From Startup Risks to Lasting Impact

In this episode…

Nic Cary interviews John and they discuss the lessons learned during his career journey including:

• The importance of identifying unmet needs and leveraging innovative solutions to address them.
• The value of building strong, aligned teams that share a common vision and purpose.
• The necessity of balancing profit with impact to create sustainable, long-term success.

Sponsor for this episode:

This episode is brought to you by Sky’s The Limit, one of the largest nonprofit programs for underrepresented young adult entrepreneurs in the US. Sky’s The Limit is a quick-growing digital platform that connects entrepreneurs with their peers, volunteer business mentors, training resources, and funding.

Our goal is to develop the social capital that founders need to chase their business dreams.

To learn more, please visit www.skysthelimit.org today.

Episode transcript

INTRO (00:04):

Welcome to The First Buck Podcast where we feature stories about entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Now let's get started with the show,

Nic Cary (00:22):

Hello and welcome to The First Buck Podcast, brought to you by skysthelimit.org. We feature stories about entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Today, we're joined by John Simon, an active entrepreneur, creator, and investor in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. He co-founded the Greenlight Fund and serves as the chairman of the board for the organization.

(00:43):
Greenlight Fund partners with local communities to match unmet needs for individuals and families navigating barriers to economic mobility, and innovative nonprofits that have a track record of success elsewhere. The national organization is scaling measurable impact in 13 sites across the country.

John is also a managing partner at Sigma Prime Ventures, where he focuses on software-based businesses and disruptive technology businesses, often getting involved in businesses at their formation or earliest stages.

Prior to founding the Greenlight Fund and joining Sigma Prime, John was a co-founder and managing director of General Catalyst Partners and founder, chairman, and CEO of UroMed Corporation. John is a graduate of Harvard University, earning a BA in history and science, and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and received his MA in politics, philosophy, and economics.

So we're extremely excited to have you on the podcast today, John. So much to discuss, but we have a little tradition around here—we gotta find out how you got started. How did you earn your first buck?

John Simon (01:41):
Not, you know, unbelievably, dramatically exciting. I mean, first of all, I just wanna say, Nic, it's a pleasure to be with you and honored to be with you and your listeners, and, you know, just really looking forward to the conversation. Thank you for having me.

First buck. Well, um, I played a lot of tennis when I was young—near tennis—and then went on to play tennis in college, in graduate school, and a little bit of semi-pro.

There was definitely no chance that I was going to be able to earn a living on the tour or anything like that, but so my first buck took advantage of that—teaching tennis. And obviously, I was a little bit of a small business person, running my own tennis lessons, giving tennis, teaching—a little mini company throughout high school and then beyond.

Even in my college years, that definitely provided not only my first buck but a few bucks to be able to spend traveling and doing things that I wanted.

Nic Cary (02:29):

All right, I love that. So, from slamming aces across the tennis court to helping the next generation pick up a racket and get going, tell us a little bit about how you navigated the next step in your career and maybe what were some of the pivotal moments, or how you invested in yourself that allowed you to sort of increase how you took risks or increased the scope of your responsibility?

John Simon (02:50):

Yeah. So I always had developed a little bit of a vision where what I wanted to do was be involved in creating things and building things from scratch that hopefully would make a difference to people, both in the for-profit and not-for-profit worlds, but with the good sense to think about, hey, let's do that in the for-profit world—create a bunch of value that would then give me the resources to invest in the nonprofit world.

And so, while I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to go about that, I started to see if I could learn a little bit about how people were starting companies. During college, I worked part-time for a startup biotech company while I was an undergraduate at Harvard.

That was my first opportunity to really see an entrepreneurial enterprise up close and personal—somebody who had licensed technology from a university setting and was trying to bring that into society to build a company around it to improve outcomes for a particular type of medical disease.

And so that was a wonderful experience. Based on that experience, I developed a little bit of a roadmap to see if maybe I could get a job in venture capital—not because I wanted to become a venture capitalist, but because if I got a job in venture capital helping partners make investments, it would basically be a mini MBA, as I thought about it.

(04:06):
Because I could see a whole bunch of people starting companies—some doing it really well, some not so well, and some doing it horribly—but basically learning by watching chefs in the kitchen. And then, maybe someday, I could start my own kitchen, to use an analogy.

So, after about three or four years in the venture business, at age 27, I probably wasn't ready, but I thought, let's give it a shot. I left my venture firm, licensed some technology that had the potential to improve outcomes in prostate cancer treatment, and created a company called UroMed around it.

And anyway, that's how I got going, really, in my entrepreneurial journey—first by getting my feet wet, then by watching and learning, and then, at a relatively young age, saying, okay, let me see if I can just go for it. I had earned a little bit of savings, so in my own mind, I could spend some of the money needed to incorporate and take an option on licensing the technology.

And get going. If I wasn't able to recruit a team, start to have success, and raise capital, I guessed I would have to get another job within a year. But I had enough savings to accommodate that if I lived in a very spartan way.

So, I guess that's the way I thought about the very beginnings of starting my entrepreneurial journey.

Nic Cary (05:35):
Got it.

Okay. Very cool. I love watching the transition from sort of the sporting world to going into school, then basically taking an opportunity to have a front-row seat at the forging of businesses. And I think, uh, being an associate in a venture firm obviously provides a huge amount of opportunity to study companies, study how they take risks, how they find product-market fit, and how they sell.

Those are foundational things that all business owners have to get pretty good at. And then, taking the leap of faith yourself into entrepreneurship, two feet first.

So, we earlier learned how you earned your first buck. You're someone that has given a huge amount back. Can you tell us a little bit about why you gave away your first buck and how you started thinking about efficiently and impactfully contributing back from your own earnings?

John Simon (06:22):
Yeah, I guess, you know, I was raised in a family—it was, you know, kind of a middle-class American family, you know, great family. My parents were great role models. My dad, in particular, was a physician and, um, carried a pager around with him. He was at the local community hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital.

He was the chief of radiology there. And I really saw, you know, his life was all about giving back and giving to others. And, um, you know, whenever we would be doing something, but somebody would need him because an X-ray needed to be taken or whatever, you know, he was on call—he'd go to the hospital, take care of people, and he never felt bothered by that.

That was what he was all about. And both my mom and dad were very active in giving to charitable causes and kind of maybe drilled into me at a young age that you had your religion, your family, your business, and your livelihood—the way you were going to earn revenue and savings, and so on.

But then there was this other component of how you would give back to the community and make a difference, and hopefully make the world a better place. You could do all of that through your family, your work, and your nonprofit, volunteer, or giving activities.

(07:33):
And so, I always kind of had this idea that there was a balanced life—that you don't want to go all-in on one thing to the point where you can't do other things. And so, creating a balanced life of impact was a mix of things. And so, you know, from the start, I started volunteering for things.

And how I kind of got started on really wanting to create things in the nonprofit world was that, when I was in college—while I was also working for the startup biotech company on the side—I started volunteering for the Special Olympics. And I was volunteering for the Special Olympics, tossing tennis balls and doing activities like that.

When I got to graduate school, which was Oxford in England, I wanted to continue that volunteering. And, um, there were no Special Olympics when I got to England in 1984. I couldn't believe it. I mean, it was something that was so important in people’s lives in the States, but yet there was nothing to volunteer for.

And so, I got this idea—why not contact a parents' group of kids that were dealing with Down syndrome and other kinds of, um, issues, and see if I could get ahold of someone running a support group or whatever, and say, "What if we start activities every Sunday?"

(08:53):
I could get a group of volunteers together, and we could do soccer—they called it football—or we could do tennis, or frisbee, or whatever. We could basically add something to the mix of the experience they were having with their families and schools, and become this third element that was important in their lives.

I contacted this parent I got in touch with, and she thought I was crazy. But we started something—we called it the Oxford Sports Group. And, uh, at first, 20 kids showed up with parents, and eventually, it was several hundred kids. Over time, we formalized it and called it KEEN, a registered UK charity.

Fast forward to today, and it serves thousands and thousands of kids a year in the UK—tens of thousands, actually—and has also spread to six cities in the United States. And that was because, you know, I got it started and then got a bunch of volunteers. But then successive generations of leadership took it over and built it, and built it, and built it.

And that was kind of my first experience—how, just by spending time and trying to create something that wasn't already there, you could build something that would make a huge difference in many people's lives.

(10:11):
That was also my first lesson in the fact that just because something great existed in one part of the world didn't mean it was going to exist in another part. And that you didn't have to be an unbelievable inventor to see, "Wow, here's something amazing that really makes a huge difference in people's lives."

Now, I'm living in a new geography, and it’s not here—what about creating that in my geography? And mechanically, without a lot of leap of faith or whatever, you could do massive amounts of good, but...

Nic Cary (10:45):
Because it's validated, right?

John Simon (10:47):
That wasn’t happening. And so, that started the first seed in my mind of what ultimately became Greenlight, which I co-founded and chair the board of, that you were referencing 20 years ago.

It is now operating in 13—soon to be 16—U.S. cities, with a 15-city waiting list, having done 60 things that we brought to cities that weren’t there but really needed to be there to make a difference, reaching close to a million children and families a year.

So the whole idea around Greenlight was to create this organization that would exist in many, many cities. And in every city, every year, we would basically look and say, "All right, what’s a real problem or metric around economic and social mobility? It’s a really bad metric, and it’s not moving, and it’s not going to move."

And then, can we find something that had moved that metric in six other cities and then Greenlight it in our city and make it work?

(11:43):
You can kind of see in that how the lessons from porting the Special Olympics from its American context to the UK in the form of KEEN—and just how meaningful it was to look at what was a gap or a rung missing on the ladder to opportunity—and then bring something that worked.

You can see how the lessons learned there have actualized themselves in what is now, I think, one of the most important poverty-fighting organizations in the U.S., headed to even greater scale over the next ten years.

And so, I would just say there was, first, the feeling that this had to be part of a good life—to try to make a difference as maximally as you could, number one. The willingness to create, number two.

And number three, starting with small lessons and then thinking about how those small lessons might possibly make sense to inspire you to create something much, much bigger and much more important, which is what we’ve done with the Greenlight Fund.

Of course, people can check it out at greenlightfund.org. And I know we’ll talk more about it, but I just wanted to try to answer your question about how it got started and share a little bit about the journey.

Nic Cary (13:00):
Well, thank you. There are so many pearls of wisdom in here. We have so many things in common on some of that stuff. I'm excited to dig in even more.

So, one of the things you brought up was this, like, importing and exporting of the best ideas. You plant seeds somewhere, you water them, you help them grow, and then you take those seeds and plant them in other places—whether that’s lessons you’ve learned about poverty reduction initiatives in one place and scaling those across the country. Fascinating and really important lessons there.

So, let's talk a little bit about maybe putting on the hat of the next generation of entrepreneurs out there. Many of our listeners are at the very earliest stages of thinking about how to do something in their community, whether in the for-profit, nonprofit, or somewhere in between that today.

And a lot of entrepreneurs out there think if they just had venture funding or could get that big loan from the bank, everything would be fine.

What advice would you have for early-stage entrepreneurs? What are some of the things they should think about first before they go?

Well, if I just had a check, I could solve all the problems.

John Simon (13:59):
Yeah, I would say, I mean, there are a few things. So first is knowing yourself, because all of us have strengths and weaknesses. And to know yourself is really helpful because if you think about, "What are my strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur?" Then you might think, "Okay, who could I surround myself with as mentors that could help me accentuate my strengths and help me deal with my weaknesses?"

And so, thinking about, you know, it takes a village to create something, even if it's a very small business and it’s going to be a solo company. So, thinking about, first of all, "Who are some mentors and advisors that I can get to coach and work with me?"

I can form a little bit of an advisory group, a kitchen cabinet, or a mentorship group. Those folks can often turn out to be investors, connectors, or help you find talent or whatever.

So, thinking about, "Okay, even though this is something I’m going to own 100%, I want to build something sustainable." But even so, thinking about, "How do I wrap some great people around me?"

So, that's kind of like the first thing. Then build a bit of a plan—what do I think I want to accomplish in the first year, second year, third year, fourth year?

(15:18):
So, you have one foot on the ground and one foot in the clouds in terms of where you're headed.

The next thing is, you know, people think about investment coming before customers or whatever, but I think it's really the other way around. You want to engage with customers and somehow, you know, prove demand.

Can you get pre-orders? Can you get people to commit? Can you have evidence of demand? And then, if you need that loan or friends-and-family money, it’s just going to be so much more attainable if you've got great people around you, you have a reasonable plan, and you have that customer pull or demand.

A lot of times, I know when I raised money for my company as a 27-year-old, what we did was find people we thought would be customers of our products if successfully developed.

I spent money on creating a little focus group and all these video clips showing what they thought about the concept, their willingness to use it, and to pay for it. Because I didn't necessarily think investors or people I was recruiting—like the head of R&D or the head of manufacturing—were going to totally believe a 27-year-old with some technology and a vision.

But if I could prove that the customer demand was there...

So I did all these video clips and showed them to potential investors and people I wanted to recruit to build confidence and get them involved. And ultimately, that made a big difference.

We raised about a million bucks or so, which, in those days, was a pretty good size.

Nic Cary (17:22):
That inflation is scary.

John Simon (17:24):
Yeah, exactly. Today, it would be like a drop in the bucket for a SAFE note or whatever, but at any rate. And ultimately, we then ended up raising like $60–$70 million before becoming a public company five years into the march and attaining close to a half-a-billion-dollar valuation.

But it all started with that first evidence of customer demand and getting those first people to take the leap, which wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Yep. So, if I summarized it, it would be: really, know thyself. Answer those questions about why you're doing this, what your motivations are. You talked about building that bench or having that cabinet of mentors and advisors who can give you advice, help you see your blind spots, and also help you understand where your strengths are.

And then engaging with customers—we have this that fits perfectly. It's something we always try to reinforce with our entrepreneurs: your customers are your best teachers.

When you can turn your customers into potential investors, advocates, and your biggest fans, that kind of evidence is the kind of thing you should follow as a business leader and founder.

Nic Cary (18:29):
So that makes a lot of sense. I wanted to ask you a question, since you've had such an extraordinary career and you recognize the importance of having that bench around you—of people that can be supportive, who aren't always necessarily employees or colleagues.

Who was maybe one of the most important mentors for you, John? And, like, if you've had more than one, happily speak to those. But, like, talk to us a little bit about that person who gave you confidence early on or helped you—or maybe gave you feedback that was tough to hear but needed.

Because I think many people are quite sensitive to getting feedback today. But feedback is also a huge learning opportunity. And if you can treat it as a way to self-improve, it's a great way to get through the hard stuff that you don't always want to deal with.

So tell us a little bit about that.

John Simon (19:11):
I mean, I've had so many, and I think, um, you know, it's important to have many because you're going to build your own authentic self and your own authentic leadership, and that's going to be uniquely you. And so, if you sort of model too much off of one person, you know, I don't know—that's probably not the best dynamic.

So I could pick so many different people that have been and continue to be mentors in various ways at various stages of my life. But just to try to be responsive to your question, there was this unbelievable fellow by the name of Bob Swanson.

If you kind of Google him, he was the founder of Genentech, which was a legendary biotechnology company, and, um, genetic engineering—the whole field of genetic engineering.

This was in the early eighties, and he built a great company. It ultimately was bought by Hoffman-La Roche, and for many billions of dollars—I don't know, maybe it had a $10 billion market cap or something.

Bob really envisioned and created this with a team of scientists—an amazing guy.

(20:21):
As he got more and more successful in later life, he started to give back in various ways. He joined the board of MIT, which is where he had gone to undergraduate school. And, uh, while he was based in the Bay Area, he would fly to Boston once a quarter for MIT board meetings.

And somehow, somebody introduced him to me. He kind of resonated with the fact that he had started his own company at 27, and I was starting my own company at 27. He took a little bit of a liking to me, the project, and the world-changing nature of it.

He decided that he was going to make an investment in UroMed, and every time he came to Boston, he would reach out to see if we could have dinner, which we did for years and years.

I was able to get his coaching on how to build and grow a team, how to think about balance in my life once we became a public company, how to deal with the pressures of being a public company and quarterly earnings, how to live a full life, and how to deal with partnerships.

We had partnerships with Johnson & Johnson in Asia, and then with Astra in Scandinavia, etc., and he taught me how to sort of navigate all that.

He was just unbelievable, took the time to do that, and was really inspiring. I learned a lot from him. Unfortunately, his life was cut all too short by brain cancer, and he died—I think he was probably in his fifties or late fifties—which was really a heartbreak because of how much more he had to give and do.

Even that taught me a lesson: time is precious, and you need to get going on doing stuff now.

Nic Cary (22:04):
Yeah, we only pass through this way but once.

John Simon (22:06):
Yeah, exactly. So, no, there's just an example of one of many people who were mentors and coaches. And I found in listening to him, um, maybe 90% of the stuff he recommended really resonated with me, and another 10% was like, well, you know, that's your style, but that's not really going to be mine.

But that was a good touchpoint. And so, I think the message is: have several mentors, learn as much as you possibly can from them, soak that up, and get them to help you. Learn from them.

And it's two-way, because they feel great by giving back and helping you, but also build your own model for the way you want to be.

Nic Cary (22:45):
Love that. Thank you for sharing that story. So, Bob Swanson is still leaving an impact in the memory of those who remember him well.

You've hired a lot of people in your career, and you just spoke a little bit about partnership. There are a lot of different kinds of partnerships—founding teams, business partnerships, personal partnerships, and then people that you work with.

And I'd be interested to hear how you think about what it takes to build a good team and even recruiting or hiring your first person.

Maybe some lessons that you have that you could share would be helpful to hear.

John Simon (23:17):
Yeah, I mean, building a team is really important because you can't make anything happen by yourself, and anything great requires a significant team. So Greenlight began with just two people, and now we're close to a 70-person team with two or three people leading efforts in every city that we're in, and then a national team of, you know, 20-plus people.

And nothing happens without, uh, unbelievable people that are unbelievably committed to the cause, that share a common value system and share a common approach and vision, and all get behind something and throw themselves into it and make it happen. So building a team is critical.

I think the first thing about building a team is being really clear about where you're headed as an organization, because obviously, if you're not clear, you might attract the wrong people, or you might attract people that think you were headed in direction X.

But because you weren't clear and you really headed in direction Y, they become unhappy. And then, like, well, geez, I thought you were headed X. Now you're headed Y. So I guess this isn't really for me, and I'm leaving.

So be really clear about the culture, the norms, the mission, the value, the path as best you can.

Knowing that things always have to be tweaked along the way. And that clarity is going to help you attract the right people, because the clearer you are about what it means to be X, the clearer the people that are magnetized by X will come and join.

(24:54):
So I think it's kind of like my know yourself around an entrepreneur, know where. Know where you're headed and what kind of people you want to attract and really broadcast that.

Like, you don't want to try to attract somebody that might not be attracted to that, but you think once they've worked here for three, six months, they're going to love it, you know.

No, be, like, really clear so that they're opting in.

Right.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is, you know, be really clear about the cultural norms, like the work style, the work hours, um, the emphasis on mission and the trajectory.

If you're a small company and you're attracting somebody that really wants to be part of a larger company, well, they might have to be.

Hey, we're not going to be a larger company for, like, seven years, so you have to be really comfortable with the size.

And just, I think I. And taking time to do it, you know, um, multiple interviews, multiple references, two-way references, so that you can do references on them and they can do references on you and your team if they're going to join it, so that you're really, um, getting people that are committed.

The biggest problem is you're attracting people that don't share a vision, and then there's just too much turnover.

Nic Cary (26:16):

Yep. All right, so be extremely clear. Be very, very clear on especially the culture and norms. And then, um, I think the last thing was, uh, you know, patience with the process so that you're absolutely getting consent from all sides, and it's really everyone going in with eyes wide open.

So thank you for sharing those lessons.

Okay, I think we've got time for one more question, so I thought we'd maybe wrap it up, and then we can do a quick summary.

Taking the steps to pursue entrepreneurship can feel really scary or intimidating, especially if you didn't grow up in a family that has, um, business owners in it, or you don't have any role models immediately around you.

So maybe what tips can you give to our listeners to think about how to manage some of the stress or some of the risk that comes with the earliest part of, uh, taking that leap of faith and getting going with it?

John Simon (27:05):

I think the first is, uh, having a support system around you a little bit so that you have, you know, whether it's friends and family and ideally, you know, people that are supportive, uh, just emotionally and that you can talk to and that you can, you know, uh, confide in and things like that. That helps because it is.

It is stressful, it is lonely. If you're running an organization, um, I know at UroMed, as we grew to about a 400-person company, it's kind of like the bigger we got, the more lonely I got, because, you know, everybody was plugging into you for leadership and energy and opportunity, and you didn't really want to confide with somebody on your management team, just like they weren't necessarily going to confide in you.

And so, but you had to have that little support group—of, in my case, it was my wife and my friends and people that you could talk to on a confidential basis—that would sort of support you. So I think that's important, number one.

Number two is just to keep balance in your life.

So even though starting a company, I mean, I think for me, it was an 80- or 90-hours-a-week thing or whatever. I mean, it was like you were all in on it. I still had the balance of family and friends, and I still tried to work out once a day or play tennis once a day or whatever, and still tried to live a little bit of a balanced life.

That gave me perspective. I think that's important.

And then the other thing—just knowing that, well, you're going to be committed to succeeding and you're going to do everything you can—but it's okay to fail.

You know, like many of the best entrepreneurs in U.S. history, you know, had serial failures before successes.

(28:42):
Famously, I forget whether it was his first company, two companies, or three companies that didn't work for Jack Dorsey. Uh, and then, you know, here he was having built multiple unbelievable companies.

And so, you know, this is one of the beauties of America and Silicon Valley.

And just in terms of a culture setting, that it's okay to try something and fail.

As long as you try your hardest and everybody's trying their hardest and you're giving it your all and, you know, um, we're not talking fraud like Elizabeth Holmes or whatever, but, you know, it's okay to fail.

And then, because it's, then it's all, how do you learn from that and get back up and then do something else? Whether that's as an entrepreneur, or you say, "You know what? That was too much risk for me. I want to join another entrepreneurial team that's successful and be part of that and get that success.

And then maybe ten years from now, I'll be ready to take another risk or whatever." But to try and fail is okay. It's then what you do with that to turn it into inspiration for better impact and better results in the future—that's really the key.

And so, that's the safety net beneath you.

It's not a disaster to fail. I mean, investors, when they're investing in things, everybody wants everything to be successful. But, uh, even the best investors in the world—from a venture capital perspective, which is just a small piece of the capital markets—friends and family money and loans, as you said, are really a key component of small business generation.

(30:18):
Or can you get customers to front pay or whatever? These are all more typical ways of financing. Venture capital is just a piece of it.

But even the best venture capitalists, with all the advantages, probably, if they're investing in early-stage companies, about 30% of the companies just really don't work out anywhere close to what you hoped.

Another 30% work out okay, another 40% work out unbelievably well. And that's what generates these venture returns.

But think about it—they're failing 30% to 60% of the time. The best investors in the world, they have to accept it.

Roger Federer, just related, gave this really cool commencement address where he talked about maybe being the best player ever.

And if you look back at all his matches, he won like 56% of his points or something. I love that. Almost every other point, he was experiencing failure.

And of course, there were all the matches that he lost and so on and so forth.

In the big picture of the economy, trial and error is what generates all this economic advance in the U.S., which doesn't happen as much in other countries.

I think that's something precious and something to be valued.

Nic Cary (31:31):

Yeah, yeah. So, in summary, I think entrepreneurs that are out there, um, there's an entrepreneur, I think, in almost everybody. If you develop your support system, if you keep a bit of balance in your life, focus on listening to those customers early, test the idea, and then accept that there will be some setbacks, um, and failures may come.

And I think there's a principle that doctors adhere to, which is always come at everything from a "do no harm" principle, and that actually exists in the business world too. Do no harm to your customers, to your stakeholders, your shareholders. Things may not work out, but if you give it your all and you work hard on it, um, you can use lessons to basically, uh, take those into the next stages of your career in life.

And so, John, thank you so much for all your wisdom today. I feel like we've gone five sets and back and forth. That commencement address by Roger was so good, you know—to be the best player in the world and just barely winning more points, you know, over the whole history of his career, allowed, uh, him to do that.

And then, you know, basically moving on from each one like you're playing it zero-zero every single time was an important lesson. I think there was, you know, Michael Jordan talks about all the shots that he was given an opportunity to win the game on and how many of those he missed.

But, you know, he was given that ball again the next time, and he did win some championships.

So, uh, thank you again. You know, I think from the early days of being a tennis coach to still providing so much of your time and your talents, especially through the Greenlight organization, you’ve built something that's now focused on helping alleviate poverty across America and hopefully taking those lessons around the world.

We’re very, very grateful for your time. And a big shout-out to your mentor, Bob. It was really touching to hear about that. So thank you very much.

John Simon (33:12):

Thank you, Nic. Honored to be part of it.

Nic Cary (33:15):
All right, great. At skysthelimit.org, we connect underrepresented entrepreneurs with volunteer business professionals for free, one-on-one mentoring.

We also provide professional guides to all of our members and monthly funding opportunities, all for free.

So, if you enjoyed what you listened to today, please subscribe and share this podcast.

Cheers.

OUTRO (33:35):

Thanks for listening to The First Buck Podcast. Don't forget to join the community of underrepresented entrepreneurs and their supporters by signing up at skysthelimit.org. Click subscribe and we'll see you next time.