StandOut Authority’s Joshua B. Lee – The Human Side of Success

Entrepreneurs are either born or made.

So says Joshua B. Lee, the “Dopamine Dealer of LinkedIn,” and founder of StandOut Authority. 

And Lee was one of the first group. Growing up, he had a gift for seeing things from a different angle, sussing out opportunities where others didn’t. From his first unofficial business selling candy from his school locker, which, since his parents purchased the inventory, had excellent margins, Lee was always asking, “How can I monetize this?” 

That sentiment resonates with most entrepreneurs. It’s the foundation of the entrepreneurial spirit — actively seeking out change, innovations, improvements, and opportunity. It pushes founders to found, and creatives to create. 

But it’s a sword with two very sharp edges. It can spur ambitious advances and innovations that, quite literally, change the world. But not all of those changes are good — least of all to the soul of the entrepreneur who’s motivated by money alone.

It was that kind of thinking that brought Lee a lot of monetary success, but ultimately led him down a bad path. 

Beginning the Journey

Lee got his start in early 2003 in the world of online marketing. He worked to help MySpace monetize, and with them, created one of the first ever social media ads. That work went on to be the model for the social media ads that followed. He also worked with Google before they were Google. 

Throughout his career, he’s had advertising spends of over a half of a billion dollars, which generated over 35 trillion online impressions. And he’s founded 16 companies — some good, some bad, and three which he was able to sell. 

But as it is for all entrepreneurs, the journey hasn’t been all wins. Lee made his share of mistakes and has had his share of failure. 

Failing Forward

In an article he wrote and posted on LinkedIn in February, Lee takes us back to 2007. He was sitting at a table in Las Vegas’ Playboy Club at the top of the Palms Casino. Some drinks had been drunk. Some bets had been placed. He’d been breathing the overly oxygenated air all night. And that’s when he made the biggest bet, and mistake, of his career. 

With one good-faith handshake and zero due-diligence, Lee agreed to a business deal that would ultimately cost his company $1.3 million and $9 million more in lost revenue. After trying to pursue litigation, Lee eventually decided to take his licks and focus on rebuilding. He calls the experience a tipping-point in his life. “I needed to get my entire life together, not just my business life,” he says. “I had to make upgrades in every area if I was to have the life I wanted.” 

Lee credits that bad bet as what led him to becoming the person he is today. “I’m much more centered, and not only more financially successful, but more successful in every aspect of life.” While he learned an effective, albeit expensive, lesson from that event, it wouldn’t be the last time life gave Lee the ol’ one-two.

The Big Reset

Still chasing paper by his mid-30s, running a business called Monsterpreneur, Lee found himself sitting in his home office one day, contemplating whether the money in his life insurance policy would be better for his family than he was. “I acted like nothing was wrong when internally I was going through so much.” 

Not long after that, Lee went through a divorce, and closed 10 companies, liquidating everything. He walked away as a 36-year-old man, moving back in with his parents, and a little less than $1,000 to his name. 

Once you understand failure, you appreciate success so much more.

Joshua B. Lee

This was a time Lee calls “the big reset.” It allowed him to slow down, take stock of his life, and rebuild it according to a vision that he didn’t have as a younger man. And going through another failure was what allowed that to happen. “I don’t think you have to fail to be able to succeed,” he says. “But once you understand failure, you appreciate success so much more.”

He stopped asking, “How can I monetize this?” and started asking, “How can I add value to this?” And it’s precisely that paradigm shift that drives what Lee and his wife Rachel do at StandOut Authority today. 

StandOut Authority

After a stint as a mala-bead wearing life coach, Lee realized that he could make a bigger impact for people drawing from his background in marketing and business. He started StandOut Authority in 2014 as a business that works with entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals to help them humanize their brands and build real human connections in online marketing spaces. 

“We are now the human algorithm behind some of the best thought leaders, influencers, and changemakers in this world,” he says. “We help them educate, inspire, and draw in their audience through the vehicle of LinkedIn.”

StandOut Authority’s goal is to remind people that human beings are behind every business, and ultimately, to help them connect with each other. “It’s not B2B or B2C,” Lee says. “It’s H2H.” Human to human.

Sharing Successes… and Failures

Because for Lee, connections are what’s really important. And that’s especially true for people on entrepreneurial journeys. Being an entrepreneur can feel like you’re on an island. The fashion in business used to be that you had to be a hardass to succeed. You held your cards close, you didn’t share your ideas, and you certainly didn’t open up about your mistakes and failures. 

That was the world that Lee came up in. “We were told don’t tell anyone about your cracks, the things that you’ve messed up on, the things that went wrong,” he says. “Because then they’re going to see you as weak.”

Fortunately that culture has changed. Now, there’s this tacit agreement that it’s okay to be vulnerable, it’s okay to share your foibles — and how you’ve learned from them. Sharing in that way can help entrepreneurs feel less alone. “That’s why I share so openly about what I’ve gone through,” Lee says. “I never want another soul, another entrepreneur to feel the same way I did.”

And Lee walks that talk, encouraging people to ask him anything. When it comes to his journey in business, he’s an open book. “I’ll tell you the worst — depression, all those kinds of things — because I know other people feel that, and I don’t want them to feel [alone] like I did.” 

Sharing his story not only helps foster connection, but it also allows Lee to pass down some of his hard-won wisdom to the next generation of entrepreneurs. “We’ve been sharing stories since the dawn of man… hoping to impart that knowledge on the next generation so they can do it smarter.”

A Life to be Proud of

What Lee values, out of more than two decades of entrepreneurialism, reflects his drive to add value in business, and to the world at large. Despite a career that’s made millions, lost millions, worked with major players in business, and rebuilt companies and his life from ashes, the things Lee is most proud of might surprise you. 

Or, actually, they might not.  

First, was his realization that you can always make money. What you can’t make more of, however, is time. That realization was what prompted the decision to close down his companies in order to not drag his kids through a long, drawn-out divorce. He says that a lot of people get so wrapped up in the minutia of the money, it takes forever and it hurts the family for longer. “Once I realized that and made the decision, it was the hardest thing I ever did,” he says. “But it was the best thing I did.”

Lee’s other proudest moment was when his wife, Rachel, decided to leave her successful job in the corporate world to partner with him at StandOut Authority. “She laid her bet down on me,” he says. “To be able to have someone have that faith in you, the person that you spend the rest of your life with — that’s amazing.” 

Appreciating All Aspects

Like most wise men, Lee acknowledges that if it weren’t for every success and failure he’s experienced in his career and life so far, he wouldn’t be who or where he is today. And if he had it all to do over again — he wouldn’t change much. “I probably would’ve made some decisions faster,” he says. “I would’ve tried to release my ego a lot more.”

But that relentless, infectious optimism wins out with Lee, every time. “I’ve got two amazing kids, an amazing wife. I live here in Austin, Texas, the freaking number one growing city in the country. I’ve got a roof over my head and I get to work with amazing people,” he says, smiling. “Yeah. I’ve had some downs. I’ve gone through some things, but I live a pretty blessed life.”