00:00
So let's do a little public math here. Let's break a rule.
00:03
He just launched this product. He had more demand than he was willing to let in. He let in five thousand people. That's twenty million in ARR
00:11
that he had on day one of launching his product.
00:24
Alright. What's up? It's me and Sam, two guys who you can't live without.
00:30
You know, I should really think about one of it to save
00:34
I literally just start talking and whatever comes out of my mouth is fine. And then also,
00:39
it's nine AM for me. I, you know, I wake up don't talk to anyone from eight AM to nine AM. So these are the first words I say. Period.
00:46
And, that's what came out. Alright. Well,
00:49
here we are. We both have one topic in both of our lists, which is very, very rare that we have overlap here. We both have this topic because there's a business that's sold for five hundred million dollars that is a bad ass story And it's called follow-up boss. I had never heard of this company before. I find out they sell five hundred million in cash.
01:07
Tell me about follow-up boss. You I think you know more. You know how I know about them. I know about them for two reasons. The biggest reason they're a Hampton member. And so I saw them post that they had just, sold
01:17
Man, this story's crazy. So I had never heard of this company. Have you? Never heard of him till today. So there's not really a reason why we would have heard of him other than we're just business nerds, but it's a real estate platform. So it's a it's a vertical software. And so basically the gist of it is that if you are a real estate agent or if you own a company that has multiple real estate agents, you get leads from Redfin Zillow, whatever else, ideally you get thousands of leads per month as well as you have homes that you're selling and people who are buying homes, you have to track them all. It's basically kind of what HubSpot or Salesforce does. But specifically for real estate agents.
01:51
The guy, Dan, he started it twelve years ago, I think. Do you know how he started it? That's what's fascinating about it. Don't know how he started, but but you're right. So the the gist of it is, it's a
02:02
niche down CRM. So agents get leads. They need to follow-up with those leads. You gotta keep track of all those leads. So it's a sort of hub spot for real estate agents just zoomed in zoomed away in on that one niche,
02:15
has a pretty insane exit. So how did they start it? So they what was the final sale? Five hundred million dollars to four hundred million dollars upfront cash and then another hundred million earn out. Let's see how this guy started. His name's Dan from Australia, but they live in Wyoming now. So I guess it's technically, it's a remote company, but they're a Wyoming startup. It's gonna be one of the bigger tech exits
02:35
out of Wyoming.
02:36
Man, listen to this. So he he actually went through the foundation remember that course, like, ten years ago? It was like a course to teach you how to start a startup. The foundation? No. I've never heard of that. Yeah. That's what it was called. And, it so it's like their greatest success story, I guess. Yeah. But they he went to this thing, and he started just trolling Facebook groups. And he was, like, working a normal job. He was a marketer at,
02:58
a normal big company. And he was like, I wanna start a company. I need some ideas.
03:02
And so he was like, well, I I've got a buddy in real estate that kind of interests me. So I'm so he started joining these Facebook groups for real estate agents, and he just started, like, skimming
03:11
in the all the posts of, like, what are people
03:14
complaining about. What's like a common thing? And he saw this guy complain. He's like, man, I'm paying five hundred bucks a month for the software that I hate for tracking all my leads. It kinda stinks, like, How are you guys, like, tracking your leads? And he saw, like, okay, that's interesting.
03:27
And so he partnered with a guy who's a developer, a friend of his, who's a developer. They build an MVP
03:32
They say that it took them, like, six six months, and they only had one customer paying a hundred and fifty bucks a month. But he said he goes, man, we built, like,
03:41
This interview that I read with him is a few years old, so I don't know if it was true till the end, but he's like, we basically built our entire business on Facebook.
03:49
But not Facebook ads, he goes, I would just go into all these Facebook groups as the CEO, and I would see them talk about like, hey, what's a good platform for this? It wasn't even related to follow-up boss, which was his software company. He was like, I was just, like, being helpful constantly. And people would click my Facebook profile and see that I was a CEO of this one platform or this one tech company, and then they would click off and buy it, and I would call them and become friends with them. But he became
04:14
They found this idea just through trolling Facebook groups, and they would see people complain about stuff, and he would DM them on Facebook and be like, hey, I think I'm building a solution for you.
04:22
I don't care if he bit or not, but, like, could you just give me ten minutes of your time so I could figure out and make sure I'm solving the right problem? And he did this so often that that's how they came up with this idea for the software. They bootstrap the whole company. I don't know how much their revenue was. The the
04:36
the only source that I found was a source that I don't entirely trust online, but it was, like, twenty eight million a year in revenue, less than a hundred employees.
04:45
And a huge echo. People have to tell you the revenue when you join Hampton. Don't you just have this? Can't you just take a peek at the quick HIPAA record here? But I would never cite that. And so I'm So I just googled, like, you know, follow-up boss revenue. And I'm just like, what what could I see that's public? Alright. So You're not so I don't know. Yeah. This this is a,
05:03
an awesome story and a good example of kind of the niche down,
05:07
the niche down zoom in pivot. And I think that this is You know, there's many, like,
05:12
business plan blueprints. So, for example, those guys from thirty seven signals, though what they're doing is they just go
05:18
Hey, what's a super popular thing, but has too many features. We're gonna make it do less. It take up less of your life. And that's, like, an ex as an example, you know, hey, their email client, they're like, yeah, just it's just gonna do these things in this way. Less features, the better. Less clutter, the better. And they're doing it again with once where they're doing software that you only have to pay for one time. No monthly recurring. Right? So the their thing is It's the stripped down version of x. I don't know if you saw, well, I don't know if you saw, but the guys who started, tuft and needle came out with a new company. Did you see this? Crazy. What's it called boring mattress? Boring mattress. So the guys who created tuft and needle, they were part of the DDC,
05:56
you know, mattresses were like the poster boy of the DDC wave that happened where Casper and tuft and needle and purple.
06:03
Got big, raised a bunch of money, burned a bunch of money, kinda didn't have a great exit. So these guys came back, and now it's just boring dot co is the name of their website? It's like, This is a plain mattress. Our friends told us that we should tell you about all the cool benefits
06:17
features
06:18
that will make this, quote, different and, quote, sellable.
06:21
But we're not convinced. We don't think you'll fall for that. So here's just a really good mattress that'll last you a while.
06:28
No frills.
06:29
And there's only four hundred dollars. Right? Or it's, like, it's cheap. Yeah. Five hundred bucks. And so that's their new thing. And so there's that's one blueprint in a business is to do The same thing with less less frills, actually, like, you know, brand less of a brand,
06:43
pump or or less features that you needed to to to use. Trello's a good example of this.
06:49
All productivity apps had more and more and more features. Chello was like, hey, we're just gonna have less features. Right? It's just the equivalent of index cards on the internet that you can move Alright, everyone. A quick break to tell you about HubSpot, and this one's really easy for me to talk about because I'm a show you a real life example. So I've got this company called join Hampton dot com. It's a community for founders doing between two million all the way up to like two fifty million dollars a year in revenue. And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these cool surveys. And so We have a lot of founders who have high net worth, and we'll ask them all types of questions that people typically are embarrassed to ask, but provide a lot of value. So things like how much the founders pay themselves each month much money they're spending each month, what their payroll looks like. If they're optimistic about the next year and their business, all these questions that people are afraid to ask, but, well, ask them anyway, and they tell us in this anonymous survey. And so what we do is we created a landing page using HubSpot's landing page tool, and it basically has a landing page that says, here's all the questions we asked. Give us your email if you wanna access it. And then I shared this page on Twitter, and we were able to get thousands of people who gave us their email and told us they want this survey. And I could see did they come from social media. I can see did they come from Twitter from LinkedIn. It's basically everywhere else that they could possibly come from, I'm able to track all of that. And then I'm able to see over the next handful of weeks how many of those people actually signed up and became a member of Hampton. In other words, I can see how much revenue came from this survey, how much revenue came from each traffic source, things like that. But the best part is I can see how much revenue came from it. And a lot of times, it takes a ton of work to make that happen. HubSpot made that super, super easy. You're interested in doing this, you could check it out HubSpot dot com, the links in the description, and I'll also put the link to the survey that I did so you can actually the landing page and how it works and everything like that. I'm just gonna do that call to action then.
08:27
And it's free.
08:28
Check it out in the description. Alright. Now back to MFM. There's actually another takeaway here, though, which is how long so you started an e commerce company? How long until you hit your first hundred thousand in revenue per month?
08:41
Like, three months, probably. Okay.
08:45
You're involved in Shepard.
08:47
How long do you think it took them to hit their first hundred thousand in in revenue?
08:52
I have no idea. I'm gonna guess six months. Yeah. Quick. Okay. Six months. So we're talking months.
08:58
Hampton took a short amount of time months as well. The hustle, I think it took nine months. Do you know how long it took follow-up boss to get to a hundred million in revenue? Or, sorry, a hundred thousand in monthly
09:09
Well, he said they had one customer for a hundred and fifty bucks, like hanging by a thread for a while. So is it more than a year to get to that first milestone?
09:16
Four years?
09:17
Four years. Four years.
09:19
Four years to get to a so I I was reading this interview with him. It took him four years. And they had eleven employees, and they're at a hundred thousand in in monthly revenue. They say they they said around a hundred thousand, so it could have been a little bit more. But what's crazy is these software companies. So I don't know what the revenue was. Like I said, I think it was between twenty five and thirty if you just Google, like, follow-up boss revenue. That's what I saw. They sold for four hundred, well, potentially five hundred, four hundred upfront. What's crazy is these software companies
09:47
We you and I both have this thing where we wanna go fast. We need to learn and have a little bit of this attitude. I got zero percent of this. You are more of a to it kinda guy. Do you think I mean, if you're under a hundred thousand in revenue,
10:01
four years in are you doing this still? It's hard. So, like, alright. So I have an audience now. So it would be Do you think you could've stuck with it? It depends where I was in life. If I was if it was twenty six year old Sam,
10:14
fifty percent chance. If it's where I am now, I would say five percent chance. It's it would be really hard. It would be it would be hard. Going into those meetings and be like, alright, guys. We're gonna review the metrics today.
10:24
Ear muffs, everybody. We're gonna send the revenue number, and then we're gonna have to do this. And then I say, we're at we're at forty two thousand in year four. And then I'm like, alright. But but there's other things to be, excited about. But we talked to Dharmesh about this, and Dharmesh is pretty,
10:39
He's pretty low key about it. He's like, it took forever. In reality, Dharmesh, Hubspot.
10:43
Dharmesh is the founder of HubSpot HubSpot. I think grew, like, actually a lot faster. But he was like, man, the first, like, six years, we only got to, like, four million or something. I forget exactly what he said. But he, like, conveyed the idea where he's like, it's a slog at first. Let's think about stop. That time, things just grew slower. Now things grow much faster. Right? The benchmarks and the expectations are way different.
11:05
But
11:06
you have to have faith. I mean, of course, we're talking about the one that worked.
11:10
And there's a lot there's so many more that don't work. But, like, to have that faith of, like, this can work and to stick to it for ten, eleven, twelve years,
11:18
if if you have the right, you know, metrics, this shit pays off. This these software companies are so much cooler than what we typically start. So I did a I remember many years ago. I did a fireside chat with Michael Birch, who was, at the time, was, you know, my mentor, he was my boss,
11:34
he's a guy who's built four or five super successful internet companies that scaled to millions of users. He's basically a billionaire at this point in Silicon Valley.
11:42
And a bunch of event entrepreneurs came over, and they were asking questions. One of the questions they asked was how do you know when to pivot or persevere?
11:50
Meaning, You hear the stories about follow-up boss or Pinterest where it's like
11:55
there was it was not taking off for a while, and then, you know, they stuck with it and then it did. And then pictures take a long time. Pictures took a long time. Like, the graph was, you know, not like some explosive social app at the beginning.
12:08
And,
12:10
and so they and I I turned to him because I was, like, I wanna know this answer too. This is, like,
12:15
the this is the I wanna know what is the guy who's done it in Silicon Valley? What does he what does he say? And he goes, this is the hardest question for any entrepreneur. It is deeply personal.
12:24
And situational. He goes for every, you know, one store you hear of a Pinterest that just keeps going after twelve months, even though there's no signs of life.
12:33
Know, there's a hundred people that did that and failed and you just never hear, but they don't get to talk at the conference. Right? So he's like, it's super hard because you have this survivorship bias to know
12:42
which stories should you listen to? And so he's like, I he's like, this is the one where there's no real advice you can get from somebody else. The one thing that we figured out at our company was, like,
12:52
We would set a timebox. We think we can hit this milestone by this date, and setting that timebox is really important because it keeps you honest. Upfront when you're super optimistic,
13:02
Alright. Let's say something then. We think that in the first,
13:06
like, I I set one for this new company. I haven't I haven't announced it yet on the pod, but I set one. I set I think we can get to five hundred thousand ARR in the first sixty days. So I think we can get five hundred k,
13:16
of revenue in the first sixty And I sent that. Now if we don't hit that, doesn't mean I'm gonna, like, throw in the towel or shut it down. It meant, like But maybe.
13:24
No. Me, you never know. Life's on the line for these companies. No. But But the reality is you set that so that you have to have a conversation about
13:32
why you didn't hit your expectations. What did what were you wrong about or what assumption did you have that was incorrect? Because It might be a fatal assumption, or it might just be, oh, I was just I underestimated how long it takes to do x. And that's okay. You could have that conversation.
13:45
The the thing we did, when I worked with Michael was we asked a question. What metric gives us the most faith? So what metric worries us the
13:53
most what metric gives us the most face. So let's say four years in, we don't have a a million or we don't have a hundred thousand of revenue. That's the one that worries us the most. We have very little revving. Okay. But what gives us the most faith? It's well, of the fifty two customers we do have,
14:06
they love it and nobody's churning. Right? Then it's like, oh, okay. What can I hang my hat on to give myself the excuse to keep going? And so I think that's a useful question to ask. If you don't know whether I should pivot or persevere, I think what metric is giving me the most faith and what metric is keeping me up at night. And then you can almost kinda weigh the two against each other. You know, if the thing that's giving you faith is, like,
14:27
Yeah. That one guy told me he likes it. It's like, that's not a very strong counter punch to the fact that the evidence on your revenue and usage side is pretty low. But it feels horrible when you're in it. So I posted a link in our MDB document. Okay. So it goes to a tech crunch. If you I remember it goes TechRarch article, but I remember when we were running the hustle. I looked up to bit there there weren't that many media companies to look up to, and so I really looked up to business insider.
14:50
And the reason I liked it was Henry Blodgett was fairly transparent about their traffics. And so Henry Blodgett,
14:56
they wrote an article. It looks like, maybe six years into a company, and he made a funny joke. He's like, we eked out a net profit of twenty one hundred dollars on revenues of four point eight million dollars
15:08
It's basically enough to buy a MacBook Pro. And,
15:11
and he reveals their traffic.
15:13
And you see that it looks like this nice like, arc, where it's, like, or this nice graph where it's, like, exponentially
15:19
going up. But it I remember when I was running the hustle, I was, like, well, there graph looked amazing. Like, it looked amazing. But then I zoomed in on this picture, and you could see that it's broken down by month. And if you really focus on it, what you could see is basically February of o nine, they hit an all time high, and then they didn't surpass that until something like December of
15:41
o nine. So, basically, for
15:43
whole year. The the for ten months, yeah, the whole year, which I think they it looks like they started in o seven.
15:49
So for ten months, two years into the company, the monthly traffic, which for a site like business insider, that's how they would gauge if they're doing a good job. It basically either went down or didn't go up.
16:00
And when you do that every single day, every single week, for ten months, it feels miserable.
16:07
And then you zoom out and you, like, see, like, okay. Well, it has gone up, but these graphs are never a smooth going up. And a lot of times, Sometimes I imagine for two years, it'll be pretty shit. Three years, for years, it'll be shifts. And then after a while, it starts picking up if you do a handful of things right. But that requires extreme faith, and it's very, very, very hard to manage your emotions every day when it's like that.
16:30
I totally agree. This is a,
16:34
Tony Robbins said this thing. He goes up. The number one choke point of any business is the psychology of the owner.
16:41
Like, every problem you think your business has.
16:44
If you do the root cause analysis, it goes right back up to the root to the psychology of the of the owner. Right. Let's say,
16:51
oh, we're not growing fast enough. Why?
16:53
Because,
16:55
you know, we don't have, our paid acquisition sucks. Why? Because we the guys running our paid acquisition has been doing it for six months in his life. You don't have somebody experience. Why? Because we're not hiring the right people. Why? Because our owner hasn't made that a priority isn't willing to spend money, right, or or is afraid to spend money on on talent. And so everything just goes back to the psychology of the owner, which is both empowering but also I think scary for some people. The empowering part is it's in your control. The the scary part is shit. It's my fault.
17:22
And it goes back you could also, like, go back to, like, what inefficiencies
17:26
or,
17:28
or, like, where does the owner or CEO? Where do they, like, suck? So, like, for example, I remember at the hustle, I was always fearful of overspending.
17:35
And so I was cheap about shit, and that was actually overly cheap. And when there there was times when Facebook ads opened up, And it's like, dude, we gotta spend more here. Looking back, I should have spent way more, but I didn't because I was being too cheap. And, like, why am I cheap? Well, because of all this other shit that I experienced in life. And so, like, it's basically, like, what did they say, like, a person with money? Is it it's just gonna, like, magnify the things that the traits that they already have, or, like, you always say that with people when they're drunk, oh, your your the true feelings are just gonna come out. Right. It's bay it's the same thing as with running a company, and you gotta, like, master that inner game. And it's really hard.
18:08
Yeah. For sure. Let's do another one.
18:11
I wanna talk about,
18:13
let's do you have this one. Peter levels is insane. Tell me the Peter levels is insane, one. That's a good headline.
18:19
I love this guy. So Peter levels we had in the pod. I think we've only had him once, but he's got an open invitation if he wants to come on again. So Peter Lovels, we both love him. He,
18:29
has, like, four or five different businesses that he runs. I think he's by himself doing it. Collectively his businesses probably do two million a year in sales, and he's super transparent
18:41
about all of it. So he puts his revenue in his bio on his
18:44
Twitter, he shares everything, really fascinating thoughtful guy. Did you see what he did with his stock portfolio? So he basically
18:52
So click that tweet and you'll see it. But he basically
18:55
created a Google sheet,
18:57
and he you can kinda I I don't he doesn't explicitly say it, but you could do the math. Says, here's how much my stock portfolio made me.
19:06
And it was up thirty two percent. So you can kinda, like, just do basic algebra, figure out how much he has in his portfolio, and he reveals
19:14
every holding that he has. And I think that a, I'm happy he is doing this, b, I would never ever do this, though. Like, it's this is, like, his transparency is wild.
19:26
But it's super fascinating to see what this guy is doing when it comes to, like, sharing his numbers, out in public.
19:33
It's pretty pretty fascinating. I gotta say two things about Peter. So, first, Peter, come back on the pot. We miss you. You've done a bunch of interesting stuff. This plus your new AI stuff that we didn't talk about yet. So I wanna do that. Second,
19:46
we've had a bunch of people on this podcast, some that have big names,
19:50
Some that have, you know, big,
19:53
big track records of billionaires or built this hundred billion dollar company or whatever.
19:58
Nobody. And I mean, nobody
20:00
has a higher approval rating
20:02
amongst
20:04
entrepreneurs on the internet that Peter levels. Have you ever met anybody? That is not a fan of Peter levels.
20:10
I've had billionaire friends, like, or associates
20:13
in a in a
20:14
in a conversation
20:15
and logo. That guy's doing it right. Everyone likes this guy. Put this guy's profile picture up on the
20:22
on the fucking screen. Go go to YouTube and just look at this guy's profile picture.
20:28
This is a personal branding seminar. Look at this guy's number picture. It's him on a couch in the, like, international pose of, like, guy scheming on the internet, just messing around, having fun on the internet, by himself. He's on a couch, half his body's dangling off. He's got his laptop. He's nowhere. No shirt. He's got his laptop up on a pillow because, you know, the laptop starts to just scorch you after a while. And he's at this messed up angles, next, all messed up. But you know, this guy is a one man band just having fun. And I this is why you're right CEOs of, like, you know, major companies are, like,
21:00
That guy. That guy's doing it right. Because everybody is jealous of being able to be this guy. A guy who's just one man in a laptop travels around the world, builds projects, whatever he wants for fun, he builds cool stuff like an artist that, whatever he builds, tends to have some some juice behind it because He's a very creative guy. He's had many failures, but who cares? And he's got a bunch of successes. He's very open about them. He's not trying to sell you anything.
21:26
Peter Level is a hero amongst makers, and nobody I I will contend as nobody has a higher approval rating on the internet. Amongst entrepreneurs and Peter levels. He's great, man. He's great. And I think on this podcast, a lot of people, like, oh, you're talking about just big companies too often or whatever.
21:43
And it's like, we always reiterate this. It's like, we like people who carve their path. And that path could lead to a huge exit. It could lead to something really small. Like,
21:52
just you could just be a great artist. It doesn't matter if it's a big money thing or not. And Peter Lovels, the reason why he's so fascinating is he has carved the hardest
22:01
and he sticks to it. He's very value based,
22:04
really, really, really cool guy. He he did a tweet that he goes. He goes, only four out of the projects I've ever done have made money and grown. Ninety five percent of everything I ever did failed, my hit rate's only five percent. So ship more. Says fifteen thousand likes. It is just literally a, like, a,
22:20
you know, like a VS code, like, a, a screenshot of projects that made money and grew four. He's got no bad list. Remote talk, rebase, and the YouTube network. This is before his AI thing. And then here's all of his lit all of his projects, and it's stuff like ice cream chat, Tubealytics, gift book, tell tailored telegrap chatbot, suit start up retreats dot com.
22:41
Places to work, fire calculator. I don't even know what any of these are, but Each one of these is, like, you know,
22:48
a a great week. It's, like, you know, a great weekend, that that was had by by him doing doing these projects.
22:53
You know that meme where it's like,
22:56
babe wake up. Sean Perry just tweeted again.
22:59
Or, like, babe wake up, you know, like, Peter levels bought a domain. Yes. Whenever Peter replies to one of my tweets, it's like one of those. It's like,
23:08
hey, wake up. Peter just said he liked what I'm doing. That's how I feel, about this guy. He really cool guy. And I have a theory that people
23:17
ultimately, what what is lacking in most people's lives is
23:21
that they don't live life on their own terms. And then the way that that expresses itself is,
23:27
you have a lot of fun when you're living life on your own when you're just doing your not your thing, you're doing your thing. And if you're doing your thing, you're having you're having a good time.
23:37
Peter levels, that profile picture of him on his couch, like, all crooked, just on his laptop, he's doing his thing. And I feel like this is Honestly, it's a bit of why people like this podcast. We're not the most prepared or researched or well spoken or whatever. But people could tell we have fun in our
23:53
lives. That we, like, we literally just do this shit that we wanna do, and we're having a good time. And it might be that the things we do are not at all the things you wanna do. Right? Sam's, like, buying a ranch and, like, you know, tipping cows and I don't know what else shit you do. I don't wanna do all that. But I can tell that you wanna do all that stuff, and that's awesome. It's great that you wanna do all those things. You know, you build your, like, gym and your farmhouse and whatever. All that good stuff. I think that
24:17
Peter Level is a great example of somebody who's just living life on his own term and that is one of the most attractive traits that people have in general. And it's so funny because what most people do is the exact opposite. Peterlevel has a bunch of influence, but when most people try to become influencers,
24:31
they, you know, strip down their personality and try to,
24:35
appeal to others, and and people could sniff that out.
24:38
Yeah. I I I I just think he's the best. And I DM him on a regular basis. He replies to me, ten percent of the time. So, Peter, if this makes it to you, come on the pod, man. Come on come back on. What do you got? Alright. Let's do,
24:54
So another person who is
24:56
gone from zero to hero,
24:58
Brian Johnson. Have you seen the t shirt that he wears lately? Don't die? Yeah. Don't die. Don't die. That's a new that's a new brand. You know what I like about it? It's the same look as the Austin three sixteen t shirts? Yes.
25:12
And I guess you should've just done Johnson three sixteen?
25:16
Don't die.
25:17
In fact, it's good, man. Make Johnson three sixteen, don't die shirts because That's who he should become.
25:23
Alright. So I was looking the other day because I saw that Brian Johnson finally started to sell something. And me and you had made a prediction about six months a year ago, we said, you know what? I don't think Brian's doing this for the money. I don't think he's doing this for the fame. Although, gonna make a lot of money, and I'm sure the fame, you know, the attention feels good in the moment. Very obvious prediction. Very obvious prediction. But we said
25:48
Dude, is this the greatest pre,
25:50
like, pre launch marketing stunt ever?
25:53
Because What he did was he basically turned himself into a character,
25:58
and
26:00
a lot of people have done this in the fitness niche he's not a fitness influencer. He he brand himself as a longevity influencer.
26:05
I live forever. Don't die influencer.
26:08
And he spent a couple million bucks,
26:10
on tests and content and building his brand. He came on pods like ours. And you can look at Google trends. You could see the interest in Brian Johnson growing over time. Actually, we should map out when our podcast was with him on that trend because I'm curious where that was.
26:24
And he has built an amazing following, and he's doing everything you should do as a an influencer. Not that he wants to be an influencer, but he's doing everything he's doing. Like, I don't know if you've seen his meetups that he's having lately, these runs that he's doing?
26:34
Yeah. They look awesome. These taking people and they chant, like, don't die, then they, like, run up a hill. Or something like that. And then they get at the bottom and they eat, like, Just just a pot of lentils, and they're all eating lentil. It's amazing. And so he's building his little cult, and it's it's a great thing. So he came out with his first paid product. Did you see it?
26:53
It was it it's the meal service. Right? No. No. No. So he came out with, like, a it's kinda like a meal service. It's, like, basically, it's a
27:01
a part one of his blueprint diet
27:03
as a red, you know, ready to eat sort of like delivery package. I think you pay three hundred thirty bucks a month And you get this thing, twelve thousand people applied. Wait. Wait. Wait. But what is how's it not? You you said I was you implied I was a little wrong with meal service. It is a meal service then, but it's just powder. Right?
27:19
Yeah. Yeah. It's not like meal delivery. It's not like blue apron, but it is, like, you know, the supplements and the drink and the when I when It's like some version some skinned down version of the,
27:29
of his, like, anti aging protocol. Got it. It's the blueprint self experimentation study.
27:35
And there's, like, a level one, and there's there's gonna be a level two or level three. So there's sixty seven interventions
27:41
in this. And it looks like there's a couple Powders. There's a bottle of olive oil, and then there's a bunch of pills. I like all those things. Powders, pills that powder pills and oils send me out.
27:51
So he
27:53
got five thousand p he, you know, twelve thousand people to apply. Five thousand people paid.
27:57
So let's do a little public math here. Let's break a rule.
28:00
He just launched this product. He had more demand than he was willing to let in. He let in five thousand people. That's twenty million in ARR.
28:08
That he had on day one of launching his product.
28:12
At twenty million of ARR for a subscription,
28:16
supplements business essentially is like a two hundred million dollar business. What do you think, athletic greens is that revenue wise? They they raised that at one point two billion in I meant their valuation. A hundred, a hundred fifties, I guess, maybe two hundred Wow. Max. Okay. Not yet, you know, but This is day one. The day one come out the gate with twenty million, and this is he let in less than half of the demand that he had. Right? So he could have been at forty million if he if he wanted to. Again, I don't think he's doing this for the money. But goddamn. That's a that is an impressive
28:44
start to a business, and it shows that I have this phrase now that I say. And my wife doesn't think it's cool, and she's the only one I've tried it on. But I say this.
28:52
I say all content is now marketing, and all marketing is now content. And this is what Brian Johnson did. He was put out content. It happened to be marketing.
29:00
And that that marketing is now leading to a lot of sales, for his new when you say that to your wife, I could just hear the world's loudest eye roll of, like,
29:10
shut the fuck up, Sean. That shit works on those fucking dorks out. Listen to you, but take out the fucking trash, Sean.
29:18
Did you warm out the mac and cheese like I asked you to or not?
29:22
Talking about.
29:24
This is awesome. It's sort of like, have you seen that? What's that movie where they talk about the biggest short? And, Ryan Gosson's character, you know, like, what are you getting out of this Ryan? And he goes, look, look, listen, bitty. You're getting the ice cream. You're getting the nuts. You're getting the chocolate syrup. You're getting the whipped cream. And when this works out, gonna get the cherry on top. That's my feet. I just get a little bit of of this. That's that's that's what,
29:45
Brian Johnson is doing with this business. He's doing everything else, I think, actually, just because because he's a dork and he enjoys the shit, then it just so happened that he got famous. And now he's like, Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Okay. Fine. I'll do that too. You know, and I dig that. And isn't it weird? Like, why do you think we have so much trust and faith in this guy? It's part of it is because he already has, like, the FU money, and so we think, like, he didn't give a shit. He's just doing this just because. But the way that he's turned himself in the character is actually really interesting
30:15
In his case, there was a high barrier to entry. He spent millions of dollars that seems doing this. He also
30:20
kinda lived like a hermit for two years to, like, perfect this. But the idea of turning yourself into a character and then doing it in front of a lot of people, that's actually a really appealing
30:31
that's an exciting route to go for a lot of people. It's just like you change your identity and you go all in on this, and you could actually make an make a great living by doing this. It's the same reason I bought shoes from these over toes guy. Right? I probably never bought shoes from any brand besides Nike in, like, twenty years.
30:48
And then
30:50
I see this guy who's over forty years old dunking a basketball. I see what he looked like before he was doing his thing and how he had knee surgeries.
30:58
Undeniable
30:59
proof
30:59
is a very, very powerful lever. This guy literally just does, like, a somersault that he gets up and dunks the basketball, and he's, like, this forty five year old white guy. Which shoes? He came out with, like, a pair of shoes, that are, like, you know, the knees over toes, like, thing. Not great shoes, by the way, for the record.
31:16
Definitely don't buy v one if anybody's anything.
31:20
So so, you know, it wasn't great, but I have a a high amount of faith and trust in this guy because, again, All content and marketing. So for two years, he was just put out free content. Didn't sell a thing. And so for two years, all he did was put out very helpful content and showed an undeniable level of proof that This guy was in incredible shape that his legs were super, super strong and that, you know, where he started to where he was is a very powerful transformation.
31:42
So anybody who wants to have that transformation will trust him. And then when he comes out with a thing and he says, hey, this is what I use, people will buy it. And it it's very, very effective.
31:51
By the way, I also
31:53
bought knees over toes shoes. Before he came out with that shoe company, he was always wearing these other shoes, and I also bought I also bought those. That that white shoe that looks like it doesn't stand. That's, like, seventy dollars or something, forty five dollars. Couldn't even really get it on. I have, like, thick American foot or something. It's like, it doesn't fit in this, like, European
32:11
shoe.
32:13
Dude, I wear the shit out of them. I love those shoes. I, like, I remember seeing the picture and, like, ugly, like, what are those shoes? They're not pretty crossable. They look cool though. What are they? They look great. They're, like, Foyer or something like that? Like Fugazi or it's, like, searched as an f I bought them from guys these two, man. They weren't they weren't guys these help. But, can I do a quick thrill of the show, by the way? Okay. Go. Alright. So, basically, at Hampton, we've got access to all this data. So in order to grow, we decide I love data. You know, they say data's the new oil. I already mentioned I love oil. I don't know how to I don't know how to make money off of it yet, but somehow, oil's good.
32:45
We've been doing these surveys where we survey different industries, and we give benchmarks for different, different industries. Right now, we just did one on agencies.
32:52
And so we did this thing where we surveyed sixty agencies. They gave us all their revenue, all their profit, and we did, like, a the school survey where we show, here's the benchmarks for profit
33:00
per employee revenue per employee. You can find it at if you just go to joint hampton dot com, and then you go to our blog, you'll see the surveys. We did one on wealth like, people say their net worth, how much money they're spending each month, how much income they're making each month, how much they're working each week. We just did one on agencies. So if you're an agency owner, check it out. But
33:18
More so, that's that's the chill. Here's the thrill part. I think, Sean, that if I
33:24
if I decide to do this, Have you ever heard of the have you I think this could work. Have you ever heard of, like, benchmarking? Like, I I I didn't know anything about this industry. Do you know anything about benchmarking? Yeah. Of course. I didn't know that people would ever pay for this. And so there's the the most common form of bench benchmarking is salary benchmarking. So there's a company called salary dot com, and then there's, like,
33:45
ten or twenty other ones who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, whatever.
33:49
I think in a couple years, if I get enough data I think we could I can spin this off and create a data company where I do benchmarking for different industries.
33:57
And the problem that we'll be solving is, let's say that you're an agency, let's say you're e com business and you're above fifty million revenue, you wanna know, are we spending the right amount for ads? Are we spending the right amount for employees? Whatever, I think we can build a cool day to business off of this. So that's the thrill of the shill, but I just wanted to call my shot and say maybe eventually, I think we're gonna do this.
34:18
I don't think it's a call your shot if you say maybe eventually.
34:22
The call your shot is I'm going to do this.
34:25
It's like the only requirement of calling your shot is to say I've gotta do this. Not calling my shot. If I still have to do me, if I so happen to do this, which probably won't.
34:35
But it could kinda work.
34:37
It's, like, a babe, Bruce just went like this. It's at the point. It just went like Hey. It's gonna shrug.
34:44
He just made his hand. He's like,
34:49
dude, also,
34:51
you reminded me of something.
34:53
I don't mean to to rain on your your thrill or your shill here. But do you remember have you seen these leaked these I'm sure you've seen this because we're both internet, like,
35:02
What's it called? Like, the people who look for fossils, whatever, archaeology. Yes.
35:07
When Mark Zuckerberg had his old, like, aim messages leaked he was nineteen years old starting Facebook, and he was, like, these these effinitiates are actually downloading this here. Here's the transcript. He goes, he just DMs a friend just because he just can't wait till Brad. He goes, Yes. So if you ever need anyone if you ever need any info about anyone at Harvard, just ask. I have over four thousand emails, pictures, addresses, social security numbers. And his friend goes, what? How did you manage that?
35:31
People just submitted it. I don't know why. They, quote, trust me. Dumped bucks.
35:38
This is Sam. It is Slack about Hampton. It's like, yeah, every agency just submitted their profits, their revenues, their growth tactics.
35:46
They trust me.
35:47
For the record, I wanna say that's zuck, dude.
35:50
Dude,
35:52
I wanna say I have access to zero of the documents that people submit for in order to join Hampton. I've got zero access. I purposely did this Just like for years, I purposely didn't ask your name of your ecomm business. I just, like, I don't wanna know because I don't wanna accidentally say anything. I have zero access to this. Not only because I don't wanna say anything and also because
36:15
I just literally don't know how to you know, like, use computers and, like, log in. And I don't have a password.
36:22
Yeah. That was the equivalent of, you know, no a la inglass like, oh, I got pulled over. I don't I don't even speak I don't even know how to use my computer. I I can't act. Just stop. Trust me. Alright. Let let me stop making funny about that. Let's let's move on. Let's do another one. Alright. So last year, I invested in this company called Consensus, and they basically it was like an AI company for research for, like, scientific research. So if you
36:43
wanna to, like, figure out, like,
36:45
you know, instead of like reading individual studies, this website would just tell you in aggregate what many studies would show. And they're only doing okay. There it was basically just two guys, and they were still just trying to figure it out. Like, it it it was, like, this sounds interesting, but, like, I don't even know if this is gonna work. Let's see. Well, something happened a few weeks ago that I think is gonna change their business, but I think that there's an inflection. So, basically, like, When the iPhone came out, the App Store happened, and we heard stories about Pandora. So Pandora was a company before they were the music service. The app store came out and they're like, oh, let's just use our service and pivot and build an app. They're one of the first apps. That's what made Pandora popular. When COVID happened, there's companies like Better Help, which is, like,
37:25
therapy online, or there's, like, telemedicine
37:28
because the laws during COVID change where a doctor can prescribe meds across state lines.
37:33
There's been a lot, a bunch of these. Right now, one just happened. So I think January fourteenth. So I think it was ten or January
37:41
tenth.
37:42
Open AI created an app store.
37:45
They've kind of done this where they've, like, made their own, like, you can make your own GPT and all this other stuff. But they've they created an App Store. I don't even think they said what the pricing was. So with the iPhone App Store, I think the developer gets what? Seventy percent of the revenue. Apple gets thirty percent. Open AI hasn't even said what that what what it's gonna be. So they're still really early. And so this company that I invested in, they're like, oh, well, like, our thing is going okay, but, like, what if we just, like, went all in on this, like, plugin for OpenAI store?
38:15
And so their version is basically, like, you just type in you ask questions, medical questions, and it just gives you a slightly better answer than OpenAI, but it's a lot better, or at least enough that you wanna pay for. And there's not that much traffic right now or not that many new apps in the open AI open AI app store, but this is one of those inflection moments. So
38:34
Here's two more examples. So you remember Honey, that company that was like,
38:38
what do they do? The coupon codes for your a website and then Grammarly did the same thing. They both did that with the Chrome store. You have a bunch of friends because you kinda ran in that world where people did this with with the Facebook platform. So Zinga, I don't know how much money they eventually made, but it was at one point a multi billion dollar company.
38:55
I think right now, we're gonna see, like, a Facebook store, you're gonna see, like, all these mafia wars, all these, like, weird games. I think you had a buddy. What was the guy's name Dan who went to Camp MFM who started, like, o m g pop or something like that? What was that called? Draw something was the game that everybody played. And it I I think he had a multi hundred million dollar exit. I think this is right now about to happen. With the open AI, like, plug in store. It's really fascinating what's happening. I thought this was interesting. You asked the guy or somebody asked the the the founder He said, I think it's gonna be something between, like, more than the Chrome extensions market, a less than the App Store. You know, short term, it's awesome for marketing and functionality for users.
39:33
And OpenAI is footing the bill on a lot of the compute costs.
39:39
In the me medium term, we have two x the usage of the next biggest GPT.
39:43
And I think Canva is the next so this is the number one GPT. Yeah. Yeah. It's taking off. And these guys, they're smart guys, but it was still when they were starting their company, once we invested, it was like, I don't know. Hopefully, we'll figure it out. And there was a time where I was like, guys better figure this out soon. Like, I don't know if this is gonna work out. And then this inflection happened. This changed happened. This product is awesome. I just went to their site, then I didn't do the chatty, but you think, but just their app is really cool. So you go there. You ask any questions. So I just did are microplastics
40:11
dangerous for humans?
40:13
And then it has all these papers But then you hit synthesize, which I think is the credits that you have to buy if you but you start with twenty three credits. And it says summary. We looked at ten papers Studies suggest microplastics are dangerous for humans and they carry toxic chemicals,
40:27
contaminate ecosystems and are linked to various health issues including cancers and immune system depart disruptions, and then it says, we looked at the fourteen papers.
40:34
Yes. Was forty three percent of time, possibly fifty seven percent of time, no zero percent of the time. And that was the, like, that was the thing. And then you could see below each specific paper, and it's, like, tagged, like, oh, this is a rigorous journal. This is highly cited.
40:47
And you can kinda get AI to summarize each of those papers.
40:51
This is
40:52
this is a sick like, this is a sick product. It's cool. And it but it by the way, just like all great stuff, it did not start that way. I imagine you didn't tell me about this. This is a why didn't I invest This is great. It wasn't obvious. It it by the way, it's still not obvious. This company just like any any startup, but it could still totally fail and not work. No. But it's a very interesting bet. Right? Like, to do a verticalized
41:12
Google, specifically for scientific papers,
41:15
and AI being the the the why now of what you could do differently than you could do before, speaks a lot of sense. And it was, I'll give the shout out. It's consensus dot app. That's their website.
41:25
But the point being, hey, consensus is great. I think it's actually gonna work out. And these guys they they kinda put their head down for, like, twenty four months and, like, are really starting to figure out. There's gonna be a lot of stuff just like them on the chat GPT store. Because I think when we invested in them, I don't remember exactly. I'm almost positive the word AI didn't come up one time. Like, it wasn't like it was like, we have this, like, I we know what the outcome that we want to what what what we want it to be, but we're not entirely sure how we're gonna come to that. And then they start figuring out a, I got more popular, and then this chatgyny store opened up, and they're like,
41:57
Boom. We found the path. And I think that path is opened right now. Now it's more competitive than than the App Store, and it's more competitive than Chrome because there's more people who are doing this stuff. OpenAI is already huge,
42:09
but that inflection is happening right now. This is one of those things that's happening in real time, and I wanted to call out because I think OpenAI even said, we don't even know how what payment terms we're gonna give these people. Like, we're they're still all figuring it out. But this is happening this second right now. There's an opportunity here for a lot of different companies. They're like, around, like, you know, some celebrity relationship. They're like, oh, we don't we don't know. We don't wanna put a label on it yet. We're just we're just exploring each other and figuring out, you know, who we are. Together and individually.
42:35
Yeah. It's definitely trying to figure it out. Have you seen, perplexity? Have you used perplexity? I don't like it. I don't know why people are doing that for It's pretty cool. It's just like open AI, but for some reason, it's, like, has a science spent. That's one of these companies. I I don't know. I don't know much about it. I this is a uninformed opinion, but
42:52
I feel like
42:54
every VC who missed, like, you can't get into open AI. Or if you could get in now, it's at a hundred billion dollar evaluation. It's not much money to be made as an investor there. And so all the capital, you know, realize all the investors realize, holy shit.
43:06
This is the big thing. And they're like, what's the next competitor. And they're like, alright, stable diffusion. And It could be. Complexity. And the next thing, and the next thing, and these they get these super inflated
43:17
valuations.
43:17
And,
43:19
I don't know. I'm not I'm not really a believer in that. I think those get way ahead of the skis, and I just seen that story many times. It's happening crypto happened in, you know, when mobile when mobile is happening and you would get, you know, for every Instagram, you would then get the ten super funded
43:34
other apps that didn't make any sense. And,
43:37
yeah, I I I'm I would take I would take the under or I would short that, that
43:43
after the pod, go to your email and type in consensus. I'm almost positive that I heard about this company and you were cc'd on the email.
43:52
Just I just wanna put that out there. I I
43:55
it was, two thousand two. It was two years ago. I'm almost positive. Have you type in to the pot?
44:00
Take some lighter fluid. Poring over your pot. Light it back. I hope no one finds what
44:08
find out what happens.
44:09
We're gonna burn it down and hide it. Can I do a rant about something? So
44:15
I've had a realization that my world, like,
44:18
a lot of the content I'm consuming was
44:23
algorithmic.
44:23
Alright. That's pretty obvious. You every What does that mean? Just Twitter TikTok, whatever? Everything I was using, you'd go to,
44:30
you go to Twitter, It's an algorithm telling you, here's the content you need to see. You go to TikTok. It's all algorithm. You can use this shit. Facebook, Instagram. Yes. All of that. Even
44:40
email. Email is not really algorithmic. Exactly. But it's,
44:44
you go there, and it's here's what other people want you to to look at. Here's my problem. Hey, here's my problem. Read me. Right? And then same thing same thing with, you know, all news. Go to a news app, say, hey, here's everybody's problems on the other side of the world. Here, you know, pay attention to this.
45:00
I'm calling it the intentional internet.
45:03
Which is
45:05
I started really being intentional about
45:07
oh, no. No. No. No. If I'm going on the internet right now, What is it that I wanna see? What is it I'm curious about? What is it that I want to learn about?
45:15
And then
45:17
I go in and I'm stiff arming algorithms left and right. You know, I'm Marshawn Lynch on that one run where he just
45:24
sheds ain't defenders. It goes all the way. It just rumbles to the end zone. That's me on the internet now, and I think more people should be doing this. Join me. The intentional internet where you get on and you don't just you're not just, you know, a little puppy, just eating the puppy child that the algorithms give you. Go on with some intent.
45:42
And say, what is it that I'm looking for? I want maybe it's I want certain type of entertainment. Maybe it's I want a certain type of information or I wanna be inspired. Okay. So that go look for the things that will give you Yeah. But you follow it that way. You follow thirteen thousand people on on Twitter. The trick is you don't go to Twitter.
45:59
Right. What do you do?
46:01
Well, Twitter's not a great place for this. Right? Because if you go to Twitter, you're gonna get your first thing that you're gonna be set up is the feed, and you're gonna start scrolling. Are you gonna start reading books? That's very unlike you. So I make a little list. I say, you know what?
46:13
Curious how
46:15
this started or I'm I wanna learn more about this. And then I'll go to YouTube or Google or wherever
46:20
looking for that. But does that adding that little paper step in between
46:24
me and the internet?
46:25
Has been very, very useful, and I learned a bunch of interesting things in the last three days. I got more out of the internet. So I'm just putting that out there for anybody who What's been on your list?
46:34
I'll give you an example.
46:37
I
46:38
was doing research for one thing, and I saw this name. Do you know this guy, Eric Van Veen?
46:45
Yes. He's amazing. I have got him oh, wait. Are you talking about Ricky Van Dean or Eric?
46:50
Oh, maybe he's Ricky. Ricky, then Ricky, Facebook guy. Yeah. Facebook guy. Dude,
46:55
dreamy.
46:56
Super dreamy.
46:58
This guy's dreamy. Shit. I've talked to him a bunch, via email a handful of times. It looks like the internet peep Buttigieg or something.
47:06
No, man. This one's great. So this guy created college humor.
47:10
Yeah. And then he created,
47:12
a couple other things. So what did he create? He create hall college humor, and then he But he created a few other things that cracked or whatever, then he bundled it up, sold it to IAC,
47:22
and he was running media at IAC,
47:24
You're forgetting the biggest thing they started.
47:27
Which one?
47:28
So at college humor, this was, like, pre YouTube days,
47:33
they create this was like EBOM's World Days. They created a better way to host videos. Yeah. And that's what Vimeo is which they sold the IAC. IAC spun off and became a billion dollar plus publicly traded company. So creates Vimeo
47:47
Crate's college humor goes to IAC. IAC is a super interesting company with, like, a very
47:53
cool pedigree of people that come out of it. Like, Tinder came out of IAC,
47:57
You know, there's there's a bunch of really interesting things about IAC. They're they're sort of like the co they're the Procter and Gamble of the internet. They're conglomerate of internet sites, most immediate.
48:05
And then dot com, I think, came out of there?
48:08
Now he's
48:10
head of, like,
48:11
head of, like, video or head of creative content at Facebook.
48:15
And I was like, oh, this guy's interesting. I just kinda just noted it. Because I I think I was thinking about college humor.
48:20
And,
48:21
so I just who who's behind that? What are they doing now? And I think this this what are they doing now has been one of my threads? So I'll I'll think of something that was cool. And I'll be like, where did they go? I haven't heard about their new album. What what are they working on? And I'll go look at that. That's just a very
48:35
it's a very useful,
48:37
way to go look at things. So By the way, Ricky, Ricky ended up marrying I don't think they're together anymore, but he like, if you just you could just Google, like, Tapoids or whatever. He married Alison Williams, you know, the famous like, actress, whose father is Brian Williams, the famous newscaster. And if you Google his name, the guy's just, like, hanging out with, like, all these celebrities and stuff, and he's, like, seems so cool. Like, he this this guy's dreamy a shit. We acknowledge that. Strategy on Facebook. Same ways. What what what's my point? So I'm I'm I'm I have a list of cool companies or cool things that were built, you know, ten years ago, and I'm wondering what are those people doing now. College humor was one of So I go look at this guy. And then I'm like, I'm researching Vimeo, and I'm I'm looking at him. And then I'm like, he gave this talk in,
49:18
two thousand eight. At this media conference, and then he comes back again eight years later. I don't know if you've ever seen this talk, but it's a it's a I mean, it gets no views on the internet, but for nerds like us who create media and content on the internet, it's very interesting to see what somebody thought in two thousand eight, which is like the iPhone has come out, but it hasn't changed the world like, literally the presentation, he's like, yeah, kids all their blackberrys are not gonna be doing x y z. And back then,
49:43
you know, when he created college humor, it became the number one,
49:48
comedy entertainment site on the internet,
49:50
way bigger than cartoon network and all these other, like, incumbents. Okay. That's interesting.
49:55
Then he comes back at you. He's later. And he's like, here's what I got right, and here's what I got wrong. And one of the things he was talking about, and he's like, he's like, at some point, people on the internet will stop leaving the internet. Like, they won't they'll still stop using the internet as a springboard
50:07
to go onto Netflix or on to get get cast into a TV show or whatever. Like, They'll realize that their YouTube channel is worth more
50:15
than than those shows, and they won't wanna leave,
50:18
to to go do those. They won't view this as as a stepping stone. And that's happening. Basically, he had, like, four or five predictions about where where the world was going. He put up the all the sites, like, viral Nova and upwardly and whatnot. He's, like, Right now, these are the hottest sites in the world. Their traffic is crushing ours, and they're they're getting more traffic than anybody. More traffic than god. Is, like, I think all of this is going to zero. I think this is highly commoditized, and it's not gonna work for these reasons. It was absolutely correct. And so it was a very interesting to go learn from this guy who's kind of a master at what he does. And I've done this before with, like,
50:50
when I looked up all the infomercial kings, So the guys who created, like, you know, proactive, that acne, you know, medicine, like, how did that story happen? Right? But
51:00
if I just log on to the internet and I just take the the the last thing that somebody tweeted or the latest TikTok.
51:06
You know, I'm playing defense. I'm playing their game, not mine. Right? And so I'm just trying to have a little bit more intention when I when I when I use the internet. It's, you know, I'm not the type who's just gonna go, like, total digital detox and does not use the internet. But when I do use it, I'm trying to use it in a bit of a healthier way. So Ricky, did he he predicted that the viral novas of the world are he predicted that it was gonna go to zero and they did? Yeah. Did I ever tell you the story about my partner, Joe, and Hampton and a bunch of other stuff. Did I tell you a story about little things?
51:34
You mentioned it before that he got, like, really let me tell you the most trafficked Facebook referral. Right? And then he had an offer to sell and he didn't take that the story? So Joe Joe's an amazing entrepreneur. So he started his first company. He was an ad tech company. He sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars when he was, like, twenty five. So he just had this, like, huge success at a young age.
51:52
Then his next business he started was called, I forget exactly what it was called, but it, Petflow. It was a pet food company.
51:59
And they started it before Chewy, except he was a little conservative and he was like, we have to spend money profitably on ads, and that's hard to do. And so we're gonna go a little bit slower. Chewy comes in and goes, nah, f that. We're gonna lose money for the first six or twelve months at a customer, and we're gonna do such a good job that they're gonna come back. And Joe was like, that's a dumb strategy. Turns out it was right. But in order to make, Petflow grow, he created a blog where they just wrote content on pets.
52:25
And within a very, very, very, very short amount time, they started getting ten, twenty, thirty million people a month coming to this blog on pets. And he's like, oh, screw that. Let's just do this blog.
52:35
And so within four years, they were the most shared website on Facebook, bigger than Viral Nova, bigger than Buzzfeed, bigger
52:42
than Huffpo, all these publishers that were huge in the two thousand fourteen, fifteen era,
52:47
and it started getting something like two hundred and fifty million unique some months to their website.
52:52
And they were scaled up, I think, to ninety million in revenue in four years. It was a huge company. I went to I cold emailed them. I went to his office. He had these studios, and they're like, Facebook Live is the next big thing. We just built out this two hundred fifty thousand dollar studio in the in the Manhattan office, and it's gonna be the greatest thing ever. We have a hundred and fifty employees. This is gonna be the biggest thing ever. The problem, of course, that we all know, was
53:15
Zuck does what Zuck wants, and they built this entire company, little things dot com, on the back of Facebook.
53:21
And they got, an LOI to sell the business, and they were literally three weeks from selling. They were gonna sell for hundreds of millions of dollars Facebook puts out this annual report when they go, we're actually changing, repivoting from this thing to this thing, and three weeks away or something like that, from this deal closing for hundreds of millions of dollars, the company,
53:40
backed out. And within six months, the business basically
53:44
laid out everyone and had the shutdown.
53:47
All in a matter of, like, six or seven months of, like, we're on top of the world, making a hundred million a year to, now we are not. And it's a crazy, crazy story. If you Google, like, his name, Joe Spiser, little things, you'll see the story. It, I think,
54:01
Inc just did some big story on it, but it's pretty wild.
54:05
The lessons we learn, unfortunately. That's, you know, that's like, it's it's cool to be like, yeah. You learn so much from failure, but it's like, god, sometimes so painful.
54:13
Yeah. He was, basically, I didn't
54:16
he posted this publicly. He was, like, I was set to make fifty million dollars. And
54:20
three weeks away from the closing, it went away.
54:23
And I he, like, has always crazy about that. What's he like to work with? Cause you picked him as your partner for Hampton?
54:30
Why'd you pick hip?
54:32
He's the best, man. He's the best. He's the best. He's a harmonious partner. He's even Kiel. He's very easy. Hey. He's not like the partner dynamics, because you've told me about those. What is he
54:41
what's his edge? What's he great at? What's a what is he, like, what is he amazing at? You ever hang out with Israeli guys and, like, Israeli guys have a culture of, like, they're quite competent because they served in the military, and they're, like, you're really good at stuff. Often, they're good at spotting opportunities because that's also part of the culture of, like, just, like, negotiating well and, like, finding interesting deals.
55:02
He is so good at spotting opportunities,
55:04
and he's technical, and he's so fast. I've never met someone who's, like, significantly faster than I am at making stuff and going all in. And, like, he'll just find an opportunity. He'll build a website for it. And he's like, yep, this is what I'm doing now. And he pounces so fast. I've never met someone who moves faster. One thing that we did, that was so great. Did you ever have this with Ben or any of your other partners where you do like a, you're like, look, before we, like, hop in bed and before we get married here, let's just sit down and map out. What do you want your life to be like? What do you want in five years and ten years? What do you want on a day to day basis? And you, like, write out, like, you wanna live, what you're willing to, what you're willing to give up, what you're not willing to give up. Have you ever done that? Not exactly. But, you know, you told me you did that. I think there's a version of that that I do, but I'm not
55:48
I think everything changes.
55:50
So I, you know, it sounded really great in theory, and I think it's a useful exercise just to clarify your own thoughts,
55:56
but I don't
55:58
I think people themselves are quite incongruent
56:01
in general.
56:03
Well, yeah. You change.
56:05
You change, but also you don't know what you want. And also, you say one thing because it sounds good or you think you want it. But then something comes, you know, something comes up and you're, you know, it's your stated preference versus re revealed preference. I think it's very hard to get to people's revealed preferences, their true preferences.
56:20
Or their true,
56:23
their true, you know, desires or or whatever.
56:25
And so I think it's a good exercise to do, but I don't put as much weight in it as you did, I think.
56:31
Well, I think that
56:33
I think that a, it starts a really good conversation. So I was like, look, let's be transparent just like you shared with, like, your wife or your, girlfriend, you're like, let's talk about, like, what type of life that we potentially want and let's be very open about that. So I think that that, like, creating that, like, let's just be very clear about and we'll we'll acknowledge that it will change. I think it creates a great version of that. I but Joe's also forty two, I think. He's older than me. And so I would think that at that age, he has a little bit of solidified the values that he stands for. And so it was helpful. I think if I did that exercise when I was twenty four, it would not have been good. In fact, I did do that exercise when I was twenty four, and it sucked. I said I wanted you wanna know what I said? I wanted when I was twenty four. I said I want ten thousand employees. I go, would it be awesome if you had ten thousand employees?
57:14
And then I hired three people, and And I'm like shit went out the window. I'm like, yeah. That's that that's a no for me, dog. Like, this then we're gonna work. But so I think if you're a little bit older and you have some experience, you might know a little bit more but when I was younger, no. That wouldn't have worked. My,
57:29
thinking on this is
57:31
the buffet thing of you want some a partner with an energy
57:34
integrity
57:35
and intelligence.
57:37
I think that's the, like, core thing you I look for at least, which is basically
57:42
And in order, energy is the easiest to spot, and it's the easiest one to try to write off if somebody doesn't have it.
57:49
Meaning
57:50
seems like a seems like a nice to have. It's actually not a nice to have for me. It's a must have for me.
57:56
And and so energy is the first one that shows up, and it's the easiest one that I've tried to talk myself out of with certain people, and that's been a mistake every single time I've done it. Who have you worked with that's high energy
58:07
and, like, almost exhaust you because you're like, I can't keep up. Sulee's like that. He's super high energy. But not in an exhausting way. And, like, I get energy from that. So it's all good. I don't mean exhausting. Like, they wear you out, but you're, like, oh my god, dude. Like, you're you're almost hard to keep up. You move so fast. That's inspiring.
58:23
Yeah. Everybody that is the yeah. It's a but it's in a good way. Like Yeah. That I mean, in a good way. Pace and that they bring their own energy to the table. I'm not bringing it out of them.
58:33
Ben is a fun so Ben, believe he's my current business partner.
58:36
On the surface, when you meet him, he's a more quiet guy. He's more reserved. He's not, like, He doesn't come across like this huge booming personality.
58:45
But Ben's got that energy where he's just he comes out for him, like, through text message or through, like, know, he he'll just wake up and do something or he can't sleep at night because he's thinking about something. And so energy reveals energy is not just being a wacky flailing arms guy. It's do you have the
59:00
Are you driven yourself? Do you take action quickly? Do you think about things all the time? Or are you am I trying to force you to to am I dragging your brain into the conversation? And do you get excited about things? Are you when an opportunity arises, does your do you shift gears up? So energy is the first one that is, intelligence or competence, which is, like, what are they great at? Oh, this person's great at selling. This person's great at building. This person's great at,
59:24
just pushing the ball forward every day. Whatever it is. And then the last one, which is integrity is the hardest one to get a feel for, which is how is this person gonna treat me when they have the opportunity to be selfish? Will they be selfish when they have the opportunity to be selfish? And it's very, very hard to know that. You can kind of only talk to people they've worked with before or ask them questions and try to see if they're they're pretty honest about that.
59:43
And then
59:44
I just work with them on something first before we commit. So it's like,
59:49
we have that conversation. Sure. But Let's like, and I would always trade an experience for a belief. And if I can have an experience working with you on something for three weeks, that's gonna be way better than me trying to put take a leap of faith on. A bunch of things you said or you wrote down in a Google doc. Did you just make up that word or that phrase?
01:00:07
Tony Robin special, maybe.
01:00:08
Oh, I was gonna say that's that's yours now.
01:00:11
Do you, what how late into the evening are you working on business stuff versus family time or fitness or whatever else there is?
01:00:22
I basically
01:00:23
I work out in the middle of the day because I work about two two PM.
01:00:26
So, basically, like, I've done I've done enough where I could stop working.
01:00:30
I wake up and I work. I wake up and do my morning routine, then I work. And then I take a break to work out. And then I'll either just if I've done enough that day, I'll just play with my kids. I'll start playing with them and just hang up.
01:00:41
If I if I have it, I'll do another hour or two of work. And then I do family time till about they go to bed. So they're, you know, usually fully asleep, eight thirty or nine.
01:00:49
And then I
01:00:51
chill out slash work One of the two, they're both kinda the same to me. So sometimes it's just like, watching a show. Sometimes it's working or reading something. And I'll do that till eleven or twelve when I go to go to sleep. But between that eleven or between kid, kids go to sleep and you go to bed, are you on the phone talking to people ever? No. No. No. That's me time. That's, me on the internet.
01:01:12
I'm not talking to people. No.
01:01:15
I
01:01:16
I've got a bunch of friends who are like that. And they'll, like Even with my wife, she'll try to talk and I will be like, I'm doing no talking.
01:01:23
That's my friend. I'm doing no talking right now.
01:01:26
It's a it's a nice way of saying, like, I don't wanna talk to you. I'm doing no talking. That's it. There's this thing. There's, like, this, like, unspoken rule at my house where like, at eight or nine when she wants to, like, ask me, like, hey, what dates do you wanna go, to this place? And I just mumble. I go,
01:01:41
That means, like,
01:01:43
dude, I just shopped at Ikea all day. I'm overwhelmed.
01:01:47
I can't look at anything. I'm I can't think don't ask me a date. I'm not thinking about anything. You know what we've been you know what we've been doing lately? It's fucking Legos. Have you ever done Legos?
01:01:56
I've never done Legos. I
01:01:58
I have a whole separate pods topic about adult Legos because I think it's a thing, and you're one of those. So we should talk we should actually do a a full segment on it. I'm so into it. I'm so into it. That's all I'll say. I am so I just got into it in November. I'm a legal guy now. I love it. Okay. We're gonna talk about that next time. I gotta jump. This has been good. This is the pod. That's the pod.
01:02:18
That's the pod.
00:00 01:02:40