Digital Creative Agency Foundings: "Up in New York, I helped found a digital creative agency a number of years ago called Jillain, and the second half of that run, it was about 12, 12, 13 years."

Disrupting Consumer Markets: "And so working with smart business founder owner operators who were finding all these cool market opportunities, from razors to sunglasses to healthcare to women's beauty products, it was a really fun time to be spin the bottle, looking at something and saying, hey, let's rethink this or reinvent it. Let's make it more personable, approachable, accessible."

Evolving Business Strategies During the Pandemic: "Then COVID hit in 2020 and everyone had to deal with all that they were dealing with personally and professionally. And for us, ourselves on the professional side, it evolved to opportunistically buying businesses that had founders who had built something great, but maybe weren't sure what to do for the next step, and didn't want to remortgage their house or take in outside capital."

Team Building in Startups: "fast forwarding to, like, building startups, it's like, you have to know your lane and don't get in other people's lanes as much, which I have struggled with sometimes when you're entrepreneurial."

Millennial Lifestyle Trends: "You know, people had a lot of debt from going to college, and they were in cities where you could earn more money and information, knowledge, kind of careers, but they were also expensive. And, you know, you're getting your own house, like, your, you know, boomer parents or maybe your Gen x older siblings a little bit later, and you're also, like, learning some of these life skills."

The Influence of Marie Kondo on Home Organization: "It just had Marie Kondo. And so that business open spaces picked up and was a more cost effective brand for us to manage and run versus equal parts, which cost us a lot more to acquire customers because we were competing versus a lot of other businesses and brands."

Building a Millennial-Centric Brand Portfolio: "But each brand is specific because that's how we know how to market and that's how we know how to sell. And that's really been our kind of thesis."

Unconventional Career Path: "I'm like borderline unhirable, you know, because it's like, where are you going to put me? I'm just crazy."

Valuing Craftsmanship and Problem-Solving in Business: "And I've also learned some parts where I'm not great at this thing, but I'm great at that, or I'm okay at this, but I want to go back to what I am world class, at which I think is being a craftsman and solving problems."

Venturing into Diverse Entrepreneurship: "Yeah, I'm trying to be pretty like category agnostic right now. I really am trying to challenge myself. Obviously I have a good network for consumer brands direct to consumer e commerce. I'm working on a few different software products, few different AI enabled or built on top of AI products. Um, a few different hospitality businesses that are using a mixture of tech, technology and like experience design, as well as just like buying or owning or managing physical properties. So it's pretty diverse, but they're all kind of in the zero to 10 to two phase."