00:00
I will predict
00:01
and guarantee, really, that this is going to be a
00:06
greater than hundred million dollar a year revenue business. Which means it's gonna be worth something
00:13
low end, three hundred four hundred million high end billion dollars.
00:27
Alright. We are live.
00:29
Sorry I missed last week. How to do a thing. But
00:32
Today's a big day for me. I'm launching my thing. I'm finally talking about a thing that I've been working on. It's called hampton joint hampton dot com.
00:42
I'm I'm excited. This is your Steve Jobs moment, dude. Is it? Every once in a while, something comes along.
00:48
That changes everything.
00:53
Triangle hand pose.
00:54
Yeah. I'm just gonna start the city like that. This is the first time that I've been working on something that I haven't talked about it, like, within twenty four hours of having the idea, and it's killed me.
01:06
It's killed me. And I have hated it. I've hated it. I'm so nervous. And so why now?
01:13
I'll give it people background. So my new company that I've been working on, I think I've been working on it since July, but I've had the idea for a long time, and I, like, even interviewed people in this space on the pod.
01:28
So, by the way, that's the funniest part of this whole thing. You invited people out of the podcast.
01:33
Ask them every hey. How do you run your business? How do you grow it? What are the numbers? How much money does it make? How'd you start it? Where'd you hire from?
01:40
And then you just launched a competitor, like, the ninety days later.
01:44
It's not a competitor. So we had chief on. It's not a competitor to chief. We had Tiger twenty one on, not a competitor there to them. But, yeah, so I wanted to prove
01:54
because I you you remember how I said I hate the question say, how would you start if you could do it over again? Yada yada yada. And and I would tell him like, well, it's easy for you. You have an audience. And so I was like, alright. Well, I'll just do it in front of you. And it just approved to myself this little chip that I have on my shoulder that I can create stuff with an audience. So
02:10
Hampton is the URL is joint Hampton. I couldn't get hampton dot com. It's like owned by holiday in or whatever the the Marriott company or whatever it is.
02:21
But it's it's pretty simple. It's a vetted network for founders entrepreneurs. So basically, if you're a founder, our sweet spot is, like, if you're the CEO of a company, our sweet spot is, like, ten million a year in revenue, but you need at least a million in revenue, at least three million in funding or -- Well, well -- and these are all Explain what it does before you the this is not requirements. What's what's I'm going to. So what I'm saying is you need, like, it's for a certain size of CEO. But, basically, you sign up, we vet you and all and interviewed all this stuff. And what you get is basically what you and I had. So before Sean and I started this pod before he started this pod, him and I would meet once a month, it would be me, you, and, like, five or six other guys. And we would, like it was basically, like, group therapy for business. And We did it for a couple of years, and then we did it informally for a long time. And I've done it I've done it informally with a bunch of people,
03:11
but it kinda changed my life. And so
03:14
We decided my partner, Joe and I to create that, but for people who are all over the country. So if you're in Idaho and you have this company that does twenty million revenue, you're kinda like a freak. You're like an outsider in your community. And so what we did was we made this thing where you can sign up get vetted, and we put you in a group of eight to ten people with a executive coach. We call them facilitators who guide conversations that you have once a month, And then there's a a Hampton community
03:39
that you,
03:41
can talk to other people anytime. And then we we're we host dinners. So we have, like, dozens of dinners. We have adventure. So, like, a bunch of members are going to a rally
03:50
car event
03:51
next week. And so we do all these things, but basically, it's like I hate using this, but it's almost like a safe space. So we have people, like, posting.
03:59
You went there. You must not care about this business.
04:02
I went there. It's like a place where you could, like, talk to your your -- Would you say that yours feel seen?
04:08
You could you could bring your whole self.
04:12
You can bring your work self and your personal self, but it's like a place where like, let's say you have to lay people off, you can, you can ask people publicly, no one's gonna make fun of you. Like, I got I have to lay people off. How do I do this? Or you could be like, I'm bummed. I'm really sad. I have to lay people off. Or
04:25
the opposite, you're like, I'm killing it. Money is coming in. How do you folks investing?
04:30
And so when I had my group, I used to do one with you, and I did one with my now partner, Joe Spiser. Like,
04:36
He knew
04:37
my net worth. He knew my relationship issues with friends and family. He knew when I was selling the company, I was like, dude, how do I not look stupid when I'm selling this this company? I, like, uh-uh, I I feel very ashamed about x, y, and z. And so it's this place where you can it's kinda like this pod, but more intimate. And,
04:56
that's kinda why we had the idea I didn't want to launch it publicly because, a, I wanted the product to be perfect. Like, I wanted to to be great. And, b, communities like this It's not like software where you just throw bodies at it, and it doesn't matter how many people are using it. We had to, like, really be careful. So we've added all these awesome people, and we, like, it was very hand curated, and it still will be, but, like, I wanted it to be like that early on.
05:22
So I think you pitched it. No. You almost didn't do yourself justice there. You know, when people come on the pod and you're like, well, let me just do that for you real quick. That's Dude, this is my nerves, man. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the nerves are getting the best to you because,
05:37
here's how I would explain this. I think you got the I think you got one part right, which was
05:42
most import the most important thing, which was you were a customer of a product like this before
05:47
you built this business. You didn't just build this business because you're like, oh, this might be a great idea.
05:52
When we met, I don't know, ten years ago, almost,
05:57
through something like this. We created a group. It was me. It was you.
06:02
Jack Smith, who went on to sell his business for, like, I don't know, seven or eight hundred nine hundred million dollars.
06:07
But at the time, he he wasn't in that spot.
06:10
A guy named Siava, who was at the time doing this kind of class notes college business that wasn't really gonna end up being that big, but his next thing, enduring ventures has turned out to be pretty big. So it's a hundred million dollar plus company now.
06:24
And there was a small group of us, and we would meet twice a month. And
06:28
there was one really important thing that it did. Which was it gave you, like you said, the safe space. Now what is it safe from? Well,
06:37
for most CEOs, most of the time,
06:40
would I would say most people think starting a business is hard or being a CEO is hard, but they think about the beginning. Like, oh, it must be hard to, like, get the idea or get it off the ground. And, like, as anybody who's actually done it knows, that's, like, one percent
06:53
of the journey. Like, the hard part is actually climb. It's like once you've got your idea and you've got your yeah. Like, now
07:02
seven years
07:03
of day to day with a bunch of unknowns and a bunch of, like, fires that are gonna pop out of nowhere, and you have to you have to put out those fires.
07:10
And just staying happy and healthy and sane and being who you are during that seven year climb is actually the hard part. And so
07:20
who helps you during that climb is, I think, the important part. And you know, the hard thing if you're a CEO is you talk to investors. You gotta tell them everything's great. Everything is up and up and up.
07:30
You're crushing it. You talk to your customers. You need to tell them how great everything is. You talk to your employees or your teammates in the office every day. You can't be telling them about all your problems.
07:40
You have to again tell them how great everything is. So this was for us, this was the one group, or you could just say how things actually are. This is what's going good. This is what's going bad. Don't even really know about this other thing. I gotta figure that out. I've been procrastinating that just because it's like looming and I don't I don't really know what to do.
07:58
And it is this founder group therapy thing where you sit down with, you know, six or seven other people.
08:04
I would say it's like seventy percent the the conversation is like seventy percent tactics,
08:09
thirty percent.
08:11
Dude, I've been there. You know, don't worry about this. Like, the the therapy, But the value is almost on the other side. It's like,
08:18
the connections that you make,
08:20
you know, the ideas that you get the relationships, like, you know, CF ended up,
08:25
you know, being one of my groomsmen, I think, at my wedding.
08:28
You know, we invest in a bunch of companies from the mastermind and that made a bunch of money. You know, had I not been in a mastermind with you? I wouldn't have seen how you built the hustle, and I wouldn't have known how to build the milk road. A business, I didn't know I was planning to create five years later, but that blueprint was etched in my brain from those meetings. And so you get all these, like, kinda crazy,
08:48
outsized benefits. And, basically, I think most people
08:52
massively overrate the idea of a mentor because I think it sounds like the easy button. It's like, man, I wish that there was just some some genius who knew everything and had done everything who could just tell me what to do and solve all my problems. And, of course, that doesn't really exist.
09:07
But, like, some mentors are pretty overrated, but peers, I think, are massively underrated.
09:12
And what you've done is basically curate a bunch of
09:15
people who are like you. So if you're in that kind of like, I've got a successful business. I'm on my seven year climb. I wanna make this as big and as generational as I can.
09:25
You want other people who have already done that or also in that journey with you doing that at the same time. That's my my sales pitch for you.
09:32
You've done it better than me.
09:34
You've absolutely thank you. You've done it way better than I did. It it's just like
09:38
Well, well, the other thing is, I I'm gonna think of it too. I'm not doing this really for you. I I remember the first piece of viral content I had was me writing how I set my how I set up our mastermind, how we ran it, and how you should like, if you wanna do that too, here's how you should do it. And this was, like, I had some crappy PDF somewhere.
09:58
But it's been downloaded, like, I don't know, ten thousand times now. Wow. I don't I don't even know where those emails are. I should go find them. Like, that thing has had, like, ten thousand ten ten thousand downloads now in a couple years because and I I don't promote this thing. It's just I set it once on a podcast a long time. You know, at the very beginning of this, And consistently,
10:16
people it resonates. People are like, I want that. How do I how do I set mine up so I can have my own version of of what you have? What you did, you made it easy. You made it a product. You were like, don't worry about figuring out how to find the right people, how to organize this, how to make sure the discussions are not a huge waste of time, and it's super productive. You just turned that into push a button. And if you're accepted in, you've you get all that out of the box, which is smart.
10:41
And I used your thing. I I used that, the down the list that you're talking about. I used, just my experience with our thing. And then I went and studied it. You know, I was talking to a lot of other of these groups and trying to figure out. We I've been calling it speed of vulnerability. How do we like to get people to be vulnerable quickly? And it sounds weird, but we have people, like, crying at some of these things. And I'm like, yes.
11:03
Yes. Got them. Your tears fuel me.
11:07
Yeah. What's better than revenue tears of my customers.
11:11
Well, particularly men, like, men are, like, while I have, like, some people afterwards are like, this was amazing. Why haven't other people done this? I'm like, dude. It's called therapy. Like, people have done this for years. And just a lot of men in particular don't do this type of stuff. That's why I haven't joined. I don't wanna cry. Last time I cried, somebody gave me a titty twister and that I just decided after that date. It's not happening again.
11:31
So so yeah, I've I've been avoiding your your emotional trap here, for a little bit. The way, this is not just something you studied like, oh, there's these three companies that started in the last ten years that do this.
11:43
This is like on some Benjamin Franklin Right? Like, this is, I think, Junto or Junto. I don't know what he called. I don't know how you pronounce it, but, like,
11:51
back in the day, this was, like, a Ben Franklin thing even. Every Friday,
11:56
he would go to this, like, one bar. You might know the story better than I do. I'll kinda butcher it. But he went to this bar every Friday, and he invited a community of like minded people. And he called it, I think, a
12:09
a club of mutual benefit, like benefit or something like that, which is basically meant it's a club of people who we are gonna make each other better.
12:17
Like, I want sparring partners when it comes to business. It's kind of the way that that that you you think about it or I think about it. But he was doing the same thing. His was a little less a little less business oriented. So a little more, like,
12:30
topics of, you know, society and law and whatever. Like, they would just debate random things.
12:36
But he, like, attributed a lot of his success to doing this regularly to having this regular recurring meeting with peers
12:44
who played the game at a high level, and that makes, you know, iron sharpens, iron type of thing. And so, yeah, this is not like a new idea. This has been around for a little while. How do you think about how this compares? So people have heard of, oh, y p o, they've heard of whatever. These these other ones, Tiger twenty one, Vistage, all all these things. How does it compare? I I know I I have my opinion. You might have to be politically correct around how you say all this. Like, no, no, no, we're all different in our own special way, but like,
13:10
I see you as the sexier modern,
13:13
more fun version that I would wanna be a part of. Is that not like it or is it is it actually much different?
13:19
My whole career,
13:20
my, like, fifteen year internet career, it's been based on, like, taking old ideas and just putting new spins on it. And so, like,
13:28
that's what we did with newsletters. Newsletters have been around before the internet, and we just put a different spin on it. And people are like, oh, you created this amazing, interesting new thing. I'm like, No. Not really. It's not that new. It's just we just, like, you know, put a different logo on it and we had our texture. We added our texture to it. And we did the same thing with this one. But, like,
13:45
I if I make fun of these other companies, I'm only joking because they they serve a need, but, like, there's YPO. So YPO has been around since the fifties. It's a really big business,
13:54
but YPO, it's like fifty eight and sixty year old men. And we make a joke at Hampton where we're like,
14:02
not a lot of people in our group
14:04
their businesses aren't inheriting fifteen apartment buildings in South Florida.
14:08
YPO exists for that. And YPO does have, like, a lot of, like, tech people and internet people, but it is a little the age range is much older. It is a little bit more boys' club. YPO without Cialis.
14:21
The war shopping some of marketing.
14:24
Yeah. I can say these things because I it's not my business.
14:28
And they're cool and all, but they're just they're just older.
14:33
Hampton, it's it's Digital First.
14:36
So, like, we have D to C companies who aren't tech companies, and we're like, we call it tech companies? And, like, they're technically not tech companies, but they're tech companies if you call if you tell your mom what you do. So they're, like, tech companies, internet companies. That's what they are. A lot of people who you recognize on Twitter are members, so that type of stick,
14:54
a lot of, like, just consumer software companies, a lot of b to b software companies, but almost everyone's software or internet based,
15:02
and it's significantly
15:03
younger than a lot of, of these older companies. And then compare it to, like, a mastermind, which I don't even use that word. Those are typically, like, fifty a lot of them can be, like, fifty grand, and it's a little bit more internet marketing this is very much like a startup internet first. I think the best sales pitch, like with any community is who else who is here. Am I doing bad? No. No. No. You're good. Good. I just wanna make sure I get you to the good bits. Right? I'm I'm your wing man here. I'm trying to get you laid here. So here, let me let me help you out.
15:31
It says on your website. Your website's nice, by the way. I wanna talk about one thing in a second here, which is that you did this differently than your other stuff. You, like, hired a fancy design agency, and you, like, picked a good name,
15:41
you, like, built it in stealth. You, like, violated a bunch of your own rules, which I think is kinda -- All of them. -- I wanna hear about those in a second. But
15:48
First,
15:49
it says the average Hampton member has twenty three million in annual revenue, and then there's some minimum.
15:56
like any community, the most valuable thing is who else is here? Because that's what I would care about. Right? Like, okay. You,
16:02
I like idea. I always liked the idea. It's like any I like the idea of a party, but who's coming. And so who are give me, like, I don't know, three, four, five, how many you want Like, give me some stories of interesting members you've met,
16:15
that have made this, like, fun for you to become a community for even you to be a part of. I'm gonna give you two categories. One, the people who you know, and then two, the people you don't know. The people you do know, covers every pop. It covers a hundred percent of the pie chart.
16:30
Dude, so,
16:32
like, pop, Anthony Poppy Popliano who was on the pod a few weeks ago. He's a member. So pump has a media company and an investment company, and and you guys have if you listen to the pod, you know, he is Patrick Campbell, bootstrap his company profit well to, like, a two hundred million dollar exit. Your friends,
16:47
bump health, you know, bump health? Of course. I don't bump their friends.
16:51
Yeah. They well, you know, what's the husband's name?
16:55
Leeland,
16:56
his wife, Christine's a member.
16:58
They boot shop their company to tens of millions in revenue, and they create,
17:02
it's it's a service for pregnant women. For pregnant women. Yeah.
17:06
Yeah. CB Insights, Anan from CB Insights, one of the most impressive people I've I've ever gotten to hang out with, very level headed and, but, like, just quietly building. You know,
17:15
CB Insights. I have you heard that little Wayne, quote where he's like, real g's, moving silence, like lasagna?
17:21
That's the that's a nod.
17:24
Austin Reef. He's in my group. So my former enemy, now one of my closest friends, Austin Reef from Morning Brew is a member Nick Cuba, Sahel, Siva, all these types of people, but let me tell you about the people who probably don't know.
17:36
Have I ever told you about Brett Adcock?
17:40
You've mentioned this guy because he took some flying car company public or something like that, but tell us Sorry. Alright. Listen to this. So this guy named Brett Adcocki started this thing called Vettery, which was a marketplace for talent, but it was very much like hired. So if you're an engineer, you go through all these tests, kind of like algorithmically
17:58
and kind of manually
17:59
match you with cool interviews. They eventually bought hired. He sold it for a hundred million dollars. He took a bunch of his earnings from that, and he started Archer, which he took public at the time for, like, two billion. Market cap now is, like, six or seven hundred million. But it was a flying car company. Basically, they kinda looked like helicopters, but they're like unmanned,
18:17
flying things that United Airlines bought a bunch of And he took time off between Vettery and Archer to study how it worked. He literally went to like University of Florida to, like, learn how this works. Now his latest company, which I'm a personal investor of is called a figure. And I went to his factory, and he's like and they basically are these robots that look like robocop.
18:36
And instead of killing you, though, they just you know, load
18:40
t shirts into packages
18:42
or Walmart.
18:43
Walmart's a hypothetical one, and they ship ship it off. So, you know, there's, like, millions of people who are doing this who are getting paid.
18:51
Yeah. What what do you call it?
18:54
Pick n Pay. There's twenty thousand of these three PLS in in America. Did you know that? I didn't know there's twenty thousand. Yeah. We could for our ecom. So we ran one. Right? So I hired a bunch of people to do this. I've done a lot of Pick n Pack myself because people call in sick to work.
19:08
It's crazy. So he's built these robots that could basically run. They call them humanoid. And he's like, they can run for twenty hours a day. They charge for four hours a day, and they're just packing stuff, and it's all using robots. But he took, like, twenty or thirty million dollars of his own money, and he was like, I basically own two stocks or one stock Archer, my public my public company, and then all the cash that I have, I bought a house and then I put invested all of it into Figured, my new company. This guy is, like, all in on it. It's pretty wild. Another interesting person, we talked about Anja of rooted She's the one person meditation app. It's a panic attack app, that does over a million in revenue. So it goes all the way from folks like Brett, who are on their ways to be billionaires, all the way down to anya, who's got a million dollar thing that she's slow growing slowly, but she owns one hundred percent of
19:56
another interesting one, AJ Patel, another guy who's pretty under the radar, but bootstrapped. Is that the Jesse pause guy?
20:02
Yeah. He bootstrapped zesty pause to a hundred million dollar exit. Now he has a new thing called high key. We talked about him a lot. He's he's he's pretty baller. And and so how does it work? These people, you you get put in a group of peers.
20:14
So you get you apply, you get accepted, you get matched into a group, and then you meet once a month with a facilitator
20:20
who guides that discussion. Right?
20:23
Yeah. And the meetings have these, like,
20:25
like, we've, like, like, we review each meeting afterwards. And we, like, study what the good, what's the bad, and then we've just shaped the,
20:33
the format. So what makes a great meeting versus,
20:36
just okay meeting? So
20:38
what I learned from the podcast is basically these meetings are basically content. So I I try to find juicy good content. So a really good meeting. We do this thing called the business breakdown. Well, someone will like do a analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
20:52
Correct. Let's see other t threats,
20:55
on their on their business.
20:57
And they'll explain how it works, what their CAC is, where they're getting customers, and they just reveal everything. And they're like, here's where we suck, here's where we rock. What do you think I should do? And here's the issue that I'm facing. And so that's a really good meeting when they do that. So Triple whale, you one of your, best investments of all time. He's,
21:14
he's a a member, and they'll just explain how the company's works. And they're, like, on on paper. And this is No threats for Triple. Yeah. This this what I'm about to say is not for for Max. It's for everyone.
21:24
What they'll say is, like, it's going well, but, like, we're sucking here, here, and here, or about to lay people off, or, we just got an acquisition offer and it's way below our valuation, whatever,
21:33
and so they, like, looks and so people will have all types of contacts on their companies to in order to give advice. So that's a good meeting. And then we've hired how many do we have? We probably have thirty or forty facilitators on staff. Right. Dude. And that's hard. Rangling these people up is hard and like training them it's been, like, that's been the biggest challenge, and that's our biggest cost is is trying to figure out how to get these people to do stuff well. Now let's talk about how you decided to start So again, I think if I had said, what is the Sampar
22:02
startup method? I would have said,
22:05
The first bit I think was was kinda correct, which was sniff around for the opportunity. I think you are a world class, you know,
22:15
hound. Sniffer? Yeah.
22:17
Top five sniffer, I know.
22:22
So you're good at finding opportunity and that what that means is you talk to a bunch of people and you bluntly ask them, be like, is that a good business? And then they're like, Well, yeah. I mean, we did this much in revenue. You're like, I was just asking, but thanks for telling me.
22:38
You do a good job of basically finding interesting models or, you know, that are businesses that you think are good businesses. So at that part, I think, was straight out of a straight out of your normal playbook. And so you did a good job with that.
22:50
Then you were like,
22:52
okay. I could see this business. And I think you even, like, talked to somebody who had bought company like this, like in private equity. Yeah. And you were like, Yeah. Why'd you buy it? I'll call them. How do they grow with year by year? What's your plan with them?
23:04
Would you buy another was this like a one off outlier or are there other businesses like this? And you're you basically got confidence. So there was some of your method
23:12
dude, I called I called the guy, and I was like, look,
23:16
hey, I just got I found your number on the internet. I I don't wanna sound like a douche bag here, but here's who I am. So I'm kind of like legit, and I'm gonna create something that I have a feeling you're gonna want to buy. I don't know if I'm ever gonna sell it, but I have a feeling you're gonna want to. So it's it it makes sense for you to have it talk with me right now. And I have a particular set of skills. I've honed over.
23:36
Well, thankfully, it worked. Like, taking speech
23:40
Very humbly. I was trying to be very humble, but, yeah, and he, like, told me a little bit about the business. He didn't reveal anything that I, I mean, I could have found a lot of it online. But he didn't it's not like he, like, broke any, like, confident reality stuff. But, yeah, I did that. And then I just created a type form, and I created a Google doc I just wrote out in one page what my new idea is, who should join, who shouldn't join, and at the bottom was a tight form. And I sent that Google doc to, like, fifty friends, and, like, twenty of them signed up, and I interviewed all of them. So I actually took a screenshot. Look at my calendar. You see my calendar down here? No. My calendar, it's like a zebra. There's, like, stripes. Basically, I did, like, fifth.
24:19
Weird flex. Alright.
24:22
Zebra calendar.
24:23
I got that zebra calendar, basically. And, like, there's no meetings on the day that you'll see there's no meetings on the day we record the the the pod. But besides that, there's, like, ten to fifteen meetings every single non MFM day. Yeah. And I would just buy one of those Bluetooth headsets
24:38
like, you're a telemarketer because I was like, I think Sam was just doing these, like, twenty minute calls
24:44
all day. Like, for a while, you were doing that. Right? You were doing basically a twenty thirty minute sales call or discovery call,
24:52
every day all day. Because we used to be completely unscheduled.
24:56
Right? Like, we had that elephant schedule. It's just clear gray. Nothing there. And I could call you anytime. We could have a little chit chat. It was fine. And then all of a sudden, you started this business,
25:07
and you became the machine. Was it hard? I became the machine. Was it hard to flip that switch or In a way,
25:14
I here's my suspicion. In a way, you kinda missed that, and it felt fun to go, like, super, like, hardcore about it. It was awesome, but it was hard. It was, like, lifting weights. Like, during it, it like, I was proud to do it, and I was happy to do it, but it was very challenging. And so I was, like, doing all these calls and I would interview people, figure out who is interesting, who's not interesting, who we should turn away, who we should accept, And then we just sent a Striplink, and we accepted payment. And then we said, alright. You have a thirty day delay. We went out and found the executive coaches, the facilitators,
25:44
we trained them, and then the first meeting started. And we did that for about a hundred people
25:49
without any website, and we didn't create a website until around December. And when we created a website, I actually in. Correct? Months. No. Yeah. Many seven figures in revenue.
26:02
The way you talk about money is so funny.
26:05
Many many sad memes, everyone's at me.
26:08
He's here hilarious. Humans don't talk like this.
26:12
Millions,
26:13
millions in run rate. It it was, like, we are doing good. I was doing good. It was just me and Joe. So, basically, he would go out and find the facilitators, and I would go out and, like, find the And by the way, there's a great story here because if you actually go to the website, CEO mastermind dot com,
26:28
This same business idea that you're doing right now
26:31
was a business I started at the very beginning of the podcast very loosely.
26:35
I, I was like, hey, this mastermind thing is really great.
26:39
It's helped me a lot in my life. Anybody wanna join one or create one here put your thing in. And I think I did, two hundred fifty dollars or three hundred dollars per month per person. So it was, like, three to four. I thought that was Club LTV, which was, like, the greatest name ever. No separate. First was CEO mastermind. So if you're interested, I think I still have the website. CEO master. It just says index. I think, yeah, maybe I didn't renew or something like that. But,
27:04
yeah. Something like that. Basically, I had created this website. This is how I met Ben, by the way. Ben was the one of the six people that signed up for this in the first batch. I said, oh, I'm only having one group.
27:13
And I made this thing on click funnels.
27:17
they joined the group, and I was the facilitator,
27:19
which was, you know, a bad move. A bad move. Because I was like, I don't really wanna be facilitating this anymore.
27:25
So I'm not gonna do this business. And the obvious is the same mistake I actually made in my sushi restaurant, which was The restaurant was actually quite profitable for month one, but I hated going every day at five in the morning to the fish market and picking up tuna and then making the spicy tuna makes hit it all the stuff. And any smart person would have just been like, you need to hire somebody to do that.
27:47
in my head, it was just like, if we hate doing other everyone's gonna hate doing this. This is terrible. I don't wanna do this anymore. I'll get me out of here. And similarly, for the CMS, when I think I was the facilitator, which was a bad move. Because really what ended up happening was I couldn't resist solving everyone's problems, and everybody who joined was a fan of the pods. So they really just wanted to talk to me. They didn't really care about their peers. And so, that was a mistake on my butt. But I'll tell you tell him what that. Ben came out of that. So I got my win out of that, which was I met Ben. He became my business partner.
28:14
The second thing was it is a great lesson in turning the intensity knob up. It's like for anyone out there who's like, oh, I had that idea. No. No. No. I literally had this idea. I was in the same position as Sam. Had this idea before Sam created the website, created the prototype, did the first round of it for a few months, and then decided, I don't really care about this six grand a month right now. I don't really wanna I don't know if I wanna grow this. I don't know how how I don't know. And I just sort of let it die on the vine.
28:44
Fast forward three years.
28:46
Sam tells me he sends me that Google doc. If I wanna start this business, I'm like, Oh, that sounds super familiar. I know that idea.
28:53
That's that's interesting. I actually you know what? I was didn't think that was a good idea.
28:59
And so, and then I got to see. I got to watch. It's like watching your buddy date your ex. It's like, I got to watch them send me a chart every day of the ARR going up Like, just exploding.
29:09
Like, dude, we're gonna need bigger paper. Eight by eleven's not cutting it. The bar charts going off the page. And I was like, this is a great example of when you turn the intensity knob up to twelve
29:20
because you are willing to do the sales calls every single day. Every every thirty all day.
29:25
You were immediately going out hiring people so that this could scale. You wouldn't have to get bogged down in the operations. You could stay focused on growing it. You did all the things that anybody would anybody smart would advise somebody to do. You were doing all those things, and it was great to see. And I say this not to say, that you that you winklevoss or anything like that. That's not what that's my takeaway. But I say it as a joke because
29:46
I really that is my takeaway, which is the difference between success and failure is often just turning the intensity knob up. Now at that time, I had just sold my company. I'm still working at Twitch. I I I don't think I really would have gone and done that. I I don't think I really wanted to do that.
30:00
But man, is it a powerful way to see, like, an AB test? Here's somebody who does it as a one of ten things that they're doing in a light intensity. And this is really fully committed and versus somebody who's fully committed who turns the intensity knob up to twelve. Same idea. Using the same, you know, fundamental platform of this podcast as, like, you know, your your launch pad for that where, I don't know, maybe not the launch pad because you need to promote it on you know, the credibility you had when you hit up those people, like, you know, a lot of those people you mentioned were for Dude, I think
30:30
this, this business would not be good for you. In fact, I think this business is good for me to run. So I've hired I we got it to a certain size, and then once we could, we hired a CEO. And that's within less than a year. Right? Which is unusual, but I think probably
30:45
that you had a reason you wanted to do that or you you actually probably plan to do that from the beginning. Why is that? Oh, no. I we didn't plan to do. We we or we didn't plan to hire this person. We hired Jordan. But did you did you think you would be the CEO or did you
30:59
Once it once it started working, I was like, oh, man. This is gonna be significantly bigger than I think it can be. And also,
31:06
I don't have the skill set. It's a very operational,
31:09
heavy thing. And you have to be very calm and patient and,
31:13
talk to people like really politely constantly, and it's a very people heavy business. So, you know, we have dozens of these facilitators and, like, wrangling them up and, like, figuring all that out, figuring all that out, it's quite hard. I don't have that ability. And I don't have the ability to run a really big company, which I think this is gonna be. So, no, we I don't think you could have done this. I I know for a fact I could have done this or could not have done this. Would have had to hire someone as well. Hiring a CEO this early is hard. It's hard to hand over your baby. So I think people, I know when Andrew comes on, people always ask Oh, ask him about hiring a CEO.
31:44
I I don't know why. I think it's another one of these easy buttons people wanna push of, like, again, it's like the mentor oh, this person will solve all my problems. Oh, if only I found a great operator, then I could have all of the ownership and none of the work. This sounds fantastic. And of course, that does happen. It's not that it doesn't happen, but I think a disproportionate number of people are interested in that.
32:03
Do you have anything interesting you could say about finding and hiring the CEO and how you know that they're the right person for for this business and taking that big leap of faith of handing a working, but early business to somebody else.
32:14
So when I write, like, three months before I was selling the hustle,
32:19
about, like, literally three weeks before
32:22
I started selling it before I got the email from HubSpot,
32:25
I started talking to this guy named Jordan, who is the chief growth officer at,
32:29
motley fool, which is, you know, like, at the time, like, a five hundred million dollar a year thing, And I was like, Jordan, I wanna hire a CEO for the hustle, and I started recruiting him, went to his house, Winden Dined him, and he was like, I'm in. And then I got this call from HubSpot. And I signed an NDA and they're publicly traded, so I couldn't tell him. And then about a week before the deal closed, I was like, Jordan, I've gotta back out of our deal. You'd, like,
32:51
I have to take this offer. And he was like, I understand.
32:54
you know, I told them, Hubspot still needs someone to run the organ as and within, do you want it? And so he said, yeah. And so he ran it. And so now I think HubSpot Media, which is what the hustle's called. It has, like, a hundred people, and he's done a good job. Then a year and a half later, two years later,
33:08
he quit.
33:09
And I and he was like, hey. Do you wanna I heard your work on this new thing, can I consult with you? And I was like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be great. And I was, like, talking to him and he was, like, do you need a CEO?
33:20
immediately, I I said, yeah. But I had this weird conflict with Hub spot. And so I just hollered at Hubspot and I explained the situation. I go, man, he he bailed already. He wants to work with me. Are you guys okay with it? And so they said, yes. And so we immediately got in a room, and we just hatched out a deal where he's highly incentivized to grow the company.
33:38
was is perfect for this because I I think I've known, like, what he's about. But it was, like, I guess, technically, a two and a half year process. And the takeaway from this is, I've I've been recruiting this guy for two and a half years now to, like, come and work with me. And so it took a long ass time. And so when we sold the company Honestly, that sounds sounds like, oh, that's unusual. No. It's not unusual.
33:58
Often the best people are people that you kinda have this, like, almost
34:04
Oh, maybe the timing's not right yet. And,
34:07
it eventually in a weird way things do fall together later, much later, but those relationships get built over time and they see get to see them operate over time. They get to see you operate over time and it builds a lot of trust. So it's pretty common. I think it's a good,
34:20
reminder not to burn bridges and not to close doors. Well, that's what I was gonna say. You have to keep people. You gotta treat people right. So when when we sold the hustle, I gave them, like, a thank you check. Like, you didn't work here, but I feel really bad. I just give you this as a token of my appreciation. He's like, this is literally a check that just says thank you, Sam.
34:41
When I say big check, I mean, it was physically a large check, and I handed over to him, and I shook his hand, in front of it.
34:49
And, dude, do you gotta treat people right? Like, you know, Steph Smith's another person who I've worked with for years. She went and worked at Andresen Horowitzitz,
34:57
And when I was starting this, I was like, just so you know, this thing's available. But anyway, this is a long game. And, you know, you talked to James Carrier. James Carrier's partner is someone who he met James harriers is like, I don't know, close to billionaire guy who has a incubator and a bunch of other companies. He is partners with someone. I believe who he's known for, like, twenty or thirty years. But you have to, like, it's a really long game to recruit these people.
35:19
Yeah. And by the way, Stan, who's his partner?
35:22
They've been they did businesses together for, like, I don't know. Fifteen, twenty years, stands currently not at an effects, which is where where James is, the thing that they, I think think the co founders together, maybe they didn't co founders together, but they were, you know, they've been doing business together for twenty years. Naturally, he would have been doing that, but he got recruited by Mark Zuckerberg. And Zuck had been recruiting him for ten plus years and finally got Stan to agree to go to Facebook.
35:46
After ten years of recruitment.
35:49
and I think now he's left, but but he he worked there for, you know, three, four years during during that period. And, and I think James was like, yeah, that's cool. Like,
35:57
go vet. Go for it. Go on tour. Have that experience. That's great. Like, you know, our partnership is still intact. Even if you go do that, which I think is a a pretty awesome thing. You know, I had a a moment like this recently where I
36:10
I so I I'm starting a new thing. I'm not talking about it yet either. So I'll come out, closet. Let's talk about that in a in a minute about why neither of us talk about stuff. Exactly. So
36:21
the plan was me and Ben are gonna do this. Great. We've we just built and sold the Bill Crowde.
36:27
That was a big win in a in a short amount of time.
36:31
We raised our fund together in, like, one month raised a range raised our own rolling fund that can deploy, I don't know, between seven to ten million dollars per year.
36:40
We built a course business. That's a seven figure course business. We, you know, we've done, like, four or five things together now. Me and Ben, and I'm like, oh, we have our team. We don't need anything else.
36:50
As we talked about this new thing, I was like, you know, there is one person
36:53
that I would recruit to join this, that I would give equity in this too, because I probably wouldn't give equity to anybody in this. Because I'm, like, I'm sure this is going to work. I think this is gonna be big. So I value the equity. So why would I give money to anybody? I don't need anything from anybody. I don't need capital Don't eat experience, don't eat don't eat anything. There was one person. And so I hit up this one person, and I said,
37:13
listen. I'm doing this thing. I think you're a perfect fit for it. And for that person, honestly, this is a perfect fit. It wasn't even like a sales pitch where I'm trying to convince you. It's like literally, there's a perfect match. Like, You know that thing you really love to do? That's all we do.
37:28
You know that real that problem with your current thing where you don't own any path to wealth,
37:33
I'm offering you a path to wealth. You know, you all own equity in this thing.
37:37
You know, you always wanted to feel special. Literally, I'm not recruiting anybody else. This is either your job or there's no job.
37:43
And I was like, you don't have to interview this is I know you. You've known me. This was something that could work. And the person was like, wow. This really does sound perfect. But, you know, I'm hesitant because of this one
37:55
visa thing, this logistical thing. And I was like, oh, and this person called me a few weeks after they they spoke to you. And I was like, oh, well, the all those things are solvable blah blah blah. And so,
38:05
anyway, long story short, the person was like, you know what? I'm just too nervous about that. I don't wanna, you know, I I I I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm ready to leave blah blah blah.
38:15
And in my head, my reply was like,
38:19
dear idiot.
38:23
Here idiot.
38:24
Thanks for notifying me about your dumb decision.
38:28
Yeah. It's like it's like it's like when a cute girl, like, you know, like, rejects you. It's like, well, I didn't even want you anyway. Right. You have ugly ankles. And so that's how I felt. I was like,
38:38
wow. Yeah.
38:40
I can't believe this person didn't take this offer.
38:44
So anyways, I I, like, have this, like, thirty second reaction where I'm, like, oh my god. I can't believe this person didn't make the offer. Doesn't make any sense to me. And then I was, like, You know what? Life's complicated. I'm sure they have a bunch of stuff going on.
38:56
Like, you know, it's not as easy as a decision. These are big leaps of faith that somebody would have to take. And you know what? I thought they were great before this. I still think they're great. I think that the, you know, this decision, I think,
39:07
is is probably the wrong decision for them, but who knows that, you know, the life is long.
39:12
I bet you I bet we'll end up working together in the future anyways because they're they are awesome. And I think we're gonna keep doing awesome things. Eventually, those things will intersect.
39:19
And, and so I I was, like, okay. That was my, like, reaction. It brought brought up two things for me. One is
39:25
reminder to myself
39:27
Don't let the the in the moment reaction be the response.
39:31
Right? So it's like,
39:33
don't let the rejection or the feeling of, oh, it didn't work out. Like, for example, for Jordan, in this case, he could have when you when you rug pulled him on the job offer been like, f this guy.
39:44
And, when we sold the milk road, same thing, we rejected the people who we eventually sold to first. At the last minute,
39:52
And then they didn't get pissed
39:55
instead. They just followed up, like, you know, forty five days later or whatever, and we're like, Hey, what's up? I didn't hear any news. Did you guys not end up selling? Like, we're still open if you would like to, and we went back and ended up doing a deal. And so
40:08
I've learned over time that the real the real ball ballers that they don't react, they respond.
40:14
And so don't let the in the moment react should take away your future opportunities. That's the first thing.
40:19
The second thing is it highlighted to me that courage
40:23
is actually
40:24
It's massively underrated.
40:26
And I was like, this is I was like, this person is more talented than me. And in fact, often when I work with people, I'm like this person is much smarter
40:34
and more talented than me. Why do I get the job? Why do I get the CEO job? Or why do I have the most equity?
40:40
It's like I think I just have one thing that a lot of these people don't have, which is I have a lot more courage and guts to go for things that I want.
40:49
That more talented people end up overanalyzing and not going for. And it just highlighted to me the importance of
40:55
having courage and having guts chase after something that's good, even though there's some unknowns or some risks involved in it. And not talking about this person's specific situation, but just as a common trait, of, like, what's the difference between an entrepreneur
41:09
and a and a non entrepreneur?
41:11
It's not intelligence.
41:13
It's not,
41:14
charisma.
41:15
It's not any of those things. It's often simply having the guts to go and choose to go do the thing. And so, it just highlighted that for me. I'm like, man, This is a person with double the talent I have, but they're gonna get half as far because they're lacking that one thing. I hope they over time develop more of that confidence to go for it.
41:36
wow, it it may be act go reprice how important that is,
41:41
as an attribute.
41:47
HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data. Across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases.
42:00
So I used to do this thing called hustle Con, which was like, you know, we did it five or six or seven times, and we would get founders of interesting startups come and explain their story. And we we would have five hundred up to twenty five hundred people there. You spoke at a couple of them. And I used to tell people. Alright. You're speaking slots at three. You have to come at noon for the mic check,
42:20
and we'll be backstage and whatever. And little did they know There was no mic check. The mic worked perfectly. There is no mic check. Like, you don't do a mic check. Also the mic check could take one second. And so you you getting them there three hours early was was a tactic.
42:35
Yeah. The the mic check they're they're ain't a mic check. We're just gonna put this little lapel mic on. You're good.
42:41
But I would tell them that because I was like, sick. I'm gonna get I'm gonna get to spend time with all these, like, billionaire type people backstage. And the best part was I would get, like, six of them at backstage at a time. And there was, like, a time where it was, like, this woman who started class pass. It was the guy who started Grammarly, the founders of away, you know, the travel company, the Casper founders, the founder of WeWork, and I remember having them all back there. And I would do what I do, which is I would just, like, throw a out there. I wouldn't insert my opinion, but they're out of question out there, and I would hear them talk. And people were complaining about, like, there's this one person who's like, I have to fire my V of finance. They're horrible. You know, they've been working with me working with me for two years. And I've known they've been horrible,
43:19
but I'm too afraid to fire them. I don't want the confrontation. And there's another person saying, like, dude, I've been raising money this whole time. I gotta keep raising, and I don't know if I'm ever gonna make anything from this yada yada yada. And then there was a couple people like Max of Grammerly who,
43:32
is just, like, killing it, but I get to, like, hear what he has to say. And I remember thinking at that moment, I remember thinking
43:37
a lot of these people are twenty or fifty times more successful than I am, but they are not twenty or fifty times smarter than me. I I I think that might be the case with a couple of them, like the Gramerley guy Max, but most of the people, they're like, not. You know, we had the,
43:52
Tom from,
43:54
Quest Nutrition who sold this company for a billion dollars. I remember hearing him say, like, whatever he was saying, I was like, I have those same thoughts. The only difference is is that you are more courageous than me, and you started your journey a little bit earlier, and you're getting after it. And I remember that, like, being around that group and then being around our group that we had, it did a few things. One, it normalized success.
44:15
And, like, another example of this is, like, sports. Like, I don't think that Brazil is necessarily or Argentina has genetically superior people that make them good at soccer. It's just that They just grow up playing and they expect to be good and they work together and it normalizes that type of excellence.
44:30
Another thing is,
44:33
It made me realize that the people who I admire,
44:37
they're fearful.
44:38
They are exactly like I am. You know, I heard this guy complain about wanting to fire someone because he just hated the con confrontation.
44:44
The difference is is that they do it anyway. And so meeting my heroes that way, it really
44:49
made me realize that they shouldn't be on a pedestal other than the reason of, like, they're just they just did the damn thing. Not they're not necessarily smarter. And so you and I have had people in this pod are significantly more successful than both of us, and a lot of them, not all of them,
45:03
they're not much better, or sometimes they're even worse. Sometimes we've had some amazing guests on. I'm like, oh, that's It's kind of an idiot.
45:11
Like, there's been times where I'm like, but they've killed it. They've they've pulled it off. Andrew Wilkes is another guy who I've talked about. I'm like, I feel like we're almost in the same ballpark of, like, patience of, of IQ and of, like, you know, maybe one person's better or worse, but his success level's huge because he's just been doing it for longer and he actually, like, tried something that was against the grain. So anyway, that's one of the, like, the big expectation or the big things that I learned being part of Hampton and also being part of our group, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to launch it was to like make, like, normalize this type of success. So if you're in Idaho, so we have this woman named Janessa, has a company called SimplyEloped.
45:42
You'll have, all they do is they sell, like, wedding packages, basically. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but Simplyelope, you can check it out. She's in Idaho, has like a ten million dollar a year business, eight million dollar a year business. And she's like, in my neck of the woods, like, no one's doing what I do. So I think that, like, I'm at the peak right now. And so it's nice to be around other people who are killing it a little bit harder than me. And now I now have, like, I know what the next level is in the next peak, but, that's one of the big learnings I have being around some of these successful people. And
46:11
we can move on and talk about other stuff, but
46:13
I'm pumped. This is out. Another thing that we're doing, by the way, where my partner wanted to try PR
46:19
and TBD if it's gonna work or not, but it's miserable. Do talking to these journalists,
46:25
it's horrible. I hate it. I told him I'd go, I'm never doing this again. Man, being around these people, you never know, like, what they're gonna take out of context or, like, if they're gonna come, like, angry,
46:35
It sucks, man. I hate doing PR. I've never done it, and I'm never gonna do it again. Doing PR, I feel like is, like, you know, those scenes where it's, like, you take out a knife and they have a knife and it's like we're sort of approaching the other's knife. We're gonna have to get really close if we're gonna either of us wants to do this. I hope you're not trying to do that. I have to have my knife case you do. That's how it's a Mexican standoff, baby. It's an old in fact, we should we should drop the hard j of journalists and just call of journalists because
47:01
This mexican standoff is tough. It's tough to do, but I think there's I think there's a lot of value, especially for something like what you're doing because
47:07
You're gonna have the seed community of people who are, like, founder type people who probably listen to the pod. They know you or they know about the hustle. And they trust you to build something awesome, then you're just gonna have a bunch of people who've got good businesses that are like, I don't listen to podcasts.
47:23
And I don't know what the hustle is
47:26
yet, you know,
47:28
no. I I don't do that, but I do read the Wall Street Journal, and if the Wall Street Journal tells me about this thing, or if, whatever TechCrunch tells me about this thing, in my mind, it's, like, credible. And, and so I think or, you know, you you reach out to somebody to to join. They're gonna Google you. What are they gonna find when they Google you? I think is, is an important, like, question for people to answer. When you had done this, you did a really good rant a second ago, and there was like three or four things that I thought were awesome. And that what you said.
47:55
One of them reminded me of something I watched last night. So I was watching I was going down YouTube rabbit hole, and I was listening to I watched this video
48:04
that was
48:05
a compilation
48:07
of Martin Screlli's greatest advice.
48:10
And Which is probably pretty good. Other than that, like disappoint.
48:13
Did not disappoint. So Other than the, like, the whole, like, you know, like, security fraud.
48:18
Yeah. You know, besides besides that, besides that, you know. Well, I I probably have ninety nine good things to say. I am buying a lot Grelly stock because everybody abandoned. He became a penny stock. Everybody's abandoned. Everybody just sort of wrote this guy off. And,
48:31
I'm not saying that I would give this guy my money,
48:35
but this is a very smart person who has very interesting things to say. He is very entertaining. First of all,
48:41
and secondly, he's got interesting things to say. And he's he's very, very intelligent.
48:46
Did he do
48:47
something wrong? Did he commit crime. It sounds like it. I don't know. I didn't go look into all of it, but he went to jail.
48:53
Would I, you know, trust him with everything in my life? Would I give him, you know, the password to my bank account? And hell no.
48:58
But I do think that in general, people just write off people way too quickly.
49:04
What did he say? And there's a whole bunch of interesting things. So in compilation. It's like a thirty minute compilation. And halfway through, he goes, he does this one thing. Somebody's like,
49:12
yeah. You know, something about being successful, and Martin's like,
49:16
like, you don't freeze it. First of all, you don't have to wanna be successful. Right? Like, you you get to choose what you want. What's success for you?
49:23
I play this capitalist game,
49:25
I like success success in this way. And it's what matters to me. And he's like, so so if you wanna do that, he's like, oh, IQ?
49:33
Nah. Like IQ is not the thing. It's like there's like a minimum amount of IQ you probably need. It's not as high as you think. If you're watching this video, you probably got it. And he's like,
49:44
also bad news. Your IQ is not gonna change. So worrying about IQ isn't gonna help you. He's a pretty IQ. He's he's I think he's a high IQ. He's a high IQ guy, but he's he's he's like, I've met a lot of people and he goes, act the higher the IQ tends to run into one problem, which is they just overthink everything. They over complicate everything.
50:03
And he's like, he basically described my favorite my meme of the year, the mid wit meme, which is basically, like, you know, the the idiot, the the the sort of numb skull on one side and the Jedi on the other. And then the middle is the, the sort of the the midwet, which is the the the person who's got the high IQ,
50:19
but the lack of courage and the the lack of wisdom to know how to zoom out.
50:23
And they over analyze and over assess everything. He he was basically describing how this happens
50:28
for most people. And I thought
50:31
man, it's so true what he's saying that, like, often the hierarchy, he's like, they he goes, they just get in their own way.
50:38
And I gotta tell you that shit hit different when he said that. I was like, it's so true.
50:42
I know the times in my life where I get in my I get in my own way. And Like, what's an example?
50:48
Oh, tons. Like,
50:51
like, I'll I'll give you an example because I have somebody who's like a mentor of mine that I text all the time about my business stuff.
50:58
And usually,
50:59
just the act of typing it to this person, I'm like, I know what they're gonna say because they're the they're they're on the Jedi side of things where they're like, Like, I was talking to them about,
51:08
I've given this example before my e com biz where I was like, I was like, okay. We got the Facebook ads up and running.
51:14
It's working.
51:15
You know, I'm thinking we should do influencers. I think influencers could be huge for us. And I'm thinking,
51:20
we don't have Google, but people, you know, obviously, there's a lot of search traffic look. I attached this PDF. I'm report of search traffic. And what do you think about SEO? I feel like SEO could be good because it's cheap. And then what do you think about and I was just like saying all this shit and then my my Jedi friend was like,
51:34
Don't talk about don't say the word influencers until you're making four hundred thousand a month on, on Facebook ads.
51:41
And I was like, oh, okay. He's like, because remember, like, we said at the beginning, Facebook's probably could be the biggest driver. So
51:47
if you can't get Facebook ads to work, none of this other stuff is probably gonna work. And the best way to get Facebook ads to work would be to I was like, focus on it. He's like, yes.
52:00
just having somebody who could just jedi zoom out and be like,
52:05
don't say don't say all these words. Like, don't say the word influencer until you get to this amount of money. Then you're allowed to talk to me about influencer. Peter Till has the same thing he used to do at running PayPal famously. It's like, was Peter Teel a good manager? And people like, no. Like,
52:21
managerial
52:21
skills or, like, soft skills are not what Peter Tiel is known for, but he did one really effective tactic, which was Everybody in the company would have their one key thing that they're working on, their one mission that they have. And if you ever tried to talk to him about not your mission, he would simply get up and leave the room. You would be like, oh, you're talking to me about not the mission.
52:41
Bye.
52:45
What did you say? Like, Wilkins said, is this a a balloon floating away?
52:49
Just blown up here. On air balloon just turns on the fire. Flits away. Bye. As he turns it to a speck in the distance.
52:56
And, I'm taking that, like, philosophy. I'm not as hardcore about as I wanna be, but, like, that's how I feel when I talk to people in my company, like, oh,
53:03
remember that thing we wrote down that we said was the most important critical thing, the main thing? Oh, you're not keeping the main thing, the main thing. Big problem. Alright. Great. And, and you see this all the time, like, the example I gave of the smart person who turned down the job that was perfect for them.
53:18
They needed the Jedi to be like, you want all these things and you just got offered all those things, like, take it, figure out the rest after that.
53:26
You know, you know, that's that's the Jedi zoom out. And so similarly, I think that being in these types of groups helps you with the Jedi zoom out because you will
53:34
you will get out of your own way about Some part of your your brain that's tangled up in a knot where you are overthinking over analyzing over complicating something. It'll happen with, like, you know, Yeah. I hired this guy. It's just not working out, but I feel like maybe I haven't put in the right position and blah blah blah. And then the peer group will be like,
53:54
you're saying that they're lazy. They misrepresented what they did before,
53:58
and you've tried to give them the freedom to do something and they're just not doing, you know,
54:03
sounds like it's not working out. Maybe you should let them go.
54:07
And then Yeah. You get obvious. Well, I'm just thinking of them to the six months. They become my hands. They're like, Do you think that in the six months, it's gonna improve?
54:14
No. I just there's no way.
54:16
So then do you think you should do the six percent? Right? It's like, It's the just obvious. It's the common sense, but common sense is fairly uncommon.
54:25
And this is the first time I've launched something significant with an audience. And I remember talking to you with the milk road. I think you launched it
54:32
January a year ago. Yeah. The first year shipping was, like, in end of December, January. Yeah. First edition came out there. And
54:39
you, like, were so excited. And with this pod, we don't hold back. And so you were just, like, telling me how excited you were, but it was live. And then, it was working and everything. But I remember you, like, forwarding emails or just talking to me, you're like, well, here's the milk road for Brazil. It's live already. They're just, like, they send it ten minutes later, but they just copy and paste it. And I actually met one of these guys the other day. He was like, yeah, I was one of the guys copying milk road. And he said, like, he said the most beautiful thing ever at least to our ears. He was like, But then I only did it for, like, a month or two months, and I realized it was too hard. And I can't I can't actually pull it off. And I was like, awesome. That's exactly what we like to hear. But I remember you, like,
55:16
I remember you, were like, yeah, this sucks. Like, all these people ripping us off. And it I don't think it made any impact on the actual business, but it does distract you, and it gets your, like, cortisol levels going. And it was the same thing with us, with this audience. And so there was a few times where I would throw, like, little strings out there. Like, I would throw, like, a domain name. Like, one time, I just mentioned marathon Ranch, which was, like, the URL of of of my Airbnb, and I didn't expect anyone to actually book it. Or I would mention, like, these other things that I had access to. And I'd go and look at the analytics, and I would see, like, oh, wow, ten or twenty thousand people came to the website.
55:50
I'm gonna
55:51
not mention this because I've learned from Sean's stuff of, like, let's not mention something until it gets to a certain size. And there's a bunch of other reasons, which is, like, you don't want the community you fast and all that. But just the pressure of, like, people talk about, like, they they build in public. A lot of people who build in public They do it as a marketing scheme. They do it to get traffic or to get awareness. You know, buffer did this. Buffer was one of the first peoples I I've ever seen where they revealed all their revenue, and they also revealed all their salaries. And that was, like, their schtick. Like, that's how we know about them, other than their product's great and everything, but that's how they got out there. But once you and I were in the very fortunate position of having an audience,
56:26
the name of the game for all, for us a lot of times is just shut the hell up. Don't talk about shit. And I remember, like, being in, like, seeing what you're going through. And I'm like, I'm not mentioning a thing anymore about certain stuff.
56:38
Well, I think,
56:39
I think you're right, but you're focusing a lot on the, like, competitive aspect of it, which I think is overblown
56:45
and doesn't That's overblown. Yeah. I think it's the pressure and
56:49
the lack of flexibility, which is In the early days of something, you you don't have a lot going for you. Right? It's like,
56:58
it's like, do I have a big brand name? No. Do I have good track record of success and a bunch of customers. No. Do I have a well established product? No. I just built it last week. Alright. So it's like you don't have
57:08
Where are the attributes? You don't have any of those attributes, but the one attribute you have is basically, like, speed and agility. The ability to to change, be flexible, adapt,
57:17
and, and and and and turn on a dime.
57:20
As you see, oh, the market actually wants this. And so the reason for me to
57:25
not talk about something early on is,
57:29
typically that
57:31
well, two things. One is
57:33
With the podcast, you're inviting a bunch of guests over to the house.
57:37
It's I wanna clean up the house a little bit. Right? Because they're I'm gonna get a lot of traffic from day one. Whereas before I had an audience, wasn't gonna get a lot of traffic from day one. Cool. I'll I'll shout it out. Only ten people are gonna come to the site anyways. Doesn't matter how crappy it looks. With something like this, a bunch of people come, so you you kinda don't wanna put your your worst forward there. But the most important thing is you don't wanna go tell the world I'm doing next. It's gonna be the best thing ever. And here's exactly how it works because you lose a little bit of that flexibility.
58:02
And adaptability. That's really your only attribute
58:05
when you're when you're young. Right? So it's like a a kid or a baby. Like, they're hyper flexible. And they could fall down, like, you you a kid can't sprain an ankle because they're they're everything is just too like malleable. Right? They can learn seven languages because their brain is, like, so malleable. Startup is kinda the same way when it's when it's young, which is that the only advantage it has is that it's really valuable.
58:25
So don't harden that too quickly by going and publicly announcing it when you may not have, you know, tested it enough to understand
58:33
exactly what you want it to be and how you want it to work. That's my my take at least. And let me give you let me give the audience two business ideas that I've discovered while working on Hampton.
58:43
The first, have you heard of Harrow? It stands for help a reporter out. Harrow, h a r o.
58:50
So Harrow was launched
58:52
I think in, like, two thousand five, it was pretty early. And if you're a new startup or even just, like, a small ish startup and you want backlinks,
59:00
it's based in and so you're a user, you sign up, and you're a PR per or you're a you're a startup person, and you're or you're a PR person,
59:07
and you get an email once a day, sometimes like three times a day. And on the other side, it's a journalist. So someone at Bloomberg says, I'm writing an article about the surge of
59:17
interest in
59:19
homemade bread.
59:21
I need I have a deadline tomorrow,
59:23
so I need to get on the phone immediately.
59:26
the recipient will see receive an email of, like, ten of these types of requests. And they reply and they go, oh, yeah. I actually am a bread maker, or I'm a bakery, and we just switched entirely to selling
59:36
home kits. Right.
59:37
Get me on the phone, and they do that because they want the link or they want the little bit of press.
59:43
That company was acquired by Cision was it called Cision -- Yeah. -- Cision?
59:48
And it's kind of, like, just kind of floating around. Doesn't seem like it's being innovated or anything like that, but I'm pretty sure they have like one and a half million subscribers, and people pay money to access it. I think that someone can redo Harrow because we've had, like, reporters come to us and be like, hey, can you introduce me to, like, a founder who's doing this, this, and this. I have a story. I'm like, yeah. Sure. I We have hundreds of them.
01:00:09
I think someone can build that out in a little bit better inch more interesting way and could have a pretty nice sized
01:00:16
company
01:00:17
really quickly. So, Harrow, but redo it. Another one.
01:00:22
I still, in our community,
01:00:24
The number one most common thing that people talk about is, does anyone know of a good blank that can do blank? So does anyone know, like, has anyone used Triple whale or a competitor? What do you think? Has anyone does anyone know of a good lawyer? Right. Does anyone know of a good freelancer who could do I think you can look at just all the categories and I would create niche websites for each or niche newsletter.
01:00:48
long form copywriters.
01:00:50
Here's the fifty people that we've vetted and we like, you can pay access to view the list. Or
01:00:55
here's a bunch of graphic designers who turn around quicker than normal, they're cheap and they're reliable.
01:01:02
This is this list, or lawyers, or payroll software, whatever, and I think you can build a pretty big business doing that because this is the most common problem that a lot of people are posting about in our community is vendors. It's wild. I'm shocked that it's consistently bad. I have a buddy who's doing something like this.
01:01:19
Julian Shapiro.
01:01:20
And so I don't know if this is up right now, but it's called
01:01:24
And while you're talking, I I thought about making just, like, people are always like, I need writers. And I'm like, I should just create Sam's list and it costs, like, five hundred dollars a month, and I'll just update it with interesting people that we're vetting. Right. Who are good writers than we approve of. But I think I think you could do that. So we might have to leave this out, but It's called the pineapple list. So, basically, Julian was like, alright. He's in the growth world, and he's been doing growth for a long time with demand curve and a bunch of things like that. And so he's like, basically, I've interviewed thousands of founders to figure out which agencies they use. So which growth agencies, design agencies, contact agencies are good, that we use.
01:01:59
and he's like, so all you gotta do is you come tell me what type of agency you need, what your budget is, and then we will just give you. Here's the top, you know, one or two or three.
01:02:07
And we charge you no money for that recommendation. We'll even, you know, kind of hop on a call and review some of these agencies for you, and the agencies pay them for that lead. This is a genius idea. I think this is gonna work really, really well. And,
01:02:22
And, yeah, I I I think this is a great idea, and I think it solves an important problem, which is,
01:02:27
you know, in our founder group chats, what question gets asked all the time? Hey. Anybody got a blank and blank that they love. Or, hey, anybody tried this. I'm looking at it right now, and then you get the, like, the real inside scoop of is it legit? Is it not? Is it is it just okay? Is it great? Etcetera etcetera.
01:02:42
Man, I think these can be big and they're they're they're not,
01:02:46
they're they're hard, but they're really simple. And if you have
01:02:49
three months of free time, just go pick a niche and go interview all the vendors in the space as well as all the customers in the space as many as you can and get the truth about what they hate and what they love and create, like, a really vetted, highly vetted list. I think you could make a lot of money -- Right. -- doing something like this. And it's a or it's just a very crystal clear product market fit type of type of solution.
01:03:10
Yeah, that's a good one. Alright. Do we wanna do anything else or should we wrap? I think we should wrap. Thank you for
01:03:17
put my company describing it better than I even could. I'm nervous, man. I've I've never been this nervous or at least I haven't been this nervous in, like, four or five years. The business is already kicking already have a great community. This business is going to work. This is there's nothing to be nervous about at this point.
01:03:33
Also, I think you know, I hope we did a good job of basically not only explaining what it is,
01:03:38
but, like, hopefully, some of the interesting things around it so that this isn't just like a one hour long sales pitch about Hampton, but, like, know, some of the thought process that went into, how did you launch it? What did you do differently this time? You know, I hope there were some good nuggets in there. You could let us know on the in Twitter if we went too far, if it feels good.
01:03:55
and the last thing I think is, you know,
01:03:58
you've been working on this now for how many months?
01:04:01
Since July. So it's March, April now. Yeah.
01:04:05
You know, that's a long time, a long buildup. And so I think you deserve to have this episode to to kinda talk through the whole, the genesis of it, how you went about it, how it's going interesting stuff that's happened along the way, you know, that that is well well learned, well deserved, And I guarantee you, I will predict and guarantee really that this is going to be a
01:04:34
low end,
01:04:35
three hundred, four hundred million,
01:04:37
high end billion dollars.
01:04:39
I think I think that that is the case. Extremely high probability in my head.
01:04:44
Well, thank you. That's awesome. That that makes me feel good.
01:04:49
know, it's true.
01:04:50
Dude, it it it ebbs and flows. And so I just want everyone to know that, like, I've built a success
01:04:56
successful ish company before the hustle. You know, we had tens of millions of revenue and it exited and all that. Every single day, I wake up, and I'm both one I'm, like, this is gonna conquer the world. And then the next hour, I think this is impossible. How are we gonna get this done? So, like, I want everyone to know that the emotions -- Still there. -- that, like, It it it doesn't go away. You know, it doesn't matter how fit you are running a race is painful. It's a different type of pain, but it is always painful and is in hopefully it's also rewarding, but it doesn't matter if you're lifting a hundred pounds or five hundred pounds.
01:05:27
Going to ninety nine max, ninety nine percent of your max is challenging. Yeah. It's good news, bad news. Good news. Hey, that feeling is normal.
01:05:35
Bad news, it doesn't go away.
01:05:38
Are we gonna when are we gonna when are you gonna launch your Earth or announce your thing? Do you know? I don't know. A little bit of time. A little bit of time.
01:05:44
Alright. Well, thanks for listening. If you're interested,
01:05:47
join hampton dot com. I'll bring it up every once in a while on the pod, but,
01:05:52
yeah, just check it out. We're not gonna we're not selling too hard, or I'm not selling it too hard. The point it's like a Harvard it's like Harvard Baby. So we wanna our our our metric of success is how many people turned down. Yeah. Exactly. So go ahead and apply just so you can get that but you can have rejection and then you can get that acceptance rate under one percent.
01:06:09
Yeah. Yeah. We need a lot of people applied, so we have more people to turn down. I'm kidding. Thank you for checking out.
01:06:16
Join hampton dot com. Thank you, everyone.
01:06:19
That's it
00:00 01:06:40