David speaks with Colin Landforce, the CTO of Unrivaled Brands.
They talked about Colin’s early forays into entrepreneurship, building things from high school and college and beyond, and then also this incredible journey of building a publicly traded cannabis company (Unrivaled Brands).
And then finally, they also talked about the idea of building a brand around yourself and tenets of being able to find authenticity and being yourself and finding your voice.
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👤 Connect with Colin Landforce:
Twitter: @landforce
Website: landforce.co
Podcast: builders.build
📄 Show notes:
Thoughts on being a builder [4:20]
How did he get into cannabis [14:48]
How cannabis works from a legislation perspective [16:51]
The nature of any startup [19:50]
Trouble with the cannabis industry [22:13]
How to lead effectively and help the business to succeed [25:10]
What do you think makes you take that first step [31:31]
Different ideas he tried [35:26]
Being able to experiment, try things and to play in different spaces [44:10]
Skills to develop and can execute well [45:49]
How to manage social media presence [53:57]
🗣 Mentioned in the show:
👨🏾💻 About David Elikwu:
David Elikwu FRSA is a serial entrepreneur, strategist and writer. David is the founder of The Knowledge, a platform helping people learn more and live better.
- Twitter: @Delikwu / @itstheknowledge
- Newsletter: https://theknowledge.io
- Course: http://careerhyperdrive.com
- Website: https://www.davidelikwu.com
- Podcast: http://plnk.to/theknowledge
🚀 Career Hyperdrive
David runs a course that will help you build a toolkit of mental models and bulletproof core skills that will drastically shorten the growth curve for your career, business, or personal brand. Join the next cohort to take control of your path, build future-proof skills, and design a career you can be proud of.
🧭 The Knowledge
As a writer and serial entrepreneur, David Elikwu speaks with elite performers from a variety of backgrounds, unpacking everything there is to know about navigating the world around us.
This podcast is a catalogue of excellent data points. Join us each week for actionable insights to make sense of what matters most.
The Knowledge is a curated digest of the world's best ideas, drawing on insights from psychology, philosophy, business, and culture. We explore tools, frameworks, and stories that will help you navigate with clarity and cut through the noise.
Website: theknowledge.io
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📜Full transcript:
Colin Landforce: [00:00:00] Urgency kinda correlates with grit, but urgency applied to everything. It makes anything that you're doing like two or three times more lethal. Right. And I think about that a lot, because everything that you're doing like the faster you can get to day zero has an exponential return on what day 30 looks like, or day 365 looks like.
Right. And, and then it also gets you to failure and pivot, adjust, do something else as fast as possible. So urgency is like this characteristic that is really hard to nail down in somebody, or understand if it exists in somebody, but it's super valuable to your own efforts to an organization and beyond.
David Elikwu: Hey, I'm David Elikwu and this is The Knowledge. a podcast for anyone obsessed with learning more and living better. In every episode I speak with successful people from a variety of backgrounds [00:01:00] to unpack everything they've learned about navigating the world around us.
This week, I'm speaking with Colin Landforce, the chief technology officer at Unrivaled Brands. This was a fantastic conversation because Colin has this insatiable drive to build and create things.
And he clearly loves that feeling of building businesses from scratch. And so we talked all about his early forays into entrepreneurship, building things from high school and college and beyond, and then also this incredible journey of building a publicly traded cannabis company.
And then finally, we also talked about this idea of building a brand around yourself and tenets of being able to find authenticity and being yourself and finding your voice and being able to share your truth with people and having people identify with that. So there's, there's so much wrapped up in that.
And this was a really fantastic episode. You can [00:02:00] find Colin online on Twitter at Landforce, and you can check out his amazing podcast with his fellow co-hosts it's the builders build podcast. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
David Elikwu: If you love this episode, please engage with it. Subscribe, share it with a friend. And most importantly, please don't forget to leave a review because it helps us tremendously to grow the show and reach other people. Just like you.
Obviously, you've gone viral a few times and you talk a lot about the businesses that you guys run now, but I'd love to go way, way, way back and figure out. Okay. Where does this all come from? So have you always felt like you've been an entrepreneur, have you always had that kind of self-starting spirit?
And I know that you have this phrase that says 'builders build'. Has that always been you from like a very young age or is that something you've cultivated as you've gotten older?
Colin Landforce: Yeah, I'd Say something I've refined. Right. So I [00:03:00] think, you know, early on, initially it expresses itself as entrepreneurship, but I've done a lot of, a lot of introspection on the topic really centered around. Insecurity of being a Jack of all trades. Right. Cause I am a Jack of all trades and I've certainly had plenty of moments of like, what, what do I actually, what am I actually doing?
What am I actually going to like specialize in? And for me it all circled back to just creating and like, I think of building as like creating something where there, where there once was not right. And so in terms of that, like, yeah, it started with Legos. Right. And then as it manifested itself into business, which is the place where I'm lucky enough to like make a living and, and have a career building you know, early on, I think for a lot of entrepreneurs found themselves, you know, promoting parties in this kind of thing.
That was definitely you know, the first probably I guess five figure businesses I was doing was throwing parties and and, and that kind of thing. And but yeah, again, for me, it's like, it's building is the core tissue there. At the end of the. And yeah, [00:04:00] had the usual CD burning in middle school and all those little hustles, I think are common amongst people of our, of, of our age.
And we ended up here. I wasn't concise. It never is for me, but
David Elikwu: No, no, no, no. I love not being concise. I mean, yeah. Let's dig into that, so. Okay. So you're doing CD burning in middle school. What's the first hustle that you remember having.
Colin Landforce: There's a couple like that. The first actual one was E-bay drop shipping sneakers. I think it was like the first the first thing. So that was, I'm sure we're all aware of like the fake sneaker world and I was transparently. So like, I was not, not getting one over on anybody drop shipping from China.
Jordan's and Nike's, that were not actually Jordans at Nike's that along with the, the party, the party stuff. So one of the origins, again, going from just like random things into like, oh, this is a business was when I was in high school. Our school canceled all of our dances because they'd gotten, gotten a little bit out of hand.
And so all of a sudden there's all this pent up [00:05:00] demand for a dance. A party, right. Amongst, you know, 15, 16, 17 year olds. And so we threw a party and that was you know, that kind of like kicked into a, I guess a four or five-year thing, starting in the middle of high school bleeding into college and not quite beyond of, of just like promoter, DJ and event stuff.
Which got pretty big, you know, we, we, through like some of the biggest new year's Eve parties in Portland a couple of years it was always just like that, that business is a slippery slope in more ways than one. And I feel like, especially at that scale, doesn't ever really pan out like nightlife.
You can, you can, like, you can hustle, you can make some money to a nightlife, but, but it, it kind of gets into a totally different ball game in terms of actually building a business there. And it was very transitory for me. It's like I'm in college. You know, I was making better money than anybody I knew in college, but it never was going to.
I never was going to be a whole lot more than that, I think in retrospect. And so those were, those were definitely the early, early things.
David Elikwu: Cool. And how were you thinking about money at that time as well? Was it a thing where you were making money and [00:06:00] saving it, or were you looking for ways to spend it, or were you thinking about maybe like reinvesting in other things. Was that something you already having in mind?
Colin Landforce: I have a very fluid relationship with money is probably a good way to put it. So yeah, like everything I've ever done is I'm not, I'm not a saver right at this point in my life. Sure. I save, but I have a very, very fluid relationship with money. It is a, it is something that comes in something that goes, and I generally feel like at any given moment, you could probably stripped me naked and throw me in the middle of a desert and I'd be in decent. I'd be in a decent place 30 days later. Right. So all of these things, whether it's is just like continue, keep the beast rolling, keep growing and keep it moving.
David Elikwu: Yeah. And so when you went to college, were you, was the plan that you wanted to get some kind of job out of that? Or were you thinking, I mean, you're already making a lot of money probably more than some people were in their first graduate jobs. What were you thinking at that time?
Colin Landforce: I think I unfortunately went to college just cause it was the next thing to do. And I ultimately [00:07:00] didn't end up graduating. I think I was a term short, I don't know how many credits exactly. But I went to business school just, just cause it was the next thing to do. And so the reason I ended up leaving is because I just had this moment of like, I'm not actually doing this.
I can come back and do this at any point, if it's what I want to do. But I'm going to, to, to go actually do things. And, and so I was reflecting the other week on college and I think that the, the professional development class that I took that was really about writing and speaking, it was probably the most valuable college class that I took.
And that class is, you know, not, not business specific or any degree specific. Right. I think all these things boil down to communication is like the most important skill set any of us can have you know, regardless of education and yeah.
David Elikwu: Yeah. I was just talking to someone about that. His name's David Belle he was a guest on this podcast, actually. And we were talking about how realistically, I think sales or communication, and being able communicate clearly and being able to sell people on ideas [00:08:00] is probably one biggest, highest leverage skills that you can develop wherever you get that, whether you're getting it doing door to door sales, whether you're getting in school or selling things, or however you get and however you can build those skills, they unlock so many other things, even writing as an So I run this course on like career building and stuff. And I just talk about how learning to write and learning to write well and communicate ideas. Clearly, even if you're not in a position, it doesn't matter. You don't have to want to become a writer. You don't have to want to use that for the specific purpose, but you can many other contexts. Yeah.
Colin Landforce: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And communicating and sales are obviously very closely related and I, I totally agree.
David Elikwu: So what did you end up doing, coming out of college? Because I can imagine maybe you don't already know exactly what you're going into. I can assume you maybe spent some time experimenting.
Colin Landforce: Yeah. So immediately [00:09:00] after that I was building media websites. So, and this was a very, I mean, I learned so much through, through that time. It was such a, a brutal grind, but I was building music based blogs, basically. There are two of them in particular and it was a hell of a grind.
I feel like looking back, knowing what I know now, it could have gone very But I, I obviously didn't and I generally feel like the obstacle is the way, so I learned a ton during that period, but honestly, coming out of, it I was dead broke and ended up just like kind of washing my hands of it.
But the, the next thing I did from there was a text tech SaaS. So really like before text marketing was what it is today. I did a, a SaaS around that and, that was a grind, but learned a lot there as well.
David Elikwu: Okay, sweet. So were you doing the coding of that business as well.
Colin Landforce: No, no, not at all. We had, we had developers, but I mean, do you know much about the SMS space today?
David Elikwu: Yeah. I know, know a bit, but I'm sure you could probably educate me a
Colin Landforce: You from, are you familiar with Twilio?
David Elikwu: Yes. Yeah.
Colin Landforce: [00:10:00] Yes. Okay. This was before Twilio, so we had, we had burner phones connected to our servers and we had literal phones sending, sending the text and running, running our entire platform off of burners, plugged into the, into the servers in this tiny little office.
So we were like, literally ahead of our time, not necessarily in a good way on it. But it was great. We learned a lot and it's really interesting looking back on like how prolific SMS is in, like in the marketing landscape and just like the, I guess not only marketing, right. Things like one-time passcodes and, and like really.
The, the operation of products and, and especially digital products and websites, these days is, is pretty interesting, but we were, we were way ahead of our time and that ended up bleeding into like an agency. Right. Cause we couldn't, it was very hard to make money doing that. And so very quickly, all the people that we were, you know, selling on text marketing also needed all these other things and so very quickly morphed into, into an agency. And yeah,
David Elikwu: Okay. [00:11:00] Sweet. So you built an agency like a media agency out of the back of that.
Colin Landforce: Yeah, just all the usual suspects, right? Websites, social media, you know, software development, like really just like for better, for worse, like the everything agency and those, those are different kind of grind and did that for a while and ended up just, just stepping away from it to go, go pursue other things, but all experiences are good experience.
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly. And I think it's so interesting because I think a lot of the kind of entrepreneurial scrappy types or people that, like you say, Jack of all trades, people that pick things up as they go along, you actually are picking up all the skills that you can leverage later on. So sometimes even though you might not see in the moment how applicable this thing is, or you might have something that fails or doesn't pan out the way you expect it to the lessons that you learned and the lessons that you learn and the skills that you build ultimately pay off when you find something that you can apply them to.
Colin Landforce: Yeah, I totally agree. I genuinely [00:12:00] do not ever look at any time I spent on anything as wasted time, even if it didn't pan out for that, for that exact reason. If you're, if you're picking up game, if you're getting experience you know, to a certain degree, that's, that's always going to be adding value, even if it doesn't seem like it in the moment.
David Elikwu: Yeah. So, how does the cannabis thing pan out? Like how do you get into that?
Colin Landforce: Yeah. So, gosh leading up to leading up to that, I was actually at like my only job, I think, as a young man at that point. And that was kind of coming to an end. In a lot of ways. And I had a couple of friends that were, as the story goes that were selling bulk flower to dispensers.
And it was kinda like looking for what's next. And it was that. So, so I left that and jumped in. And the rest is history. You know, I can't remember remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I think that the year following me leaving, we did like three and a half or 4 million. It was largely[00:13:00] bulk, just moving weight to dispensaries.
But the, the end goal was always product, right. So the early days were just building the distribution network without distribution, nothing really matters. Right. So building out that network so that we could ultimately sell whatever we landed on into that same network. And, and so the early days were just, just building that out and then figuring out what was next.
And, and then we started developing brands and developing products and so on and so forth. And then I think three or four rounds of M&A later here we are publicly traded through a merger and doing that at a bigger scale than four or five years ago, when it all started.
David Elikwu: That's awesome. Give me an idea of how, how easy or difficult was it scaling in those early days? Because I think people, there's two things, right? So people obviously see your journey and see everything that you've done. And there are people that will want to replicate that whether it's in the same industry or in others, and people will see that as a, as an example, and you know, was it, was it easy being able to scale the [00:14:00] distribution or also maybe give me an idea of like how this fits in from a legislation perspective. Was this like soon after it was starting to become legalized in a lot of places, was it super early or was it, you can already see some examples of what this was going to look like in some other areas.
Colin Landforce: Yeah, well, I think there are a couple angles on it. One is especially early days. We're basically talking low margin distribution business, and those are really hard from a cashflow standpoint, right. As you grow, you need exponentially more cash and it's low margin. So cash is hard to come by and that's, if collections are perfect and business is good, right.
And then you add onto it, the, the cannabis dynamic and, and so outside of regulation and licenses and the hoops that have to be jumped through there, which, which vary a lot market to market, Cannabis in open markets, which is what the west coast, all the, all the west coast states are, are open open licensed states, which means that more or less, if you want a license and you want to be in business, you can be which means it's an absolute blood bath.
Like, I don't think there [00:15:00] are very many industries that are more competitive than than west coast cannabis. And so you add that onto that. And it, it's absolutely been a blood bath. It's very, very difficult. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. But the, what the advice I do give is is that cannabis is exciting.
There's going to be there is, and there will continue to be a huge growth, growth curve in cannabis and my favorite lane. And if I was like stepping back, stepping away now, but then wanted to get into cannabis, I would be getting into ancillary businesses. That, that service cannabis, right? Like the board, like a marketing agency an electrician, all this boring stuff that basically has like the same growth, potential as cannabis, but it's just the nuts and bolts.
Right. And it's like, the electrician gets paid whether or not the price of the flour being grown there, plummets and kills the business. That's running it. The electrician who ran the wires gets the check every single time. Right. Because you don't, you don't get to grow the weed without that. And I think I think there's huge opportunities to just niche into cannabis with all these, all [00:16:00] these boring businesses isn't the word, but like run of the mill businesses. Right. that's my, that's my pitch on the cannabis industry. Stay away.
David Elikwu: Yeah, no, no. I completely get that. It's not always the big, sexy thing, right? Like there's so many small niches and so many small opportunities that people often miss, just because they are literally looking to replicate whatever it is that they've seen. So, one other question that is kind of going off the back of what you were saying. Which is really about when you're there in those very early days, you haven't necessarily done something exactly like this before. How much did you need to learn in order to be competent? Because I think you see the story. A lot of, a lot of people get onto something good and they don't even know how to cope with it.
And there's too much demand. There's too much going on and they can burn out very quickly. But obviously you guys were able to keep going for, for the long haul and actually make it work. And you were able to learn whatever it is that you needed to learn at the exact right time to be able to keep things going.
Colin Landforce: Right. So I think to a [00:17:00] certain degree, that's the nature of any startup cause even in, you know, even in a an established industry you know, you don't really know what to expect until that first punch. Right. And then, and then all hell breaks loose. So I think startup life in general is kind of built that way. For cannabis it gets extra special because, you know, I think in, in the case of us, so like, especially early days, but, but also now a big part of our businesses is the distribution businesses and, and distribution is an afterthought to regulators, right. When the regulators sit, sit down at the state level to go, okay, so we need to figure out rules and licensing for stores, and then the people that grow it, and then the people that make the products, right?
Like generally speaking, all the regulation around, moving it and getting it from A to B was like a total afterthought. So in addition to, okay, you're, you're learning about the compliance, the hoops, you have to jump through. You're learning the software that runs that, which is also like pretty half-baked, there's also just like gaps in this stuff where there is no way to do it.
Right. And it's, it's, it's pretty daunting when you're talking about like compliance and [00:18:00] regulation to go like, okay, so we don't have a way to do this. So just like, do it, do it the same way every time. So once we figure it out, at least we'll know that you we're being intentional about it, right?
It's like you have a lot of moments like that. Even in the sectors that are more sorted out like a retail, but then even there, right? So you don't get to just use a normal POS solution for a retail store, right? You need to, you're using things that are, are addressing, you know, both the compliance side of the industry, as well as just the nuance of cannabis, which there is plenty.
That means all these softwares are new. There's not a single player in the cannabis space that's like a big player in software that has been around very long because it hasn't been around very long from a like recreational market standpoint. Which means that all of, all of these things, all of the utilities that any other industry takes for granted are like being rapidly developed by teams that are generally fighting the same fires as you. And like, grappling with the ever-changing legislation, just like you are and so on and so forth. So it's like startup startup [00:19:00] vibes on like 5,000.
David Elikwu: Yeah, I can imagine, particularly within that kind of industry, did you find any trouble with, in terms of hiring look, finding the right people, people that were not just there, because it was an interesting industry to be in, but people that could actually do what you needed and to help you scale in the right way.
Colin Landforce: There's a really interesting dichotomy of people getting into cannabis between like people that just want to do cannabis and then, but don't particularly have any experience outside of it. And then people that have a ton of experience in a thing and, and want to get into cannabis and apply that.
Right. So early on for us, our whole thing was not hiring from within. Our thinking was that you, you know, you can teach somebody about cannabis. You can't teach them to like show up on time, right. That those are inherent traits. And so, especially from a sales perspective, right? Like we want to do bring in people that were great at boots on the ground, B2B sales and then teach them cannabis.
Now, fast forward a few years now, it's [00:20:00] like, I'd much rather hire a sales rep that, that has a book of business and has existing relationships, so that that's kind of flipped on its head. And then in a totally different light, you know, we had, we had somebody applying for a job, like on our manufacturing line who had like two master's degrees from like Yale and Harvard.
Like in like theoretical something or other. And again, this is just somebody that they just want to be around weed. They just want to do weed, which is a bizarre just a bizarre thing to deal with. Right. It's not your run of the mill manufacturing team member. So it's really all over the board, I think not to give like a cliche answer, but it's kind of boiled down to just like, it just has to be right.
You know, a super seasoned manufacturing leader is not going to be able to come in and figure out a main cannabis supply chain overnight. Cause there's nothing like it in the world. And so all these things where like you have to find people that they kind of like have some of this, some of the structure and core competencies competencies from you know, from the spaces that they work in, but are [00:21:00] flexible and crazy enough to go figure out how that applies to cannabis and how it doesn't cause nothing, nothing is cookie cutter in it.
David Elikwu: How have you found adapting to the leadership side of things in terms of actually having to help run this company as you're growing. Cause I think it's very different. You Get two kinds, maybe like two types in my mind, there's a lot of people that, okay, don't necessarily have any corporate experience or startup experience, but they're able to maybe build something small and it stays relatively lean, like, you know, in the tens of people.
And then I think on the flip side, you also have some founders that maybe they've worked in some other startups before, and they've seen things scale and they've maybe worked in corporates or in consulting or something else. And they have some of that experience. How did you find that if you didn't necessarily, it's not like you had to spent years and years within previous startups to be able to see examples of, you know, like how to lead effectively and how to help the business to [00:22:00] scale well.
Colin Landforce: Yeah, I think that's another place where I think there's a lot of like management skills that can be taught. From a, from a leadership and communication standpoint. I think a lot of that is is you, you have it, or you don't. And, and so a lot of, a lot of like our, I guess, technically what might be considered middle-management, but I'd like a lot of the leaders in our business have just been brought up through the ranks.
Because a lot of the intangibles, like you need so much, so much leadership on the ground with how fast things change in this. And and the reality is that's not going to come from someone who's like led a large team at Deloitte. It's going to come from someone who knows this stuff, who understands the struggles of the people on their team and the people around them, but then happens to have happens to have the communication skills and, and just these intrinsic leadership skills to, to piece that together.
I don't know, again, this feels like cliche answers, right. But it it's so true and I've seen so many people coming to cannabis with traditional experience in X. They just get burned [00:23:00] by the nuance. And without being able to you know, not literally speak the language, but like understand the language the rest doesn't, doesn't matter a lot of the time at the end of the day.
David Elikwu: Yeah, I get that. And so do you think things have changed a lot, obviously, like you mentioned, you've had the merger, you're now publicly traded, how different is that to where you'd been. Before and obviously like having gone through that whole process.
Colin Landforce: Yeah, I think there's definitely just additional layers. Right? All the, all the other nuance and complexity still exists every day. And then you have new layers, you have the public market layer, like you, as you're, as you're fighting through the, the daily firefights and, and operating the business and growing the business.
There's also this layer of like, where's the share price, right? And these kinds of things. And I think we're fortunate enough where, you know, we have people who like, that's how they spend most of their lives. That's not how I spend most of my life. I've I've learned a ton about it, but I think the primary value, I think that a lot of value that [00:24:00] I in general bring is being able to bridge that gap.
Right? Like I've been the drug dealer and I can also play the suit. And I'm really like, not either one of them at the end of the day. So, so can connecting the dots between two of those and, and like facilitating both of those operating. Right. Because, you know, we have salespeople that like, they were selling to their customers when this was totally illegal.
Right. And then, and then we have we have you know, the board of directors in the public markets to think about. And all of this is just a matrix of connecting dots and, and making sure that those things can play well together and communicate with each other and understand each other.
David Elikwu: How have you found building this with also managing your personal life as well? I know that you're crazy about being a dad and having your family and how do you find balancing that side of your life as well? Cause I know there's loads of people. When you think of a CTO of a public traded company, you know, there are people that their whole lives get sucked into work and whatever it is that they're doing and, you know, they have to pick up their [00:25:00] phone whenever it rings at all times of the night and do all of those things.
So how do you find that balance?
Colin Landforce: Right. I mean, it's tricky. I have like the I'm I'm fortunate enough that like, I have a very serious, like, nothing else actually matters outside of, of that little being that I am so fortunate to have in my life. Right. So I definitely, there are moments where it's an all hours thing, right. And there, there are moments of like conflict in my personal life because of how much.
To for me, the hardest part is just being able to block out the rest of that when I have that time and, and, and get present and how hard that is, kind of varies with what's going on with the business and just what dynamics I'm dealing with during the day. But I think like, you know, the content of, you know, said phone call or getting those emails, the content of those aside.
It's not that different from just like balancing, you know, entrepreneurship where you, you take ownership of, of everything you care about everything. And and you want to be available, whether it's a partner or [00:26:00] somebody on your team, or or one of your colleagues or one of your peers like that want or need to be available.
And, and not actually shut off is like an entrepreneurship thing as much as it is anything else. And at the end of the day, When you, like when we talk personal life, I think like I have like building things and then I have my kid and my family and there's, I don't need anything besides those things, which I think makes it simpler.
Like I don't, like, I'm not like trying to hang out with the boys and watch the game and all these things. Like I do that with my, you know, with my sidekick. And so I think in a lot of ways, that's, it's a lot easier to balance it when it's just two pieces. Then when it is you know, a social life and all these other things, like I got my kid and I got building. Right. And those are that simplifies it a little bit.
David Elikwu: Sure, I saw quite recently, you did a thread I think you were talking about how your barber could make like an extra 40k by starting a small business on the side. And it's funny [00:27:00] because you see some of the responses And okay. I think you get two sides. There's one group of people that are like, oh my gosh, I need to run out and do this.
I'm going to start my own pomade company. I'm going to do exactly what you just said. And then you also get people that like nitpick and they're like, oh my gosh, but what about this? What about that? And what do you think it is that people just don't get about entrepreneurship? Because it's not for everyone, right?
There are plenty of that were in your situation. However many years ago that were in college. Would've been too scared to drop out like you did. And they would have been too worried about what the future would look like. They would have been too focused on all these other things. And then they ended up just going into whatever job that they think is right.
And whatever they think is the next step. What do you it is about maybe your experience or the way you think that makes you able to like, take that step.
Colin Landforce: It's a very existential question. But I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it because it's something that I want to make sure I can instill in my daughter and not like [00:28:00] entrepreneurship, but really just like exactly what it is that you want to do and bring to the world.
I want to make sure that my daughter is in a position to do that and doesn't feel blocked by technicalities or, or whatever it is. And I think that the biggest thing again, and kind of trying to dissect this so that I can apply it to my parenting is just, I was so fortunate to have parents that never told me I had to do anything except for remember who I am and who I represent and, and follow through on commitments you make to other people, right. It was never like, oh, you need to do sports. You need to take music lessons. It was none of that. It was like, do exactly what you want to do every single day and just like be responsible and meet your commitments.
And, and I think that that's kind of at the core of how I ended up here that along with some crazy tech where I love making things and building things And I think that there's, I feel super, super blessed to have, have that kind of at the in the deepest of depths in terms of like the core of my psyche and personality.
And I think it's [00:29:00] something that my parents gave me without particularly realizing it. But that's something that I try and like push, push onto my daughter, which if you kind of like backtrack on what I just said is like push nothing. Like, like my kid will be exactly what she wants to be and nothing, nothing else.
And and so when I see that kind of stuff, like, I, I like kind of, I think it's fear if I had to diagnose it, I used to have this really like flip it and like kind of asshole reaction to it. But I think at the end of the day, it's it's people that are like, over-complicating those things, or are just like figuring out why.
All the reasons why that wouldn't actually work. Which is a huge bummer, I think, at the end of the day. It's also, like you said, like it's not, you know, making things isn't for everybody. Like there has to be accountants too, and that's fine.
David Elikwu: Yeah, I completely agree. I think that's really powerful. And I'm glad that you are taking that approach with your daughter, because I think not everyone gets that. And I think just like you say, [00:30:00] so many people are driven by fear. I think it's a real societal thing that we are taught. That there's pretty much one way to go through life.
And I think it's the scarcity of like how much time you have, right? So you don't want to make a mistake. You want to get everything right. You want to pick the options that you think will give you the most, the least possibility of failure, and so with entrepreneurship with building things, there is a big opportunity for failure, but I mean, I guess it's about, you know, there's a big opportunity for success, but there's also a big opportunity to fail and you might have to restart.
You might even like you shared, like there's a few different things that you've tried. Some of them haven't panned out exactly the way you want. You want them to, but eventually you can strike gold and you can find something that works and you can, you can scale it. You can apply all of those lessons that you've been building up.
But I think unless you are willing to make that bet and to at least try then, you're not, you won't have either. [00:31:00] You can't have the big success if you're not willing to risk the big failure. And it's the same, even with investing, right? Like if there's a lot of people that want to make big money, let's say on crypto or in whatever area, but they are not comfortable with big losses. People lose, like they want to have 20-50 percent margin in terms of like their investment going up. But if their investment goes down like 10%.
Colin Landforce: Selling. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think you know, on one hand it's risk profile, right? Like I have a very, very different risk profile in terms of like what I'm comfortable with than anybody else, then to go a little bit deeper than that. It's like, what is risk?
I don't care if I try something and fail. Like it, it is not an, not an important part of my life. Right. And I think that that guides, that risk tolerance, that like what is failing, you know, you're the invest, the investment example is like, obviously very, very different.
But for me in trying something it's [00:32:00] like, I don't have my self-confidence wrapped up in whether or not idea X works. So in a lot of cases, there's like very little, if any risk at all. And then you add on, on top of that, that I have a very high tolerance for, for risk. And it's like, yeah, why not? Why not go to the moon? Right.
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly. So, is there anything else you're interested in building? I know you that you're helping with your wife's e-comm business.
Colin Landforce: For, yeah, for better or for worse, there's almost nothing I'm not interested in building. My wife's business is crushing it. I think she, I think she got like 20 sales yesterday. But she's crushing it. I'm very thankful that that has that you know, me weighing in or having opinions and helping here.
And there has not created strain on our relationship because it certainly could. But she's taking it at her speed. It's going well. I tell her at least once a week that there's a million-dollar a year business and we need to, you know, pour some, pour some gas on the fire and make it happen. But she's, she's like learning stuff every day and figured it out and taking her own approach to it. And it's awesome. She's having a lot of luck with [00:33:00] tiktok which is, you know, was, was new to me a few months ago, but it's like driving is driving all of our growth right now and it's cool to watch.
David Elikwu: What's she selling?
Colin Landforce: So my wife is half Chinese and we got totally lucky and finding this thing, but it is a lot of people of Eastern Asian descent have like a missing enzyme or something where, when they drink alcohol they turn red and they also, in addition to turning red, it's like a bunch of other bad things happen, right? Like it's like a immediate hangover and X and Y and Z, she could tell you all about it. And so she has this, this patch product, a topical patch product that basically is packed with vitamins to to counteract that.
And so it varies drastically on people that try it. And actually there are a lot of Caucasian folks that are for that also deal with this. It's just predominantly Eastern Asian. But basically you put that sucker on before you drink. And for some people it's night and day for some people, it helps a little bit.
But she totally, we totally randomly stumbled into buying it [00:34:00] from a kid who had created it. And the issue has been dealing with this since she was in college and first started drinking and were not drinkers by any means, but it's like for a lot of people, it's like, literally like you take a sip of wine.
And like, you start glowing and you get a headache immediately. And so it's a, it's a pretty incredible product for the people that works for, and it lines right up with something she knows very well. So it's really a perfect, perfect e-comm business for her.
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly. I know exactly what you mean. I spent some time working in Shanghai and I've traveled quite a bit in east asia
Colin Landforce: You know? Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah.
David Elikwu: It's really cool though. It's great that you were able to do that. I mean, not necessarily to go like it's our business, but you know, I think having, obviously you've had your experience and you're able to input, and like you say something that doesn't, you know, interfere with your relationship all.
Cause I think that's the other part that people struggle with it. I know loads of people that maybe were couples, I think. Okay. [00:35:00] Canva's probably the great example. I think there are couple.
Colin Landforce: Right.
David Elikwu: But it doesn't always work out that way.
Colin Landforce: Yeah right Yeah. Seriously. I keep banging on her to put the product into a fulfillment center, like ship them all the inventory, let them fulfill the orders. And she's fulfilling, still fulfilling them in our house and then asked me to take them to the post office on Saturdays. So we get a good laugh of that, that I'm the fulfillment center. But yeah, we'll get there.
David Elikwu: Is there anything else that you're building or trying to build?
Colin Landforce: Ah, man not that nothing serious. Right. I try and try and keep most of my days focused on the one. But I've got a couple of little passive things. Like, I'm just like when I have ideas, I need to act on them. Right. So I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but like I've got a handful of these little things.
That you know, or either you know, I think that this Twitter app that I made that is like what I do all my writing and Twitter on, because I, I work on Twitter fairly seriously. It's got like 700 users and like, it's, it's free. None of them paying, it's not like bringing them money, but it's like I like improve it and work [00:36:00] on it, you know, at least a couple of times a week and some other people are, are. Using it.
So that's more of just like a scratching, my own itch thing. And then I've got a little, a little I'm not sure if you call it a SaaS, but a little I used to be really not used to, I like basketball cards. I'm not currently in a phase where I'm buying basketball cards, but when I, when I was more seriously, I created a little, a little tool for that.
That like makes a, it's doing like a couple thousand bucks a month. And, and it's something that every now and then I tinker with and try to improve the product, but it's just kind of trucking along. But besides that, we've been working on the podcast, which has been, as we were talking about before we started going a journey in itself and learning how that works.
And we It was a grind. We weren't growing at all. We kind of rebranded it into builders, build and change the format. And since, since then it's been going much better, but it's still a grind and it's still a, you know, every day trying to get to like, what, what does the A-plus podcast look like and how can I execute on it without, you know, the mega studio and the team [00:37:00] and all that.
So that's the, the other one that's taken up, you know, some hours every week.
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly. I definitely feel you on the podcast thing, but even in building generally, I think so much of what you said. I get it completely. I think I'm the same. I just love building stuff. And it's funny, it goes back to what you were saying about being a Jack of all trades as well. There's so many people that are, maybe it's just different types of people, but loads of people talk about, oh my gosh, you need to focus.
And you know, the only way to be successful is if you just only do one thing and you focus on one thing and you're not allowed to try all these other things. And I just try stuff like for fun, I do this podcast. I do take this seriously. And I have a business that I do take seriously, but I also start a bunch of other businesses.
Like I started a coffee business because I kind of wanted to partly because I wanted to solve a problem with like selling with African coffee. But it's also because I thought it would be cool and so I do.
Colin Landforce: Yeah.
David Elikwu: Yeah.
It doesn't take up a huge. Part of my life because I organized it that way and I built it in a way that's [00:38:00] sustainable and it just exists.
Like I can scale it up and down whenever I want to do more marketing, but I can just do that. And then I started a wine it's so funny again, it's one of those things. I mean, it would be cool. I started it. So originally I was doing this entrepreneurship program thing and they gave us a challenge to make a 1k in, I think, two weeks. And so obviously I had to think of like a way to do that. And I literally just did the mock-up of a bottle of wine. I just talked about it on Twitter. and I think it was literally eight days or 12 days, so okay. On the first day I just tweeted about it and I was like, okay, if I started selling wine, would anyone be interested.
And then four days later I came back with mock-ups and I was like, okay, this is the wine you want it.
Colin Landforce: You're doing the wine.
David Elikwu: Yeah, I just built a landing page. I had mock-ups of it. I didn't actually have it yet. I mean, I'd been speaking to people to get it, but I didn't have it. It wasn't done, but I just had like the mock-up that I made and I just did pre-orders and I sold it, I think maybe about 3k [00:39:00] in the next four days.
So, so we're already profitable, so now I can use the money to go and buy to go and buy the wine yeah, exactly. And so that's another thing where I don't know when I feel like it, I can just order another a hundred, couple hundred bottles and sell those and, and whatever. So I think it's, it's cool being able to just experiment and try things and to like play in different spaces.
Colin Landforce: Amen. Same, same energy, man. That's kinda the, you know, I like you pointed out. I say, I say builders build a lot. That's that's my, my thing, my tag, and it's, it's that exact energy it's like just, you know, you don't have to ask anybody for anything. And I think it lines up with the Jack of all trades thing.
You follow the traditional path and you go through school and you come out the other end without any, especially business school, without anything tangible to work with. And then if you go and level yourself up a little bit, figure out Photoshop and figure out how to do a WordPress site and how to turn on a camera and record an audio file for a podcast.
All of a sudden, like [00:40:00] there's almost like nothing that you can't at least get the ball rolling on. And that just gives you a ton of optionality. Like, you know, like you just listed three things where tomorrow, if you wanted to go and scale something that $10 million a year, like you got your pick of the litter without even having to start, start from scratch. i love it
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly. I think, I think that's the thing as well. Cause you give yourself options just by trying things and if they fail, I mean it fails, but you maybe you just plan it in a way that you can keep yourself alive and it doesn't have to take up all your time and all your energy.
Colin Landforce: Yup. Amen. Love it.
David Elikwu: One other question I had so I know that we talked about like communication being a key skill. Is there anything else that you can think of that and All the things that you've built and the things that you've tried that is super high leverage. I'm thinking just as an example, to people that might be listening to this and thinking, you know, they might want to build something like, what are the key skills that you think, that you can develop that will that you execute well.
Colin Landforce: Alright, I got, I [00:41:00] got two answers here. One is like tactical skill. And one is like characteristic that I think is especially good to look for in someone else. If you're trying to find somebody to build with, but tactical skill is, is web. And by web, I don't mean web design, but I mean like figure, like being able to being able to execute a presence on the internet and, and do things there, right?
Like being able to go from zero to 100 on, there is a website, it is optimized for SEO. I'm getting traffic, yada yada yada. Right. That is and it lines up very closely with, with the design thing, but it's way more functional than, than that. And then in terms of something a little bit more abstract, I think urgency is like kinda correlates with grit, but urgency applied to everything. It makes anything that you're doing like two or three times more, more lethal. Right. And I think about that a lot, because everything that you're doing like the faster you can get to day zero has an exponential return on what day 30 looks like, or day [00:42:00] 365 looks like.
Right. And, and then it also gets you to failure and pivot, adjust, do something else as fast as possible. So urgency is like this characteristic that is really hard to really hard to to nail down in somebody, or like really like understand if it exists in somebody, but it's like super valuable to your own efforts to an organization and beyond
David Elikwu: Yeah, I think those two things are hugely connected. I love that you brought that up and it made me think there's something I was thinking about earlier. It's just this fact that so many people it's almost like, okay, imagine you're baking. Like you're trying to make a cake. And people are imagining how much sugar they should put without actually trying it.
Like people don't actually do the experimentation of trying to like, create the perfect recipe. You've got to fail a couple of times. You've got to try it a couple of times and see what works, see what doesn't work. But people sit down first and try and imagine exactly how the perfect it might look
Yeah, exactly. And then they don't think it's [00:43:00] possible, then they already give up.
Colin Landforce: Right. Right. For me, another breakthrough is the awareness that whoever wrote that recipe, they didn't know, they didn't wake up in the morning and know that it was 10 grams of sugar. Right. They got there by trying nine or eight or 20 or yada, yada, yada. Right. And nobody, nobody wakes up in the morning, you know, with a skill or with, with this knowledge, shout out to the knowledge podcast.
Everybody gets there by trying it and figuring it out. Right. And that's a really powerful thing to wrap your mind around.
David Elikwu: Yeah. And I think the speed thing is particularly important. And like you mentioned, getting to the first failure as quickly as possible. I think the faster you can figure out which part will not work or which part you need to change the faster you can adapt. Whereas some people, if you keep kicking the can down the road and keep thinking, okay, I'm eventually going to try it.
Or even, even if you do start trying it, but you start really slow. You're not trying to scale it up. It doesn't have to take all your time, at least trying to hit that velocity as quickly as possible.
And it takes reps as well, because literally what you were just [00:44:00] saying. it made me think, funnily enough, it's not something that I've shared, but this is something that I had been practicing for so long almost.
And I have like one of my notebooks I could, I could even get it and show you, but anytime I had a business idea, I would give myself maybe two weeks and just try and go from, okay. I have the idea. Okay. What would it, what would the business look like? I'm writing it all down. I try and build a landing page.
I try and I designed the logo. I do a bunch of stuff. I get the domains, all of that stuff. Like how quickly can I go from zero to it's there. And it doesn't mean that, I have to launch it. It doesn't mean that, you know, that be a thing, but it's just practicing that wrap of like going from idea to something is done and something is out there.
And so funnily enough, okay. Even the coffee thing, I had that original idea in 2018, I think I launched it in 2020. I had already had the idea and done that whole thing, like design a logo, did a website, bought domains, did all that. And then I just sat on it. Like, I, it's not something that I was ready to launch at that time, but because I had been doing that practice, then when [00:45:00] I did want to launch it, it took two weeks.
It just took like, think pretty much the same thing with the wine. I said, Hey, pre-orders gave myself two weeks to build the website and then launched it. And it's done because you have that practice of doing it.
Colin Landforce: Right. Love it. Love it. Same energy for me. I use this more as a filter on ideas than like you said, To get practice. But when I have something, I go, I buy the domain and I don't set it to auto renew. So so it will expire a year later. And that, that gives me a year to decide if it's something that I ever want to see again.
Otherwise all of a sudden you get 10 years down the road and you got 140 domains on auto renew and that, that adds up pretty quickly. Yeah.
David Elikwu: Yeah, no, you're right with that. I do. I've got a ton domains but I mean, I don't know there's a balance Yup Yeah, No, you're right. It's a filter for the good quality ideas, because it would make sure that if it's something worth acting on you'll act on it and so I think [00:46:00] it solves for the procrastination part of it. But one thing I do like about having those sprints and, and keeping things on the backlog is that sometimes, I don't know, like if I feel like launching something, if I ever got to a point where, okay, for example, I've got a skincare thing.
If I ever wanted to get into that, I've got the, I've got the business plan, I've got the logo design, I've got all of that somewhere in my backlog. If I wanted to get into looks like that, I've got it. Done. If I wanted into, I don't know, like making suits, I've got that. If I wanted to get into, like, there's a bunch of stuff that I don't have to do it now.
I've got my hands full. I've got enough things I'm doing now, but It's cool. Well, I enjoy having a backlog of actually thinking through the ideas. Cause I think that's another thing that people don't do is that as much as I mentioned people trying to figure out what the recipe looks like, I think people don't think things through fully, at the same time, people just have an idea and they say, wouldn't it be cool, but they don't actually think about, okay.
What is distribution like, Go and research, going find some factories. Like, [00:47:00] how would you get this made? How would, how would you do this? How would you do that? And so I think it can be useful actually trying to think about all those things and giving your mind that exercise. And then, like you say, I think, you know, it can be good to then give yourself a year and, and figure it out and see, see if you can launch it.
Colin Landforce: Yeah, absolutely.
David Elikwu: So how are you finding on social media, like managing your presence? Cause you talked about like web being a thing and, and being able to grow and manage a presence and being able to use it. How are you finding managing that? Because I think it can go one of two ways. One, in terms of the, maybe negatives is perhaps like being pigeonholed into whatever particular thing you started doing. and then also, maybe some people don't always like the recognizability and, and everyone knowing who you are, or like trying to look into you or all of that stuff. And then also, I think sometimes maybe you say something, you say the wrong thing, and then everyone's on your back. And so there's all of that.
So how do you manage trying to like build and, and grow your [00:48:00] presence in the right way?
Colin Landforce: Well I struggle a lot with like pigeonholding myself into any particular into any particular thing. So I'm only like I'm a little bit more than a year into doing content on the internet building personal brand. I wanted to forever for a lot of reasons, I didn't. I think the biggest one was realizing that all you have to do is just start creating stuff. It, it actually doesn't matter like how you position yourself or how great of a website you make that the, the start of it all is just talking. But honestly, like it's a huge focus for me. It's incredibly valuable. Like, it's weird to realize that, like, it was probably very few things that I could do that are higher leverage than like putting some energy into like creating some content for you know, my weapon of choice is Twitter for the time being.
But I'm, I've I have been and continue to really struggle with the the box or, or I guess my lack of a niche, right. For me, it's realizing that like doing this and talking a lot. Like, there's no way I can do that. And only talk about one thing. It's not who I am. [00:49:00] It's not how I'm, how I'm wired. Right. And kind of like bizarrely that makes talking a lot and doing it a lot, that much harder.
Right. Cause it's like, you feel like you're all over the place. I generally feel like everything I do is like very, very scattered. I would be confused if I followed me. And so a lot of, a lot of it has been like, trying to figure out how, you know, we talk about focus. I think a lot of times focus is framing.
So we can sit here and say like, oh, I'm not focused because I do X, Y, and Z. It's like, well, the thing I'm actually focused on is like the intersection of, or like how those pieces come together. And I think that's a lot of, of the value of being a Jack of all trades. Right. Look, it's not, it's not that if you're a Jack of all trades, you can also be, go and be an amazing designer and a fantastic, you know, web person and like yada, yada, yada it's actually that you can connect all of those dots.
Right. And so for me, and figuring out my content and my personal brand online, it's been about, it's been about like, how do I like form this into like my niche [00:50:00] being connecting those dots. And for me, that, that levels back up to building, like my niche is building things right. And there's, there's all kinds of things that you can build.
Right. And it's very, very Jack of all trades is like at the core of that, but I'm still trying to figure out how to, how to bottle that up and talk about it and, and be comfortable with it and do good tweets. I haven't figured it out yet.
David Elikwu: Do you think there's a specific end goal of that? Or is it just being able to have a platform that you can leverage?
Colin Landforce: I think having is I hate the whole like building an audience thing, but obviously that's what we do. Right. And it's, you can just do anything like the optionality that I have today compared to a year ago is maybe 18 months ago is crazy. And I know, you know, talking to someone here who is like launched a wine, a wine brand on a whim or a coffee brand on a whim, it's like, you get it.
You can like, I can do anything. Not to mention the people that I meet from it and the network that I can. That I can create from it, you know I had, I was just thinking the other day, like, oh, I want to do [00:51:00] another round of doing a bunch of podcasts. Right? This is pre, this is, you know, independent of you hitting me up.
And it's like, I could tweet right now, like, Hey, what, Do you do a podcast? I want to be on it. And I could book 10 podcasts over the next three weeks. And I'm not sure if that's how I want to use my time, whether that's two weeks, it's probably not. But having that optionality to go and like, get a message out if I had something to promote or, or whatever it may be is incredibly powerful.
And you know, I use the example of the, that Twitter app that I that I tinker with and, and building earlier here, it's like, I did a little thread about how I was building this Twitter app to scratch my own itch. And it got 500 users overnight. Right? Well, That's the power of, of doing this. And so it, it is well worth my time and in anyone's time who decides to do it, most people are not up for the grind. You know, most people will do a little bit of it and it doesn't catch it. And that's what it is and.
David Elikwu: Yeah. How do you think you do it from scratch? Because I think that's the other part of it where [00:52:00] I completely get you. I think it's, it's hugely useful, but I think there's also a slight difference between I'll speak for myself and I'll let you answer. I think there's the part where you're actually adding tangible value because what I see that's happening on Twitter a lot now, particularly now, more so where I think people are starting to see the effects of people building brands is getting a lot of people, just Yeah. like, but in a fake way, just like a very scammy, like, I don't know, copying threads and just doing all of this stuff and you're not actually doing anything. You're not actually doing any work. You're not putting anything out there. That's useful to people. You're just doing it for the sake of doing it.
Colin Landforce: Yeah. I mean, I totally agree. I was actually talking with, with somebody who is, is big in the audience builder space in, in kind of what you're talking about and who, who I like and respect, I wouldn't do what he's doing, but you know, it's fine. I get it. But what I told him is that like, I'm only interested in doing things that only I can do.
Right. And that, [00:53:00] that, that includes like in the building and the, the work that I do, but also in the content that I do. So that for me, really changes, like I could go do a threat. Like I see this person did this thread and they got 10,000 likes. Like I could go and like hack that, use it as a template and go and go and get that.
And I've like experimented with that, honestly, but I only want to be doing. You know, in the case of a thread, a thread that only Colin can do. And if you step back from that, it's like, that is things like personality and the way that I write, but it's also what I write about. Right. And what that means is I'm probably not going to be like, here's 10 great SaaS tools that you, that, you know, if you don't use these 10 tools, your productivity will fall off a cliff and you'll die.
You know, thread like that. I'm not going to be that guy because anybody can, can be. And that's kinda my guiding light on all this stuff. And I'm well aware that like I could probably grow a bigger audience and do it faster. If I went down that path, I [00:54:00] watched a lot of people do it. And I'm, I'm doing fine with, with how I am and I'm going to keep, figuring out how to do stuff that only I can do.
That's that's valuable. And that I feel awesome about.
David Elikwu: I love that. How do you find the process of finding your voice? Cause I think that's one thing that I, I wouldn't say struggle with. So I mostly do writing, like, not just tweets, like an actual writing, like off Twitter. Yeah. I mean, you know, you know what I mean? Like, dunno, I, I enjoy writing, but I think.
Even with that, it's it took a lot of iteration for me personally, where I feel like you have to write enough to get out all the copying out of you. Like whatever is influencing you, whatever it is that you've seen, at least in my view, I feel like I had to write enough to figure out what felt unique to me and what actually felt authentic.
And I'm interested to know like how you find being able to find your voice, particularly in a space where Twitter, where you're shown things a lot. And so it [00:55:00] can be quite easy to fall into this trap of just doing whatever's popular, doing what other people are doing. If people are doing threads
Colin Landforce: Doing stuff that gets like,
David Elikwu: Yeah exactly.
Colin Landforce: Yeah. Well, so for me, I've always liked to write. However it turned out I've most of my writing up until 18 months ago was in emails, right. in, with work. Right. always liked the act of writing. It was just all inside work emails or, you know, emails. Right. So the biggest thing for me, I think, has been like stopping, trying to craft what that voice is. And just, I guess at the end of the day, this sounds cliche, but just being myself, right. It's way easier to find your voice when you let it just be your voice. And if you are super concerned with like how many likes you get on a tweet and, and, and making sure the engagement is popping, then it's a lot harder to, you know, go and show that voice on Twitter.
But I think a lot of that is futile, even though it can work. And so for me, it's just all been all about Being [00:56:00] myself and you know, and accepting like, I'm a little bit crazy. My written word is sometimes a little fragmented because I've spent so much time communicating over instant messenger with developers who don't speak English as a first language.
So my, my written word is like always a little bit clunky. I love rap. It's the only music I've ever listened to. That that is a big part of who I am and that I'm not going to like try and shield and like, act like I'm a suit on Twitter and talk about KPIs. Like, I'm, I might mention that, but I'm going to do it in my own way.
And so I guess there's not, there's nothing tactical there, but it's just like, like being David being Colin, like being me and, and not trying to be this manufactured version of you so that you can like look cool or, or be or be, you know, get, get as much engagement as possible. Because again, I think it comes back to like anybody can go and manufacture a voice.
Right. And like, You are the one that can do your voice. I'm the one that can do my voice. And that's something that we, we have that, that no one can take away or, or no one else can do. And so I think the, [00:57:00] the long game is just doing, like, doing your voice, just do it, rip it.
David Elikwu: Yeah, I absolutely agree, man. And like you say, builders build. I think it's so easy to tell. The people that are actually out there building stuff and doing things in real life, you can recognize those people. There's a huge difference between the people that are actually doing stuff in day-to-day life and the people that are just talk about doing stuff and the people that, you know, there's so many people that can build profiles around being a, I know, whatever, like a, you know, consulting on something, but not actually doing that thing.
And there's people that want to teach you how to do something, but they're not actually doing that thing. And they don't, they're not building in the space they don't have the experience doing the thing, but they want to talk about it and they can, they can build the profile that looks like the thing, but they're not actually doing the thing.
And I think it's completely different.
Colin Landforce: Yeah, totally. And I think it just, anybody can do that. You know, like you gotta come back to the stuff that only you can do. And like the best use of anyone's time is doing [00:58:00] things that they are uniquely qualified to do that nobody else can do. And I think that the same goes for just like putting things on the internet and adding value to the world in that way.
And hopefully it has value. Some of it won't be some of it's just going to be noise from my brain and that's totally fine. That's what, that's what makes it fun. Right? Like, you know, it's not all, it's not all like threads to get followers.
It's having fun on the internet as well.
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly. I think that's a, that's a big part as well.
And it goes back to what we were saying about failure, but it is, it's almost a guarantee that if you try, if someone's listening to this right now, if you try any of the stuff that we're saying, you're going to fail at least once or twice, and it's going to happen and you need to get it out of your system because I've definitely learned that at least even just from writing. The same with podcasting. I did about five podcast episodes before the first one that I actually published, just because I know that the first five are going to be rubbish like this. And the more you do, the more you can look back and be like, yeah that was all good.
Colin Landforce: Yeah, no, say me and my guy did [00:59:00] re I think we recorded like three or four episodes of the first version of our podcast that just like, we just never like hit upload. Um, And it, and it wasn't for the sake of practicing. It was because we didn't have the balls to hit upload, because I think that the I'm like pretty fearless about a lot of things, but like putting myself out there and talking on the internet, it was like not one of those for, for a long time.
Cause it is a weird chasm .To cross into like, Hey, I'm Colin and I have things to say, that's a weird place to get. Um, But it's fun when you get there.
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly. But I think that is how you figure out what good looks like, because you won't actually know until, you know what bad looks like. You have to figure out what, or at least what mediocre looks like once you've um, I think even like a baseball analogy, right? You can't increase your batting average, if you haven't hit any low numbers, like you to increase your batting average, you need to have an average, you need to have stuff that's below and you have stuff that's above and then you just keep getting more stuff that's above.
Colin Landforce: Yeah. yeah You can't think about it. You have to swing.
David Elikwu: Yeah, [01:00:00] exactly. And I think that's, that kind of sums up everything that we've been talking about. Right. Just taking big swings and just trying things and seeing what works and figuring things out and being authentic to yourself as well.
Colin Landforce: Amen.
David Elikwu: I love that man, but yeah. Thanks a lot for making the time. I really appreciate it.
Colin Landforce: Thanks a ton for having me. You should uh, we're we're getting our act together on our podcast for a next round of like where we have guests, not just the three of us. And we'd love to have you come and come and do the builders build podcast with us
David Elikwu: Yeah, that'd be awesome, man. Yeah. Let's talk about building stuff.
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