YouSaid · the spoken record

David Heacock

lines on the record: 137
first: 2025-02-18
most recent: 2025-02-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“When I'm making a decision or deciding to go into something, am I going to regret not trying it? And so that's why this personal brand thing I was private for so long and I really was scared of going out and being so public and especially in the way that I am now or to tell the world I'm going to do something so big. This really scared me but ultimately I know that if I didn't do it on my deathbed, I would say to myself, oh, I wonder only if and that is just not acceptable to me.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does success look like for you on your deathbed? Is to not have any regrets of not doing something that I knew I should have done or not have tried something where I'm saying only if that is the thing that I think about that every day.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thinking of, oh, I need to cut my expenses and live. To me, the answer isn't living a lower lifestyle in those cases. The answer is going out and figuring out a way to add value to be able to deserve that lifestyle. And that's not great advice for everybody. I mean, everybody's different, but that's just how I'm built and how I have to frame it and how I have to think about it.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I look at it and these things add up so much, and you're like, how do regular people do this? It's easy for that to happen. And the more successful you are, ironically, the more people take advantage of you. And it's in subtle ways, but it's definitely one of those things that happens. So I understand how things creep up. But I come at all of these things from a place of abundance. And I have the confidence to go out that I know I can go out and build what I've got to build. And I earn more than I spend and, you know, and, you know, I really do that through the business and compounding it. So I'm certainly fortunate. But I think the way that you ultimately combat it is to build the skills to be undeniable. And then you have the confidence that you can go out and earn what you want. I mean, I just am such, I'm so adverse to.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Build that lifestyle again, so to speak. And so most of the people that I've seen that have been impacted have come from like the finance world that is now declining as a share of GDP. And so it's just contracting. There's not as much money as there was before. And then a lot of those people get to a point where then they're not employable at the same level, but they still have that same lifestyle. And even if they have a decent amount of assets, then ironically taking less risk with them because they're afraid of losing it, which creates this whole negative kind of spiral with that. So that's what I have seen. I think it's easy to have lifestyle creep. I mean, like I look at my I always talk to my wife. It's like, you know, when I travel or go out, it's mostly work related. So like when I look at our personal expenses, like my wife is not a big spender and I'm very thankful for that.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, you know, the examples that I've seen come back to something we spoke about earlier in the conversation. But, you know, when you're relying on other people or a paycheck or one income stream to pay your bills, and then it may be like if you're working in finance and you're making a few million dollars a year, then your lifestyle creeps up to that. And then you wake up one day and maybe you're not as marketable as you were before and you don't have any other skills and you don't have the muscle of building those new skills. And then you're in trouble. And I know a number of people that have lived that because it's easy to think, oh, this is going to go on forever and then it inevitably doesn't. And even if you have a lot of money, it goes back to that scarcity mindset because you're so afraid of losing it, you can't spend it, you can't invest it, you can't take the risk that you need in order to be able to go out and build.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is really a big driver for me. And I know that if I just gave up now and sold to a private equity company or took a big check from somebody and then just kind of went to the”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mission. I mean, as I told you, I had a bit of a crisis of self. I wanted to know that question myself, right? And for me, I like to think about what am I going to be thinking about on my deathbed. And I know for me the things I will regret are things that I did not try or that I knew I could have done or thought I could have done if only I put in more effort or things that I didn't do because I was fearful. Those are the things that I'm going to regret. It's not going to be the things that the times where I make a mistake. And I know that I am uniquely gifted in a number of ways. And I feel a tremendous responsibility to those people I touch and the people around me to have a positive impact. And that sounds corny to say, but it's.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Works for you is going to look very different than works for me. And that's what's beautiful about it. But if I try to be you or you tried to be me, we would both be miserable even if we were financially successful, right? At least that's my belief. And I think that that self-awareness of knowing like really who are you and like what do you, but what really gets you going and what do you really need out of life to have a fulfilled life is the biggest cheat code of all and I think is the thing that most people don't spend any time actually thinking about.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't want to sound like a broken record, but ultimately really self awareness and knowing what you need out of life is a huge cheat code. I think a lot of people are trying to live somebody else's life. And I think, and then wondering why they're unhappy. And it's because they're trying to live somebody else's life. And that's what's so dangerous about the modern influencer culture because it's so easy to want to live somebody else's life. We all fall into it. Charlie Munger, probably my greatest virtual mentor has a saying that the thing that drives the world isn't greed, it's envy. It's envy. Envy is the real problem because people always want what somebody else has. And I think that it's very easy for us to fall into that trap, but that ultimately leads to misery because”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a lot of things I don't get to do that other people may do. I don't get to play tennis and I enjoy playing tennis or I don't golf. And friendships have probably suffered in that I don't have friends I hang out with every weekend and that kind of stuff. I mean, those are the things that are the cost of that, but I have such a fulfilling life with my family and my business. And so I find real purpose in my work. And I have a family that supports me completely and understands and was thankful for that. But I also get to spend a lot of time with them. I mean, more than, you know, I think people might think. And I think I spend more time with my kids and a lot of people that work way less probably. Prioritize that is important to me.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot, but I'm at home for 630 for dinner almost every night when I travel, I now have a plane and I go all over the country, but I do my best to minimize myself to one night gone a week worst case, I'm gone two nights. And the rest of the time I'm at home by 6.30 and I see them in the morning before they go off to school. You know, I have a great relationship with them. And I think that, you know, people use it as an excuse oftentimes to say, oh, I need balance or I can't have it all or can't be above. I don't think you can have it all. But it's like, you know, there's so much time in the day. And you just have to prioritize the things that are important to you. And for me, it's my business and my family.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was incredibly lucky. I have great parents and I actually married my high school sweetheart. We've been together since we were 17 years old. Actually, she was 16. I was 17. And we've been together that whole time and 24 years now, I guess. And I got three young children. I have a great relationship with them. And, you know, my wife understands who I am at a deep level and never would try to change me. And she trusts me completely. And so I've been very fortunate for that. And I think that having a stable good partner is a cheat code in life. And I really prioritize it. work really hard and I travel”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That gets you out of bed every day, gets me out of bed every day. And I think that that's how human beings are wired. And the most miserable people I know are the people that don't have any purpose.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rich guy that spent all of his time at the beach and on the yacht all day long. I knew I would be miserable in that or with the foundation even that I just pretended to give a little bit of money away. So I had something to do. I just knew that for me, I would only find misery in that. And so that's what ultimately led to me, you know, creating my mission of building the world's leading indoor air quality company because that's something I know I can work home for the rest of my life and be excited about and be proud about and hopefully rally people around me to work on and achieve that together. And that's a purpose. That's my purpose. And I would encourage anyone to go out and find their own unique purpose. It doesn't need to be that or it doesn't need to be as big. It can be way bigger. It can be anything that you want. But that's the driver, that's the fuel.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's something that ultimately can allow you to have fulfillment. And it's just how we're wired. And that's why, and it's something I don't think we talk enough about, because we all focus on the material. And the material stuff is important. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I think material stuff is very important, but that's not enough. Just take a little step back about it. About two years ago, and really when I started working with Dr. Gerner, I was having a little bit of a crisis of self in that, you know, what do I want out of life? I could sell the business and have more money than I could ever spend or my children could ever spend. I would have been 40 years old or just about to turn 40, could have hundreds.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Important factor in anybody's life, but that's not enough to solve people's problems or to give them fulfillment most importantly. There's so many people oftentimes that were given money that are actually miserable. And I've seen that so many times in my life and I'm so tried to avoid that so much because I just see people that have so much money that are so miserable because they don't have any fulfillment. They have no reason actually for existing or waking up every day and they know that deep down like when you're in that situation, you know it that you don't you don't have a purpose in life is you don't you don't have a reason to to really wake up and exist every day and I think that when that's you're miserable and you know but when you when you know like hey I'm here I'm working on this it can be the most inane problem but like if you have if you have a reason for existing on a purpose then”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that we as human beings need to have a purpose in life and have a reason to wake up every day. And I've seen that both at high level executive type people all the way down to people that work on manufacturing lines that really take their job seriously and really find meaning and fulfillment and working for a company that has a mission and a purpose. And I think that the X factor that gets people excited to come to work and to go the extra mile any given day. But I just think it's how we're wired. I mean, I think that we're not wired to get money. I mean, I think that money is something that's important for everyone and obviously is.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be able to sell it to the next person up. I mean, like, I'm not going to say that's all private equity, but that's a lot of private equity. And the people that are working for them are miserable oftentimes. And that's why I consider myself anti-private equity.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Private equity companies, which means they just went out and raised private capital to go and run these playbooks that don't have the operational expertise that they need to really run these businesses well. And I think that it creates a lot of problems both for them and for the employees of the companies that they hire. And I can tell you almost every major person that I've hired at management level has come from a company that was owned by a private equity company and they absolutely hated it and they were looking for, you know, a different path. I mean, when I interview for CFOs or for any other positions, most of what we see are people that are working for a private equity-based company that are miserable because there really is no clear vision, no clear direction. They're just looking to optimize to financial engineer.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More specifically, there are certainly private equity companies that do this type of thing well in all types of spaces. The ones that do it well understand the business that they're in really well and do build the operations that give you economies of scale for the smaller entities that they're running. So like if you can consolidate ERP system that you're using across all your companies so you have one expert that understands service Titan or whatever that might be or you can consolidate your recruiting practices and really have the playbooks down for all of those things there are some private equity companies that are great operators that are able to do that and can go out and roll these things up very well you know but I think that there are a lot of kind of medium and smaller particularly quote unquote primary”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On small scale. And all I can tell you is that I have a lot of resources and have done, and I think I'm a pretty established and good entrepreneur. And my first acquisition, I lost four and a half million dollars. And that was on a three and a half million dollar purchase price. So we managed to lose more than we pay for the business in trying to fix it. And so there are risks involved in doing this stuff. the operational risk are huge. And so I'm quite skeptical as to, especially on a small scale, people's ability to do it well. It doesn't mean you can't. I mean, I think there's huge opportunity if you can, but I think it's a lot more difficult than most people are articulating. And I think it's maybe because they don't really understand the risk that are associated with these. But to answer your question, more.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I kind of position myself as the opposite of private equity in that, and I went like anybody that may partner with me or partner with us to know that and to believe that because I believe in adding long-term value and I have no intention to sell my businesses. And I think there's a world in which we may go public one day way down the road. But other than that, I'm in it for the long haul and I don't have any intention to buy it and flip it, which is what the mindset of so many of these private equity firms have. And so I just think that's first thing that's important to know. I think that the smaller HVAC service base or any service base is incredibly tough. And it's a lot tougher than, I mean, there are a lot of, you know, big social media people currently that are big proponents of that type of a model than doing it.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, it's really for any business, it would be the same. It's like, how am I going to deliver a product or service consistently? So having the infrastructure to do that and hiring experts, in this case, now I'm far enough along I can really hire experts to help me to build that, make sure that we're operating in the most efficient way possible, offering the best service possible, doing that consistently, doing that repeatedly repeatedly. So that's one. And the second, and arguably the trickiest, although they're both tricky, is the marketing and branding, right? And, you know, customer acquisition costs in the HVAC service base is very high. I mean, you may be paying $500 for a new customer.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doesn't work. And, you know, so now I'm really going through the process of building out that operational playbook that can scale and then I'm going to hopefully scale that by acquisition and by partnering with businesses to do it quickly.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And partnering with other HVAC businesses that maybe are struggling or are struggling to grow or maybe are working in a niche market and want to be a part of something bigger, I want to bring the brand and the kind of operational playbook and expertise to partner with them, potentially maybe buy a majority stake and partner with them to really grow that business kind of a model is what I ultimately intend to do with my personal brand and why I'm starting to be public about it. And the difference between like when I bought that first HVAC business that failed is I had not built my own operational playbook yet that I was comfortable with going out and doing at scale. I hadn't really done the work to deserve that yet. I was just trying to buy somebody else's and for me at least that just”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Want to interact with their service people is very different than how the older generation did. Generally now people do not want to haggle on price. They want transparent pricing. They don't want opaque pricing. Lots of factors like that that the HVAC service business is actually operates in kind of an old school way. And I think that there's room for national brand that has the trust and the reputation backing behind it and that's something that the younger generations are actually looking for that does not currently exist. And we're in a unique position to build that. But I'd be remiss not to say that part of the reason I'm going so public with my personal brand is I actually think the way I'm going to be able to execute against that is ironically ultimately by”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have sold to somewhere around 8 million unique residences across the country. All those customers by definition have, and it's HVAC unit that needs to be serviced. So I call the air filter our Trojan horse into somebody's home. And so I think when somebody's riding my biography in 30 years, I hope that that's what they're talking about is like that was the start of this much bigger indoor air quality company that was ultimately built because that air filter was the Trojan horse that got us that customer's relationship. So we already have a relationship with customers and like the customer acquisition cost in the brand is actually the hardest thing to build from scratch. And so like we already have that as a starting point. But my belief is that the way that millennials in young”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So my intention is to build a nationwide HVAC service business, which in the U.S. does not currently exist. And so my benchmark for that is could I, if I wanted to run a Super Bowl ad and have it be effective because it touches everybody that would be watching it, right? That's what a nationwide HVAC service business is. And right now, that's a very fragmented market. There are lots of mom and pop type businesses that have been around for a long time to serve specific geographic areas. But there's no nationwide HVAC service business, at least that I'm aware of, that there's been a lot of private equity interest in it because, as you noted, that there are good margins in that business. And so the private equity players end up rolling up businesses of different brands, but they can't consolidate them under one brand because they would lose all that goodwill or that brand equity, right? I'm in a unique position in that we.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I should have been a lot more careful, even though I knew it was consistent with my longer term vision. I rushed into it. And that basically, we ended up having to shut down that business and it cost us a total of four and a half million dollars. And now I've taken the learning from that and now doing it right and we're building out filter by HVAC solutions where we operate now in South Florida and we intend to make take that nationwide. But I'm doing it on my own terms and really methodically building out our systems and processes, customer acquisition funnels, all of those types of things that I think are really important to be able to scale it. And so I really took a big step back to get it right. This time around. Talk to me.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And yeah, well, they, I mean, a typical HVAC service business operates at about a 15 to 20% net margin is what you'd find most good HVAC services operate at. The business we bought was different than the business that was represented. But I did that with a partner who still works with me today and he's the guy that runs our HVAC solutions business. But I realized that we did that too quickly. Again, it was an arrogant decision that as I have this belief that any business problem is solvable. And I still stand by that very clearly. But I was not as close to that specific transaction as I probably should have been. And, you know, going into a new industry as I was more or less with that.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's different now, and we can talk about what that is, it's a big part of what I intend to do in the future. But long story short, we bought this business and when we started operating, it became clear to us that it was not the business that we were sold.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another Well, we actually did a video about it, but I effectively in 2021 with a partner from Goldman bought an HVAC service business in Hollywood, Florida, which is outside of Miami.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, a lot more, and opportunity cost, in my opinion. I mean, that's why I remind myself number one focus, because that's just an example. And I have others where I got off track a little bit and I convinced myself that it was consistent with what I was doing because you're all. Yourself always. And I convinced myself, fool myself into thinking it was a good idea.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mistake on my side. But the money is one thing. The biggest mistake was the lack of focus or the energy that it took and distraction away from the core business, both for me and for people around me that helping me to manage it.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was an example where the freight business is very cyclical, and I knew that going in. It wasn't like I knew it. I decided I was smart enough to be able to mitigate it, which is wrong. But it's very cyclical and you saw freight rates start to come down pretty quickly in 2022. At the end of 2022 and really into 2023, but even when they were higher, the managing of that business was both a distraction because that's a lot of people to manage. We did not have the right infrastructure to manage it and the right teams to manage it. I really bit off more than we as a company could chew while still we're still growing our business at a really rapid rate, right? And I'm trying to do this aside as an aside. And so ultimately I liquidated all of those trucks at the end of 2023, all in that probably was three or four million.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably 60 trailers to go along with it. So I don't do things in a small way or I don't make small mistakes. If I make them, I make them big. So, you know, it's probably six or seven million dollars worth of equipment, more or less, in that neighborhood. And we operated them. And never once did we operate them profitably. Even in the beginning, like the...”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, wow. And it actually still exists currently this year. You can only do 60% with Trump back in office. My guess is it'll go back up to 100%. But it's something that you don't see talked about a lot. But like if I bought a million dollars of trucks, I could effectively borrow a million dollars from a bank because they love to finance against trucks. And you could also, you know, if you had a million dollars of income, you could then take that income effectively to zero and pay zero income tax. That's how accelerated depreciation works. So that's another part of the reason I got sucked into this whole thing. But I thought, oh, if I can do this and operate a freight business, then I found. found a cheat code here so that was kind of the origin for me getting into it and between 2021 and 20 sorry 2020 and 2021 i bought 50 tractor trailers so i bought 50 trucks and actually”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could actually give you a couple of other examples too. But freight, long story short, in COVID, sorry, in 2020, freight became very hard to source and it was very expensive because there was just so much demand to move this stuff. And again, a bit hubristic, I would argue if I was looking back at it, I thought, well, you know, I'm so good at this business thing, right? How hard could running a freight business be? And I have a lot of demand for freight, so I can just do my own freight and then sell the excess to other people. And also in US tax code, there's a bit of an aside. There is a section that basically allows for accelerated appreciation. And what that means is that if you bought a million dollars of equipment like trucks, then you could write off that million dollars against your taxes. In that year.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Confidence as you build. And I'm certainly more confident than I was a decade ago, and I think decade ago I was more confident than I was a decade before that, but it's all about building the momentum towards that.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To that, I think it's important when people get money that they maybe didn't deserve or they didn't earn, then they're forever living in a scarcity mindset because they're afraid of losing it. Because if you have something that you covet, that you have no way of getting back if you lose it, then you have to hold on to it so tight. And that is not conducive to living happy life or accomplishing big things. You need to have, in my opinion, an expansive mindset. And the way you can build that expansive mindset is to have the confidence that you can go out and build something or get that money. Again, you're not afraid of losing it because you know you're going to be able to go out and make it happen again. And that's really the mindset that it takes to do something big, I think. And, you know, that just comes from building the confidence and that muscle over time that you get more and more.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On other people to pay you or validate you that you never really get the confidence that you can build as an entrepreneur when you're kind of out there making things happen on your own. And I think that for me at least that's been super important. And it's part of the reason why I wanted to leave Goldman when I did is I wanted to go out and build my own life. And I knew that I would find freedom in that. As I sit here today, it's like if I lost everything tomorrow, I have the confidence that I have the skills and the knowledge and the ability to go out and do something else that's big. And that is where I have found real freedom and where I think real freedom lies. And that's why I always push back so much on people that think that money in and of itself gives freedom. I've seen so many examples where it's actually quite the opposite. And correlation.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People that are doers, and then there are people that just let life happen to them, I guess. And I think that because I've been able to over time build more and more skills, more and more resources, or like, you know, just compound things positively that you get more and more confidence as time goes on. And that comes from experimenting and going down rabbit holes and that kind of stuff. And I think that that lends itself ultimately to confidence. I mean, you know, I see so many people, so many friends even from my finance days that, you know, you look at and make, they made a lot of money on a relative basis. And some of them still make a lot of money, but don't have the confidence. And I think it's because when you're working for somebody else or relying on.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The more you know how things work, the more confident you become that you're able to kind of turn the system in your favor, I guess. So I think that there's a lot of truth in that. I mean, I definitely have proven that to myself time and time again. I think that there are”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of it is, you're born with it probably, if I'm honest. I mean, I don't know the alternative. I'm just uniquely determined in a lot of ways. And I see that. And that's why I always hate giving advice to people because I know what works for me is different than what would work for somebody else. And what I want is very different than what somebody else might want. I think I was blessed with a lot of unique skills that allow me to do what I do. And I don't think that most people would be happy in the living the life that I've chosen to lead. And I think that people need to have self-awareness around that. But, you know, I had two loving, wonderful parents that, you know, I think were very helpful for that. And so, you know, they definitely helped to instill that in me. And I think that, you know, without, I'd be remiss if I didn't.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After that, things started really coming together. But that was two and a half years into my entrepreneurial journey. And I would not have had the financial or quite frankly mental staying power to continue to do it if I had not been able to find that solution. But it's also very formative for me in that ever since then I've been hit with a lot of problems. Some of them seemingly bigger than that. And that's just life. And that's certainly life in business. But I realized as I've gotten older that I've built the muscle of dealing with those problems and actually almost thriving in those situations because I get hit with something that maybe it's always annoying, but you say, but I have the confidence that I'm going to go and figure out a solution to it. And that's definitely one of my superpowers. And I think that you have to embrace.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Woke up, got trained on that laminator all day that Friday, then drove through the night back to Alabama, and early Saturday morning trained the team on that hot glue laminator, and that solved all of our laminating problems. And if they had not had that piece of machinery in stock, I do not know that I would have been able to continue manufacturing air filters because that was my breaking point and I really didn't know how to solve it. I ultimately found that solution and went and figured it out. And actually, you know, you won't be able to see it here, but I actually have a scar on my finger where I almost cut off my finger on that machine when I was training them as I made a mistake. And I literally almost cut off my finger that Saturday morning when I got back. So I have this scar to remind myself of that experience. But that was really the turning point for us because”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where I'm able to find a machine that was built to order. But for some reason, they had one on the floor. And I spent like $55,000 probably close to the last 55 grand I had to buy that hot glue laminator. I drove up on a, I rented a 20-foot Pinsky truck in Annison, Alabama. I drove to New Albany, Indiana, got there about two o'clock in the morning.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was not drying in the way it was supposed to be. There was so much water in the air. And so we were making all of these components or all of this raw material that's supposed to feed our whole manufacturing process. And the glue, the roles were ultimately getting stuck to each other because it hadn't dried properly and it became unusable. And so we were wasting about half of our raw material any given day, which was extraordinarily expensive and also was keeping us from being able to manufacture the product that we needed for our customers. And I was panicking because I didn't know how to solve this problem. What am I supposed to do differently? And I started calling around like desperately and found a company in Indiana that had what's called a hot glue version of this laminator where you use hot glue rather than cold glue to do it, which I did not even know existed. And by some act of God, they had one on the floor that I've never had that happen since.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I told this story a few times, and I'll give you the short version because it's a bit tricky to articulate. But I had been working on manufacturing air filters for about three years, maybe two and a half years. And there's a part of the manufacturing process, which is the beginning where you basically laminate or put glue onto like this chicken wire that goes onto the media to give it the media the rigidity and the air filter. So it's called the laminator. And when I bought the initial machines, I bought what's called a cold glue laminator, which means like Elmer's glue type consistency that's, you know, goes on and then it dries. And it's supposed to dry before it gets rolled up into this roll that then goes into the next part of the manufacturing process. Well, there was a May in Alabama when it was super humid and it was super humid in our manufacturing facility and the glue was not drying.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source