Reinventing Through Adversity: Entrepreneurial Lessons From EO’s Global Leaders

Rise25
33 min read

ZhubeiZhubei is the Co-founder of Venture Education, a Beijing-based consultancy that provides market intelligence on K–12 education in China to organizations worldwide. Before co-founding Venture Education, she taught English to thousands of university volunteers for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Committee and coordinated between CCTV and its overseas partners.

 

Adam HorowitzAdam Horowitz is the Principal of Lever Capital Partners, a Las Vegas-based firm specializing in complex commercial real estate financing across the United States. He founded the company in 2009, leveraging his extensive experience to arrange debt, mezzanine, and equity financing for prominent real estate developers and owners.

 

Paul CarrollPaul Carroll is the Founder and CEO of Avion Wealth, a Houston-based wealth management firm that assists clients in making smart financial decisions aligned with their goals and values. With a background in the US Air Force and degrees from the University of Maryland and Texas A&M University, he has built a firm managing approximately $850 million in assets.

 

Jeff LutherJeff Luther is the Founder and CEO of Home-Probe, Inc., a home inspection company serving the greater Atlanta and Charleston areas. Since establishing the company in 2002, he has grown it into one of the most referred home inspection firms in the Southeast, emphasizing high standards and client satisfaction.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [1:45] Zhubei shares how Venture Education pivoted through China’s education crackdown and a personal health crisis
  • [10:32] Adam Horowitz reflects on launching Lever Capital Partners during the mortgage collapse and finding support through EO
  • [17:15] Paul Carroll traces his path from pilot to wealth advisor after 9/11 upended his aviation career
  • [22:26] Jeff Luther talks about scaling Home-Probe and weathering major downturns in the real estate market

In this episode…

Reinventing a business in the face of crisis demands clarity, community, and the courage to pivot. From collapsing industries and personal challenges to leadership breakthroughs, how do today’s top entrepreneurs find their footing and come back stronger?

Zhubei reflects on navigating China’s sudden education crackdown while caring for a sick child — and how mentorship, empathy, and her EO community helped her rise again. Adam Horowitz shares lessons from launching a commercial real estate firm during a financial crash and the importance of building a strong network to weather any storm. Paul Carroll recounts his unexpected transition from airline pilot to financial advisor after 9/11 reshaped his future, and Jeff Luther explains how EO helped him rebuild and scale after devastating downturns in the real estate market.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, recorded live at the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Leadership Conference in Honolulu, you’ll hear how Zhubei, Adam Horowitz, Paul Carroll, and Jeff Luther turned adversity into opportunity. Learn how EO’s support system fueled their resilience, helped them redefine success, and gave them tools to lead with purpose.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

  • “You work on something not for the success, but for the pursuit.”
  • “The biggest thing, and I talk to people about this all the time, whether or not you’re entrepreneurs or not, is building that community.”
  • “I liked strategy and I like talking about these things, but I didn’t know who to talk to about it.”
  • “That furlough really motivated me to decide to look for something where I had a little more control over my destiny.”
  • “When you have other folks that share the same [problems], you realize you’re not alone.”

Action Steps

  1. Build a support network through entrepreneurial communities: Surrounding yourself with like-minded peers helps reduce isolation and sparks strategic insight during hard times.
  2. Reevaluate your core offering after disruption: Revisiting what clients truly value allows you to rebuild around your most meaningful and resilient services.
  3. Embrace vulnerability in leadership moments: Allowing space for shared grief or honesty can foster trust and long-term team loyalty during transitions.
  4. Diversify business models to reduce risk exposure: Separating direct-to-consumer and B2B services can insulate your company from sudden regulatory or market shocks.
  5. Use reflection to clarify your purpose: Revisiting personal motivation helps align your business with what energizes you, especially after periods of burnout.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:02

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

John Corcoran: 00:12

Hey everybody, this is John Corcoran with Dr. Jeremy Weisz, and this episode is a little bit different. This is a live interview that we recorded at the Global Leadership Conference from Entrepreneurs’ Organization, where some of the best entrepreneurs from around the globe share ideas and to learn about entrepreneurship. And of course, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, where we help B2B businesses to give to and to connect to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships, helping you to run a podcast so that it generates a referral pipeline and ROI.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:44

Yeah, I mean, John, after both of us have been podcasting for over a decade, the number one thing in our life is relationships, and we’re always looking at ways to give to our best relationships, and we found no better way to do that over the past decade than to profile the people and companies we admire and shout from the rooftops what they’re working on, and this interview is no different. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should go to rise25.com to learn more or email us at. support@rise25.com.

John Corcoran: 01:11

Thanks everyone. Enjoy the interview.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 01:12

Enjoy.

John Corcoran: 01:27

John Corcoran coming to you live from Honolulu, Hawaii at the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Leadership Conference. And my company is Rise25. And we are here with Zhubei who’s from Beijing Metro Metropolitan EO chapter. And Zhubei, tell us a little bit about what your company is and what your company does.

Zhubei: 01:45

So my the name of my company is called Venture Education. So me and my business partner Julian Fisher, we started the company 12 years ago. He’s also an EO member. So when we started, it was a very simple idea. I’m Chinese, he’s British. He understands how international education works and I understand Chinese students and parents. So we decided to make a company together. And for the last 12 years, we’ve pivoted our company so many times. So we started as bringing Chinese students to England for an authentic experience mixed with other countries, kids from other countries. And then we evolved into a learning centre in Beijing. We hired people. At the peak time we had about 70 staff from all was peak.

John Corcoran: 02:35

Was this right before Covid?

Zhubei: 02:37

It was before Covid. It was before that wipe out policy that China had on education industry. I’m not sure if any of you heard about it, but some of the publicly listed companies like New Oriental had their profit, had their market value vanished probably 95% overnight. Wow. Yeah. So that was a big hit on our industry. And that was when I, my daughter was was sick or had a medical situation at a point that the doctor was worried that she had blood cancer because her platelet was low. And it was a time when I was at my personal low because I was constantly worried for my daughter checking into the hospitals.

John Corcoran: 03:19

And all this happened while you were going through that.

Zhubei: 03:21

And whilst that happened when my company was falling apart, I had to sack most of the team because the policy overnight said we are not legal anymore, although we held a legal license and at 1000 square meter learning center, with the theater, with the gym, with classrooms, that was just designed right after I had given birth to my daughter. And so that was the first project after my baby, and that was my second baby, because I had three months off. And after the first month I thought, well, why not? We start a new center? And so it was a big hit. And it was it was a very difficult time because you have the team that you love so much and you trust so much and vice versa. And you had to let them go and you had to be that person sitting in that office and telling them, I am sorry, I have to let you go.

John Corcoran: 04:15

It’s devastating.

Zhubei: 04:17

And if it was any mistake that I made, and if I look back and I think I thought that I had to be strong and I had to stay indifferent to tell people because it’s a policy situation. But looking back, I thought that probably I did not allow myself or the team to be sad about it, to moan about the death of something we built together. And if I had the chance to do it again, I would have probably done it in a way where I just hug everyone and have a good cry, because that’s exactly what I needed at the time. So the rise up was when then me and my business partner decided that we have to, you know, separate the eggs into two different baskets. So at the time, we had already been providing services for the British Embassy and for some international schools and universities. So we decided to build a consultancy company that serves only the universities, schools and other educational institutions. So it’s going to be a B2B business. And he loves data analysis and report. So he went into that direction, which we hope that can scale. And also kind of counterbalances the risk from, you know, the direct market. And then I asked myself many times over during that time and I said, if there is only me left, and if there is one thing that I would love to do and I still want to get up in the morning, what would it be? And my answer was, I have to be with the students and I have to be with the people. And that’s what I did. And so I got together with some of my clients that stayed with me for a long time, and those kids have already gone to university. And so I got them into the room and I asked them the question, what do you think is the most valuable thing that I have given you over the past however years?

John Corcoran: 06:07

Which is a great way to find out what your customers want from you.

Zhubei: 06:09

Exactly. And the collected answer was the companionship, the mentorship, and just holding the holding hands. It was not the training, it was not the tutoring. It wasn’t any of those things that I sold for money. Right. And that was the moment that I realized what I loved doing the most is holding hands because of my own experience that, you know, I’ll talk about it in another time, that I just really have so much empathy for the kids and for the parents. None of them are bad people. They just they just they have different perspectives. They have different ways of handling these things. And I now know how to help them Because I’ve been there. Yeah.

John Corcoran: 06:50

And so quite the transition into something completely new.

Zhubei: 06:53

However, I don’t think it’s a transition because I had always been doing that, that support with the parents. Anyways. I just never charged them for that service. I just did it like a freebie. Yeah. And so instead after that, I kind of turned it around and gave my and and made my most valuable input. My current product was.

John Corcoran: 07:12

This before Covid.

Zhubei: 07:13

This was basically during during Covid.

John Corcoran: 07:16

Okay okay okay okay. So that’s quite a pivot for you during that time. Were you in EO at the time?

Zhubei: 07:22

I wasn’t.

John Corcoran: 07:23

Okay. And reflecting now on what EO provides value like how it provides value to you. A lot of times people join EO after having gone through some kind of like really difficult transition like that. And so how does it serve you now?

[Continue to Page 2]

Zhubei: 07:39

I would say when I joined EO, it was 2023, 2022. And then that was a time I felt so because I had just gone through the crisis. I made, you know, somehow, like put the ship together, still sailing. But I felt so like my energy, my motivation was so, so much sucked out of me because you’ve gone through so much and and you just had to stick there. But then I just needed some kind of holding some, you know, someone to, like, be there for me. And the first thing I did after joining EO was GLC in Cape Town. And that was transformational.

John Corcoran: 08:21

Just like this, it was the equivalent. But in Cape Town, yes.

Zhubei: 08:24

Just like EO in Hawaii. And I remember the theme was called elevate. And that’s exactly what I needed. And it wasn’t just the GLC, it was the speakers and the amazing speakers. Some of the speakers we actually managed to bring to China and to the people who couldn’t go to Cape Town. It was just that spirit. It was a spirit of forgiveness. It was a spirit of belief. It was a spirit of that. You work on something not for the success, but for the pursuit. And that was the spirit of South Africa, and that was a spirit that filtered through all the EO events. And I still feel that the, the, you know, till today and I think what have a community and and like the theme of this year ohana believe belong beyond and I and to me I think the sequence goes belong you feel belonging and that’s where you, you start to, you know, have the belief rising in you. And once you have the belief rising in you, then you go beyond.

John Corcoran: 09:22

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. Where can people go to learn more about you?

Zhubei: 09:26

Just follow Venture Education on LinkedIn. We are launching our new data platform. It’s called data without the D, so it’s Galata. I don’t have a personal LinkedIn, but I have a Instagram. So it’s Zhubei, My name zhubei26. I just picked a random number. I’m not actually 26. So if you’re from China then you can follow my channels. I have about 10,000 followers watching me, doing interviews, dialogues with principals of schools, education people, impactful people in education, psychologists, interesting, fun students. Thank you so much for the interview.

John Corcoran: 10:12

Yeah, thank you very much. Hey, John Corcoran, coming to you live from the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Leadership Conference 2025, in Honolulu, Hawaii. I’m here with Adam Horowitz, who is from the EO Los Angeles chapter. And, Adam, you’ve been in EO for about 15 years now. What is the name of your company? And tell me a little bit about what your company does.

Adam Horowitz: 10:32

It’s a Lever Capital Partners. Lever short for essentially leverage or leverage capital. And we arrange capital for commercial real estate projects across the United States. Essentially, we’re like a residential mortgage broker, but for large commercial projects.

John Corcoran: 10:46

Okay, let’s see you start. You said 15 years. Okay.

Adam Horowitz: 10:49

I started about 15 years ago and I’ve been EO for ten. Okay. So it took a little while to kind of find this place and join.

John Corcoran: 10:56

And so 2010 was still kind of on the back end of that whole mortgage meltdown area. What was that like? What was what was it like starting a company in that space at that time?

Adam Horowitz: 11:06

It was really incredible. I was working for a company doing exactly what I do now. There was a handful of people. We had a Harvard MBA, we had a NYU MBA, we had a Columbia masters person.

John Corcoran: 11:19

So some real slackers.

Adam Horowitz: 11:21

Michigan MBA and the market crashed and they all sat there twiddling their thumbs. I was blown away by the fact that here were people, they had no strategy. They were deal people. They were good at their job. But there was no strategy. They weren’t communicating. They weren’t talking. And then when that whole thing blew up and I decided to start my own company, I said, there’s got to be a better way. There’s got to be a way, because the market will go up and it will go down and need to be able to find a community of people that I could talk to to help try to figure out how to navigate things when things turn sideways, which eventually they will.

John Corcoran: 11:51

And so you started and you did it about five years before you found your way to EO. What were the early years like? What were some of the challenges for you when you started the company?

Adam Horowitz: 12:01

I think just nobody to talk to. So, you know, I liked strategy and I like talking about these things, but I didn’t know who to talk to about it. The people that were working for me at the time weren’t people really to have those conversations with. I didn’t have friends or relatives that were owning their own businesses. All of my friends growing up in college and grad school, they were all just workers like I was in the past, and I was kind of on an island and didn’t really know what to do. So a lot of times what we do is do nothing. The decision is to not make a decision.

John Corcoran: 12:29

So you find your way to EO and what role has EO played for you in the last ten years?

Adam Horowitz: 12:36

I think the biggest thing and I talk to people about this all the time, whether or not you’re entrepreneurs or not, is building that community. I actually had that conversation this morning with one of my interns. We have three interns every semester from USC’s real estate program intern for us, and a lot of times when I’m providing for them is just understanding about how the world works. And I talked this morning with somebody about building his own community, even though he’s 20 years old. Start building that community, because what I’ve noticed more so from anything from the first time I went to an event in EO event, was that the guy that I was talking to? And I told this story this morning, I was shocked to find out that he had hired the speaker that had spoken, and when I asked him about it, he said I had hired that guy and I hired that woman. I was blown away. I had no idea that people were hiring all these people. And he said to me, you need a team of people, you know, you can only be an expert in so many things, and you need to supplement yourself with experts from around, around the community. And that has really been an eye opener and has really changed the way that I do business.

John Corcoran: 13:34

Yeah. Now I know you also have a bit of an expertise in forum, a lot of care, a lot about that. The forum structure. Talk a little bit about what you see as best practices. What have what leads forums to be successful versus not successful?

Adam Horowitz: 13:48

Wow. I mean, how many minutes do we have or hours or days?

John Corcoran: 13:50

You have 35 seconds.

Adam Horowitz: 13:51

Okay. 35. No, but this is clearly the thing I’m most passionate about within EO. And I think, you know, what you learn from a young age is like you’re either moving towards the things or away from the things that as a child you needed or didn’t need. And this is certainly true for me. So I was always looking for that community and looking for connection and forum really provides that opportunity to not is really to help, to find people, to help you solve your own problems. Right? I am not here to solve your problem. You can go out for a drink and we can go do that. But when we’re in forum, what I’m going to do is help you get to that really deep why question and then give you all the tools necessary to go out and solve your own problem. And I’ve seen myself and in other people within me to help make life changing conversations with people. And I had one of them this morning at 6 a.m., getting coffee this morning with somebody else who was also an early bird, and we were talking about process and structure and stuff like that, and all of these things I got from you.

John Corcoran: 14:44

Yeah. And you also have been involved in leadership. You know, this at Global Leadership Conference is for emerging leaders who want to get involved in their board and then take some of those leadership skills and bring them back to their their company. Why have you gotten involved on that level with the leading in your chapter?

Adam Horowitz: 15:03

So I’ve been on the board the whole time. I’ve been in EO 10, 11 years. The first time I was voluntold, which is a word, a portmanteau that we all get to understand along with intimacy, which I love. That’s another portmanteau I love.

John Corcoran: 15:16

What is that one word?

Adam Horowitz: 15:17

Instant. Instant. Intimacy. Intimacy. So. But with being voluntold, I joined EO. It was a small. I was in the Vegas chapter initially, and it was a small chapter. And the guy says, oh, you should do forum, it’s easy. And I was in the EOE like two weeks and turned out, you know.

John Corcoran: 15:34

Typically a role that people are been in Indio for a little while before they take that on that role.

Adam Horowitz: 15:39

So people were yelling at me and screaming at me and cursing at me from things that had happened a year or two before, which obviously I wasn’t involved with. But it turned out that being on the board and I share this with people all the time has been the best part of EO for me. Mostly because I get to see other leaders leading other people, and we always have these challenges of how do we get people to follow us when they don’t work for us, we’re not paying them. So how do I how do I build that, that rapport within people to get them on my side, to get them to say, we’re going to do it this way because it’s going to help everybody involved in that process. And I’ve had multiple roles within the organization. Form happens to be the one that I’m most passionate about and I’m happiest to be in. But in general, I would say, you know, these are the people who have drank the Kool-Aid the most. These are the people that are really interested in upleveling not only their own lives, but their families and their friends and the people who work for them. And to me, that’s a really exciting comment. When I talk to somebody and I do some coaching, which I love doing, I am not here to just help you. I’m here to help you, help everybody else.

John Corcoran: 16:42

That’s great. Adam, this has been great. Where can people go to learn more about you and check you out?

Adam Horowitz: 16:47

levercp.com. I’m not a social media person, so I don’t know if you could, you could find my one picture on Instagram. But if you want to reach me at my company, Lever Corp ahorowitz@levercp.com is the easiest way to do it.

John Corcoran: 17:01

Adam, thanks so much.

Adam Horowitz: 17:01

Thank you.

John Corcoran: 17:02

Hey, John Corcoran here. Coming to you live from Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Leadership Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, 2025. I’m here with Paul Carroll who has a wealth management firm. Paul, tell us about what your company is and what your company does.

Paul Carroll: 17:15

My company is Avion Wealth. We’re based in Houston, Texas. We have clients throughout the United States. What we do is in addition to helping our clients protect their wealth, we also help them mitigate their taxes, take care of their heirs, protect their assets from being unjustly taken and maximize the impact of charitable planning, if that’s important to them.

John Corcoran: 17:33

You started that firm about 20 years ago. How did it get started? Tell us the origin story behind it.

Paul Carroll: 17:39

Well, to do that, I have to roll the tape back a little. Before that, I came to the United States in the fall of 1979. I was 17 years old, and I showed up with $200 in a toothbrush. I really had no idea what I was doing, but before long I was in the Air Force and that was my avenue for getting an undergraduate degree. When I got out of the Air Force, I didn’t know what to do next, so I did. I did what you normally do in such a situation. I went to grad school to study finance. Got out of grad school. Ended up with a company called Smith Barney. They made money the old fashioned way and that was a disappointing experience. It was really dialing for dollars. I was disillusioned, and I decided that I was going to go ahead and learn how to fly for a living, because there was a quote unquote, pilot shortage at the time. Well, I learned something about shortages, about when you’re ready. That shortage is long gone. I entered the industry at what was the worst hiring drought in the history of aviation before or since, and seven jobs and 7000 hours later, I ended up being picked up by Continental Airlines. So finally I made it. I was home free, and yet it was just four short years after that. That September 11th hit blew a hole in the side of the airline. The industry in my career. So after being forced to move to Houston, I was then kindly furloughed. And that furlough really motivated me to decide to look for something where I had a little more control over my destiny. I love flying, I hate unions, I hate seniority. And so I was ready to do something where I have more control. And so after a little bit of homework, research and due diligence, that’s when I started Avion.

John Corcoran: 19:22

Well, yeah. And so you started it, I guess, after nine over 11. Then we had a couple of years of rough economic times. Was that a tough time to start a company?

Paul Carroll: 19:31

So it was an interesting time. I had no idea what I was doing. I was writing checks to the company anyway. I really had my head down. What really was a rough time was 2008. I mean, we were really focused on airline pilots. What a lot of people don’t remember about 2008 is every single airline in North America except Continental and Southwest filed for bankruptcy. Well, we were working their pensions, their retirement plans, and they all were wiped out. Continental’s wasn’t wiped out. It was frozen. Southwest didn’t have a pension plan. So my business model had to pivot pretty damn rapidly after the 2008 financial crisis.

John Corcoran: 20:13

And what did you pivot into?

Paul Carroll: 20:15

Well, we we basically moved into leaders with a growth mindset, C-suite executives and successful business leaders.

John Corcoran: 20:24

What about so there’s Covid. 2020. Did that affect your company? What was that period like?

Paul Carroll: 20:30

Well, that was an interesting time for us. In 2018, we decided to rebrand to what is now Avion Wealth. That was a two year exercise. And we were frankly terrified it wouldn’t become like the classic Coke exercise, which was a disaster. The new Coke, sorry. And and so the beauty of Covid is we did the brand switch on January the 1st. And by March the 30th, everyone had long since forgotten about Avion’s rebranding. It kind of helped with the rebranding. It didn’t hurt our business at all. People needed people to talk to. And of course, about March 2930, the markets collapsed somewhat like they are right now. And for for my industry, that means people needed they needed guidance, they needed safety and they needed that sanity.

John Corcoran: 21:22

What about for you? You’ve been in Entrepreneurs’ Organization for some time. What role has that played for you as an entrepreneur?

Paul Carroll: 21:28

It’s been interesting. I didn’t come from an entrepreneurial family. I didn’t know anything about being an entrepreneur. I’m an accidental entrepreneur. I didn’t have a book of business when I started my business. And when I discovered EO, it was it was like finding a long lost tribe of interesting people who had shared experiences. And so for me, it was very meaningful and I’ve enjoyed getting more and more involved. Now I’m in a bridge chapter. I’m the finance chair, of course. And it continues to be a great value add to my life.

John Corcoran: 22:01

Yeah. Well, thanks so much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about you and Avion?

Paul Carroll: 22:06

AvionWealth.com.

John Corcoran: 22:08

All right. Thanks so much. Hey, John Corcoran here at the Entrepreneur’s Organization Global Leadership Conference here in beautiful Honolulu, Hawaii, 2025. And I’m here with Jeff Luther, who’s from beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. Long ways away. Jeff, tell us about what your company is and what your company does.

Jeff Luther: 22:26

Home-Probe is the name of the company. It’s a home inspection company. So we’re in the business of real estate inspections. It’s been around for 22 years.

John Corcoran: 22:32

Okay, cool. And take me back to 22 years ago when you started that out. If you can remember back that far, what were some of the challenges when you started it out?

Jeff Luther: 22:41

Okay, so one day I made this really bad decision and it was to start my own company. The biggest challenge is the business that I’m in is very personal. So it typically is tied to the personality. And the hardest challenge that I had over the entire course of the business was getting referral sources to be comfortable working with someone that wasn’t me replicating myself.

John Corcoran: 23:06

And so that was was that in the early years that you were trying to figure that out? Did you did you find a magic solution that everyone here can learn from you?

Jeff Luther: 23:15

Yeah. Early on I was as busy as I wanted to be. I was, for lack of a better term. I was printing money, but I had more money than time. So I stayed incredibly busy, and I was always afraid of allowing someone else in that business to to take my place to work with me. And ultimately, I realized no one’s going to do it perfectly. And if they did, they would own their own business. So I had to be resigned to the fact that about 80%, if I could get 80% of my expectation, then that was good.

John Corcoran: 23:46

That was good enough. And so you’ve been through some real downturns during that period of time. 2008 comes to mind with the real estate downturn. What was that like for you being in the real estate industry?

Jeff Luther: 23:57

Oh, in 2022 to today. Don’t forget that one.

John Corcoran: 24:00

Yeah, we’ll get to it.

Jeff Luther: 24:02

So it was it was a long bloody road. Honestly, 2008 it was there were days I had to pick up the phone to make sure we still had a dial tone. It was. It was Just empty. It was a real empty period of time.

John Corcoran: 24:19

Did you have a larger group of people? Did you have to do layoffs?

Jeff Luther: 24:22

I guess to both of those things, that’s when I was kind of accelerating up. So you figure 2006, my company was in Atlanta, and if you had a pulse and a phone number, you could do business in real estate. So we were hiring. We’re on the way up. And then it was like the bottom fell out.

John Corcoran: 24:39

And then you mentioned 2022 to today.

Jeff Luther: 24:42

Yeah. 2022 to today. As interest rates started to go up, coming off, the pandemic was the busiest our business has ever been. And we went from our business is down almost 60% in a little less than three years.

John Corcoran: 24:57

That’s a tough adjustment. You’ve been in EO for a while. What role has EO played for you going through these types of difficult periods?

Jeff Luther: 25:04

So I’ll start. EO has been huge. I’ll start with I started out in Accelerator bouncing around around the 850 mark. had been for a few years, and I was an accelerator for less than four months to get to the million dollar mark. If that tells the tale.

John Corcoran: 25:20

Yeah. So it helped you break through some barriers?

Jeff Luther: 25:22

Yeah, that’s an understatement for sure. Yeah.

John Corcoran: 25:25

Yeah. And then how has EO played a role for you.

Jeff Luther: 25:28

You know it’s forum has been huge. It’s a great think tank. It’s nice to know you’re not on your own little island. You feel like your problems are unique. And when you have other folks that share the same, you realize you’re not alone. And the way that I put it to people, it’s a place to celebrate the wins and commiserate the losses.

John Corcoran: 25:47

Yeah, yeah. Jeff, thanks so much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about you and learn about your company?

Jeff Luther: 25:53

JT Luther 2.0 for Instagram and you can learn about me at jeffluther.com.

John Corcoran: 25:58

Excellent. Thanks so much.

Outro: 26:00

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