Dave Borden, who sold his first business for $19MM tells his story on what it takes to be a serial entrepreneur, selling too soon, and the definition of what "entrepreneur" really means.

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Sample Transcription

Dan Daugherty

Welcome to this episode of The Big Exit. I'm here with Dave Borden who sold his company in 2006 for $19MM. I wanted to structure this episode a little bit differently and actually get into the psyche and the mind of serial entrepreneurs and Dave has built multiple companies throughout the last couple decades. Some have been successful and some have failed, but we will talk more about his story. Dave, thank you for joining me.

Dave Borden

Thanks for having me Dan, we'll talk more about the success hopefully, but yeah, there's probably a lot more to learn from the failures but the successes are obviously more fun. So..

Dan Daugherty

Well, let's start at the beginning, even in childhood, you grew up in Colorado Springs, correct?

Dave Borden

Yeah. I grew up mostly in Colorado, but yeah, probably from about sixth grade on I was in Colorado Springs.

Dan Daugherty

And did you always want to start a company, or were you influenced by your parents? Were they entrepreneurs?

Dave Borden

Yeah, from a very young age, I always wanted to have a business of my own and I didn't really know exactly what it was, but both my parents were, they were entrepreneurs and they still are. And so I grew up from about the age of five where my family never worked for anybody else, and they always were able to provide plenty of income and do well. So I guess I was never scared of starting a business and I've only worked for, other than my time in the army, in a very brief stint in corporate America, I've never never worked for anybody other than myself.

Dan Daugherty

Did you, you know growing up, even my mom actually ran Daugherty Construction and she also built pools. But one of the things I remember is that she was always stressed out about money. Did you see that at all with your family?

Dave Borden

Okay, a couple rare times? Yes, I will say, my dad. I love him to death. He's also one of the most frugal guys I know. So, he never had a desire for fancy stuff and he was always very good at saving. However, we did have a pretty rough time and I think it was early eighties, like eighty one, eighty two, we used to live in Steamboat actually and it was before the big ski boom. So they had, they owned a bunch of property in real estate and they've always been into real estate and investing but the market really went sour, nothing was selling and even though I know we had some good savings, I know it dried up pretty quickly and that's the point where we pretty much moved.

We were forced to move to Colorado Springs just because there wasn't any income there. I think my dad actually took a job at a hardware store for about six to twelve months just to pay some bills. We didn't really have many bills like I said, my dad was very frugal. That was a pretty rough time and I think they just decided that we needed to pick up and go somewhere with a little more opportunity.

Dan Daugherty

Subconsciously, do you think that helped transform your ideas, your ideals, and your thoughts about starting a company?

Dave Borden

Well, I think I was pretty young at that time. I'm 48 now. I think at that time, I was under ten, maybe eight or nine, maybe ten. Well. I don't know, sixth grade whatever that is, ten, eleven, twelve, something like that. I did see you can feel the struggle, even though my parents never talked about it, but we were okay and I don't remember ever a time with my parents that we, you know, had bill collectors calling or we were late on mortgages.