Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome back to Healthy Mind, Healthy Like. I am Yusuf, and today I'm joined by Austin Reed, co-founder and CEO of Horizon Development, a founder and automation agency. And a digital nomad who has built his business while traveling across more than 26 countries. Austin speaks openly about the mental cost of entrepreneurship, the setbacks that shape you, and by paying your team before yourself might be the most sane thing a founder can do. With that, I welcome my guest Austin to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Hey, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Perfect.

The Tech Pivot That Broke Us

SPEAKER_00 0:50

So Austin, you have talked about setbacks that felt devastating at the time without going into anything you're not comfortable with. Was there a specific moment in building your business where you genuinely did not know if you were going to make it through?

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Yeah, there is a few moments like that. I think everybody who grows a business goes through those moments. I think the biggest moment was when we were switching technologies. So we started out by doing smaller WordPress projects, and we didn't really like them. And we landed a couple of Python Django projects and React projects, and we liked those more. So we decided to switch technologies to only do Django and React type of work. And that switch was really hard. It took us about nine months between the time we did our last sale on WordPress and the time we made a sale for Django and React. And yeah, I mean, it was difficult. There was a time where uh I had to call my mom. We were all living in Ecuador. Me, my co-founder, his girlfriend, my wife, and our designer. So five of us living in the same house in Ecuador. And I had to call my mom for groceries because we didn't have enough money. Thank God, two weeks later, we landed a client and everything was okay. But right at the end there, I had to call my mom for help so that everybody had food. So yeah.

What Setbacks Should Actually Teach

SPEAKER_00 2:20

And often there's this idea that gets passed around in entrepreneurship circles that struggle build strength. That harder the path, the better you come out on the other side. But I think there's a version of that idea that is actually doing people harm. So, what do you think we have gotten wrong about what setbacks are supposed to do to you?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah, you know, I'm not sure. I I I don't know. Like, I can only talk from my own experience. A lot of my setbacks, people would think, they're like, oh my gosh, that's really, really crazy. You've been through that. And for me, it wasn't all that crazy when I was going through the moment. I never really had a moment thinking, like, oh, I'm gonna give up or quit. You know, a lot of people they have those moments. I never did. Like, once I left corporate life, I never came back and I never wanted to. And I just always found a way, even if it was selling the things I had on Facebook just to make rent money, right? Like, I always found a way to make it through. So what's toxic about that? Um, I don't necessarily think you have to go through hardship to be successful. I do think you have to have failures, but I also think you can fast-track that. So if you have like mentors, for example, mentors can teach you their failures, so you learn by proxy, and you don't have to experience the same failures that your mentor did because he told you, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

So I agree with that because I think a lot of people are in something really hard right now, and they're not sure if they are being forged or just depleted, and that uncertainty alone is exhausting.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Definitely, definitely. For me, I think if you're not doing what you love, that's a huge thing, right? The one thing that I've always been fortunate is I've always been fortunate to do things I really enjoy doing, right? So I don't take on projects that I don't enjoy. And I think because of that, I've been able to maintain a high level of of energy throughout the entrepreneurial journey.

Grind Culture And Mental Cost

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Okay, let's talk about grind culture because I think it is something you have pushed back on. Most of the messaging around entrepreneurship still glorifies the hustle. The founder who sleeps for four hours, who sacrifices everything, who's always building. So, what does that actually cost people? Not just professionally, but mentally.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah, so when we started out, I worked 12, 15 hours a day, every day for a long time. A long time. There were projects. I remember there was this one project we had. Uh, they wanted it done over Christmas, and I was losing sleep. I was I was programming all day and all night and sleeping for like two, three hours, and then waking up and programming all day. And and it was snowing outside, and I was tired, so I'd go outside without a shirt on to stay awake so I could keep programming. Uh that was a crazy time. Um, I think that um I think at the beginning it's like you kind of have to go through at least a little bit of that if you want to really get the ship off the ground. You know what I'm saying? It's not necessarily required. There are paths where like you only need to work four or six hours a day, but a lot of those paths require that you already have resources. But if you're starting with no resources, like we started, we when we started, we had nothing, right? Like I was, I was pretty poor, like I didn't really have money or investors or even really a big team. It was just, you know, me and my friends trying to make it, you know. And so, um, and so yeah, you kind of have to grind through some of those nights, but as you gain resources and as you as you grow, you start having more leverage on your time because you have more team members around you, you have more money, you have more tools that you can use. And then it no longer becomes, hey, work 12 hours a day, which I mean, you can still do that. I mean, there are things I could do 12 hours a day for my business. I'm not going to lie. But the most important thing, probably you don't need to be doing that for 10, 12 hours a day. Like for me, the most important thing is setting up a multi-like an uh enterprise level marketing campaign, right? So reaching out to businesses via direct mail, via retargeting ads via LinkedIn and email to like a subset of a thousand businesses in one industry, right? That is the highest leverage activity I can do. Once I build that campaign and that campaign is going, there's not much else that's super high leverage. Like I can manage projects, I can make content, I can do more outreach or cold calls or this or that, but none of it's really going to drive the needle as much as that one activity, right? So grinding all day, every day isn't necessarily as good. And I've noticed that now that I've stepped back a little bit, like I still work six to eight hours a day, depending on the day. Some days I work less, some days I work like four or three hours and some I take off, right? It depends. But um, I noticed the more that I have space, the better decisions I make. So it allows me to sit and be more tactical. Also, the feedback loops have gotten larger, right? So, whereas before it was like I had to do all the work, so I would sit down, work on the thing, the thing would get done, work, plan the next thing, work on the thing, thing would get now. I sit down, I have a vision, I tell my team about the vision, the team executes the vision, and while they're executing the vision, I am like, okay, now I do my thing. And so then I have to wait for them to finish to get feedback, right? Because I I need I need them to to present the work. And so that means the decisions now all of a sudden take longer. Whereas before we could make a decision that would take two weeks or a month, now certain decisions take two, three months to fruition because there's moving parts, and we have to wait on them and then this team and that team to put everything together, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:56

And and for someone who has bought into the story that who has made it part of their identity, what does it feel like when they start to question it? Because

Learning To Rest Without Guilt

SPEAKER_00 9:07

I imagine that is not a comfortable place to be.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Man, you have to learn how to enjoy life again. So before I started this company, I also was working like 12-15 hours a day on music, and I I just got really angry with the world for a minute. And um, I had to when when I got to Bali, this was just right before COVID, I I took a month off, like literally just a month, and I did nothing. And and it took me like at first, I didn't even know how to like enjoy my life. Like, I would sit, I would go to like a cafe or I'd sit at the beach and I'd be like really anxious, stressed out because I'm not working, you know. And it's like, what is the point of working all day and making all this fucking money if you if you don't like enjoy your life? You're just gonna lose both. You lose your relationships, you lose your family, you lose your health, you lose your enjoyment and the magic of life, right? And so, like, I talk to a lot of people. I'm like, hey, what's your goal in your business? And they're like, yo, I just want to exit, make a million dollars, so then I can go sit on the beach and drink a martini. I'm like, why don't you just go sit on the beach and drink a martini now? Like, it's not that expensive. You're already making $10,000, $15,000 a month. Like, you really don't need to wait, bro. Like, so I mean, it's a conundrum. And for me, like shifting that mindset was really, really hard at first. It like I had to learn how to relax, and that took months. That took a while, it was not an easy thing for sure.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

And I think that is that quiet crisis that does not get talked about, not burning out in a dramatic way, but slowly realizing that the way you have been working was never actually sustainable, and you have been calling that dedication.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Yeah, yeah, that is pretty funny.

Paying Your Team Before Yourself

SPEAKER_00 11:15

You run a team and you have spoken about paying your team first, even in the hard season, and that's a values, values statement, but it is also a mental health statement. Like, what happens to a founder's world when they consistently put themselves last? And what shifts when they stop?

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Yeah, I think I built a team for the team. Like, I started rising by accent. Like it were, I didn't start this company on purpose, it was it was just me and my friend doing projects, and I was just trying to help a friend, and it became a company, right? So I didn't really intend to start the company, but I I fell in love with certain aspects of it. I fell in love with sales, I fell in love with programming to an extent I really like to program, but I also fell in love with the team members for me. That's really important, and so I now like to be honest, bro, I could just stop now and be fine and stop investing in growth and just in a vet and just maintain what I have and enjoy a really awesome fucking life, and I don't have to work super hard, and that that's great, but I I don't do that. I I like to work and I work because I really care about my team members and I want to foster the dreams that they have, right? So, for example, Andre just had a baby, right? And he's building out a house, and he wants to have a really, really stable job and really, really stable, you know, income for his family. And so I that makes me want to work harder because, like, first of all, I've had Andre for like two and a half years now, which is like a while, like I've known him a bit, and uh I feel for the man, like I want to make I want to make that come true. Like Lorenzo, he wants to be the leader of a front-end development team, you know, and so every chance I get, I try to put him in a little bit more charge because I know that like that's his dream, that's what he wants to do, and I know he's ambitious and he tries really hard, you know. And so I every every couple of months will meet up with every single team member and ask them, like, hey, you know, how are you doing? How's your family? You know, what's your dreams? Because their dreams change, right? Like 22-year-old Lorenzo and 27-year-old Lorenzo have different priorities. You see what I'm saying? So I always try to keep in touch with with who they are and what they want and how they're doing, and then I try to align the company to foster that because I I find them to be important.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

You know what I am hearing is that how you treat the people around you is actually a reflection of your own relationship with pressure, and that integrity under financial stress might be one of the truest sets of what kind of leader someone actually is.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Beautiful, man. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Digital Nomad Life And Staying Grounded

SPEAKER_00 14:24

And you build your business as a digital nomad across 26 countries. Most people hear that and think freedom. But I'm curious about the other side. What does that kind of lifestyle actually ask of you mentally? And how do you stay grounded when the context around you is always changing?

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Yeah, so the first biggest misconception is if you're gonna grow a business, okay, living overseas, at least coming from a first-world country like the United States, is a great idea because like you're gonna save a shitload of money, like straight up. Like in the US, you pay like two or three thousand dollars a month for rent. Here you could pay like 700 bucks. Some places you can pay like $200 or $100 for rent. Like I've stayed in some very, very cheap countries, right? So, in that aspect, like it helps because you have a lot of leverage, you know, because it's like all of a sudden now you only have to pay yourself four or five hundred dollars a month to live, and everything else you can reinvest in the business, and that's huge, right? Um, on the other side of things, a lot of people think it's cool because you're always traveling and you get to see all these places. And I'll tell you, when you first start a business, you don't have time to see any place, you know. So you go to these cool countries and you work all day, and all you see is your is your hotel room and maybe a cafe, and that's it, right? So um, I I actually regret some countries and some parts of some countries that I've been to I didn't get to fully enjoy. Like when I was in India, I went to Rajasthan and I enjoyed some parts of Rajasthan. I went to Aur and that was really cool, but I never got to see the Taj Mahal and I never went to Jaipur, and I would have loved to go and do those things, right? And then when I was in Malaysia, um, there's this part in Kuala Lumpur called Batu Caves, and I never got to see that because I was so busy working that that I never had the time to really go, and I do regret that. And so now when I travel, I always make time to go and do these things, even if it's just one day a week, right? Just always get out of my comfort zone and go places, right? Now you're saying, how do you stay grounded? I think changing environments is really, really great time to change habits. So if you're in the habit of like you have a bad habit of like you're waking up late or or maybe you're drinking too many energy drinks, or you're not going to the gym, or like just who knows, just whatever, right? When you move environments, if from the first day you change environments, you change your behavior, it's really easy that that behavior sticks. So I would use changing countries as a way to change my behavior so that I can become the person that I want to become and remove habits that I don't want. That really helps.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

And that is a real skill, isn't it? The ability to not get caught in the loop. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, that loop replaying what went wrong, what they should have done is where the most energy gets lost.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yeah, no, I think so. I do think that there is a lot of energy that gets lost in in those things. But I don't think being a digital nomad necessarily adds or removes any energy into any business. I think it doesn't really matter where you are, it it more depends on how you present yourself.

Where To Connect And Final Message

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Austin, for people who want to connect with you or want to learn more about your work, where can they do that?

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Yeah, you guys can check out horizon.dev. Uh at the bottom, we have our YouTube channel where we teach other business owners how to do automations and grow their businesses. We have a channel that gets over 100,000 views a month. And yeah, other than that, reach out on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Perfect. And to everyone listening, all the links in the show notes, so just go and check those out. Austin, is there any last message that you want to switch?

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Um yeah, I mean, just do what you love, don't give up, and the universe will give back.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Okay, Austin, thank you so much. You know, this conversation I think a lot of this needed. And probably a few people who aren't even founders but have been living like they are. They needed this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Yeah, I think so too. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

You're most welcome. And to everyone listening, you are allowed to build something that does not cost you everything. In fact, that might be the most important thing you build. We'll be back soon with more conversations like this. Take care of yourselves.