Will Zell - Co-Founder and Executive Chair of AssetWatch: Charting Entrepreneurial Waters, Designing Your Life, and Shareholder Thinking

Will Zell 00:00

The founder journey, the entrepreneurial journey, is very similar in archetype to explorers of old. There's this idea and belief in a land that is far off, that exists, that we cannot see or touch. You've got a small wooden boat in the midst of this force of nature, called the ocean, that cares very little for who you are. You have ego, you have pride, you have a vision for what you're pursuing, and belief in your ability to get there. But you're existing in a vessel with a team that believes with you, in the midst of a force of nature that will swallow you in an instant.

Callan Harrington 00:42

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives, and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Will Zell. Will is the co-founder and Executive Chair of AssetWatch, founder of Vessel, and founding partner of the Ohio Angel Collective, which has been building and investing in companies since 2006, with a focus on venture capital and technology startups since 2012. The first thing I'll say is that we went deep in this episode. We explore the concept of strategic pivots in business, we dive into a lot of nautical metaphors, and how they relate to early-stage startups. That specifically will make a lot more sense when you get into the episode. We also talk about Will's view on startup creation as an art form. I thought this was a really interesting conversation, and it serves as a great roadmap for anybody that's looking to build something truly unique. Another concept that Will brought up was thinking of yourself as a shareholder above all else. When you adopt this mindset, you ensure that you're always doing what's best for the company. I think it's a great mindset for any founder, CEO, executive, or even an employee within a company. And Will walked us through his personal experience with thinking of himself as a shareholder and the impact that had on his career, and I thought it was excellent. So with that, let's get to the show. Will, I'm excited. And I'm excited for a number of reasons for this, but a big one is to understand you running for city council in high school. Can you walk us through this?

Will Zell 02:53

Sure. Great to be with you first and foremost, Callan, excited for our time together. I'm an entrepreneur, right, have started multiple businesses and have been on that journey for the last twenty years. But really, it was a discovery too, and quite a journey, to go from understanding my propensity to take risk and go a path that's not normal. That took a few years to find its way into actually being an entrepreneur when it comes to starting businesses. But going back several years before that, throughout high school, and particularly my senior year of high school, I was already starting to take or make, quote, unquote, entrepreneurial decisions. In the fall of 2000, I had an internship with the president of the Logan County Chamber of Commerce. That experience was really interesting for me because it was the first time where I was broadly exposed to relationships with the people who were leading the community. At that time, there were a couple of pretty big concerns that I had about the community that I lived in, and this is Bellefontaine, Ohio, which is northwest of Columbus by about forty-five minutes. The big one was, if you looked at the economic epicenter, the heart of the community, it was in disrepair. Like many other small-town downtowns, a lot of the economic activity had moved to the outskirts, right? The Walmarts, the box stores, and a lot of that activity was no longer where it used to be, which is the downtown, and it hadn't been backfilled with anything. So you had a lot of vacancies. You had a- So, just not great, right? So you've got a courthouse and a courthouse square, and some government-related agencies, and then nothing. During that time period, and in the months following that, I just started to build more of an interest in local politics. Somehow, the opportunity to run on the Democratic ticket for the Bellefontaine City Council race at large came across my plate. I thought to myself, well, that sounds like fun. Let's do that.

Callan Harrington 04:54

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is going to be an uphill battle to win on the Democratic ticket. Is that fair to say?

Will Zell 05:00

So, yes, Logan County is about 120% Republican. I look at it now, and I'm like, I shake my head, and like, it's funny, I'm still talking about it many years past, but it was good because it was one of those formative life experiences that had actually a lot of implications for even my life today. The opportunity came up to run, and I'm like, alright, I'm going to do it. My parents approved of it. My mom was actually wonderful, she was very encouraging. Because basically, take a step back, I was already accepted to Ohio State. I was going to be in the Scholars Program, had already gone and done multiple tours on campus, and had like the dorm even picked out. So everything, the path ahead of me, was graduate from high school, do something fun for the summer, and then go and live on campus in Columbus. And all of that was like, well, that's no longer going to work if I run for city council. I would say some of the kind of core things that drive entrepreneurs are this curious mindset of kind of seeing opportunity, something that may be unique or off the beaten path, and really building conviction to take a risk to pursue a path that is not paved and go after it. And that first big decision for me was to run for city council. So I was seventeen when I filed to run. I was actually seventeen during the primary election. I wasn't even able to vote for myself during the primary election. I turned eighteen in July, and then the general election was in November.

Callan Harrington 06:26

So as I understand it, you actually, you had to get special approval to even run in this, correct?

Will Zell 06:34

It was because I wasn't eighteen, right, at the time of filing. And also being on the ballot, right. So if you think about it, not being able to vote for yourself while on the ballot, there was a question as to whether or not I could even file, and it went up to the Secretary of State's office. Ken Blackwell was Secretary of State at the time. And the decision came back that because I would be eighteen by the general election, and when I would take office if I won, then I could file to- for the race. And I could be on the primary ballot, even though I couldn't vote for myself.

Callan Harrington 07:06

I noticed you never ran again. (laughs)

Will Zell 07:11

Losing will do that to you, Callan. (laughs)

Callan Harrington 07:12

(laughs) It seemed like a, very much a, running for public office? Eh, I think I'm just going to do startups instead.

Will Zell 07:20

There was no chance in the world I was going to win, kind of in hindsight, looking back at it now. But I ran a decent race, so I came in fourth. There weren't a huge number of votes between third and fourth. And the general kind of collective establishment in the community was very supportive of what I did when I was like, bummed out, and I was like, alright, I'm getting out of here and going to go live in Columbus. I had a few key leaders that came to me and said, no, we want you to stay, get involved, become a Republican. (laughs) So step number one-

Callan Harrington 07:50

(laughs) Step one-

Will Zell 07:51

Step one, become a Republican. Which we could have a whole debate around that, for a future time. But anyways, I can position myself to run for office again at some point in the future, but I had some really interesting life experiences, and ended up going a different path that led me to starting my own business.

Callan Harrington 07:54

That's not going to work. And I will tell you, as I was researching and prepping for this interview, in particular, I actually struggled a bit on where to kick this thing off because you had this totally unique experience here, you started to build a real estate business, you've done three tech startups, you have an angel investing community, and you have a venture capital fund that you're doing. What is your process for when you make these changes from doing one business to another? You seem to have this uncanny ability to do a post-mortem on what happened, and then immediately take what you learned, what worked, what didn't, then go to the next one. Is that true?

Will Zell 08:52

What's probably really important to know is, if you look across the individual efforts, in terms of the businesses that I've started, it's all actually in the context of a very long-term vision that I started pursuing in my early twenties. So when, when it really started clicking that, I'm an entrepreneur, where I get the most passion from, is building a business and using that platform to positively impact communities. Once that really started coming together, I went on a very kind of personal journey to really think about my life sixty years in the future, right. And the literal exercise was project myself when I'm eighty-five, ninety, right? And I'm at the latter season in my life about to peace out, Lord willing making it to that point, but it's clear that I'm getting towards the end, if you will, and what do I want to be thinking about? Right? What do I want to be reflecting on? What do I want to be proud of? What I want to be looking back at the decades previous to that and be happy, right? Where do I get that satisfaction from a life well lived? The process was project that in the future, get clarity around that, and then start to bring that back in the decades, your seventies, your sixties, your fifties, your forties, your thirties, your twenties. And really try to build like, what is that life vision. And so for me, at that time, was really crafted a vision around building, in essence, an investment company, right? A platform where my main business would be owning other businesses, right? So if you think about a business, a business has a product or service, right? Unless you're an investment company, or you're a holding company. If you're an investment company, or holding company, or venture capital fund, your business is actually about other businesses, right? So when you look at my journey, you see brands like the real estate company, and then Huddlewoo, which was the first startup, and ConnectToHome, and Nikola Labs, which became AssetWatch, and Zell Capital, you see these different brands. But all of that is actually a product of this very long-term vision that I'm still pursuing, which is how do you build a platform, where you have the joy to be part of creating multiple businesses that deliver a product or service to the market, that positively impacts a meaningful number of people, including the direct customers that are served, the team members that are part of the journey that you're on, the key stakeholders, whether they're investors or partners, and then ultimately, in that good that you are building, in that platform that you're building, how do you take that success and positively impact communities and that you care about or causes that you care about? But the reason why it's like, on to the next thing, because they all serve this very long-term vision that I'm pursuing, and in many ways feel like I'm a student of, and forever learning from.

Callan Harrington 11:59

So you started doing this when you were twenty years old?

Will Zell 12:01

Twenties, it was early twenties.

Callan Harrington 12:03

I started doing that at thirty-eight. Recently, literally, just started, like, maybe I should design what I ultimately want to do here. So I say that a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but I am curious, has that changed over the years? Do you revisit this on an annual basis? How do you make refinements to that?

Will Zell 12:22

I started off very rigid, right, in the context of, here is the very specific vision. Here is the ten-year goal. Here's the three-year goal. Here's the one-year goal, quarterly goals, and here's monthly goals. And here's what I'm literally going to do today. And it was that rigid, right, but ultimately, I view business building as a creative process. And once you get into it, the realities of the market just beat that pretense out of you.

Callan Harrington 12:52

(laughs)

Will Zell 12:53

So I'm a big believer in systems, I'm a big believer in practice and devotion to your work, right. And we follow like, for instance, at Vessel, we follow the Entrepreneurial Operating System, right, we have quarterly rocks that we're working towards, but the biggest experience is that getting into it, and Vessel is- the brand of Vessel, which is our investment management company, right. So of that vision that I talked about, I finally feel now being, I'll turn forty-one in July, that I'm just now getting to this brand and this narrative that is pulling everything together into a company and a brand that is the expression of this journey, that can hopefully be built upon over the next several decades. And that is Vessel, right. And Vessel is a very specific brand because one of the analogies that I often use when I'm talking to young entrepreneurs, is that the founder journey, the entrepreneurial journey is very similar in archetype to explorers of old. So think of the Magellans, and Christopher Columbus, and what they had to do to- the starting point is there's like this idea and belief in a land that is far off that exists that we cannot see or touch, and we've only heard about it. You've got a small wooden boat in the midst of this force of nature, called the ocean, that cares very little for who you are, right? You have ego, you have pride, you have a vision for what you're pursuing, and belief in your ability to get there, but you're existing in a vessel with a team that believes with you, in the midst of a force of nature that will swallow you in an instant. And in business building that ocean is the market.

Callan Harrington 14:45

To this point of what you're saying on this ocean, you had went through a couple of tech startups in the real estate business prior- and probably other businesses is my guess. But you had gone through these prior to founding AssetWatch, which was originally Nikola Labs. What were the things that you learned that helped you better cross the ocean from these previous startups that you implemented within Nikola Labs?

Will Zell 15:14

Nikola Labs for me was actually probably the business experience where I've found even this analogy, right, found my voice as an entrepreneur and ultimately an investor as well. I often share with new entrepreneurs, new founders, that the very first thing that's going to happen when you start a business is that the market is going to punch you in the face. That first big storm, if you will, when you set sail- oh, my god, like, what are we doing? And it's going to punch you in the face, and it's going to expose very quickly what you suck at.

Callan Harrington 15:45

(laughs)

Will Zell 15:47

Seriously, and then-

Callan Harrington 15:49

I'm laughing because I can empathize with what you're saying. And I'm thinking of these things, it's like, for me, just where these huge gaps were. It was like, okay, yeah, you really know that you're not good at that. Like, I totally understand that now.

Will Zell 15:57

Yeah. And I think if you've been on the journey, you get it, right? And then your ability to survive and sustain is all how you respond to that, right? So for me, the first business with real estate was, you know, I found things such as I needed process, I'm very much a dreamer, right? It's very easy for me to see the future of what something can be. So if you think about flipping a house, you can walk into a house that's in disrepair, and you can see the end product, right, which is very hard for other people to see. But I could describe to you in detail how this is going to look when we're done with it, which is great. And we got done with it, but rather than spending $50,000, we spent $100,000. And it took us four months longer than what we had planned. And that's literally like the first, the very first flip that I did.

Callan Harrington 16:54

I think that's such an interesting point. You know, one thing I want to circle back to, you mentioned your entrepreneurial voice. Never heard it that way, and it very much is tied to creativity, right? I mean, you hear this in standup all the time, it takes seven years to find your voice. And you mentioned that. What was that? What was your entrepreneurial voice?

Will Zell 17:12

So I'm reading a book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

Callan Harrington 17:16

Great book!

Will Zell 17:17

Everybody needs to read it. Every founder needs to read The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

Callan Harrington 17:22

It's excellent. It's the best book on creativity.

Will Zell 17:25

It's amazing.

Callan Harrington 17:26

So I do stand up, and improv as well. So like that was kind of the genesis of me wanting to get Rick Rubin's book, but I've- every podcast he was on, I listened to all of them.

Will Zell 17:35

I very, very much believe, I think most founders do, now ultimately, when you build a business, you want to make money, right, and the outcome of building a successful business is wealth creation. But there's got to be some connectivity to the product or service that you're delivering and the organization that you're building. And I would say motivated by a greater why than just the financial outcomes. Now, that could be the case for many people, which is fine, but that's not the case for me. For me, I view business building as a creative process, as an artistic expression. And it's actually way more complex than a canvas and paint. You're dealing with markets, you're dealing with people, you're dealing with finances, right? So it's this evolving work of art that ultimately expresses itself as a brand, as a culture within an organization, as a set of beliefs and core values that inspire people to not only just work and have a job, but really contribute their all, day in and day out for the common and collective success. That creative process for me, my heart's desire, is to be able to build a set of volumes of work that is manifested in a portfolio of businesses that each have their unique impact on society, their unique impact on the markets that they serve, and at the end of the day, very, very positive value creation for all key stakeholders. But when I say my entrepreneurial voice, it is the ability to kind of pull all of that collective experience together into a thesis. And it's a thesis that we use for business building. And it's a thesis that we use for investment decisions that we make at Vessel, and it's got a depth to it that is visceral, and that is born of the seas, if you will, right? When we think about capital allocation at Vessel, we're not financial investors from the point of deploying capital from a lofty place of privilege. We are born of the seas. So there's a degree of empathy for the journey. There's a degree of understanding that we want to bring to every business relationship that we're in. But ultimately, it should point back to our thesis and our core values that we have as a company that guide the daily decisions that we make. When you get to that point, it just comes from such a deeper level, if you don't have that actual burning excitement for this on a day-to-day basis, I think this is too hard to do. There are 100 times easier ways to go about a career than doing startups or whatever this might be, than if you don't have that feeling. And it's that, that excitement, and that feeling that is born out of the dark nights of the soul.

Callan Harrington 20:40

Walk me through that.

Will Zell 20:41

In those moments in the journey, which are often in the startup journey, when everything says to give up- all of 2023. And I describe that, and again, sorry for all of the analogies back to exploration and Vessel. But that's- it's the brand's story, right?

Callan Harrington 20:59

Yeah.

Will Zell 21:00

And it's when you're in the midst of the waves and of the storm. And it is like the dark night of the soul when it's just you and your self-belief. Because everything else, everything else, says that this is not working, it's going to fail. And it's just you and your self-belief. And it's the ability to reconcile in those moments, and make intentional decisions to keep going or to say this one's done, I'm gonna learn everything that I can, but I'm on to the next one.

Callan Harrington 21:34

Which is one of my favorite points of The Creative Act, in particular, where he talks a lot about, you have to drive that excitement in you first. And then think about your audience second, which is very counter right, to like a bigger company. It's research, research, research.

Will Zell 21:50

Rick Rubin is amazing. And what he says is that really like your art is an expression of you. And you're building for an audience of one. Alright, which is super interesting. And to your point, if you think of the general product development process, it's customer feedback, customer feedback, input, gather as much as you can, right. And I think that where the two converge in beautiful works of art, is, if you're going to build into a market, when you can study and learn to the detail where you really understand the customer that you're serving. And their nuance, the nuance of what drives value and will create value for them. And you can really feel like you are living there. And then you step back, and you say, alright, I've got it. Now as an artist, what is the greatest expression that I can paint for this customer? And then from there, alright, as an artist, what is the best? What is the most incredible experience that I could create for them? What are the levers that I can pull, to help them save a ton of money or make even more money? And that is the art is in being able to build from and deliver from that place of really understanding that customer well. Because and I've done this where I've relied too much on my artistic capability and what I believe, right, without spending enough time understanding the true status quo for the customer. It's an interesting thing, especially looking at entrepreneurship as a creative process, and that's why you hear many times where great entrepreneurs and great businesses succeed when the founder is solving their own problem. It's because they have a degree of intimacy with the status quo and what's not working, to where they can put together a creative solution for a new product or service that will work. As a generalist investor, I'm not a specialist. I've got to have a process where it's about spending enough time to understand that status quo. But then that's when you let, alright, I got it now, I've studied, now I'm an artist. Now let's go. Right? And how do we as a team, how do we product leaders, designers, engineers, how do we pull all this together into an expression of art that blows their mind?

Callan Harrington 24:19

It's pretty deep. A number of follow-up questions. I love it. I totally agree with that. I've never heard it said that way. But I'm curious, is Ohio Angel Collective a good example of you doing this? Because you are doing this in a totally different way. And what I mean specifically is that we had this conversation, and you mentioned you want to get those people that are on the sideline, that have capital they want to invest, they have an interest in technology, but they don't have the slightest clue on how to evaluate, how to know if this is a good bet or not, how much to put in, how much equity they should get for that, or any of that. I'm curious, is that a manifestation of what you just said?

Will Zell 25:05

Hundred percent! So the starting point for the Ohio Angel Collective, it's a two-sided marketplace, right. So you have great entrepreneurs that are out there, and founders that are in the earliest stages of building their business, and they've got a need to raise capital, because in their particular business model, they can't get to cash flow breakeven fast, right, which is the gap that venture capital serves, or angel investment serves. So you've got this demand from founders, and there are a lot of them across the state that need capital. So that's one side of the marketplace. On the other side of the marketplace is, you have a supply of capital, and when you look at parties that invest in that stage of business formation, it's very early stage venture capital firms, which we have few of, and it's angel investors, and angel investors are individuals who are investing their own money. So it's not a fund manager managing other people's money, it is angel investors who have liquid cash, or assets that can be moved to cash pretty quickly, that they can invest in startups. Culturally, right, if you look at developed ecosystems, if you go into Silicon Valley or the East Coast, if you go into the valley now, you're basically looking at the tenth cycle of this turnover of culture, right, that goes back several decades now, of people who are willing to take risks and understand how to write or underwrite an early-stage investment opportunity, and that they've known through lived experience, or people that they know and are close with that you can put $10,000 into a pre-seed company, and if it hits, that can become worth a lot more money, right. And that ecosystem has developed over cycles. If you go to less developed ecosystems, like we have here, in Ohio, you have wealth. So there's a meaningful amount of wealth that has been created and that people have, you have founders that are out there that are building, that are highly capable, both from an entrepreneurial perspective and a technical perspective. But you don't have a culture that gives that wealth a very simple onboarding path to begin to invest in those founders. So where do I find these founders to invest in? How do I underwrite them, I don't know how to do diligence on an angel investment deal. I don't know how much money I want to invest. Somebody is raising a fund, but it costs $100,000, to invest. And that's not a number that makes sense for me because that's way too much of a risk for that first step into the asset class. The Ohio Angel Collective is very intentionally constructed as a syndicate with no membership fee, with no specific investment commitment, right. You can literally join and just be with us for however long you want to, but what we ask is that you study, you learn, you read our investment memos, you get a feel for how we underwrite deals. And at the time that makes sense for you, you start with that first check.

Callan Harrington 28:18

Super interesting model, and I've been talking with some people about it, just because I don't know that I've seen anything like this out there. And it's super interesting. So before we talk about Vessel, because I definitely want to talk about that, one of the things that I want to circle back to is- that I thought was really interesting in the way that you approach this. So you founded Nikola Labs, which was rebranded to Asset Watch, you went through a number of pivots- probably don't have all the time to talk about the number of pivots that you went through. You found land, you found product-market fit, started scaling in that, and then you've replaced yourself as CEO. Now, I will say you've already probably given a lot of clarity on this when you talk about like, at twenty years old, you had your eighty-year-old vision of where you want to be.

Will Zell 29:08

(laughs) I'm just an old man, Callan.

Callan Harrington 29:09

You're just an old- (laughs) Yeah, I'm twenty-two going on eighty-two. That's great. But I am curious, did you know from the gate from starting this, that you were getting it- the second that you got this to this product-market fit you were bringing in a CEO for scale?

Will Zell 29:24

That's the playbook. And it was even pre-product market fit. So when I think about business building, I approach every business first and foremost, and really the only role that matters is as a shareholder, meaning I have equity in this company, and there are other people likely that have equity in this company that are on this journey. And we're starting from scratch, and the goal is to make this equity worth a significantly larger amount of money than it's worth today. When you approach it from that perspective, then the process becomes about how do you ensure that the organization is set up in the best way for success for the current leg of the journey that it's on. And I believe that it's really important for every founder to have this internal discussion, actually get a view on this very specific point as to whether or not you believe that you are a stage-focused builder, or that you are willing to evolve and grow to be a leader that's needed at various legs, right? Because as you know, being the CEO of a company that has two people is very different than being a CEO of a company, that's twenty, 100, 200, 500. So for me, the playbook and what I've been very comfortable with is I'm really a stage-focused investor and stage-focused builder. I love the water. I love pulling everything together and getting across the ocean, that zero to one phase, if you will, pre-product-market fit. And that was the journey that we went on with AssetWatch. And we've got an incredible executive leadership team that has done amazing work. Now I still am along on the journey, and still very much invested in the success of the company, it's just where I focus on what are the one or two areas that I can create the most value around, and that's what I focus on. But when it comes to being the captain of the ship, I would much rather empower somebody who has a very developed skill set to lead an organization through that next phase, and be their greatest champion and cheerleader of all time.

Callan Harrington 31:37

A couple of things. One, it makes sense why that is the creativity part. You start to lose some of that creativity as the- you start to lose some of the freedom to be as creative as the company scales, because then you really do have true market conditions and things like that. And that's why you see the biggest companies, it's hard for them, they're not doing that because they don't want to be creative. It's just very hard to turn an ocean liner. And I would also say, to me, in my opinion, that extends to all executives. That stage fit, it's just so critical. It can be hard to think that way, especially if you're an executive and not the- well, if you're the founder, it's just hard, this is your baby, you grew this up, you got it to a certain point. But it's also hard on the executive side, because you're thinking about your career beyond this company. And one of the things that, you know, I've been fortunate to be part of a couple of exits. And boy, does that change quick when you see the exit, and you think about it more, it's like man, I wish I would have thought about this more as a shareholder than I did as an employee, which is always hard, right? A lot of it is, it's a lottery ticket. Not all these are going to exit, you can't bet your whole thing on that. But when you think about it from that standpoint, it's what are my shares worth? And then what are my shares worth at a liquidity event? And am I the best person to take us to this next level?

Will Zell 32:58

It takes away a lot of the ego because you have to have a degree of ego and self-confidence, even just to start this journey. And so when you position it to where what matters, there is not a greater role than shareholder because really what is a more enviable position, than being part of something for a while, and then empowering other people that are actually doing the work and they're making you money? (laughs)

Callan Harrington 33:24

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I can't wait to fire myself. (laughs)

Will Zell 33:28

But the fact of the matter is that if you want to be with it for the duration, then you have to evolve as a leader.

Callan Harrington 33:35

I think that's a super interesting outlook on all of it. So you started this venture capital company, Vessel. This is the culmination of what you were looking to build when you were twenty years old. How does it feel to have hit that goal that you've been laying out for this whole time?

Will Zell 33:55

It's not even hitting a goal, it's like you're just getting started. I feel like I'm just at the beginning of hitting my groove. And what's interesting when you look back, and if you study- I love studying successful people of the past. And if you look, just in business, the number of very successful people that really started their thing in their mid-thirties, late thirties, early forties, I feel like that time period. There's a lot of glorification in our society around the young entrepreneur in their twenties. And I would suggest anybody that, if you believe you're an entrepreneur, start taking swings, right, as early as you can, and figure it out. But don't feel like you're a failure if things don't start clicking until you're in your mid-thirties, late thirties, forties. I wouldn't say it's like hitting a goal. It's almost like oh my gosh, it took this long. It took twenty years basically to get to this point, but I think that's part of the process, is like alright, now it's all come together. And let's build.

Callan Harrington 34:52

Do you feel there's more pressure on you for this one because of that?

Will Zell 34:57

The pressure that I have is a self-imposed pressure. There's stress that is caused by circumstance, if you will, right? But from a pressure perspective, it's the pursuit of this vision that I have that drives me. And so, and honestly, if you look at like the first iteration of Zell Capital, it failed, right? So when we started our fund, what is Vessel now is a continuation of a strategy that started as Zell Capital, which was launched as a very unique fund, and it just didn't work. So even in this journey with Vessel, it's born through things not working, and how do you then continue to take it forward, and start to build success, and learn from it? I will just go back to Rick Rubin, so I'm glad that you've read his book. I'm building, in essence, for an audience of one, at this stage. And I feel like if I do that well, and I would say the audience of one is in two different contexts, it would be myself as an artist, but then faith is very important to me, in my life, and building to an audience of one around what I believe, is that there's a creator that put me on this earth for very specific things. And that an expression that the business building side of things is an expression of worship, and giving back, and delivering value to this world, and to other people in a very positive way.

Callan Harrington 36:23

Will, last question that I have for you is: if you can have a conversation with your younger self, age, totally up to you, what would that conversation be? And what advice would you give him?

Will Zell 36:35

I would give very tactical advice because I would not want to try to dissuade or change the current of pain that my younger self would be on in their journey. Because I feel like if I would go back, and I would try to give myself a bunch of advice to do this, instead of this, it would be an effort to try to avoid pain that has made me who I am today. That pain, and that suffering, those dark nights of the soul, are really what bring about the beauty in the creative process. And so my advice to my younger self would be a heck of a lot more tactical, like: take engineering classes, make sure you study physics well, learn Excel as fast as you can, have a great accountant and lawyer, and build relationships that last, right? They would be much more tactical in nature versus philosophical or avoidance. Do this instead of that. The pain, right, the suffering, if you look at the founder's journey, the business builder's journey, you're generally talking about emotional, and sometimes physical, from a stress perspective, and financial stress and pain. It's not physical in the context of there are actually real people who are suffering out there in very physical ways. It's, you know, if you go back to the explorer's journey, we're not drowning in the ocean when the ship actually sinks. But if you do look at it, in the context of the weight of that emotion, the weight of that psychological stress, it is very, very real. And I believe that great explorers are the ones that have so much respect for the ocean. Because when you're young, and you're getting out there, as a founder, starting your business, you feel like you can control it, right, and you feel like you can defeat it. And what you learn over time is that you can't, and you learn to go with the ocean. You learn to open your hands, to use instinct, but to try to connect with whatever situation you're in. And it could be one day, the most beautiful sight that you've ever seen with the most amazing sunset that you will remember for ages. And then the next day, it could be the greatest storm that you will ever experience in your life.

Callan Harrington 36:40

It's this delicate balance of having a long-term vision and being absolutely totally laser-focused on the present. Will, this has been excellent man.

Will Zell 37:36

I hope so. We got pretty deep.

Callan Harrington 38:46

This is good. That's what I wanted.

Will Zell 38:50

I had a day today of like, advising founders and diving in on stuff, so I don't know what mood I was when I walked in, but I felt this is therapeutic. So thank you. I love it. This was a total blast, man. I appreciate you coming on. My pleasure. Thanks, Callan.

Callan Harrington 39:30

I hope you enjoyed Will and I's conversation. I think having a shareholder mindset is critical to success in a startup. If you want to learn more about Will, you could find him on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you can find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.