The Lonerider Spirit w/ Sumit Vohra

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Chuck: Thank you for being an innovators on tap. It's great to have you here today. Glad to be here. And it's great to have you hosting us at the lone riders newest hideout here in Wake Forest, North Carolina. This is a great location.

Sumit: Thank you took a lot of work a lot of people. And it's still continuing to do that. But it's but it's good. It's open feedbacks been extremely positive. So we're happy that it's here now.

Chuck: I thought I'd start this podcast a little differently than others because it reminds me of why I named my podcast innovators on tap. One of the things that would happen at cre is we'd be working on a problem having a tough day. And, you know, things would come up and finally, some I just got stuck. And I say, you know what, let's just go grab a beer. We go sit down, have a beer, and it was amazing over a beer, how you just seem to be able to, I think, relax, think different open your mind and solve problems in a different way. And so when I wanted to have honest, creative conversations with people about innovation, I said, we should be like having a beer. And so that's where the name came from. And what was interesting is we found a quote where you said, You're talking about beer, and you said, it's the only thing I know that gets people to come together and actually have honest conversations. And since one of the keys to innovation is getting people to have open, honest conversations, what's your perspective? Why does what's the magic of beer? Why does this happen?

Sumit: I think it's the, in my mind, it's the idea. It's the idea that you're actually going to have a conversation with somebody without the rigidity of a boardroom. Now your guard is down, and you're actually able to say what's on your mind, rather than obviously having a Think about things that are stuck on wall including mission statements. So you are going into a zone where you don't have to worry. And you can actually say what's on your mind.

 Chuck: So what do you think it is that happens when we're not here, right? When we're sitting in that boardroom or we're sitting in our cubes wherever we might be working? What is that impediment that's in our way,

 Sumit: most of the time, when you're having conversations over beer, they're in smaller settings. And even if they're in a bigger setting, it is an open atmosphere. When you are in a place in a boardroom, at least that's what I feel. That's why I don't have an office, my car's my office or a bar. And it's been like that for 10 years. It takes away the sameness of in and out every day. When you're in an office, you're sitting confined by walls. That's all you're thinking of. Your vision is limited when you're sitting in a bar, or sitting in a location where you can drink a beer and chill. Just the visual cues themselves are different than what you're used to you go to your desk, you do the same thing every day. And you fall into habits good or bad. And you forget about how to think different. And that's why over beer, it's better.

 Chuck: It's almost like, as you were describing, it's like when we're in those other environments, those boundary conditions, whether they're real or imagined, whether they're really walls or they're just expectations that they create a box of expectations that it's kind of hard to get out of, and you literally physically get out of that space and sit down. And, you know, this is kind of the anti box environment. It is the anti box environment. It's, I mean, you've seen the thing that we've had on our philosophy for 10 years, which is effect change, don't be an audience. Instead of thinking outside the box. Imagine what if there was no box, even folks that have the best intention of staying outside the box, fall back into that paradigm because life gets in the way, and it's a conscious effort you have to make yourself do to continue to remind yourself, think different. It just does. doesn't always come naturally. But you have to remind yourself because that's important. So let me step back for a moment. One of the things I find when I talk to people about innovation, or I've done research on it, is that how people grow up really has a big effect on on who they are and how they think about certain things. And so, you know, you have a different background than most people who are going to listen to this podcast, you grew up in India, can you tell us just give me a little bit? What was that, like? We'll transition into you come into the states.

 Sumit: You're absolutely right about that. I grew up in an environment where in a household, I should say, my parents are very polite. They are amazing people, but they bred politeness into me from day one. And it is Thank you. Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. Not in those words, of course in Hindi, but they did that and that stays with you. And I didn't come here until I was 16. When that stays with you. It affects how you get into confrontation and how you think think differently. And culture has a lot to do with it some cultures naturally rewarded in us. There's a lot of talk about entrepreneurship. I grew up in a culture where the expectation from me was, you're going to be a doctor, you're going to be an engineer, or you're going to be a lawyer. I said, Great. So I ran away from the country ended up being an engineer, but at some point, was able to do what I really wanted to do. Do you think that some of that politeness and the lack of confrontation has has challenged you sometimes to do some of the things you need to do? Absolutely. Because of the way I have always operated, it is sometimes difficult to tell the other person, oh, you're full of crap. And so I don't do it as often as I should. But yes, it does hamper you. It does make you think twice about what you're going to say. Especially if you're going to laugh at this. The part about having some As an elder, yeah. In India guest is a velcome entity in the house. Parents are to be respected and anybody who's over the age that you can say, Okay, well, he's 1015 years old or nine. Well, he used to be respected. That's bred into you until you're 16 when you try to get into innovation becomes really difficult to tell somebody who's your elder. Yeah, man, you're totally wrong. But, you know, over time, I've been able to do it, but it's definitely difficult.

 Chuck: You're 16 you decide to come to the US. Was that your idea? Your parents idea? How'd that come about?

 Sumit: I knew I couldn't do what I needed to do back home. I knew I was gonna end up being in the same. I would have done things and made my parents proud, but it would have been the same challenge I would have had, I wouldn't get to do what I really wanted, which was, for lack of a better word escape. Go to a place where Ideas are not treated as shouldn't have one. I'm not saying that all Indians like that, because there's a ton of smart people that come from there. But there is absolutely a box of expectations. That starts when you go into Elementary. It is on you until you graduate.

 Chuck: You get to Alabama, and I just I can't even imagine the culture shock. You'd not enter the states before that. Is that correct? No. So you get on a plane, you're going to college and you've never been at this country.

Sumit: 24 hour flight. I didn't sleep. I was like sleep. If I sleep, what's going to happen to me? I haven't been on a plane before. I think I've been on plane once. And I get here. And I just decided not to sleep because I didn't know what I was going to do because the plane flew through Zurich, I barely spoke English. I mean, I knew English very well in the written form, because that's what I learned from day one. But I really wasn't very conversant in it. And just going like, what happens if I missed the announcement? For the flight that I'm supposed to board Next, I will be left stranded here.

 Chuck: So you get a degree in is it engineering or computer science or computer science in bachelor's and master's was in computer science. And then from there you go and get a job in industry, Cisco. And then you're at Cisco and I read somewhere that you were considered an intrapreneur.

 Sumit: I started actually this initiative in this organization, I call it innovate at Cisco. And my first thing was a gal put together plan. My second thing was, well, we can't do it here. Innovation in a traditional organization is really hard. You can't do it. But everybody that supported me went, but uh, you don't get a choice. Either you make a program that fits these confines, or you go, so meta program, set up all the initiatives set up the reward system, we had people come up with ideas like we would be doing cables, cabling in routers, yeah. So we'll be setting up a network one The ideas was very simple. Like I said, Look, all of us spend a lot of time labeling. Which end is what, which goes where he's like, why can't we just call our cable company, tell them to pre label those cables and to end, so we don't have to do it. And he called them, they did it. And I was like, this is an organization organization full of really bright people. But nobody had thought of it. So that's why the entrepreneurial part.

 Chuck: You're fresh out of college, you haven't been in the country that long you go to work for a very large tech company. What do you think allowed you to be able to take and that's a risk most people go Hey, why don't rock the boat, right? You know, you're risking what what do you think allowed you to take that risk?

 Sumit: I just asked myself If not, not when there was no right answer. The sun wasn't gonna rise at a perfect time and the stars weren't gonna align. If I didn't do it, then when would I do it? And the answer came back simple. Just go do it. Just stop thinking about it. Because The more you think about it, the more reasons you will come up with not to do it. Were you worried at all about failing? The fear of not having the chance to fail was greater than the fear of failure?

 Chuck: So I think you'd go on to quintiles from Cisco, is that right? And then, and then at some point, you decided to go to Carolina and get an MBA, what were you looking for?

 Sumit: that was the path out of the engineering path that I was on, I didn't want to be in that path anymore. It's not that I don't love technology, as I still know how to code. And I still enjoy doing it sometimes. But I could see no path out of that organization. If I didn't take a step. directionally perpendicular. Because you're essentially saying, Look, I'm going in this direction. I gotta just take a hard right turn. And that was a way to do that. And it was also to see what's possible, because that wasn't available in the limited environment I had.

Chuck: So you went there to learn to be an entrepreneur. Did it teach you to be an entrepreneur.

 Sumit: It taught me that there are tools you need. If you go into entrepreneurship, I don't think it's probably just me. I don't think anybody can teach you to be an entrepreneur, you. You're gonna have to develop that risk tolerance and just go do it. It's hard work. But I don't. I wouldn't say that. No, did not teach me to be an entrepreneur.

Chuck: What if you look back on your MBA experience? Which tools Did you get that have been most important to you as an entrepreneur?

Sumit: Every time you meet a person, and this is what I, when I, when folks asked me to come back to MBA school and talk about it, I said, Look, the best thing you can get out of the MBA program is a network. Ask questions, ask a lot of fun, even if they laugh at you. Ask questions. And by the way, ask your professors for one connection. Your professors are really smart. They work with some of their working with health, you know, CEO of coke, they're working with CEO Craig you should ask them to make them meaningful connection for you. And if I can say one thing out of an MBA program, get that.

 Chuck: So we're going to shift to the beer business, because you spend a lot of time in that. And that's actually how we got to know each other. So when did you first start making beer?

Sumit: The first beer? It was 2009.

Chuck: So and that was your first that was not a professional batch. Did you start home brewing?

 Sumit: Oh yeah, poorly, really poor. So how did you go from it's a hobby to we're going to start a business, the idea to start a brewery. It was again, simple. I've always believed beer is a like when people go out, I think they talk about let's go out for a beer, even if they're going out for a wine, but it's about let's go out for a beer. And I wanted to be in an industry that I was really unfamiliar with, but be really enjoyed and liked.

 Chuck: But a lot of people have these conversations when they're in business school or sitting around with their friends. Hey, we're going to do this someday. I as you know my story, my friend Scott and I talked about going from homebrewing to start A brewpub and we never did we'd never quit our regular jobs probably financially worked out way better, but, but we never did it what allowed you to walk away so that this time we were at quintiles when you decide to leave?

 Sumit: Yeah, actually, the gentleman who was my boss, there was really cool, too. I tried to quit. And he said, Well, how about you just work three days a week with me? I'm like, Sure. Can I work Thursday to Sunday at the brewery? Like, yeah, so I did hard time quitting. But then it got to a point where I went back and that by that time the gentleman had left and then the gentleman that was there, I said, Look, it's not fair to you. It's not fair to me. I'm not giving you my full attention. And I'm not giving loan rather my full attention. So I gotta go. What allowed me to do that was, I really don't have a good answer. I just wanted to do it. I just needed to do it.

 Chuck: I think the I've heard you say this, but we also found it quoted somewhere is that you described the beginning of lone rider is we have a West Texas theme brewery in Raleigh, North Carolina, making a German style half of it run by a guy from India. And I believe if I remember part of the story you even decided to start selling it into winter, which is not normally when you would sell a heavy lights. And so how does this seem like a good idea to you at the time,

 Sumit: I did approach everything with scale. And like I said, if I'm going to do something, it's going to be a brand. It's not going to be, oh, you open a brewery and now we're selling beer. This is great. That's why there's stories behind every single one of the beers that we make. But the most quintessential image I could keep in my mind that define that outlaw. Think outside the box was the Wild West American cowboy. And also was a Clint Eastwood fan watched a lot of spaghetti westerns, but that image is what allowed us to grow as a brand. Second, in terms of making a half of it, and that was a very planned move. It was no competition locally, Luna was the only competition cost was good. The the German style hefeweizen style was really not here. And in North Carolina, there is somewhere all the time, the IRI data, which is the industry data said that that style was on the rise feature, it actually focused on women more. So you were able to bring an entire new class of individuals to the beer business because it's primarily male dominated. So all those reasons was why we made it, the business to get started.

 Chuck: One of the challenges was you really couldn't get access to distribution, essentially, it was closed market. And so my sense is that in the beginning, the challenge you were facing was how do we get into distribution? Yep. Today I look at the business 10 years later, and you've had a ton of success, including being named last year a CEO of the year, which is great honor, but as you look ahead, we're 10 years in, it almost feels like thing you needed most which was to get into distribution is maybe one of the biggest challenges your facing today to grow the business. Does that make sense?

 Sumit: Absolutely. And it actually is true. And I know the wholesalers are going to hear this, but I'm open with them about this. It depends on which channel and how you build your brand. The channel opened up with the wholesalers and the recordable sellers. And the reason for the channel opening up wasn't that, hey, they saw an opportunity in the market. They said, craft beer, what they call the golden cases, essentially, you make money on craft beer Anheuser Busch, you make money on it's great, but you don't make a ton, but it keeps the light on and keeps a lot of lights on. I mean, some of the wholesalers are fairly well off. What happened was that access opened up, then a flood of craft breweries came in and then craft beer became really popular in America. And then the law started changing and the channel access became more varied. But the legislation still makes it extremely difficult. To get out of a wholesaler, so you don't this is not free market enterprise. It's like if you're in a marriage, and the only person that can divorce is your wife, you, you have no option. It's so the channel X has became really legislation tied it down. And now because there are so many breweries, and because there is also the consumers have shifted. Consumers are looking for new, what's exciting. And the channel access by AB by buying up 10 different craft breweries also confusing the issue at Channel access is closing. But you still can't get out of those relationships a lot of times because, again, legislation doesn't allow you to.

 Chuck: So I'm going to switch gears and talk a little bit about some people stuff. There's a quote I want to read that you gave because I thought was very interesting and something I hadn't heard you say directly, but it makes sense. And you said, I've always been a big believer in empathy more than sympathy, emotion that allows you to understand how another fields and then respond with positivity is amazing. Over the years, I've seen many acts of kindness from a simple offer of let me buy your food to you can crash on my couch tonight. It's cold outside. These are the things that inspire me and make me want to leave the world a better place. I know I'm biased here. But craft beer industry is fairly empathetic, who can't be empathetic after drinking a delicious cold one. So I'm curious. And it's a really interesting insight but do so how do you balance that approach with the realities of trying to run a business in a really competitive industry with a lot of challenges today?

 Sumit: It is tough, crappier give you another example. When I first went into craft beer and went to craft brewers conference, I get to craft brewers conference and the gift for every Brewer was a pair of nose hair trimmers and a beard trimmer. I don't fit that mold. But that was 80% of the mold. Yeah. But the idea about the whole thing was that every person I met in the beer industry was very willing to help. When we started, there was not a lot of access to information. We didn't know there was a gentleman out on the west coast, that actually helped us with knowledge so that we could start and he did it for no other reason than he just wanted to be helpful. He had no extra ground, he had no agenda. And he helped. So we kept trying to do that with other breweries as well. But now the access to information is very simple. Other consultants now there's access to equipment, everything is on demand and ready and there are several suppliers, I'll give you help. None of that existed. So the craft beer came out of empathy. But in terms of in a competitive market, I think it's now more about empathy and clarity. I will absolutely help anybody that goes Hey, man, I don't have hops today. Like Okay, come on over. We have we have them taken and When you get your seminars back, simple as that, but in the markets more competitive, you're not going to share your market data and you're not going to go help somebody get a tap, that's probably yours that they're going to take. So that becomes different. But I think that clarity is also common in a competitive environment. You just have to be upfront with people on what you can and can't do. But do it with the best of intentions.

 Chuck: Something else we talked about that I know you believe in a lot, which is a it's a great perspective, as you mentioned, and I don't get it. This isn't a quote, but you said something along the line, you were reminding me one day that a business is about more than profits. And, and I agree with that philosophically, I do. But I think the conversation we're in and I'm going to share with because I think that a lot of people struggle with this is at the same time when you're in a business, unless it's all your own money. Then you've also you're using other people's money, you have this commitment to to these investors. Right, you have a commitment to deliver return to them. So the business isn't all about profits. But you have this contract to an investor. How do you balance that? Right? How do you get your head around the fact that ultimately, you've agreed to give them their money back? And more at some point?

 Sumit: No, you're absolutely right. running an organization is you have in order of priority, you have responsibilities. It's like when I was working at Cisco, I didn't have to worry about any of that stuff. All I cared about was like, Hey, I get to do cool stuff, and they're paying me good money to do it. When you run your own business, that's much more different and much more difficult because you do have an obligation to all the folks that actually believed in you enough to put the money in it. So that always stays on the top of your mind. It doesn't make any difficult decisions any less difficult. It just makes you say they just have to be made.

 Chuck: Do you think sometimes that if you could do it all over again, do you think that you get the bounce Ryder, do you think it's a struggle? I think we constantly learn. So if we're not getting better or evolving, what are we doing? No, obviously, we'll do everything different. The reason I ask is so we used to have a big debate, people would talk about it. No, it's not about your shareholders. It's about your stakeholders. And it's why I said, Okay, let's think about that. Right. So our stakeholders were in the most general terms, our employees, yeah. Our customers, you could argue the community is one of those stakeholders, and then you would say your investors. And they said, Look, it's really about balancing the stakeholders interests. And philosophically I agree with that. But practically, it doesn't work that way. What I what I would say is I agree, that's great, except that if you don't take care of the shareholder, you won't have an opportunity to take care of the rest of the stakeholders.

 Sumit: Yeah, exactly.

Chuck: And what's funny is one actually enables you to do the rest and so I find there's always this pressure on business owners. Hey, help this person out help. It's about everybody and answers, actually If you take care of the enterprise, the enterprise has the most ability to take care of everyone else.

 Sumit: And you know, the folks that asked that are asking for the right reasons. And they have every good intention for that. It's funny, like a nonprofit world. I used to at UNC, give this conversation or just small speech, and it was, do good by doing good. Like, you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of anybody else. Because if you don't take care of yourself, then how are you going to, you know, if you don't take care of your body, how are you actually going to go serve in a soup kitchen or work and Habitat for Humanity? You're not going to be able to do that if you're not healthy. And by the way, think about what Bill Gates has done. I mean, they tackle big problems, but he's able to do that because of what he did. And so in an organization, it's no different.

 Chuck: If someone came to you this afternoon, they're working in a big company like you are, whether it be quintiles or Cisco, or somewhere else and they're like, boy, I think I think I want to maybe do something different, but I'm not. I'm not sure I can What advice would you give that person that's thinking about taking the kind of leap that you did to, to leave your job and start a small business?

 Sumit: I asked them a simple question. I said, What's your hobby? What do you love? And they will tell me so I had a conversation with this one gentleman, I said, What do you love? He's like, I love woodworking. I said, Great. build me a $5,000 chair. He's like, What do you mean? I said, build me a $5,000. Chair. And either I'll sell it for you or I will buy it. He goes, Okay. He called me next day with 20 reasons why he couldn't do it. I said, Don't start with another thing.

 Chuck: I know you're pretty passionate about as mentors. So and I there's a lot of talk today especially in in when students are in college, but hey, you got to find mentors and find something that how do you go about finding a mentor if you're someone just getting started out.

 Sumit: The funny thing about mentors is you're going to get as much out of a mentorship as much as you put into it. The first thing I would says be committed that you actually want something out of that answer, because don't waste their time, if you don't have any intention of taking advantage of what they're telling me. So, to find one, I would say, again, it's all about connections and people. Ask the person you trust the most. What do you need first? And who do you need? And then look out at the leaders and then look, you are your see if you are CEO of a very successful company. You are now semi retired doing four different things at the same time. And while finding time to drink beer at the same time, but if somebody sent you an email, and you really liked that email that came from them, or some connection, they don't have to be informed with an email. And if you felt like helping that person, wouldn't you? Yeah. Well, most people are just afraid to ask and they don't say look, find where you want to go to and find the direct path to youth. You may have a mentor in your Network, or don't be afraid to reach out to somebody. They're gonna say no. Well, the answer is no until you're asked. So just ask.

 Chuck: Yeah, one of the things I find is that, you know, especially while I was CEO of Cree, I got lots of requests for people to connect. And there were two types. One was someone who was transactionally, trying to create a networking Connect, and I didn't get much out of those. But I think for the person that's looking for a mentor, what do you offer them? And I, that sounds funny, but they're, the people don't mentor for the heck of it, they get something out of that relationship. And I think that's the trick to this is that it's a to a successful mentorship in my mind is a two way street. And too often, we treat it for the people looking for mentors as a one way transactional thing and I think and they approach it that way. And the reality is, is a cold call email from someone I have no connection to a relation. It's hard to know. You know how many of those times I want to go get coffee versus there have been a few people that have done it in a very compelling way. And I'm interested in what I may only get out of it the reward of helping someone or in some cases, I learned something from it. Those are the best ones for me.

 Sumit: Yeah. It's, but I said, like, you know, just take your time to research before you reach out to a person. Don't just say, Hey, man, can I get 10 minutes of your time for coffee? Or what? What am I doing, sitting there with you? It's not that I don't want to meet you. I'm happy to. And if you came to a warm lead, and that trust that person, I will absolutely go meet you. It's not even about that the time is the only thing that we don't make any more. That's all we got. And if the other person didn't spend enough time to ask you for yours, then why should you do it?

 Chuck: What do you know now that you wish you knew when you got started?

 Sumit: I think the biggest thing that I would say for me personally Don't try to make everybody happy. It's never gonna work. That's probably the biggest thing for me.

 Chuck: That's really insightful. I don't think I don't people almost never say that. But Sumit, I think you're really onto something. I think this idea of trying to please everyone is a it's a it's a no win situation that I think in my career, I got there pretty early. But I think if you don't, you can never get anything done.

 Chuck: So what's your biggest failure?

Sumit: I look at everything as a learning opportunity. Everything I did, I did, and nobody else did for me. So I don't consider them as failures. But more like, I that should I shouldn't have done.

Chuck: So that's actually great. Because honestly, I one of my themes of the book is failure is the fuel of innovation, right? It's, it's not about the failure. It's about the learning. So what's the thing you do? It did not go as planned where you learn the most.

Sumit: I'm thinking on how to answer that question, because it's a, it's a pretty large question. Yeah. So let me turn around and ask you, and then I'll answer it. And the reason for that is, because the way I look at this is, I look at several areas of life. Yeah. What is more important? Yeah, I would say the biggest failure in business, if you're sticking to the business side of things is that I really should have waited to take money. So I would, it was very helpful. We did it right. But there was an opportunity where we should have stopped and said, we're going to do these five things before we take any money. And, and that would that goes back to the concept of, hey, let's really make sure that the direction that we're walking in, because at that time, it was wide open. We were growing, we started with 770 barrels of Forestry. 3520 this next year 70 530 year 11,000, the fourth year, and we just kept growing. But industry changed on us. We nearly even realized that it changed on us and it changed fast. And it changed fast and hard. And then we had to make sure our priorities were different. So think we should have waited to take money.

 Chuck: You asked me what I would. It's funny, no one's at throwing that question back at me. So few things come to mind. In terms of running cre, I think thing I learned is that when when you realize someone was in the wrong job, whether they the people decisions I made, I always made far later than I should have, and they would have been better for me in the company and the person to help them get to that decision sooner. And it looked it was a relationship built culture and so you invest in relationships. You don't want to undo them, but absolutely There wasn't a single one. I don't remember a situation where there wasn't an indication of people issues coming up. And I waited that it ever worked itself out. And almost all the cases, the person moved on to something else. And everyone was better off, because but I think we all struggle with that one. So that would I'd say, at one level, I think that's more of a people side of creed, I think strategically. So Cree was built around innovation and these principles of innovation that are in the book, and then I like to talk about on the podcast, at the end of Cree, we weren't very innovative. And so what we had done is to try to run a larger public company and to make more predictable results. The term I use is the innovator spirit, they kind of built the company, we let it get away and it was probably it was the right decision for what the shareholders want to create to become so I think we did what they wanted. I don't know that it made Cree better, but I think he's gonna be just fine. But it wasn't right for me. So either I should have recognized that sooner and realized I wasn't the CEO to run the management driven company. And it's not that I couldn't do it. I could do it wasn't much fun. Or we should have kept Cree the way that we wanted. We were built to run it and just pursued innovation. But we got it got stuck in between and I think halfway between anywhere isn't good for the people, or the business. And then on a personal note, it took me a long time. It was when my daughter I dropped her off at Marquette when she was 18. My oldest daughter, and I realized that I had missed almost all her growing up. And it doesn't mean you could work less at crea I had to change how I managed my life. So I came home from that trip and I figured out how I was going to be the CEO and be a baseball coach. All it meant was I leave at four o'clock and coach literally for two hours and I'd either come back to work or work till 10 or 11 at night, I can do both and got a little asleep. I the team was forced to take on some responsibility that they I couldn't do my But I wish I'd have figured that one out. Because you're, you know, I think just like we don't get any more time, families and children, it's a pretty cool experience. And you can you can actually be all in on your job and do that you just have to do it in a way I think it's different than most people expect. And, you know, I've talked to some other entrepreneurs and, you know, someone said to me, one of their keys to success was is if you're going to do this, in whatever your family situation, they need to be on board with it, because you can't do this halfway. In the end, we have a life to it. And if we don't get to live that, then everything else that we ever will do. may create value may not create value, but you'll lose some yourself somewhere along the way. And you don't want to do that. I'm back to beer to wrap this up.

Chuck: Well, so anything last thought about innovation, that You'd think you'd want to share with people listening that they think they might be misunderstood as someone who's lived through starting a business and going through different challenges anything out there, you want to share with them about innovation.

Sumit: If you think you innovate and you don't have a black book of ideas, you’re fooling yourself.

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