Levi Lindsay: [00:00] The best learning experiences are the real scars that failure leaves: The actual experience of losing something. Failing. Egg on your face. The feeling of the yolk dripping down of failure.

Joe Grover: [00:14] Welcome to The Real F Word. 

[00:21] I'm so happy to be here with you, Levi. We've become fast friends, and I remember many years ago a good mutual friend of ours said, “Hey, you've got to meet Levi Lindsay. He's so talented, and he's starting this company called VidArmy, and we're going to talk a little bit more about VidArmy.

Levi Lindsay: [00:38] It was Michael Jordan, I think, was our mutual friend, that told you that you needed to meet me.

Joe Grover: [00:45] Indeed, MJ. Number 23.

Levi Lindsay: [00:47] Who was the friend? 

Joe Grover: [00:49] Mark Matheson. 

Levi Lindsay: [00:49] Oh, that's right. 

Joe Grover: [00:50] And he'll probably be listening to this episode.

Levi Lindsay: [00:52] Oh, my gosh, Mark. It's been too long. I'd love to chat. He was a mentor for us at VidArmy. 

Joe Grover: [00:58] That's right. And you've had a really interesting and varied career. You've been a CMO You've run content at one of the larger consumer brands here Kizik. That grew really, really fast. You're now the VP of marketing at Hona, which is a software company. I think you're catered to attorneys right?

[01:18] So you've had a terrific run. And today, I want to talk about all the failures and none of the successes, right? That is the theme of our discussion here on The F Word Podcast. So tell me about VidArmy. What was the genesis of the idea? And talk a little bit about that early growth when things were going well. And then there was—you shared this experience with me: There's a little bit of a turn, and I think there's a lot of learning from your experience there that the listeners will want to hear.

Levi Lindsay: [01:44] Yeah, VidArmy is—it's so funny. We had lunch a while ago, and I told you this whole story, and I was like, “I really need to learn how to condense this.” But it really was so many failures and learning in that three years. I feel like I went and got a couple of master's degrees.

[02:01] If you're familiar with the LDS culture here in Utah, I was living in my parents' basement with my newlywed wife. We’d just graduated from college, and we're trying to figure out what to do next after college. And I was assigned to home teach (at the time is what it was called) a gentleman in my parents' congregation up in Bountiful, Utah. And we became very fast friends. And he said, “Hey, I have this idea, but I'm working full time and I have bills to pay. But you're this young kid who's living in his mom's basement, so you probably have the financial flexibility and time to start this up.” And I was like, “I do.” And so he's like, “It's a video subscription. It's 500 bucks a month, and you get unlimited video production for 500 bucks a month.” And I was like, “I like the sound of this.”

Joe Grover: [02:56] Did you have a video background?

Levi Lindsay: [02:57] No, no video background, no photography, nothing at all.

Joe Grover: [03:01] Marketing background?

Levi Lindsay: [03:03] I mean, I wanted to go into marketing, but I saw that the marketing degrees all had a couple more math classes, and I didn't want to take any more math. So I did the professional sales degree at Weber thinking, “Maybe I can somehow default into marketing.” Thankfully I did, but it was a dumb choice. 

[03:24] But then it was, “You've got access to my camera equipment. I'll start throwing some business your way.” Minky Couture, I think, was already a client at the time. And a couple other smaller businesses up in northern Utah were clients. And started getting rolling, getting some working capital. Hired our first employee after a couple months. And the first year was me working full-time in the business, not paying myself, with one employee that we paid, I think, $18 an hour, and Johnny being full-time. And that was year one. Just cranked, trying to build recurring revenue. Sorry.

Joe Grover: [04:06] What was the response in the market? Were you signing up a bunch of clients quickly?

Levi Lindsay: [04:12] That's a good question. I think it was a little bit of—cause I was always positioning as unlimited filming for $500, and there was a lot of learning of how to tweak the model. We actually got it to the point where it would economically work, but within that first year we really were like eating—

Joe Grover: [04:35] It was a nonprofit.

Levi Lindsay: [04:36] It was a nonprofit for sure. And we were very delusional about how service companies grow. We thought that it would grow like a tech company and multiples would be 20x and VC dollars would flow in. And we thought that it would be a one to 1:10 ratio on every dollar. But in service, it just scales long and slow. The way I look at it is you get fast initial revenue when you start a service company, but then things taper off more on the tail end. It's not a hockey stick. It's almost like a quick growth and then flatline and then slow, steady growth, and I didn't realize that.

Joe Grover: [05:14] So how many years did you build VidArmy?

Levi Lindsay: [05:16] Three years.

Joe Grover: [05:17] Okay, about how far into this entrepreneurial journey did you see signs of weakness in the model or the partnership?

Levi Lindsay: [05:26] Things started getting crazy as they scaled. At the end of year one, that's when my partner said, “Okay, it looks like we have enough monthly recurring revenue that I could come in and we can pay my salary and I can quit this job I'm doing.” And so he jumped in. We started paying him a salary. I think I started paying myself maybe $1,200 bucks a month at that time, cause it's just like, “I'm going to grind it out.” It was 50/50 from the start. No partnership agreement. And we're just cruising, having a good time, and we just believe in this thing. And it's a lot of hard work, but we see the long-term vision. And then he came on, and he's like, “I can handle a hundred clients, don't worry.” Week one he was like, “Hey, we need to hire some help for me.” And so now we're hiring an editor for 40–50 grand a year, whatever that is, on top of his salary. So all the—

Joe Grover: [06:20] Because your partner had a video background.

Levi Lindsay: [06:30] Because my partner did have a video background. So the idea was that he would be the individual contributor to come in and also be the entrepreneur. But it quickly just turned into, “No, I need some individual contributor help.” 

[06:38] And then at this time—this is one of the funniest parts to me—his brother-in-law started a pest control business a few years back and was just on the tail end of selling it. And I think he'd built it up to like a million dollars in annual revenue. And my partner and I were just starry-eyed, like, “I can't believe you scaled a business to $1 million in annual revenue,” like this guy is the king of business.

Joe Grover: [07:09] And you've spent a million dollars in a single ad channel in your career per month. 

Levi Lindsay: [07:15] Oh yeah. Money loses all perspective in marketing. I think we talked about this, but you're like, “Let's just run this quick test. Oh, didn't work. Well, that was a house.” 

Joe Grover: [07:27] Exactly.

Levi Lindsay: [07:28] Anyway. So we said, “Come on board.” Still no partnership agreement. “Come on board, we'll give you 33% of the business, and it'll be 33, 33, 33.” So it's me, my original partner, and his brother-in-law, and now we're all three owners. And that's really because we didn't have working capital or funding. I mean, just free labor for equity is how we got going—and my partner's initial equipment and jolt of clients, that got us the ball rolling. But then we needed to start bringing in more business to start scaling, to start hiring more employees. And so I would classify year two more as like figuring out how to make the model work and how to grow.

[08:11] And I think by the end of year two we had around 15 employees. And I still wasn't taking a salary. And my original partner's brother-in-law wasn't taking his salary still. But we could see the progress. We could see the monthly recurring revenue climbing, and it was this legit, sustainable business. We had an office, we'd bought some more equipment. And that's where year two ended. And then we also started to see that the model—the $500 production—was more of our Costco chicken. It was more of an advertising ploy to get people to come in to film other videos.

Joe Grover: [08:59] Because you had to charge more, right? Yeah, 500 bucks doesn't get you a lot of—

Levi Lindsay: [09:04] Not a sustainable model. Nope. We would limit it. We'd film for one hour, but by the time we were in year two, we had a little studio, we'd film for one hour, film as many videos as you wanted. Mostly they were talking head. And we would chop that up into as many videos as you feasibly could and do it all just in the studio. So it was no travel, tight on editing, and so it actually ended up working. But we had to narrow and narrow and narrow the scope so that it could scale.

Joe Grover: [09:40] So you’re at the end of year two. You got another partner. So the three of you, did you finally pencil that or did you finalize an agreement? You never had a finalized partnership agreement? By the way, this happens a lot. There's probably some learning here for entrepreneurs. These handshake agreements on day one seem to be great. There's high trust, and there's excitement to build a business. Invariably, things don't always go as planned and it's a mess. Is that fair to say?

Levi Lindsay: [10:06] Especially when you’re friends or you’re family or even, in Utah, church members, “They would never do that to me. Someone who's in my congregation, someone who's my family member, someone who acts so kindly and we get along so well, we would never end up disagreeing to the point where we couldn't fix it.

Joe Grover: [10:23] Yeah, those are famous last words, right? I've seen that play out over and over and over again.

Levi Lindsay: [10:28] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [10:29] I think, especially in certain cultures, this culture of trust is a positive thing. We want to give people the benefit of the doubt and trust each other. But it's business. You just need to remember this is business and in the end, what's written is what people are going to do.

Levi Lindsay: [10:44] Yeah, and the learning for me was you can trust anybody on this planet once an ironclad agreement's in place. Then you can trust completely and fully. But you do the diligence and then you trust. You don't trust and then do the diligence. Because it's always too late.

Joe Grover: [11:03] So you're two years in. 

Levi Lindsay: [11:04] Two years in.

Joe Grover: [11:05] And then a few things are changing in the business. Talk to me about this year three.

Levi Lindsay: [11:11] Oh man, year three is where things get real wild. COVID hits, which obviously is crazy for a film company. Because sending people out gets sketchy. But what's interesting is the government was handing out money like candy. Our cute little video business got a nice, juicy check with a sweetheart loan. EIDL. So we get the EIDL loan, which is like a 30-year fix. You owe 500 bucks a month after three years, and it's one percent interest. It's the most sweetheart loan a business could ever get. So that money hits our bank and we're so many things that we— 

Joe Grover: [12:01] Because this is the first infusion of capital you've had right. You've been bootstrapping this. Every dollar that comes in is paying people and trying to keep the business alive. And now you get this little influx, little shot in the arm. What do you do with this money?

Levi Lindsay: [12:15] First thing we do, we hire a CEO. So now we have three founders and a CEO and our 15 employees. So we're just overleveraged. Our monthly expenses are just climbing, but our optimism isn't rooted in logic at all. We see this amount of money and, like we did with the million dollar business, we thought this is a ton of money. But you know, it burns fast. You'd be shocked how fast money burns. You'd add whatever quantity into a business. And then we all started disagreeing pretty quickly on how these funds should be divvied out. I always saw it as this is working capital for us to grow. Maybe we put some into advertising, maybe we pay ourselves a little bit of a salary and give ourselves jobs, really get strict on what our job in the business is.

[13:25] But anyway, we hired a CEO: Nick Stagge. Guy's a stud. That was probably the one correct thing we did with those funds, because he took us from mid-five figures to well beyond six figures a month in revenue, and a good chunk of that being monthly recurring revenue within the first few months. So that was probably the deal of our lifetime that we were going to get with that small amount of cash was hiring Nick Staggy as our CEO. But at the same time, I didn't understand some financial obligations that the original partner was going through at the time. And he came to us and said to our new CEO, to myself, and his brother-in-law, and said, “I need to get my salary back up to this immediately.” Sorry, reversing, all the founders took our salaries away during COVID to make sure we could keep things going.

Joe Grover: [14:34] So now you're working for free again. Trying to make ends meet. How did you make ends meet during those days?

Levi Lindsay: [14:41] My sweet wife. She worked. That was, man, that was one thing that killed me. I remember—sorry, this is a side tangent—but I remember dropping off my little girl, my first daughter, to daycare while my wife was at work, working full time to make sure I didn't have to take a salary. And I dropped off my little girl, and she's bawling her eyes out and clawing to not go and just clawing my arm as she leaves. And I go get in the car. And I just started bawling because I've now got a partner that's saying he's got to get paid, and we don't have the money to pay him, but I think he has the perception that he can get paid because we have this little nest egg. And I have to go drop my daughter off to go work for free in this business, and it's year three, and I've been grinding hard. I just lost it. 

[15:45] And I think that's where emotions started to come into play. And I started to fight back and say, “No, you can't go, stay at home, buy a new house without telling us, and give us a vague description of what you're going to be doing when you're working from home and get a salary when none of us are, when the rest of the founding group aren't taking a salary.” Then his brother-in-law gets deployed to California for the military during COVID.

Joe Grover: [16:19] Oh, wow.

Levi Lindsay: [16:20] So now I'm on my own. Thankfully, his brother-in-law was always very level-headed, the mature one of the three, and played mediator between me and the original founder. So now we're fighting with the founder, brother-in-law's in California. I have to keep things going. We have 15 employees, we're closing Amazon, so cool things are happening on the revenue side, on the client side.

Joe Grover: [16:45] This is such a classic story, because there were a lot of positive things, and maybe from the outside looking in, it was all up and to the right, but so much turmoil behind the curtain, right? So much turmoil in the partnership.

Levi Lindsay: [16:59] Yeah, oh, and it's funny, because we grew very organically by just pushing our personal brands on LinkedIn is really how—it was our main acquisition channel.

Joe Grover: [17:12] By the way, you've been a master of LinkedIn ever since. You're very active and get lots of great engagement.

Levi Lindsay: [17:18] Well, I appreciate that. I think, out of necessity, I was able to find a voice on there, and it's been a huge blessing. I wouldn't have recovered after the failure if it wasn't for that. 

[17:31] But anyway, we were really good at making things look really rosy to LinkedIn while things were just completely caving in on us. But so now at this point we're just stewing in this argument of, “Hey, man, we're not going to pay you a salary. We just can't do it.” And then all of a sudden, we get in the mail a thick partnership agreement. And the partnership agreement says that this partner is going to get 6% of the top line revenue from the business for the lifetime of the business.

Joe Grover: [18:10] Is this something you guys had talked about? 

Levi Lindsay: [18:12] No.

Joe Grover: [18:13] Out of the blue from a law firm.

Levi Lindsay: [18:15] Completely out of the blue, from a lawyer he had hired, we get this partnership agreement slapped on our desk asking for, no strings attached, every dollar, he gets six cents. No question. And it's gross revenue. Not net. Not profits. Gross revenue.

Joe Grover: [18:34] Which, in a service business, which you were probably running a gross margin of 40 percent?

Levi Lindsay: [18:41] I wish. I think it was 20 at its best. 

Joe Grover: [18:45] Net or gross?

Levi Lindsay: [18:46] Twenty percent margins at its best.

Joe Grover: [18:48] Twenty percent net, that's what I was gonna say. So by the time you have overhead after you've paid your people and your cost of delivery, you're probably 20 net margin, so six percent ends up being a big chunk of that.

Levi Lindsay: [19:00] Yeah, well, and you know, in hindsight, you read Shoe Dog from Phil Knight and you understand. A growing business with limited capital eats itself alive. I love the quote, “You can die from indigestion just as easily as you can die from starvation.” And the irony, like you were saying, is things were up and to the right revenue-wise, but then we're eating ourselves alive through arguments and partnership disagreements and what to do with capital. And maybe we could have made it outside of that, but even then, it would have been a miracle. And so things were tight.

Joe Grover: [19:38] Yeah, so you get this partnership agreement, and how do you respond?

Levi Lindsay: [19:42] Like I said, I think things had gotten really emotional at this point because I'd been working for three years. I think at this time I'd made an accumulation of maybe $30,000 over the three years.

Joe Grover: [19:53] Wow.

Levi Lindsay: [19:53] Maybe. Cause I would get a nice livable wage for a month, and then we'd take it away pretty immediately. I'd get it, and then we'd take it away. Cause I was always like, “Look, I'll take my salary away.” 

Joe Grover: [20:03] Take one for the team, right? You were playing the long game.

Levi Lindsay: [20:08] So emotions are high.

Joe Grover: [20:09] By the way, this is interesting. The work-for-free mentality, I was taught early in my career that that's what's required is a little bit of work for free. And there's times in your life where you can afford to do that. And you were in the moment. Today, you couldn't work for free. No, you've got two daughters, and you have a mortgage probably and a couple of cars. But early in your career, you have this window where you can probably give it two or three years without making a lot of money. And I always wonder, “Is that worth it?” And the answer is it can be, but it rarely is.

Levi Lindsay: [20:43] Yeah.

Joe Grover: [20:43] Right, because it rarely works out and pays you back, because most startups fail. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't do that for the experience and to get started as an entrepreneur, but I worked for free for a time as well.

Levi Lindsay: [20:58] Yeah, it's hard because I couldn't do it again. However, thankfully, it happened at the right time so that I don't think I actually would be providing for my family in the way that I am now if I wouldn't have worked for free. Because I got on LinkedIn, I built that following, and I learned the hard lessons. I learned what working capital was. I learned the corporate structure. I almost see it as I went and said, “I don't want to do a master's degree,” and God was like, “I'll make you do one anyway.”

Joe Grover: [21:41] It's so true. I mean, the experience, you learn more running a business in a month than you would in a year sitting in a classroom. 

Levi Lindsay: [21:48] A hundred percent. Reading a line about something versus the feeling of like, “Ooh, I've over leveraged my monthly expenses,” is such a—

Joe Grover: [22:00] Fixed costs will kill a business. 

Levi Lindsay: [22:02] Yeah. Having your stomach sink to the ground because of a number versus someone just telling you, “Oh, this happens in business,” is two completely different things.

Joe Grover: [22:11] Not being able to make a payroll is a great lesson in accounting.

Levi Lindsay: [22:16] Yeah. And it's, I don't know, it's random, but I think I've been a better executive within companies because I can empathize more with the founders. Whereas a lot of people have this perception of the founders of, “You lucky dogs. You got all this equity, you have these payouts, and da da da da da.” And you don't. They leverage some risk.

Joe Grover: [22:36] It's so—I see this dynamic as I work with founders where the rest of the employees have this perception, you know, these founders are building—one in particular, they built a business over 11 years, right? Started in their home, right? And grew it and it's successful now, right? and certainly there's some free cashflow now. But no one recognizes the sacrifices for years and the financial risk, right? I mean, they put everything on the line to get to where they're at. Employees will show up without that perspective and they just can't relate.

Levi Lindsay: [23:10] Yeah, and everyone loves to say, “Look at us now, look how big we are, and I work for such and such.” You have no idea what year one is like. The year one to year two, year three, those are different animals. I know I don't have it in me anymore. The reason I love Hona is I'm coming in right after series A, I'm coming in three years when there's market validation—

Joe Grover: [23:32] Working capital there's some marketing investments.

Levi Lindsay: [23:34] There’s employees—

Joe Grover: [23:37] You've got a team.

Levi Lindsay: [23:38] A hundred percent. 

Joe Grover: [23:38] It's a lot different when you have capital and people.

Levi Lindsay: [23:40] I would have to be super passionate about something if I was to go and do a year one to two again.

Joe Grover: [23:48] All right, I'll invite you. Let's start something. 

Levi Lindsay: [23:49] Goodness, gracious. Or you know—

Joe Grover: [23:51] I know I work for a consulting firm now. 

Levi Lindsay: [23:54] Maybe after an exit we can—what's that joke? I wish I had enough money that my wife could have a coffee shop that loses $40,000 a month. Anyway, year one is a beast.

Joe Grover: [24:09] So you're in year three, you get the partnership agreement, and you're like, “This doesn't work.”

Levi Lindsay: [24:14] I'm like, “The math isn't mathing.” I get emotional. One of my really big lessons in this is when things like this happen, that you don't take it personally. That you come back without emotion and you just say, “Hey, this doesn't work.” And even if they come back emotionally, you just can't—

Joe Grover: [24:32] Were you emotional at the time? 

Levi Lindsay: [24:34] Very emotional, very immature, I mean, I think it was 27 at the time, a couple years out of college at this point.

Joe Grover: [24:44] Maybe a little overconfident? 

Levi Lindsay: [24:45] Super overconfident. And I handled it very personally and emotionally. And I wish I would have had a more level head about it. At the time I thought, “Well, this is my one shot. There's nothing after this. VidArmy is me, my identity in the community.” I was Levi, one of the founders of VidArmy. And so I just thought, “This guy's gonna end my life.” Thankfully, gosh, it was just a silly little video company. But we get those papers. We say no. He comes back and the negotiations start. And the negotiations are—the different planets we were living on were incredible.

Joe Grover: [25:34] In terms of the value that he is ascribing to the business versus where you guys were at?

Levi Lindsay: [25:38] Yeah, I mean, one offer was, “You pay me $200,000 every year for the rest of the life of the business.” Where's that money coming?

Joe Grover: [25:45] That’s all of the profit.

Levi Lindsay: [25:48] We're not making an extra 200 grand right now. I don't know what business is that they could just be like, “Okay, just to get this argument over with, we'll hand over two hundred thousand dollars a year forever. 

Joe Grover: [26:00] So it became super contentious, and you're going back and forth via email. 

Levi Lindsay: [26:04] Yeah, email phone call.

Joe Grover: [26:05] Was there a moment that you realized that this was not reconcilable, that you weren't going to be able to actually find a meeting of the minds and a solution here?

Levi Lindsay: [26:18] I don't know when it was, but at some point in the crux of it all, it might have been right after we did mediation. So we finally met in person with a mediator, with our lawyers. We hired a lawyer. And he said, “My final offer is for 3% of my equity—of my 33%—I want $1 million.” And I was just like, “Dude, here's the numbers. We put it all together. The business is not only worth zero, it owes money. So here's our offer. We'll give you X amount of money, which I don't even know how we'll come up with that, but you got to walk away. We want all of that 33%.” And I think this is where I learned about reality distortion fields and how there are people—and they're scary in business, because there is no reasoning. And so now we're in this position of this guy's not backing down, and he has just as much attachment to this business emotionally as we do.

Joe Grover: [27:20] Which, to be clear, there is still no documentation that has established the equity in the business. 

Levi Lindsay: [27:25] Nope.

Joe Grover: [27:26] Who was on the original LLC documents? Who was the managing member?

Levi Lindsay: [27:32] I think me and him. And we went down all those rabbit holes, but I think there was enough documentation through text messages and emails—

Joe Grover: [27:41] So, even though there was an agreement, everyone had pretty much said, “Hey, everyone owns a third of this business.”

Levi Lindsay: [27:45] Yeah, and so thankfully things were strong enough there that there wasn't really arguing out of that. Anyway, the next move was, after fighting for a few more months, we bought him down to 19% from 33% for an unreasonable amount of money that we were going to pay in a few large chunks over a few months.

Joe Grover: [28:06] Was that just so you guys could have majority control of the business so there wasn't this stalemate?

Levi Lindsay: [28:15] I learned a lot about stuff. Like, if you're 20% or more, you have to be on loans, and on certain types of documents and leases, so our goal was to at least get them to 19%. So we got them down to that.

Joe Grover: [28:28] It sounds like you had some debt too, so you'd raise some notes.

Levi Lindsay: [28:31] Well, the EIDL is technically debt. 

Joe Grover: [28:33] Oh, that's right. 

Levi Lindsay: [28:34] And then the PPP loan, but thankfully that was forgivable. And then we were so over leveraged on our monthly expenses, it was like, “We need all this working capital.” And you look at it on a balance sheet, and the company was literally worth zero dollars at the moment. 

Joe Grover: [28:55] But you're still growing. You're still providing good service. 

Levi Lindsay: [28:59] Yep, and at this time, we're up well above the seven-figure mark—I guess we're around that seven-figure mark in annual revenue. And like I said, there's some good monthly recurring. So, once we get him down to 19 percent, he went and started a company called VidFam to compete with VidArmy directly with a new partner. He told people, “Ask me why it's called VidFam.” I assume what he would tell people is that—and maybe I caught wind of this—but it was called VidFam because he valued family and we didn't because we wouldn't let him be with his family. I think in his head, from his perspective, it's, “You guys, I'm here as a friend, asking you for a favor and you're not giving it to me when I would do the same for you.”

Joe Grover: [29:56] And I'm sure if he was on the podcast he'd have a perspective about things, as always. 

Levi Lindsay: [30:00] For sure. 

Joe Grover: [30:02] Man, how rough. At that time, what was your mental health like?

Levi Lindsay: [30:08] So this is when panic attacks started. I think this is when this was all around November of 2020. And that's when I had my first panic attack. It was in the crux of arguing over how are we going to even get him to 19%? And that's when I found myself in my closet. I'd never had a panic attack before. I'd heard of them before. But I'm just in my closet and just breathing heavily, can't breathe, and my mind is disassociating. It feels existential. And my wife comes in and catches me, and I'm just in this shock state. And she just starts rubbing my back. And that was freaky because at the moment I didn't have the mental fortitude or knowledge that anything would get better, and then the tricky part is I'm also experiencing burnout because I've been working my freaking butt off for three years. 

Joe Grover: [31:11] How many hours a week were you working? 

Levi Lindsay: [31:12] At the crux of it, sometimes 80. You know when you're a business owner, I remember I would go on vacation with my family, and I'd be on the beach or texting, and they'd be out in the water.

Joe Grover: [31:26] Unfortunately, I do know.

Levi Lindsay: [31:27] On a vacation we couldn't afford. I'm over there working, trying to figure out “This videographer is supposed to be here at this time and da da da da da” because your business just never leaves your brain. Even if you have a thought, it's your second thought, and then you can maybe get another thought where you taste some food and you're like, “Oh, this food's good. My business. This food's good. My business.”

Joe Grover: [31:42] Yeah, it's consuming mentally. Even physically, Melanie, my wife, would always say, “Hey, you're here physically, but you're not here mentally.” I was there, but she knew and everyone could tell that I wasn't engaged. I wasn't connecting. I wasn't even talking, because my mind was spinning about all the things that had to be done and fixed and all the problems and challenges. And that's such a dangerous place to find yourself in. Because you're not only sacrificing your time—and in your case, you weren't getting paid—but you're sacrificing relationships. You're sacrificing real connection for the pursuit of some success, some achievement, and that's a dangerous place to be, and a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to that.

[32:46] Yeah, so the panic attack started. And by the way, thank you for being so open about this, because we haven't talked about this a lot in previous episodes, but I had experiences during about a year-and-a-half stretch, I'm very similar to that, where, not in a chemical way was I depressed, but I dealt with all the signs of depression. And I remember being curled up a time or two in a closet or in a car just because I didn't feel like I could. I did not have a coping mechanism, and I had internalized everything that was happening in the business in a way that I felt like I had to solve it all and that I carried it all on my shoulders in a way that was so unhealthy. Did that get better, or was it pretty persistent, the panic attacks and the anxiety that came with this stressful situation at VidArmy?

Levi Lindsay: [33:39] It got worse and worse because—I think you couple it with a few things: I have ADHD, and I get hyper-focus. Hyper-focus is a blessing, because you go hard at one thing and you get obsessed with that thing, and my thing was make VidArmy the biggest thing this world has ever seen.

Joe Grover: [33:57] This was your bet. You were swinging for the fence. 

Levi Lindsay: [34:00] And that leads to burnout, and then it leads to panic attacks because I'm working on this thing and people are fighting against me. And so the frustration ensues, the burnout ensues. And what's interesting is—and you probably experienced this—it's sometimes, as the founder or business owner, you start feeling all those pressures and those weights and the depression and the burnout, but then you don't feel like you even have the space to go recover because everyone's depending on you and the problems aren't going to go away. A lot of employees have the privilege of punching out at five and being like, “If I lose my job, I'm going to get another one.” But for you, it's like, “No, I've leveraged everything into this, I've bled into this, and I have to make it work, and these people are making salaries, and I have to show up the next day.”

Joe Grover: [34:49] Isn't it interesting? As a leader, we feel this responsibility, and it is our responsibility to show up and rally the team and to motivate and provide vision and encouragement. And I remember walking up the stairs to my office every single morning. It was an old building in Denver. And these metal stairs, I can still feel the weight of every step because I was in so much pain and I knew that there was an inevitable outcome here that was not going to be positive for many people, including those employees and my investors and my customers. And so I would walk up those stairs, and I walk in, and I think if you ask people how I showed up every single day, they would say I was positive and motivating and encouraging. And I had to dig so deep, but I was hiding. I was hiding real pain, just cause I felt like I had no other choice. I couldn't show up in that state of anxiety or stress because it would just bleed into the rest of the organization. And that, I think, exasperates the problem, because there's no outlet. You feel like you have to show up in a way that is so dissonant with how you're feeling. Did you feel that way?

Levi Lindsay: [36:06] Yeah, and you're almost running on reserve. You're running on adrenaline because you've already given everything that you can give. So now you're just tapping into fight-or-flight chemicals to make people happy. You're not taking from a tank that you've filled anymore—you're taking from an empty tank, and it's his extra little caveman pouch of adrenaline that you're running on. And that's dangerous, because it got to the point—and I'll fast forward a little bit. 

[36:37] When I finally did leave the business, and I could take myself out of it, I was so used to being Levi, one of the founders of VidArmy and so hyper-focused on it and being on autopilot with my family and just grinding through burnout. Then you take all that away, and it was like, “Wait, now what's my purpose? And what's next? And who am I?” And my identity was tied to that. My happiness was tied to the outcome of that, and I didn't get the outcome of that. So now I'm sad.

• [37:15] It all came to a pretty big crux where I attempted suicide about a month and a half later, where I just thought—I'd emptied the tank so dry that I was like, “How am I supposed to go on when there's just an empty tank? And I'm reaching for stuff and I am not finding anything.” Thankfully, time is what fills that tank. Not thankfully is that it takes a long time. Alex McArthur and Kizik probably saved my life by reaching out and taking a chance on me. Otherwise, who knows where I'd be or what I'd be floundering through. But they gave me a purpose and an awesome team to fall back on and trusted me with projects that I fumbled through. I don't think I'd be here without that.

Joe Grover: [38:17] This experience is probably all too familiar to so many entrepreneurs. We don't really talk about the mental health costs that come with business ownership, with starting something. And I just wonder, could you have done anything different along the way that would have helped you cope? We're so grateful that you're here and have had this successful marketing career post-VidArmy, but most importantly, we're so thankful that you're here sharing this perspective and being vulnerable and giving hope and direction to other entrepreneurs. But what would you have done different along the way that would have prevented that spiral?

Levi Lindsay: [39:07] Oh man. It's so funny, because I've bounced to a few companies now, and I look back. I don't do this perfectly now, but I do it sometimes when I get into the crux of the problems of the current day of the current company. I think, “Oh yeah, I was facing some problems at Neighbor.” I don't even remember what they were, but, man, I was stressed out. But that's a company I don't think about anymore, and I don't work there. And like the VidArmy problems, they're not problems anymore because I don't work there. 

[39:08] I like what Tim Allen says on one of the Santa Clause movies. He says, “A problem at work is a problem, but a problem at home is a PROBLEM.” And just this last week, I faced a really big problem where it was of my own doing. I was a really big idiot and made some pretty pretty crazy mistakes with some interpersonal skills with somebody that I really care about. And the only thing that got me through was, despite the temptation to say, “My problem's at work, so let's dive into work,” fighting the temptation to do that and saying, “My problem's at work; I'm going to dive in head deep into home, and I'm going to take my girls out on a daddy-daughter date. I'm going to take them to the indoor play gym. I'm going to enjoy reading a book with them,” because everything in you says, “Go solve the problem at work.”

[40:50] But man, my three-year-old healed my soul this last week, because all the failures in life and the reputations I've destroyed through being a jerk or making mistakes and failures and not acting correctly and learning, my three-year-old looks at me, and I'm her entire world. When I came to my wife and I said, “Hey, I think it's time for me to leave VidArmy, and I've got this opportunity. I think this is the time for me to just walk away.” She said, “I don't care what you do, I just want my husband back.” And it took a lot of months and a lot of time, and, like I said, thankfully Kizik was there to catch my fall and Alex MacArthur, but I wasn't there anymore.

Joe Grover: [41:53] It's so easy now, in hindsight, to say those problems weren't as big. Even as you describe them today, I'm sure you still feel some of that pain. But with perspective they're like, “Hey, it was a small video business.” You just said it. But it was your whole world. It was your whole identity. Your mental health was hinging on what was happening in this negotiation and the success or failure of the company. In the moment, how do we do that? How do we keep perspective in the moment? Cause that's what I struggle with too. And, curiously, the reason I got a little bit emotional is because my wife said that same thing to me, right? She's like, “This is not Joe Grover.” She's like, “This is not worth it.” She's like, “I don't care what you do. I'd rather be poor for the rest of our life than for you to be in pain and disconnected and unavailable.”

• [42:40] And probably the thing that saved me during those years was some ski trips with my kids. Those were moments where I wasn't thinking about work on Saturdays, driving up I-70 to Vail and Breckenridge when I was living in Colorado. Those are probably what kept me sane through that. And then Sunday night would come, and I would spiral, and I'd work and fight and claw my way trying to solve all the problems. But how do we keep the perspective in the moment when these just seem like mountains that are unclimbable?

Levi Lindsay: [43:15] I feel like you'll understand what I mean when I say I think, unfortunately, one of the best ways to learn how to do it is to go through it and lose a business. I'm so grateful now, in 2025, that I lost myself in 2021, because now I can look back and say nothing's worth that. Really feels like that one analogy of God's holding a teddy bear behind His back that's huge, and you're sitting there crying over this little tiny teddy bear, his eyeballs popped out. And you're sad, and He's like, “I've got something so much bigger and better for you. But right now I get that this sucks.” 

[44:05] People talk about shifting perspective, and hopefully listening to this podcast will help people shift perspective. But at the end of the day, the best learning experiences are the real scars that failure leaves: The actual experience of losing something. Failing. Egg on your face. The feeling of the yolk dripping down of failure.

Joe Grover: [44:28] That everyone can see and everyone's judging you: the founder, the failed founder, the founder of VidArmy who didn't figure it out. I can remember just thinking I'll never, ever be a CEO or a CMO ever again, because who would bet on me?

Levi Lindsay: [44:46] Yeah, a hundred percent, and unfortunately, time is the one thing. And it sucks because you want to fix things then. But time has been the single healer of suicidal ideation, damage to a reputation for someone who cares way too much about what people think, not being qualified to do the things that I have committed to doing, the feelings of bitterness and self-doubt and self-loathing. It's time.

Joe Grover: [45:32] Yeah, it took me seven years to start a podcast to talk about failure. You're far ahead of where I was four years ago.

Levi Lindsay: [45:40] Four years yeah.

Joe Grover: [45:42] Seems like a lifetime ago, doesn't it now?

Levi Lindsay: [45:45] But also, when you think of 2020, don't you think like, “Oh, it was like, what, last year? Two years ago?” And then people are like, “No, it was five years ago. And you add on top of that, 2020 was a crazy year for the entire world, let alone trying to keep a thin business that's on the verge of collapsing.

Joe Grover: [46:05] Tell me about—you tell your wife that you're done with VidArmy, and she says, “Whatever, I don't care at all about that business, I just care about my husband.” How did you feel the day after?

Levi Lindsay: [46:19] You probably would relate to this too. But you almost go through every grieving process. You go through denial and acceptance and bargaining. I remember when the contract was signed and I didn't have any equity anymore in it and I washed my hands of it and had indemnification from whatever happened beyond that point. Muscles I didn't even know I had started to relax. Muscles I didn't know that I'd been clenching for weeks started to relax. And then it was facing the next conundrum, which was, “Who the crap am I, and what do I do now, and what's my purpose?” And what? Do I go back to school? Can I find a job? Am I hireable? But yeah, I do remember just the feeling washing over me. My wife is just so patient. Sounds like your wife and my wife would really get along, where she's just like, “I don't care, we'll make it work.” We put so much pressure on ourselves in America, but then Utah too.

Joe Grover: [47:25] Yeah, we have this idealistic view of what life should be, and it's unhealthy.

Levi Lindsay: [47:35] It's unhealthy. It drives a lot of unhealthy behaviors.

Joe Grover: [47:39] It does. That moment. So there's a little bit of grieving. I understand that. Absolutely. I remember throwing away all the t-shirts that had the logo of the company because I couldn’t go in my closet. I had all of this swag: hats, t-shirts, bags. I threw it all away because it was a reminder to me of a failure, and I had to distance myself from that. I mean, that's crazy. It all went to the Salvation Army. But I do remember also the relief. I also remember after we had laid off a bunch of employees, it was a little bit of a different outcome, and I talked to all the investors. It was super painful. I've talked about it a lot through season one. I do remember feeling like I was free again, like it wasn't my identity anymore. It was a bad outcome, it was. I didn't want to talk about it. I wrote about it. I didn't want to talk about it with anyone. I didn't want to unpack it at the time, but I did feel a great relief. 

[48:38] And the reason I bring it up is because I just want to say it's okay to quit. We've talked a lot about quitting and failing and are those the same or they're not the same? But I've just changed my philosophy over the last several months as I've talked to entrepreneurs, and it's just not worth it. The reality is, if it's that bad that you don't feel like you should be living anymore, or if it's that bad that you don't think you're going to be able to turn this thing around, then you are more important to your family and to society and to our community than that business is. Period, full stop.

[49:21] And this sunk-cost fallacy where I've been at it for three years, I put all my money and time and energy into it, it’s my identity—stop it. Just stop it. Say, “I'm done,” and move on. Because I've now watched entrepreneur after entrepreneur, whether they were forced to do it because the business just ran out of cash and they had to close the doors, or they chose to do it because that was in their best interest. I've seen those entrepreneurs take that experience and parlay it into successful companies but, most importantly, happier lives, more fulfilled lives. Just stop. It's not worth it. And this idea that we have to persevere against all odds, that we can't ever quit, I think does more damage to humans and to families than all of the wealth that you could accumulate from any exit or IPO that you could ever imagine.

• [50:14] So I don't know if that's a hot take or not, but if you're an entrepreneur and you're like, “I don't feel like I have joy in my life. I can't connect with people that I love. I don't think I'm going to be able to figure this out. I don't feel like I should be on the earth anymore.” Then what I would tell you to do is stop. Quit. Back away. Distance yourself. And you will find some freedom. And honestly, you'll probably find that this endeavor, this venture, is not your end game, that you got something else—a bigger teddy bear.

Levi Lindsay: [50:50] Man, I love, love, love that one of the learnings is you can “I'll be happy when” yourself into the grave. “I'll be happy when this business hits this revenue mark.” “I'll be happy when we have this many employees.” “I'll be happy once we get our series A funding.” “I'll be happy when.” “I'll be happy when.” When, in reality, if I was to start another business, I would need to make sure I'm happy and that the business could be an amplifier of the happiness, not the giver of it.

Joe Grover: [51:20] Yeah, I love that. Stop it. “I'll be happy when?” You'll be asking yourself that question until you're 90 years old. 

Levi Lindsay: [51:29] A hundred percent. 

Joe Grover: [51:30] It has to be independent of the success or any outcome of any company. So I don't know, do you disagree or agree with what I said? Cause I've never said it out loud until I've been sitting here with you, and it's been something I wanted to get off my chest, and this is probably the final episode of season one. So I guess I just want to give permission to entrepreneurs everywhere to stop and to quit and to live to fight another day.

Levi Lindsay: [51:56] Yeah, or even slow down. Who said that you have to have a Divvy exit in three years? So many people need to learn to be easily pleased but never satisfied, where it's, “Oh, wow. Okay, we're not so-and-so that I saw on LinkedIn. But, man, look at how far we've come. This is pretty awesome. We have a business doing such and such revenue, and it's paying our bills, and, oh yeah, we can fix a couple of problems.” I think shifting the perspective and comparison, it really is the thief of joy. And failure, when you're a failure and then you see other people succeeding or even perceiving that they're succeeding—cause, like I said, I was really good at showing people I was succeeding when we weren't. We're marketers. Of course we're going to show people we succeed. Just because other people are having certain successes doesn't mean that they're—it's your journey. That was my journey that I needed to go through. 

[53:06] One VC told me this: “Before you start a business, before you join a business, before you do anything, know thyself.” And we sit there and compare all these successes of people, and it's like, “I don't know what they've got to get to that success or what they've been through to get to that.” But at the end of the day, all I get to take with me is the learning from the failures and none of the IPOs. And can we just normalize—sorry, can we just normalize in Utah—quit putting off salary for equity, quit putting off happiness for these little startups in hopes for an IPO. Every entrepreneur is out there selling this dream of “Burn yourself out for me and one day you'll get $2 million or $10 million.” You know it's a huge exit. Normalize just getting paid what you need to get paid now, clocking out at five, going home and seeing your family, and quit putting off your happiness for this fictitious IPO that's going to happen.

Joe Grover: [54:04] All the VCs in the community are going to be like, “Joe just told all the entrepreneurs to stop and quit their job as the founder.” And you just said, “Go home at five and stop taking equity instead of salary. Take all the salary now.” No, I agree.

Levi Lindsay: [54:17] Let's flip the script.

Joe Grover: [54:19] I was sitting with three executives one year, and we were growing, we actually had raised a bunch of money, and we were doing pretty well. We were growing. We actually had raised a bunch of money, and we were doing pretty well. We were on a nice trajectory, but we were not profitable. And I remember there was this conversation about our salaries. And we were all under market, and we all got paid the exact same amount, which is really interesting. The C-suite all had the exact same salary. We had the exact same bonus. So we're all in parody, and I remember we said, “Okay, we're going to bump it by $20,000 a year.” And I said no. And I was like, “Guys,” and I came from the investment side. I said, “Listen, we're not profitable. We can't justify that. This is not the right time to give ourselves a raise. We need to get to profitability first.” And I know that sounds really benevolent, but it was stupid because that $20,000 was not going to make a difference at all in our burn rate. It was a principle-based decision that I felt strongly about, and I'm sure my investors thank me for it. But guess what? That $20,000 did make a lot of difference to my family and probably to my kids' college fund that, over the course of five years, I had $100,000 less in my kids' college funds, in my savings account, because I had taken one for the team, because I had equity, because I was looking out for the long game. Come on!

Levi Lindsay: [55:30] “I'll be happy when we get this pay. I'm cutting $20,000 now for $20 million in three years.” Right? 

Joe Grover: [55:38] Exactly. So I like that you bring that up.

Levi Lindsay: [55:40] It's a lot of what's driving mental health problems for people in software companies right now and people working off VC money. Because we got to grind, and we have to double every year, or we're not in top percentile. And look, I'm all about working really hard towards those things. Manny, my CEO, don't worry, I'm still going to work really hard. But also, I'm done putting off my happiness hoping that it happens, cause it actually happens maybe one out of every hundred.

Joe Grover: [56:14] Yeah, even companies that have been successful in Silicon slopes—and you know who they are—have had massive outcomes. You look at how deep those dollars went, and in some of those companies it did not go very deep. And there was a lot of people that signed up for those gigs with this equity lottery ticket. And those lottery tickets sometimes become a vacation, not a retirement. And I've seen that play out a lot. So even if the company does work out, oftentimes, unless you're there early, you're probably not going to retire on that outcome. And so that's a little bit of straight talk from a couple of guys who probably are really rich with a lot of equity that's worth nothing. 

Levi Lindsay: [56:56] A hundred percent.

Joe Grover: [56:57] At least I am. Maybe you're not.

Levi Lindsay: [56:59] I am absolutely filthy rich on failures and unkept promises and outcomes that never happened.

Joe Grover: [57:11] One day, I remember, I had an employee say, “Tell me what this really means. These employees stock options. What's the strike price? What's the company worth?” And I remember talking with my executive team, and I said, “Let's do a training on this so that everyone understands exactly how it works. What's the value of their options today based on the last round? With dilution and preferences, what does it look like if we sell the business for $100 million or a billion?” And the sad reality was when you looked at three or 400 employees, and everyone had options, and you did the math, these were $50,000 checks. And $50,000 is a lot of money. But I think some of those employees were operating with the assumption that it was $500,000 just because they didn't know. 

Levi Lindsay: [57:59] Or even, “I'm going to retire off this or pay off my house.”

Joe Grover: [58:04] And so I like the call-out. So in closing, Levi, this is one of my favorite conversations of all time. You've shared a bunch of personal things, and some of these things you've shared on LinkedIn as well, and I think it's inspired thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of entrepreneurs. Share some parting wisdom for the founder, for the operator who is embattled, who is in a partnership conflict, who is struggling to keep a business afloat, to survive, or who is struggling with deeper mental health challenges. What would you tell that entrepreneur?

Levi Lindsay: [58:42] Even though every fiber of your being is saying that you can't afford to take the time off, that you can't afford to lose the client, that you can't afford to take the next VC meeting, or whatever it is that you're putting off that week off for, actually, you can't afford to take, actually you can't afford to not take the time off. You need to give yourself permission to lose a client. You need to give yourself permission to piss off an employee. You need to give yourself permission to quit caring so much about the outcome of the business and take a break and force yourself to forget about the business for a day, a week, as long as you can, because the business is eating you alive and you don't even know it.

Joe Grover: [59:40] So maybe you don't have to quit, but you definitely need a week off.

Levi Lindsay: [59:43] Or just quit. Or quit freaking hanging on and just let it go. Give up, because you're not giving up, you're actually—what's funny is giving up the business in a lot of regards, and probably in a lot of people's cases, is actually the triumph where you go and save your life. 

Joe Grover: [59:59] It's not the failure. 

Levi Lindsay: [1:00:00] It's not the failure.

Joe Grover: [1:00:01] That's the reality is the fact that you're sitting here right now: That's a triumph. The fact that you lived to fight another day but also have now parlayed that experience into so many other contributions in our community and in the startup ecosystem here in Utah. There's no failure in that story, in my opinion. Thank you so much, Levi. 

Levi Lindsay: [1:00:27] Thank you.

[1:00:28] I am Levi Lindsay, the former cofounder of VidArmy, an epic failure out of Utah, but turned out to be one of the biggest blessings and lessons in my life where I got to learn the importance of family and taking care of my own mental health above all else.

Joe Grover: [1:00:47] Thanks for tuning in to The Real F Word. The real F word is failure, and remember that failure is a stepping stone. It's not just a stumbling block. Join us next time as we continue to explore the journey of resilience and growth without ignoring the true costs personally, professionally, and financially that comes with failure. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep embracing the real stories of entrepreneurship. See you next time.