Episode Details

David Forman was an entrepreneur long before everyone decided they wanted to be one.

At eight years old, he was selling gift wrap door to door. At ten, he was flipping video games on eBay. By fifteen, he was buying broken laptops, repairing them and selling them for a profit. Before he'd even finished school, he'd already started multiple businesses.

So naturally, he became an auditor.

This week on Random Access Memories, I sat down with David, co-founder and CEO of Mastermind, to talk about why we're so obsessed with entrepreneurship, what it actually takes to build a business and whether we've started confusing being a founder with being successful.

David spent years at EY, travelling more than 200 nights a year, learning how businesses operate and building a career that looked pretty successful from the outside.

But his personal life was falling apart.

He married his high school sweetheart at 22, having been together for ten years. Eighteen months later, they were divorced. David found himself single in his mid-twenties, throwing himself into work and trying to work out what came next.

We talk about the impact of that experience, finding love again with his wife Tori, becoming a father to Cooper and how his priorities have changed.

We also get into the less glamorous side of entrepreneurship. Building Mastermind without outside investment, refusing to grow simply for the sake of growth and what happens when you lose a customer responsible for more than 20% of your revenue.

There's a particularly interesting discussion about whether young people are rushing to become founders without first learning how to work, communicate, manage people or build something customers actually need.

And why spending ten years working for someone else might be the best preparation for starting your own business.

David was also the first person to sponsor Random Access Memories, before I'd even properly worked out what this podcast was going to 
become. We finish by talking about why he took that chance and what genuine relationships mean in business.

I think we've become far too obsessed with the idea that entrepreneurship is somehow more impressive than employment.

Starting a company doesn't make you successful. Building something worthwhile does.

And sometimes the hardest part of building a business has absolutely nothing to do with the business itself.

In this episode...

• How David went from selling gift wrap at eight to running multiple businesses before university
• Why a lifelong entrepreneur decided to become an auditor at EY
• Whether we've started glorifying entrepreneurship without understanding what it takes
• Why corporate experience might make you a better founder
• The communication skills younger professionals risk losing
• Building Mastermind without venture capital or outside investors
• Why David doesn't want to build another enormous professional services firm
• Losing a customer responsible for over 20% of revenue and dealing with the responsibility of employing people
• Spending 200 nights a year travelling and the impact on his personal life
• Marrying his high school sweetheart, divorcing at 24 and having to start again
• Finding love with Tori, remarrying and becoming a father
• Why relationships should never be purely transactional
• The advice he'd give his son about entrepreneurship
• Why David became the first sponsor of Random Access Memories