Risky Business with Serial Entrepreneur Tom Noonan
In today’s episode of The Adrenaline Zone, Sandra and Sandy Winnefeld welcome serial entrepreneur Tom Noonan to the podcast. Tom shares his experiences starting businesses from scratch and offers insights and lessons learned for those interested in taking risks to achieve success. He discusses the importance of having a good idea, the value of surrounding oneself with a strong team, and the need to adapt and pivot in the face of challenges. Tom also touches on the importance of giving back and helping others learn from his experiences.
During their conversation, Tom talks about the challenges he has faced and how he overcame them, including the dotcom bubble burst and the 9/11 attacks. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining culture in a business as it grows, and the need to evolve the culture while still holding onto core values. Our guest then shares his experiences with the culture at Internet Security Solutions as it experienced significant growth, and the contrast between the culture at ISS and the culture at IBM. He also shares his thoughts on the importance of having a strong vision, and the role of leadership in building and maintaining culture. Tom concludes by emphasizing the importance of pursuing risk and opportunities, the value of keeping the "child inside" alive, and the power of having a strong vision
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Transcript:
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It lies somewhere between the pit of your stomach, your racing heart, and your brain, somehow trying to keep it all together. It's an area we call The Adrenaline Zone. I'm retired astronaut Dr. Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm retired Navy fighter pilot Admiral Sandy Winnefeld. We're two adrenaline junkies who love spending time with people who are really passionate about pushing their boundaries as far as possible. While most people are content to have a certain amount of security in their lives, successful entrepreneurs have to not only be creative and work hard to turn their ideas into operating businesses, they often have to lay it all on the line to get it done.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Tom Noonan grew up in Atlanta and started his first paper route when he was eight years old. And after graduating from Georgia Tech, he's been involved in a dizzying array of startups.
Sandy Winnefeld: Along the way, he's accumulated a wealth of interesting stories and lessons learned for those interested in pushing through all the fear and uncertainty and hitting it with a good idea.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: He's also a serial teacher, generously helping a host of young people follow in his footsteps. We were curious about what makes him tick, and he was kind enough to join us in The Adrenaline Zone to share what he's learned.
Sandy Winnefeld: Many thanks to our sponsor for this episode, Culligan Water.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: With Culligan's drinking water systems, you can get the ultra-filtered water you need to fuel your high-performance lifestyle right on tap. Learn more at culligan.com. Tom, welcome to The Adrenaline Zone, and thanks for being with us today.
Tom Noonan: It's my pleasure, Sandra. It's great to be here, and I look forward to spending the time with you.
Sandy Winnefeld: Tom, hey, it's good to see you again. We've interviewed a lot of people who take all kinds of risks, and we've always wanted to talk to somebody who's really sort of risked it all to start up a successful business. And you've done that a bunch of times. So let's start at the beginning. What lit the fire? How did you discover that you were not interested in being a stable Fortune 500 guy, but wanted instead to start businesses from scratch? What got you going?
Tom Noonan: I guess it all started at a really young age, Sandy. I come from a family of five boys and one girl, and my dad grew up in the Depression in the Bronx, and he encouraged/demanded us all to have jobs as kids. So I got my first paper route when I was about seven years old and delivered the paper before school. At about 12 years old, I got my first job, I think it was $1.35 an hour at the local country club. But it was not until I was a student at Georgia Tech that I think I got the bug. I hit the motherload of entrepreneurial pay dirt in those days by converting old Coca-Cola machines into beer machines and placing them–
Sandy Winnefeld: Of course.
Tom Noonan: –in fraternity houses on campus. And I used to say to Dr. Pettitt, I think I was the only Georgia Tech student that paid my tuition with large bags of coins. And I really think those early experiences put me on the track to say, "Hey, this is kind of fun to do it yourself."
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So entrepreneurship requires a host of skills and traits which not that many people are good at. But let's talk about one of the most important ones, which is getting an idea in the first place. And perhaps your biggest hit was the Internet Security Solutions where you and Chris Klaus picked up on the need for cybersecurity way before it became a trend and a ton of companies entered the market. So how did you get that idea and so far ahead of its time?
Tom Noonan: Well, ISS was a really interesting story and I think it was inspired by the marriage of two very different backgrounds, but two very compatible dreamers. Chris and I. Chris and I were introduced by mutual friends. Our backgrounds were very different. I was a control systems engineer out of Georgia Tech, having gone to work for Rockwell, and I was fascinated by the Internet. And Chris was a student at Georgia Tech at the time and he and his Georgia Tech friends were, let's just say, curious explorers of the early Internet. And they basically earned bragging rights by posting their tradecraft on which systems they could compromise. It was like earning nerd points and street cred with the community of hackers on the internet in the early '90s.
And when I met Chris, he and his friends were building these tools to automatically find vulnerabilities in systems and they were posting them on the internet for free. And I was inspired by the possibility of connecting the entire world to a common network but knew that unless it was trusted and secure, it could never reach its full potential. So I saw Chris's tools as the foundation of a different kind of control system to manage risk, to basically identify threats and vulnerabilities dynamically. And I thought businesses would pay for this capability if they were using the internet to find out where they were weak.
And really, that passion between the two of us led to two of the earliest pioneering inventions in the security industry where ISS is credited with inventing the first automated vulnerability detection system and the first fully automated intrusion detection system. So sometimes innovation occurs at the edges and I would definitely say ISS was one of those stories.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: How much did you have to educate your customers because you were so early in the game?
Tom Noonan: Well, we were smart enough to know that we had to go to the customers that would actually care about this. So our earliest customers were the DoD and the military because they were certainly aware of this, and big banks and financial institutions. And I would say for the first two years those were the only two types of customers we had, with the exception of some telecom customers. And so, a funny story when I went to raise money for ISS, and that was a hair-raising experience, to begin with back in 1995. But the first three venture capitalists I went to said, "What's the Internet?" And I thought, "Boy, I'm in the wrong office here."
Sandy Winnefeld: I'm in trouble now.
Tom Noonan: Making sure we focused on those early customers that actually cared about security was really important to us. And that's the way we got it going, is we went after target-rich environments.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Tom, a little bit of an excursion here because this conversation really is about you and your approach to entrepreneurship, which is fascinating. But before we kind of get a little bit more into that, this is about risk, right? And the cyber realm is very full of risk. Can you give our listeners a brief sense for where you sort of think cyber risk is right now and how the industry is handling it and what's the most important thing people out there should be doing to reduce their cyber risk?
Tom Noonan: It's a really good question, Sandy. And one of the things that drew me to security early on with the Internet was that methods and threat actors continue to change. And as the infrastructure changes, the methods and the ways that people are compromising the infrastructure also changes. So, whenever you're faced with a situation where everything is changing, it creates a great business opportunity because nothing is static, especially for innovative companies. And if you look at the threat spectrum and where the threat spectrum has evolved, it has evolved from simple file-based viruses into very sophisticated, advanced persistent threats that are funded by very large budgets from nation-states, organized crime organizations, and cartels.
So, the challenge here is that security professionals have to be right 100% of the time to manage a fully protected environment, and the threat actors only have to be right once. So, being vigilant against these advanced persistent threats is critical. And in the US, we know very well that there are well-funded nation-state actors in China and Russia, in Iran and North Korea, and we monitor these threats both at a national level.
And one of the great things I think our country did under President Bush was creating the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, where I was a founding member of that to bring a public-private partnership together for information sharing and to protect and assure the resilience of our infrastructure. You know, this is a threat that the government can't really address alone. 85% plus of the critical infrastructure is managed by private industry, and therefore, a public-private partnership is critical.
Sandy Winnefeld: I would imagine that you would probably agree with if anybody ever came into your office and said, “I've got the cybersecurity solution that will handle all of your needs and you will be cyber secure.” You'd probably throw them out of the office.
Tom Noonan: Exactly. In fact, it reminds me, Sandy, of a publication that we published at ISS just to raise the ire of the industry. And it was me holding a silver 45-caliber bullet. And the title of it was The Silver Bullet. And it was some new technology that we were releasing, and it had the desired effect. There were detractors everywhere. We got a lot of free press out of that.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, everybody's good for something, even if it's a bad example. Is that what you're saying?
Tom Noonan: Exactly. Sometimes it's a bad example that gets you the most press.
Sandy Winnefeld: Oh, I know all about that.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah. So, let's go backwards then, to getting ISS off the ground, which, as we've talked about, wasn't particularly easy because you had to educate and target. But, can you talk a little bit about some of the risks you took in order to get that company started again so ahead of its time?
Tom Noonan: Sure, Sandra. I mean, history recognizes ISS as a great success, but it rarely remembers how many times we faced failure or how close we were to shutting the doors. ISS ran out of money long before we had paying customers. I had invested all of my savings, sold my car, had young kids who depended on me, and I was five months behind on my home mortgage payments. And it led me to rock bottom.
We were trying to release Internet Scanner, version 20. This was in August of ‘95. And with failure looming, I began to apply for Visa cards and funded the company with cash advances ultimately growing to, I think, 37 cards fully at their limit before we shipped our first product and earned our first substantial order. And I think to this day, I'm afraid to ever apply for a Visa again.
But I took those 37 cards to John Emley. He was a Georgia Tech grad. He passed away now, but he's the father of Atlanta technology. And I spread them out like a Vegas dealer on his huge wooden conference room table. And I said, "John, I'm going to jail. I've got all these cards. The cash from number 37 can't pay the minimum on the 36 prior. I need help." And John gave us $100,000. And that really changed the course of our company. But, there were a lot of risks there. I had cashed in my wife's 401 (k) without telling her.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh.
Tom Noonan: I did a number of things that, looking back on it, was crazy. But we were so passionately convinced that we were on the right track, that common sense wasn't something I was relying on at that point.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, I would say two things. One, this sounds like a do-not-try-this-at-home.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Definitely.
Sandy Winnefeld: But the other thing for our listeners is that that sounds kind of seedy. But I'll tell you that Tom Noonan is one of the most compassionate people I've ever met and is very philanthropic and has learned all that from his own hard experience.
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Sandy Winnefeld: Let me ask you, in the process of starting up this company, I believe you started the tradition of the infamous Purple Shoe. Can you share with our listeners kind of a G-rated version of that story?
Tom Noonan: Sure, Sandy. Honestly, the only version of the story is G-rated, but it’s very crazy. Prior to starting ISS, I was being heavily recruited by a large California technology company to be the VP of Marketing for their emerging applications business. And the CEO of that company had a particularly crusty reputation and still does and he was directly involved in courting me for a number of months. And he spent many many hours invested in getting me to move to California and take this job. And after a long process and probably some indication for me that I was leaning in heavily, I disappointed them at the 11th hour by telling them I was starting my own company. And almost immediately after that, I received a very crass email from the CEO and he said, “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” And he said, “If you ever raise $1 in that company, I will personally come to Atlanta and drink champagne from a prostitute's shoe.”
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, my gosh.
Tom Noonan: He was known for making outlandish claims. And my assistant never forgot that rude email. And on the day we closed our Series A venture capital with Greylock and Kleiner Perkins, she went to the store with another female employee and she said we were yelling down the aisle, “Do this look like a hooker shoe?” to each other. And they ended up getting two purple shoes with a big bow, really high heels, they’re the most gaudiest looking things in the world. And she brought those back to the company and one of our engineers had made some homemade cider and the whole company drank champagne from that shoe. We took a picture of it and sent it out to California. So they became a symbol of pride in our culture, and they kind of represented that triumph of the human spirit to battle forward despite the odds and the detractors. And over the years, thousands of employees, customers, and partners have drunk from those shoes to celebrate our culture.
I mean, one of them sank to the bottom of the Grand Canal in Amsterdam. One ended up in a massive public refuse dump in Puerto Rico. We sent a team in, they extracted it. It’s been on the Great wall of China. They’ve been just about everywhere. But today, they're proudly exhibited in my office. How they survived 14 years of that is beyond me. But they’re a great reminder that regardless of the detractors, regardless of the naysayers, if you are committed to something there’s always a way to find a way to success.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You know, it's interesting you mention that because to be an entrepreneur requires, as I mentioned earlier, special skills and traits. So, clearly, determination and commitment is one of them. Can you capture a few others for our listeners?
Tom Noonan: You know, like so many things in life, it all begins with strong leadership. I mean, the right leadership is critical and has brought implications for the future success of anything. But I think great entrepreneurial leaders are hardwired for meaning and we chase the things that set our souls on fire. I mean, when you believe in something as passionately as a great entrepreneur does, it sets their soul on fire. And the force of your conviction really causes other people to get motivated and help you achieve your vision of the future, so I think that passion is the authentic purpose.
And there are all kinds of other skills that you can check that you can check the box on, do you have the right competency and experience, integrity, etc., but then there are those intangible attributes that I think are some of the most important such as leadership skills, loyalty, and the ability and the capacity to coach and be coached.
And so as an entrepreneur or CEO, you have to be a player-coach. You are usually the person that puts the coffee on early in the morning and you’re the last one to leave at night. But when you love what you’re doing, it doesn’t feel like work at all.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So you've started at least ten businesses. So you've gone through this ten times, and all of which have been successful. We know we've talked about ISS, but you have this remarkable record with all these other businesses, I guess, which is why you have a company called Ten Holdings. But are there any other good risk stories or close calls that come out of some of these other startups?
Tom Noonan: Yeah, I think, first of all, at my end of the venture spectrum, all these things are white nickel rides. And at this point in my life, I don't know that there are too many hard lessons left for me to learn, because all of these early-stage dreams have one foot on the grave and one foot on the banana peel. The journey of these things is the most amazing part. Every time one gets acquired or goes public or I'm no longer involved with it, what you remember is the journey. You remember the battles you fought, the people you fought them with, and the stories that were told.
I was just thinking back as you asked me this question of the story of the ISS KK IPO. So ISS KK was our Japanese subsidiary. We became the single largest supplier of network and system security to the Japanese government, only to be told four years later when I was a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq, my manager of Japan came to me and said, "Boss, we got a problem." And I said, "What's the problem?" And he said, "Well, we're in violation of a Japanese national security law. They're actually spending 60% of their budget on ISS. That was about $40 Million at the time, and they can't spend any more than 10% of their budget on a foreign supplier of national security interest." And I said, "My God, what are we going to do? We were about a $250 Million in revenue company.” Then I thought, if I lose $40 Million, we're in trouble.
So I flew to Japan. We met with members of the Liberal Democratic Party that were in the ruling party at the time, and we all ended up for three days in a hot tub in Japan in some town to resolve this issue. And, of course, as you might imagine, there was lots of sake consumed and lots of food eaten and stories told. But in the end, we decided at their advice, if we took our Japanese office public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, we would actually be considered a Japanese company. I flew back to Atlanta and told my board, people like Sam Nunn and Dave Strom, you know, seasoned veterans of American industry, that we were going to take our Japanese sales office public, and they thought it was crazy. Sure enough, on September 4, 2001, ISS KK went public, and we saved our $40 Million of business. But this is the type of ingenuity you have to come up with when you're running these businesses, or you face extinction.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow, as time has evolved and you've been through on this amazing journey of entrepreneurship, it seems like you've sort of shifted, Tom, from doing entrepreneurship yourself to actually supporting it, starting, I think, with tech operators. How's that transition worked in your own mind and what makes you happier, starting your own project or helping others start theirs?
Tom Noonan: Let's start with the fact that my wife forbade me to start any more companies. So given that she was my freshman chemistry lab partner at Georgia Tech, you know, we've been together a long time. So my journey as an investor in innovation and a mentor to entrepreneurs has been incredibly rewarding and fulfilling over the last ten years, ever since I started tech operators. And looking back on it, I've funded over 75 early-stage companies. I've invested over $250 Million of my own money in these ventures. And what you quickly realize in this business is how few investors actually have operating experience. It's like a fire chief that's never fought a fire.
And so I find this incredibly fulfilling. I work with these young entrepreneurs, and you kind of take for granted what you've learned over the last 30, 35 years building companies. And these incredibly brilliant young people are deep subject matter experts in their domain, but they really have no practical experience in dealing with employment issues, partnership issues, legal issues, compensation issues, budgeting, and planning. And so I'm actually having a ball, Sandy, and I'm having as much fun now as I ever have. So I intend to be doing this for quite a while longer.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It's the give-back phase where you help others leverage your learning, right?
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Dr. Sandra Magnus: So as a business gets bigger, it gets harder and harder to maintain culture. Of course, at some point, Sandy and I have long and storied history with the government, which is like the ultimate bureaucracy. But how have you handled that in your individual businesses and in your span of control? Is you've gone from incubator into larger and larger companies. And I've always wondered if there's a specific size, either in revenue or people, where you go from that entrepreneurial, innovative, flexible, do what you have to do to grow and be successful into the bureaucratic mode where you need processes and systems, and it stifles that innovation. So what's your experience with that?
Tom Noonan: I tell you, it's a tough one, Sandra. I think the age-old principles of leadership and culture apply regardless of what you're building or operating, but the culture has to evolve. In the ISS example, we went from almost $0 revenue drinking out of the purple shoe to $500 Million in revenue being public on the Nasdaq and the Tokyo Stock Exchange and ultimately being acquired by ISS. And those purple shoes were still with us because the founding culture evolved and it grew up.
I think some of the age-old principles of working as a team and leaning on one another for support, putting customers' interests first, focusing on solutions and how to improve, as opposed to dwelling on obstacles or reasons why you can't get done, all those are founding tenets of great culture. But ISS probably gave me the best example of how a culture had to evolve. And we grew up as a company, and I think we did a good job of it without becoming bureaucratic.
When we got to IBM, it was very clear to me how different that culture was, because at ISS we were always pursuing opportunities, which meant we were pursuing risk. And when we got to IBM, all of the executives told me, "We are stewards of this great brand and we make it very difficult to put that brand at risk." And so it was a very different cultural axiom for me to see the stark contrast between two publicly traded companies where investors where we were regulated by the same regulatory bodies, but the difference in what a 120-year-old bureaucracy is like as opposed to a 15-year-old bureaucracy.
Sandy Winnefeld: I was just going to say, as you were answering that question, it made me think of one of my favorite literary quotes from a classic American author named Paul Horgan who said, "You know the great secret, it's to keep alive the child inside alongside the man growing up." And it almost sounds like that's exactly the approach you took culturally to your companies.
Tom Noonan: That is exactly the approach. And some days it was hard. But some of the early shenanigans that occurred in companies, I spent three days trying to get a handful of my engineers out of jail. One week and they were wide.
Sandy Winnefeld: I want to ask why they were in jail.
Tom Noonan: Well, they pulled a practical stint. Kool & the Gang, the performer was performing at the Atlanta tabernacle for the user group of our biggest competitor, McAfee, or Network Associates. And these engineers had snuck backstage before the event and paid Kool $500 to wear a t-shirt that said, "ISS protects my network." And he had a sticker on his pants, and they replaced a banner that was going to drop behind him that said, "Welcome McAfee customers." It said, "Welcome ISS customers."
And so Kool, these guys had had a few drinks and they were hiding behind the stage, and Kool & the Gang came busting out onto the stage for this 2000 event user group customer celebration for our biggest competitor. And the ISS banner fell down, came down behind him, and Kool hit the stage with an ISS t-shirt. Well, at that point, they bolted out the back, and one of them did try to outrun a police on a Harley motorcycle. It didn't work. And I asked his wife, “What was he thinking?” She said, “Well, he did run track in high school. He wasn't going to outrun a Harley Davidson.”
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Who says engineers aren’t fun people? Oh, my goodness.
Tom Noonan: Exactly. The experiences you have are just–the stories you remember are just classic. But you have to grow up and you got to keep that fire burning alive, but at the same time, the company’s got to grow and mature because the risks are much higher.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yes. But you grow but you don't get complacent, and you still embrace risk appropriately. That sounds like that's the key, actually.
Tom Noonan: Exactly.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You talked earlier about the fact that you're in the phase of your life where you're mentoring, which I find extremely fun. So what drives you to do that? To teach young people and college students about entrepreneurship? And more importantly, how do you go about doing it? Because clearly, you've talked about how much fun you're having. But how do you go about transferring your knowledge to these students?
Tom Noonan: Yeah, I guess the reason I do it is because I really enjoy it. I actually find fulfillment in working with these young people. And there's an old saying that in a corporation if people aren't coming to you to ask for advice or your opinion, you're probably not very important. So I think in some ways it suits my ego every day to know that young people are still coming to me and I'm not a washed-up old fart. But I teach a class a few times a year in the Georgia Tech School of Management about entrepreneurship. And I think all great teachers are storytellers. So my lessons are all taught by talking about real-life stories, real-life experiences, real-life challenges, real-life opportunities that I've been faced with and how I solve them. It's kind of like a living case study of example after example one.
And I think people learn best through stories. And so my method and my approach is to create thematic stories about challenges. Whether it's how do you get to early product market fit or how do you iterate to build the right go-to-market motion or the right go-to-market structure, how do you think about organizational strategy as your company evolves and grows and scales? These are all real-life lessons that I've experienced not once, not twice, but many times. And the other things I don't think you're going to get in a book or learn in a classroom environment from someone who hasn't experienced it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: But it's interesting, I noticed at Georgia Tech that there's a whole program on entrepreneurship that the students can engage with that didn't exist, for example, when I was a student. So there seems to be more formal training available in general for students.
Tom Noonan: Very much so. To that point, Chris Klaus, my business partner in ISS and my very good friend to this day, spent an enormous amount of effort over the last 10 years to build Create-X, which is a program for Georgia Tech students to actually experience an entrepreneurial venture and compete for a prize.
Sandy Winnefeld: It's hugely popular.
Sandy Winnefeld: And a lot of other particular engineering schools are doing the exact same thing, and so it's good that our alma mater is on board with that program. You have, over your long career, developed a really good, broad, and deep view of the sort of innovation landscape. So what do you see as the next sort of tech wave that young entrepreneurs should be thinking about? On the macro sense? Where is this whole thing going? Is it machine learning, artificial intelligence, that sort of thing? There's a host of possibilities out there. Where do you see the most promise?
Tom Noonan: The innovation landscape is going to continue to change, but I think there are some major opportunities where innovation is going to have an impact over the next 15 to 20 years. I mean, clearly, energy and finding alternative energy that's clean, whether it's a combination of nuclear, solar, wind, wave, all the above, or something we haven't even thought of yet. Today, we'll continue to use the tools, the algorithmic tools of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and all of these capabilities will continue to improve our ability to improve the science. But if you look at some of the major opportunities, zero carbon emission flight, we aspire to that today, but we're not there yet. There's battery technology. We're absolutely destroying the surface of the earth and the mining of the heavy metals that are required to store energy, and yet we know we have to solve that problem somehow. We can't destroy our atmosphere with carbon, and yet at the same time, we shouldn't be destroying the crust of our earth with the mining of these heavy metals.
Today, I think it's estimated that if every single automobile that there's enough heavy metals on the surface of the earth to actually power 10% of the world's automobiles. So, you know, we're not there yet. So the innovations around this, I think there's a lot of innovation around healthcare using the science, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic intelligence in that area and then in security in my own backyard. I think we will continually evolve our methods and our ability to protect and defend a more resilient infrastructure because the bad guys are not going away. Whether they're nation-state actors prosecuting political aims or whether they're cabals or mafias, we've got to protect and defend and maintain the resilience of this infrastructure that we're all so dependent on.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, Tom, we're out of time. And I mentioned at the very top of this show that we've interviewed a lot of people who've taken physical risks and that sort of thing. We've always wanted to have somebody who sort of put it all out there, intellectually, financially, and the like. And this has been a terrific discussion that I think is going to be inspiring to anyone, particularly young people who hear about it. It will get them excited that they can do this too, as long as they have the kind of perseverance that you demonstrated. And thanks also for everything you're doing to help young people. A lot of people don't do that. They do well, but they don't give back, and you're clearly doing that well.
Tom Noonan: In the last Georgia Tech class I had, they were questioning me about failure, and I said, look, failure is literally part of the equation of success. I said it isn't failure unless you've thrown the towel in if you're still fighting if you're still trying to find a way. And I told him, I have always found that there's a way out. Sometimes it's unconventional, sometimes it's scary, but if you keep believing, you'll find a way out.
And failures taught me things about myself that I could have learned in no other way, and certainly that I wouldn't have been able to learn in some risk-averse corporation or some classroom setting. So I think the kids are listening, and I think they're benefiting, and I'm certainly enjoying it. So what the heck? It works for everyone.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, you're one of the lucky few who gets to do something that they absolutely love doing. And a reminder to me of the old saying that, you know, success comes just after the point where most people quit. So thanks so much for being a guest.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yes, thank you.
Sandy Winnefeld: I look forward to seeing you soon.
Tom Noonan: Absolutely. I'm looking forward to our February joint, so I'll see you then. And thank you for taking the time to interview me.
Sandy Winnefeld: Many happy returns with your brand-new granddaughter.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Tom. That was Serial Entrepreneur Tom Noonan speaking to us from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld. Thanks again to Culligan Water for sponsoring this episode. Your high-performance lifestyle deserves high-performance water. Learn more at Culligan.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And check us out on social media, including a short video of our interview with Tom on TikTok. Our handle is very simple: @theadrenalinezone.
