Summary

In this episode of the Executive Connect podcast, host Melissa Aarskaug talks with entrepreneur and business coach Henry Woodman about building successful teams, navigating business challenges, and balancing personal well-being with professional growth. Henry shares insights on effective management, company culture, and the importance of pursuing passion projects. Don’t miss his valuable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs!

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Leadership and Entrepreneurship
01:33 The Evolution of Henry’s Career
06:10 Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs
10:31 Building and Motivating Teams
15:05 Management Style and Company Culture
18:42 Challenges in Scaling Businesses
24:40 Pursuing Passion Projects
27:41 Advice for New Entrepreneurs
34:44 Integrating Personal and Professional Life

Transcript

Melissa Aarskaug (00:02.084)
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast where we bring insights from top leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs who have made an impact in their industry. Today, I’m excited to talk to Henry Woodman as our guest about leadership, entrepreneur journeys, and management. He has over three decades as an entrepreneur, angel investor, and business coach.

and he was a former founder and president of Ice Portal, a leading provider of content management for the travel sector, which he successfully sold in 2019. Welcome, Henry.

Henry Woodman (00:44.482)
Thank you so much. You know, when I hear those accolades, I keep having this imposter syndrome like, wow, that guy is cool. But I will update one thing. It’s actually five decades as a sort of an entrepreneurial journey. It kind of started at 13. So we can go in. But the big one was, as you mentioned, Ice Portal.

Melissa Aarskaug (01:05.222)
I love it. feel like, you know, I love that you said that at 13 because I remember when I was that age to Henry, I was selling stuff out of my parents garage during garage sale season. And, you know, there started my entrepreneurial journey. So I can’t wait to jump into this. let’s really just, you know, jump into what you were saying from founding the ice portal to transitioning into media. Can you talk a little bit about your career, how it’s evolved?

and what has motivated you to pursue different paths.

Henry Woodman (01:38.242)
Yeah, I’m gonna say it’s probably a venture of hedonistic opportunistic pursuits, right? And I’m gonna whip through the first couple of decades to get to Ice Portal. So, I’m in college, I’m thinking of Pac-Man. I’m addicted to Pac-Man, right? I’m in a laundromat. I got a pocket full of quarters. I wanna play a video game. There isn’t one there. There isn’t in any of the…

Laundromats around Tucson where I went to college. the time I graduated, I had video game machines in most of the laundromats in Tucson. So that was my first sort of business venture. I sold that, moved to California with dreams of getting into producing and directing movies. That’s something that I loved and that did not happen, right? And you know, I fumbled my way around. I made a little bit of money on a game show. I ended up partying too much. And then finally, after a couple of years, I start getting on travel.

film broad or film shows, right? And I’m the PA, the production assistant, sound guy, producer. Eventually after producing a show in Chile and in Latin America, the country went from a dictatorship with Pinochet to a democracy. And I thought, ooh, opportunity because new television stations and new network were being added and they needed content, right? So I went down there, I pitched a game show from the U.S. and an idea I ripped off and

Couple of months later, we’re on the air with a game show. While I’m in Chile, somebody gives me a CD-ROM. This is the mid, late, mid-90s, early 90s, mid-90s, right? And they give me a CD-ROM and it has this virtual reality tour where you can look up and down and all around within the confines of your computer. And I thought that is the coolest thing ever, right?

I want to set up a company and I want to travel around so I don’t have to have five guys and 17 pieces of luggage with a camera and shoot virtual tours of the world. So I set up a company called World Travel Vision. It does very well for a couple of years. We’re kind of innovators in doing this 360 tours. We give hotels and destinations a CD-ROM. They take it to the conference or the trade show and they promote their destination. And a few years into this, they’d say, OK.

Henry Woodman (03:58.51)
How do we get these virtual tours on this new worldwide web thingy? Right now we’re talking mid to late 90s and I’m like, I don’t know I don’t even have an AOL account I might add right so I didn’t know what internet yeah You know what? Let me figure out see what I can do to help So then we decide okay Let’s try to distribute the virtual tours on behalf of these clients So we produce the virtual tours and then we distribute them, right? and so

We’re distributing virtual tours and we figure, you know what? Now that we know a little bit more about the industry and we’re starting to get into technology, we realize photos was a problem, right? Because the old systems back in the day when you’d go to a travel agency, a brick and mortar on the corner, they had these cryptic green screen terminals with the rate and the availability, but there were no photos, right? There wasn’t the bandwidth, there wasn’t the capacity.

So the internet comes along and they have all this rate and availability, but the photos are non-existent because those systems never had it and they couldn’t deal with it, the legacy systems. So the big websites, like the Expedia’s and Travelosity’s would have a database for photos and a database for the ARI, the available rate information, and marry it together in the end. So we thought, okay, nice to have virtual tours, need to have photos, right? Let’s figure out how we can do this, right? So we were in a…

overnight success after 25 years of, you know, pivoting me on the technology and connecting and dealing with all kinds of ups and downs and close to bankruptcies. And I’ll leave it at that. So it was a long and sort of arduous journey.

Melissa Aarskaug (05:40.676)
And but it sounds to me, Henry, that you were solving a lot of problems. mean, even like, you know, what are people doing when they’re at the laundromat, but sitting there and putting Pac-Man machines in the laundromat gave people, you know, a way to, you know, enjoy the time at the laundromat versus just sitting there waiting for the machine to end. it feels like, like what I hear is you have a very strong entrepreneur spirit and that you’re really solving problems before people even realize

they’re a problem. And it sounds like you’ve you’ve been in many different industries, not just one, you’ve worn different hats. What personal traits do you think are most important when driving your success and your passion, whether it’s travel or the Pac-Man or technology? Like what were the traits that you thought that you had to make you accomplish the businesses?

Henry Woodman (06:35.97)
Right. So, and you’re absolutely right. I mean, it’s not so much that I would seek problems. obviously, I’m always looking at opportunities and the real sort of, there’s a couple of things. One, are you solving a problem? And it may be just your own little problem. Like you said, I’m in a laundromat and I’m addicted to Pac-Man. Maybe others are, and you know, they’re a captive audience as well, right?

The irony is I did it so I could play at Laundromats and then everybody was playing so I couldn’t play my own game even though I would take money from myself, right? So it kind of backfired on me in that sense, but it gave me the sense for getting a little bit of revenue and being able, my joke is I bought my first car with quarters. But the reality is I think tenacity and discipline, right? First,

Are you solving a problem? Is this really something that is an issue for a lot of people or that you see as an issue? Or are you improving on something that is simplifying an existing solution? I would have had no idea that there was a problem with photos going to travel websites had I not done virtual tours, because I wanted to travel, and I knew that world.

And then somebody asked me to put those virtual tours on travel sites. And I’m like, all right, let me figure it out. And then as I look into what’s going on, I’m like, wow, that’s kind of dysfunctional. You don’t know these things until you find yourself involved in it. So looking for opportunity. At the beginning, you say yes to pretty much everything because you’re trying to find the right answers. And eventually, when you find things that you can do really well or win at,

then you have to learn to say no to everything else, which is really hard, right? Because we’d go from virtual tour production, the virtual tour production, and then distribution, and then we’d do loss leaders on the virtual tour production to get the distribution because that was an ongoing revenue. And then we eventually got rid of the photographers and got rid of the virtual tours and did nothing but the photography, right? So, you know, even though that was our bread and butter early on, it morphed into a lower

Henry Woodman (08:52.802)
cost per item, but much larger volume and much more required than the others. No longer a luxury, it’s a need, right?

Melissa Aarskaug (09:02.583)
Yeah, definitely. When you were saying that, it popped into my head so many times people would say to me in Texas, curbside pickup was like the new thing in Texas during the pandemic. But curbside pickup had been around for a very long time with one parking space in the front. during the pandemic,

grocery stores made it, perfected it. And so many people today still use grocery delivery services and curbside pickup. They just weren’t doing it as good as they are today where it’s more, they have people that do it full time now inside grocery stores. So I love what you said. And really, you know, in all the time that you’ve been managing professionals and scaling companies, what has been, in your opinion,

Henry Woodman (09:38.638)
Of

Melissa Aarskaug (09:55.87)
some of the critical, outside of the skills you mentioned, just the drive and everything, to keeping your team motivated. So you have the drive and the motivation and the vision to see things differently. And then you really gotta sell that to the people that are working for you or are helping you build your business. And when you’re an entrepreneur and scaling your business, it’s a lot of grind, it’s a lot of work.

and the people that you’re employing, how do you keep them motivated and focused on the prize, which is building the business the way you see it?

Henry Woodman (10:31.598)
That’s a great question beyond the beatings will continue until morale improves, but that didn’t. Yeah. So really the reality is, you in, in finding my way through and then stumbling on this, came to the realization that I had no idea what I was doing early on. And people would say to me things like, you need to hire the best people. And I’m thinking to myself, look, I can’t even afford to pay myself. I can’t afford best people. thought it was.

Melissa Aarskaug (10:35.355)
Hey

Henry Woodman (10:58.858)
experienced and expensive people. You need a culture. like, I don’t even know what that is. You need KPIs. I’m like, what’s a KPI, right? I had no idea about any of this stuff. I’m giving a presentation a couple of years into my business to a group of local CEOs and around the room there are these MBAs. And I think, my God, an imposter I am. They know more about running a business than I do. So I went back to school and I got my MBA in entrepreneurship in my 50s.

Melissa Aarskaug (11:01.658)
Yeah.

Henry Woodman (11:27.512)
basically because I wanted to learn how to better scale the business, which is to say, what exactly is a vision? How do you create one and what does that mean? And then when you tell people, here is what I’m thinking and here’s the direction we’re going, let’s all row in that direction, right? And then what is it exactly that you need to measure the KPIs, the key performance indicators, in order to understand if you’re progressing or not, right? And eventually,

You start to understand the only way you’re going to scale is that you build a foundation with proper procedures and processes that will allow you to do that and plug and play, right? Because early on you’re wearing multiple hats and everybody’s doing everything and we don’t even know what’s going on and very few things are documented, right? Well, that slowly changed, right? And so I looked at it too that some of the employees we had early on when we were building were underpaid.

Right? So I said to them, I said, listen, I love what you’re doing. I think you believe in the cause. I can’t afford to pay you more, but I want to give you Phantom stock because at one point I want to sell the company and I want you to succeed as well. And it worked two ways. One, they’d have a piece of the company upon the sale. Okay. And it would vest over two years, meaning we’d sell the company. They don’t get a pot of money. They get a little bit every six months. That’s good for the company, new owners.

who say, we don’t want these smart people to leave when they get their money. No, no, no, they’ll be there for a little bit if they want their money, otherwise they forfeit it. So it was a win, win, win. They got a little bit of extra money for the motivation. It kept them on and incentivized. the culture’s a huge thing. I don’t know how to write code, so I need to get more intelligent people. I need to get people who buy into what we’re doing, where we’re going, and how we’re going to win, right?

those are the elements which constitute the culture as well. And I think that gets a little more challenging now as we see many people, you know, after COVID, I want to work from home. You know, I want more benefits and I want more money. And you’re like, wow, if everyone’s working from home, I can get foreigners that work for half as much and don’t expect all that and all those benefits and entitlements. So it’s a challenge for employers these days.

Melissa Aarskaug (13:50.596)
Yeah, I do think that is great advice is giving them Phantom stock and having them. Cause really the results are going to be dictated on how hard everybody’s pulling at whatever the goal is. And I think managing people is becoming, you know, a really important skill. think just because somebody has a title doesn’t mean they’re a manager and or a leader. It’s something that has to, you know, be learned. And a lot of times, I’ve always hired for attitude.

Henry Woodman (13:51.31)
you

Melissa Aarskaug (14:20.98)
And for people that were really good in areas, I am not. And because it really brings it, like if I hire everybody that’s like me, you know, we’re not gonna solve the problem the best, right? So I think really management is more than just here’s the goal, let’s go get the goal. It’s about creating an environment where people wanna grow in, know, succeed in, and they want to…

really pull at the company mission, whatever the company mission is. And so how would you describe your management style and what key elements do you think you have that’s made you such a great manager in all the businesses that you’ve been part of?

Henry Woodman (15:05.644)
have to pay the employees a little bit more to say that. you know, I think the reality is that early on, and I mentioned I had little idea what all of this meant. I was given a book called Traction by Gina Wickman. And it all of a sudden, the light bulb went off, if you will. And I’m like, so that’s what that means. And this is what you do in order to formulate a vision and a mission and a culture.

These are what the scorecard, like, okay, okay. So at the time there were six of us, so I bought a book for everyone in the company. said, okay, read this, you have one month, we’re gonna go back together. And this is our new Bible, right? So we all had that sort of mindset of what this means to essentially grow and scale. And we even had our backdoor password to our technology platform as Gina Wickman, he was the author of the book, right? And so we…

really believed in those basic fundamentals. So the leadership style was, listen, we’re all gonna come together and like you said, I certainly don’t like a lot of the detail stuff. That was my right hand. She loved detail. I mean, she was detail everything. So she was what Traction would call an integrator and I was the visionary, right? And then we had the other elements put together. So everybody had a good sense of…

exactly where they fit and how it was going to happen and what we were doing. And then I obsessed over documentation and process. I said, imagine if you will, that we’re going to build a franchise of this office in Europe and they can never speak to us. The documents need to be clearly identifying our process, our procedures and what we do and how we do it. And it’s a living document. It stays up to date because you know, things change, APIs change, coding changes. So we need to keep all of that stuff.

up to date. And so we essentially have weekly meetings and we had daily huddles. And the daily huddle was we would pick a different person every week. You would run the meeting. You’d put music on in the big center and it would be your style. Right. And then you’d go around the room and people would say what you accomplished yesterday and what you’re planning on accomplishing today. And then we would also identify at least one person in the company two or three times a week.

Melissa Aarskaug (17:20.75)
Right?

Henry Woodman (17:28.45)
that emulated one of the cultural fits, know, what we believe as a culture. And we say, listen, I saw Melissa last week, you know, this honesty thing. She was talking to a client. She really did them right. And this is an example of art. And they’re like, yeah, okay. Instead of a plaque on the wall, which nobody reads, we would continually integrate that into the daily meetings.

Melissa Aarskaug (17:52.228)
Yeah, I love that. think too, you know, one of the hardest things I think when building somebody else’s business or your own business is really like, a lot of times the detail people are like, what are you doing? You’re just sitting and thinking about the vision and the vision people are like, what are you doing? You know, we got to like,

use each other because we have different ways of going through building a business, scaling a business. Sometimes you really need the vision to change, to scale it. Maybe you’ve hit a threshold in your business and you’re not growing the revenue or maybe you need the details to look at, hey, we’re going to exit, we need to sell, here’s our exit number. So it really goes hand in hand, those two things. And so I want to talk a little bit about as you’re growing and scaling these businesses,

What were some of the challenges you faced in scaling them and growing them in all of the businesses, I guess?

Henry Woodman (18:51.34)
Yeah. You know, the first thing I’ll say, you know, in talking to that is if I knew at the time how to raise money, I probably would have tried or raised money and I would have spent it stupidly and I would have bankrupted my own company. And I say that with love and affection of myself, because doing stupid things and learning from the mistakes and the hurdles and the mountains that you have to overcome, I think helped grow the business as opposed to just throw money at it and then money runs out and nobody wants to fund it anymore. Right.

But in answer to your question, I think the things that I learned or that helped us grow along the way was discipline. This is not something that you start and you go, okay, next month we’re gonna be a hundred fold better and a year from now we’re gonna sell for gazillions of dollars. It’s a wash, rinse, repeat. It was not in my idea, it was not going to flip overnight.

but I did have a number on my mirror what I wanted to exit with. And so that was my goal. And then people would say, well, how did you get that number? And I literally sat down, my brother and I actually, and we sat down and said, how much money would I need to live the rest of my life comfortably without making anymore, know, just taking it down. And assuming I lived to like 90, right? And then I doubled that because, you know, other stupid things happen and taxes and stuff like that. And that was my number, right?

So that was on my mirror for a decade and that was kind of the focal point. And, you know, I just looked at it like there are kind of three sort of pillars to this. And that is you got to have a little bit of talent, right? Whether it’s leadership, whether it’s technology or something, you need to prepare, prepare the process of the procedure, prepare for the eventual hopeful opportunity. And you need to be lucky.

Because if you’re prepared and you’re not lucky, you might not see opportunity. And I leave talent to the side. And if you’re lucky and you’re not prepared, you may not see opportunity. Now, obviously mindset plays a big part in tenacity and discipline. But at the end of the day, if opportunity, if you want opportunity to find you, prepare well, be disciplined, and hope for luck.

Melissa Aarskaug (21:07.614)
Yeah, and you said one really, really important nugget in there, which was, you know, you did you did well important nugget that I think, you know, we kind of we should hit on a little bit more is your number that you put on your mirror, right? Like, you really wanted that number, you really believed in that number. And you were really focused on that number. Sometimes the puzzle pieces kind of get into place once you know where you’re going, right? If you’re going from Austin to Florida,

Henry Woodman (21:12.532)
That’s it.

Melissa Aarskaug (21:35.834)
and you just get in the car and start driving without a plan or a vision and no map. Like how do you know which way you’re turning, right? And so I think exactly what you were saying, you knew your number, you had a strategy and you didn’t have to know, okay, well, I gotta do this and then this and this and this and this. You didn’t have to have everything figured out. You just had to know where your destination was and then you can, you know, kind of, I say reverse engineer it.

and look backwards and figure out what you need to get there. And I think that is a really important piece is, you know, if you just are starting a business and you’re like, okay, I’m gonna build this business because I love it. And I’m passionate, I’m plugging a hole, but you have no vision and strategy. Like you said, you might get lucky. But but really, you need to have that vision and strategy. And I always kind of like what you were saying at the beginning, like the dumb tax like

Henry Woodman (22:21.987)
Agree.

Melissa Aarskaug (22:26.374)
I know I’ve personally paid some dumb tax with my own money making mistakes and learning from the mistakes. And when you’re using other people’s money, it’s a different lens than when, yes, when you’re.

Henry Woodman (22:39.244)
Lack of respect.

Henry Woodman (22:50.199)
I lost you.

Yeah, I lost you, Melissa.

Henry Woodman (23:01.45)
I can’t hear you.

I see the lips moving, but I don’t hear audio.

Melissa Aarskaug (23:09.362)
Test, test, hold on.

Henry Woodman (23:10.669)
now I hear you. You did something where you moved to wire or something.

not anymore.

Melissa Aarskaug (23:24.205)
Can you hear me now? So weird, I didn’t even touch anything. No touchy touchy. Raph, think your computer needs to come sooner rather than later. This is the… Okay, so let’s just, we might have to cut any of that. Let me jump.

Henry Woodman (23:25.379)
Yes.

Henry Woodman (23:43.598)
You were talking about the number on the mirror and the pieces coming together in the end.

Melissa Aarskaug (23:46.561)
And it can, yeah, and I was just, kind of pivoted on you when it’s your own money, you treat it much different than when you have other people’s money. And so I often, you know, talk a lot about having some of your stuff, money, whatever it is, invested along with other people’s money. Yeah, exactly. Skin in the game.

Henry Woodman (24:07.384)
Sure, let’s get in the game.

Melissa Aarskaug (24:11.427)
I want to pivot a little bit about, you know, we talked a lot about like travel and the tech industry and now just your passions in TV and media and I want to talk about that pivot and going from one industry another and how has that leadership experience evolved and really what excites you about what next like a kind of being comfortable with going from one to another and be

You know, just tell us about the new venture.

Henry Woodman (24:43.138)
Yeah, well, I’m really comfortable sort of connecting dots and going from one to another, but it’s not, you know, it’s not that new only because, you know, when I moved to LA 40 some odd years ago and I thought I was going to produce in direct movies, I bought the rights to a book and I thought, you know what, I’m going to produce a movie out of this. Well, the world has changed, right? Back then there were a handful of studios that controlled everything from the production to the distribution, right? The world has changed. And of course I went out and did some travel stuff and then I did

game shows in Chile and then I ran a tech company. And now in retrospect, I’m like, I always wanted to do that. Now I can now in truth, this is not even though there’s more opportunity with streamers, this is not something I would go out and say, this is a place where I can make a ton of money. No, that’s not it at all. It’s really a passion project. It is something that I wanted to do since, you know, teenage years.

So now that I have the opportunity to pursue it and I’m not under the gun for, I gotta make money at this, then I can do it with passion. and this is also what, the other thing when people sell a business where they retire and they go, I can’t wait to just play golf or sit on the beach and drink pina coladas, I’m like, okay, great, what are you gonna do in a week too? Right, because let’s be clear, people that are entrepreneur and have this sort of ADD mindset,

You need something, a passion or a purpose. And in this case, it’s my passion, right? I just published the book, it’s called The Reincarnation of Marie. And that is sort of the springboard for the concept for this TV series that we’re now calling Slippin’.

Melissa Aarskaug (26:27.179)
I love it. And I love how you say you’re comfortable connecting the dots because I think a lot of times it’s also a muscle because you’ve practiced and been able to like grow and enhance that muscle. But a lot of times I hear people maybe their jobs aren’t around anymore for whatever reason and they need they were let go and they have to kind of reinvent themselves and find new careers. So sometimes like pivoting from you know, one industry and another can be

really difficult for people. And I always say, you know, you got to lean in and try it and see if it works. And I want to touch a little bit about I know a lot of people right now are looking at starting their own business, because they were let go or buying a franchise or just really taking more of an entrepreneurial way.

with their family and their life. So I want to hear a little bit about your advice to younger, newer entrepreneurs, business owners, as they navigate business ownership, what would you share with them on maybe tips that they should think about and really how to keep them resilient to keep pushing forward?

Henry Woodman (27:41.952)
Absolutely. So first of all, you have to have the mindset. You have to have an entrepreneur mindset to know that the majority of small businesses fail. So go into it and say, I’m going to be different, right? Because if you believe, I’m going to be one of those statistics, then you will be, right? That’s the first thing. The second thing is try to find something either that you know or that you see is a problem that you can fulfill as an opportunity or as a solution, right? Now.

I would venture if I were younger and I looked at the world and I said, okay, I want to do something. I would look at buying a business or working some creative deal with one of these baby boomers who has a relatively small business. mean, there are thousands of baby boomers with small businesses that are like, you know what? I got to retire. I got to get rid of it. And there are a lot of people that say, look, I’m not going to give you the few hundred thousand dollars you want because I don’t have it, but I’ll gladly work out a deal and I’ll pay you through.

And I need your advice to help hold my hand and teach me some of the things. And simple examples would be like lawnmower repair shops. I don’t know what they look like, but I imagine they’re mom and pops. And then you say, OK, let me just buy three or four and then get the accounting and all of the processes centralized so that I can save money that way. And then maybe on a larger bargaining power to buy the parts or whatever it is. But at the end of the day,

I heard a guy present, this was about a year ago, where more businesses that are acquired by businesses have a lower failure rate than starting a business. It’s really hard to establish yourself and your brand. mean, even if people say, yeah, that’s a great idea, I love it. You know what, call me in a year or two and if you’re still around, then I’ll take you seriously. But I don’t know if you’re still gonna be here. So I don’t wanna take a risk with you. Sorry, I like you, right?

An existing business, yeah, has been there for a while. They have a reputation. You don’t have to do as much time and effort marketing. So I would look into things that you also like to do and that you have a passion for. And it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. There’s a lot of pain. I I spent time mortgaging my house to get a line of credit to pay the employees in order to build on the tech. I came…

Henry Woodman (30:04.462)
close to bankruptcy multiple times. So, you know, I just believed I didn’t have a backup, right? You know, as I said early, go look at opportunities and try and say yes to everything until you find something you really think you can win at and you can create a motor round and then maniacally do that and say no to everything else. But also keep in mind, you know, you may have to pivot. The world is changing and it’s changing fast. You know, when I look at what AI is doing, it scares the hell out of me.

that people are not embracing it like they should.

Melissa Aarskaug (30:38.179)
Yeah, that’s a really good point. think building a business in the 80s and 90s is very different than building a business today, like you said, with AI. You can use the AI tool to come up with mission values, branding, and just like with the snap of a finger, whereas in the 80s, you’d hire a consultant, they’d work for months, you’d figure it out, you’d run the process.

Now you can find so many things and strategies to whatever your problems are in AI. So the barrier to entry, to enter in entrepreneurship is a lot less, I would say, than it was in the 80s. Because really Google and ChatGPT, a lot of information is in those tools on how to build whatever you’re trying to build, right? You’re spot on.

Henry Woodman (31:31.628)
mean, could say, for example, you could ask Chet GPT, act as though you’re a McKinsey consultant who is interested in buying this business and give me the pros and cons, and it will do it. You can also say to Chet GPT, look, there’s this big ass contract and you know what, I’m not a lawyer. And before I talk to the lawyer, give me an overview and dumb it down for me and give me the pros and the cons of this agreement, right? Then you talk to the lawyer and you ask him just those things because

I can’t tell you how many agreements I looked at and I’m like, my God, I could read this and put me to sleep. I mean, it’s painful, right? Lawyers may know, but then you pay them a lot of money and you don’t have a lot of money. So I think chat GPT helps that. also helps, you know what? Act as though you’re the new business owner for this. Create a strategy that will help me do these things, whether it’s marketing or process orientation stuff. my God, I’d be all over that.

Melissa Aarskaug (32:25.761)
Yeah, it’s so true. I’ve seen, you know, not all information is good information and not all you know, everything we see these days on TV and on the internet must be true, right? And, right. So I, I plug sometimes things and help me like, is this correct? Or give me a quote about this or tell me the statistic about that. And you’re right, you could get it like

Henry Woodman (32:37.55)
God, yeah.

Melissa Aarskaug (32:51.687)
lickety split. And I think you’re spot on with really using AI and technology, no matter what age you are, no matter what you’re doing. It’s kind of something else you said is building your brand, you need to start doing that before you need it. So if you’re, you know, starting as an entrepreneur today, and you need to build your brand today, you’re a little behind on building your brand, and really focusing on that brand.

and then starting your business is really key. Like what you said, gotta have, you know, you gotta have the trust in the brand for people to wanna buy or use whatever it is you’re offering.

Henry Woodman (33:29.518)
Yeah. And Melissa, it’s also scary looking at, you know, the, the, the film and television industry with not just AI for writing scripts, but AI for doing text to video is getting so good, right? That you think, okay, you know, full day of production, paying cast crew and all these people for a two minute of finished product. my God. Where AI could do an entire thing in a month, a week for a fraction of the cost. Wow. That.

corner is right. mean, we’re right there. And I think the industry is afraid because there’s going to be a lot of pushback from the internals in the industry who are living off of this. But at the end of the day, the big streamers are going to like, look, there’s a need for good content. This will create it at a fraction of the cost. I can satisfy all these needs. And it’s all about

Melissa Aarskaug (34:20.853)
Yeah, absolutely. Kind of some closing thoughts. know I don’t, I am hesitant to use the word work-life balance. I’m not sure I believe in a full balanced life, but I do believe in an integrated life where I’m able to balance my personal goals with my professional goals and.

while building a legacy for my family. So I want to kind of get your opinion about what’s next and how do you juggle and integrate your personal and your professional life to make sure you’re really living that whole life.

Henry Woodman (34:58.99)
Yeah, that’s a very easy question. So the reality is if you look at people who have succeeded tremendous, had made tremendous fortunes and are a huge success and are unhealthy as a result, you know, I worked so hard, I didn’t eat properly, I didn’t exercise, I stressed, now I’m miserable and I give all that money just to have my health, right? So if we look at that and say, okay, what’s the most important thing in life? And it is your health.

You can’t buy it, you have to do three things. Well, maybe four if you count, minimize your stress. Sleep well, eat well, and move. Exercise, that’s it. So even in the middle of a stressful business, I would take the middle of my day and I would go swim and I would do things in order to keep mentally focused. I would bring salads to work. So at the point of if I don’t do those things, I know I feel like crap.

I’m eating poorly, that’s affecting my health. I’m not sleeping as a result, I’m stressing and it becomes a virtuous spiral, right? And it makes it worse. So the one thing that I would say to anybody, dedicate a little bit of time to yourself, right? I know there’s the family and the thing, but you first, right? Whether it’s walking, whether it’s just showing up at a gym, whether it’s eating properly and not all this ultra processed food and sleeping.

Melissa Aarskaug (35:57.569)
Mm-hmm.

Henry Woodman (36:27.116)
We have, I mean, we have minimized the value of that and maximized the value of the dollar. And I think that’s wrong.

Melissa Aarskaug (36:35.163)
Yeah, it’s so true. I saw this in one of my social posts this last week where a young entrepreneur in her 20s with two kids passed away because she was not sleeping, not eating. And so she was really giving up her health for her wealth. And ultimately she passed away because of the life she kept. And so it’s really spot on. No, you know, no amount of money is important to

to your health because once you get the money, you can’t spend it if you’re not healthy. So you’re so spot on as taking care of yourself first and really doing that so you can build a business and take care of others.

Henry Woodman (37:18.176)
Doesn’t matter how much money you have if you have shitty health.

Melissa Aarskaug (37:21.731)
100%, 100%. Kind of in closing, I wanna get any final thoughts or anything else you wanted to share. I know we covered a lot of different things, the time flew, Henry, and just any closing thoughts you wanna share.

Henry Woodman (37:38.478)
So if anybody’s interested, I know I mentioned the book and stuff in the series, I created a website called marithestory.com. It includes information on the book, it’s called The Reincarnation of Marie. It includes information on the author, which was my father. And it includes information on the series and a couple other links. It also has a link to my Facebook, my Instagram, and LinkedIn pages for anybody that wants to connect.

Melissa Aarskaug (38:06.208)
I love it. Thank you so much, Henry, for being here and sharing your journey. You’re such an inspiration to all of our listeners. And that’s the Executive Connect podcast.

Henry Woodman (38:07.63)
Thank you.

Henry Woodman (38:18.69)
Thank you.

Melissa Aarskaug (38:20.611)
All right, Rob had to run, so I need to…