Hi, it’s Melissa, and welcome (back) to “your founder next door“, a weekly publication on the strategies and stories behind building a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places. No BS, just straight-up truth bombs.
The guy with the champagne he wasn’t drinking 🍾
I met Alejandro Perez two years ago at a music festival our best friends threw in Portugal.
We were in adjacent communities. We had fun and danced the week away. I didn’t think much more of him. He was quiet and reserved. Friendly and cheerful. Seemed like a normal guy.
One of the things I love most about our social communities is that nobody talks about work. That’s the complete opposite of how it was when I lived in New York, where “what do you do?” was the conversation opener and the scoring system.
Last summer, David and I were in Sardinia, where friends of ours own a small beach club and were throwing a party. I saw on Alejandro’s Instagram story that he and his wife happened to be there too, so I invited them to come.
That night, Alejandro was standing beside a table with a couple bottles of champagne on it, offering them around. He wasn’t drinking any.
He told me he was recovering from a heart attack, so the bottles were just for us.
I thought, that’s thoughtful and generous.
That’s when we started connecting properly.
He told me he’d pulled his son out of school for a year so the family could travel and experience the world. I got curious and asked what his story was.
Turns out, he’d bootstrapped a company in the floral industry for almost two decades, sold it to private equity, then did a deep dive into Bitcoin and put most of the proceeds in when it was near its lows.
I had to ask him the obvious question, “You never have to work again?”
“Absolutely not.” He said. “But I will.”
The quiet guy disappeared the moment we started talking about his company. He lit up. He couldn’t get the stories out fast enough and he was excited about every question I threw at him.
I knew I’d be recording Season 3 of ProfitLed eventually, so I told him to save it so we can do this properly, on the record.
A few weeks ago, we finally did.
My conversation with Alejandro on ProfitLed 🎙️
He built Komet Sales, an ERP and e-commerce platform for the flower industry, from his parents’ house to a private equity exit in 18 years, 6 months and 18 days. But who’s counting!
Before that, he ran a dev shop for six years chasing money and making almost none. His words: when your only goal is to make money, money becomes elusive. The switch flipped when he stopped asking how to make money and started asking how to add value.
He started Komet at the lowest point of his life. Newly divorced, young kid, back living with his parents in Medellín after ten years in Miami, spending as little as humanly possible. He had no plan B, because if you have a plan B you’ll take it the second things get hard.
There’s a moment in the episode where he describes those years as hanging onto a log in the middle of the ocean. No land in sight. Every so often a wave pushes you under and you don’t know if you’re getting another breath.
When people ask him for the trick, he tells them the trick was eating shit for eight years.
There’s a lot more color in our conversation. Why not paying himself made his company less valuable. Why he hired a banker when he didn’t need to. The magic mushrooms in the Amazon.
Two heart attacks 🫀
Alejandro had two heart attacks, a few weeks apart.
Here’s someone who worked hard, got the exit, made the right call on Bitcoin, has a great family and a thriving social life, and is young enough to enjoy all of it. Then his body nearly took it away.
His take on it is that option one is to sit down and cry about how life isn’t fair. Option two is to take the experience and turn it into rocket fuel.
He said he always picks the second one. It’s easier, and it’s more fun. So why not?
I’ve met a lot of founders who perform positivity. He wasn’t that. He’d describe genuinely terrible stretches of his life and you could hear that he was wired to receive it.
If life is going to happen to you either way, why wouldn’t you choose to have a great time while it does?
Where I am right now 😳
I’m writing this as someone who is not wired that way.
If you’ve been following my content, you know everything at eWebinar is up in the air right now. And my inner monologue is a nightmare. My anxiety dreams every night reflect it too.
What if this doesn’t work? What if I picked the wrong idea? What if we’ve hit our growth ceiling? What if this is the wrong path? What if I need to sell this and nobody wants to buy it? What if the value in our product is made up? What if everybody cancels? What if I run out of money to float this? What if AI changes something overnight and takes the whole thing out?
Then the other voice shows up and says: if you don’t believe in this, nobody will.
I spend my days bouncing between those two. Managing the negative thoughts, knowing I’m supposed to stay positive.
Knowing you need to be positive isn’t the problem. The hard part is believing it, because your mind is everything and whatever you decide is true becomes true. You design your future by having everything you do serve that story.
The most valuable thing I took from Alejandro’s conversation was the importance of positivity and an undefeatable attitude.
You can trick yourself 🪞
If you’re not naturally positive, I don’t believe you get there by waiting to feel it. You can trick yourself into it first, then let your actions follow.
It’s similar to rituals founders have used to hype themselves up forever. Smile when you feel sad. Look in the mirror before the big meeting and tell yourself you’ve got this. Ten jumping jacks to get your blood moving. Journal every morning to slowly reprogram what your brain reaches for first.
These are exercises and you can train for this the way you’d train for anything else.
It’s not about feeling better. It’s about what positivity buys you, which is more rocket fuel.
There’s no version of this that’s easy. Someone else’s story only looks tidy because you already know how it ends. Every founder I know has had moments where quitting would have been completely reasonable and nobody would have blamed them.
What kept them in it wasn’t a better strategy. It was the voice that said it’s going to work.
That’s the voice I’m training right now.
I’ve come this far. Why not keep going?
To hear our full conversation, tune into this episode of ProfitLed here: Apple, Spotify, YouTube
Till next time,
— Melissa, your founder next door ✌️
What did you think of this article? Let me know!
Season 3 of my podcast, ProfitLed, is now live.
We’re exploring the intersection of Passion, Profit, and Purpose, and how those shifts as founders come into financial success. Find it on: Apple, Spotify, YouTube
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Thank you 💜 The only way this grows is by word of mouth, so I’d really appreciate all the help you’re willing to give.
I'm relentlessly positive. And that allows me to see opportunities where others might. Of course, I really appreciate someone on my team who is more cautious to balance me out. But if I can transcend my positivity to my team, we can do great things. Hopefully. Usually. OK, once in a while. But that beats never.
Thanks for having me on the podcast, Mel. I really enjoyed our conversation, and I hope this helps and inspires others to aim for and reach their goals.