From the Start up to the End up: From the Better Lab to One Real Voice & Beyond - Andrew Vontz x Shannon Jones redactedLast week, my friend Andrew Vontz did something unusual on his podcast "Choose the Hard Way" – instead of interviewing someone else about a hard thing they'd done, he invited me to guest host and interview him about his Better Lab journey. From startup to wind-down, financial consequences, and what comes next. As someone who's been alongside Andrew throughout this entire entrepreneurial adventure – advising, supporting, and watching every decision unfold – I was uniquely positioned to dig into the stuff most entrepreneurs whisper about in private but rarely discuss publicly. We talked about something I rarely hear entrepreneurs discuss openly: the actual financial consequences of having your company close. Not the sanitized "lessons learned" version, but the brutal reality. The Net Doesn't Always Appear (But You Might Be the Net) Everyone loves that saying, "leap and the net will appear." Andrew's here to tell you the net often does not appear – he's got stories about the proverbial Looney Tunes freefall off the cliff. But what emerged from our conversation is this insight: sometimes you are the net. The Axel Rose Problem Andrew had this great metaphor about feeling like Axel Rose instead of Duff McKagan in his previous role at Strava – sometimes you realize you're not the bass player, you need to be the one with the big ideas, expressing them on a bigger canvas. Even when that means walking away from lucrative opportunities to bet on yourself. What I Learned About Resilience Having watched Andrew's journey up close, what struck me most was his evolution from someone who felt dissociated and disconnected in his previous role to someone with absolute clarity about his path forward. The entrepreneurial crucible – including the financial stress and uncertainty – became a forge for self-awareness. He's now building One Real Voice to help senior leaders, professional athletes, and politicians become great long-form communicators, because being great at podcasts and extended conversations is now mission-critical and very different from traditional media training. Listen to the Full Conversation If you want to hear Andrew get vulnerable about financial insecurity, entrepreneurial identity, and why he thinks every human contains all the information they need (plus the story of how I once choked him out at TRX), give it a listen. Subscribe to Choose the Hard Way wherever you get your podcasts. Check out Andrew's work at onrealvoice.com and follow his journey at alwaysthehardway.substack.com.