In today's world where startups are happening every day with new ideas being tested before going into full-scale production, business owners need to be able to effectuate their company's idea quickly and best play in this fast-paced environment. Once an owner has figured out their desired outcomes, it becomes easier for them to take steps towards achieving those goals and keep moving forward in the right direction until they reach success.

As a business owner, an educator, and investor, Michael has been working at the intersection of investing and operations.

His approach to fostering multiple businesses

• Look and see the change you can make in the world and then go test it. And if it works, you double down, triple down, and quadruple down in it.

Michael Girdley is the Chairman and co-founder ofDura Software, the second-largest software company in San Antonio. He co-founded and served in leadership roles at numerous companies and nonprofits: Codeup, Effectual Ventures, Toro Coffee,Dry Line Partners, and Alamo Angels. Michael is also a partner at the Geekdom Fund, a seed-stage tech venture capital fund that has invested in over 50 high-growth tech companies.

Enjoy!

Hang out with the Landing Collective and Expert(ish) Podcast team on the Swing for Our Heroes charity golf tournament at the Omni La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California on Friday, September 17, 2021, 12pm-6pm PST.

Visit Swing for Our Heroes Website to support our amazing friends at STEP (Support the Enlisted Project) raise funds in their mission to help veteran and military families obtain an overall healthier financial well-being.

In This Episode

1:09 - Backstory of Michael Girdley

2:46 - How he got involved with multiple businesses

6:57 - Why having more money or more resources does not guarantee success in business

14:16 - What separates a great educator from an average educator

20:59 - How Michael finds opportunity in today's environment

23:53 - What "edge" means in terms of opportunity and investment

31:03 - What Michael's podcasts, Acquisitions Anonymous and Unusual Profits, are all about

35:06 - How he got a lot of twitter followers

41:07 - His perspective about failures and mistakes

Favorite Quotes:

"I've learned the hard way that you're much better off looking for business opportunities that have tailwinds. Like one's where the universe is conspiring to help you, and so what does the world want? Which way is the world going? I'm going to swim with that current and that's made a huge difference in terms of how I approach stuff." - Michael Girdley

"I'm so glad that I was in the fireworks business because starting with a really hard one taught me how easy other businesses can be." - Michael Girdley

"The really wacky thing about entrepreneurship, people think that if you have more money or more resources when starting your business, it will turn out to be a better business." - Michael Girdley

"Education is a creative problem-solving exercise where you are trying to share with somebody else something that will make sense in their brain." - Michael Girdley

"A really successful tutor will understand the precise thing that you as the student or the pupil needs to hear next to unblock you." - Michael Girdley

"Adopting a model of personality where you understand everyone is different leads me to understand how heterogeneous teams are made of people of different backgrounds, different wiring, different goals in life, and different attitudes. All that stuff is essential. Heterogeneous teams outperform homogeneous teams." - Michael Girdley

"The edges are things that you as a buyer of an asset have that other buyers do not that allow you to extract more value." - Michael Girdley

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