What happens when you spend seven years building a business without making money—and almost everyone around you thinks it may be time to quit?

On this episode of the Mile High Success Podcast, Nick Elder sits down with entrepreneur Zach Garfias to talk about the long and difficult road behind building and eventually selling his real estate software company.

Zach’s path was anything but simple. He started in real estate at a young age, moved into distressed property investing, built a demolition company, and eventually decided to take on the real estate software industry.

What followed was seven years of persistence, uncertainty, financial pressure, and sacrifice.

Zach shares what it was like to keep believing in his idea when even the people closest to him were worried. He opens up about risking his mother’s home equity to keep the company alive, living out of his car, and reaching a point where he finally walked away from the business—only to realize he wasn’t finished.

That decision changed his life.

Zach eventually sold the company and went from worrying about basic expenses to facing an entirely different challenge: figuring out what to do with money after a major financial change.

Nick and Zach also discuss why entrepreneurs need smart people around them, the value of getting advice from several trusted experts instead of just one, and why happiness should come before money.

Zach also shares what he is building next with VNTR, a new consumer packaged goods company designed around his love of adventure and the life he wants to live.

At its heart, this conversation is about much more than business. It is about persistence, belief, guilt, gratitude, money, happiness, and having the courage to keep going when the outcome is far from certain.