The Bar Fight That Built a Business (And Why You Should Be Angry)

I never wanted to talk about race, racism, or the fact that I’m an introvert who hates working the room.

It makes people uncomfortable. It ruins the vibe at the networking mixer. It doesn’t fit the glossy narrative of the "Crushing It!" entrepreneur on LinkedIn.

But now that the business is sold and the checks have cleared, I can afford to be honest. And the honest truth is that MotivBase wasn’t born from a "synergistic paradigm shift."

It started with a drunk guy in a bar spewing racist garbage at me and my business partner, Jason.

Jason, God bless him, was ready to throw hands. He was ready to take this guy down right there among the sticky tables and stale beer smell. I held him back.

But that moment defined us. It solidified Jason as the big brother figure who would stand between me and the ugly side of the world, and it solidified me as the guy who had to succeed—not because I wanted a yacht, but because I had to prove I had a right to be in the room.

The Invisible Rule of "The Club"

Here is the Invisible Rule that kills more dreams than bankruptcy: The belief that you need permission to belong.

Jason and I would walk into rooms full of guys named Chad who went to Ivy League schools and vacationed in the Hamptons. They had the pedigree. They had the "look." They had the invisible pass that said, “One of us.”

I didn’t. I was a shy immigrant who hated small talk. I had an MBA, but not from their schools. I didn’t look like them, and I certainly didn’t act like them.

I felt like a fraud. A massive imposter.

But here is the counterintuitive truth: Imposter syndrome is a competitive advantage.

The guys who felt like they belonged? They got lazy. They relied on borrowed credibility—their dad’s connections, their alumni network, their easy charm.

We couldn't borrow credibility. We had to manufacture it from scratch, brick by bloody brick.

We couldn't rely on a handshake; we had to rely on being undeniably, irritatingly better at the work than anyone else. We solved problems so big and so well that eventually, they had to let us in the room, even if we didn't know the secret handshake.

If you feel like you don't fit in, stop trying to fix it. Lean into it. The chip on your shoulder is the only thing keeping you warm in the winter of entrepreneurship.

The Minneapolis Rooftop: Burning the Boats

Fast forward a few years. We weren't fighting drunks anymore; we were fighting comfort.

We were sitting on a rooftop in Minneapolis, the Mayo Clinic building looming in the background. We had just met with Target and General Mills. We were making good money as consultants. It was safe. It was stable.

It was a trap.

The Invisible Rule of business says: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

We looked at each other and decided to break it on purpose.

We decided to torch our high-margin consulting services—our safety net—to go all-in on our technology platform. It was objectively a stupid decision on paper. It was risky. It meant our revenue would take a nosedive in the short term.

But we knew that if we stayed "safe," we would be consultants forever. We would be trading time for money until we died.

To build a legacy, we had to be willing to lose the safety.

The Founder as Unlicensed Therapist

Here is the part of the journey nobody puts in the pitch deck.

As the company grew, I realized that being a CEO is about 10% strategy and 90% emotional management.

You think you’re hiring employees? No. You are adopting a massive, dysfunctional family.

I found myself playing therapist, mediator, and priest. People came to me with their anxieties, their fears, their personal crises. And the unspoken expectation is that because you are the Founder, you are an endless well of emotional stability.

You have to fix the server crash and comfort the sales rep who just got dumped, all while dealing with your own grief, your own family, and your own crushing doubt.

It takes a toll. You lose pieces of yourself. You sacrifice your own mental health to keep the collective psyche of the company afloat.

Is it healthy? Probably not. Is it necessary? Absolutely.

The 20% Rule

When we finally exited, I learned one last brutal truth.

For 80% of your employees, this is just a job. And that is okay. You cannot expect them to bleed for the company the way you do.

But then there is the 20%. The ones who stayed late. The ones who fought in the trenches. The ones who believed in the mission when the mission looked impossible.

When we sold, the check was nice. But looking around at that holiday party, seeing that 20% laughing and celebrating—that was the actual currency.

We didn't have a "sexy" business. We didn't have VC money. We didn't have a Canadian client to save our lives (seriously, we built a Canadian company with zero Canadian clients—talk about an invisible rule of risk aversion!).

But we built something real.

My Provocative Question For You:

What is the one part of your identity that you are trying to hide because you think it doesn't "fit" the entrepreneurial mold?

And what would happen if you stopped hiding it and started using it as a weapon?

Hit reply. I read everything.

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