[00:00:28] Jay: Hi, everyone, welcome to First Customer Podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today, I'm lucky enough to be joined by Dusty Gulleson. He is the CEO and founder of Tectonic. The tagline said strategy and transformation, which are two words that mean absolutely nothing, but, like, are very real and mean absolutely everything sometimes.

So, I'm excited to hear, like, what you've done to build this incredible company you've got. You know, I met you, you were smoking cigars in the woods with your dogs, watching... He would tell me it was a cigar. And now you're smoking a cigar again, so you are a cigar guy. You put it on your LinkedIn. Let's lead with that. Like, what is this with your life? Is it just something you found that you love? Like, how long you been... Like, what's the

deal with it? 

[00:01:04] Dusty: I've been doing it since I was, like, 20 years old. It's a long time. 19 years old. So what? I've been doing it for 32 years something like that. But yeah, I had some friends that were trying to be all cool and hip, and they were smoking pipes. But I have ADHD, and I don't have the time for figuring that stuff out.

I just want to light and go. I was on a beach in South Carolina trying to light a pipe that my friend was trying to get me to smoke, and it's just like, "Dude, this is not gonna work." So, he handed me a cigar, and since then I've been smoking cigars. I mean, it's gradually ratcheted up. I'm about a day a one-a-days kind of guy.

 Sometimes two. Depends on the meetings

[00:01:48] Jay: I mean, look man, if anybody tells you they don't have vices, they're lying straight to your face. So I don't... I mean, we all got our thing, and if you got your thing you enjoy and it's a hobby and it's something you enjoy, good for you, dude. I don't... I mean, whatever, right?

It's 

[00:02:01] Dusty: You're assuming it's a vice.

[00:02:03] Jay: I would assume that other people would assume it's a vice.

I'm saying it's whatever you enjoy. I don't give a shit. So you do your thing. All right. Where did you grow up and did that have an impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:02:13] Dusty: Absolutely. I was born and raised in Indonesia, if you're familiar with a bunch of islands between Singapore and Australia. I was born on the island Java. My parents were missionaries, so from zero to 18, I grew up in a multicultural setting. I was a pretty feral child. My parents would kick me out when I was young, and I'd wander around from village to village and meet people and, you know, play marbles to scrounge for money for lunch.

Grew up, I wouldn't say we're, you know, by American standards, I grew up very poor. You know, missionaries are not, like, making the bucks. So, I was very entrepreneurial early on, started my own businesses when I was young from tutoring to English to all kinds of things, selling merchandise at school and stuff like that.

So yeah, early on, I was very much entrepreneurial. My dad's quite the entrepreneur himself. As a missionary, you would never think that, but

truly unique about them is they grew-- Their whole shtick was never to ask for money. So they never asked for money for support their mission, ever.

[00:03:21] Jay: What they did was communicate a lot.

[00:03:22] Dusty: He was into content before content was what it is today. And he, I mean, I remember when I was a kid, I would run a mimeograph machine with him where he'd write newsletters every single month, and he had, you know, segmented the newsletter, the A list, the B list, the C list, and then he would actually segment by topics and stuff.

But he would send out thousands of letters, thousands, just updating them what's going on. And you know what? He was very successful at that. Never asked for a dollar. People just gave money based on what he was doing. It's pretty impressive. So I saw my dad's entrepreneurial spirit in that, and he was like I said, into content before content was a thing, you know, SEO and AO and all that stuff we all talk about.

But he was the original writer. He wrote prolifically.

[00:04:16] Jay: That's beautiful.

[00:04:17] Dusty: Yeah.

[00:04:18] Jay: Well, so what do you, what's something that you maybe consciously or subconsciously don't do because of what you watched your dad do?

[00:04:31] Dusty: You know he's an extremely disciplined person. I have more of the ADHD. So I'd probably be far more successful as disciplined and organized as him. He's kind of, you know, my mom would call him a machine. You know, he'd wake up every day at 4:00 and go until 8:00, 9:00, you know, whenever it took. He just did it.

 I remember when he was 30 when he told me this he decided he wanted to be healthy, you know? So he decided he's just gonna run. And so he got up every morning at 4:00 and ran for half an hour to an hour, or whatever it was, and he did that until his doctor said he couldn't run anymore 'cause of his knees.

Then he took up biking, and then he couldn't do that anymore 'cause of other medical situation, and then he took up swimming. He's 86 years old right now, and he swims about a mile a week, two miles a week,

[00:05:23] Jay: Good

[00:05:23] Dusty: and walks. But he... The thing is, it's discipline, and he always used to tell me, it's not how hard you work, just, you just work smarter."

[00:05:33] Jay: It's consistency, man.

[00:05:34] Dusty: Yeah. Doing the reps

[00:05:37] Jay: It's literally like, I mean, it's all the fluffy bullshit, you, all the books and all the things and all the how do you be motivated and how you do whatever. Like, it literally is just like, you don't have to be motivated. You, like, you're not gonna be motivated to be consistent.

Like, motivation's not it. You just gotta, you gotta just decide to be consistent at something, 

and 

[00:05:58] Dusty: You read Atomic Habits, right? I'm sure

[00:06:00] Jay: I absolutely have. And even that I have trouble I, like I, I struggle with any framework that I have to like... i'm the

same as you. I'm ADHD, but also I feel like I have some discipline, and I feel like my discipline comes from consistency, not motivation because I'm certainly motivated to choose every

[00:06:15] Dusty: That's the thing.

[00:06:16] Jay: squirrel in the world.

[00:06:17] Dusty: Oh, that's what I loved about the time I have is this is, you can't wait for motivation to get you to go on. Motivation's nothing. I mean, this morning I stared at my cold plunge and I was like, "Don't think about it." It's not a thing to think about. It's only four, four minutes at 45 degrees.

Why is, why am I even think about it? Just do it. 

[00:06:36] Jay: Yeah. 

[00:06:37] Dusty: But you know, the more I think about it, the more I ponder it, the more I'm not gonna do it. Just do what you gotta do. Don't think about it. You've already thought this is a good thing when you're not faced with it. But when you come up against something you have to do and you start pondering it, you're screwed.

[00:06:52] Jay: Yeah. No it's like, 

[00:06:53] Dusty: just an internal debate.

[00:06:55] Jay: it's like professional sports. You know, as soon as you see them think about anything, like it's over. Like you're just you're done. So I- it's a really great point. So, tell me a little bit more about Tectonic specifically.

When did you start it, and who was your first

customer? 

[00:07:10] Dusty: So we started back in 1999 formerly known as eResources. We rebranded this year to Tectonic, and that's a journey. Let's see first customer, it was a, a domain company. Back in the day it was everybody was trying to sell domains, so they were a registrar and seller, and we came up with a web infrastructure for them, design and, that-- I was solo at the time, back in '99. And then we got into content management systems back when Vignette was like a million dollar license a year and blah, blah, blah. And so we built our own classic ASP content management system. We just-- I knew Microsoft, so I just dove in there, and we built them for a lot of associations and nonprofits that couldn't afford that licensing, but they wanted, you know, a good content management system.

So we did that, and we were pretty successful with that, and then clients would ask us, "Can you fix our computers?" You know, that's what you do in nonprofit. You can do that, you can do everything. So we started an MSSP back in 2005, and that grew. That's our largest division, almost ten million in that little group.

And then we built some custom workflow solutions for some overseas study programs for schools and stuff. And so that came into our SaaS product, which is Orchestrate now, where we build workflow management and custom solutions that are with multi audiences involved. And then that grew into accessibility management software for schools to manage all the accessibility management.

And then that grew into, 'cause I grew up overseas, I had friends that I grew up with that were like programmers, so we built an offshore team. It was just for us, for, you know, R&D and development. And then had some friends said, "Hey, is there labor out there? Can we do it for bookkeeping?" I said, "Sure. Why?

Let's figure it out." So now we have about 130 bookkeepers offshore servicing fintech and CPA firms, and we're the AI behind a lot of AI that's going on nowadays.

[00:09:18] Jay: The Amazon Fresh tobacco

[00:09:20] Dusty: Amazon Fresh, exactly. Exactly.

[00:09:23] Jay: Yeah that's the...

[00:09:25] Dusty: why am I getting my receipt two days later? That's weird. 

[00:09:27] Jay: Yeah, why is it in a different language? This is weird. Why is it in, why is it in Hindi or whatever.

[00:09:33] Dusty: Yeah,

exactly. It's Hindi.

[00:09:35] Jay: This was in Pennsylvania. All right. So

[00:09:38] Dusty: Yeah, so it grew and grew. That's what I was raising.

[00:09:41] Jay: So how... But, like, okay. But everybody on earth says focus, focus, focus, and it sounds like you did the opposite. So how were you successful? 

[00:09:49] Dusty: Like, you just tell, I did focus. I focused on client needs.

[00:09:53] Jay: Or so to say, I should say one product, one thing, one like, 

[00:09:56] Dusty: you know, 

you know, 

[00:09:57] Jay: you hear that over and over 

again, 

[00:09:58] Dusty: I know those people. 

[00:09:58] Jay: Built all these different divisions and all this different stuff, and like is it too like wouldn't most people just spread themselves too thin trying to like continually add lines of business, and maybe there's some magic you have?

Or is it something that is like over-hyped and like you don't have to just do one thing?

[00:10:17] Dusty: So have you ever read the book Range?

[00:10:20] Jay: No.

[00:10:21] Dusty: Great book. It's about how the generalists actually rule the world. And it's true. Amazon's not focused on one thing. You know, they're delivering products, so what do they do? They build a trucking company. Cool. They need to deliver product faster, they build an airline.

So you got Prime Air. They need some products that can scale, they build their own brand. 

[00:10:43] Jay: I would argue, now listen I think that, I think the rebuttal to this would be not picking those companies of that size and talking about a company that's maybe,

you know, million, two million, three million, and their assets and their, you know, their bets are a lot more you know, risky to go

after different 

[00:11:03] Dusty: I think scale is scale. I don't think you have to be a certain scale, and here's the reason why. I'm very customer centric and I build deep trust with our clients. Our clients have been with us 15, 20 some- almost 30 years. And the reason why is because I understand their situation.

There are times I'll tell a client, "We don't do that. We can't, but I'll help you find somebody that can." So we become the trusted advisor, and when I-- people ask us what we do. I-- we're a vertically integrated technology company, and we've beaten out the likes of Deloitte before because they like that we're highly customer centric.

We have the ability, we can bring in teams that we need if we need to scale something. But it was a natural evolution from being a technology advisor to start servicing those certain brands. We do a lot in higher ed, and it's just-- and that's in one side of our business, and we do a lot in manufacturing, and that's usually in one side of our business.

And what's happened is that we've been really valuable to clients when they come in and say, "Hey, we're trying to do X, Y, and Z." I'm like, "Hey, we're doing this over here and here. Let's marry this and find a solution." So I know the tagline strategy and transformation, what are you gonna do? You, we have a you know, we have marketing.

It is what it is.

[00:12:17] Jay: I know. You gotta

play the game. 

[00:12:19] Dusty: Pick on me, pick It doesn't-- I don't mind. I mean, our old tagline used to be strategy delivered, and I love that tagline because we come up with a strategy and we figure out how to 

[00:12:29] Jay: Mine was quality assurance delivered, so there you go. We were, we had the same vein. There you go.

[00:12:34] Dusty: Yeah. So transformation is true 'cause it's even accelerating now.

I don't even know it's morphing. It's strategy and morphing, 'cause things are morphing every week from one thing to the next. I mean, I build an agent last week and it's obsolete this week. It's out of control. But I do think from our approach being in all these different areas, we bring a lot of value to a client that goes, "Oh, you can see everything from the strategy to the DevOps to the, you know, management.

You understand our sales. You can plug in with our sales team. You know what integration is like with the Salesforce solution or HubSpot." And like we, we see that whole thing where a lot of clients have to go and find one vendor to do that and another vendor to do that and it just becomes a mess, and then you become a cop for settling fights between vendors, you know, blaming the other people.

[00:13:26] Jay: Well, let me ask the question in a different way, I guess, is like,

[00:13:29] Dusty: Sure

[00:13:30] Jay: How would you, how would you advise, you know, a service-based company that maybe has, you know, one strong offering, they're smaller, do a couple million a year, you know, under sub-million a year, 

and they've got, you know, opportunities for different things? I think the question is how do you... how do they not stretch themselves thin and just do a bunch of things shitty instead of

like picking a couple and doing them really well?

'Cause I

think now, like you've got the infrastructure and all this, I mean, yeah, absolutely. But like back then, like how do you split the bandwidth in the right way?

[00:14:07] Dusty: Well, I, my mantra is it's people, or people, processes, and platforms in that order. You can't do any of it without the right people, and I've been fortunate enough to have the right people and bring in the right people for certain things. So I hire quality people and they lead in those areas.

We're very much into decentralized leadership where we make sure that people know what our objectives are and what we're trying to do, and give them the latitude and breadth to be successful in their specific division that they're running. So when you're a sub 1 million firm, I mean, some things I turned down because I didn't know what to, how to do them when I was that young.

Took me-- I mean, I didn't think I made my first, you know, top line million until after four and a half years, five years. I mean, it took me a long time just, you know, figuring it out. But

still figuring it out. 

[00:14:55] Jay: While. It takes a while. It takes a while. It takes a while.

[00:14:58] Dusty: It does take a while. People, it's a hard work. And so what I tell someone to sub and they see an opportunity, if they can see how that opportunity connects as adjacent and logical, and they have people that are talented or they can bring in a partner go for it.

And you know what I did in 2015 when I was just like $6 or $7 million top line, I just started buying companies using an SBA line of credit. And I was like, you know what? I know how to do this, but I can get better if I can acquire companies. And just it's a combination of acqui-hire

[00:15:33] Jay: What was the first one you bought and why?

[00:15:36] Dusty: First one I bought doesn't count 'cause 

[00:15:37] Jay: All right. Okay. Well, what was the first one that like that made an impact that like you... 

[00:15:40] Dusty: It was the second one.

The second one really counted because that was

[00:15:44] Jay: Oh, wait, what happened with the first one? Now I kind of want to know what happened with that.

[00:15:48] Dusty: The first one my friend was getting out of digital, and he was getting into-- he wanted to go to whatever, law school or something, and

he wanted me to buy his product and... But that satiated me a little bit and gave me the, the thirst to go, "Hey, it kinda works." It wasn't like I made a good deal on it,

you know? But it was a small, little... I think it was, like, 35 grand I paid for that company. But it gave me an idea of like, "Wait, why don't I buy a, like, something that I can really bolt on?" And so the second one I bought was this company called SuddenDigital, which was a MSP down in Ocala, Florida. And I was targeting Florida 'cause I wanted to move our headquarters out of Virginia, just tax reasons, and Florida's just so friendly to businesses on all levels.

So we bought that company and moved our headquarters down there and said, "Okay, this is-- We're gonna be a you know, a Florida company." And that was a learning curve, extreme learning curve, 'cause, you know, when you buy a company, you also buy all the ancillary expectations of clients and employees.

And I think we fired every employee but one after 12 months or 14, 16 months, something like that. Just people just-- We wanted to grow, and they were very much like, you know, they'd turn off 

[00:17:09] Jay: So what did you get out of the acquisition then? The clients?

[00:17:12] Dusty: Contracts, contract clients, and basically a new position. We got people, we eventually replaced those people, right?

So we needed to do that. So that was the first one. The second one was up in Michigan, in Detroit. We bought a company up there. Again, clients and people. Some of our best employees are from Michigan. Really good people. And then after that, we bought one in Memphis, which was a very niche MSSP, and did some niche stuff in the multifamily housing industry which has been super successful, been a very good part of our company.

And then at that point, I was like, "You know what? We really need to now be holistic," you know? We had a software division that was going on its own and everything, but we needed to have more polish as a company.

So I bought a branding and identity strategy company out of Louisville that had really good track record.

It's the only company we bought where we had them-- we preserved the owner, and that owner became our CMO, who's super great. Jason Clark, very talented.

He ran a great shop there. But we also were able to merge with a lot of great talent. Their COO is now our COO of our whole company, Krystal Glover.

Fantastic woman, very good manager. And then just the talent that we were able to bring into the company was really was a shot of life and fresh blood. And it gave us this vision beyond, you know, being this small company, and now we're-- we wanna be bigger. That led to the rebrand and the restructuring of how we approach things and getting our brand voice solid 'cause it's, you know, it's everything, knowing...

But at the end of the day, it was the people. And so we're looking at two acquisitions right now, and the best part about those acquisitions we start with is just people. Who's part of this company? Yes, the contracts are important and business, but if you don't have good people in that mix, it's gonna be just crapshoot.

And that Memphis acquisition I had we acquired one manager that was just the worst person in the world. The 24 hours after the ink was dry, that person just completely went sideways,

and it took me 11 months. I didn't sleep that... Those, those 11 months, I slept maybe three, four hours a night just stressed out at how to deal.

You know, you give the person as much rope, you 

[00:19:42] Jay: Oh yeah. Yep. 

[00:19:43] Dusty: them,

[00:19:44] Jay: Yep

[00:19:45] Dusty: and that, that taught me one thing. Fire fast, man. As soon as you start seeing problems like that, it's not worth it. You know, you try to, you know, try to do some remedial solutions, but 

[00:19:56] Jay: Yeah. No, I agree.

[00:19:57] Dusty: And as soon as we got rid of that cancer, we did well.

[00:19:59] Jay: Well, somebody told me one time, like, you know, people show you who they are the first time you meet them professionally, and that has never been wrong. Never been wrong for me. Like, if you get... If it's a good vibe, bad vibe whatever the vibe is, if it feels...

and that person may fuck up later and may down the line. But generally speaking, if there's anything off, like, from the jump, like, it doesn't get fit- it doesn't get better. It never gets better. It's always... It's-- But anyway, I have a question for you. We have a couple minutes left. In a, in like two minutes-ish, I saw you had a post actually today that I liked a lot, which was like, "Stop trying to be a thought leader and just start telling your story."

And I think, like, when you're younger, that all sounds like bullshit, and it kind of sounds, like, corporate-y or, like, just fluffy, like, whatever. But, like, as you live it and you, like, go through it and you're like, as a business owner, like, if you're doing marketing the right way, then it should be a story, right?

Like, you shouldn't shy away from, I think what a lot of people, and myself included, have traditionally thought is corporate-y, kind of like hollow. You know, when you hear story when it comes to a brand, you're like, "Well, I don't... Fucking what's Nike's story? I don't give a shit what Nike's story is." Like, I'm not gonna really connect with this giant soulless company. But I love the fact that you told people to focus on that. So my question to you is, for young entrepreneurs, young business owners, whatever, I was there, you were there what are some, like, not ethereal kind of like thought, but like some nuts and bolts stuff, two minutes you know, if you had to go one, two, three, these are the things you go do today to start telling your story, whether that's to go onto LinkedIn and do whatever, whether it's start a blog, whether it's to fucking do whatever.

Like give somebody real actionable advice to do what you told them to do today. How do they go tell their story?

[00:21:42] Dusty: I think the first and most important thing is how can you write yourself into other people's story and make them, their life better? That's you know, why are you doing your job? If you want to say it's making money, great, go sell a product on Amazon or something, I don't know. But if you're in a service industry, you really have to go, how can I be part of a, someone's thinking later down the road?

So, you know, I think about my clients, how do I want them to talk about me when I'm not around? Did I give them value? Did they feel like, man, that was a great relationship? And it is all relational. You know, all the AI hype out there, it's all about automating tasks, but you can't automate a relationship.

You

just cannot automate the idea of joking around about the Eagles with you and talking about South Street and connecting on things that it's in your life. You know, whether it's an you know, an employee that's going through a tough time in their life, you know, you treat them like, like they're friends, but they're not your friends, they're your employees.

But you care about them, and you want them to think, "Man, my boss is not gonna pay my mortgage, you know, unless I work, but he does care about me," you know? And I think that's the first and foremost thing is you're in a relationship, all these things, and that's why the story is so important 'cause a story is all relationship based.

It's not about metrics. No one's ever gonna be, you know, seen those memes people talking about at the end of their life, "Man, I wish I had leveraged more synergy in my company." No, no one's ever gonna say that crap. It's just not gonna happen. But people are gonna say, "You know, I remember when I talked to Jay, and he made me feel like I was a guest, and I felt like he really valued my opinion,

[00:23:22] Jay: How do people work on that? 

[00:23:23] Dusty: a good guy."

[00:23:23] Jay: You're right in all of this. Some of it's innate in some people, but some of it you have to learn. Like, how do people, how do you get better at that?

[00:23:33] Dusty: I have an unpopular opinion. I think don't avoid difficult situations in your life. Embrace them. Because the more difficulty you embrace,

the more you stretch yourself, the more you have empathy for other people. 'Cause what... we have a corporate shrink, for lack of a better word there.

They do analysis and assessments of our, the management team and stuff like that, and we all take these tests, you know, tester tests. But when I first took this test maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, my lo- you know, I, and all the leadership and all the blah, blah, blah and all that stuff, but my weakest was empathy.

And my wife's like, "I could have told you that." 'Cause I'm always just constantly going from one thing to the next, and I remember at a conference in Hawaii sitting with some leaders, and it dawned on me, 'cause I used to say to all my employees, "Don't talk, don't... I don't need a long narrative, just talk to me in bullet points.

Speak to me in bullet points," is what I used to always say.

'Cause, you know, I'm, we're moving. And I remember, I forget who I was talking to. But it's where they, someone said it's the truth is in the narrative. It's in the nuance. It's in the story. This is why you're not connecting with people is 'cause you're not taking the time to listen to, you know, why?

What's the why? And I'm not one to be all Simon Sinek, but he's absolutely right.

[00:24:53] Jay: Yeah. Yep. 

[00:24:54] Dusty: A why behind, "I wanna do this, and this," and that's where the truth is, and that's where the value is in the relationship. When you understand why, and I think at the end of the day, human beings are all wanting to do one thing.

They wanna be known. They wanna know, and they want to be known. When you feel known by another person, whether it's in a intimate relationship with a spouse or partner, that connection of being known, that's the best in the whole world. When you don't have that, you feel lonely. Loneliness is not being known, and I think when it comes to business is knowing what they're trying to achieve.

'Cause this is their dream. This business or this marketing manager, whoever you're working with, they want to be known. They want tobe understood and be cared for, and that takes time, and it's a story, and that's the most important part of any part of business. Whether you make

half a million or billions, it's all the same.

[00:25:48] Jay: I love it. "How to Win Friends," I think is the name of the Dale Carnegie book that like... I

[00:25:55] Dusty: I have a story about that.

[00:25:56] Jay: I think they should just like, I don't-- There's like a couple things they need to teach in school. They need to put that book in school. They need to teach kids like the difference between leasing a car and buying a car because it's not rocket science and it took me like 40 years until I finally, I was like, "Why did they not just tell people how to do this?"

It's like it makes, it's so, so easy. But yes, Dale Carnegie I think should be... Please, what's your story

about how to win friends?

[00:26:18] Dusty: So when I was in eighth grade, I was an awkward kid. I wasn't very outgoing or anything until my dad, you know, like I said, a machine, and I remember telling my dad, "I just don't have a lot of friends. It sucks. My life sucks." And my dad is, he reads like a machine, too. He reads prolifically, and I remember him going back to his office, grabbing the Dale Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and said, "Read this."

And so I read that back, cover to cover, and the biggest thing that I came away my... I remember in eighth grade going to ninth grade, I remember, be interested in people and their 

[00:26:56] Jay: I wish I had that in eighth grade, dude. Your dad helped you out a lot, man. That was a good time to read that book.

[00:27:01] Dusty: It was a formative book in my life. 

[00:27:03] Jay: That's... I read it when I was probably 35-ish, and it was still transformative and just, like, completely changed every relationship I've ever had, because now I don't give a shit about what I'm trying to say for the most part, and it's like once you kind of crack that nut and you're like, "Oh, I shouldn't."

Like, nobody fucking cares.

Nobody cares, man. Everybody just wants to talk about themselves, and if you

listen, you can have 

[00:27:27] Dusty: Right? 

[00:27:28] Jay: So all right, look, I have one more question. This is just about Dusty being Dusty. By the way, I have a theory that kind of names match the people and, like, are all...

Do you know... All the other Dustins or Dusty. Are they cool people? 'Cause all the Dustys I know are cool people, kind of like you.

[00:27:43] Dusty: I do. 

[00:27:44] Jay: You know other Dustys? Are they all kind

 of chill guys?

[00:27:46] Dusty: They're pretty cool people. They're amazing.

[00:27:48] Jay: I've never met, like, an uptight Dusty. 

[00:27:51] Dusty: Oh, it depends on the day.

Depends on the stress level, right? 

[00:27:54] Jay: Both days I found you, you were smoking a cigar, and you were a very relaxed and a nice guy, so I'm two for two with you.

All right, not about business just Dusty being Dusty. If you could do anything on Earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:28:09] Dusty: You could do anything on Earth Jeez. That's... I don't know. I'd have, man, there's so many different angles to this story. I think, come back to relationships is just risk a lot more.

Risk a lot more and not, you know... There's a pastor, he's, he passed away, Tim Keller. He used to say, "We all have idols. We all worship something." God or whatever, and most people worship, like, money or sex or whatever.

Everyone has an addiction that they worship to a certain degree. But he said, "It's not the addiction that's in front of your face, it's the far addiction, that's... The far idol," he always used to call it. And I used to think money was my idol. Like, I'm always working for the money. But really, my idol is security, 'cause I grew up poor, and my parents never asked for money.

And I remember distinctly, you know, my parents would have family Bible reading at 6:00 AM. My dad, man, brutal. Brutal as a kid to get up at 5:30 and then be there and have your dad preach at you for a half hour while you're just barely awake.

Anyway, God love him. He's a wonderful man. 

[00:29:27] Jay: God probably does love him. God probably does. He loves him more than me, I'm sure

[00:29:31] Dusty: He loves us all equally, my friend.

[00:29:33] Jay: That's what I've heard. 

[00:29:33] Dusty: But anyway, he said, "You know, guys, Monday, I'm gonna have to pull you out of school," 'cause my parents sent us to a very good school. They were very much into education being super important. So, went to international school in Jakarta, and I remember him telling me on Friday, in our family Bible study, "Guys, we don't have money for you to go to school, so we're gonna have to find another solution for you."

Monday morning, I'm sitting there at Bible study again in the morning, and my dad's like, "Oh, you're going to school. Don't worry about it." I was like, "Why?" He's like I got a telex that 15 grand got deposited in our account. I don't know how, but you're going to school." That's how we grew up, and I think that living by faith is such a very, very hard thing for me to do.

And so my idol is I do money so I can have security, 'cause I wanna provide for my family, I wanna provide for my wife. So I think when you say, what would you do? If I didn't have to worry about security and providing for my family, I'd do tons of things differently, right? I would, you know, jump on a plane and help people that are...

You know, I read about this guy that buys people out of indentured servanthood in like these countries around the world where they're stuck and can never get out, or, you know, buy child brides from just molesters, you know? So that stuff, that's real. That's real stuff. That's where you're really impacting.

It's not your APIs. It's not your I just, you know, got on a top ranking in AO, you know?

It's people's lives, man, and I think that's what I'd love to do is see- you know, risk it all to make things better somewhere.

[00:31:18] Jay: You know what, man? In this scenario, you can't fail. So you did-- you've done-- You could do it all, and you can be successful. And I think that's probably... It still feels doable, some of the stuff you just said. So I feel like, you know, you being a driven guy some of that's gonna probably come to fruition.

So Dusty, if anybody wants to hear anything they heard or talk to you about anything they heard today how do they reach you directly?

[00:31:39] Dusty: I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me really quickly, Dusty Gulleson, not very many of us.

[00:31:43] Jay: No, not many Dusty Gullesons?

[00:31:46] Dusty: Nope, it's rare. I haven't met one. But you can shoot me an email at dusty@... Or dgulleson@teamtectonic.com. I'm happy to chat. I love talking, as you can tell. It's not a problem.

[00:32:01] Jay: You're a great storyteller, Dusty, and I feel very fortunate to have gotten some of your very valuable time today. So thank you for hopping on. We'll be following along, and we'll talk to you again soon, all right?

[00:32:11] Dusty: Sounds good, Jay. Take care. 

[00:32:12] Jay: Thanks, Dusty. See you, buddy.

Later 

​