parties when I go into UGA.

And long story short, it was just constantly ingrained in me of whenever I graduate I do not wanna work corporate. So somehow I got a position to go and help build a cannabis business outside of Aspen. I didn't own the company, but I gotta a lay of the land of the industry. Back in 2015, right when legalization was starting in the United States.

So from the ground floor, got to see what cannabis even meant from a recreational standpoint. And then as I was building that business, and not only learning the industry, but learning how to manage and scale and grow a company things started coming up where I thought. We're probably not the only one that's gonna experience this particular problem.

And from there, just developed into maybe I should have equity and own this company. Versus working for somebody and assisting them to build something. As much as I enjoyed that journey to learn the entrepreneurial spirit there's a big difference when you actually not only have the equity, but can have control over your freedom and what you want to do.

[00:03:15] Eric: That's right. I remember that. So how do you, so you had your eye on a leadership, you had your eye on being the boss from day one. Even jumping into that, that company as an employee, what was your mindset like?

[00:03:28] Brett: Yeah it's pretty nuts. 'cause at first I went from, my, my official title after college when I moved to Colorado was executive assistant.

So I had a executive assistant title, which basically meant I was like the ultimate pledge. I did everything for my boss, who was the CEO from picking up his kids from school to, raising $20 million from investors. And I didn't know what was gonna happen the next day, but I was essentially actually doing a lot of the work that came to running a business and learning the ins and outs.

So when I started, I actually didn't feel. That much of a leader at all. I was 24, 25 years old. I really felt like I was the, the bottom of the totem pole, just being told what to do all the time and trying to figure it out. And then I got in a fortunate position where an unfortunate position for my boss that I worked at, but for me it was an opportunity to show up where he ended up having to leave the state.

'cause he had some illness that he had to deal with. So when he left the board promoted me to CEO position, which I went in and asked for, I was like he's not around anymore. He is gonna run the business. The company needs to have a face. And I've been here from day one. Did I have the ultimate confidence that I was really like able to run a, at 10, $20 million cannabis business at that age?

No. I was, I did not feel qualified at all, but. I think what I learned was the fake it till you make it strategy. And, I ended up panning out where at least I had the respect from a group of people to entitle me to at least learn on the job. And then from that experience you're like, oh, I can do this.

And then it just keeps stacking on where you feel more and more capable to keep,

[00:05:11] Eric: doing your own thing. That's amazing. It's funny you say that because I had a similar path where my goal was to have my own business at some point, but it was, you know what? I'm just gonna learn, and this is, this kind of teaches the kids out there these days, is you really should hunker down and educate yourself and immerse yourself as a, like a padawan, and just learn and learn. Until an opportunity like that arises. Because I do feel like if you show up day in and day out, learning something new, maybe every day, every week, that eventually opportunities are gonna arise and land on your doorsteps. So that's very interesting. You, it sounds like you just, you took on all the challenges that were thrown at you and you weren't complaining, you were optimistic and.

Opportunity arose and you became the CEO of a multimillion dollar cannabis company at 24, 25,

[00:06:10] Brett: 24. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, and

[00:06:12] Eric: I

[00:06:12] Brett: totally agree with if I didn't have that experience before even being executive assistant or learning kind of the ins and outs of a, call it a startup or a, a bootstrap business, then would you really have the confidence to go out and say, I'm gonna start my own company, or take a risk and move? Yeah. I moved back home with my mom in the basement and started like my own startup after leaving that position. I had the confidence that like, I know how to run a business now, but if you don't have that sort of experience, it's gonna be much more difficult to feel.

You're capable, but that doesn't mean you're not, it just definitely gives you a headstart where if you're able to, be an intern or work as a, in sales at a smaller company to see how the inner workings work, you're able to at least be like, oh, I could do this. I think I'd be pretty overwhelmed if I didn't have that opportunity.

Oh wow, like this person can run a company like this, or that person can be the CEO of a company. Oh, I could definitely. Figure this out. And I definitely, I'm really grateful I had that experience. 'cause I don't know, it's easy to look at someone now and be like, you're so smart.

You could totally do your own thing. If you don't, if you never set up a LLC before and paid, your own health insurance, some of those things sound like crazy. Wow. I get my paycheck and my, my, my salaries, paid out, by biweekly on a paycheck.

Everything's easy to think about what that looks like in a completely different structure. It's challenging.

[00:07:39] Eric: Yeah. There's a lot of moving pieces, a lot of aspects. The CEO role is tough and, we'll dive into it a little bit more, but let's just fast forward to today. You obviously can't just do one thing, Brett.

You have. Cannabis collects. You have, CBC Credit Association working together. What's your long-term mission for those and vision? Yeah,

[00:08:02] Brett: so I guess to round it up after Colorado realized there was a big issue in collections in the cannabis industry, which, I never thought in a million years I'd be owning a collection agency that's one of the least sexy businesses to say that, you're owning or managing, but.

A lot of these companies don't pay their bills on time, and we were able to step in and help cannabis operators and brands and also ancillary companies collect outstanding money. So we've been doing that for the last seven or eight years. We're by far the first and leading collection agency focused in this industry.

And through that experience, just like when you're solving new problems, people would say, Brett, thanks for helping collect our money, but how can you make sure this doesn't happen again? We then started the Cannabis Credit Association, call it like the Dun Bradstreet or the Better Business Bureau for Cannabis about two years ago, to help solve a proactive approach for companies to know who they're doing business with before they have collection problems.

It's in the same ecosystem. They're two separate companies, kind of sister companies. And really long term, my goal is to really focus on scaling the CCA. It's more of a SaaS platform as this credit reporting, credit monitoring supported by the collection agency, which is more of a cash business.

That kind of fuels my lifestyle and allows me to pay my bills and kinda reinvest into. CCA and hopefully over the next three to five years as legalization continues to mature in, in the United States. I really want to be the number one, credit reporting platform in the country for this industry and continue to maintain and scale the collection business.

So in the future, when, federal legalization turns the corner, we have a really unique and valuable data set that I think. Even outside of cannabis a lot of companies are gonna be interested in hopefully at that point in time.

[00:09:56] Eric: That's awesome. Wow. So you've gone from cannabis to professional services.

You, you stopped in manufacturing and, produced your own product at one point. And now getting into a credit association. Kind of technology, if you will. So you're really just hopping in industries. But it all, it's it's all relative in the cannabis services ancillary products.

And of course the main product starting out. This is just like your step, just taking opportunity. So do you see another startup that you're looking to? Is there something in the works right now or is this, are you waiting for the next thing? Is there gonna be another Brett startup soon?

[00:10:41] Brett: I'm in my early thirties, so I definitely don't think this is gonna be the last of building something. And that's where I get itchy is, I like finding product market fit. And I think that's my better skillset is. Branding and solving a problem.

And then to be honest, once I get things up and running, it's not in my forte or my motivation as much to just keep thinking scale. Like for me to be the CEO of a, 20, 30, $40 million companies, it's not really exciting for me. So what I'm working on now is. How to put the right teams and systems in place where I could have the freedom to potentially think of my next thing.

The priority for me now is gonna be family and building a family here. Now that I moved to St. Pete, that'll probably be my next call it startup with my wife is what's that? What that's gonna look like. And I know, Eric, that's probably the most important project that, that you can work on.

So that's like in my immediate future, I'm trying to hold off from. Maybe starting other things. And then, yeah I really wanna focus on making sure my team is successful at the two of the companies now in the, in this cannabis space. I don't think I'm gonna do anything else in cannabis other than really focus on tackling the ar and collection and credit here which is what we're doing now, and over the next few years, we'll see how those ride out.

But I would say my next thing would probably be something more tangible here in the community in St. Pete. I think last 10 or so years since I left Colorado or around that timeframe I'm I have a home office and I work virtually with people and I feel like I'm starting to miss being outside, shaking hands and having a staple, maybe something that I could really own and see people here locally in the neighborhood because I do love the city so much since I moved to St.

Pete about nine months ago. So I'm starting to think about. I don't know if I need to be building another big startup and scaling and even like raising money ever again after these two things. I think I'd really like to focus on, people call it like a lifestyle business, but honestly having a nice business that, something that I can relate to.

If it has to do with racket sports or it has to do with a health and wellness cafe or. It is it's nothing crazy novel, but something that I can just go outside, make it my own, meet people here in person. That sounds more interesting to me now than building some big technology company or selling a business for a hundred million dollars.

[00:13:17] Eric: That's awesome. Wow. I could definitely see you having a little shop there in St. Pete. Dispensary. I don't know.

[00:13:25] Brett: It's fine. I don't even smoke weed. I think that is, it's actually an interesting topic because I do find myself questioning, passion and what's important for me.

And before, like in high school, I could say like the passion was entrepreneurship, period. It didn't matter what industry or how to, like what idea it was just being your own boss and starting a company. And being able to pay your own bills with money you make for yourself. That was the dream.

And as I checked that off, fortunately, by finding a really unique young and fast growing industry, I'm now starting to get more intentional around, okay, why am I doing what I'm doing every day? What's the purpose? And you can say, of course, if. To support the lifestyle the family that's obviously critical.

And let's say for example, you had millions and millions of dollars where money didn't mean anything and you had the security what would you be doing? And that's where I'm starting to think is, if living in this idea of abundance of, if I didn't, I wasn't nervous about losing everything tomorrow.

Would I be working in cannabis for the next 10 years or would I be focused on something else that might be more relatable to myself and my lifestyle? I don't know. And I wonder if I would've changed anything in the past. Probably not, because I was so lucky to learn the things that I did, being in such a unique industry.

But as I grow up, I think it's important to, or if you're starting a business, I do think it's critical to, to really understand. The customers you're serving, why you're serving them. Because let's say it does work, you need to scale it, right? It's not okay, once it works, like you're done, you found product market fit, and you can step out.

Now you have to have motivation to really ensure that you can grow it and maybe exit or have enough cashflow to, to live your life. I'm not sure if you have any thoughts on that around passion or, why do what you do every day, but I think sometimes that gets missed when you're like, I just wanna start a business.

And I tell my friends all the time like are you really gonna enjoy doing this for the next 10, 15 years? 'Cause the idea of starting something just sounds exciting, but just 'cause you started doesn't mean it's

[00:15:30] Eric: gonna work for. Many years. Yeah. And, accounting and finance, what I do is not the most sexy business either.

So I can definitely relate, but I've been able to be intentional with everything I'm doing and helping small businesses is really my mission, right? It's not the accounting and the finance. It's helping small businesses grow and ultimately have an exit. And also for them to be intentional with what they're doing.

But we work with a lot of startups. And your point on, being nervous on if money wasn't an option. 'cause there, there is that component. It's that's everything. Financing and putting your own money into it or taking someone else's money that you could lose tomorrow.

It's a huge component. And I heard this concept that the way humans' brain works is that if we fail, we die. It's like we have this mentality that if we lose something, we just, we lose everything. But the worst case scenario is like we end up with, the friends and families that we already have and they'll help you out and build together.

So your point on, building your foundation in St. Pete with your community is such a huge aspect to it, and I could absolutely see you. And of course being, once you get to your thirties, health and wellness becomes a priority. 'cause you realize that in order to have longevity, you need to eat good.

You need to exercise, be active. And that's such a huge part of what I've been focused on being disciplined with my diet. And it comes easy to me, but not to everyone. And of course how you can share that with other people. I think that's a, that's an impact you can make in your community, in the world.

And but yeah, I definitely agree with you. And then going back to, scaling your business, I think there's, you keep putting in the work day in and day out. I think eventually you're gonna have something that's big. The question is, what's the timeline? And of course, the dynamic changes, right?

You're one day wearing every hat and the next day. You're not even the CEO anymore. There's someone else, there's an executive team, and you're just on the board. So the question is, like how far does that go? This podcast is called Growth Under Pressure. It's really understanding how you are able to grow in those crazy moments.

So what's your, what's been your biggest Oh shit moment? Across, maybe across both companies or even going back to. It's a Pat case and how did you navigate out of it? Yeah,

[00:18:01] Brett: so I would say definitely biggest OSHA mo moment had to do with PAC case. And just backstory on PAC case, that was my first big idea when I left Colorado way more than the collection and credit side.

It was okay. The industry's only selling pre-rolls in single tubes. Everything has to be child resistant, certified, just like a medicine container. And they were only sold in single tubes because there was no other packaging option where you can put more than one joint known as a pre-roll in a pack that holds more than one.

It just didn't exist. So it was like light bulb went off. Let's create the first child resistant multi-pack for pre-rolls and then you could buy a pack of joints the same way you could buy a pack of cigarettes and sell them to brands across the country and Canada. So we got a, we went through the patenting process.

We got a design utility patent. We basically contracted a manufacturer in Shenzhen in China and did the whole thing. And it just, 90% in luck, 10% like timing and skill. There was just we launched the product right when Canada went legalized in 2018. For recreational cannabis, it was the first country that really legalized cannabis.

So in their regulation, same thing. Everything had to be child resistant. But the only products that could sell that first year was flour, like the actual cannabis. They couldn't sell beverages or gummies or edibles. So when it comes to different types of skews and inventory, they only had basically single pre-rolls.

Or grams or eighths of flour. Here's some kids from, I was from Atlanta, my partner's from Florida. All of a sudden we have a pack that you can hold more than one joint that's child resistant, certified. And we just started pulled emailing every huge, there were mostly public companies in Canada that were like really well funded, so we just started cold emailing all these huge corporations in Canada saying, we now have the opportunity for you guys to release a whole new sku.

By having a packaging product that's, certified where you can put more than one joint. Oh shit moment was, we actually got contracted and signed an exclusive agreement with the largest cannabis company in the world at the time, which was Canopy Growth Corporation. They had deals with Snoop Doggs Rogan it was just like, they were just the player.

So we were super fortunate. It was our first year launching the business. We. Got an exclusivity contract with the down payment and we were feeling really good. We had to ship I think it was a half a million units for our first order, and we were on, cloud nine. So we shipped the units.

They obviously, they go by boat across the ocean, and they arrived to the facility in Canada. And once on upon arrival, we were supposed to get the other 50% and we were like, bam. Like they're, a million plus dollars in our bank. Like we are flying first year in business and we get an email from their like compliance director saying that the boxes arrived soaking wet and that there's a huge risk for contamination, yeast and mold.

And we were like. Oh shit, like big time. What is, I called my mom being like, we're done. Like they, they basically said we're gonna have to return all the units or we're gonna have to destroy them because their compliance and regulation there was regulated by Health Canada. So you can't have wet packaging came from ocean water.

We don't know how it happened or what happened, but. Long story short, we had to basically negotiate with their entire executive team to say, Hey, let us send a random sample to mold and ye te testing to just to see if there's actually anything wrong with it. And if we pass testing, let's save the time, money, and energy of having to like try to replace them or ship them back because they also needed the units to start packing and selling.

So they really needed them just as much as we needed it. So thankfully we were able to negotiate the ability to do that, and I was crossing my fingers that there would be no contamination. And thank God everything was okay and they were able to use the units, but I think we would've been completely outta business before we even got started, if they made us try to refund them or return them with an order of that.

[00:22:09] Eric: Oh yeah. Wow. That's a oh shit moment, right in the beginning. Like it doesn't get any better than that. And I think I remember, I think we were working together when that happened. And of course you probably freak out your mindset's. Just like I'm, I'm mid twenties, just started a company, you you guys were going through that shoe dog story where you went, you go to China, you get your manufacturer, you build your product, and it's awesome.

And of course the cashflow is a big aspect of it. Just lesson learned from that, from a finance perspective. Did you guys take anything away from, Hey, we have this money let's use it wisely, and let's not just, let's not lose it

[00:22:51] Brett: after the OSHA moment has pat rest.

Yeah, totally. I think I learned from that experience the importance of contracts when you're dealing with bigger companies because, there was some language about shipping that like, we just oh, we got the deal. Let's just, we didn't really take it as seriously about responsibility of.

Shipping and liability. So in those moments that it that there's so much potential risk. If things don't go well, you have to really look like, I don't like working with lawyers. I can't stand it. And I think it's just can be a pocket burner. But in situations like that where there's significant deals that could put you in and outta business, like it is important to get a good lawyer and a good review and take those negotiations seriously.

'Cause shit does happen and it can happen. And as much as you can negotiate out of it, it would've been easier just to be like, oh, that's not on us. Or, oh, sorry we don't take responsibility 'cause we agreed on that on the front end. So that'd be one big thing is just making sure expectations and terms are clear before you do a deal.

And then when it comes to actually the financial side, yeah, we had the money we actually did, we did so the first few years of PAC case where I look back and it's just mind blowing to see and I had such a great experience in my real first entrepreneurial venture where I think we did eight or $900,000 the first year, like 1.4, 1.5 the second year, two to 2.5 the next year.

And then we got close to 4 million. And then I started seeing, the industry start swaying the other way. People weren't spending as much money on packaging. And I saw the issues with collections, but the lesson that I learned was just as we started, the sales started coming in. I was trying to do too much, honestly.

Like I kept reinvesting every single thing back in the business, which is typically a good thing. Like you think about, okay reinvest. And I wasn't really taking money out for myself.

And if I look back, I think 80% of our revenue came from 20% of our clients, the Pareto principle.

And when we did lose some of our big clients, it was a, it was really hard to build back up that revenue base. And we started we hired a marketing agency for $150,000 at a year to try to do a direct to consumer model. And we tried to going all these different places. And then I ended up having a fallout with my partner where I was able to get a buyout, thank God, and was able to get out and with a deal that made sense for me to start and focus on my other businesses.

But in hindsight, if I just took money outta that company the last three, four years when we were making money. I don't think the outcome would've been that different of like where we would've been. And also I don't, I think we were trying too hard where if we just slowed down and we're more intentional around why are we doing the things that we're doing?

Okay, we've got a concentration risk of customers, let's focus on diversifying that customer base just by mimicing the type of customers those are and go after two or three more every quarter and just focus on that. But we are drowning in opportunity 'cause we were making money. I think that happens a lot with.

VC backed companies have never done the VC model, but I can imagine that if you get like a tranche of a half a million dollars or a million bucks or plus from vc, they expect you to spend the money. So now you're forcing yourself to just figure out ways to reinvest and grow. We're sometimes, and I really believe this, the best thing to do is just stick to a path.

Be so focused on why you're doing the things you're doing that's making you profit, not even revenue, what's making you profit, and just keep replicating that because if not, you're gonna be all over the place in every action you take or every new program or project you try to get into. It's not only a distraction of yourself, but you just have to expend so many resources on those different avenues.

Every little activity leads to drainage across the business. So sometimes the easiest thing to do is say, what are the one or two things that are actually moving the needle? And just focus on that for two or three years. Versus having to try to figure out, to do other things just because you have the ability to do it because of cashflow,

[00:26:53] Eric: right?

Yeah. So instead of taking all that cash, immediately reinvesting back into the business, just super hypergrowth. Being financially disciplined, not just from a, a, a detailed, bottoms, bottoms up view where it's just Hey, we're just gonna spend this much in these categories.

It's really just that high level, Hey let's sit down and really think about our day to day and where we want to be in three years. But it's, a lot of it comes down to what is the economy gonna look like in three to five years? What is our market gonna look like in three to five years? There's such a strong strategic component to that I think a lot of businesses miss because you are doing a couple million in revenue and this is nice, and you're like, okay. You start feeling it. It's we start feeling that growth and you feel the confidence and you just wanna hunker down and keep doing what works.

I've personally seen you navigate. Rough waters 99% of founders. So what's your framework for deciding when to pivot versus when to double down?

[00:28:01] Brett: I would say number one, it's a gut feeling that even I have to work on all the time on trusting. I think most of us know, if something feels right or it doesn't, and yeah, might sound foo or whatever, but you really know. If you're feeling uncomfortable, there's something that's uncomfortable most of the time. So I think trusting yourself and knowing, okay and again, I'm so glad I trusted the feeling of my partner and I splitting up during the PAC case days because I knew, I felt it like, we gotta get out, like it's time to leave because we don't have a good enough plan.

And I had another two to run where it's not like I had all my eggs in that basket, so why not? Take chips off the table. I was in my early, mid to late twenties and try to get the best exit and then move forward. But, he had a different philosophy. He wanted to take it to the next level and thought he could do it.

And we both had different gut reactions. I don't know where those come from, but I'm glad I trusted mine because we're in, another company went bankrupt and I was able to get money out of it and, very different feelings. So I would say trust yours. And then, yeah, you can do all the research in the world to try to figure out like what's the best next step in my opinion.

Nobody knows, right? Like you can have a feeling, you can look at the model, you of the total addressable market, and you can do all the data. But I think the most important thing to do is just talk to your customers because your customers are gonna tell you what they like, what they don't like.

Are they paying too much? Are they happy with your service? If you can find 10, 15 customers that appreciate what you do and you're providing good value, most of the time you could find more of those customers. And if you can't, that means that the market isn't there and you should probably think about doing something else.

[00:29:49] Eric: Yeah. Alright, so I want to talk about what you just said about trusting your gut. So I found out that you've been a business owner going back to 2007 when you were a teenager with BC Creations, if I'm correct. You and I know you're a dad. And I, and you mentioned earlier that he told you to always be your own boss.

So I wanna unpack that a little bit and learn about what aspect of your childhood encouraged you to be a serial entrepreneur more than just. Being your own boss. And I think that's such a, that's such a key part of what molds entrepreneurs and CEOs and leaders. It's where they started. So what, talk to me a little bit about those aspects that you grew up with that you think brought you to this stage and helped you through those tough moments.

[00:30:40] Brett: Yeah it's interesting 'cause like my dad was a collection attorney and ran a collection law firm for. 30 years, so totally, I'm not gonna take it from him at all. Entrepreneur took a huge risk and then really hunkered down for almost his entire career doing what he did. And the main mantra was just like, be your own boss.

Be your own boss. But when it came to like the Mark Hugin, Gary V type of like entrepreneurship. It wasn't really instilled in my home of like, how he did it, how to manage, how to scale. I didn't really see that it was just, I knew he went to the office every day and he had about maybe 50, a hundred people working for him in an office building, but would go into his, into the office and sit in his chair and feel like, oh, he's the boss.

But it didn't really hit me in the entrepreneurial sense especially like the way that he, in his mind it was. For him it was almost like that's just what he knew. That's what he did. And I think more about like building creativity. I don't think we see the same there of and he would say the same thing.

I'm way more of a creative I like to start things and I think he just really loved the collection business and he loved, collecting money for people when I got to, let's say, like even when I was young, counting the pennies and nickels in my piggy bang to then doing lemonade stands and having my friends come over, and that's all I wanted to do was just like, go out and sell lemonade and cookies in the front yard.

And that developed into, bar mitzvah season where I asked my sister, mine actually had the idea first, but let's come together and create like video montages for bar mitzvahs, which led to me doing okay, I can do montages and then I can DJ. Developing into just step by step being like, all right, you can literally ask somebody to provide a value or service and get paid for it if you do a good enough job.

And it was just the light bulb that went off early on of why would I have anybody tell me how much money I can make or when I should go, when I can go on a vacation and I can basically control my schedule and control the product or service or value that I give to the world. So I, I think from an early age, from BC creations to what I'm doing now, it's just a constant evolution of feeling more confident of, I can provide value or to people around me and to companies around me, and more and more, so I'm thinking aside from just providing value, what's most valuable to me, to then inevitably provide that value Because you have exchange service, product collection, services, packaging.

Cannabis in exchange for money, and that money feels my life. But longer, more and more I'm thinking, okay just like you said your mission there is really helping startups succeed. And I totally can resonate with that, where it's so fun to see a mom and pop, restaurant or handyman that comes over and they're struggling with their business and I can give 'em some tidbits of advice and next thing they call me and they tell me they're, doing so well like that.

Way more to me than making, a million dollar deal commercially. So I think it's just been a constant evolution of learning. What does even entrepreneurship mean to myself?

[00:33:51] Eric: Yeah. And I do think there's a blend of genetics and upbringing, but it's such an interesting perspective to, to see you can become this if you go down this path, or just if you have a little bit of confidence in yourself.

And know that you can add value to someone else's life, just go for it and take that risk because the downside is you never do it and you just live in regret. On that note, like

[00:34:17] Brett: one quick story that I think really hits is the last few years I had a lot of people asking me, like via text, Hey Brett, can you help me with this startup idea that I had?

Or, Hey, I have this concept and I was having only site conversations where I said, why don't I just bring a group of my friends together and create like a very simple mastermind. There's about eight or nine of us and the first month I just had everyone pitch their idea. The second month they. Basically came with a financial model just to like actually put the idea in numbers, which I'm sure you'd love Eric.

Long story short on this one is just out of the eight people, only one of them a friend of mine in LA had an idea to put, saunas and ice baths in a portable fashion where he could actually put a sauna on a trailer at his truck and do like popup events. He was the only one that actually stuck with the idea, actually did everything.

Everyone else was so excited in the beginning when I gave him the homework of actually doing the financial model. Everybody dropped off, said they were too busy with family, too busy with their corporate jobs and whatever. And I think that's just such a great example because out of the eight or nine people in the group, my friend in LA actually got the loan to buy the sauna, built it on its spare time.

And now fast forward a year and he's doing like pop-up events for some of the biggest kind of social clubs in la. He got contracted by one of the most famous comedians in the country that loves to do ice bath and sauna before set and was getting paid 20 plus thousand dollars a month to just show up with Asana and has the opportunity now to.

Essentially replace his income with, if he wanted to, with this side hustle that he did and he didn't have, like he started with nothing with regards to this idea other than give it a shot. So it's just a great representation of, it's just action. And everybody, it doesn't matter how smart you are, like.

Most people don't do it. Like I saw that in my own little bubble and the nine people that wanted to text me about an idea when they actually were given an assignment to run a very easy, like I gave 'em the template of a p and l of what are your marketing expenses? What are your, what's your potential cash flow?

Not nobody wanted to do it. They didn't have time for that one exercise, so how are they gonna have time to actually build a business? And the one person I was like, I'm gonna commit to this next thing you know, he is hanging out with famous comedian paying him $20,000 a month.

[00:36:37] Eric: Wow. He changed his life.

Yeah. Action is, it's action over words. But what I'm finding is, and I feel like I have this within me and I see it with you as well, is consistency and discipline. And it's just showing up every day and doing it. There's some days where you wanna stay in bed and you don't want to get up, or, I'm not perfect, right?

I'm not waking up at 5:00 AM dipping my face into cold ice water. Doing my journaling and meditating. I, yeah, I do some things. I have my little morning routine that works for me, but some days I may stay in bed an extra hour and that's okay. But it's picking back up and staying consistent and staying on track.

So just wrapping up, I want to hear a little bit about what AI tools you're using these days, but before we dive into the creative tools you're using, I want to hear. About maybe finance and accounting specific, if you're doing anything different from where you were 10 years ago. On the accounting and finance side.

[00:37:38] Brett: Yeah. I have a controller at my company that, I don't know how much she's leveraging it right now, but it's interesting because when she'll send me, like my budget to actual, I'll run it through chat, GBT and just ask it some prompts and questions of for example, what are, what, why was there such a delta from this month to that month?

Or what can you pick out from the biggest categories of my spending and things that I know that she's, highlighting for me. But just going a little bit more granular and trying to actually push her a little bit to leverage some of these tools to help her analyze these things. Also, a great one is when she just got started, 'cause I just hired a new controller.

I wanted to redo my chart of accounts and she was like, do you have any ideas on how you wanna reorganize it? So I just. Ask Chad, GBT, how should I reorganize my chart of accounts that she basically just replicated that exact model, which now we have a really clean chart of accounts. Yeah, I've been using it almost too much, which I honestly am getting a little bit worried about when it comes to like my writing.

Because I'm, I've even seen articles where we're actually starting to lose our minds because we're not using them. So I'm trying not to be more intentional around if I write an email, let me just write it myself and I don't have to polish every single email. And but I'm really excited though the ability of how my team at CCA on the credit reporting side is leveraging AI for all this data analysis.

'cause it's a, it's, we're a data business, so we're using it daily to clean up data, to run reports and help us basically Nors star, our platform.

[00:39:09] Eric: Awesome. Yeah, I'm definitely seeing a lot more on the finance side. I think accounting has some room to pick up. I asked.

Chat. GPTI think it it might've been rock. I asked or Claude, I asked where do you see AdaptCFO in a hundred years? And it was like quantum accounting. Like it got really advanced that I won't even go there. But are there any other favorite tools you're using just overall these days?

Other than chat? GPT.

[00:39:35] Brett: Fathom, which I saw you using before we're screen and recording. That's like a must do to record your calls and give you summaries. And other than that, honestly, not really. I think the hardest part about startup world, and it's my biggest kind of like challenge is how are we using all these systems?

I use A CRM and then we got QuickBooks, and then we've got our program to manage the collectors and. I think now more than ever, it's I have a team on the CCA side that's basically building everything from scratch. Like my VP of ops built her own project management tool versus using a Trello or Asana, and she can tie that all into our new program we developed for the platform.

So it's all tied in one. So it's making it really easy for companies to basically build their own programs. But yeah I don't. I'm not the thinker on the tech side, which is hard. Now I'm running like the, a tech technology company where I know these like young guns are getting really good at what's out there.

[00:40:31] Eric: But that just shows you that the, the tech stuff is on the lower level, the ai and you still need executives and leaders guiding the business. Let's just finish up with a quick, rapid. Fire clothes. What's your favorite leadership or finance book that you gift the most if you have one?

I would have to say,

[00:40:53] Brett: I'm gonna go with how to Win Friends and Influence People, just 'cause that probably made my that was core for me growing up.

[00:40:58] Eric: That's a good one. And what about a KPI that you check every morning before coffee? I would say meetings booked. Meeting's booked. Awesome. Okay.

Complete this sentence for me. Founder Under pressure should always

[00:41:14] Brett: breathe.

[00:41:17] Eric: Awesome. Brett, this was fun. It was great catching up. Can't wait to do it again.

[00:41:23] Brett: Thank you, Eric, for having me, man. I feel very privileged to be on here, so thanks so much.

[00:41:27] Eric: Of course. I'm really excited for your success and till next time.

Awesome. Take care. Thanks. Yep. That's it for today's episode of Growth Under Pressure. I'm Eric Ovitz from AdaptCFO, and I hope these insights help you tackle your biggest scaling challenges. If you want to help other founders find the show, give us a quick follow or a share. Thanks for listening and I hope to catch you next time.

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