Unlocking Lessons From Extreme Challenges With Neil Emeigh

Skot Waldron (00:00.398)
Sometimes Riverside glitches on me a little bit, so I just want to make sure it's not going to glitch. you know, if, if you end up having no idea what I'm saying, it's still uploading high res on your side and my side. Just, you know, fake it. if you're like, dude, I have no idea what you said, then I'll, I'll, I'll bleep it out, you know, and, and don't bail after when I stop it. All right.

Neil Emeigh (00:05.215)
So.

Neil Emeigh (00:15.786)
Yeah.

Yeah, good.

Yeah.

Neil Emeigh (00:24.693)
Yeah, that's true.

Skot Waldron (00:30.124)
Well, you ready? All right.

Neil Emeigh (00:31.499)
Yep, let's do it.

Skot Waldron (00:36.364)
Neil, thanks for jumping on, man. It's a, good talking to you.

Neil Emeigh (00:40.063)
Yeah, thanks for having me, Scott.

Skot Waldron (00:42.618)
you're an interesting cat, man. And when I say interesting, that's the word I use for people that have done things that make me go, what? You know, like, okay, there's some, there's some, there's some stuff here that not just everybody does. And, that's where I kind of want to start with you. So sure. Roeby at your company.

You know, there's, we'll introduce that a little bit here, but I really want to talk about you as the person and, and you building your company as an entrepreneur and then living your life and doing the things you've done in your life that have helped you grow and challenge yourself. You, you are into this like challenge yourself thing. So, so, so, so let's, let's go there. Like when, when you're building this company, you've started this company, how old is the company now?

Neil Emeigh (01:29.333)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks.

Neil Emeigh (01:41.162)
Nine years.

Skot Waldron (01:42.222)
Okay. Nine years. You've experienced some pains and gains during those nine years. I'm assuming.

Talk about how personally challenging yourself in your personal space has helped you overcome the challenges in your professional space.

Neil Emeigh (02:02.569)
Yeah, that's pretty easy. I've done an Ironman and that's one of the more extreme things. And what that requires is a level of discipline that you lose sight of in the day -to -day humbum of work and emails and to stay consistent in a training plan day after day after day.

and to build up to, I think I was at 17 hours of training a week, it just, it forms grit in yourself. And that's just one example, but there's other things I've done personally that then I come back into the workspace and I'm like, wow, if I can do that, then I can handle this work challenges in front of me, for example.

Skot Waldron (02:49.87)
So when you're, give us some perspective on the Ironman stuff. I'm, I'm somewhat familiar with it. but for those of those people out there that are not like, probably heard of Ironman. They just don't know like what it entails. So give us the, distances of, the, of the, of the disciplines and then also tell us like the rigor of the training and what that entails.

Neil Emeigh (03:16.203)
Yeah. So the, I remember the miles I'm down kilometers. I think it's 2 .4 miles swim and then 112 miles bike to triathlon and then a marathon 26 mile run. And so you would assume that the race, the race would be the hardest part, but for me, that was one of the most easy. was the training leading up to the race day that required this.

consistency of this grit for I started, I started, I hadn't done triathlon ever. And I got an email to this business group I'm in called EO, Entrepreneurship Organization. And I said, Hey, there's this very special race in Germany. You can sign up for it's an Ironman. Like, Hey, this is a, this is a challenge. Let's, let's do it. And I signed up in October and started training in January and the race was in July. So I had six months to learn the sport of triathlon and to build myself up to do

The idea of the three disciplines is that they're kind of the same kind of efforts, like the marathon. Everyone, most people understand like a marathon generally. The 26 miles is about the same as 112 miles biking is the same as 2 .4 miles swimming as the idea they're trying to get to. So I had to build up my body and shape to get to like all three of those disciplines. And I didn't even know how to swim, but starting into this and, and

The consistency, as I said, the brace itself was just like something I did. took me about, mine was just under 13 hours. But as a consistency, six days a week of training for six months, building up to 17 hours. And it's not even that, it's all the eating. I'm not counting my eating hours, meal prep and just consuming. I had consume enough food and then you sleep probably as a sleeping nine, 10 hours some days and yeah, so on and so forth. It was a grind.

said at least.

Skot Waldron (05:15.95)
So it was, this was the first, this is the first one you've done because they have some smaller ones. There's a sprint triathlon, which could take an hour and a half maybe for on average, or there's Olympics that can take a little bit longer. they have like a mile swim almost, then 25 mile bike, and then, then a 10 K, run. And you didn't even do any of those. You were just like, you jumped right into the full blown.

Neil Emeigh (05:23.989)
Yeah, yeah, right.

Neil Emeigh (05:41.521)
No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't. I do things to challenge myself to see if I can do them. And I figured a sprint distance, the smallest one, I knew I could do that. could go out there and just show up and do it. Iron Man, I didn't know if I could do it. was was an honest, like, hesitation in my mind. I don't know.

And now that's kind of, I wrote a blog post about it that after the race.

And leading up to the next morning when I woke up, I had like this deep depression come upon me and I couldn't figure it out for quite a while. was like, God, I feel like crap. I just I wrote it off as as like, it's my chemicals. I use all your adrenaline, all your dopamine just to like get across. You're using just so much your body is like. And so I was like, it must be that. But after working with my coach of it and self reflecting on what that was, it was I climbed this mountain.

And now I didn't have something else to go to next. mean, I was just like, well, I guess I could do a double iron man. There are such things as that. But then I was like, what's the point? Then it's the more, more, more. And that, and that scared me. was like, I'm not, I'm not in life to do more, more, more, but what do I do now? What's, what's my next challenge to climb? And I haven't answered that in a lot of ways. And that was two years ago.

Skot Waldron (07:17.048)
Let me talk about, okay, let's transition to another one. Okay. So we're going to come back to all of these in a second. let's talk about your silent meditation retreat. when you went into that, did you think you could do that? Was that another one of those challenges where you're like, I don't know. Like this is, it's going to be tough or like, what was the, what was the thought behind that one?

Neil Emeigh (07:21.995)
Yeah.

Neil Emeigh (07:39.243)
Yeah. Yeah. The context for the listeners, I did a seven day silent meditation retreat in Bali and there was no reading, no writing, no speaking, no looking at other people. And it was 20 of us and then this kind of guru and this nice, beautiful tropical kind of compound they had. And I think I was just so naive on that one. That one, again, it was a challenge. I'm like, wow, that's...

really, huh, I never even thought to even consider something like that. Could I do it? I'm sure I can, but I still like, it wasn't like a, that's an easy thing. So it's like, let's do it. I'm going to learn something when I do this. and that one, I approached with more naivety, I think, than the Iron Man, because I had to compare the two because one, they're just, they're just so different, but it had its own, it was worse than the Iron Man and many.

regards and I share this with people. I ask people, say, when's the last time you've spent one day?

not reading, not writing, not talking, not looking at anyone, not, and of course, not on your phone, which is like the most, the most gimme, but nothing else. You can't read a book. You can't just hang out at a beach. It's just like nothing, literally nothing for an entire 24 hour period. And I looked at myself and like, I haven't even gotten close to that. Maybe I've been like two hours of my life that besides sleeping, of course, and to do that for seven days, your mind really starts transforming into it.

It's, you get into weird angles and places and it was, it was strange. It cool. It cool. I'm really grateful I did it.

Skot Waldron (09:26.446)
So what in the world, seriously, you say you do nothing, but I mean, are you sitting in a room just like cross -legged for like 15 hours? Are you walking around? Are you like, you eat? mean, like, what's going on?

Neil Emeigh (09:34.793)
Yeah, yeah, so we had, yeah, basically it was, we did a...

Neil Emeigh (09:42.699)
Yeah, yeah, it was 430 every morning was the bell to our first meditation. So you're like exhausted in our last one, I think went until like 10pm. You know, I think it was nine and a half hours of silent meditation just cross legged, eyes closed and just focusing on your breath in and out and you did that nine hours like it was an hour, a break for 15 minutes, an hour break for 15 and lunch for an hour break. So it's nine hours over the course of the day.

Yeah, you're just counting your breath for seven days, basically.

Skot Waldron (10:16.494)
That's insane. okay. Marathon. I mean, I'm sorry. Marathons are, I'm just saying, marathons in and of themselves, I think are insane. don't know. Marathons are like, I'll bike 112 miles. I'll swim two and whatever, two miles, but running a marathon is just crazy, man. but anyway, Ironman, crazy. Okay. When you kind of think like outside the box, Ironman is like endurance. It's like,

Neil Emeigh (10:27.712)
Yes, they suck. I just did one recently.

Skot Waldron (10:46.06)
I look at triathletes and I'm just like, they're a different breed of individual. There's something that has to be there for that to happen. Seven day silent retreat. That to me is like, what? Like, I don't know that it throws all these doubts into people's minds of like, what's, what's possible? What, what can we do in that space? When you came out of these things, you had different types of feelings, emotions.

experiences from those things. What was similar as far as what you learned as an individual coming out of those and then what was different?

Neil Emeigh (11:30.219)
similar between the two was I would just use one word perspective. Perspective on the world, things I learned, how to look at things differently, perspective on my life, why am I doing this, why did I do this. So I think that would be the one word that I could go all around with both of those coming out of them. And differently,

The things differently coming out of them. As I said, the Iron Man, I came out of that one kind of freaked out about what's my next mountain. And that kind of set a whole course of my life, like going next to like figuring this out and kind of, I say a little bit more dismal -y. Like I had to some valleys to kind of get to where I am today after the Iron Man was kind of like this wake up.

With the meditation retreat, this is a different period of my life, maybe two years prior to that, where I was already in kind of a weird, let's say valley at the beginning, kind of just lost. I don't know what to do with my life. was growing the business, kind of lost. And so I was kind of there and coming out of the meditation retreat, I was coming out more on the high. was like, whoa, what was this spiritual world that I encountered that I think I was maybe 20.

for at the time of this meditation retreat. So prior to that, I just didn't have this. And so it kind of gave me some optimism. They're like, wow, what's next? This is cool. Let's keep exploring and learning and being curious. So they're opposite on the difference there.

Skot Waldron (13:05.486)
So why do you think that is? mean, if you look at this, both of them were a what's next scenario. That's what I heard out of you. Both of them are what's next. Iron Man, it's like, I don't know. Like now, okay, what's next? And it was almost afraid. was like fear of the what's next of having to like take on that next challenge or the commitment to do something else.

Neil Emeigh (13:14.101)
Mm

Skot Waldron (13:33.834)
wins the end and fearful that the other one was what's next. All this is amazing. Like this optimism, this positivity of like, what's next of what's, what's the opportunity out there for me? Why do you think they were so different?

Neil Emeigh (13:49.515)
Yeah, that's a great, great question. think what I would pull away is that what the meditation retreat for me opened me up to a world of spirituality and not in the strongest religious sense, but just like more to the world than logging into my computer and doing 200 emails a day and five hours of Zoom calls. that was just my prior, I was again 24, I started the company when I was 21.

I was just college drunk like many college kids in university just drinking, fun. So I just didn't know much other than this. And so this opened up a different world of like, wow, there's spiritual, there's more to life than just the money and the work. What is that? That's interesting. Whereas the Iron Man, what that, I feel that brought to question was what's next for

that, whether it's a physical challenge, or more or less a physical challenge, it was more and more more, I guess I'm repeating myself, but the more and more and more is I realized I didn't want that more and more and more. It was in an area of physical and competition. I didn't want to be this competitive person that just has to be

the next Jeff Bezos in terms of whether financial business or being a personal life success, whereas the meditation, the what's more there was expanding, widening my perspective of the world. Did I answer that? Did I connect that?

Skot Waldron (15:32.816)
Yeah, I think so.

No, no, no, let me throw this at you and see if this, this, this resonates at all. But I hear like the retreat was a, a introspective spiritual, like elevation almost like out of body kind of just this perspective on everything else of the world and the planet and whatever. the, the triathlon was definitely a physical thing. Now I'll tell you that anybody.

Neil Emeigh (15:39.582)
Yeah, please.

Skot Waldron (16:07.01)
And I have experienced this too, and distance and long endurance things, right? There's, there's a spiritual aspect to that, right? When you get done, there is this euphoric state. It's like, I did that, you know, and like you, it is those, that adrenaline dopamine hits the, that euphoric experience, but it, seems to be like.

Neil Emeigh (16:13.237)
Mm -hmm.

Neil Emeigh (16:17.321)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Skot Waldron (16:31.18)
the physical demand on that, not saying that the retreat wasn't a physical demand. I'm sure it was very physically demanding, but it just seemed like more of a, a worldly thing versus the spiritual thing. I don't know if that resonates with you or not.

Neil Emeigh (16:35.911)
Yeah.

Neil Emeigh (16:43.816)
Hmm.

Neil Emeigh (16:50.047)
Worldly in the sense, in the sense I think of how society defines success maybe. Wow, Neil, you ran an Ironman. Wow, what's next? Well, I guess to beat that, it has to be a double Ironman, For you, the person I'm talking to, to be impressed. And that was the type of pressure that I confronted in me. I was like, wow, I don't want that more and more more lifestyle. on the spiritual side, I think.

It's different. It's a different conversation. It's like, wow, Neil, you did this. What's next? And my answer would be, I want to broaden and increase my awareness of the world even more than making more money with my business. I want to be more spiritually in tune with the world than I have ever been before. And that is a competition that I'm excited for. I don't know. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to connect those dots. It's a great question, Scott.

Skot Waldron (17:48.526)
That's interesting. That's it. Maybe you need another retreat. You go think about it. go think about it. Well, I mean, it's kind of like, you do say like, what's next with the next Iron Jew, a double Iron Man. I don't think anybody's going, well, what's next with the retreat thing? Well, guess I do 14 days on a retreat. you know, how is it? Okay. All right. Okay. Well, maybe one day. So let's talk, let's bring this back to a practical sense, I think for leadership. And I think with, with the audience that's listened to this now, what they're hearing and how they can.

Neil Emeigh (17:49.759)
Yeah. Yeah, seriously.

Neil Emeigh (18:01.307)
Yeah, exactly. And that is actually the next step. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah.

Skot Waldron (18:18.35)
So give us a quick rundown on the company first.

Neil Emeigh (18:24.171)
So we're RailByte. I started it nine years ago, completely bootstrapped. have 50 employees, 5 ,000 customers, Fortune 500. And what we do is called web scraping, data scraping. So we help companies gather data at scale. The easiest use case for most people to understand is when you search for a flight on Google, Google Flights or Skyscanner or hotels or booking .com, when you see a list of

all your options, you sort it by the cheapest price, usually as a consumer. Well, the way that these search engines, booking .com, Kayak, Trivago, Google Flights, the way they're doing that is they're scraping this data from the web. They're bringing it into one user interface for you, the consumer, to get value from. So we generally help things and use cases around that.

Skot Waldron (19:14.71)
Okay. I love that you just said, cause I sit there and I go, man, like we've had like a pretty deep conversation. You know, it's like soul, sweat, challenge, overcoming obstacles, endurance, like all these things. And then it's like, man, that's what, what's the company it's like, we do web scraping. It's like very data. It's very tactical. It's very like.

Neil Emeigh (19:23.413)
You

Neil Emeigh (19:38.752)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Skot Waldron (19:43.294)
I don't know how much heart is in there behind data scraping, right? But tell me, tell me about why you started the company in the first place. You believe that, for -profit companies are not just here to make money, but with data scraping, you sit there and you talk about, okay, so, all right. So what's, what's the heart of the company for you? Why did you start the company and why do you stick with it? Why haven't you just sold it and like,

Neil Emeigh (19:46.719)
Yeah, yeah.

Skot Waldron (20:12.268)
made a billion dollars and gone off your way.

Neil Emeigh (20:16.195)
It comes to generally my purpose and we've ascribed to be the purpose of our company, is it's Simon Sinek's why not what, what we sell is data scraping. Many companies do that. Why do we sell it? Our purpose statement as a company is to help people bring their great ideas to life. And so today we sell data scraping, but in the future, I really do aspire to offer different products, tools, whether physical or software that help people.

bring their great ideas to life. And that comes from my own nature, which is when I started the company, I go back, I started SEO, internet marketing when I was 15. So 15 years ago at this point. And I was just always curious to just try new things. what about this idea? What about this idea? let me try this, let me try this. And then when we landed on our current product as it is now, our product right now is like an infrastructure.

it's kind of useless just like sitting there on a shelf. It needs somebody to build something around it. And I got so excited talking to the people that were just using like a hammer, I was just selling them a hammer and then they would build these homes. And I was engaged in those conversations and could help them bring those ideas to life. So that's where I get a lot of excitement today.

Skot Waldron (21:36.17)
Where do you think companies falter when they look at building a company, when they're building a for -profit, they're here to make money. And if you are public, you have shareholders to answer to. they're like, that's great that your purpose is that thing, Neil, but we need you to make your numbers so that your stock price increases and that we get a return. How do you manage all that?

Neil Emeigh (21:46.784)
Yeah.

Neil Emeigh (21:51.114)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Neil Emeigh (22:00.041)
Yeah.

Right, right. It's, it's, be transparent, I do not have the answer to it. It's extremely difficult internally and externally to the revenue, the finances, the profits. Internally, having our team get on board with this idea has been extremely difficult. I say we're not entirely there yet. Most people could hear me saying these things and go, yeah, okay, but we have KPIs there, we have our OKRs there, and so on and so forth.

externally, when I say that way, like to make profit. When we've leaned, I've noticed in the last year or so when we've leaned too far into this purpose, feely goody thing that you hear cliche as a rebuttal to this idea, things in our company kind of started crumbling a bit or we weren't, we weren't making money basically. And so we had to swing the pendulum back, which then created this case with our team, especially.

of like, well, if we're swinging it back, it must mean it must not be good. You must not really care about that feel good stuff because you're swinging it back. And it's been difficult. We're actively in this right now. And I don't have all the answers. The one answer I do have for myself at least is, at least we're trying. At least we're trying our best to say, gosh, dang it, maybe we have to focus on money at the end of the day. Maybe we're going to to stay alive. But let's try just.

pendulum here and then and the revert back if we have to and then a pendulum here and the revert back to and I think if enough businesses if every business in the world did that and and just try pushing themselves to be more have goodwill for the world than just revenue and profits you would believe statistically that will be a little bit better place

Skot Waldron (23:51.97)
Do you consider yourself a pretty authentic guy, Neil?

Neil Emeigh (23:56.677)
I'm humbly so, I try to be, yeah.

Skot Waldron (24:00.798)
It's like the whole thing of like, you kiss yourself a humble guy, Neil? And you're like, well, yeah, it's, it's the cycle of as good as you claim it. but I think that's, that's, that's, that's part of it. And it's, and it was that testing, I think of the pendulum of like, let's go hard, like purpose. think the purpose is going to drive us if we can, you know, along with Simon Sinek, we say things like.

Neil Emeigh (24:04.733)
Yeah, it's like, it's like, right. No, exactly. Right. It's like, don't know how to answer that. Yeah, I tried to be.

Neil Emeigh (24:20.8)
Yeah.

Skot Waldron (24:25.378)
Hey, this is why we do what we do. And if we can find other clients and work with other people that believe what we believe, then we're going to, we're all profits are going to come. But something was happening to where that wasn't happening and you had to like be smart enough and intuitive enough. also know that you're investing that there's people there that are relying on you and their shareholders and your board members and things like that, that you had to come back a little bit. had to like, and I think that that.

and understanding yourself and your soul, not selling your soul, but saying, Hey, this is still who we are. I'm not ignoring this, but we do have to make sure that we are this too, that we're being profitable. But you know what? We are still going to keep pushing this purpose stuff. why is that so important for businesses and where do you think they sell themselves short?

Neil Emeigh (25:26.104)
from a practical making money, succeeding in business perspective, my opinion is I think you can be a successful business, and I did this in the first years of the company when I was kind of more focused on money. I think you can be a successful business and have linear growth. can compete in the red ocean of business and you can be successful. So I tell her.

peers that talk to business peers and say, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. You can be successful and be happy. When I look at the great companies of the world, the Apples, the Googles, so Tesla's, so on and so forth, I look at the majority of, not every one of those companies, know, Enron is extremely successful, but you know, story. But the majority of the companies exist today that are successful. They have that heart.

There's something special about them. that's where I think Simon Sinek's book talks about the why. And so for me, practically when I look at financial success, I would much rather take the gamble and have that greater success backed by some like this authenticity of heart and purpose. That's a win -win. If we get there, then crawl our way and fight our way through pennies of margins in a linear, bad ocean, essentially.

Skot Waldron (26:47.31)
Well, I'm going to look at you and I'm say that's crazy. Like that's, that's stupid. Why would you do that?

Neil Emeigh (26:55.849)
Yeah, to put the gamble and yeah, yeah, I think it's that I said like the win win the payoff is not only I believe there would be greater successes. But to the greater successes are being fueled by heart and purpose whatever your purpose for me, for me, I would just visualize of love.

Skot Waldron (26:58.38)
Yeah, like why would you do that?

Neil Emeigh (27:22.279)
Millions of people using our tools and just tools a hammer bringing their great ideas to life them showing it off and saying wow Look what I build and I would just get so excited seeing that it's a feeling and seeing that vision Is all worth it if I if I bring it to the other side and say how do I maximize? Every customers every penny. How do I upsell them cross them and put pressure on them things that businesses? Can and sometimes should do to maximize shareholder value

At the end of the day, I feel dirty because at the end of the day, I'm just saying, well, how do we maximize profit? I'm not motivated by that. It's not a long -term, it's not going to keep me going in it for the long -term.

Skot Waldron (28:06.754)
And how do you find people to work for you that are like, believe in, are you focused on finding people that are doing it or do just need people that are like, can build scraping stuff?

Neil Emeigh (28:22.319)
Right, right. This purpose journey has been, I it's ever evolving. It's the pendulum. One year we're one way, one year we have to kind of pull it back. But we've been leaning into it in the last two years than anything. And so our new hiring practice, we don't have a lot of turnover in our company. So we're not hiring that many people who are filtering this, but now we do in our hiring process. We have very specific questions about.

What is, when you hear this purpose statement, what do you feel? Or give me an example of ideas you like to bring to life or what hobbies do you have? And we're trying to listen for people saying, well, I just love, I love programming on the weekend or I love reading a DIY book and then go building a birdhouse. those are the people that we're trying to identify that resonate with this. But with our current people then, well, I mean, our current staff more or less has been people that.

resonated with my innate values. I've always been this curious -hearted person that wanted these things. And so I feel like I'm surrounded by people that more or less resonate with that purpose.

Skot Waldron (29:29.272)
So doing the hard things, the personal things that have pushed you, that have pushed your limits, that have expanded your vision, your perspective, heightened your awareness of all these things. How do you think those have attributed to your success in your business? Again, let's hit on that one more time.

Neil Emeigh (29:52.583)
Ask the question one more time while I'm processing.

Skot Waldron (29:54.04)
So all the things that you experienced, we're talking about the triathlon, we're talking about the meditation, we're talking about other trials that you've experienced in your life that were difficult, things that pushed you beyond your limits, things that you didn't know if you could do them. You launched this business, that may have been another one of those. Like, I don't know if I could do this. I'm going to take this thing on. But you've been successful. Okay. We'll just quote unquote, whatever successful means by all means it seems successful.

Neil Emeigh (30:11.381)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Skot Waldron (30:22.99)
grown it, you've expanded. What are the things that have helped you get there through, you know, I'm talking about the challenges and the pushing yourself beyond that have helped sustain you through the growth of your company.

Neil Emeigh (30:41.899)
Self -reflection would be my one hyphenated word. The thing that I would attribute the most to my growth as a human being, my growth as a leader, my growth as a man has been the time I spend self -reflecting on my life and what's happening. I'm an avid believer and follower of stoicism.

And I journal, I journal every day. I mean, there's when I'm going on vacation, airplanes are one of my favorite times of the year because I have this completely unerupted time to do nothing else but sit in this cramped little seat. And that's where I just journal and journal and I write and I write and write. And so I have hard notebooks. I have my digital notebook, just thousands of pages, thousands and thousands and thousands of pages in the last nine years. And I don't think I'd be where I am.

had I not taken the time to do that, if I would just plow ahead and not sit back and listen to myself and listen to what I'm feeling, listen to what I'm seeing ahead of

Skot Waldron (31:49.76)
Is there a specific prompt or a specific question or a specific challenge you would give to other leaders right now listening to this?

Neil Emeigh (31:57.507)
prompt in a journaling or self -reflection. The one that I've most resonated with that I write every day, every morning, then especially when I'm stuck in life is, how do I feel? Sorry, I write and I change my, the person perspective. I actually write, how do you feel? And talking to myself and I score this from

one through five through three being normal, five being awesome, one being shitty. I write that number down and then I go and I just like, you know, this is why I'm feeling this way and this and this and this and this and I need to solve this, create an action item over here and it just, it opens me up when I ask myself, how do I really feel?

Skot Waldron (32:44.76)
So asking, so quantifying that right off the bat and then going into why. So I mean, in business, we have a lot of things that do that, right? When you talk about net promoter scores and all kinds of stuff, it's like, how likely are you to refer this person? Well, it's seven. And then it's like, why? then like they kind of, but that quantification first gives some context, I think to our...

Neil Emeigh (32:48.01)
Yeah.

Neil Emeigh (32:59.083)
Right,

Skot Waldron (33:10.304)
our literal brain, and then we get into the heart. always think like, you know, when I was doing a lot of brand strategy work and even when I'm coaching leaders now, it's, it's the heart and, and the brain that like have to come together to make something happen. Well, we call it, we, we satisfy the brain, the logic part first, and then the heart flows after that is kind of a belief system I have.

Neil Emeigh (33:29.544)
Right, there you go. That must be what I'm doing without knowing it.

Skot Waldron (33:34.264)
That's awesome. Yeah. I love it. I love it, man. Thank you. so what are you doing right now that, other, want other people to reach out to you for, why would somebody want to reach out to you? Sure. Like maybe they want to invest or maybe they want to just understand data scraping, but on another level, who else do you want to reach out to you and why?

Neil Emeigh (33:58.595)
I would like a call to action on my blog, NeilAmy .com, because I want to connect with people who share these same ideals as me. I want to hear the people who say, you know what, I pushed myself in life way too hard and I realized that I didn't want to climb the next mountain and I'm lost and I'm wandering around because that's where I'm at right now even. I've kind of lost.

purposeless and directionless in some cases. There's my business, but there's so many other aspects. There's people like that. There's people who have reached success in life, how they define it. In my case, have lot of business success, and that isn't fulfilling in a lot of days. And I want to connect with those people. so following me on my blog, reaching out to me, I would just love to learn from other people who are facing these things so that I can learn and hopefully they can learn from me as well.

Skot Waldron (34:57.08)
That's brilliant. How do they do that? Go to your blog.

Neil Emeigh (35:00.008)
Yeah, NeilAnie .com. There's a big flashy contact me button there with my personal email.

Skot Waldron (35:06.478)
Okay. Flashy neon sign, fingers pointing to it.

Neil Emeigh (35:08.613)
Yeah, kind of. Yeah, if you see my homepage, it's me. That's kind of my trademark at our company.

Skot Waldron (35:15.948)
Nice, nice. Neil, this has been fascinating, man. Like I've super enjoyed this and I usually go so deep on some of these questions, but you challenged me before you're like, me some stuff. then so we got to go there, man. We got to go there. Well, thanks for being on. I really appreciate it. Thanks for staying after hours over there in the Netherlands to hang out with me too. Appreciate it, man.

Neil Emeigh (35:22.581)
Yeah, likewise.

Neil Emeigh (35:28.553)
Yeah, you did great. Thank you.

Neil Emeigh (35:38.879)
Yeah, cool. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate you.