Welcome back to the Real Conversations Newsletter!

My name is Jacob O’Connor and I’ve interviewed 300+ high performers for my podcast, Real Conversations. Every Tuesday I send out 3-4 of my biggest takeaways from that weeks podcast episode. Short, concise, and never spam.

Today’s newsletter post is from this weeks Real Conversation’s episode with Jason Illian- Selling Multiple Companies & Investing Billions. Know someone who you think might be interested in this newsletter? Forward this email to them (we’d appreciate it 😉).

Jason Illian- Selling Multiple Companies & Investing Billions

Jason is a serial entrepreneur with two exits and is currently the General Partner, co-founder and CEO of Highmount Capital, a unique investment firm. He is the former Managing Director and founding member of Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), the venture and growth arm of Koch Industries, the largest privately-held company in the US with $130B in revenue. Here are 3 takeaways from my episode with Jason:

1. Life is Never a Straight Line

“When you see a business plan, it’s always got a graph with a line going up and to the right… That’s not how life works…At least not how mine worked”

Life is going to be riddled with setbacks and Jason faced his fair share of them. He credits his work ethic but acknowledges there’s been random events with God’s fingerprints on them that you just can’t predict.

2. Newton’s First Law of Motion

Newton’s first law of motion: “…an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force”. Daily consistencies compound due to momentum.

In this episode, Jason said that growing up he knew that “if you just worked hard enough and long enough, eventually doors will open”.

If you have a brick wall in front of you and you’re chipping away at it every day, you’ll eventually break through.

3. Keep What Matters in Perspective

Jason has, objectively, had a very successful career: from selling multiple companies to investing billions of dollars; but, in this episode he kept coming back to his family and his faith.

Making money and having personal ambition is great— I’m an advocate for it— but I’d hate to live a life where my greatest accomplishment was my bank account and I neglected the things that really matter.

As the RC tagline suggests— do hard things & live a meaningful life— I believe there is a delicate balancing act required between being all consumed by your goals and making time for what (and whom) you find meaningful.

You can watch / listen to the episode here. 

You can follow Jason on LinkedIn here. 

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-Do Hard Things & Live a Meaningful Life-