0:00

Entrepreneur is not a gambler. Entrepreneur is a risk-averse individual that has great idea but doesn't wanna take risk. They offered to buy the company for $10 million. The money fleshed me, but what I didn't realize, that this venture could have been worth a billion dollars if I took it two more years forward. 90% is as good as perfect. Don't spend exponential amount of energy to get from 90 to 95. What we call geopolitical and economic should not affect your business. If you don't have cash, doesn't matter how big your ideas are. At the end of the day, you need to have means, you need to have the resources to fulfill your dream. I wanna invent, I wanna be something recognized for achievement, for doing something good for humanity. Welcome to The Business Game, the show that breaks business down into real levels from zero to over $50 billion so founders can see exactly where they are and what comes next. Today's guest is playing at level six, which sits in the 100 to $500 million bracket, the scale leader stage. At this level, governance, data, finance, and infrastructure can't be informal anymore. They must be engineered. The challenges? Enterprise systems, compliance, cross-functional complexity, and financial sophistication. The goal? Architect a resilient data-driven organization built for serious scale Welcome to The Business Game. I'm Steve Plummer. Be sure to like and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening. Today, we're joined by Shlomo Assa, chairman, president, and co-founder of Aclaro Medical, with more than 40 years of experience in photonic technology, medical devices, and entrepreneurship. Shlomo has founded and sold four companies, and helped triple Candela Medical's revenue in four years through product innovation, clinical marketing, and brand repositioning. Today, we're exploring how to turn innovative technology into commercial success, build a consistent sales engine, and lead a global business in a highly competitive and regulated industry. Let's dive in with Shlomo Assa. Shlomo, welcome to The Business Game. Thank you. Thank you, Steve, and thank you for having me. It's a pleasure and honor for me to join you. Oh, thank you. I'm looking forward to our conversation today. So let's take us back to the start. So tell us about Aclaro Medical, what you do, and the problem you're solving in the aesthetic medical industry. So Aclaro is a, a medical device that, uh, is made in the US. Our products are made in the US. And, uh, we started the company just at the beginning of COVID, and we observed the change of the, of the demand, uh, as it progressed from before COVID, through COVID, and after COVID. And what happened is the demand for medical aesthetic- Distilled itself from, I, I, I used to joke, from the old woman, old Caucasian woman, I describe it as Barbara Bush. Um, you know, God, God bless her heart. She was a wonderful woman. But it's depicts, it depicts a, an image of a Caucasian with wrinkle, old woman, to basically today two third of the, the money spent is, is millennials. Is young people who wanna, uh, wanna, wanna stop the aging instead of fixing aging, right? And it's completely different business model. And we observed that, and we've actually created a product line that actually is smack in the middle of the demand, trying to address this un- unmet need of the young people trying to stop it, you know, stop aging. And our product line is very successful because it addresses right where the demand is, and it's, it's enabling a lot of clinics and a lot of physician to basically be in the game of providing solutions for people who are seeking that particular demand. Yeah, okay. So, uh, what... So we're, we're really clear. It's, it's about wrinkles, um, age spots, sunspots, uh- No, it's about, it's about, it's about skin health. It's about skin health from, from young age. So imagine a 18 or 20-year-old girl who's got bad skin, doesn't have anything wrong with her, but has got bad skin, and she spends an hour and a half every day putting makeup. And she wants to relieve herself from makeup and actually be natural. Uh, a laser treatment that can actually relieve her from that, and giving her a bet- better fortune for- forward. Um, it's fixing pigments, it's fix- fixing dull skin, porosities. Uh, you know, as you get older and you start to develop wrinkle, of course, wrinkle and, and sagging skin is the next thing. But we see less and less demand in the older people, more and more demand in the younger people. The younger people wanna, wanna deal with anti-aging. They wanna slow down the aging. They wanna reverse the aging. Uh, we call it longevity or anti-aging. Yeah, okay. All right, let's, um, let's talk about your entrepreneurial journey. Now, you founded and sold four companies throughout your career. Looking back on that and, and leaning on your wisdom, what were the defining moments that shaped you as an entrepreneur? So it's interesting that back in the days when I started my first management role in a company, it was... The name of the company is Laser Industries. Today, it's part of Luminus. And we were, we were looking at trying to copy a success of an American brand in a, in a very niche area that we were playing. And we were looking at circuit boards, we're looking at software, we're looking at monitors, configuration of product. And we're sitting and looking, trying to figure out what does the hardware tell us? And it's a collection of scientists and engineers, and I'm kinda asking myself the question, what are we doing here? Kinda to myself. What are we doing? We're looking at other people's circuit boards. We're looking at other people's harnesses and connectors, and we're trying to figure out how that device is becoming successful and how we're gonna become successful And I totally rejected the idea of me too. Rejected completely internally. I basically said to myself, "Why would we spend energy being talented people to look at what other people do if we can be original, if we can be creative?" And my mind shifted, and I was young, young age. I was 27, 28 years, years old. And I said, "Why would I look at what other people do? What, am I not intelligent enough to understand what people are willing to spend money and try to figure out how do I solve original problem?" For me, that was the defining moment. No more me too, just be disruptive, to be original. Try to understand the problem and try to bring a solution. So, I mean, it's, it's kinda like the engineer inside me. You know, in engineering school they're also teaching you always ask the question why. Not, not what you see why. Why do you need to solve? What's the problem? What's the higher level drive? So combine these two, I made a vow to myself, I don't wanna be a me too. I wanna be original. I wanna build. I wanna invent. I wanna be something recognized for achievement of doing something good for humanity, not just saying, "Oh, I'm a little bit better than that, but my, my graphic is a little bit refined or my, my aesthetic or my appearance is a little bit better." I wanted to do something original. Looking back over those 40 years you've been an entrepreneur, I guess zooming out, uh, is there something that you, after that revelation came to you when you, you know, you o- I guess organized your life around that, your business life around that, has there been something that you strongly believed about business when you were younger that you think you actually got completely wrong? No, I, I, I... Of course, I mean, it came to me very young age, but I couldn't, I couldn't start the business. So I, I started getting involved in a higher and higher level of business making, and in about 1992, '93 timeframe, I headed a, a startup that was trying to... was funded by a conglomerate of big companies. At the time it was, uh, uh, a company like, um, N- New Focus, which was doing projectors. Company like, uh, Texas Instrument that just started their DLP, the digital light processing engine. Companies like Sanyo w- were doing a lot of projectors. And we were trying to put together an red, green, and blue laser technology for multimedia projector at high intensity. Uh-huh. And I remember we spent a lot of money. We had a very, very sophisticated group. It was ba- back in California, in Del Mar, California. And I was looking at my CEO at the time. I was, I was the chief technology officer, and I was the spirit of the, the innovator of the group. Okay? And, and his name is Glenn Sherman. He passed away a few years. He was, he was an amazing guy. PhD from University of Illinois. Uh, very, very sharp guy. And I looked at him and I said, "Glenn, you realize that..." I mean, and the chairman of Sanyo stopped and visited and said to us, "You know, you are probably 10, 15 years away from the technology maturity." And we rejected the idea. We felt like, "No, we believe we're a lot closer." But internally, I remember I looked around and I told Glenn, "You know, you realize that we, we really need a lot more money to continue to develop that, not just that we're not there. Here's the chairman of Sanyo, the guy who invented the CD player for Sanyo. He's a very sharp Japanese guy. He's telling us our technology is 10, 15 years away." And Glenn told me, "Just, just let's continue. TI, Texas Instrument, they're gonna pour the money." Obviously, the money dried away several, several months after because all those big companies realized, after the evaluation of the chairman of Sanyo, that maybe, maybe it's true that we're 10, 15 years away. And I looked at it and said, "Do we wanna continue to spend?" That was to me a point when I realized you have to have a business plan, a business model, and an exit strategy. You, you got, you gotta know why you're in this, where, where you're heading, and how do you measure success. You cannot just say, "Oh, let's live day by day and keep investing money." You, you go talk it to, to big players, say, "Did you bring your wallet? Did you bring your pay... your checkbook? 'Cause I need investment." It, it, it, it doesn't work like that, you know? At some point in time, people wake up and say, "No, we're not continue investing. You're not there yet." So that was to me the point when I started realize that businesses are rising and falling not on just on ideas or people. They rise and fall on money, on cash. If you don't have cash, doesn't matter how big your ideas are. At the end of the day, you need to have means, you need to have the resources to fulfill your dream. And the first venture, we ended up selling the pieces to all kind of laser technologies. I mean, we had a lot of technology. We basically sold the pieces to try not to go bankrupt. So-- But, but the technology broke into movie theaters about 20 years later It was correct. We were very pioneer- pioneering at that time, but way, way ahead of our t- our time. Mm. That, that's really interesting, isn't it? That the, the, the great ideas are great, but the commercial reality trumps it almost every time. So was that a, was that a kick in the guts when you heard that, you know, you're, you're, you're too early, it's not gonna work? Absolutely. I mean, I, I really was captivated. I mean, at the time, '92, I was what? I was, uh, '92, I was 73, so I was 40 years old. So young, young VP. Yeah. Young, very driven entrepreneur. A lot of the people that surrounded me at the time, they're very senior today. So I mean, I, I got a lucky that both in the medical and the industrial world, the network of people I worked, all of them were my age. Like, the first layer of VPs. It was a kick in the gut. It was very difficult to accept that something we really believe in is really not mature, and we try to tell the J- the, those, the Japanese are just too conservative, and we, we know better. But, but something inside you do a reality check. Look, I do a reality check. We're going to Texas Instrument, and they say the money drop. We're not, we're not continue investing. So you get some of the investor pulling out. You're getting a lot of question from the previous investors. How come we're not, we're not there? What, what, what do we need to do in terms of technology development? No money. And, and then the chairman of Sanyo pulls out and say, "You guys are way, way, way, way too early, and you got another 10 years, and we're not investing in that." I mean, it's a big disappointment, but in a m- in a, in a way, I looked at it and I said, "So what do I learn from that?" I learned from that, that you're really not enough to have a big vision and a big- We call it big vision and big balls and go out and say, "Let me raise big money." And we spent a lot of money. Spent somewhere around $50 million, 1992 money. It's a lot of money. We developed very good technology, but we did not develop what we... So to me, it was, it was a lesson that says you have to have down-to-earth realistic expectation and realistic measure of what success is. I meet today a lot of entrepreneur who have big ideas, but, uh, when I ask him, "How do you make money?" They have no clue. What do you mean? I mean, okay, you're investing, but how do you make money? They have no idea. Yeah. So speaking of that, so how do you... Or what, rather what is the key to turning great technology and, and innovation, all those sorts of things, into the product the market genuinely wants to buy? So I always say to people, you start with the economics of your solution. First of all, define the unmet need. There's often time, and I see this a lot in the world of photonics, people come with a gizmo and say, "Here's my solution, let's define the problem." That's, that's the... That's never succeeded. Never succeed. You succeed always with say, "Here's my problem. Here's what people willing to spend money." That's the unmet need. You need to define the unmet need in an economical terms. And then you go back and say, "Do I have means to solve it? Do I have a tool that I can bring in that solves the problem within the confinement of we're willing to pay, they're willing to pay money, and is that solving the problem?" I'll give you an example. Mm-hmm. Okay? Simple example. When, when I was in Candela, it was, it was not a winning company. It was acquired, many, many rounds of layoffs, the people were beat up, company was bleeding cash. I was placed there to fix the company. And we embarked on developing a picosecond technology, picosecond technology for clearing tattoos. Now, we studied economics and we said- There's no money in tattoos because to clear tattoos is extremely painful, multiple treatment, uh, very difficult. Sometimes you get scars, and m- most patients with tattoos give up after the first treatment because they cannot tolerate the pain, the complication. So the conclusion, it's not a good economy. Not a good economy. If you're building your business on tattoos, you won't succeed. There's not enough money, not enough longevity. I mean, there's research that'll tell you there's hundreds of millions of Americans with tattoo that went to Las Vegas, got drunk, and got tattoos in the last minute. It's not. It's not. It's, it's, it's a bunch of people who are doing very shallow research. Right. Right. Well, what I found out, 99% of the patients is a people who are fully tattooed, and they want a clear tattoo they did 20 years ago to put a new tattoo as they're getting older, and these are the only people who are gonna come and take the pain to get the gain, and the gain for them is, "I gotta remove something I put on my body when I was 20 years old. Now I'm 45. I got a bunch of kids. I gotta remove this and put something different." Yes. And there's no economy. So you can spend a lot of money developing a technology. If the economic is not in place, you won't succeed. There's plenty of sto- plenty of failure stories of either, "Here's my solution. What's your problem?" Or, "Gee, I didn't do the economics calculation." And, uh, you know, I'll give you another example. It's, it's, it's a well, very well-documented example. A company called Cutera that w- used to be a public company, developed a machine to treat acne, active acne, and they couldn't sell the machine because the machine was too expensive to build. So they decided they're gonna partner with a clinic. They're gonna give the clinic the machine for, like, $5,000, but they're gonna share 50% of the revenue, uh, o- of the revenue. But what they didn't find out is that a, and a mother who brings a 17-year-old boy with full of acne has to make a decision. "Do I get Accutane, which I get it for free from my medical insurance, or do I pay $5,000 to b- have my boy treated on a laser, three treatment, with maybe get the same results?" So 99% of women or, or, or mothers say, "No, I'm gonna put him on an Accutane. I can't spend $5,000 out of pocket." And what happened is they sold at $5,000 of 1,000 machines, but then they waited for the utilization. Never happened because, because the clinic had the machine. Nobody buys the treatment, so they don't pay any. And the company went bankrupt because they spent $450 million to build those thousands of machines, assuming that those machines will be generating revenue every month. They did not, because the economic is not in place. So the first thing you need to do as an entrepreneur, not just define what the unmet need is, define the economics. Define... And, and look at the economic and say, "If I get that level of revenue, would my business thrive? Can I make money this way?" Mm. 'Cause the solution without the economics is exactly what I told you the first. With a projector, you come, you come ahead of your time. So to me, this is the thing that most entrepreneur miss. Most of them miss. They, they, they, they're leaving the economics to be done after they are ready to launch the product. Yeah, okay. So have you got some tips then about how to do the economics before they launch the product? It's real simple. If, if you, if you, if you building a device, you have an, a market aim, you can do some very low-scale market survey. Ask some people what they're gonna be willing to pay for the, for the solution. Gauge the interest, and use a lot of the available tools, a lot of the available data on your particular problem, and gauge whether there is a success or not And, and, and, and develop economical approach that says, "If I brought it in, I know people pay for this 'cause that gives a superior solution that is cheaper than what they do today." So the economics engine requires you to do a what if analysis. Put some spreadsheet in, put some assumptions, put some realistic numbers, 'cause if you put unrealistic numbers, you get garbage in, you'll get garbage out. So you wanna do a real robust analysis. Then do a sensitivity analysis. Ask yourself if the price they're willing to pay will be 50% do I still have a business or I'm bankrupt? Because if the, if, if your model is sensitive to 5%, well, then you got a too sensitive model. Your model has to be robust enough to accept fluctuation of currency, fluctuation of different countries, and fluctuation of demand. If you're not, then you've got a sensitive model that's gonna be take it or break it and, and you're gambling. You don't wanna gamble. So I say put robust numbers for yourself, not for the investor. People are putting number for the investor to impress investor to get the money in. Convince yourself first. Make yourself be the, the toughest customer to convince. What I'm hearing is there's an awful lot of products out there that were really, really good but never made it to be commercially viable and hit the market. Is that a fair comment? Absolutely, especially in the medical business. In a medical business, people looking at FDA clearance as, as, as the, as the barrier to entry. FDA clearance is not the barrier to entry. The barrier to entry is to convince a patient that what you're providing them is a better fortune for their life, for them to spend money to do it Uh, or convince a physician to procure or to buy a device that can change their, their economics of their clinic. In other words, with this device you'll make more money because you can actually get into a market that you don't play today. Yeah. And, and oftentimes people come with a solution and they don't think about the economics, and they usually end up being, coming and going and passed. And there's plenty of examples in many, many industry- Yeah to demonstrate that. Successful businesses are business that have a robust economics, a robust unmet need, a well-defined unmet need, and a group of people who bringing a solution that is innovative but solves the problem within the economic boundaries. Yeah. All right, I'm, I'm interested in, again, looking back on your journey because the, the success that you've had is, um, you know, it's pretty damn good, to be honest. So looking back, has there or was there a mistake that was real- that you made that was really, really difficult at the time, but ultimately it made you a better entrepreneur or a better leader in business? Yeah. You know, you, you, you, you selling too early and you don't realize the value in what you do. So I'll give you an example. In, in 1994 or '95, when I was involved in my first medical outfit, I met a guy in Los Angeles whose wife was treated by one of my devices, and he was sitting down very nervous in the entry room. And asked him, "It sounds like your m- wife about to, to give birth," but that's a dermatology officer. So, "Oh, she's being treated with a CO2 laser." That was probably my laser. And, and we started talking. His name is Boris Resnick, very, very nice guy. And I described to him, "Don't worry, it's technology very safe. It works like that. It's less peeling. It's a lot more this," and I, I really calmed do- calmed him down. And he's asking me... And asking him, "What do you do?" "I'm the plant manager to manufacturing ice cream for Safeway." The old Safeway chain. Wow, so that's a, that's a very big, uh, big business. He said, "Yeah, it's a huge business. We make the biggest-- We're the biggest ice cream maker in America." Well, Safeway. So he said to me, "Do you think your laser can print on a ice cream cone?" I said, "Piece of cake. Why not?" He said to me, "Can you, can you come to my office in Los Angeles in, in, in city of industry in a big factory, and we try it out?" "Sure." We have a date, and, um, I'm taking one of my, my, my, uh, medical laser and put some software to write some dates, and I'm going there. I'm giving him a laser on the floor with articulated arm with a scanner and medical device, but printing out some date code. He looks at me, he said, "I thought you're very clever. You're dumb like everybody else." He shows me a machine that made in Canada by a company called Lumonics. "That machine cost me two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, exactly what you're describing me. But what you're missing," he said, "in a production line, I don't have engineers. I have people who barely speak English. I need a typewriter. I need a simple machine like a typewriter that they can put date, serial number, code, and A, B, C, D like typewriter." I said, "Boris, but I can build this." "But that's not what you're showing me." I said, "If I build it, would you be my first customer?" He said, "Depends if you solve the problem." So I went to work, and I said to myself, "This is a clever idea. I can use the laser technology. I know the laser solves the problem." Yeah. Because once I put the laser in, I put a date code right away, and that didn't matter how much condensation was on the package, which is was his problem. So he defined to me the problem. I went and I built, I built a printer called Z Code. It had a, a typewriter looking like a remote. It can only print A, B, C, D, and ten, ten figures. And it's a, it's a small box, literally a box like... And my campaign was there's nothing under the table. There's no another big device that supports this. And I went to market. Two years into my market, I've been approached by one of the biggest player. It's a company called Markem-Imaje, which is part of Dover, and invite me to their facility, and just wanted to collaborate to marketing. I brought a device that I sold to a, a company in, in New Hampshire. This company was in Keene, New Hampshire, and they take it for twenty-four hours. I come in the morning. They said, "Your machine is a lot more capable than your specification." Said, "Well, I'm an, I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm self-funded. I'm, I'm going to market crawl, walk, run." Well, they made an offer to buy the company. They offered to buy the company for equivalent ten million dollars in two steps, five million and another five plus future value. And the money, the money fleshed me. But what I didn't realize that this venture could have been worth a billion dollars if I took it two more years forward. I realized just later, after I've seen what we've done with Markim, Markim Image, all of a sudden I started building-- se- selling machines to Coca-Cola, selling machine to Unilever, going all over the world selling machine to Cadbury. People that didn't wanna talk to me before all of a sudden became our best clie- best client. And I look at it and I said, "This venture was like a thousand time more valuable than what I sold it for." Because I sold it early by being fleshed. And I realize a lot of smart companies are making those effort to fool entrepreneur to, when they see the opportunity, they're trying to get you out of there to work for them, and they get the big bucks, you, you just basically get petty cash. Yeah. Which we call it the American dream. So all of a sudden you have couple of millions, they'll say, "Wow, look at this." That's one of the biggest mistake I've done. And through my career, I, I realize that early sale is giving you a quick reward money, but you leave most of the value that you build, you leave on the, you leave on the table, somebody else take it. Mm. So that's why I won't do with Acclaro. I won't do that with Acclaro. Yeah, right. Yeah. Actually just I, I'd love your opinion on this. I... A very successful entrepreneur I heard talking from stage once, h- he said that whenever someone offers you a chunk of money, as an entrepreneur, you should always take it and then move on. So that's contradictory to what you just said, isn't it? Yes. That's, that's essentially an insecure entrepreneur, and I've been insecure at the beginning. You know, you, you're self-funding the ideas, and you realize, you realize the company pays you... I know at the time I got $10 million. I got a little bit upside, 'cause the upside after four years was much better. But my conversation with them, the, the, the, the guys who control the company was two brothers, the Putnam brothers, my age. Very smart guys, but silver spoon. I mean, they're basically fourth generation to the Putnam. Their grand, grand, grandfather started the company about 50, 75 years before them. And they just basically landed all their life, worked in the company. And they came to visit me in San Diego. At the time I was in San Diego, and tried to convince me that past the exit I should start another venture with, with them. Mm-hmm. And said, "Okay, I have great ideas, but what would be, be the split?" "90/10." Wow. I said, "Why, why, why, why, why would I work for 10%?" Yeah. "Well, it's a great, it's a great return. You, you take zero risk." I said to Tom, "Tom, take your $10 million. Put them in a bank, what do you get? 2%, 3% maybe. You're risking it. You're looking for people like me who can take your 10 million and turn it to, to 500 million. You don't know how to do it. I know how to do it, but you don't. Your money is gonna earn you 2% maybe, and if you try to do too aggressive, you'll get 5%, but you may lose 20." So your money worth only the money. You're looking for a, a horse like me that w- that can take the 10 million, turn it to 100 or 500. So why would I work for 10%? It's, it's incredible. And said, "No, no, no, no. Let's look at it." And for, like, a year we neg- we dancing the dancing. It's not negotiation, 'cause I was an e- I was an employee, sold my holding, and I was in a waiting list to try to ask myself, do I go to my next venture, start my next company, or do I do it with you guys? If I do it with you guys, it's gonna be 60/40. You put 6- you get 60%, I get 40%. You put all the money, you put all the risk, and I take the risk 'cause I put my life in- on the line for the next 10 years. We never got past the 8, 9%. Never got past that. And eventually I, I, I, I drew up my resignation. I said, "Guys, you're nice guys. You're great, but I got... I wanna conquer bigger mountains. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not made for this." Okay, I learned my lesson, and I sold you 10 million, and you guys made probably 3, $400 million valuation with me, but I didn't get... I get pennies on the dollars because I agreed early to sell the company. But I'm, I'm moving on. And it was a big disappointment for them, big disappointment for me, but hey, that's what money people think. Money people think that money is everything. Entrepreneur is basically saying e- entrepreneur is everything, 'cause the money not gonna give you anything. It's the people will, will, will do the thing. And if you have abil- inability to understand the people who are working for big chunk Y- y- you're not, you're not gonna be a good investor. Yeah. So that's why I moved on. Yeah. That's... Y- it's an interesting... You called it a dance, right? It's such an interesting dance, isn't it? That, well, well, the do I take the money? Do I build? Um, you know, w- is that offer a good one, is it not? It's a really good story and a lesson for, for entrepreneurs. There's a lot of theory that says when somebody offer you money for your business, you should take it. Okay, but that's, but that's a pragmati- pra- pragmatic. But I'm saying, what if somebody offer you money that is not worth taking, right? Um, y- you know, like, I can sell my business today for four times revenue, like this. Yeah. I don't sell the business, number one, for four times revenue. I wanna sell the business for 10 times revenue. Why? 'Cause I believe the value for the future owner of my venture is by far bigger than three, four, five rep, uh, x revenue. It's the, in the billions. And if you believe in this, then you do one of the, the two. Either you continue growing the business, 'cause you believe in your business, and you believe, believe in the venture, and you basically get it to the level you think it is and exit at that point, or you take the money and run. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I generated a lot of wealth. I mean, I raised my kids. I got them through college. I, I bought houses. I bought boats. I lived very luxury life. Very, very luxury life. And I never had penny missing, 'cause I always sold businesses for a lot of money. But the people who bought got between 10 and 100 t- times more money than me. I sold, I sold InLight to Syneron, that's I came to, to work for Syneron Candela, and the core, the product that I sold them, generated over $500 million retained earning in a period of about seven years that they seriously sold it. So that venture was worth probably, probably north of five, $700 million. Yeah. I got out, I got for that $4 million. Mm. 'Cause I sold it in 2008 at the financial crisis. I panicked- I panicked, uh, like everybody else, and I had an offer on the table. I took the offer on the table, it was $4 million. I generated for them over $500 million valuation, and I got $4 million. Mm. Yeah. So- You tell me. Yeah. Is it early good idea? Not a good idea. Well, looking back, it's, uh, everyone's vision is 20/20, right? In hindsight. Exactly. So, so you, you really need to value what you're doing, and you need to have confidence in your vision. And, and if you, and if you make the mathematics of your business, if you make the analytics of your business, in other words, your economics of business model is clear and it's working, you're looking at your P&L, you're looking at your balance sheet, you're looking realistically at the business, the robustness of your, your success, then you can scale it up. Don't be afraid. Scale it up. Yeah. Uh, y- you mentioned just then that, um, in 2008, you, you panicked. Did, did that, did that whole, um, episode in your life or chapter of your life, has that made you, I guess, more confident or, or, or more sure of that next time I'm not going to panic? Uh, you know, it made me, first of all, stronger to realize that, uh, you know, success or failure is not measured by what outside factors are imposing on your business. In other words- Through my career also as an executive, as a civil executive, I sat in a lot of quarter reviews, and I heard a lot, "Oh, there's a war here. There's a dif- inflation here. There's a, a distress here. Uh, the Japanese market is not doing well because the Japanese is not growing." That's BS. That's BS. You look at Apple. Apple succeeded in all, against all the odds. So economic, economic condition, or what we call geopolitical and economic, should not affect your business, should not. If you're smart, you should look at it, you should see the difficulties, so- solve them. One way is to diversify going global, right? An American company made in the US still carries an, an enormous value everywhere in the world. Diversify your business. Go to Europe. Go to Asia Pacific. Invest in the Middle East. It's difficult. It's difficult. It's not comfortable. Yeah. Uh, so there's multitude ways. So what I learned in the financial debacle, and I listened too much to the politics of it, I panicked, and I, I sold my business literally on one cent on the dollar. Wow. Literally. Yeah. I sold it for $4 million. I think the valuation they got out of that is at least $500 million, so I left on the table multiple hundred million dollars. A- and, and it was because I panicked. Today, I won't panic. I look at, I look at the wars in the Middle East, okay? There's war in the Middle East. Do you think that Dubai stopped doing business? Dubai is thriving like every day else. Yes, they've got some problems there. Once in a while, there's a missile. Once in a while, there's distress, there's a, there's a bomb, there's this and that, but when you talk to Dubai, continue doing business. Iraq, continue doing business. Syria keep doing good, do- doing business. So you can look at this and you can say, "Oh, here's my excuse. I won't make my numbers because there's a war in Middle East." But if you look at it realistically, you say, "Okay, there's a little bit distress there, so it moves a little slower. Let me put, put more effort here, more effort there." So geopolitical and economic should not affect your business, and don't ever panic, don't listen to the politician because the market, the, the driving economics of the market, the free market, are stronger than anything else. Wow. I love that. That's a, a beautiful lesson for, for listeners, right? In... And, and it was a hard lesson for you to learn, and so thank you for sharing that. And people look at it and say, "Gas price, gas price. Affordability, affordability." It's, it's all, it's all politics. Don't listen to the politics. Look at your economics and go down to the clinic and go down to your business and be close to your customer and gauge what are the fear factors of your customer, and you'll find out. The customer must do, must make money. They con- must continue investing in their business. N- nothing stops the free economy The Business Game is proud to partner with HighLevel, the all-in-one CRM and marketing platform built for growing businesses. With CRM funnel, website and course builders, marketing automations, email builders, and so much more, HighLevel software will drive your customer retention and your profits through the stratosphere. And HighLevel is fully white label, which means you can brand the platform and mobile app with your logo and company colors, and then resell it to your customers for a monthly subscription. Ready to go HighLevel? Click on the link below to begin your 14-day free trial. Okay. I wanna drill down into Aclero for now. One of the things you've said is that the, a challenge for the company at the moment is getting consistent sales without daily drama. Now, I, I love that description, right? It's almost... That's almost business, um, in that one, one particular phrase. So what's, at the stage that Aclero is, what's creating the daily drama, and why is it difficult to eliminate, you know, even at your level of business experience and success? It's not, it's not a daily drama that I have that other people don't. It's a daily drama you have with the sales. So when you sell premium products, and premium product could be a Boeing, a Caterpillar. Premium product could be measured some high-level tools that you're selling business to business. Um, a lot of what Medtronics or GE sells, General Electrics, or DuPont. So when you sell premium products, you build premium sales organization, and there is a, a very high level of commission structure and a very high level of T&E, travel and entertainment, built into the sales process. Y- 'cause you build relationship with a customer, realizing the customer buying a multi-tens of thousand dollars device, so like 100,000, 200,000. In a Boeing case it's millions. In Caterpillar it could be single digit millions. But you, you get what I'm talking. And so- Yeah the salesman who is exercising the deal is instrumental as the company. The research shows that it's people, product, and company equally divided. So people is the salesman. Product is what you're selling, what you're offering. It's, it's how robust is what you offer and how competitive it is. And a company is whether you stand behind. And it's usually divided 50% or thir- 33/33. So if you think about company is everything I c- I can build in my headquarters. It's the company, the service, the repair, the fleshiness of the product. Okay? Product is... So I can influence the company, I can influence the product, but then I gotta work with the sales organization that exercise my business making. And those guys are very highly paid, and that, and a lot of them develop the idea that I'm bigger than life. When somebody makes half a million dollars of commission a year- It's not because they're very talented or they went and, and acquired a PhD in sales or their PhD in nuclear engineering. They're not. They're very good at creating relationship. They got lucky, and they closed bunch of deals, and they got very high commission. But figure out that a 35, 40-year-old kid that just built a family just made a W-2 of half a million dollars, some of the things getting into his head, and he convinced himself, "It's all about me, not about you guys. It's about me." The maturity of those individuals is de- determine how successful and the longevity of their success. And the drama is all about egos. If everyone can leave their ego at home and come to work and focus on work only World will be a lot quieter. It'll be more businesslike. So, but there's personalities. You understand what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. There's personalities, and when you put the people and the personality with a lot of money, you get sometimes conflict, and these are the things that company like ours are building a very, very high-level brand with a very high level of expectation from ourself. There are some integrity, performance, delivery, quality, lo- longevity, repeatability. We cannot tolerate flashy playboys. We don't. Mm. And it's sometimes, sometimes you, you have to, you have to put people on the pl- so you gotta put guardrails. You got, you got... It's, it's, it's a daily management of every little things. And it's not my problem only, it's every sales organization problem. Yeah. It's people, right? Yeah. It's people. It's people with, with a high pay commission, with... I mean, real estate is the same thing. Yeah. Real estate is the same thing. You, you talk about real estate, and you talk about two real estate dividing their commission, they're lucky that there is regulation coming from states that says, "This is how you develop the, the sales agreement. This is how to divide the commission." But think about if the sales... The, the real estate was not regulated, and you sell a million dollars, and you make 5%. Mm. There's a lot of money there. Yeah. When you build a business, and you scale it up, and you scale it up outside the US, and you're getting into Europe, and you're getting into the Far East, different countries, different culture, different language, different way of doing business, it becomes more intricate. Yeah. It's not a question of experience, a question of being able to put the facility that puts the guardrails and manages it. It's about HR, it's about discipline, it's about contractual obligation, it's about monitoring behavior. It's about... I, I mean, basically managing a large organization with a lot of salespeople who are making a lot of money. Yeah. So just on that then, h- have you got any advice for hiring? Because, you know, v- again, very experienced, you've seen a lot. You know, have you got some tips for our listeners about hiring people? So I, I learned from a lot of bigger, bigger entrepreneur than me. Uh, the guy who, who is the head of NVIDIA, uh, you know, the guy who has with Intel, I read, I read their books, you know. I'm listening to a lot of the educational videos from Jeff Bezos or from, from, from those guys, and one thing I learned is selecting the people, the salespeople Is the management responsibility. You cannot just put it on a sales management and say, "Go get yourself the right headhunter," or we call them the, the, the recruiter. It's a nicer, nicer word. In the old days, we used to call them headhunters. Yes. Now we call them recruiters. Yes. And just give a good... Get yourself a good recruiter, let them do the first l- line of filtering. You do the filtering and make sure that you have a well-defined territory on what you're looking for. I say, "No, I wanna interview them. I wanna meet everyone that comes to my company. They need to pass my muster test." And ask them question about, about their performance. Ask them question about their character. And, and one of the thing I wanna understand, so I heard from a lot of those mega entrepreneurs- Mm like Bezos and the other guys, that you, you interview as a founder and as, as a, as a, as a leader. You interview your first 1,000 employees. You interview yourself. You're not let... You're not relying just on your team. You interview and you make sure that they fit your standard, they fit the quality of people you wanna bring in, the first 1,000. So don't think task. But if you really believe in this- You do it. I interview every salesman that comes, and I can tell you my rejection rate is about 35%. I reject 35%. They don't fit. They don't fit. I- my first question is, "Why are you in sales?" I want to see a person married with, with a bunch of kids. They wanna buy, buy a house, have a good motivation why he goes to work every day. I want to see a guy that every day goes... leaves home, before he leaves home, he folds his, his, his, his, his bed and, and organizes bed so when he comes back home it's organized nice and clean, ready to go to bed. I want to see a person who is disciplined enough that can overcome his emotion. And the salesman who, who wants to hire them, they wanna hire somebody quick that can do the numbers. I wanna bring somebody who has the value that I define as the value of my employees. Mm. My advice to any company manager, interview the first 1,000 employees that you bring in, make sure that you know who they are. Yeah. Okay, I wanna talk about... We, we've spoken a little bit about money. I want to talk about creating enterprise value in a little bit, and, um, because you've experienced, and we have touched on this, but I just... I wanna... There's a couple of... There's a little point I want to make here about you've experienced a lot of successful exits and, you know, including Smart Lights. Um, what have you learned about building a company that is valuable and attractive to a potential buyer? So I learned a few things. Let me first start from the world of investment. Investors are very conservative, so investors like real terms. They're going on comparables. They live and die by comparable. The world is not spinning around comparables. Yeah, you know, there's only one, one Tesla, there's only one Amazon, there's only one Apple that stands up, there's only one Nvidia. So you cannot come and say comparable. Comparables is a very lazy way of doing it, but in, in the world of investment, it's all about comparables. In the world of companies, what we call functional investor or, or, or strategic investor, it's all about how do I subdue you to pay... to b- take the deal I'm willing to pay you? So it's, it's all you're not that smart, you're not that big. Let me, let me put you down and calm down your excitement. So I, I started looking and tried to say, "How do you really value enterprise?" So that... So I can put them in myself some ambitious values. It's not about the money for me. 73 years old. You know, it's not about whether I'm gonna sell Claro for 500 million or 700 million. I won't... This is not the money I'm building 'cause I really wanna spend. I really wanna buy another yacht. It's not. To me, it's, it's a sense of accomplishment. It's a sense of learning. And I, and I learned one thing. The world of investment in America right now has no appetite for healthcare. No appetite at all. And because the politics, how it projects in the high level of politics in the, in the world, the Western world, is that healthcare is a malaria, is a disease. It's expensive, and it's really inefficient, and it's just a, a parasite. I mean, you listen to how everybody talks about healthcare. It's a parasite. It's not a parasite. It's technology that saves life. You look at it and you realize that if you have an enterprise, you can have an enterprise that growth at the same rate of the industry growth. So you'll get a multiplier of EBITDA. People look at it and say, "We value your enterprise the way we value a Hilton hotel. You, you make such a profit, we give you a multiplier profit." Could be 20 times, 12 times, 15 times, whatever the multiplier is depends of how attractive it is. But it'd be multiplier of EBITDA. But if you fast-growing company, exceptionally growing, like 50% and up, the sky's the limit where the valuation can be. And it's not about EBITDA anymore. It's about what the enterprise value in the future looks like. And you can get a much higher valuation than Wall Street if you find the right investor Because the growth rate you're exhibiting over a long period of time represents that you have a solution that can be scaled up. You've already scaled it up, and has a longevity to scale up in an ocean deep potential market. If you maintain the growth, you can get to eight to 10 multiplier revenue. Now remember, EBITDA could be 15, 20% of, of revenue. So you... When you get a 10 multiplier of EBITDA, you really get four or five multiplier revenue. And I'm saying if you have an exceptional growth of 50% higher in multiple years, you're showing the potential investor that the market appetite for your product is much bigger in the future, you can get up to 10 times return. So the key to get enterprise value is not to fall into the pattern of, "Let me grow at the rate of the industry. Let me be conservative," because then you become a multiplier of EBITDA, and you work very hard to convince that you're not a hotel, but you are a technology company. But if you're growing exceptionally, you can get phenomenal multiplier. You don't have to go public. You can get it in the pri- private equity market. All right. I'm, I'm curious, you mentioned you were 73, and it's not the money that drives you. So what is it that keeps you innovating, growing, wanting to contribute? The drive to create something new, the curiosity of solving problem that nobody has, being disruptive, being innovative. It's in my drive. It's my DNA. I cannot look at a problem and say, "I make money there. I can solve this problem and make money tomorrow." Everywhere I'm going, when I look at a problem, I'm, I'm saying to my co-founder, Helen, "You know, we can start a business, and we can solve this problem, and we can make a lot of money," because a lot of people have the same problem. You look at y- y- your day-to-day life, and there's a lot of issues in our t- day-to-day life that we can make better if we had a better product to solve our problems. So I mean, my mind, my mind is keep working all the time. That's my DNA. That's... I suppose I was born to be like that, and it's, it's like I- I- I'm, I'm having a lot of fun in, in OcchioLuso right now 'cause I don't, I don't... I mean, the company is growing. It's a very good company. I got amazing team. I don't need to sell it. I'm very well capitalized, and people are interested in our business. But eventually it'll, eventually they... some of the investors gonna want out, so gonna have to sell the company. Then, um, then I, I'll take, I'll take my portion, and I'll go do something else. Start some other company. So I mean, it's, it's like my DNA. There's people who like to play tennis. The people... For me, it's my mind is occupied about problem-solving. I always look at something and I say, "Can I solve the problem?" I mean, it's kinda like my, my, my, my engine works like that Mm. Yep. Um, looking at growing across international markets, so a- as the business expands, you know, internationally, how do you maintain operational discipline, a strong company culture, while also empowering the teams? Have you got any tips around that? It's all about leadership. So the execution quality of your organization always starts from the top and percolate down. It starts from you. It goes down to the people you choose as your executive team, the message you give them, the message they execute down. It's always c- come from the top. So when we went to Asia Pacific, we recognized we need an Asia Pacific leader. We found a guy who has been in Asia Pacific, born in Asia Pacific Uh, he's a, he's a Englishman in London. He was born in, in, in, in, in, uh, in Pakistan, but he's an Englishman now for many, many years. Spent most of his career in Asia Pacific, knows the Asia Pacific market inside out, and knows the culture, understands the dynamics between the people. There's Southern Asia, there's Northern Asia. You know, Japan is the top of the top. Japan and Korea is very different. Japan, Korea, and China is very different, and there's Southern Asia. You know, in, in, in, in, in Asian culture, it's not one homogenic. They all of them look Asian, but they're very different. And you have a good leader. A good leader brings the good sub-leaders, and you create a good organization that is disciplined, that carries your message, carries your values, and, and doing business. It... Business is not a- an every price. It's as long as it's done correctly along the line of the guardrails we're setting, and it's all starts from the top. You do the same thing in Europe because one thing I learned long time ago, and I, and I learned it even more when I was in Candela, in every country where you operate, you have to be like the countrymen. You don't come to Germany and you're selling as an American in Germany. A German buys from German. They don't buy from America. For one, nobody speaks English there. They want a, they want a, they want a, a German, a German value proposition presented in German by a German person. So in every country you are, you need to be local. That means you have to have an organization that establishes how to manage local people in different languages. It's not easy. So, so... And you need to figure the mix between distributors or middlemen who are basically working with you as a partner, and markets you go in direct, meaning you hire your own people. Hmm. All right. I, I wanna touch on life beyond business. I mean, you mentioned that, you know, finding the problem is very much in your DNA, and we hear so much about work-life balance and what people do outside of work to, to recharge or, or, you know, whatever that might be. Do you have a work-life balance? And if so, how do you approach that to maintain your health and your interest and all of those sorts of things? I try to say involved Outside the business, not just in the business. So, you know, I, I, I usually know when to close the store. I call it close the store. You know, the days, even days that I'm hectically behind, I know at 9:30, 10 o'clock, I close the store. That's it. Whatever I didn't finish today, shame on me, goes to tomorrow because I gotta decompress, go to sleep. I gotta get my sleep, my, my, my natural sleep. Comes the weekend, I try to get some engage in some stuff I like. I like to work out and ride my bike. Um, I like, um, and play piano for, for, for, for a hobby. So I like to get sufficient time between all the activities in the business so I can actually invest and enjoy my life. Eat healthy. When I go, when I go to have a meal, I don't rush myself. Say, "Lunch, my store is closed. I'm eating lunch right now. I don't wanna talk business. I don't wanna people coming busting to me." I just have a question. Close my door. I said, "Don't, don't bother me, I'm eating lunch." So, I mean, I mean, it's a question of discipline. I mean, I, I spent my, my my early you- youth years I was in the military. I learned discipline and I exercised a lot of discipline in my life. And, you know, I close the store, I work out. If I need... If I wanna go swim, I go to the gym, I go swim. I don't carry my phone with me and I'm now worried about what, what, what text message I get, and if it's... So I'm, I'm trying, and I'm trying to educate all the younger people working with me, it's important to have your life. It's important to have your weekend. It's important to maintain your, your why, 'cause you're working for your family, so make sure you have a family Don't, don't, don't, don't take one on top of the other. So it's, it's a very important factor to not close the store. You know? I'm a morning person, so I always start early my, my, my morning. I, I get, I get my, my I get dressed, I get my bed organized, I get everything that I need to do. I, I eat my breakfast and I go to work, and I open officially my office. And I, I, I'm trying to teach the organization to be the same thing. There's work hours, there's hours that you do some overtime, and there's a work you close this and you do... You run your life. All right. Fantastic. I love that. And I love the close the store, right? It's such a, it's such a simple but clear almost permission to yourself that you can switch off. You don't have to be on 24/7. Yeah, and I teach my team also. I mean, you know, of course everybody's on email, and they try to be concurrent. If somebody... I mean, when you're a global company, there's no time zone 'cause, you know, Asia is 12 hours ahead. The Middle East is seven hours behind. So constantly you have one part of the world is working when your, when your store is closed. But you, but you educate the people that the US hours is from, say, from 7:00 to 7:00. Outside 7:00 to 7:00, unless it's urgent, s- s- stay within 7:00 to 7:00. And, and respect the other people, right? So I, I don't call the UK past, say, 6:00 in the evening. I don't. I, I respect them, them closing the store. And it's important for people to learn the term close the store. Now, if you have a store, if you're a store owner, you go and you close the door, you lock the store, and you go to your car. So you have a physical way of closing the store. We're doing virtual store, so we're closing the store when we're closing our mind. We're going home to have dinner, and that's it. You can, can glance at the, at the, at the text message or Teams or the, the email, but again, keep the door, the, the, the... Keep the business closed. That's important It's important for peace of mind, it's important for recharging your battery, it's important for your clarity because if you're overworking yourself, you're burning the candle from both end. That's not good. All right, to play devil will, devil's advocate for that just for a moment, if a, another founder came to you and said, "Look, I hear what you're saying about closing the store, but I have real trouble doing that," what would you s- tell them? Well, you're gonna, you're gonna end up burning yourself, you're gonna end up making a lot of mistakes, and you're gonna actually bur- uh, you're gonna, you're gonna end up regretting not listening to that. So what happen is, is this. I, and, and I, I see a lot of those people. They're, they're either perfectionists, and I'm a perfectionist myself. I've grown to learn that 90% is as good as perfect. So, like, I work with a team w- every day is telling me, "We build perfect machines here. Our machines are perfect." I say, "Okay, but let me, let me say this. 98% is very, very high perfect. 90% is as good as perfect. Guys, take it from me. I lo- lo- long, lived long enough to know 98, 90% is as good as perfect. You wanna get to 95%, comes easy, get it. Don't spend exponential amount of energy to get from 90 to 95. It's not worth it." So I would say this. If you overwork yourself, you get tired the next day, you get to start, you start to get agitated. Y- very easy you get into bad attitude. Very quickly you make bad decisions, and very quickly you make costly decision. And then you regret that, but you're very tired and you don't know why you get grumpy, and you don't know what happened. And you get in a vicious cycle that you cannot understand why nobody around you is having productive communication with you Because, because you're acting irrational because you're constantly tired, you're constantly procrastinating, and you're never attentive. To be attentive and to be effective, you first of all have to get seven, eight hours sleep, and to eat properly, and to be restful, and to have good listening. God gave you two ears and one mouth. Talk less, you know, listen more. And you need to be in a balanced state. So, so especially when you're higher up, president, CEO, you make decisions that are crucial. You gotta be cool. You can't make decision out of pressure when you're tired and you're hungry and you didn't sleep two nights in a row. It's not a good idea. You don't build a sustainable environment. Sustainable environment is where you, you're in, you're in good place. You're in a good place. You're stable. Y- y- you're sustainable. You're in a steady state. You know, in engineering, we call it steady states, where everything is working and you can work for perpetuity. Nothing overheats, nothing over c- consumes too much energy. Everything is stable, so you can work for perpetuity. It's the same like with our body. Our body, our mind, it's all connected. So if you, if you, if you're hungry and you're grumpy, you piss off people. People have come seek advice, you don't treat them well. You don't even pay attention you're doing it, 'cause it's Y- you overworked. You don't see it. I... Often I get people calling me. I say, "I'm warning you, I'm very grumpy." I said, "Why are you grumpy?" "Because I'm overworked and I'm, and, and I'm deprived of sleep." Why do you allow yourself to? Well, jet lag. Jet lag is excuse. Jet lag is excuse, excuse. When you go to international trip and you get jet lag, you know you're gonna get jet lag, so you condition yourself. So ve- very important, these parameters. Ve- especially when you get higher up and you... Especially when you're entrepreneur and the company depends on your mind, depends on your creativity, depends on your ability to drive the company properly. Yeah. Y- you mentioned decision-making. I- I'm just curious, how do you make decisions or have you got some advice about making decisions at, at that pointy end of big business? Well, you always, you always have a, a dilemma. And the dilemma, you, you need... What you like to have is, first of all, you like to understand what is the problem that needs to have a decision. You want a well-defined problem. You wanna have an option. So you want your executive team to present you an option. I always say, "Don't give me black and white. Try to give me option." That's a better executive. You can... "We can do this, less costly here, and a little more risky here. And, and, and then I recommend we do that. Would you approve this?" That, to me, is a good dynamics. It's what I expect my executive team to bring. Not to come and say, "We have a problem. I'm passing it to you over the wall, like sending it to you. It used to be mine, it's now yours. Make a decision, let me know what you've decided." That, to me, is executive not gonna live long in, in my company. 'Cause I'd like to know the problem, define me the problem, give me alternatives, options, and give me a recommendation. And I'd like 80% of the cases to adopt a recommendation. That's a good balanced management structure. Mm-hmm. You validate that you've done the right homework, you've defined the problem correctly, you've defined the solution, you gave me the option, and you chose the right option. All right. I love that. It's a culture that you have to cultivate people to do that, 'cause they don't come naturally with that. Always they come and ask, "What's the budget for this activity?" Why do you ask me? Or they go to the CFO, "Did you allocate a budget for this?" I said, "I'm CFO." You know what activities you need to do, put the budget. Well, what do I need to do? Open a spreadsheet, the activities you need to do. Tell me which vendors you need to hire, how much money they want, and what do you max absolutely have to have and have some options. Price them out, summarize it. Don't, don't worry about adding them up because Excel will do it for you, and you get a dollar, and you present those options and say, "I can do this, or I can do it like this, or I can do it like that. I would choose this. Do you agree? Do you approve this?" All right, fantastic. One more question before we get into our quick-fire questions, Shlomo. Um, so you're playing the business game at level six now, which is a, a significant, um, step down the, the, the business journey. And so for entrepreneurs and founders who are at l- level four, level five, and they want to grow into the same level of business that you've got, I know this is a how long's a piece of string type question, but what's the, the best advice you can give them? Is it a, a strategy? Is it a, a way of thinking, or is there something else entirely? If they... If someone came to you and said, "Look, give me some advice about getting to the next level of business," what would you say to them? Focus on the economic of your solution. Define the unmet need. Make sure that you understand the economics of your solution inside out. Check it out. Convince yourself it's a robust business, and then roll your sleeve and go do it. And if you need money, don't be afraid to go raise funding because if you have a robust business model, and you have the basic communication skills, you can actually convince investor it's a good idea to give you money. 'Cause investor sits on the money. Usually, it's not their money. It's the money that comes with collection of investor who wanna take the money and, and d- double or triple it. They have no idea how to do it, and they don't wanna invest it in, in index funds 'cause index funds are too risky. They wanna take it, and they wanna elevate the risk and put it in a place where they can get 10 or 20X. And those people are looking for those mega opportunity. So, spend first time validating your solution, the market you are, and, and, and convince them beyond any reasonable doubt that you got a home run solution. And if you're missing money 'cause you cannot fund it yourself, don't be afraid to bring an investor. You can bring friends and family. You can bring a angel investor. You can bring a VC. Investor could be a very good partner if your business needs money that you don't have. Mm. But don't go into assumptions that are not validated and not vetted properly because that's called gambling. The difference between Being an entrepreneur and being a gambler, as entrepreneur is a risk-averse. People like me don't like risk. If you heard me enough talking, I don't like risk. I don't like question I don't know the answers. I don't go... I don't like to go to places when I don't know exactly what are my expectation are from the setting. I don't like surprises. So entrepreneur is not a gambler. Entrepreneur is a risk-averse individual that has great idea but doesn't wanna take risk. Same like investor. Thank you. Love that. All righty, so let's get into the quick-fire questions. So to get to know the person behind the microphone just a, a little bit more, we ask 10 very quick questions and ask you to respond in a, a word or a sentence or a sentence or less, I, I guess basically. So you ready to go? Yeah, sure. All right, Shlomo, let's dive into it. So number one, what's better, innovation or execution? Innovation. Okay. Revenue growth or profitability? Revenue growth, 10 times more important. Speed or precision? Precision. Okay. Build organically or acquire? Build organic. When you acquire, you acquire the other people problem, other people's problem. Okay. When you build organic, you build what you believe in. Yes. Yep. Technology advantage or commercial advantage? Commercial advantage. Mm-hmm. Centralized control or empowered teams? Empower. Okay. The perfect product or get it to the market? Get it to the market. Mm-hmm. One leadership lesson you wish you'd learned earlier. Uh, evolve and improve. Launch a product, evolve, evolve and improve as you go. Don't try to get it perfect and never, never launch it. Okay, one business decision you'd happily make again. Start another business. Yes, I... That's not a surprise for you to say that. No, start a new business and in any field. It could be even building a new drone if I thought that I have a, a niche that I found out. Yeah. Doesn't frighten me. Yeah. Fantastic. All righty, one final question. Shlomo Assa, if business truly is a game, how do you define winning? Building value- that other investor writing you a massive check for that Okay, love that. All righty, and lastly, Shlomo, where can listeners find you online? I have, uh, my email. They can, they can either email me at sassa@acclaiaromd, acclaiaromd.com, uh, and/or they can reach me on LinkedIn and d- they, they text me on LinkedIn. I am on LinkedIn under Shlomo Assa, Instagram, and all the social media, but best way, send me an email, and I'm more than happy to help, uh, anybody who has a question or has a dilemma or has a, a, a, a consultation that he wants to do. I, I, I don't take money. I like to help people. A lot of good people help me. I'm willing to help good people who have really dilemma. Oh, thank you for your generosity. That's, uh, that's a really great offer, someone at the level of business you're at. So, uh, make sure you take advantage of that, folks, while you're listening. So all righty, that's all we do have time for. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to The Business Game and check out the playlist for the level of business you're currently playing, because every founder is somewhere on the game board, from zero all the way to over $50 billion. Choose your level, and we'll see you next time. Thanks, Shlomo. Thank you. God bless