Mentors, Investors, and Managing through Loss as an Entrepreneur – Interview with Brian Larsen, Co-Founder and CEO of RestoraPet
April 21, 2021
By Matt Miner, MBA, CFP®
The Tip of the Iceberg
The extraordinary results you see in a person’s life are the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface you’ll discover thousands of hours of work, hundreds of setbacks, dozens of tortured thoughts, and usually, a handful of real tragedies. People who achieve wild success, it turns out, are very much like everyone else.
How often the thought flits through our mind, or worse, lodges there, “Sure, [insert name of admired person here] has achieved massive success, but that’s because they haven’t had to cope with [insert setback, difficulty, or trial here]. Their life has been a straight line from pre-school to big-ballin’. If only mine was the same. Sigh.”
Exorcise this notion from your thinking! Successful don’t navigate jauntily from glory to glory. Rather, unusually successful people manage differently, focus on what they can control, are present in the moment, and move forward with help from people who care for them.
Fail Forward
Today’s episode loaded with Brian Larsen’s excellent advice on entrepreneurship, including founding and scaling a product-based business by 500% YOY. It’s chock-full of personal stories including dealing with drug addiction in the life of a co-founder, and big personal loss. As Brian reflects on his journey, it’s clear the difficulties he and others encounter on the way are catalysts for innovation and growth, a theme reflected in the Anne Mercogliano interview, who, through planning and care for other people, proactively crafted her own career-change plan that included getting laid off by her former employer.
There’s also a lot of joy in this episode, including an exciting personal announcement from Brian toward the end of the show, and stories about things going really well.
Never Too Soon to Start
Brian and I tackle his early start in work at age fifteen, the role of parents in encouraging entrepreneurship in their children, including getting out of their kid’s way, and a discussion of the arc of Brian’s relationship with co-founder Kenny Kramm and Kenny’s family.
We also talk about when to take investor financing. And when not to take money. And debt versus equity capital in a young business. Throughout our conversation, Brian’s hard work and his love for the people and pets in his life is his lodestar.
Resources
For a whole lot more about Brian, check out Leigh Buchanan’s excellent piece in the March / April issue of Inc. magazine. It’s an amazing story delves deeper on things Brian and I touch on in our interview.
Visit RestoraPet.com for all the details about Brian’s business.
Books
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Getting Things Done by David Allen & the Things 3 app
The Whole 30 & It Starts with Food, by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig
Introducing Brian Larsen
Brian Larsen is a serial entrepreneur, product inventor, Darden MBA, and passable musician. He invented the RestoraPet line of pet products and launched the brand globally, growing the company's sales more than 500% YoY for three consecutive years.
His passion for business and entrepreneurship has been lifelong. Larsen began his career in the pharmacy industry, becoming a Director before studying chemistry and biology and obtaining two science degrees. He co-founded Maryland's first virtual care clinic and one of the first long-term care virtual care programs in the country. Innovation and advancement is at the heart of everything Brian does, and he's dedicated his life to finding creative ways to help others.
Brian has had a lifelong love of pets, and after his beloved childhood Siberian Husky, Bandit, developed severe arthritis and terminal bone cancer, he vowed to develop a product that would work to rehabilitate and protect pets at the cellular level, for a vastly improved quality of life. The result of his research is RestoraPet, which he spent 10 years developing. RestoraPet visibly improves a pet’s quality of life, increasing energy and flexibility, reducing pain, and improving immune function and skin and coat health.
Special notes
This episode would not have happened without Shane Dikolli. He introduced me to Brian and nudged us both to create the show. Thanks, Shane. Your mentorship and friendship means the world to me.
Follow Brian
Transcript
[00:00:01] Matt Miner: Sometimes we get the idea that people who've accomplished big things have escaped suffering and catastrophe in a way that's made it easier for them to be successful. In my experience, this just isn't the case. In previous episodes, Charlotte Whitmore told us how she got started as an entrepreneur in part because she fell off a ladder, got badly hurt, and could hardly hold her new baby, let alone work as a nurse helping other people. Shane Dikolli talks about sustained effort and grit as part of his journey and Ann Mercogliano's second interview is about managing through a layoff in uncertain times.
People who get a lot of stuff done don't have any special dispensation that lets them avoid heartache and setbacks. Instead, they experience at least as many trials as the rest of us, then they learn what they can and move forward without regrets.
In today's show, we hear how necessity, super-strong desire becomes the mother of invention and leads to the founding of two successful companies and how hardship can be the catalyst to launch.
Hey, and welcome to the Work Pants Finance Podcast. I'm Matt Miner, your money guide. Life Meets Money is the show for MBAs, entrepreneurs, and other working professionals who want their financial plan to work as hard as they do.
Now here's today's money guide quick tip. When you make a mistake or suffer a setback in your career, business, or relationships, here's the process to follow. First, if you've hurt someone, ask their forgiveness and seek reconciliation. Second, ask why something happened and identify what you want to do differently next time, then charge ahead and never look back.
Today's guest is Brian Larsen, co-founder and CEO of RestoraPet. Brian is a serial entrepreneur, product inventor, Darden MBA, and passable musician in his words. He invented the RestoraPet line of pet products and launched the brand globally growing the company sales more than 500% year-over-year for three consecutive years.
Brian began his career in the pharmacy industry becoming a director before studying chemistry and biology and obtaining two science degrees. He co-founded Maryland's first virtual care clinic and one of the first long-term care virtual care programs in the country. Brian's lifelong love of pets comes through loud and clear in today's show. When Brian's beloved Siberian Husky, Bandit, developed severe arthritis and terminal bone cancer, Brian vowed to develop a product that would rehabilitate and restore pets at the cellular level for a vastly improved quality of life. The result of his research is RestoraPet, which he spent 10 years developing.
RestoraPet is all about improving pets' lives and Brian's customers are raving fans, and be sure to stick around to the end for Brian's exciting personal announcement. Today's episode is Mentors, Investors, and Managing Through Loss As An Entrepreneur. It's an interview with Brian Larsen, co-founder and CEO of RestoraPet, and you can read more at workpantsfinance.com/19.
[music]
[00:03:14] Matt: Brian Larsen, welcome to the Work Pants Finance Podcast. It's great to have you with me here today. Everyone that I have on the show has interesting lives and yours fits that description for sure. I'm excited for all that we're going to talk about in that regard, but if you could take a minute and tell my listeners a little bit of your history, both personally and with RestoraPet, please also take us through the story of your pets that have had such a big part of your life in Bandit, Nibbler, Henry, and Zoe.
[00:03:38] Brian Larsen: Yes, absolutely. My name is Brian Larsen. I guess my story, if there's a theme that's running through it, is one of just always trying to harness the creativity and the energy that has been a driving force for everything. I think I've always wanted to start and grow my own business, whether that is the fact that I was this aspiring young musician from a really young age, I was watching MTV almost from birth, and had this little toy guitar that my parents got me when I was two or three years old and I was strumming, and thinking that I was writing songs, to the fact that I was actually writing songs years after that and putting out some really crappy CDs in my youth, pre-teen years, but I think that the idea is that my life is not necessarily unique from anyone else's.
I think we've all had a lot of challenges. What I've always tried to do, and I think a big theme in my life is I want to harness that at the deepest possible level, whether that's loss of mentors or business partners or parents, or experiences that I've had and to take that and to really honor their memory and honor what's happened and just drive such that I take advantage of this moment in time. I think that RestoraPet is a testament to that. Growing up, I had this dog, Bandit, this incredible Siberian Husky that went everywhere with me. We'd walk like all day, every day, and when I turned 18, I moved away from home and went out on my own. Bandit came with me and she started experiencing arthritis and eventually was diagnosed with bone cancer at a pretty young age.
The idea there is that I had experienced this just real heartbreak at seeing her decline. I remember walking her out in the snow and she slipped a little bit, and long story short, she ended up breaking her leg, but it was such a minor thing. It was clear that it shouldn't have happened. We rushed her to the vet. They did an x-ray and it looked like her bones are just like Swiss cheese and it was that she had had bone cancer. Ultimately made the decision to put her down and really, really difficult one. Actually her ashes are right behind me here as well as a photo right on this bureau along with photos of all of my pets. I really took that loss and drove forward as I'm sure we'll talk about to just find that meaning and find what I could do differently or how I could try to make some an incremental difference.
That led to research and what eventually became RestoraPet. After Bandit passed away, I got a Shitzu rescue and that's Nibbler. Nibbler is almost 16 years old now, still running around like a maniac, his little tongue hanging out. He’s just really an incredibly energetic dog. About three years ago, my wife had a lifelong dream of having cats (the pets 100% in our household own us, it's not that we own them) but she had these terrible allergies to cats. I'm always a fan of adopt, don't shop, but in this case, we had to get specially bred Siberian cats that were hypoallergenic. She could snuggle and hold and love on our two cats, Henry and Zoe, and they are just the sassiest, most personality driven pets that you can imagine. I've just been fortunate in my life to have these pets that have such strong personalities. I guess everybody in my life does, but it's really great.
[00:07:15] Matt: That's a terrific part of your story. We're here at the Miner family (I actually haven't introduced her to my podcast audience yet) is Scout, our dog, who is a three-year old Lab rescue. We call her a “Whippahoundadore” because we think she's part whippet, part hound and part Labrador. She's a whole lot of fun and she's probably a future RestoraPet customer because she came to us with a broken femur. She'd been hit by a car before she was rescued and has arthritis in her left hip and always has had, although she's doing great right now, she's still pretty young dog. Do your pets have voices? Our dog has a very distinct voice that we use for her.
[00:07:50] Brian: Yes, 100%. Actually Henry has his own voice in that, this is like signature to Siberian cats. He chatters a little bit, but he also, he constantly talks. He will just howl and yell at you non-stop. If he wants to go out and we don't let him just go out and walk, we have to walk him. My wife and I take our cat out with a harness. We walk the cats multiple times a day like you would a dog. He will just howl until you take him out. Yes, we give them voices. We've got like a million nicknames for them, but Henry's got his own voice, too.
[00:08:21] Matt: That's good to know that my family is not the only one.
[00:08:23] Brian: [laughs] Yes, a 100%.
[00:08:25] Matt: Well, look, one of the things that I noticed as I did research for this interview is that you started work in college really young. I wanted to ask whether you were attending traditional high school at that time, or whether you were in some a non-traditional education situation?
[00:08:40] Brian: Yes and no. I went to a public high school, however, I grew up right on the edge of a county line, Anne Arundel County in Maryland. The only school that I could go to was a military high school, so I went to this Fort Meade High School in Fort Meade, Maryland. That was a really interesting experience. I actually went to a military middle school as well, MacArthur Middle. That was transformative, and being at that military high school during September 11th, I guess I would have been a sophomore at that time, NSA is on the campus, the National Security Administration, that was an original intended target for the terrorists. I don't remember all the details if it was that, it was hard to identify from an aerial view or whatever it is, but NSA was at least at some point an intended target.
Security became incredible after that, and really did inform a lot of my high school experience driving with the school bus, trying to get onto the military base because I was a civilian, having military police come on with machine guns and walk through the front to back of the bus and back to the front again, to ensure that there weren't terrorists on board. It was a really interesting situation, but for all intents and purposes, outside of that, it was a relatively normal education arrangement.
It was a pretty low income school, but I had really incredible teachers that I, in some cases, still keep in contact with, to this day. One that was an early mentor of mine, it was an English teacher that I had throughout all of high school. She actually ended up reading a poem at my wedding a few years ago. Here's, I'm 16, 17 years out of high school and still maintaining a relationship. I think that that mentor relationship, the ones that I formed throughout my life, and there's been a handful of them, have really structured and informed who I've become as a person.
[00:10:40] Matt: Two of my early mentors were public high school teachers, AP English and AP History. Both of them, they're both still on the Christmas card list. I can't say that I've talked to them incredibly recently, but that's great. Really, I guess this ties into my next question. I really wanted to talk to you about your decision to get started with work so young, how you were able to make that fit with your, sounds like largely traditional high school background and how your family was part of those decisions, if they were.
[00:11:10] Brian: Yes, well, I think that growing up, my parents, and I say this with the utmost respect, but my parents were a little tired and I mean that. They were 40 when they had me, they had raised three kids already. It was just an interesting situation. My parents, much to their credit, really allowed me to go out and do what I wanted to do and what was going to make me happy. That was giving me time in the basement to do my music as a little kid and play and write and whatever was of interest to me.
I was never into sports. I was totally off doing my own thing. I think that that was the case as well with work. I really just wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to earn some money and they supported me in that desire. In the beginning, I was too young to even have a driver's license, so they were driving me to work, but as soon as I turned 16, got my license and got a car and all of that. Yes, they were supportive in letting me just follow my dreams.
[00:12:11] Matt: Yes, no. So that's interesting. This was less a case of some joint intentionality between you and them and more a case of them getting out of your way and letting you do what you need to do.
[00:12:21] Brian: That's exactly right. Yes. Sometimes I think that that's really the right approach.
[00:12:26] Matt: Okay. Very good. Well, one of the things I wanted to ask you about is that in other media appearances, you've talked about your mentors. In fact, we've even begun to touch on that today, especially Kenny Cram and currently Morton Meyerson. If you could tell us a bit about how these two gentlemen fit into different stages of your life and how you continue to stretch your wings and interact with mentors today.
[00:12:47] Brian: Yes. Mentors, extremely important. Like I was mentioning, whether it's an English teacher or somebody like Kenny or Morton. Kenny came into my life when I started working at FLAVORx. I was their 50th employee. They had just been on the Inc 500 list for two or three consecutive years at that point. It was really, really rapid growth. I knew that I had this interest in chemistry. I remember sitting down for my interview with Kenny when I applied and he hired me on the spot and really saw something in me that made me believe in myself. That was really uplifting.
Kenny really took me under his wing and really inspired me to strive to do more. He had this daughter, Hadley Cram, who is this amazing girl, now a woman. She was born with cerebral palsy and has really, really severe medical challenges, challenges with mobility and development, and all of that, but she was really the light of Kenny's life. At that same time that I had Bandit and Bandit was declining and when Hadley was born, she wouldn't take her medicine. She was spitting out her medicine. They didn't believe that she was going to survive and that's what led Kenny to start FLAVORx. FLAVORx is the largest medication flavoring company in the world. That was begun out of Kenny's family's garage as a true ode to the necessity to keep his daughter alive. He came up with these different flavorings and tested them with her seizure medication.
That whole concept was really instructive for me. Getting to meet Hadley, I'll never forget. Kenny taking me, it was in the middle of a busy work day. I was having a really difficult time with something just like emotionally about Bandit or whatever it was, and Kenny and I jumped into his car and he took me to his house so I could meet Hadley firsthand. It was really this transformative moment for me of seeing just the purity of this love that the two of them shared, she adored her father and he adored her.
Just seeing that, no matter how difficult things got for Kenny and no matter how many struggles that he had, Hadley was an inspiration, this beacon of hope for him and this just symbol of again just pure, true love, something that he wanted to just earn and be respectful of. He just really would do anything for his daughter. That was really inspirational for me.
The whole story of how Kenny became an entrepreneur, which again was accidental. Kenny was not business-driven necessarily. He did this out of necessity. That really was inspiring to me. I was with FLAVORx for over a year, but not for very long, but Kenny and I always kept in touch. He was always pushing me to say this thing that you're interested in, what eventually became RestoraPet, you really need to continue with it, and just there on the sidelines. Again, we didn't talk every day or every week or even every month for years there, but he was always there as a voice saying, "You should really carry forward with this."
When I finalized the formulation and knew that I had something special with RestoraPet, Kenny had pushed me to really make it official and that's when he and I sat down and decided that we would become 50/50 business partners in this. It was great to have somebody like Kenny, despite the fact that he had challenges in his own life, somebody that had achieved that level of success and had a substantial nine-figure exit to his business, or solid eight-figure exit, I should say, that's a pretty big deal when you're a young 20 something wannabe entrepreneur or somebody like that to really believe in you.
As we'll get into with Kenny's story, he had other challenges and eventually totally unrelated to any of the challenges he had in his life with substance abuse or anything else passed away, actually just a little more than a week after my wedding, which was a huge turning point in my life. I continued growing RestoraPet organically and bootstrapping after that, but Morton Meyerson came into my life through a Darden classmate of mine and is just this phenomenal guy. He's in his early 80s now, but is one of the most energetic people I've ever met, just smart as a whip, just unbelievably intelligent and perceptive.
Where I'm at in this point in my career and in my life, Mort has given me capital and that's been really great, the first real substantial investment that I took for RestoraPet, but he's also been this guiding light for me and this person that has driven me to dream bigger than I ever would have expected to. I dream big, but Mort is somebody that has just had unbelievable success in his life, coming from a very middle-class family and humble beginnings, Mort now to have been Ross Perot's CEO of Perot Systems and all that he's done with General Motors as CTO and become a self-made billionaire in the true sense of the word is pretty amazing.
[00:18:14] Matt: That's great. I love the characterization of mentors as people who help us dream bigger. Of course, it's not just about dreaming. You and Morton have gotten it done, right, and Kenny as well at the time. A big part of getting ready to talk to you today was a large piece in Inc this spring. In that article, Shelly Cram, Kenny's wife and Sarah Spun, Kenny's daughter, along with you speak, really openly about Kenny's drug addiction and its effects on business and family, as well as talk about how they struggled, which you've touched on already.
I admire this openness so much, but it's tough stuff getting into. I wondered if you could talk about how you and the Crams decided to be so forthright and vulnerable and a big media piece like that, and how you see your responsibility as a friend and a former business partner in telling the story in a way that's honest and respectful, but not hurtful to the people who are involved.
[00:19:07] Brian: That's a great question. I think that there's a few different angles there. Firstly, when Inc approached me about doing this piece and the editor at large, Lee Buchanan, who had written the really transformative cover story about Kenny and FLAVORx and Hadley and the whole family in Inc. Here's this weird, full circle, 15 years later, the same person that wrote this story about Kenny is writing a story about RestoraPet and about me.
I sat down with Shelly who I've become really good friends with and really just deeply admire and respect. She's a wonderful person. She's a wonderful caregiver to Hadley, a wonderful mom. I really adore her that I wanted to make sure that it was okay with her and I wanted to set some ground rules and make sure that the whole family was comfortable with what I was doing and what we were going to be talking about. They were really supportive. There is definitely a lesson in that story and in the totality of Kenny's story of the incredible successes that he achieved, as well as the personal struggles that he faced and how that affected his family and the business, and everything. It's a cautionary tale, but I think that when Shelly realized that there was a lesson there for entrepreneurs and that it was really instructive, she felt really open, to her credit, about being willing to share this whole story, works and all, and to just lay it out there.
Anybody that knows me knows that I'm somebody that is very open, very vulnerable. Certainly, I can be a hard negotiator, my wife will be the first person to say, she's never met anybody that's successfully been able to walk all over me or anything like that, but I believe that in life it's really important to be sincere, to be direct, to be open. I thought that the Inc piece, as well as some of the other press that we've gotten over the last several months, was a real great opportunity to just be able to share that honest story and I think I would have been reticent and cautious about being involved with that piece if it had to be really heavily filtered. I thought it was really important to just lay it all out there.
[00:21:27] Matt: I think that's great and I think kind of an editor's dream story as well, to be able to have written the first one and then this one, and it has these really difficult parts to it, but then also in many ways, a very positive and encouraging direction at this point, so I appreciated what you guys shared there.
[00:21:46] Brian: Yes, it was interesting. Lee had remarked that that story that printed in Inc, this one from the spring, she submitted to them the entire story. Obviously, she edited, she did a phenomenal job writing the story, but she had assumed that they would cut it down significantly and they didn't reduce it at all. She was saying she was just shocked that they put the entire- It's like nine pages or something.
[00:22:08] Matt: I thought about pulling it to a document before we started today to see how many words it was because I think it's probably over 3000. It's a big, big piece. Your path up to this point has had, I think it's fair to say some tragic twists and turns, you found RestoraPet as you grieve the loss of Bandit and then Kenny died so close to your wedding and under these really sad circumstances. Our family has also had hard times at different times and I wonder how those parts of the story color your view of the present and the future.
[00:22:37] Brian: Well, I think that those experiences, as well, as one more, that I would say has been really transformative, which was just before I started the MBA program at Darden, which I just recently graduated from.
[00:22:49] Matt: Congratulations, first of all.
[00:22:51] Brian: Yes, I love it, but just before I started, my mom passed away.
[00:22:56] Matt: Oh, I'm so sorry for that.
[00:22:58] Brian: Thanks. Very, very transformative moment, but what those things made me realize every one of those experiences was that you absolutely have to value where you're at in this moment. You have to value the time that you've got on this earth and you've got to really appreciate the now and appreciate this moment. So I would say that every one of those experiences has really, really helped me to recognize that this is a pivotal moment. This moment in time right now is really all that we have. I'll mention that later when we talk about books and things, maybe that I'd recommend, but those twists and turns, I think have all just paved the way for my view of the future, being that, yes, it's important to think about the future.
Believe me, as an entrepreneur and a CEO, I'm constantly thinking about the future, but really none of that matters because what matters is the moment that I've got right now and with my mom who passed away just days after her 70th birthday, I say this with love and respect for her, but she lived almost exactly a year after getting a terminal cancer diagnosis and I don't think that she ever accepted even to the very end that it was a terminal diagnosis, even though she was told point-blank that it was, but I would say that, and again, with the utmost respect, my mom spent 69 years not really appreciating or admiring life.
Then when she was faced with her own mortality in a very real way and had pain and discomfort because it was a very painful-- She had bone cancer, lung cancer, all kinds of stuff, but she learned to really deeply appreciate her life in that last year and I think that there's a real cautionary tale in there about the fact that we all, no matter what challenges we're going through, there is something about life for us to appreciate, and that we need to do that.
[00:25:01] Matt: I think this ties in so closely with what I do on the daily with clients, which is like, yes, it's important to take care of future you because you won't be happy if you get to that point and you've done no planning, but it's also really important to ask what would you like to be doing right now? So often the answer to that question comes down to something with people or something with other experiences or something that will take time. It's not always a whole lot of money to do exactly what we want to be doing right now and just encouraging people to take hold of what's going on right now is so important.
Then I think like in this COVID-19 pandemic that we've all been living through, it's like, I'm thankful for every trip I ever took, every person I ever visited, every old family member in a nursing home who I ever went to read a book to. You take so many things for granted at the time and none of us know what the future holds. I think it's a wonderful point and I appreciate you sharing the story about your mom's life and how she lived that last year.
Well, back to business a bit, one of the things that you also have commented on publicly is that investor capital is part of your financing strategy and I wonder if you have advice for other entrepreneurs on dealing with investors versus bootstrapping growth and how you made that decision for your firm?
[00:26:23] Brian: Absolutely, so I have a tremendous amount of respect for bootstrapping. I did it for over five years and there were difficult times in there financially in terms of working 50, 60 plus hours a week at a day job that was lucrative but it was being used to fund the business development for RestoraPet. I was a Director of Nursing for a long time. I'm still an actively licensed registered nurse. I've had a lot of twists and turns in my career, but that whole concept is something that I think is really important. I think that racing out and getting investor capital is definitely not the right move.
I respect that it's a viable path for a lot of businesses and maybe particularly in the tech sector, but I wanted to create real value for the business and I wanted to create a situation where I was able to sit down with investors that were going to respect the value of the years of bootstrapping that I spent. At the time I had been involved in a couple of startup projects that later got folded into like nonprofit work. One was a virtual care in Maryland for nursing homes. So I had done some entrepreneurial type things, but RestoraPet was for all intents and purposes the first real business that I co-founded, and Kenny was definitely helpful and instrumental in those early years, but I was really running the show in all practical intents and purposes and Kenny was more of an advisor.
I think that I probably could have accelerated that timeline significantly knowing what I know now, but I really believe that both for first-time entrepreneurs that are really wanting to better understand the business world bootstrapping is really, really important. I also think that it's critically important to take investor capital at the right time. For me, that was being willing to give those years to this organic growth and it is, it was a continuous period of slow, sometimes frustratingly slow, but always trending in the right direction, growth.
What we've never done is been leveraged. I've avoided debt, we have no debt now, none whatsoever and that I think is also really important. I think that there are definitely, don't get me wrong, right? There are definitely times within the lifespan of a business when it's important to consider getting leveraged, but that just wasn't the right path for RestoraPet. It was basically, get to a point of positive cash flow with an incrementality there that was slow, but respectable, and then get investor capital where I was willing to give up some equity. Also had a bit of a partial exit, which was great for me personally, still retain a massive amount of equity in the business, obviously, but I was able to do all that without leveraging the business at all.
[music]
[00:29:22] Matt: I want to say special thanks to Brian for his patience as we created this show. I forgot to mash the record button at the start and we had to go back and rerecord the first question of our interview. Also, I've added, make sure the clothes dryer's buzzer is not on before recording an episode, to my pre-production checklist. If you hear any obnoxious sounds in the background, that's what it is.
Finally, this is a great place to thank Steve Stewart, the world's most amazing podcast editor and podcasting coach. If you don't hear the dryer buzzer, constant listener, it's because of Steve's production quality prowess. Steve, thank you for your work, your advice, and friendship to a noob in this business. [music]
[00:30:04] Matt: Look, I wanted to ask what do you see for yourself and for RestoraPet in the future?
[00:30:09] Brian: We've got a number of additional products that are coming out R&D has been critical to the business for quite a while now. Next month we've got an all-natural organic allergy itch and immune support formula. It's also our first chew. Currently, RestoraPet, we've got two products that are both liquids that you add to a pet's food or you can give it directly by mouth. Multiple flavors, very palatable and dogs, cats, we have a horse formula as well. They really enjoy the flavors, but we're excited to be expanding into these soft chews and to be doing that with a specialty product, but a number of other projects that we're working on, including one that's in the tech sphere around diagnostics, that is super exciting. I'm ecstatic about that in fact.
We're going to continue to grow this and really the goal is to continue to become this dominating force within the wellness space for pets and so our motto is that 'We are your partner in achieving and maintaining wellness for your pets,' and that's absolutely something that we want to do. Long-term, we have eyed an exit path and we've got some interesting tax arrangements that we went through a lot of different work on qualified small business stock and different things that give us really, really awesome exit potential when the time is right.
[00:31:31] Matt: Now, that's super exciting stuff. There's been some good planning that's gone in there, I'm glad to hear about that. This is a show about life, work, and money and I wonder if you could talk about what you love about where you are today in life, work and money, Brian?
[00:31:43] Brian: Yes. Well in life, I really couldn't be happier. I've got an amazing wife. I've got great pets. I don't know when this podcast is going live, but my wife and I just found out relatively recently that we're pregnant with our first child.
[00:31:58] Matt: A big congratulations.
[00:31:59] Brian: Thank you. Yes, super excited about that. Something that we've been trying for a while. Within my life, my life is just this tremendous foundation by which everything else, meaning work and everything else gets what it needs to be successful, but I couldn't be happier with my life. In terms of work, I really love what I do. I love coming to work every day. I think that I'm the most fortunate founder in the world in that I still every day get messages and calls and communication from customers that say that these products that I invented have improved quality of life for their pets and a lot of the times in very visible, very impactful emotional ways.
I've sat at my desk on many occasions, as silly as this might sound to admit and cry, teared up reading messages from people that said that they were going to put their dog down or whatever, and that it's got a new lease on life. What more can you possibly ask for to have a business that's become successful and to have something that people really believe in? That will never get old.
[00:33:13] Matt: Well, that's super rewarding.
[00:33:14] Brian: It is, it really is.
[00:33:16] Matt: I can connect wholeheartedly with that feeling.
[00:33:17] Brian: It's great. Then from a money standpoint, very fortunate, too. After a lot of periods of struggle, something I haven't talked about in previous interviews, but when I moved out away from home, I actually got married at 19 years old, bought a house, did that whole thing. Ended up, I was married for five years. The marriage didn't work out and that's all part of learning and growing, but ended up filing for bankruptcy 10 years ago. I made a lot of decisions that at 19 and 20 years old seemed like the right thing to do, was able to very quickly restructure after that and put my life back together.
Now, I'm very fortunate and very blessed to not have to think about money at all, whether that's having the opportunity to plan for retirement or plan for our future or when something that's really interesting to me comes my way and I've got the opportunity to acquire it. There was a really special art print that I've thought about since I was a little kid by my favorite artist, Francis Bacon, this huge, huge painting that he did and there's maybe a hundred of these prints in the world that he signed, this guy's paintings, one just sold a few weeks ago for a hundred million dollars. The idea that there's this print that's, life-size, it's enormous.
It takes up an entire wall and that there's a hundred of them in the world. I saw one come up on the auction block and I bought it and it was just the most surreal feeling in the world to now have sitting next to in my piano room to have this massive print that I look at it every day in awe and it's pretty amazing. Just to have my money working for me rather than just to be working for money is something that I'm really thankful for.
[00:34:57] Matt: Is there anything you would change today about life, work, and money, Brian?
[00:35:00] Brian: I can't say that there is, no. I think this goes back to something we were talking about a little while ago, which is, I think it's important to accept your present circumstances. You can always find ways to want to better yourself and to better your circumstances, but anything short of accepting where you're at right now is denial and I think that getting into denial is a really problematic state of mind. What I like to have such-- My wife and I have this dream of having really, really, really remarkable financial independence and starting a non-profit, basically a fund that funds itself where we give seed capital to aspiring young entrepreneurs that are looking to do something that's going to make a positive impact on the world.
Ecological entrepreneurship and really socially-focused and minority groups and just really like focusing on things that are going to make this world a better place than the way that we found it and being able to support that and then watch as those things take hold and grow and being able to just put that money back into this pot that we want to have for just social entrepreneurship and really, really interesting young entrepreneurs, so I'm excited about that.
[00:36:21] Matt: Now, that's great. I have a hypothesis that giving away money is actually probably the most fun you can have with money. You're talking about giving away money, maybe at a scale that is unique and I think probably most people would say exciting, but I also think that all along the path from where my children are now to where anyone finds themselves on the journey, giving it away is probably the most fun you can have with money. I love to hear you say that.
[00:36:49] Brian: I agree and time as well, right?
[00:36:50] Matt: Yes.
[00:36:51] Brian: Sometimes for people giving away money, wherever they're at that moment in the journey might be challenging or maybe they're very limited in the actual quantitative amount of money they can give away, which is totally fine, but being giving of your time is I think just as amazing. Yes, I 100% agree with you.
[00:37:11] Matt: All right. Well, I want to ask if someone wanted to be like you, launching and growing a product-based business and serving what I think is a super-engaged group of customers, what should they do and what should they avoid?
[00:37:24] Brian: Well, first, understanding what it is that you're trying to get into at the most granular level possible. I spent years thinking about the pet industry. I spent years wanting to understand the wellness industry and when I ultimately worked to develop RestoraPet, it was something that was going to be truly unique. My closest competitions in any meaningful way to this day are really joint supplements, glucosamine and chondroitin, and those kinds of things. Whereas RestoraPet is something that works holistically on the entire body. If you want to launch a product-based business, try to do something that is familiar enough.
Totally reinventing the wheel can sometimes be a real challenge, of course, but I talked to so many aspiring entrepreneurs that say that-- and by the way, I don't believe in that. I don't believe in aspiring entrepreneurs. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur, but they talk about drop shipping or buying stuff from Alibaba and I don't believe in that at all. Anybody can do that. Anybody can buy the whatever hundred minimum order quantity that's required to put your little logo on something, like IP. If you can develop some real IP around the product that you're interested in introducing become an inventor, solve a customer's real problem, and whenever humanly possible manufacture that product yourself.
Don't rush to outsource, don't bring in too many middlemen or middle people too early. If you're going to really do this and you're going to take it seriously and you want to develop a product-based business, do it yourself if you can, and you'll learn so much along the way, and you'll have so much more authority and power in the way that if you want to outsource it late or however you want to handle it. I think that the thing that my investors really respected about RestoreaPet when they wanted to get involved was the IP.
When we talked about the R&D pipeline and the brain trust that they felt that I had, that was from me diving in as all my staff knows, just getting my hands dirty constantly with the business and really wanting to understand it at a very granular level.
[00:39:36] Matt: I love it and I can just tell the energy with which you deliver that reply, you both thought about this and you really believe it. Not that you don't believe the other stuff, but I think that was a great response. I want to ask you, this is a show about learning from the experience of others and I wonder if you could share a piece of advice that you've benefited from.
[00:39:54] Brian: Yes, I'm going to go back to what we were talking about when I was mentioning my mom, which is don't wait until it too late to start living and appreciating your life. No matter what your circumstances are, I think that there's something there that you can be grateful for. I think gratitude is a really, really important theme in my life and really is something that can apply to everyone's life so I believe in that wholeheartedly.
[00:40:21] Matt: All right. Continuing with that advice theme, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about anything that you've been reading that has been particularly impactful to you either now or in the past? Just books that you like.
[00:40:35] Brian: Yes, there's three that I think are really transformative for me. The first I'll talk about here that I've mentioned several times thematically throughout this interview is The Power of Now. It's probably the book that's changed my life the most. I consider it to be every bit as much a business book as it is a life philosophy or anything else. Maybe it's spiritual, but it's not religious. It is literally about the fact that there is nothing in this world other than this present moment. You and I sitting down, having this conversation right now, in our lives, in this moment, or whether if you're a listener to this podcast like that is the only moment that matters. This moment right now is the only one that matters.
What happened two minutes ago might as well be as ancient as the pyramids being built and what's going to happen two minutes from now might as well be as distant as 100,000 years from now because the only step that you can take is the one that you're taking right now. What happens in the future, and I'm not saying don't plan, but give attention in your life to where you're at right now because if you're an entrepreneur, if you're looking to start a business, there is absolutely no time like the present. I think that a book like The Power of Now really helps to harness and drive home that fact, so it's amazing.
On the business side of things like very practically, I love the book Getting Things Done by David Allen. That's been really transformative for me. It's about really organizing and understanding tasks that you are confronted with in a very granular sense. It's about breaking things out into projects and areas of focus. There's also an app that goes really well with it called Things, literally just things. That's something that I've used for over 10 years now. It's been huge for my business.
Then, I would say going back to this wellness aspect, a book that I read a couple of years ago that I've come back to, probably 50 times is very, very interesting because in some ways it's almost like a cookbook but it's called Whole30, W-H-O-L-E 3-0. I've done the Whole30 which is a 30-day challenge of eating only unprocessed foods, no sugar, just really very kind of clean foods, no alcohol. I've done that several times over the last few years and it's amazing what that's done for my cognition, my energy levels. The idea of just giving 30 days of your life to just cutting out all artificial foods, everybody should try it at least once because it's really, really amazing. Hard to do in some ways. Although I would say running a marathon is hard, eating healthy for 30 days isn't so hard. Those are the three for me.
[00:43:24] Matt: I'm familiar with all three of those books although the Allen book is the only one that I've read. On the Whole30 book, where does coffee fit into the recommendations there?
[00:43:31] Brian: It's black coffee. Black coffee is okay so that's all I drink.
[00:43:36] Matt: Okay, good deal. A couple of more, I wanted to just drop in here. I wanted to ask, have you participated or will you participate in any groups like Entrepreneurs' Organization or Vistage, or have you opted instead to craft your own group of advisors and mentors? Which obviously we've talked about until now. I'm just curious whether you've done either of those two or something that I may not know about.
[00:43:58] Brian: Yes. Well, I've done a few different things with Darden and have gotten involved. I've been mentoring a few entrepreneurs that are just getting started, but I haven't really given a lot of thought to making that more formal, I guess. It's something that is very interesting to me. I've made definitely an invite to entrepreneurs or people that are interested in connecting and I think that that offer definitely still stands that I'm happy to be a contact or a sounding board if there's any value to offer my advice.
I think that the world of mentorship and the world of business people supporting each other is more critical now than ever. Like we talked about in this interview, the success that I've been able to achieve in my life has been because there were people that were willing to take the time to offer insight and advice and challenge me and offer constructive criticism. I believe in paying that forward.
[00:45:02] Matt: That's great. I also wanted to ask if you could tell us a little bit about the role that music plays in your life. As we've been having this great conversation, I can see the guitar on the wall behind you. This is also a big part of what you tweet about on your personal Twitter account.
[00:45:18] Brian: Music is huge, huge for me. I grew up as this die-hard fan of Fleetwood Mac and half of what you'll see on my Instagram is Fleetwood Mac or their guitarist Lindsey Buckingham-related stuff. Music is just this truly universal language and it's this opportunity-- I think having a creative outlet, business is very creative, certainly being an entrepreneur is very creative, but for me, having the ability to sit down and just channel what I'm feeling by writing music and getting that out on a record. I've released several albums independently.
I started when I was very young. Some of them are absolutely atrocious, really, really bad, but I think if nothing else, it's demonstrative of the fact that I always aspire to develop a product and to be able to introduce something to the public. I'm talking like my first album, I was 11 years old and it is really bad. The point there is just that we all need something that balances us out and as much as I absolutely love my business, being able to take even just a few minutes to turn your mind off and to just channel that creativity and just ground yourself, just feel that is so important. I'm really appreciative of the fact that I've had this ability, this music has always been there for me since I was a little kid.
[00:46:49] Matt: Before we wrap up, can you tell us about the trip to Australia with Shane Dikolli who was, of course, an early guest of this show, and your other Darden classmates?
[00:46:57] Brian: That was a really awesome experience. RestoraPet is in the process of expanding distribution down in Australia and the person that we'll be working on that has been the president of the Australian division of FLAVORx for over 15 years. This guy, Piero [unintelligible 00:47:13] that I've known for, I've known him for 15 years. He was a very good friend of Kenny's. He and I have always kept in contact. He's going to be working on that project which is getting RestoraPet approved by the Australian Regulatory Authorities and really helping with the distribution efforts and all of that and even the bottling.
We're going to send him drums of product and then he will handle the process of getting that into bottles for cost efficiency sake. Sending glass bottles down to Australia is pretty expensive. I was just sharing, I think in between classes when I was at Darden, Shane and I were chatting, and Shane might be able to correct me on this, I can't remember who said what, but one of us just said, "Hey, let's make something out of this. Do you want to go down to Australia? Do you want to do a course around this?" It was pretty nonchalant. It was like, "Absolutely, that sounds phenom." Who better to be with in Australia than Shane Dikolli?
He's just the coolest guy in the world, the coolest professor, so intelligent, so charismatic, and just knows everybody, knows everything so I jumped at the opportunity. Pretty shortly thereafter, while I was still a student, I came down to Charlottesville, I went to his office and we started planning this trip. In typical Shane fashion, he had this huge whiteboard where he's sketching out all of the intricacies of this and all the wineries and the places he wanted to go to.
Long story short, RestoraPet and Piero came to the University of Melbourne. He featured very prominently in that and it was really the anchor for this program. I had had a back surgery in December of 2019 that failed and so I was in agonizing pain while I was down there in Australia. If it was anybody but Shane, I would have canceled the trip because I was in so much pain, but I went down there. There were all these activities that the students were doing that I wanted to participate in, Qantas Airlines and all this cool stuff and I was literally just stuck in bed in my hotel room the entire time. Then, I would just prop myself up and go and lecture on the class or do a Q&A with the students.
Then two days after I got back from Australia, I had an emergency back surgery. That one failed too, but six weeks ago today, I had a revision surgery and it's been perfect. No pain, I feel great, amazing surgeon. Moral of the story there is despite that setback, it was incredible to be able to go down to Australia with somebody like Shane.
[00:49:39] Matt: Man, I'm so glad you were able to go, but that is an amazing hurdle or hurdles that you had to overcome.
[00:49:45] Brian: It's life.
[00:49:47] Matt: To do that, it's life. That's one of the things that's come through, I think, in this that I'll probably comment on when I do the opening to this show. It's like, it's not easy for anybody. I appreciate how open you've been in sharing those stories whether it was from a back surgery to things that are even harder than that. Brian, is there anything else that you'd like to say that I haven't asked you or given you a chance to talk about it until now?
[00:50:07] Brian: I think it's just that central theme that I've inadvertently, but probably way too clearly as I listen back to this, delivered, but for an entrepreneur or whether you're thinking about, just any action that you want to take in your life, now's the time to do it. I really believe that it's just about that step that you can take right now to try to do something, to change the world or better your circumstance, or put a smile on somebody's face or whatever it is. That's my belief.
[00:50:36] Matt: Is there any way that you'd like people to follow up with you around the web or at RestoraPet or how would you like people to get in touch?
[00:50:43] Brian: Our website's restorapet.com R-E-S-T-O-R-A-P-E-T dot com. That's our handle, RestoraPet is our handle and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else, and certainly people can also connect with me on LinkedIn.
[00:50:57] Matt: Very good. I appreciate that so much. It's been just a pleasure to get to know you better, really appreciate all that you've shared today and know that it's going to be super helpful to the people who listen.
[00:51:06] Brian: Thank you so much. Pleasure is mine.
[music]
[00:51:10] Matt: Life's not easy for anyone, but rather than curl up in a ball, instead, take setbacks and stride and learn from them. But hardships motivate you to help others in ways, both big and small and be assured out there in podcast landia I'm talking to myself as much as anyone.
Now, here are the takeaways from today's show. It's impossible to overestimate the importance of mentors and you can't begin too young in establishing relationships with people who want to support you.
If you're in a position to mentor others, consider how you can help. If you're seeking mentors, think about people you know whom you would like to emulate and be a friend first. You need to maximize time with people you love, because we just never know how much time we've got. The story about Kenny and about Brian's mom illustrate this all too clearly for us. When it comes to taking on investors, it's very important to do it at the right time, usually not too soon, and to bring on investors who can add value to the business as advisors and supporters.
Brian and I talk about giving. I know that giving money away is about the most fun you can have with money and giving time is meaningful too. Next, we discussed that it's really important to have stuff in your life that grounds you outside of business. That's especially people, but also things like music or physical exercise or other hobbies.
With that, thank you so much for listening to this show. Next week's show talks about mentors, being one or seeking one, and the importance of action rather than analysis, and the importance of now versus later. Until then this is Matt Miner, encouraging you to make a financial plan that works as hard as you do.
[music]
[00:52:48] Female Speaker Matt Miner is a fee-only, fiduciary financial advisor and Founder & CEO of Miner Wealth Management, a North Carolina Registered Investment Advisor where Matt provides personalized, unconflicted, advice to clients for a fee. He’s also my dad, so please be nice when you talk to him! Matt is a Certified Financial Planner Professional and holds a Series 65 securities license. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Finance from Arizona State University, and his MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
Work Pants Finance is Matt's financial media business where he talks about work, entrepreneurship, kids and money, taxes, investing, and other personal finance topics. WorkPantsFinance.com exists to share wisdom and provide general financial information. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice. You are an individual and probably need personal advice for your specific situation. You should consider building relationships with helpful, caring, and competent professionals who understand your unique context and can provide advice that is tailored to your needs.