The Ebbs and Flows of Being an Entrepreneur & Building LeggUP

Tom Finn (00:01.46)

Today I am joined by my co-founder and business partner, Viktor Bullain. As fellow entrepreneurs who built LeggUP from the ground up, Viktor and I have weathered the storms and celebrated the Victories that come with building a company. He serves as LeggUP's chief product officer and has been instrumental in creating innovative coaching solutions that are changing how enterprises approach talent development. Today we're gonna pull back the curtain on our entrepreneurial journey. The challenges, the pivots, the lessons that we've learned along the way are going to be a wild ride in conversation. Viktor, my friend and co-founder, it is a special treat to have you on the other side of the mic today. Welcome to the show.

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Viktor Bullain (00:44.994)

Thank you, Tom. It's super exciting to be on the show today and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

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Tom Finn (00:50.846)

Well, let's start with where we met and go all the way back to our time at grad school. So do you remember when and where we met?

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Viktor Bullain (01:03.758)

Yes, Tom, that's a great question. So I think it was 2014 and we were at the Get to Know Each Other party of the USC MBA program. And all I remember is Tom Finn hustling to put together a study group in Orange County. And we immediately hit it off because we live in the same neighborhood or live close to each other. And then we were recruiting other members for our study group.

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Tom Finn (01:36.49)

Yeah, so totally right on. The context behind that is that we both went to USC, the University of Southern California, fight on, for our graduate program. And there were two options when you went to USC at the time. You could go to the downtown LA campus, which sounds pretty standard, or there was a satellite campus on a resort in San Diego. And Viktor and I lived Equidistant between LA and San Diego. chose San Diego quite frankly because of the traffic patterns. That was it. That was the only reason. How could I get there faster and get home faster? how did you choose San Diego over LA?

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Viktor Bullain (02:18.946)

I think it was similar. think the distance was equal. It was easy to get to. also, I think studying in a resort together was definitely a special experience. So I will cherish that experience forever. And it created that atmosphere. It created that vibe that allowed us to really open up and learn new things together and at the same time have a great time. So that was probably the reason why I chose that program.

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Tom Finn (02:49.78)

Yeah, I think that was probably the same for me. So we meet at USC and we go through the program, but you weren't an entrepreneur at the time. What were you doing during graduate school?

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Viktor Bullain (03:01.282)

Yes. So during graduate school, I was working for a large construction project management company and I was in charge of digital transformation and implementing new ways of working. And I had always passion for technology, right? But I always had a passion for business as well. And before I joined Turner, I was co-founder of a technology startup out of Boston. And I had always in my mind thought that I'm going to go back to find another way to create the new business or new businesses because I really, really enjoyed that experience.

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Tom Finn (03:43.956)

That's great. So I was in healthcare working for Big Corp, running a large region as a general manager in healthcare, flying all over the West at the time. And actually really enjoyed the role and enjoyed the insurance space as well. But for me, going back to grad school was the acknowledgment that I didn't want any of the jobs at the time that were senior to me in the company. People were stressed out. People were tons of people getting divorced. You know, sort of broken families, broken promises, broken dreams. it just looked terrifying. And I was, I was reasonably young at the eight at the time I was, shoot, must've been 34, when we started grad school, 36, kind of when we graduated. I, I hadn't really, sort of peek through my thirties yet. So what was the, what was the impetus for you to, go to graduate school to begin with?

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Viktor Bullain (04:41.41)

Yeah, so I wanted to round out my skill set. I was trained as an engineer, worked as an engineer, and I felt like when I was working in this digital transformation role and thought about how to impact a business fully, I thought that business education or business program would help round out my skill set, right? And that was the impetus for me to go back to school and start an MBA program.

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Tom Finn (05:11.294)

Yeah, I think it was the same for me. I I just remember feeling like all I know is healthcare and insurance and there's a whole world out there not called healthcare and insurance, right? That is vibrant and fun and innovative. And I wanted to sort of get outside that bubble for a little bit and see what I could learn in graduate school. So we go to graduate school. We'll sort of set all of that time on the shelf for a second and go right into the entrepreneurial journey. So what made you want to start LeggUP? When did that happen and what was your vision? What did you see in the market that made you want to start this company?

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Viktor Bullain (05:53.72)

Yeah, so in my role as a regional manager to help with digital transformation, I really felt like people needed to have an open mind to be able to implement new ways of working and not just implement the new technology for the sake of the technology, but also for them to be able to more productive, to feel more fulfilled, and to develop their career. And I saw firsthand the impact of coaching and the coaching had on people in that process. And we worked with coaches that helped our teams transform the way they worked. And that's where I really understood the value of coaching. But what I also understood is that in order for people to be able to grow in their career, they have to have access to one-on-one conversations with a coach. 

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In a group setting, they can create awareness and they can become aware of how they can grow. But really, the growth happens when they have access to one-on-one conversations. And scaling those one-on-one conversations was very difficult, right? And when we started discussing the idea behind LeggUP, this idea of having access to a person that focuses on you, listens to your challenges and helps you figure out a way to overcome those challenges, that I think was very powerful. And that was one of the key drivers for me to start LeggUP and build a business together.

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Tom Finn (07:37.63)

Yeah, I think for me, was feeling very anxious in large corporate roles. And I asked for a coach. remember in one of my roles, I asked for a coach and I said, look, I just need somebody to help me with some decision making and having some tough conversations with people that are older than me that I manage and trying to do that the right way. And I remember the first company said, no, no, we're not going to do it. It's not in the budget. It's $40,000, or, you know, six months or a year, and it's just not in the budget. And I remember hearing that number, and at the time, $40,000, you could still buy a car, pretty nice car for 40 grand. And I thought, wow, that's impressive. That's an impressive number. I agree. Let's not pay for that. And then I went to, took a promotional opportunity with a competitor, and part of my deal structure was that I asked for an executive coach. And they said, yes, yeah, no problem. We got you. You're in a pretty big role here. We want you to do it right. And so I was very grateful for those conversations. But that's not the reason I started LeggUP with you. The reason was I remember looking at the other roles in the organization and thinking, man, am I just going to sit here and kind of trade clients with our competitors and… Run a P and L and hire people and let people go and rebuild. Is that what I'm going to do my whole life? And I just remember having this burning desire in my belly that was, I didn't want to look at my son, and tell him, Hey, go chase your dreams. mean, I didn't chase my dreams, but I want you to chase your dreams. And that sort of moment of, a lack of authenticity that, that I was feeling in myself was really the spark that I said, gotta do something. Even if it doesn't work, I gotta do something and at least say, look, I tried and I'm excited about the journey. So that's really what it was for me.

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Viktor Bullain (09:43.096)

Yes, and I think it was basically a decision that allowed us to quit our corporate jobs and basically start from scratch, start from zero together. And I really cherish that opportunity, right? To get started with something I'm really, really passionate about building new things. My original degree was in architecture and I never really practiced in architecture, but… I think what I took away from that education was creating something, solving problems and creating something that solved those problems. So when we had the original conversation about quitting our jobs, starting something new, I really felt passionate about jumping on it and jumping in both feet and starting this journey together.

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Tom Finn (10:37.374)

Yeah, so here's what really happened. So here's what really happened. So Viktor and I are working at corporate jobs. I decided in the spring of 2017 that I'm gonna take every Monday off for, I can't remember, it must have been three months, right? So it's like three times four, it's like 12 days, okay? So this isn't like some major thing, but you do that at a large corporation, take every Monday off for 12 weeks, and there's a few eyebrows that are going up and saying, what is he up to? So anyway, I, I take 12 Mondays off. and then we got a little, small office, right? Where we had the whiteboard painted on the wall. and, and we just had a desk and a chair and a couple of laptops, personal laptops. And we started trying to figure out if we could build a business model. then, and then you took Friday afternoons off.

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Viktor Bullain (11:36.546)

That's right.

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Tom Finn (11:36.69)

And I took Friday afternoons off and we went in the office and just sort of whiteboarded for as many hours as we had left in terms of our energy before we had to wrap up for the week. Do you remember those days?

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Viktor Bullain (11:49.408)

I do remember and I do remember the whiteboard and I do remember the discussion about, what do we do first? And I think the conversation was where should we start? And then I remember working in what's called big rooms. And a big room is basically a project room where everything stays on the wall. And meeting after meeting, you can see the evolution of your thoughts instead of taking them down and putting them up again every time you meet, it stays on the wall. So we discussed, okay, let's get a little office, as you said. We painted the wall and we started sketching. And I still remember those sketches. We have a few photos of those sketches of our initial timelines of how we would start a business. But at that point, it was really just, let's say, you know, blue ocean thinking, you know. What is the new opportunity and where that opportunity lies and how can we get there?

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Tom Finn (12:48.17)

So what was the original thesis for LeggUP? Because we haven't gotten there yet, and I'm sure if there's a few people listening saying, wait a second, what is this LeggUP thing? So give us the original plan for LeggUP.

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Viktor Bullain (12:53.486)

Yeah. The original plan was to create a marketplace for coaches to be able to offer their services through a platform to enterprise members. So our original thesis was that we are not developing our own science. We're not developing our own methodology. Our original thesis was let's have the coaches bring all that with them and on a marketplace make it available to enterprise employees. And well, that was a great plan. But when the rubber hits the road, every plan changes immediately. Do you remember, how the plan changed?

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Tom Finn (13:42.74)

Yeah, I'd like to quote Mike Tyson here. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. I remember calling investors and emailing investors and saying, we're building a marketplace for coaching and we're going to sell it to enterprises and it's going to be huge. It's going to be huge. And I remember this one guy, he responded. He was at a big VC firm in San Francisco one that everybody knows and he is the head of marketplaces and had been for a decade or something. So this guy knows his stuff. He actually responded to me. So I got to give him credit for responding to me. But what he said was hilarious. He said, wonderful. I'm so, so glad to hear that you're going down this path kind of thing. And then he said, as soon as you reach $10 million in revenue, let me know. We're absolutely going to be interested. And I just remember getting that email as the biggest F you email back to me, right? Of like, okay, guy, I've heard this story 1000 times. And, you know, you have no revenue, and you're trying to build a marketplace. It just sort of signified how difficult it is to build that business model, a marketplace business model. When it gets going, it's magical, but it's very difficult to build. What did you find were the sort of the stress points on that business model that didn't work?

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Viktor Bullain (15:11.192)

Yeah, so a two-sided business model, a two-sided marketplace as a business model always has the challenge of having multiple customers. So our customers were the coaches and our customers were also the enterprises with their members. And what we found is that coaches had trouble productizing their services. So it was very difficult to create a standardized way for coaches to be able to interact with members. The ICF provides a really good framework and a really good system for how coaching engagements should transpire. But when it's implemented through a platform, it's actually not very easy to come up with a standardized way to measure quality and to make sure that engagements actually deliver the value that the members and enterprises are looking for. So I think that was one bottleneck. The other bottleneck was that HR teams are looking to create a scalable solution. And if there's no guarantee for outcomes and the way they can measure the impact of the programs that they're implementing, then there's high level of skepticism, right? From HR teams in terms of implementing new products and implementing new services. So we have to overcome both of those.

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Tom Finn (16:48.862)

Yeah, I agree. It was an interesting conversation to have with an HR person. And I think the problem that I remember very specifically for a buyer at the enterprise level was simple. So you have a bunch of different products from a bunch of different coaches. What are the price points? And we literally had price points where they were trying to do entry level things at 20 bucks, right? $15, I'll do this thing. So think Fiverr, think Upwork.

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Viktor Bullain (17:15.041)

Yeah.

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Tom Finn (17:20.17)

right? The Fiverr or Upwork for coaching and consulting and those type of models. That was kind of the idea. And from from there, it was like, okay, somebody's $20. What about the this is this is $1,500. So you want me to offer this to my employees. And there's a whole wide variety of coaches. And they have everything from $15 $20 to $1,500. And some of them are, hey, pay once for some particular project model and others are pay monthly, you know, or pay hourly. And so the way that you purchased as a human being just didn't make sense to the enterprise. And so we realized that after a number of conversations and we had built the technology and then, you know, maybe the other most important part was you had coaches that were creating these products and they weren't very good. The quality was really bad. Coaches are wonderful. Coaches are great. I love the coaching industry. I love what coaches do for people. Certainly I've been touched by some magical brains that have helped me along the way. But they do not know how to productize anything. So somebody else has to do it. And we realized that. And then we got our first customer, if you remember. We decided to pivot and say, okay, we're gonna build our own science, we're gonna build these models, we're gonna do it ourselves. And we had a ton of data from the coaches on what topics were working in the market. And we used those topics to create workbooks and topic models that then created our first client, which our first check, do you remember how much it was?

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Viktor Bullain (19:11.918)

It's a good question. think it was maybe $9,000, something like that, maybe $10,000. Yeah.

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Tom Finn (19:17.386)

I wish. I wish I put you on the spot. It was, it was right in there, though. It was five grand. Our first check was $5,000 from a big company that has, at the time, I think they had 13 or 14,000 employees. And we, all it was, was there were two ladies that were on performance improvement plans. I, I, I went to happy hour with the HR person, the local HR person, and she said, well, if you could solve this problem for me,these two people on performance improvement plans. I'd be very grateful. What does that cost? I made up a number. She said yes. And within a couple of weeks we had a check, a paper check in the mail. And I said, okay, we might have something here. That was our first, but, but do you remember how long it took us to get there? Like a year and a half.

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Viktor Bullain (20:05.25)

Yes, so I think one of the key learnings from that phase was that it's not enough to work on a product or of course you have an idea for a product and you're working on creating a product that would be adopted by enterprises or people. But I think what we learned is how important it was to work on the business model and really understand how the business model impacts the revenue streams, how the business model impacts the ability to scale and grow. And we continuously worked on that model and pivoted multiple times as we learned what was actually working versus what wasn't.

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Tom Finn (20:50.644)

I'll add one more thing. You got to get customer feedback. So I think in our first year and a half, we made phone calls, we had conversations, but we didn't actually get direct customer feedback until we had almost a working product, Viktor. I mean, we sort of went technology first and we're going to build it sort of the, if we build it, they will come kind of model. And if I were to go back in time, I wouldn't do that. I would. I would sketch some things out. would have a bunch of conversations. I would see what people wanted to purchase and then adjust the technology to meet them where they want to buy. And so that would be my lesson learned from the early days was we could have avoided the marketplace if we had spent some more time talking to people.

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Viktor Bullain (21:40.62)

Yeah, but I think every founder has the urge to build and it's sometimes difficult to overcome that urge. So I totally agree with you. Having that customer feedback helped us create a much more standardized way of approaching the market and then creating value for our members and for our clients at the same time.

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Tom Finn (22:06.282)

So during this time, Viktor and I went cold turkey. We resigned from our jobs. I resigned sort of at January 1st, 2018. We were working on sort of the homework in 2017 while we both had jobs. And LeggUP was founded July of 2017. So 7, 2017 is when LeggUP was founded. I was still working until January 1st of 2018. And you left right around the same time.

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Viktor Bullain (22:38.722)

Yes, so I left around the same time and we made a big move with our family. At the same time, we moved to Switzerland. So I remember, Tom, having that conversation with you. We're co-founding this company, but I'm moving to Switzerland for some reasons that, let's say, outside of my control. But at the same time, I think it turned out really actually beneficial for us because we were able to recruit our development team in Eastern Europe and I ended up closer in time zones with them. So I was able to work with them on a daily basis with within their own time zone. And at the same time, I also worked on the US time zones with you, California time after bedtime with the kids. We would get on the phone and we still do that today. And I actually feel really productive in those hours because there's quite a house and we can, we can have long conversations together and collaborate really effectively.

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Tom Finn (23:41.93)

So I remember the day Viktor came to me and said, hey, man, I know we're starting this company. And you just quit your job and everything. But I'm leaving the country. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. And there were some personal reasons. So if you don't know, Viktor is the smartest person in the room in almost every room that he's in until his wife walks in. And then she's the smartest person in the room.

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Viktor Bullain (24:08.462)

That's true.

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Tom Finn (24:10.698)

And that is how they operate. so Sophia had a wonderful opportunity to go to Europe. You want to talk a little bit about that for a second?

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Viktor Bullain (24:22.924)

Yes, her mission is to cure Alzheimer's and she's been an Alzheimer researcher and a neurologist, board certified neurologist. And an opportunity came up for her to work with Roche, is one of the largest pharma companies in the world based out of Basel, Switzerland to help develop a drug for Alzheimer's. So that was an opportunity that… She wouldn't want to give up and I didn't want to stand in a way for her to be able to make that move. And it just turned out that it was the right move for both of us. We were able to start fresh. You we sold our house. I used some of the equity to put it in the company with you. And, you know, I would not, I did not regret that decision because I think it… helped us create something really valuable and it helped us get on this journey together that we've been on for the past seven years.

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Tom Finn (25:29.246)

Yeah, I think you gotta look for breadcrumbs in your life and find little things that connect. So my grandfather passed away from Alzheimer's and dementia. And I remember as a young guy, kind of visiting him, he was in the UK and half my family is British. And so I remember visiting him and thinking, man, this is crazy. And my mom talking to me about the disease and the whole thing. And I remember the conversation with you like it was yesterday because to Viktor's credit, he came to the conversation and said, look, I'll give you back the shares in the company. No problem. I will, you know, we'll shake hands and I'll go to Switzerland, do my thing. You do your thing, Tom. You take the company wherever you want, right? And totally cool with me. Or if you want me to stay on and you want to try to figure this thing out virtually, I'm happy to do that too. Now, those of you listening are saying: we'll just do it virtually. Obviously, it's no big deal. But this was before COVID, okay? Like this is when people had offices and you had to be in the same room. And certainly entrepreneurs had to be in the same room. You know, these are the days of like 14-hour work days out of the Bay Area that was sort of a stamp of approval that you were actually a human being. Not that I agree with that. I don't at all. But those were the times, right? And so Viktor comes and says, hey man, going to Switzerland for very good reasons. It sort of touched me that there was this focus on Alzheimer's and I thought, yeah, let's do it, man. Let's just keep going.

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Viktor Bullain (27:10.38)

Yeah, yeah, and I think working virtually definitely has, you know, benefits in terms of flexibility and creating your own rhythm. At the same time, I also cherished the moments when we got together and, know, in Airbnbs and different parts of the country or the world for that matter. We were able to collaborate and come up with ideas. So we always had these intense sprints of collaboration and then working together in person. And then again, collaboration, virtually working together in person. And I think that's that rhythm was really beneficial for how we built the company to begin with.

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Tom Finn (27:57.994)

Do you remember during this time, it was the first kind of year and a half, we found our developers in Minsk, Belarus. So Minsk is the capital of Belarus. It's in Eastern Europe, right next to Russia. And we found our developers there. And do you remember that trip? we get on an airplane and we fly to Belarus, know, Viktor's whole thing was we gotta meet these people, we gotta sit down and talk about architecture, we gotta get them on the same page I completely agreed, and so we flew to Belarus.

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Viktor Bullain (28:36.834)

Yes, and we arrived on a snowy day. It was pretty dark and there were some, let's say tough-looking soldiers at the border staring at us. And it was a little bit intimidating, but I think the team itself really valued the fact that we visited and it created actually a bond with our team that is still very strong. And our lead developer, Andre, is still on board for all this time, for seven years. He's still with us, and he's been the first person to write the first line of code for LeggUP. And it's been great to have that team still working with us despite of all the challenges that we faced afterwards.

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Tom Finn (29:30.378)

Yeah, so I remember landing on what looked like grass and snow with this one little building. And I just remember looking at this thing going, where is the runway? There's no runway. Where are we going to land? mean, it was exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time. But look, you know, the folks that are flying the plane had done this a million times and they landed this thing. I'm guessing there was a runway, but it was just covered with snow and was not plowed at all. And we landed this thing and I was grateful to get off the airplane and meet the folks there in Belarus. But I want to stay on this for a second. So let me fast forward. We'll come back to LeggUP in a second. One of the coolest things you ever did, in my opinion, was support the employees that we had in Belarus when there was some political unrest. So let me fast forward this for everybody. So we hired this team. They came to work for us full-time, you know, maybe a year later. Wonderful group of people. And there was some political unrest. I'm forgetting the year. But Viktor took it upon himself to kind of figure this out.

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Viktor Bullain (30:42.19)

Yeah, I think it was 2020 before COVID or around that time. due to the political unrest in Belarus, basically we had to get the whole team out to be able to collaborate and continue the work together. And I remember calling different embassies and working with different European economic development teams in Vilnius and in Poland to be able to get them visas. And I have to say that the Polish Economic Development team and the embassy was so responsive and so helpful that we were able to get the visas for them and relocate the entire team to Wroclaw. And we were able to establish a base there and it was a great, actually it turned out to be a great experience to be able to provide the opportunity for them to continue to work with us and also creating something together in Poland that helped us grow the company forward.

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Tom Finn (31:48.778)

Yeah, I think it's one of your bullet points of success with the company. I mean, you really took it upon yourself to help, from a human standpoint, get people out of what was an oppressive sort of time in their home country and get a team of people moved to Poland, which is part of the European Union. And that's why we selected Poland as well part of the European Union. We had tried India before. We actually flew to Mumbai and to a little town called Pune, which is a couple hours outside of Mumbai, tried to go with sort of Indian-based developers. And it just didn't work. I think that the production was underwhelming. The product was underwhelming. The timeline stretched. Just… It just didn't work for us and we kept getting delayed and delayed late. And by the way, it cost a fortune. It wasn't less expensive than Europe. And so we decided to push forward and build our own team in Poland and then bring the folks from Belarus into Poland. I think this is important, right? Because entrepreneurs struggle with this stuff. Like, where do I go? What do I do? How do I get labor at a lower cost than US pricing? And you do have to go offshore for some of that and part of its personal preference.

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Viktor Bullain (33:15.694)

Yeah. Yeah, I think the goal here was for us to have a team that could really move fast. I remember Tom coming up with an idea and expecting that idea to be working basically in a couple of days, right? And when Andre and the team pushes through to get those ideas, you delivered within a short frame of time, those are the successes that help us to keep up with the pace that the business requires. without that kind of speed and the ability to change and pivot, it's really hard to build the businesses that are successful because you really need to be able to, you know, on a moment's notice, change a lot of things based on the customer feedback that you just described before.

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Tom Finn (34:10.356)

So let's go back to LeggUP. So we get our first $5,000. We get our first paying client. We're pivoting out of a marketplace model and into a direct-to-enterprise science product, our own stuff, so that we could find the right product market fit. So then we raise $2 million from a family office. And that gave us the capital to take the next steps. But we did that at the end of 2019. I think our round closed sometime in November, December, if I remember correctly. And then COVID hit.

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Viktor Bullain (35:01.038)

Correct. And COVID hit, everything basically came to a standstill. Nobody was purchasing any types of new services. Everybody was in a big scramble to continue to operate in a virtual environment. And I remember trying to understand, okay, how are we going to grow the business in this environment together? And lo and behold, we found a partner to work on a mental health network that was immensely valuable and needed during that time because a lot of people were struggling with working from home and needed support. And being able to build a mental health network during COVID was the project that pulled us through.

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Tom Finn (36:02.152)

Yeah, we would have been out of business if it wasn't for this group in Canada who came through and said, look, we want to build a US-based mental health system based on CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy. And you guys have insurance experience. You know the insurance space. You guys have network experience. You built coaching networks. Could you build us a mental health network there in the US? That's part of our sort of next evolution of our strategy. And the answer was resoundingly yes. And we looked into it and figured out that we could effectively do this very quickly for them. And so we went from contract negotiation, which, you know, that always takes a while. But from the time they said go, we built a 50 state plus Washington, DC mental health network, technology and therapists and compliance in six months.

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Viktor Bullain (36:55.342)

Yeah.

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Tom Finn (37:00.872)

I mean, one of the greatest achievements that we've had as entrepreneurs, six months to build a national network of therapists.

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Viktor Bullain (37:10.37)

Yes, and we learned a ton about how to build and create a certified licensed health network. that actually, that experience, I think was immensely valuable for us. And it is definitely something that I think we will, we're taking to heart for the future as well, potentially.

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Tom Finn (37:35.05)

So we build this mental health network. And we've actually got a three-year deal with a two-year extension, essentially. So we're in pretty good shape. When you're building contracts for partnerships, you definitely want to have a three-year deal. Most look at things in five years, and they can't really look beyond. You're not going to get a 10-year deal. But if you can get a three-year deal with a couple year extension, that's pretty good for an entrepreneur. So we have this deal, we're rolling it out, we're live, we got the product in the market, things are going swimmingly, and then they decide to sell the company. So one of the clauses, of course, in our contract, both ways, was if we sell the company, you can exit the contract. And they're a publicly traded company and they decided to sell the organization. And as a result of that, we lost our contract and essentially lost 90 % of our revenue almost overnight.

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Viktor Bullain (38:44.238)

Yeah, I think what that experience taught us is to diversify our revenue streams. Of course, there were circumstances like COVID and others that made it harder, but having one big client and no diversified revenue stream at the same time creates a huge challenge. And I think that's one of the questions when you're raising money. It's like how diversified your book is in terms of revenue and do you have one big client or do you have many, many clients that bring in the revenue itself. So we went down quite fast and scaled the team back a little bit, but at the same time, rebooted our coaching business and started growing that fairly rapidly at the time.

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Tom Finn (39:39.924)

Yeah, so these are the ebbs and flows of being an entrepreneur. And certainly you get headwinds like global pandemics and organizations focused on getting everybody into their homes and getting the technology set up, not adding new services of coaching. And so for us, was a challenging time. But the mental health side really, like you said, sort of floated us through. I'm very grateful for the partnerships that we had during that time so that you and I can sit here in 2024 and still be having the conversation.

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Viktor Bullain (40:11.008)

Absolutely. think the word resilience really have filled up with meaning for both of us in terms of the experiences that we went through and what resilience actually means. You know, it's a word that's being used all the time and thrown around as something that you need in your career, in your market, in your business entrepreneurial journey. But I think going through those experiences gives you the meaning of what resilience actually means.

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Tom Finn (40:49.502)

Yeah, I've got a pair of green Nikes behind me on the shelf if you're listening on the radio and I've talked about them before publicly, the book Shoe Dog written by Phil Knight, who is the founder of Nike, is an incredible book about his journey in building Nike and the amount of times that he almost went out of business.

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Viktor Bullain (40:52.269)

Yes.

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Tom Finn (41:15.976)

You know, with, you know, a few thousand dollars in the bank account or a negative bank account or whatever, whatever that looked like. And I think I, you know, I loved that book when I read it because it gave me, an understanding that this wasn't going to be easy and building something big and impactful and meaningful in the market is going to take everything you've got in terms of resilience.

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Viktor Bullain (41:38.754)

Yeah, and I think that experience and that journey is part of the fun, to be honest. I know that when you're in it, doesn't feel like it, but I think the value that we can create through these pivots and through these experiences, multiply the impact and amplify basically our ability to provide value. That is the fun part, to provide value and make some potentially some money with it. But at the same time, you can't take it away from the journey itself. You can't divorce it from the journey that you have to go through and the challenges that you have to face.

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Tom Finn (42:26.002)

Yeah, so Viktor is my in-house counselor, if you haven't figured that out yet. You know, when I'm panicking and saying, you know, we're almost out of money, Viktor is saying, this is part of the journey. And Tom, just relax, the money will show up. We're going to be fine. And I've been listening to that for, you know, seven years at this point. And you know what? I think you've got me turned around. I think you're right. You got to, you've got to sort of enjoy the waters that you're in. You know, I sort of visualize whitewater rafting and how exhilarating that is for people. And they love it, right? Because it's a little bit of danger and a little bit of fun and fast and you're getting splashed in the face and you can kind of visualize whitewater rafting. And I sort of visualize, you know, our journey to being in a big yellow boat, you know, somewhere in Wyoming, going down this very cold river and getting splashed in the face and holding onto the ropes and in some points kind of gritting your teeth and in other points laying back and really enjoying the journey. And that's the visual that comes to mind when I think about kind of the path we've been on.

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Viktor Bullain (43:44.234)

Absolutely. you know, I have a passion for sailing and the experience that I have and the visual that I have is similar. It's basically just going, you know, sailing with the boat, trying to always find a wind and tacking when it's needed. you know, always, always look for the wind. And that's definitely, I think, part of this journey that helps us, you know, become successful. And sometimes you look back, you hear that, that person or LeggUP, it has been an overnight success, but there's several years of grinding and resilience building, character building that happens behind that you shouldn't discount.

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Tom Finn (44:35.432)

Yeah, agreed. we come out COVID and we're selling, we've lost the big client out of Canada that we were doing mental health. We are now a coaching company competing with some of the big coaching companies that have raised a lot of capital. So some of those companies are BetterUp, Sounding Board, Coach Hub, ASAP, Bravely. I could go on and on and on and on because they seem to just pop up out of the woodwork. And they've raised a lot of money. So you look at competitors that raise a lot of money. it's not always healthy. It's not always good money. It's just cash. And they're fueling their model. What's your take on raising capital, competing against people that have raised more capital than you, that may appear to be ahead but perhaps aren't?

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Viktor Bullain (45:34.69)

Yeah, so I think in the ZERP era when the interest rates were very low and raising money was a little bit easier, companies got accustomed to be able to fuel the growth and always raise a new round. And I think the value of having founders that are frugal and making a business work and actually are looking at the P &L and making it profitable or breakeven and in creating growth that way, I think became much, much more valuable these days because there's not an endless, let's say, number of rounds that you can raise in the current market anymore. So I think in some ways we actually learned that lesson early because we haven't raised immense amount of capital. But at the same time, it helped us become aware of how to run the business in a way that helps us create value and grow with our own efforts.

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Tom Finn (46:45.422)

Yeah, when we talk to investors, they use this term, you're very capital efficient. You're very capital efficient. And I'm not sure if that's like a subtle dig or they're actually genuine. I'm really not sure to this day. And I've had 500 investor conversations in seven years. maybe one of my biggest maybe it's a regret, maybe it's not. It's just one of those moments that we've just never been able to figure out how to raise a big amount of capital. We're not San Francisco VC guys. We didn't go to Stanford. We didn't go to Harvard. And you find a lot of people on the other end of the phone did. They went to Stanford, they went to Harvard, they… They want that kind of branding that they invest in. And so, you know, we never were able to raise the round that we wanted to at the time, or that gave us some influx of huge capital. And we've got a terrific business model, and we've built it in a lean way, in an appropriate way that is capital efficient.

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Viktor Bullain (48:07.8)

Yeah. Exactly. And I think that's an experience and that's something that I think is valued perhaps a little bit more today than it was before when everybody was raising rounds after rounds after rounds. And in 2022, AI came along and the marketplace has changed yet again. We were on our journey with the Human Coaching Network, growing our book of business. And I think, I remember sending you Tom, an email or another email, actually a Slack message. Look at this tool. And I think it was chat GPT and, we were both amazed and, thinking how this will impact, you know, our business and how this will impact, the, the, our clients' business in general as well. And we have pivoted into an AI enabled network. And I think that's our next major pivot that what we're building is our own ontology layer that helps us mine the data that we've collected throughout the thousands and thousands of coaching engagements that we delivered. And that data helps us build an ontology layer that delivers coaching with the help of an AI agent at a lower price point available to a larger group of enterprise employees than before, perhaps.

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Tom Finn (49:59.048)

Yeah. And this solves a major problem that we found in the business model. And it's not just LeggUP. It's, all of the other, you know, rascals out there that are competing with us. the, the major issue is that most HR teams do not want to cover everybody in their company with coaching and development. They just quite frankly don't want to support everybody. And, that might sound shocking and it actually is shocking. but they want to select high, you know, high-pos, high-performance leaders, they wanna select folks that are up and comers, they wanna select existing managers, they wanna select particular cohorts. It's not like medical insurance where they wanna cover everybody and make sure everybody's physical body is taken care of. They don't actually wanna help with the career for everybody and I think quite frankly, it's just price point.

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Viktor Bullain (50:54.904)

It's price good.

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Tom Finn (50:58.206)

The price point is so high that it's not, you know, maybe that they don't want to, it's that they can't afford to. They can't afford to cover everybody with one-on-one coaches. just, it's just not in the budget. Because coaching can be reasonably expensive when you start to scale it over a thousand people, right? Or 2,000 or 10,000, right? And so it becomes a product that has to be put into different sections of the company. So to your point with AI, that's gonna change a little bit.

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How do you see that price point impacting an HR's buying decision?

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Viktor Bullain (51:32.046)

Yeah, so the price point goes from around $100 to down to $1 per employee or under five for sure. And the ability to scale that type of offering has a lot more opportunities. I think at the same time, I wouldn't discount the value of the human network and the ability to communicate human to human. And I think the mix of the two is actually that delivers the value.

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because then you can choose the modality. You can choose whether AI can support you or you want to be referred to a human coach that can help you overcome a certain challenge. And that duality and that ability to go back and forth, I think has immense value for the future.

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Tom Finn (52:25.482)

I completely agree, obviously. We've probably talked about this once or twice before. Let me hit folks with some stats for a second. we've had customer bases that have exceeded 50,000 employees. We've had 30,000 coaching sessions on our platform. We have had 10,000 employees go through our programs. We show an ROI of over 300 % for our customers, including very specific areas of productivity and wellbeing, which is where we focus our business on. And so we have figured out how to model physical and mental health prevention with leadership and performance in the workplace, which from our time working in corporate America roles is the absolute blend that you need. You can't be productive without being well, and you can't be well without being productive. So for employers and for partners that want to lower healthcare costs, lower disability costs, lower absenteeism, presenteeism, they want a higher level of return to work. They want engagement across all classes of employees.

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Wherever they are in the company all of those things happen because your physical body is doing well your mental health your ability to deal with difficult conversations is doing well and Your ability to lead in a modern environment You have full control over meaning you you understand how to talk to people how to communicate how to be empathetic How to do all of those things for others as well? That's been our blend, and that's why we're taking that model, layering it on top of an artificial intelligence model, and then being able to deliver that at scale and speed for our partners.

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Viktor Bullain (54:32.61)

Yes, and I think one of the misconceptions is that well-being is its own silo and leadership development is its own silo and professional career development is its own silo. The human being is in the center of all of that and the human being doesn't experience these stresses, stressors in silos. If you're working in a toxic environment, you're stressed out. If you're not sleeping anything well, it has an impact on your work performance as well. So we can't separate these different ways of helping people cope with stress. And I think one of the benefits of our model is to be able to combine that and provide a systematic approach to wellbeing that allows us to look at the whole person and look at organizational health, look at performance, and look at wellbeing all at the same time, not separately. And that's the model that I'm really excited about because we have data to support it and we have the ability to scale it through AI at the same time.

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Tom Finn (55:54.686)

Seven years on this journey with you, my friend. And another pivot is upcoming. So for those that don't know, we're going through another pivot moment. If you are sort of keeping track, we've had a few of them. Remember the marketplace conversation. You go mental health. You go pure coaching, competing with some of those big guys that are raising a lot of capital. And now we sort of move into the next evolution of LeggUP, which is really digital health and performance. We've determined that through all of our science over the last five years, that in 10,000 people going through these programs, we have been able to lower stress levels dramatically. We can lower stress levels. That improves productivity, retention, and certainly engagement as well. And so we've got all the data. We've done it. And now we can say to folks, we know how to do this better than anybody. And we do. And our stuff works. And so that's our new pivot is digital health and performance. And bringing in a layer of AI, I think, is an important component in terms of cost and scalability.

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Viktor Bullain (57:08.714)

Yeah, exactly. And I'm really proud of our Net Promoter Score of 4.8. It basically, actually 81, sorry. The coach rating is 4.8 and the Net Promoter Score is 81. That helps us show the value of what we've been delivering to our members and transform that into AI and now scale it up it will deliver that value at a larger scale and make a larger impact in our members' lives as well.

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Tom Finn (57:45.29)

Yeah, well said. Look, we have built an excellent product set. And kudos to you as the chief product officer. Well done. The net promoter score, if you don't know what that is, really just measures how many people would recommend this product to friends and family. And we've been tracking that for years. And anything above 70 is really, really good. I think Google's in the high 40s to give people kind of a barometer here. And it goes minus 100 to plus 100. If you're in the 80s, you have an exceptional product. Absolutely exceptional. People love it. And so we have built an exceptional product. And I think our challenge has not been building terrific product and high net promoter scores and high coaching scores. We're very focused on the user experience. Our challenge has been scaling it to aa massive amount of people that can have access. So we hadn't figured out how to scale to get to everybody. So that's our next evolution really is scalability and being able to take this science and this methodology that really works and get it to more people.

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Viktor Bullain (59:04.78)

Yeah, and I'm looking forward to building partnerships that will help us get to that scale. the these partnerships that I think that we're looking at will help us create the book of business that can propel LeggUP into the next phase.

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Tom Finn (59:27.882)

So for folks out there, hardest thing, best thing and hardest thing about working with me, what is it?

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Viktor Bullain (59:37.713)

wow. Okay. The best thing to work with you is that you always come up with really good ideas and keep the team on thinking, right? On how to provide value. The most challenging thing is that you want it yesterday.

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Tom Finn (59:58.302)

Hahaha, that's so true. I always want everything delivered yesterday. If we come up with an idea right now, I'm literally going to ask when on Thursday, know, Thursday it can be completed. That's how fast I want to move. Thank you for saying that. I love having the vision. I love sharing that vision. I love showing people how we're going to do it, how we're going to pivot, how we're going to move. That's always been something that really excites me. And I'll return the favor. My favorite thing about working with Viktor as a business partner is, well, there's a lot, so I'll try to be succinct. His character, he's a very high-level character person, so you can always trust what he's going to say. And so that is a thread that I think sort of binds us together. We've always talked about that in terms of finding the right founder partner. But for me, and I said it earlier, Viktor is the consummate still lake. He is always calm. It's always glassy out there. There's always a light breeze, but not an intense breeze. And so Viktor has a way of being this, maybe it's the calm water on the whitewater rafting trip. Viktor has the ability to turn the waters calm for me, but also for everybody else. So when you have a founder that's a driver, which is me, and you have a founder that can calm people down and get everybody engaged, that's Viktor. I think that's probably my favorite part about working with you. I would say my least favorite part, or maybe the hardest part for me, is I would love to be around you more. So we mentioned it earlier, I'm here now in Nashville, Tennessee.

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We used to live in Southern California, but we've moved to Nashville, Tennessee. So I'm in Nashville, Tennessee, Viktor's all the way over in Basel, Switzerland. So we have conversations almost every day. However, I would love to be in a room with you, like you said, more often. That would be the thing that if I could change it, I would.

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Viktor Bullain (01:02:20.59)

No, I appreciate it, Tom. And I appreciate the energy that you bring to the table. And I think, as you said, we complement one another really well. And that's probably why we've been able to succeed for the past seven years, because that complementary skill set and also energy drives the company forward. And I'm very much looking forward to visiting you in Tennessee and seeing your new digs.

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Tom Finn (01:02:47.786)

Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. we've got a lot of work to get back to, to many more years of us growing and evolving and building things together. Cheers to you, my friend. Thanks for being on this amazing journey with me.

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Viktor Bullain (01:03:06.552)

Thank you, Tom. It was a great experience to have this discussion on the podcast. And I'm sure we have a lot of work to do, so let's get back to work.

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Tom Finn (01:03:17.502)

Yeah, well, that's a good point. This is three years of the podcast and this will be the final episode of season three. And I'm just not sure if I'm going to do season four. So this may be the final episode of my podcasting days. Well, time will tell, as you always say, time will tell. But we're definitely going to take a break so that you and I can focus on the core fundamentals of where we think we can create the most impact for people's lives and that is the focus on LeggUP.

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Viktor Bullain (01:03:51.15)

Yeah, absolutely, Tom. Well, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'm grateful to be on this journey with you. And here's to a lot more years ahead of us.

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Tom Finn (01:04:03.272)

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, my friend. So where can people track you down, find you, hunt you down for advice and counsel, or just generally connect with one of the greatest humans on the planet?

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Viktor Bullain (01:04:14.606)

The easiest way is to find me on LinkedIn and you can also find us on leggup.com and we'd be happy to connect.

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Tom Finn (01:04:25.022)

Yeah, so we'll put Viktor's information in the show notes so that you can connect with him. Viktor, in all sincerity, thank you for being a great friend, a great business partner, and someone that I count on weekly to keep us moving in the right direction. So thank you for your partnership.

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Viktor Bullain (01:04:43.224)

Thank you, Tom. Appreciate it.

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Tom Finn (01:04:45.052)

Okay buddy, to the next seven years.

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Viktor Bullain (01:04:47.822)

Cheers to that.