Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom? For BarTrack founder Brett Danielson, being asked to leave college during his freshman year was the catalyst for his greatest transformation. In this episode, we explore the crucial distinction between failing—a temporary event—and failure—a choice to quit.

Join us as Brett shares his raw, honest journey from living in his car and working two jobs to returning to James Madison University as an honors graduate and building a successful startup. Discover how shifting your mindset from “I have to” to “I get to” can redefine your career, build unshakeable discipline, and help you turn life’s biggest setbacks into your greatest competitive advantage. If you’re ready to master the art of resilience and solve better problems, this episode is your blueprint for success.

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Failing And Failure Are Not The Same With Brett Danielson

In this episode, I have somebody that I ran into at a networking event and rekindled a conversation. I’ve known him since he was in college and I saw him at a pitch competition. It is none other than Brett Danielson. Brett is a JMU Alum. He is a Duke. I have the opportunity to go back to JMU. Brett, you’ll have to tell me how many years ago was that. How many years ago was the pitch competition?

Eight.

Years have gone by fast. I was there at my university. Many universities do this. They hold pitch competitions for their budding entrepreneurs to get networked and have people give them feedback. I saw a lot of amazing things that day but the one amazing person I saw was Brett. It was because of his way to wholly connect with an audience through humor, being unbelievably relatable and very passionate about this product that he had started jerry-rigging with duct tape. I was caught up who this student was. Since then, he and I have been able to maintain a relationship and friendship over the years through different groups at our alma mater and through other friends that we’ve now seen get married. Brett, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Tina. I’m excited to be here.

I told Brad. I said, “I just go fast and loose on this. I don’t have an agenda as to what we’re going to talk about.” He’s like, “Alright.” I want to start with where we met last and why, in that moment, I said, “Brett, would you mind jumping on a show with me?” Being who he is, he’s like, “Sure.” He didn’t ask me a whole bunch of questions about it. He was just ready to come on and have a conversation. We met at a networking event in Arlington, a couple months back. It was the beginning of what they’re calling the JMU Founder’s Network. It was a wonderful bar. What’s the name?

It’s Bronson Bierhall. It’s also owned by a JMU grad.

Thank you. I forgot the name. It was a big JMU fest. We were at Bronson Bierhall and we loved the fact that everybody was getting together. A lot of energy, but a lot of noise because it is a beer hall and they had a band playing.

It was brought on by a JMU guy and booked through the JMU company. I think he may have been a JMU artist as well. It was a big JMU night.

We’re there talking and people ask about networking events all the time. I look at networking events and I don’t mind them. I enjoy meeting new people. I enjoy going around and having conversations, but they tend to be very surface level. They tend to be very fast. You’re trying to catch what people are saying. It’s a lot of introductions and a lot of cards possibly being handed out. I end up towards the back where the band is with Brett.

We’re standing there and I’m like, “What’s going on? What’s happening in your life?” I don’t know how we ended up weaving into this conversation, but I learned so much about you that day. One of the things I learned about you is that before I met you at that competition pitch. You had quite the time in your early JMU career. Can we start with that? I don’t want to start on a downer, but everything goes up from there. Let’s start with that. That’s what I learned about you.

Brett’s Academic Struggles And Leaving JMU

I grew up in Northern Virginia. A lot of people out here in Nova end up going down to JMU. My freshman year at JMU did not go as planned. I didn’t realize that you were required to go to class. I did great on my quizzes and on my test. I aced all my homework and found out that I was failing everything for lack of attendance. That obviously threw a wrench in my freshman year and I had to leave the school. After my freshman year, they politely asked me not to come back. That took me on a journey of lots of hard work, let’s say. I’m working two jobs, seven days a week, trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.

You’re lost when you leave college early and you don’t achieve the goal. You didn’t graduate. It hits you like a ton of bricks. There’s a rough point probably in my life for that year or two, where I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, but who I was. Working hard in the heating and air conditioning, electrical plumbing world and then also working a bar job at night, was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I say that because it taught me pride in my work and showing up every day. Not calling out sick. Not missing jobs. It got me to appreciate the things that I didn’t appreciate before. The way I like to say it is, I had to go to class. I had to take tests. I had to be in college. That’s what I had to do. When I didn’t have that anymore, I realized what an opportunity it was to go back to college. I ended up going back to JMU. They didn’t want to let me in at the beginning, but I wasn’t taking no for an answer.

My mindset went from “I have to,” to, “I get to.” I get this opportunity. I get to go to class. I get to learn all these amazing things. I get to meet all these amazing people. That mindset switch combined with the work ethic that I had developed in between my first and second iteration of college set me up for success. I knew what I wanted. I knew who I was. I knew what mattered to me. I went back to college like a man on a mission. I ended up graduating with honors even with that horrible GPA that I had to carry for my freshman year.

Adopting A “Have To” To “Get To” Mindset

Before we go on, when I met you and you were in this, there was something else that you shared that night about where you were living. You were talking about the fact that you did HVAC work, but there was a little bit more color behind that. I wanted to sit there for a second because what I learned about you that night was a lesson for parents. I’m a parent and I was thinking when you were explaining to me you were acing your test, your quizzes and homework, but you weren’t showing up for school then they politely asked you to leave.

I was thinking as a parent, “How would I manage a student, who I love and I’m putting through school, the fact that he’s now no longer allowed back at that school?” You talked to me about your parents in that conversation and you also talked to me about what resulted in that short period of time that puts you in a position to realize how much of a gift life could be. Can we go back to that for a second?

I lived with my mother at the time and she paid for my first year of college. When I failed out, she was not happy with me. She also politely told me that I was not welcome at the house anymore, which resulted in me living in the car, couch surfing, and friends places. I was a nomad, let’s say. At the moment, it doesn’t take as big of a toll as you think but as you look back at it, it took a toll. It made me who I am. I am a big believer in second chances because I got a second chance at JMU. It changed my life. With that second chance, there’s that element of hitting rock bottom emotionally, physically, and mentally. I definitely hit that point for sure.

What was that like? You’re so on your couch surfing. You’re sleeping in your car. Your mom loves you but you would share that it was a tough love moment.

It was the, “You got to grow up,” moment. When it happens, you’re resentful, obviously. You’re like “What? What’s going on?” As I look back at it now, I’d say that was probably the most important thing that happened to me. That whole two-year period of my life where I failed out of school, got kicked out of my house as a result of failing out of school and had to figure out who I was. I made a commitment to myself that all this bad stuff had happened to me but I was not going to let it be a bad thing. I was going to make it the best thing that ever happened to me.

That switch in mindset that I mentioned earlier about obligation versus opportunity mindset or the have to versus I get to or just taking bad things that happened in your life and making them a positive. It’s an orientation that everybody could use and win from. It was what changed my life. I could have easily gotten mired down in the negativity and the things that I did wrong. My friends are graduating college and I’m working a job that’s radically different than they are. That feeling of being behind or not being where you’re supposed to be or not where you believe you’re able to be is tough.

Did you have anybody that was looking at your situation and saying, “Brett, let me mentor you through this or let me give you some advice?” Was this more introspection? If it was introspection, was there a moment or was it just a build up over time? You’re working in the present to move to a better present. What was that for you?

Building Resilience Through Internal Mentorship

It was more internal than external. At that time, I was doing a lot of thinking about who I was and what I wanted to be and what was the meaning of my life. There was a moment if you’re looking for that moment that changed everything. I have a young half-brother who’s twelve years younger than me. I remember I was like 19 years old or maybe 20 or somewhere around there. We’re playing knee basketball because he’s a little kid. We’re playing in the basement and we’re having fun. I thought about what role model I want to be to him. I thought, “What is he going to think of me when he’s my age now?”

It made me spiral into the, “Am I doing what I want to be doing? Am I capable of more? How do I rebound from this situation?” I got intense. You know me. I started listening to podcasts, to motivational speakers, and building back up my confidence, maybe that is the right way to put it. My now wife at the time had just finished Hurston at Community College and was going to JMU. There were a lot of forces in my life all at once saying, “You got to get back in the game,” and I got back in the game.

You got back in the game big time. Thank you for the reminder of your younger brother because as you were telling that story, I was, “I do remember him sharing that as well,” but it was so loud that night. I remember that story. It’s almost as though you were trying to figure out, “How can I be a mentor to this kid if I’m at this place in my life?” You were mentoring yourself out of the situation. Where were your friends during all of this? I never asked you about your friends. You’re a likeable person. I’m not throwing any shade.

They’re all in college doing their thing. I had great friends that let me stay on their couch and all sorts of different stuff. It’s not like I was out there all by myself. A lot of my friends from high school are all in college and I’m the one guy back at home. We still communicated and talked. I went and visited them and things like that, but it’s a lot different when you’re disconnected from that ecosystem. It was a tough time in my life but that tough time is the reason why I believe anything’s possible.

If you look at the odds of somebody with a 0.7 GPA in their freshman year. 1) Getting back into that school. 2) Excelling at that school. 3) Starting a business during college. 4) Making that business successful. All of those things most people would say are impossible. What it taught me is that, if you put your mind to something and you commit, anything is possible. It makes you resilient and somewhat ignorant to the risks. You’re like, “If I want this, I can get it. I can go and grab it.” That doesn’t mean that you’re reckless or something. It means you’re focused.

I went back to school and I said, “Every single opportunity that I can get, I’m going to take it. Every extracurricular, every teacher, I’m going to go to their office hours and I’m going to talk to them and get advice. Every test, quiz and homework I’m going to take seriously.” That builds like habits. It’s almost like going to the gym every day. You go to the gym every day to build habits and to build discipline around your physical physique or your health or whatever it may be. Those same habits can be mentally. I would argue that in most cases, it happens mentally first. You just don’t realize it. I had to make such a conscious effort to lean into what my potential could be if I gave it everything I had.

You mentioned a word that’s interesting. It was something I was ruminating on and that is about habit building. It’s just funny that you just mentioned this whole thing about habits. I want to ask you a little bit more clarity on. What habits do you believe people should be doing that would be highly beneficial in their life? Maybe it’s habits that you’re good at doing that you had to bring for yourself. You mentioned earlier that when you were in school, you had to do school.

There were habits that you were doing, but they weren’t necessarily because you had built them yourself. It was because you were following a system. All of a sudden, the system failed to you or you failed in the system somehow. You had to rebuild habits. Is there anything else in habit building that you want to share? Something real there with you when it comes to habit building.

It’s hard. It’s significantly easier to break a habit than it is to build a habit. I forget who says the quote, but it’s what pops into my mind when you ask the question on habits. Which is like, “Discipline is like the most important thing in your life,” I would say. There are plenty of times as a college dropout or even going back to college or even being the CEO of the company, or the founder of a company where you’re not having fun. There is a lack of motivation or it’s harder than you thought.

That’s just it. Discipline has to make up for lack of motivation because sometimes it’s not fun.

That’s right. The quote goes essentially like, “Motivation comes and goes but discipline brings the motivation back.” I wake up every day early. I do the same thing every day. I work hard. Even if the day is poor or not going the way that I want in any aspect of my life over the years, I don’t quit. I didn’t throw in the towel. I didn’t say, “This homework is too hard. This test is too hard. This decision I have to make, the company is too hard. Things aren’t going the way that I want.” I never threw the towel in.

Distinguishing Between Failing And Being A Failure

Interestingly, you did fail. You just never quit.

Failing and failure are two different things. You can fail but what makes you a failure is your lack of pursuit of continuing to try. That’s a classic in every entrepreneurial journey, too. I have never met an entrepreneur in my entire life where they’re original business plan was the one that made them successful. Never. What does that mean? What’s the lesson there? It’s that you’re going to fail. You’re going to have assumptions that are wrong. It’s going to be harder than you think. It’s going to take more money than you think.

Being focused, being disciplined in business on what the problem you’re trying to solve is, is always the right answer. For me in my early life, the problem I was personally trying to solve was, what was my potential? What was I capable of, versus business. Which is solely focused on your problem. My problem in my business is I want to create remarkable drinking experiences for every guest across every beverage. I don’t care if it’s soda, beer, cocktails, wines, or whatever. If it’s on draft, I want the person that’s drinking it to have an amazing drinking experience.

Everything that we do is focused on that. When the times get tough or decisions are hard, that’s the North Star. The same thing with people personally. Whatever your personal goal is, that’s your North Star. My personal goal for me still is trying to figure out what my potential is. I still don’t know what it is. I have this feeling and I’ve never voiced this out loud, so I don’t know if a lot of people feel this way. In a business like mine where you’re chasing something big, you feel like you’re always trapped in the middle of the ladder. Every wrong you climb up, another wrong, adds to the top because your ambition is so high.

You’re like, “Now that I’m here, I can do this. Once I get there, I can do that, and once I get there, I can do that.” It’s like this feeling like you’re not making momentum but you’re making him crazy momentum. The goals are getting loftier. The progress is moving forward, but you don’t necessarily feel it in real time unless you reflect on it. Every time I get to a new stage of the business or we do something spectacular, it doesn’t excite me the way that you would think it would excite you when you’re thinking about it years ago.

Some of these milestones we’ve crossed are incredible. When we cross them, I’m like, “Cool. On to the next thing.” We’re nowhere close to where we want to be. I’m nowhere close to where I want to be personally and professionally. I want to improve my skills, but if I were to ask the twenty-year-old Brett who was a college dropout like, “Did you just do this?” That guy would have been like, “No way.” It’s that weird feeling for me at least.

Feeling like I’m making progress, but I’m not closer to where I want to go. The more impossible things that I or we accomplish, the more impossible things that I can accomplish in the future. That may capture some of that entrepreneurial disease that a lot of startup founders have right where they exit and they retire for a year then they can’t stay retired. There’s that addiction and pushing yourself to the limits and figuring out what you’re capable of.

I gamify it like you when you were saying, and then there’s another wrong of the ladder that all of a sudden appears. It’s like a game. You got to keep doing that. In order to rationalize the nonsense, I always say, I’m just reaching for a better problem. The problems that young Brett had in comparison to the problems that current Brett has are still problems. It’s just a different problem. If problems are always going to exist, we should pray for better problems.

I have a similar saying which is like, the problems never go away. They just evolve. Whatever you thought your number one problem was with your business plan, it never ends up being the number one problem. Another saying that I love in business is, “Businesses are a game of constraints.” They both relate to each other where my job and our job is to move constraints. Whether its commercialization, operations, supply chain, engineering and innovation pace. Whatever that constraint is, our job is to move the constraint. As you move constraints you bring in new problems and move problems around and the problems of all.

Very well said. Very real. Let me ask you. You haven’t exited. Not yet at least. In your pursuit of making every beverage the best experience for the consumer, do you stop to reflect? When you reflect, what do you reflect on? What do you allow yourself to sit in at that moment or maybe you’re going to do it now?

I spend an inordinate amount of time reflecting on the things that I did poorly on a day-to-day basis. Some people say, “That’s negative. Why are you doing that?” It’s because I want to get better. Every day, I go home and I think about every interaction I had with my team, with a customer, or with an investor in everything that I did. I say, “That one conversation, I wasn’t prepared or I said the wrong thing or I let my emotions get the best of me or whatever it is.” You smack yourself in the head and you’re like, “Don’t do that again.”

I would say spend an inordinate amount of time reflecting that way. In terms of the stop to smell the roses stuff, maybe once or twice a year. There’s moments in the business where you’re like, “We might do this thing. We’re getting pretty close. We’re making a pretty big impact if this one thing happens or that one thing happens.” You start to think about it that way, about how far we’ve come. It’s great, but I try not to get overly excited about the progress we’ve made because we’re not done yet. Looking at the basketball game, the Nicks and the Spurs. The Spurs were up 30 points and they lost at home.

Before this episode, I just talked to a guy who’s leaving. He was outside in the watch party outside of the arena. I can’t even imagine what that was like. He’s like, “Tina, I got to call you back. I’m going to be late for my flight.” He had way too good of a time at that game.

That’s why I don’t celebrate. I’m not pumping myself up and saying, “You’re the best. We’re amazing. We’ve done it.” We haven’t done anything yet. We have a ton of potential and we are on the right track, but we got to finish the game. I don’t think too much about it. In moments that are hard, in my life, I always say, “You can push through. You can make this happen. You’re capable of doing it.” There is some of that self-talk that exists for sure. The most important thing to accomplishing anything in your life is believing that you can do it.

That’s huge right there because I was going to ask you then you answered the question before I could even ask it. You see potential. You move to potential. You are constantly thinking of potential and trying to achieve potential. That’s hardwired in you, but you’ve probably met plenty of people. I’m thinking about the student population who are plugging away and they haven’t realized their potential. Now, they’re getting ready to cross the stage to go get a piece of paper and start in the real world.

They’re moving into a space where there’s no longer a system. They have to build their own system. They have to create their own habits. They have to go out and realize their own potential. What would you say to people who are on that precipice and are nervous about, “I don’t even know what that could look like for me?”

I would say that you have to know who you are and what you value. That’s the most important thing.

Did you ever have a definition of success? In those years where you’re like, “I got myself out.” Did you ever create some definition of success or were you like, “What I value is not this. This is hard. I want to go back. I want to do this?”

Redefining Success As Internal And Purpose-Driven

When I say like what you value, I mean like more kindness to others, showing up early and leaving late. Dedicating personal time for professional improvement and doing a kind gesture to a stranger. As a human being, those are values that we all require. They’re important for your journey as you’re coming out of college and going into the workplace because most people in my experience don’t get fired because they do a bad job. They get fired because they’re a bad cultural fit or a bad person or have the wrong values. If you know what your values are and who you are as a person, there’s going to be natural ebbs and flows in your career that happen. Your North Star is your value.

It’s like, “I want to do something nice for somebody every day. I want my wife to know that I’m there for her whenever she needs me.” One of the things that I value the most for me is pushing myself to the absolute limit and finding what that limit is. I don’t know if I’ve found it yet. You asked the question about my definition of success. That was one of the things that a lot of the podcasts or YouTube videos or whatever that I was watching, would always say. It’s like, “You got to figure out what your finish line is.”

I took it in a radically different way, which was I’m not going to define what my finish line is. I’m going to leave it undefined. I’m going to push myself as hard as I can to be the best CEO that I possibly can be. The best Brett that I possibly can be. Wherever I land is wherever I land because I don’t want to be anchored in something material like, “I want to be a millionaire or I want to sell a business or I want to travel the world or I want to retire when I’m 50 or whatever.” I want it to be more emotional, spiritual and more meaningful.

I was going to say you did hint that when I asked you about, was there a mentor or advisor and you said it was more internal than external. You’re saying the same thing again now. That you decided not to create some external construct of a definition of success preferring to focus on the internal version of who you are and follow those values. That’s what I heard, which is very powerful.

There’s the other side of that, too. What if I said my goal was to make $10 million? When I was twenty years old, I didn’t even think that would have been my goal. It would probably be like making a million dollars. What if I’m capable of making $100? What if my goal was to retire when I’m 50? What if that’s a bad goal? What if my goal would have been to help people or bring someone along? I could have retired early. All these things that you stand up in front of you as goals, they change. I bet if I asked you when you graduated college or when you were my age. What was your goal? I guarantee you what your goal is now is different from what it was then. If it’s not, then hats off to you, but I bet it’s different.

It’s very different. I shifted my whole life away from a 22-year-career because I had new goals. With that being said, I’m asking you what your definition of success is and I don’t have one either. I don’t have a definition that is external. I have a desire for what’s internal. I am very much aligned with what you said. It resonated with me. I’m sure it’s going to resonate with a lot of people. It is a different mindset.

I’ve never talked about it that way to my peers in entrepreneurship but I would have to imagine that if you were to look at the most successful entrepreneurs in the world that they all have that same bias like Elon Musk.

I was just thinking about Elon. I’m like, “This guy’s going to be a trillionaire.” I don’t think he put that as his goal. He’s just a curious dude that wants to try this and try that. “Let’s go to Mars.” Why not?

His goal was something immaterial. He wants to essentially, in his head, save the human race. I never heard him say what he wants to do. Why did he start SpaceX, Tesla, Solar City, and all these different companies? Why did he start them? I never once did he say, “It’s because I wanted to make money.” Never. There’s always some purpose and I find that inspiring as somebody that’s trying to live their life for a purpose. If I died tomorrow, I would hope that the people that are closest to me are the people that knew me or knew about my story would say, “He represented possibilities.” If you put your mind to something that anything’s achievable. That would be great, though.

That is a beautiful thing. A lot of people would think that of you.

I hope so. Some people might think I’m a crazy lunatic, but that’s also true.

I thought you were so charming then as a student and years later, I see how business and life have moved into who you were as a student and have polished you in certain areas here and given you new insights into that. It has been fascinating to read your newsletters and see you on LinkedIn. For those of you who are probably like, “You guys never talked about what Brett does or what even the name of his company is.” That’s not the point and we’re going to get to that in a second, but you can look him up.

Look up his name. Look up BarTrack and you’re going to look up everything. You’re going to see all the stuff. You’re going to get all of the facts, but what I like to talk to founders about or people that come on the show is, I want to talk about them, what they think, how they think and how they get there. That’s more important to me than what the resume says. You will see his resume, but I have seen this evolution of Brett that has been amazing.

The through line is still there, which is this guy puts forth tireless effort in achieving the next wrong of his best self. He’s never verbalized that to me until now. Every interaction I have with you is just another wrong of fascination for me as to what is possible. I’m definitely in that vein with you. What would you like to say when you think of the duct taping of the product in the place that you lived?

This is what we got and this is the idea of where you are and in multiple places. What would you like to say to entrepreneurs? What would you like to say about BarTrack? I do want to give you a second to talk about the company where you were, where you are, and where you want to be. We got a little bit of what you want the experience to be.

I would say the most powerful thing in the world is a great idea and the most important thing in the world is a great team. For people that are doing a business like mine, not in the beverage space, you have to build something from scratch that nobody has. You got to sell it to somebody and no one’s ever bought it before. I would tell them that it’s very possible. The steps to do it are easier than you think in each step and harder than you think in multiple steps. Focus on the next step.

The most important thing that you can do especially if you’re a young entrepreneur is to build your network. Your network is your net worth. If you want to be successful in your endeavor, in your business venture then you better have some good people around you. That doesn’t mean just your team that you’re working with. It’s all the team that is advising you and building your skills and teaching you or showing you how to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that they’ve made in their career. I wouldn’t be where I am without amazing mentors. Zero percent chance means zero.

Do you want to give a shout to one of them by any chance? You can do that.

I don’t want to single out any one person because there’s been so many but they know who they are. They know that I appreciate them. Every opportunity I can, I tell them thank you for spending time with me. I’ve done a lot of good things. I’ve done a lot of bad things. I made some horrible mistakes. I’ve threaded the needle on some amazing decisions. A lot of that is due to having people that I can go and ask questions to that have experienced that have done it before.

I don’t care what anybody says. There is no substitute for experience. There’s no book that you can read that’s going to give you real world experience and people with gray hair, if you will. They got gray hair because of the knowledge that they’ve learned over many years of making mistakes and making successes. It’s our job as young entrepreneurs to get that information from them. A saying that we say at JMU a lot of the time, which I completely relate to in this vein is, “Hold the door for the person behind you.”

They say it to every kid in orientation because they mean literally hold the door. After you graduate and you go on to your career, it’s more of a figurative or metaphorical thing where there are other people that are out there that are going to hold the door open for you. It’s your job to seek them out and walk through the door. There are people that are out there that are willing to help you. That’s what I would say.

When you are on campus, out of curiosity because there’s a lot of distractions on campus and certainly there’s this. We all have one. That can be unbelievably distracting. What would you say is a good best practice as far as building that network on campus?

The Power Of Face-To-Face Networking

I’ve built a pretty incredible network with almost zero social media. I haven’t posted on Facebook in almost 15 or 20 years. I don’t have Instagram. I don’t have TikTok and Twitter. I don’t have any of that stuff. I have LinkedIn, but my network wasn’t built on LinkedIn. My network was built by going and talking to people face to face. My network was built on taking opportunities and going to my teacher’s offices and telling them what I want to do and that I needed help.

They would introduce me to someone and then I would tell that person my story and what I wanted to do. That person would introduce me to somebody and that’s how your network grows. You can build a network on social media. You can build a network a million different ways. There’s no one right way to do it but, for me, it was in person events talking to people and then following up. That’s how I build my network. It was one person at a time.

Keep it very simple and very manageable.

You can create more meaningful connections with people face to face or on a video. If you’re going to send someone an email, you don’t realize people like you or people like me get 50 emails like that a day. How many times do you go to an event and someone makes an impression on you in person? That’s almost what you’re describing about me when you saw me at JMU. If you would have sought in a newsletter, you’ve been like, “Cool. Whatever,” and it would have been gone. I went down to James Madison University because I sit on the GCFE Advisory Board.

I talked to the accelerator program down there. There were people that tracked me down afterwards as I was walking to my car to talk to me about their business. That made an impression on me. I guarantee you they probably hit me up on LinkedIn or email before and I’ve never answered. Now, I know their name, I know what they do and I want to help them. It was just that face-to-face interaction. It’s six one way, half a dozen another. You can do it a million different ways, but that’s what worked for me at least.

Everybody’s going to ask, “This guy sounds amazing. Can I come work for him?” Let’s talk about BarTrack for just a second as we’re coming to a close here. How’s BarTrack going? How are you guys doing? What’s the latest? What’s the thing that’s like, “This was my huge win or our huge win?” It’s because you are a team.

It’s been amazing. We improve 1% every day. You don’t see it over a week, but you see it over many months. The improvement that we make is incredible and it’s continuous. Our teams are amazing. We continue to grow and expand. Our big thing going into 2026 and 2027 is the expansion into soft drinks. That’s where things are going. That’s the next big thing I should say for us. We’re very excited about that product offering. We think it’s going to make a huge difference in the market. It’s been a lot of fun doing something new with the hardware.

I love your story, Brett. I cannot thank you enough for joining us. For those of you reading, this is a guy to watch. As I said, I have been fascinated with him ever since I saw him on stage at JMU. He continues to not only improve himself, but bring people around him and support them and their Improvement. I know a lot of his colleagues. They speak so highly of him. It’s a wonderful thing to watch. I’m so proud of a fellow Duke reaching for the stars.

Sky is the limit with you. Don’t set that definition. Get 1% better every day. I’m rooting you on every single step of the way. I can’t wait to see you next time either at homecoming or wherever we’re going to connect in this world. Thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else that you’d like to say?

No other than thank you for having me. This was great. I appreciate it. If there’s anything that I can ever do for you, don’t hesitate to let me know.

That’s Brett. Happy birthday to your wife. Enjoy the fly fishing and we’ll catch up real soon. Everybody, thank you for tuning in. We will see you on the next episode where we’re going to continue to bring the most exciting guests with the best stories that we can possibly find.

Important Links

• Brett Danielson on LinkedIn
• BarTrack
• Bronson Bierhall

About Brett Danielson

Brett Danielson is the CEO and Co-Founder of BarTrack, a hospitality technology company focused on transforming draft beverage operations through data, automation, and real-time visibility. With a background rooted in both hospitality and startup execution. Brett has built his career at the intersection of operations, technology, and scalable growth. As CEO, Brett leads overall company strategy, product vision, and go-to-market execution. He has driven BarTrack from concept to a rapidly scaling platform used by leading operators, distributors, and global beverage brands. Under his leadership, the company has developed a data-driven ecosystem that improves draft quality, reduces waste, and unlocks measurable profitability for hospitality operators. Brett has been instrumental in building a category-defining solution for draft beverage management, integrating hardware, software, and analytics into a seamless platform. With a hands-on approach to leadership, Brett has built and scaled core functions across product, sales, and customer success. He has led early-stage growth initiatives, strategic partnerships, and pilot programs with enterprise customers, turning operational insights into scalable business solutions. Brett has been recognized as a Washington Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree in 2025 for his leadership and impact in the region’s startup and hospitality ecosystem. He also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Gilliam Center for Entrepreneurship at his alma mater James Madison University, supporting the next generation of founders and innovation in the hospitality and technology sectors.