Christer Holloman On Raising $50 Million To Give You More Choices When Managing Your Finances

Christer Holloman has raised tens of millions of dollars for his fintech startup, including achieving 100% oversubscribed funding rounds. The venture, Divido, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Silicon Valley Bank UK, Dawn Capital, SBI Investment, and ING Ventures.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The notable investors Christer’s strategy has enabled them to land
• How to manage your investors once you bring the capital in
• When to transition out of being CEO, and what to do next
• Christer Holloman’s top advice for starting a business

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About Christer Holloman:

Christer Holloman is the CEO and co-founder of the award-winning consumer finance platform, Divido. Prior to starting Divido, Holloman launched Glassdoor.com in EMEA, which subsequently got acquired for $1.2BN.

Before this, he helped traditional media companies like The Times, the Daily Mail in the UK, and Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the US, to transition old business models to monetize new digital channels for recruitment, property, and content.

Hollman is the author of the Amazon bestseller “The Social Media MBA” series, published by Wiley in multiple languages, and more recently, “How to Sell Online,” published by Pearson, the world’s largest publisher of academic literature.

Holloman holds an MBA from the University of Oxford.

Connect with Christer Holloman:

• Crunchbase
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Already hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today. We’re gonna be talking with this incredible founder. Also an author of several books and we’re gonna be talking about building and scaling in Europe and then also moving to the us so without further ado. Let’s welcome. Our guests today. Christer Holoman welcome to the show. So originally born in Sweden give us a little of how walk through memory lane. How was life growing up there.

Christer Holloman: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

Christer Holloman: So I was born very close to the Arctic Circle. So for I’m not sure if you had that opportunity to be up there but the summers are pretty remarkable that the sun never sets So as you see the sun hitting the Horizon. It goes up again. But then on their flip side in the winter. You barely see the sun so you can be in complete darkness for weeks on end more or less so pretty epic and in that sense. But yeah, very idyllic. It’s very green, Very clean, very safe. So Yeah, I’m super grateful for for the opportunity to to grow up there.

Alejandro Cremades: And then you also did your military service there. So I mean how how was because you know typically in the us you don’t do that I mean you you see that more like in Israel and other places I mean what kind of ethics. Do you think or or or perspective did doing the military.

Christer Holloman: So that was one of the last generations that mandatory had to do the military service since I did it now is very much on an optin basis. So Sweden has famously been neutral for for centuries.

Alejandro Cremades: But you.

Christer Holloman: Um, and part of being able to be neutral is to have a credible defense. So it’s It’s kind of just something we had to do it. It’s part of almost like ah a rite of passage for for a generation of of swedes that had to to do it. Yeah I thought it was a unique experience I’m very grateful for it. It’s clearly not something hopefully that I’ll ever be able to you’ll need to use skills or or experiences I need to use again. So yeah, but I thought it was ah it was fun to do it and I feel that I’m more well-rounded because of having had that experience.

Alejandro Cremades: And then in that case I mean obviously you were in Sweden you did the military there you did your undergrad there as well. I mean at what point do you realize that maybe it makes sense to make a move and land in London.

Christer Holloman: So as I mentioned I’m I’m from the very far north. There’s a very small place and and I realized pretty quickly that if I wanted to become successful if I wanted to make something on myself I can’t stay in that small city. So I had my heart and my head set on Stockholm the capital of Sweden when I was a teenager. Try to go there as often as I could to see friends or as live in the big city when I went to university I had the opportunity to apply for a scholarship to come work in London for a year at the swedish shanero commerce so I applied and I was very fortunate to to get that opportunity. So after I finished my undergrad I moved to London and the idea was to spend a year there but having been there for a few weeks for a few months I realized what was I thinking about trying to go to Stockholm clearly London is the place to be way bigger, more fun, more exciting. So. Yeah, and then I’m skipping stokcomm all together and going straight to London.

Alejandro Cremades: So in Lano tell us how landing in London what happened next.

Christer Holloman: So in the beginning I worked for a series of newspapers I worked for a us newspaper group called Gnett helping them launch a new for europe at the time a new job board called http://careerbuilder.com and then I worked for the times and the Sunday times again helping them to deliver and new product innovations put new products and service out in the market learning them or helping them figure out how to make money online because obviously up until that point they’d been making all the money on ads in physical paper people weren’t buying them. Um, so they had to transition their business online as we all know as as consumers of the news. So yes I spent the none chunk of my career doing that.

Alejandro Cremades: And that was quite a rocket ship be so in this case for you. You know you were also one of the None team employees you know for for glass door. So tell us all glass door to.

Christer Holloman: Yeah, so when I was working for the newspapers that one of the most significant revenue opportunities that we had was classified so jobs automotive and so on. So. Glass store is a review website where you as an employee can review your employer and this is the poiglos store that most people are familiar about but where they make a lot of money is to classify it so I had the opportunity to join glass store as the none employee outside the us to help them launch and build out the european operations. Um, so yeah, at the time that we were a none people my bolshes in San Francisco and today they’re over a thousand people they got acquired a few years ago for over a billion dollars so tremendously. Successful business.

Alejandro Cremades: And what were some of the things that you were able to have exposure to by working with a company that was a rocket ship like that.

Christer Holloman: Well I think it’s certainly elevated my gaze having worked with newspapers which is obviously very stable, very traditional, very conservative things doesn’t happen very quickly easily in that world. So it really transformed my perspective and and how to get things done what we are aiming to do how quickly we want to get there I remember pitching a few business ideas to my line managers and he he said Chris this can only make us ten more million dollars I don’t think is worth our time. And just that mindset if if something isn’t going to bring in 50 or one hundred or a billion dollars why we even bothering. So I think that helped me to think bigger and to expand my own horizon and all the art of the possible.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in this case for you, you know? eventually you ah realize that it’s time for you to start your own thing. You know at what point you know did the I idea or the concept come to mind and and how did you go about you know launching it because I mean becoming. Ah, None time entrepreneur is a big deal is a big leap of faith and I’m wondering what was that incubation process for you.

Christer Holloman: Well, there was a number of sort of data points that I kind of came across in this period ah in my life. 1 of them was having a friend that was trying to launch a cloac clone in Poland and I saw him struggling to raise money. Ah, to get the capital to lend to consumers and get the capital to build the business and get the capital to get the banking licenses and so on was so mini hurdles and and I really thought that was ah None big challenge. Similarly um I came across a company in the Uk called pay for later. And their business model is very similar to Klana with the one significant difference is that they don’t do any of the lending instead they partner with banks and then they offer the combination of their software and the banking so provider to the retailers and I even pitched this to my friend saying hey this could totally solve your problems. Ah, instead of having you to become the bank instead of you becoming regulated. You can just focus on building the business and partner with the banks and he said Christer you know this is my idea I think this is the way it needs to go and I said well if you’re not going to do it I’m going to do it. It was a combination of things that I saw in my surroundings effectively that led me to create Div divideo together with my two cofounders so divideo’s business idea is very similar to Klana in the in the sense that we’re offering buy now pay later but the significant way we’re different is that we only build a software. And we license it to companies that want to compete with Klarna other the banks or or to big retailers that want to work with multiple providers for credit and therefore needs to manage to interface themselves in-house. So that was our kind of ah unique take on by now pay later.

Alejandro Cremades: And how were you guys making money there I mean how what was the pricing and and and anything else that you can share around the business model right.

Christer Holloman: Yeah, so in the beginning we were approaching ss so we would charge a setup fee usually 49 to £99 a month then we charge um a monthly fee which again and that could be another forty nine to £99 a month and then we charge a transaction fee. So whatever. Ah, they were processing. We would take None to 2% and and those so were the three ways that we were extracting value from from the by now perator space.

Alejandro Cremades: So what time do you realize? hey you know it’s probably better if we just focus. You know most of our efforts into Enterprise type of sales.

Christer Holloman: Yeah, so we had over a thousand se retailers after a few years using our solution. Um, and we had a few bigger clients approaching us the first one they actually came through our website they clicked on the chat button and and we responded and it was Lenovo. So one of the world’s biggest computer manufacturers and we thought it was someone that was joking with us. We couldn’t believe our luck. You know we’ve been dealing with Mrs Jones ‘ art gallery in Bristol and and. And Sarah’s dj equipment store in Edinburgh. Nothing bad against those guys at all but they’re obviously significantly smaller players than the likes of of global consumer electronics manufacturers so we we ended up speaking to them qualifying them. And they and ended up signing up with us as the none enterprise client what they liked about the technology is that it allows you to use different lenders in different countries because as you may be aware a very few lenders can lend money to consumers all over the world. It’s usually very. Regionate restrictive for example, only in the Uk or only in the us. So that’s what Lenovo really liked but the problem with Lenova is that they have and other enterprise clients is that they have incredibly high standards and so we really needed to to up our game. Um. So after a few months we recognized we were making a lot of money on the bigger clients but taking a lot of energy and we had to really challenge ourselves to figure out how to prioritize s and mes versus enterprise and and after a series a the board took a decision. To exit the s and me space entirely. So we can double down and focus our headspace our money on those enterprise clients.

Alejandro Cremades: And what is it like dealing with enterprise clients and and more specifically dealing with banks. You know that’s not easy.

Christer Holloman: Yeah, so I mean the good thing with the s and me is which is why it makes perfect sense for a lot of startups to start with those if you’re targeting business clients is that you could get hold of the ownery with one call and you could potentially get ah a signed deal literally on the back of None phone call. We had None sales guy. He did a five day close he called them on the Monday on by Friday they were transacting on our platform. So that’s obviously great when you want to show investors numbers show a growth and so on but the numbers are very small as we touched on earlier. The big difference and perhaps obvious difference is with enterprise is that they are There’s not necessarily None decision makers. There’s usually none people involved in signing off any any sort of big significant investment or change and that takes time so ah, a identifying those right peoples. Convincing all those people going through all the due diligence steps and all the hoops even to be a prudence supplier or vendor. You know that alone takes six nine months and that’s even before you started actually finalizing the contract perhaps or even starting the the build which again can take another six nine months so yeah tremendously long sales cycles from five days to None ars end to end.

Alejandro Cremades: So now in this case I mean same it’s It’s really interesting to like the way that you would go about financing a company like this one you know in in this case, How much capital have you guys raised to date.

Christer Holloman: Yeah, so dividers raised over $50,000,000 the none fundraise was roughly $1000000 um, and interestingly we me and my co-unders we were working on this business for a year and the last sort of three four months is when we were in a position to start fundraising. And we had meanings with None investors and everyone said no everyone said well Paypal can just copy this? Um, and in April Two Thousand and fifteen ah we were running out of ah personal money to sustain ourselves. I was he even starting to look for for jobs. But but we had a breakthrough one investor said well we won’t give you the full amount but we’ll give you half and at that point we were only asking for none. That’s what we were starting with and the investor was a company called initial capital. Um, and that was like a turning point for us I actually even just weeks before I had to sell my so my I had an old Bmw I got £10000 which will give me a few more months to to live off so I sold the literally the only ass that I had at that point. To to brace myself for a few more months of fundraising so it it was on the on the brink of of not happening. But interestingly when that none investor said yes for half of the amount almost every subsequent conversation we had from that point onwards turned into yeses. Because I guess investors they have a fear of missing out. That’s a totally real thing. Um and we get the kind of almost social validity or validation by getting that none invested to to say yes to us. And in the end we did not only filled around. We didn’t just reach the 500 as um as I alluded to we actually oversubscribed by a hundred percent we raised just over a million pounds in that first fundraise so from being a from almost walking away from creating this business altogether to selling the only asset I had left. At the brink of personal you know, ruin um it everything turned and literally four six weeks later everything were completely different. So yeah, that’s ah the starting point of our fundraising journey.

Alejandro Cremades: I mean obviously you you’ve raised quite a bit of money and those are pretty interesting. Lesson they’re like the importance of and engineering fear of missing out. So how I mean obviously there’s a lot of people that are probably tuning in now and and listening and and wondering. Hey you know like how should I go creating that fear of missing out so that you know maybe I’m able to put myself in a position like Christ where all of a sudden you get None and then everything else is is much easier after.

Christer Holloman: Yeah, so I think the key is that ah you don’t want to drip feed ah investor engagements you want to kind of go all in in one massive hit so spend a lot of time doing upfront research that at divided we call it blueprinting. So you map out all of the players in our space who their investors are most of those will not be interested so we put them on the on the red list or blocklist and then we focus on who else is ah similar in this space who’s like who’s investing in fintech who’s investing in Uk in our case uk-based companies. Um. We had a really clear idea by the way we didn’t really do this for the none round but we got better as we as we went along so we had a critical mass like None plus investors for each subsequent round that we did and we would we would approach all of them at the same time within the within the same few weeks we would email them all Linkedin them all. And and that’s that’s the other thing you you also don’t want to rely on just having None email to or phone number but maybe email probably the most likely um you want to map out None or 3 people at each of those firms that potentially could be a ah way in for you because yeah as we know people can be on holiday. People’s emails can go to spam um and that’s probably the other thing that you don’t just want to email them and sit back and wait and hope that’s going to work. You also want to find them on Linkedin and and message them there as well and if there’s another way like if you can meet them in person if you’re attending an event like. We went to money none quite a lot and a lot of investors would would go there in our space. So I think that’s the key thing you have to identify all of the right people or their contact details and hit them as hard as you can as fast as you can in a short period of time as you can and that obviously assumes that you have a very compelling. Compelling ah business case that illustrates that this is a huge opportunity and this is why you need a position to capture this opportunity in ah in a way that kind of resonates and is understandable and relatable I mean divider is a relatively easy product to pitch everyone understands why consumers use credit. Um, it’s almost like a no-brainer and and our approach coupled with that made it a very easy decision for investors to make.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in this case I mean you guys have raised money from all types of profiles. I mean you’ve raised from angels even series a you already got people like American Express I mean which is a you know quite early now but they still It’s great. An amazing company. And then you know like also going more into like the Vc traditional type of route. So what is the difference from each one of those profiles I mean what’s the way of engaging with them and then also to continue to manage that relationship.

Christer Holloman: Yeah, so the beginning whilst our largest investor was an institutional early stage investor. We had a long tail of smaller. Ah high net worth individuals. They putting in anything from none pounds each and you’re actually right? It’s about managing that could. Managing them and managing their expectations. Some of them would email me every other week asking for updates which is obviously not really practical so we had to sort of so tell everyone that no we don’t do ad hoc None on one updates. We do a courtly or bimonthly update and we give the same to the angels as we did to the. Institutional investors I think that’s like the None thing to manage expectations upfront and to not bend backwards and do anything and everything an angel might ask from from time to time I think that’s one key difference another key difference and and going back to the point around fear of missing out. I would argue that one of the main reasons we were able to convince amys to invest to your point they wouldn’t typically do deals of that size that early on but we were fortunate enough to have been selected by Mastercard to join something called startpath which is their global platform to engage with fintech effectively. And on the back of that partnership. They had the right to invest should they choose to do so in our subsequent funding round and they took the decision to invest in dividers. So it made it very easy for me then to call American Express and say hey mastercar is investing would you be interested. And and clearly I did the same thing with visa and now visa at this time they were in the process of I’m not sure if you remember this but visa used to be europe and the us and they merged and there was for a few years visa wasn’t really doing much in fintech which is why Mastercard signed all of the. Early stage fintech to to use their cards in the cardrails. So visa didn’t really have a good point of contact. But anyways fairom missing out definitely worked in the case of Amex and Mastercard and again the difference between our institution investors and angels is that. Unlike them we can actually work with these vcs these corporate Vcs to gain to get business. So the the key thing there is not so much what we can do for them. But what they can do for us who do they know that we want to speak to who do they have relationships that we want to work with. Um, and so on so Mastercard on amexs has been was a tremendous catalyst for divider not just from the money perspective but also from a credibility perspective to be able to say to prospect employees can’t work with us. We’re backed by Amex and Mastercard to prospect clients. Hey.

Christer Holloman: You should trust us look these guys trust us and and on top of that to get an introduction from mastercard ah is is incredible. Like for example, they introduced us to http://lastminute.com which is one of the biggest online travel agents in in Europe and on the back of that we did a tremendously successful deal with with them. So. Um, yeah, very different dynamics and benefits and and I really see value in in having all of them at different stages so of your journey.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in this case I mean you guys raised quite a bit of money during the Covid time. So how was like raisingcing money you know, but that point.

Christer Holloman: Yeah, so in total I raise $50,000,000 for for divider and again just to be super clear. Divider does not lend any money so we are just a software company. So this money goes straight to hiring engineers product development marketing sales and so on. This is not money that we lend to consumers in any shape or form That’s what our clients do with their money. Our bank clients effectively. So we had raised in the last round we did $30000000 so it was the our series b was a biggest round the plan was to do about half of that. Um, and we started approaching strategic investors because we knew they would take the the longest but the fundraise started maybe April may so that just as covid has the lockdown had sort of come into force almost globally. We started fundraising. And yeah, for the first few months investors were a little bit kind of on edge to try to figure out what’s going on and a lot of investors day during a time of crisis like the one we’re seeing now they become a little bit like a hedgeho they kind of turn inwards to trying to understand what’s going on with their existing investments. What can they do to help them effectively which means that if you’re a new company trying to pitch for their attention or raise money from them. You will be kind of none tier in their mind in terms of priorities. So yeah, so it did take us a few months to to get going with the fundraise we were planning on closing by the end of of 20 20 um but ah yeah, it took longer than that. Fortunately, we had some very good strategic corporate clients that also did investments so we were able to have conversations with them and in the end in the spring of 2021 we got a firm term sheet from hspc and I and g to lead our series b and and that was the again fear of missing out they became those anchor investors the anchor names they gave confidence to ah, a long list of other investors that joined at the same time. Which is why we were so oversubscribed again, you’re almost doubling what we were looking to initially raise.

Alejandro Cremades: So very recently you decided to step down from from the company I mean as the Ceo so so walk through that you know thought process.

Christer Holloman: Sure. Yeah, so I’ve been working with Div divider all day every day from at that point for the last sort of None ars is a very all consuming as as you’ll know and I’m sure other entrepreneurs you’ve spoken to will will testify to um. And as you know the business had changed a lot. We went from s and mes to large enterprise deals and I very much felt that there will never be a good time for me to exit. So it’s kind of about finding what’s the least bad time to to leave the business and I felt that the business was in ah, an incredibly stable position. We had signed some landmark deals with global players. We had a clear path to break. Even we were. We had just signed a tremendous chairman the former Ceo paypal emme I hired a fantastic cfo and the team was very stable. Um, we had the clients we had the team and we had the money. Most importantly, we had the money in the bank and that was the the final kind of deciding point for me to say this is the point when I’m comfortable to step down I still have a significant shareholding in divider. So I very much wanted to continue to prosper and be successful and I’m there. The biggest fan. Um, but it gave me the opportunity to pursue other interests and other opportunities and one of them was to.

Alejandro Cremades: And what is that what is that transition. What is that transition process like you know where you know here you are the founder of the business. The Ceo of the business and you want to make sure that you’re able to preserve you know what? you’ve built and what you’ve created and that. You know people are not going to destroy it right? overnight. So what is that transition process to make sure that you’re able to show up yourself with someone else that is going to be able to carry that flak in the same way or perhaps in a better way so that you know the legacy you know is there? yeah.

Christer Holloman: Yeah, no absolutely and for me, it comes back to the team. So the people that that was left when I stepped down with people I’ve been working with all day every day for the last one 2 3 4 even None ars so I feel that they knew me they knew what I wanted to do I think I had. Ah, shared with them the vision of where this company could go and I felt that they felt that you know in their hearts as well. So I felt very comfortable with them staying. Also you know we were 3 co-founders. So one of the co-founders. He left three years ago and the none cofounder he is still in the business. So. We also have some longevity through through that relationship and we still you know, very good friends so’re very close in that sense. But in terms of the process itself. It’s something that I’ve been discussing with my chairman for over None ars or almost two years so it wasn’t something that ah you know? ah. Ah, quick decision on my part or a quick sort of exit in terms of the planning for this bringing on board. A professional cfo was ah one of the key milestones because she would be the interim Ceo Ceo when I stepped down so that was another key influencer. Knowing that the people were in place and that we were doing this in an organized fashion. We wouldn’t we didn’t want to spook the employees. We didn’t want to spook our investors. We didn’t want to spook our clients. So yeah I think it was kind of like a textbook example of how I would wish for anyone to be able to exit their their business.

Alejandro Cremades: And and what’s next for you. Chris.

Christer Holloman: Well, ah, knowing that I was so moving on I started working on a book last year called how banks innovate because as I mentioned whilst we started working with Smes and then eventually focused on enterprise retailers. Around the same time. We also started licensing the platform to banks directly for them to brand it as if is their own and give it to their own retail clients so over the over the last so five six years I’ve met with over a none banks literally all over the world from. From Africa to South America to Australia to Asia North America and obviously all over europe and divider is fortunate enough to work with None of some of the most significant players in the space that was the inspiration for me to but but basic I was running workshops for these banks around how how. By now potato’s evolving how banks need to compete with this how this is eating up their credit card of revenue so consumer lending revenues and working with them how to come up with a plan to transition from the old way of thinking to the new way of thinking and effectively managing their innovation process because. They hadn’t done this before some of the banks we worked with said this is the None new product they’ve launched in ten or fifteen years so banks like most big traditional organizations are very slow moving. They’re very risk averse for very good reasons. Ah, and there’s ah there is a perception that banks do not innovate. Um. And I wanted to dispel that myth by sharing what I’ve already seen in my job by publishing this book about how different banks are approaching. Innovation. So there are 16 different banks around the world and I’m covering topics like buying building partnering and acquire or changing ways of working. So what I’ve been doing since I stepped down is spending a lot of time with banks on a consulting basis to advise them on specific projects I’ve also started investing myself in early stage tech companies I’ve done about 2024 investments in the last ten months in fintech and but also beyond that. Um, and I’ve also taken some time out to decide what I want to do next and one of those things was to to move to the us which is where I’m now based.

Alejandro Cremades: Now you’ve you’ve done other books too them. So tell us about those other books and perhaps like like maybe like 1 nugget you know of ah or maybe like something that people you know can really take you know for themselves from from this time with you from each one of those books.

Christer Holloman: Yeah I mean I think there’s 2 ways sounds to the question when I was working for the daily mail group I was asked to because I was active on social media. They thought I was a knowledgeable person to help them on social media. Um, and and I at the time didn’t really know much I started doing research. How can corporates already on social media. Take it to the next level and this was ten twelve years ago so this is very much the beginning of Twitter becoming mainstream and Facebook becoming like staple so I was intrigued how you elevate your social media presence when you’re already doing social media. Um, and I realized there was no books There were no guides written addressing businesses and their needs. So as I was speaking to people I offered them to con chapters and eventually that became a whole book that got published by by Wyley the book was became an Amazon bestsellers. It’s called the social media Mba. Translated into multiple languages and on the back of that they asked me to do a none none book also on social media but different aspects. Best practices case studies as well as how to measure the success. There are a why as I as a business leveraging social media. So what I would say. It’s not so much a nugget from the books but I would say anyone listening if you’re ah if you’re a person or professional that wants to further your personal brand. It’s great that you’re posting stuff on on Linkedin It’s great that you’re engaging in local communities and and contributing as a speaker or guest blogger. Whatever it might be. But I would challenge everyone to contemplate the opportunity of writing a book I think honestly that everyone carries at least None book within them and I think it’s very daunting and challenging to write like a novel like a story. Ah, but if we talk about what we do all day every day our day jobs I think we have a ton of experience. That is definitely worth worthy of sharing. So think that will be my None recommendation. Why have you not written a book and what steps can you take to to write a book and how can you do that in part-time alongside your day job. Um. And ultimately not only does it benefit you and your personal brand and your expanding your network is also hopefully benefiting your employer or the business you’re working for whether it’s your own business or someone else’s if you’re able to link what you’re talking about to what the business is working on and. And therefore create an opportunity for marketing material for white papers or whatever else like you can extract on the back who created this book.

Alejandro Cremades: Now for the you know one thing that I’d like to ask you here is imagine if I was to put you into a time machine and I put you back in time to that moment that you were perhaps you know working at Glass door and thinking about like Wow was going to be the future and maybe like something that you could do on your own. If. You could go back in time and give that younger self you know one piece of advice before launching a business.. What would you say you know and why give me what you know now. Yeah.

Christer Holloman: I think that um I think everyone should have a go at starting a business at some point in their career I think it’s a unique learning opportunity learning experience. I think it’s tremendously it develops you as a professional develops develops you as a person it gives you opportunity to learn new skills whether it’s managing people or managing investors managing a board. Maybe things that you wouldn’t necessarily have had the opportunity to do at this point in your career so by starting a business you kind of leapfrog maybe traditional. Career paths and and hierarchies and and put yourself in the driving seat. So I think ah don’t be so hesitant. So so what? what happened was that I I was fortunate enough to have roughly a one year worth of savings that I didn’t need to to earn a living as I mentioned I had to sell my car at the end. So I think it’s you know you need to recognize you need to save up to be able to take a step back from earning the traditional salary. So I think that would be the key thing start saving to put yourself in a position to not have to take a salary for at least you know, depending on. But industry. You’re in you know up to twelve months maybe

Alejandro Cremades: Now for the people that are listening a Krista what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi wonderful well Christ. Thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an honor to have you.

Christer Holloman: Linkedin is probably the the easiest.

Christer Holloman: Thanks for having me appreciate the opportunity.

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If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at [email protected]

 

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