TRANSCRIPT
Matt VO
Welcome back to Sound-Up Governance. This is Matt Fullbrook. And honestly, I continue to be kind of stunned by the brilliance of the people who are just, you know, around...everywhere, like one of my oldest friends in the world Sander Trestain. The headline here is that once upon a time Sander moved to the United Arab Emirates with two of his college friends to start with turned out to be a hugely successful solar energy company called Enviromena Power Systems. Sander was the COO. This episode is mostly about that and the ups and downs of entrepreneurship in general, not to mention with friends and in a super different part of the world. But before we get there...
Matt
Maybe we can both take a stab at this. How did we meet?
Sander Trestain
What is your obscenity criteria on this podcast?
Matt
Small to medium?
Sander Trestain
All right, so I'll say God damn, it was a long time ago. Yeah, so we were in I was in eighth grade, you were in seventh grade, making us 13/14? 12/13?
Matt
Something like that
Sander Trestain
Yeah, ballpark.
Matt
We had a lot of mutual friends. But so that was point one of connection. But strangely, I think maybe bonded over music, despite our other maybe more significant.
Sander Trestain
Yeah, it was unusual. I think we kind of were the we were the raw onion of figuring each other out at the age of 13, which is weird. Most people don't do that. Ya know, we certainly immediately gravitated on the issue of music, which is to say, I was doing a rather studious and tedious Royal Conservatory run of piano lessons and cello lessons, but was significantly more interested in the I don't know, I'm sorry. How do you pronounce it? It's "rotch and roll?"
Matt
Yeah, that's right. Canadian pronunciation.
Sander Trestain
Yeah, you were a exit vehicle for me in that direction. And I was a maybe vehicle for you in terms of like, hey, let's do a project together and record quote unquote, something, which sounds insanely easy right now, because we would all just hit a button on our iPhone to do it. But in 1900s, it was more complicated. Explicitly, I was 16 years old, I had seen enough movies to understand that being a record producer was kind of cool. You also get that giant mixing board, which we never had, incidentally,
Matt
No, we had a small one, though,
Sander Trestain
We had a very small one that didn't have sliders, it had knobs. Anyway, we didn't have anything like that what we had was some very late 90s digital recording equipment in my parents furnace room.
Matt VO
So that's a bit of our origin story: a 30-year adventure that was punctuated rather impressively by Sander's journey with Environmena Power Systems. It went something like this.
Sander Trestain
Okay, I'm gonna go bullet point form on this graduated university in two thousand and...
Matt
Two
Sander Trestain
Three
Matt
Three
Sander Trestain
Mechanical engineering, business degree, blah, blah, blah, all functionally, just academic. Got real bored by my entry level engineering job, which was in the fire protection industry. It was fine enough, but I just wasn't interested in it. I had a number of friends. So specifically a friend named Eric, who I went to university with and he had a friend named Sami, who he went to high school with. Three of us became socially quite close, and began discussing business opportunities, specifically in the Middle East. And Sami, in particular, had a connection, which is that his brother had already moved to the Middle East. Sami, to be clear, Middle East background, Palestinian descent, grew up in Canada, a Toronto boy, went to Earl Haig, and was aware of renewable energy initiative that they were initiating. And so we were all having, as everyone does in life our like entry level, I just got out of university jobs and saying, "Hey, it would be fun. Like this is our moment. And we all know that we're unattached. We can get on a plane, go anywhere and do anything right now. So let's do it." And so our decision was: OK, Abu Dhabi is making a very significant investment into renewable energy. In particular, photovoltaics just stuck out as just like a "Yeah, this is the next thing." Spoiler alert: we weren't totally correct. Photovoltaics was the next big thing. So that was a good call. We started a company. Starting a company in a you know, non G7 economy is complicated and not anything that any of us had ever experienced before. It required a lot of administrative work, and patience and time. And but we, you know, pushed through it with the help of advisors. And at the same time we were also fundraising. So we needed, you know, millions of dollars to kick off a renewable energy business. We ultimately raised four point something million in sort of angel, and seed. And, in fact, as it turned out, institutional capital to fund the company, which is a pretty big fundraise for a first round. Our very first significant project was to build the largest photovoltaic solar power plant in the Middle East to date at the time in 2008, which was a 10 megawatt plant at Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. Amusingly, the 10 megawatt plant at the time cost $50 million in capital cost to build. So that's $5 per megawatt, if you were to like to sort of amortize this over the cost of the plant it was producing electricity at I don't know it just to give it a range like 40, 50, 60 US cents per kilowatt hour. Which is to say, expensive. Nowadays, that same plant like I can't even throw a number at it is comically tiny, like like less than less than 10% of that number. The energy that's being produced is among the cheapest forms of electricity available on the planet today. And it was an extremely intriguing sort of adventure, to be building this company, at the same time that the economic reality of solar being not just like, well, this is renewable energy. To just like, this is just energy. Like that transition occurred while we were building, the company. Very much affected our ability to build the company quickly. And ultimately, we did build a very large company. We had 1500, paid personnel on the ground, construction projects all over the Middle East and North Africa. We had built 17,000 individual solar power systems, about $750 million of installed solar infrastructure, again, across the Middle East and North Africa and Europe. It went from like, you know, essentially, a fantasy product of like, "well, I can have clean energy, but I need to pay this huge premium for it," to "Well, I can have clean energy, and I already get it, it comes out of my outlet, because municipal grids are now taking renewable energy from everyone and distributing it to everyone." Which is the reality.
Matt VO
Now, one of the reasons why I was so interested in talking to Sander is not just because this story is kind of super awesome. But also because I find it hard, impossible even, to imagine myself in his shoes through the experience. I wanted to zoom in a bit on his state of mind before, during and after Enviromena.
Matt
And you mentioned that you were starting to do these projects in 2008, which some of us might remember was a relatively remarkable year. So let me start with this. Be honest, when you moved out to the Middle East, as a, you know, 20-something year old with your friends. How How long did you expect to stay there?
Sander Trestain
Yeah, so to be clear, I was in my mid-20s. Now, okay, let's be fair, late 20s. And, and it was it just like, I'll probably never get this chance. But like, I can get on a plane right now, with two rolling suitcases and a guitar on my back, which is precisely what I did. And like, give this thing a shot and I might be home in two months. That's fine. I can go get another job and whatever. But it was like a "huh, I don't know, you want to go try and start a corporation in the Middle East, mid Iraq War, just to put a little historical context on it?" And the answer was, "yeah! that'd be fun to try." The real surprise to it all was not that we went and tried to do it, but that it actually sort of worked out.
Matt
Sure. Okay, I'm gonna, but I'm gonna re-ask my question not the "Yeah, I could be back in two months" part. But like, if you were if I had asked you in 2007 You know, "what's the what's the goal here?" I'm gonna guess it was probably to like build something and sell it and be home within how long?
Sander Trestain
Yeah, I mean, I can hear the term pump and dump on the back of your mind as you say this, and that's very fair. Because, you know, you got a bunch of young guys talking about starting a business and there's all there was, you know, inevitably going to be a lot of like, "Yo, baby, we're gonna, like, make a couple of million bucks and be out of this thing in a couple of years. Let's roll!" Yeah, that is not the reality of running a business at all. But it is a very fun way to approach running a business. So long as you're relatively realistic about how wildly not the case that is going to be.
Matt
So you started a business with friends.
Sander Trestain
Yes.
Matt
Which is already... there's tons of reasons why that sounds awesome on paper, and tons of reasons why it sounds like it could go real sideways real fast. So what was, what was it like doing this? Taking this, it's not just a normal risk of like, "hey, let's do a start up. But we're doing it out of our mom's basement." Like you picked up and flew across the world to a really, really unusual place for for all of you. As friends. What was it like just being with those guys, and trying to do this together?
Sander Trestain
Well, it was intriguing. So I mean, obviously, we were very close friends. The two guys are very different people. And I'm a very different person than all of them. So we were sort of like a complementary interesting mix of mix of people. I don't know I to be honest, it's funny, I, we sometimes refer to me as the late joiner to this group. The two of those guys had been like researching this concept for a couple of months before I was even aware of it. And then I kind of like, you know, I was just like...Alright. You know, I'll be completely honest, I rolled into their apartment, to, you know, party, and was like, "Hey, what are these notes all about?" That was kind of the start of the conversation. Two days went by, they were like, Okay, we want you to partner up full partner status. Like we were one/two, now we want to be one/two/thee. Let's do this thing. And I was like, "What is this thing?" Like, "Oh, right. Yeah, we should probably talk about that."
Matt VO
I mean, I remember this whole idea of feeling very risky and spontaneous at the time, but I don't remember it being quite that spontaneous. From there, we already basically know how the business turned out. And I'm not just trying to share a successful entrepreneurial story with you. Some of you listening may have already started your own successful companies and may be thinking, "mmhmm, so what?" Well, there's some other parts of the story that I bet you can relate to, and maybe aren't so used to talking about.
Matt
So it was like doing all that with friends, was it like a superpower, like greater than the sum of your parts? Was it just sort of "Yeah, it's cool. And we're friends, but that doesn't really matter?" Like, what was, what was it like?
Sander Trestain
Um, so it's interesting. It was certainly a wild change. Because for sure my perception of work leading up to Enviromena was like, you go to a place every day from nine to five and sit with boring old men who are, generally speaking, balding and angry, and do what they say. So that was like, "oh, that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life." Then, I landed in a crazy office where it's like, "well, we may end up bankrupting ourselves or in jail. Both of those are discrete possibilities. However, we are going to listen to a bunch of Lil Wayne and rap about how we're going to close a contract tomorrow at that meeting that we have. And then when we're driving in the new car that we bought yesterday, for one of us or whatever." Like, you know, it's fucking fun man, of course it's fun. It's fun to like, particularly like, you know, like, this is such an absurd stereotype that it is it is out of control, almost not acceptable for me to say but like, HBO series, Entourage, there was just a few inflection moments. Being there just like, "Yo, bro, we're gonna close a $50 million contract, like in 19 minutes. We're in a car right now on our way to go do that." Like what do you think we'd do? We listen to,, listen to some really loud music and we are very, very happy. So you know, it's basically Entourage except that we're not...there's a significant lack of male toxicity. And also we're giant nerds. So we're we're just It's like, "Hey, I can't believe we got like clause 8.2.1.3 c sub clause one through. That's crazy!"
Matt
So now I'm gonna fast forward to when I, when I met you there, and I was completely isolated from your work, all I got to hear about was the you know that stuff for the most part. But I do remember already it being real clear that this was also really, really, really hard.
Sander Trestain
Oh yeah! No, I was wildly stressed out and in particular, you know, in Canada and a lot of G7 countries and you know, like, essentially the wealthy West, business can and usually is relatively, you know, straightforward and follows a program of like, "alright, well, we're gonna send an agenda, we'll discuss these things." And anyway, turns out in rest of world, which is most of world, it is significantly more chaotic and aggressive. Which is to say, there's a lot of yelling at people to get things done. For lack of a better way of putting it. That's and it, it's on all levels. The client, the clients that we hire - sorry that we hire, I wish - the clients that hire us to deliver very significant large infrastructure projects at you know, hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, are genuinely concerned about us doing a good job on it, and therefore yell at us to deliver it appropriately. We hire a variety of suppliers and contractors to work with us to deliver it, and we yell at them. So your entire life is yelling. Renewable energy sounds like you know, like a really lovely, like, you know, forward sounding industry where everything's roses, and we all have ping pong tables and play foosball over lunch, and so on. But, no, it's construction. We dig holes, pour concrete footings, install steel framing, and put solar photovoltaic panels, that are kind of heavy, on top of them, which are bolted on. And that's it. Like square kilometers of area. So it's, it's a big project. And it's like dirty business. Construction is functionally dirty, and stressful, and there's problems and you have to deal with it. Health and safety is a huge consideration, like, like, we're responsible, like morally, and also like legally liably for the health and safety of every single person that touches any one of our projects. And it's, you know, every single company has to make that decision of like, this is priority number one. So that's a huge project just in and of itself, like, you have to hire an entire project team to manage health and safety on a project site, there's a lot going on, it was very stressful. There's people's lives, like, you know, it's like not lives on the line, like some sort of military operation, but it's dangerous. It's construction.
Matt
And this was before, I'll ask a question in a second. But I'll caveat in advance that you can be as nonspecific as you want. But this was before...if I understand correctly, your deals started getting more complex, both in terms of the scale and scope and so on, but also in terms of whom you were partnering with, and parts of the world you had to work in that were more complex and dangerous. And I mean, maybe you can tell as specifically or nonspecifically as you want a story about some of the really crazy dangerous stuff that you found yourself facing.
Sander Trestain
The reality is, you're correct. I was in a couple of dangerous situations. Anything that was scary that occurred to me was in a crazy, super rural location of a faraway part of the world where it's just like, we were not in an urban environment and whatever it is that we were doing in this non urban environment was not consistent with what the people who live there were used to, and they reacted somewhere between with concern and aggressively, and all of those are completely understandable.
Matt
Right, no, and you've you've positioned that well. It's not my intention to illustrate anything other than the impact on you, really. Because it's not a normal experience, I don't think, for most people who go and start a successful business with their friends to need private security and kidnap & ransom insurance, and you know, similar. So this is kind of what I'm getting at. It's less about where you were and more about the circumstance.
Sander Trestain
All right? Well, I'll give you the cool like, three point elevator pitch on the weird shit. First of all, when you get K&R insurance, kidnap and ransom insurance to be clear, they will pay for you to have your ransom paid. If you're kidnapped in a hostile jurisdiction. It turns out there's lots of like exclusions in that type of insurance. But generally speaking, it's, it's exactly as intended. It's like, well, you know, one of our professional hostage negotiators will come in on your behalf, and come up with the best deal and we'll pay for it. And all you need to do is give us $7,000 a year, or whatever. I think it was roughly that if I had to guess. Anyway, it's funny: first thing they tell you when you get K&R insurance, "don't tell anyone you have K&R insurance." I, to be clear, no longer have K&R insurance. So get that out of your mind. Matt. Never had to pull the trigger on K&R insurance, thankfully, did have a bunch of weirdo situations. For sure, the standout was in rural Egypt. I was on a job site. I was with a bodyguard/driver/handler. You know, the guy that actually knows what's going on in the place where we are. He was taking me around to our rural locations. We were at a job site, I was looking at some geotechnical data, which is extraordinarily boring when some gentleman appeared over a hill in the distance. And we heard some popping noises. And they were indeed shooting machine guns at us. To which my driver/bodyguard/handler said, "Let's get the fuck out of here!" I agreed. To be clear, I am a very soft Canadian boy. So this is not...
Matt
It's true
Sander Trestain
Yes. Checks out. I might. I have a colorful sweater. My dress shirt I'm wearing under it. It is pink.
Matt
Is it also linen?
Sander Trestain
It is. It's a pink linen dress shirt.
Matt
It was minus 20 Celsius earlier today.
Sander Trestain
Okay. Yeah, well, I also have a jacket. In any case, those gentlemen shot at us they were way too like, just to be nerdy and quantitative about it they were probably 400 yards away. So like there is a more or less no chance that they would hit us with shooting at us. They were scaring us by shooting at us. But we were scared. So he took a run for the truck. He had somehow gotten winged in the leg by one of these guys wildly, like statistically impossible, I would imagine. But had gotten injured and was bleeding and I was like, "What the fuck do we do?" And he was like, "drive!" Like, okay, okay, okay, okay. Okay. So I was like, "Whoa, I, okay. So what do we do next?" And he was like, "airport." I was like, "Oh, you mean hospital for you?" And he's like, no "airport for you." I was like, "okay. You sure?" It's like "Yes. I'm sure. This is my job like," Okay. "What can I do?" And he's like, "I don't know. I mean, I would say press here really hard but no just drive." I was like, "okay," and that was it. Basically, I got dropped off the airport. And I have not thought about it since except for... every day.
Matt VO
Yes, sure. This is a single terrifying incident that happened on one day out of 1000s. And it, of course, stands out from among the countless other stressful and traumatic things that go into starting your own business, whether it succeeds or fails. All those things happen. And then as Sander says, you don't think about it since except for every day. What's the ultimate toll?
Matt
We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, but…you used the word when we were talking the other day, PTSD. First of all, do you want to talk about it? Second of all, if you do, I’ll let you take it where you want to take it.
Sander Trestain
I can give you a brief rundown. So first of all, to be clear, I only use the term PTSD because a apparent professional uses that term. I'm not trying to say this cynically. A professional told me like "I don't know, seems like everything you're describing to me, is mild PTSD." That was very surprising to me, because there was other than what I essentially just described to you, which was very fast and over very quickly, and really didn't affect me that dramatically. My understanding of PTSD is that it required trauma, trauma, it actually does not, aparently. This is, again, based just solely on things that people who are apparently professionals have told me. It can be cumulative of just like too much work stress for quite a while. And you'll have similar effects/symptoms as... and like, to be extraordinarily clear, this not at all the same thing that like, veterans and stuff have. I am on, it's a spectrum, I'm on the extraordinarily mild and if anything of it. It affects your ability to focus sometimes and to deal with what one would normally characterize as everyday stress of just the like, like, like, "Oh, something went wrong, and I now need to deal with that." Stuff that is sort of everyday stressful, feels significantly more stressful than it needs to. It's not a big deal. But I'm like, "Oh, I can see how this is a big deal to some people." Like they it's like... it's just a few steps away of like, oh, yeah, if I did this for a little bit longer, that would have messed me up. I can see it like, it's just it's a weird thing to just sort of like I only just became able to understand it as a result of being like adjacently influenced by it on a very mild way.
Matt
Yeah. And I think there's maybe an important thing for any entrepreneur, especially, but you know, it doesn't have to be quite that specific. But a lot of people who venture out to start something, whether it's successful or not find themselves in that situation or something like what you're describing where that cumulative load is pretty huge. And acknowledging the potential impact is important, right? It's not about whether it's mild or severe. It's more about this is, it is trauma. And it matters.
Sander Trestain
Sure, yeah. And like 5% of trauma for 10 years is the same thing as 100% of trauma for 10 minutes. Or whatever. Yeah, I'm not sure that math checks in to be honest. But the sentiment is there. Everyone has this. Everyone cumulates. Wait is that a word?
Matt
Accumulates.
Sander Trestain
Accumulates. Good Lord I'm literally a writing professional. This is embarrassing.
Matt
Different than a talking professional.
Sander Trestain
That's true. Good Lord, that's true. We all accumulate like pain. It's sad, but we are just pain sponges. And you know, it gets absorbed and digested and disposed of much like food. This is a really gross metaphor. I'm just making this up as I'm going along. It's disgusting. Oh, dear. Anyway,
Matt
Let me interrupt you.
Sander Trestain
I guess what I'm saying is poop your pain, don't... Okay, yeah. Take this over, please.
Matt VO
Okay, anyone want to guess what Sander does now? He's the founding partner of a company called CS Global, which is a communications consulting firm where as Sander says, he "ghost writes stuff for people on a corporate level and quote." The S in CS Global stands for Sander. The C? Well, that's Chris. Who's Chris? Chris was the drummer in my band that recorded in Sander's parents' basement all those years ago. We're still super close, which means that Sander did the whole thing again: starting a business with a friend.
Matt
And I know this is a bit of a trite question, but what did you learn from your Enviromena experience, either do or don't do that you're they're doubling down on or avoiding with CS Global.
Sander Trestain
First of all, everyone is as bad at their jobs as you suspect that they are. Which is a weird thing that everyone learns becoming an adult. And like I was, you know, in my 20s. So I was, I guess, a theoretical adult in the like civilization term, but not with respect to understanding the complexities of industry and capitalism. So, yeah, it turns out, there are a minority of people who are excellent at lots of things, and really, really very skilled in their trades. However, most people are kind of hit or miss.
Matt
Well, I know I've had the same experience. And I know exactly my takeaway, and you can tell me if you agree, is when you find people who are inspiring, you got our latch on to those people pretty hard.
Sander Trestain
Yeah, I'm sure you've got some suction cup bruises all over your body.
Matt
I'll take that as a compliment. I think?
Sander Trestain
I don't know under any other context, I don't think you would. But here, go for it.
Matt
But you know what I mean, right?
Sander Trestain
Absolutely, is just like, like anyone who can help you. And so like, I don't even know how you can help me. But you seem really good at the thing that you do. Like, you're like, you're a rarity in the world. Humanity in general, I am wildly optimistic. It's going good places were good. But in terms of the day to day of like, I just need to get this thing printed, please. It's it can be wildly difficult. And it's not driven by people. It's not people. In many ways. it's corporations that have like, well, you know, our policies trickled down to the people who actually deliver our services in a manner that we didn't expect. And as a result, it sucks. So that was lesson one: stuff just doesn't work very well. And in many respects, if you want a business idea, just look around. Like if it doesn't work well, do it. That's it. Like, you don't need to invent a thing. You don't need to, like, "I have found a way to catch flies that will blow your mind." Like, no you don't need to do that. Like, what is the thing that you tried to buy that you couldn't find? Like that thing? All right, do that. That's it. Get more like adulty in life as you get older, and like do like when it comes to like other things? Like, "I really need a babysitter!" Like, "Oh, should I start a babysitting service?" I have considered that is like, wildly outside of anything I could possibly manage or do and, you know, is a small possibility that a bald middle aged man shouldn't start a babysitting service in downtown Toronto. Or at least I would not be the front person for it. And, and but it was just like a consideration like, "wow, this is really hard to find, therefore, someone should start a business doing it. Therefore, why not me?" Like that's it. That's the market cue that you need.
Matt VO
Sounds almost exactly like the entrepreneurial mindframe that Lisa Oldridge talked about back in episode three. Anyway, I'm recording this VO about a week before publication date for this episode, between now and then Chris, who now lives in Poland will coincidentally be in Toronto. If I can manage a bit of magic, then I'll try to get a few comments from him to insert into the episode here.
Chris Runowski
Okay, so I'm Chris Runowski, and I'm the Co-Founder of CSG, also known as CS Global.
Matt
Okay, so seeing as this is, like a part of an episode with Sander and me, we, the three of us, we kind of all met the same way, I think, how did that happen?
Chris Runowski
Oh, it would have been back in grade eight for us, Sander and I, and grade seven for yourself. I believe that's the first time we crossed paths. And that was at Kane Middle School. And we were in the various bands, I guess, concert band, stage band most notably.
Matt
Yeah, we met as trombone players.
Chris Runowski
Yeah, we were on opposite sides of the row. But it was a lot of fun back then. That's right. Yeah,
Matt
Poland. What's up with that?
Chris Runowski
Yeah, so I guess we'll go back in time a little bit. When I was around 30, 31, I got an opportunity to go play hockey in Poland. I picked up a semi professional contract and headed over there to meet a friend of mine who I played hockey with locally in Toronto. And because I'm half Polish, it was more about the adventure, traveling there, learning about my roots. Something I'd always been interested in, and I had never been to Europe. I just kind of picked up and relocated there, temporarily at first. And then that was like, what, 12 years ago. So I've ended up staying there. I really enjoy it. I like European life. And it's really interesting to, you know, I didn't really know any Polish people growing up. So as soon as I got there, I started seeing characteristics in people's faces that I recognize from my family and idiosyncrasies and it felt like kind of like a it was a coming home thing. In some ways.
Matt
What's it like starting a business with a friend doing it from different parts in the world? Learning a new business together... what just what's going on?
Chris Runowski
Yeah, well, I think the the first two parts of your question kind of fit together. We started this at the beginning of the pandemic when everything was remote, and we were all Zooming each other. And because we're friends and we've known each other for so long. I'm Sander and I found it quite easy to work remotely, exclusively. I think being friends helped facilitate that. And more easily than if we were just, you know, we had met randomly or didn't know each other that well. It wasn't anything new for me. I had managed projects intercontinentally in the past when I worked in the automotive industry, remotely, because you can't be in India and Europe and North America at the same time. So, of course, there were elements of travel that I did a lot of travel, but most of the nuts and bolts were handled remotely. But working with a friend, otherwise, I think you have the benefit of knowing how each other will respond to certain situations. Not always, but mostly, there are a lot of unsaids in friendships that help smooth situations over, you're able to kind of read each other's minds a little bit. So I think that's, that's very beneficial.
Matt
Yeah, so there's a superpower. Any, like kryptonite there?
Chris Runowski
Well, yeah, sometimes it can be a matter of personal accountability, because, "oh, it's my body. So you know, I can brush things off and not feel so bad about it." You know, I, we tend not to do that, of course. But that can be a risk, I could see that happening. So you have to remain quite disciplined with delivering on your promises, make up for the fact that sometimes you may be motivated otherwise, to to get things done out of embarrassment with a stranger or somebody who's just a professional colleague. You know, Sander, and I shared one characteristic, a professional one, or competency, if you will, that, that we learned while working abroad, is that people would come to us to check their English. Because we were working in an English as a second language environment, primarily, us being native speakers living abroad bore the brunt of checking and vetting a lot of English that was sent out professionally, especially in writing. So we decided that, you know, this is something we should focus on, because there is a gap out there.
Matt VO
Thanks, Chris. And you might have noticed we were doing that remotely, it turns out that we couldn't actually do any recording in the same spot at the same time. Anyway, the themes in what we learned from Sander today are kind of both super extraordinary and generic. Most of us won't accomplish what he's accomplished. Certainly not under the same circumstances. But we can all relate to the joy and the pain and the friendship and trauma. I know it's corny to steal from another podcast, but Stephen Dubner's sign off from the Freakonomics Radio show seems a bit too perfect here. If you're not familiar, he ends every episode by saying, "take care of yourself, and if you can, someone else, too. Thanks as always for listening. Reach out anytime with feedback questions, fan mail, hate mail or whatever. Send it to soundup@groundupgovernance.com. Catch you next time.
Sound-Up Governance (ep.21) - The thrill, joy, trauma, and complexity of entrepreneurship with friends (feat. Sander Trestain)