Wait, My Intern Became a 21-Year-Old Millionaire??

I remember at one point you're telling me in Slack, you're like These people just offered me two million bucks for this. Yeah. I'm like, holy shit, you did it, dude. We started the podcast My First Million, you've just made your first two million. Congrats. Like I can't believe this worked out. You're like, I'm not gonna sell though.

And I was like, wow. This guy's insane. And I was like, that's an insane story. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to Alright, so I can't tell you how many times I hear this. People will DM me every single day and they'll say, Hey, I'm just calling my shot right now.

Yeah. Tree. I'm s I'm a small boy. In three years from now. I'm gonna be on MFM. I'm gonna be on my first million. I'm gonna make my first million do an XYZ. Yep.

Every single day I get a message like that. Here's somebody who actually did it. This is Sean. He was my intern. Turn guy who's made millions and millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars, and had crazy journey in between. You were the guy who I created this podcast with. Yeah.

You were the guy who The the cover art of our podcast? He created it. Um the intro song originally, the original intro song, he created it. I didn't even know how to record it audio at the time. This guy did all of it. Um, you went from behind the scenes to now you're on the stage. Here in my house and we're gonna record this episode. So I've made it.

You mean it's that's the teaser, all right. Let's tell the story. All right. What's up, man? Yeah, what's up? I uh

So people don't know this. So you are You Sean. You uh I've met I've known you since you were eighteen years old. You still are kinda like eighteen years old. I'll yeah, yeah, yeah. I still look like you're twenty three now? Yeah. All right, so I'm thinking this episode is kind of like

Your title wasn't intern, but it's gonna be good for YouTube. So we're gonna be like intern. My intern became a millionaire. Yeah, I wasn't glorified and I my type of fish title is cheap as stuff. And by the way, I got a good track record with this. I don't know if I'm doing anything, but I'm good at picking people because I worked with you at age eighteen. Yeah. Steve Bartlett, nineteen, maybe twenty uh years old. There's a guy uh another guy named Sean who

Just tweeted out today that He's like those four months I worked with you We're super influential. He went from like guy just working someplace, now he's got an eight figure agency. So that was cool. Yeah. Uh Danny Miranda works me for a little bit. People know him in the podcast game now. He was with us for a couple of months before he started creating contest. So I th I feel like

Those two is shons, and maybe. Yeah. Getting people that like sound similar to your name. Yeah, yeah, the closer the better, actually. Um all right. So you've had a crazy run. But let's do Let's do the history. So

How do we meet? Uh, well, I followed you on Twitter when I was like twelve, thirteen years old. I was tweeting my whole strategy was let me get My light. Like Profile picture. I'm gonna reintro the the the one part, which is

One thing that people don't know Is This podcast was started actually not with me and Sam. Me and you. I hit you up on uh Twitter DMs. Yes. Yeah.

And I saw that you were doing a pot you were a podcast editor for somebody else I knew. Um I think Corey or Angelist or Corey Levy. Yeah, Corey Levy. And so I I had this idea, all right, I want to do a podcast. I hit you up. I didn't know how old you were, but I was like, Hey

Do you wanna do you wanna produce for me? Then we got on a call I was like, Oh man, this is like a kid summer. You were at school at the time. And I was like, Will you do you know how how audio works? And you're like, Yes, I got you. So the If people see the The cover art of the podcast. Yeah. You made that.

Um, the initial like, you know, twenty episodes or whatever, all those intro and all the audio, you made that. Yeah. Then we started doing business experiments together. This was at a time where I was kind of like, I think I want to build an audience. Yeah. And I also want to just launch some businesses. We launched uh ecom businesses, we launched a bunch of shit together.

And then we all went off our own ways. And then you had a crazy journey after that, where you made millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars, and All the rest. So we're gonna talk about all that. Let's start at the beginning. So I DM'd you, but we you were actually were on Twitter when you said we were what, thirteen years old? Thirteen years old, I followed you. I was trying to just get my face. Like on

All these people in'cause I was I'm from Australia, right? There's no There's no Silicon Valley, there's no like VCs and cool angels and all these people, so I was like, uh, let me this is my avenue to get to these people. Um And then let me just like Even if it wasn't like a lot of value add, I'll let me just tweet random shit. Hey you guys and

I was doing that so if you just go on my Twitter, you'll find tweets of me you know. Tweeting off to Sean, random shit and you'll respond here and there, but Yes, that was like when I was yeah, literally like thirteen, fourteen, whatever. And then Couple of years af later. When else we had the podcast with Corey.

It's when yeah, you DMed me and I was like, Yeah, I already know who you want. Let's do this. I think your name was I think I found you'cause your name was also shot and I was like, this is this is it's me. Uh but yeah. So you um Talk about the start. So when we were working together, tell me some of the things you remember. Cause I remember all I only re everyone's got their own version of history. Yeah. I remember in my head, like, you know, what we were thinking back then, but I'm curious. And this is our first time catching up in person'cause

You live in Australia. Uh when you're just in town. So I mean you used to live it where I I lived. I was living in Brisbane. You also like way back when lived in Brisbane. Yeah. Um so what's your version of history? What do you remember? The first thing I remember. Well I think the First thing I remember is when we're doing the

Podcast I cover out the stuff. I said you over some like uh Yeah, like Here's version A, version B, blah blah blah. And then

You're like, hold on a second, you should uh add your name. To the to the cover up. Yeah. And I th I thought that was really cool. That that gave like me a lot of confidence. Oh okay, yeah. Yeah, a part of this as as well. I don't know. That was that was like a cool thing you did because I think maybe that's some learning there with people that higher. Yeah, give them feel special. Yeah, yeah, you make them feel s special, um do that. I remember.

Um Also I'm just like the Kind of craziness of like Let's start a crystal store today. And then like a few weeks later, let's start this other D thing. Like make up make the store seventy two hours go off and

And do it. It was There's like some variation of like an incubator, but It's just like at this time I'm working at Twitch. I'm earning out my deal. We sold the Twitch. I'm now earning out and I know, okay, in a year I get this besting check. Yeah.

But in the meantime, like Frankly, I was pretty bored inside of a big company. Uh you know, it's not I knew that's not my long term And I was like, you know, on the side here, what can I do to entertain myself? The podcast was one.

Cool thing I'd always wanted to do. And then the other would be like I would meet somebody and I'm like, Oh, this person's killing it in ecom? Yeah. Yo, he's Sean. I'm making an e-com store and I remember for the crystals thing, I was like I read some article

I saw some magazine, like I was trying to look outside of Like I don't look at Tech Crunch to get tech ideas. Or like business ideas. I look I was stem released. I remember reading like a people magazine and it was like Adele was saying she won't go on stage unless she has her like rose quartz crystal

And I was like, what? Like that's insane. Like you who believes in this crap? And I Googled it and I was like after Kim Kardashian got mugged, she had like a four million dollar ring. She got mugged and it was like, How did you recover? She's like, Well, my crystals really grounded me. And I was like, and then you see all these celebrities, I'm like if again

I just think people are sort of like I have this tweet that's like uh The economy is just smart people. Tank. beautiful people to the market to to to the sort of like average people.

And I was like, if all the celebrities are doing this, then there's gotta be a bunch of other people that believe in this. And so I remember calling you and you're like The best part about you is your game. Uh that's I just my favorite thing is like if you hire somebody with no experience, there's a bunch of bad things. Like I'd be like, dude, like I haven't heard from you in two days. Where'd you go?

Yeah. But then on the good side it'd be like He doesn't know any better. So I could just be like Hey, we're doing this and it's gonna be we're gonna launch it in two days. And you're probably just like, I don't know, does that is that normal? Maybe that's normal, right? Like

Because but besides this, like I've never I've always been working for like internet people. I've never had like a traditional go to an office and and like I was I remember at the time I was like Uh, I'm like I'm going to finish uni. Should I go and be a consultant for like some Bank whatever. Yeah, you asked me that. So I'cause yeah, I just didn't know what the other I guess I was just gay'cause I didn't know what the other world was like. I was like, all right, this is kind of right normal and doing this, so Um

See crazy stuff like Just yeah, creating different Ecom stores or different experiments. We did like a newsletter. The good, terrible, bad, very bad. Oh, then do it out here. Top five before Milk Road, right? Milk Road became a successful newsletter company, but I guess before that, I don't even remember that. We did we did launch a newsletter.

Called it. The no good, very bad, terrible something something something newsletter. Yeah. I don't know whether why we called it that, but We basically were launching a bunch of experiments. And I remember at the time, one my one of my takeaways from that is

That Crystal Store, for example. I didn't even know what winning looked like. So one problem with an experiment. 'Cause easy to use this word experiment, but the way a science experiment works is you have a hypothesis. You're like I believe This.

Then you run the test and it either confirms it or it doesn't. Yeah. But I was using the word experiment wrong, which was like I'm just gonna try a bunch of shit. Without actually knowing like what is the win condition.

Yeah. What is the success or failure condition of this? And so like Now that I look now that I actually have an e commerce b like. E commerce business now. Yeah, it's Doing very well. It's an eight figure e commerce business.

Now that I know what an econ business looks like, I can go back and think about our our Crystal store. actually was doing very well. Like I just didn't know. So for example We were running Facebook ads. And the key metric for all e commerce businesses is your Row ads, your return on ad spend.

And I think we were getting like one point seven. Yeah. Well like the rocks. Yeah, we'll still need these rocks. Like Fifty, sixty not. They're crystals. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I remember Like like the first few hours we got that that Shopify ding. Yeah, it's amazing. Like that was I mean, most people start up a store and they're they don't have sales for like a couple of days or whatever, or weeks. And so

Yeah it I think Alpha was like Just didn't continue. We didn't continue, exactly. Because now that I look back, it was like one point seven to two X. Yeah. And I remember thinking, Oh, it's supposed to be three or four X, I think. I'd heard some idiot saying that somewhere. And I just thought that's what it is. And so I was like, Oh, I guess this is bad. Turn it like shut it down. Let's do the next thing.

Um you know, in retrospect, it's I um maybe I'm glad I'm not running a crystal store, but at the same time, like there is a lesson there of I mean sticking to it is obviously a crip like You can't win without the stick to it, miss. But one of the things that makes you stick to it is not just willpower, it's like Knowing your wind condition. So like

You do you even know what to look at? And do you know what winning looks like? Do you know what the benchmark should be? So that you can actually assess A successful versus unsuccessful experiments. That was one of my learning one of my re Things I remember from back then.

The other one I remember is Like With the pod. We kind of like We called our shot a little bit, like

We made this Google Doc. Yeah. of the plan, the one page plan. And now I call that my kickoff doc, but it was like before we started it, I wrote this out. Do you remember that that done? Yeah, I remember. And it was well, the first thing that he helped them was like you need your a thousand true fans. Like that was the Very, very first thing you're like, if we just got this you can build a pretty big business just with

With a thousand people that was like The first thing I remember. And then you had a few things like we need to get to a hundred thousand listeners and Get a bunch of other other like maybe build a business of or like you know, these ancillary businesses. A Jason business does across it and I mean you

Did all that. That's that's one thing you kinda step back and it's like I'll share the dog. I'll put the doc uh if you're on YouTube, I'm gonna put it on the screen so you can see. Literally, like word for word what we wrote back then. And it's not that it It wasn't all right in that uh It all happened. But it definitely didn't happen on the timeline. I remember thinking we're gonna hit let's get to a hundred thousand downloads per episode. So that's the thing. Like per episode, I want a hundred thousand downloads.

By the end of the year. So it's like twelve months. Yeah. Took me three years. So like you know, now we do that, but like, you know, it took three years for us to ever hit that mark. So it's kind of this old phrase like Don't confuse a clear view for a short distance.

It's like I feel like we had a clear view. I just thought things would happen faster. I overestimated kind of like what could be done in one year. But with that one, because it's so fun, I just kept going and like Sure enough, like you know, it all we we we that was like the right thing they keep going. Those all the other things shiny things and that was like the right one. The one that was making no money actually costing me money, because one of the things I wrote in that doc is I plan to lose ten thousand dollars a year doing that. But it'll be worth it because I thought, you know

Creates like some serendipity. Yeah. You kinda talked about that too, like content creating serendipity or like Just being online and being like in the mix. Yeah, clear liking a post or applying to something or putting putting yourself out there. Who cares if someone doesn't like

When you I mean it's different you know, if you post there's millions of people that look at it, but like Just for like a regular person, when you post like a tweet. And it says like a hundred and sixteen impressions. It's gonna like that's all like That's still some people that have looked at it and you don't know who it is. But you know, later down the line that could That could come in handy. When when we talk about uh so some of the stuff I'm doing now, I can

I've gotten all my opportunities. Every single one of them has been like through Twitter or like Through some like LinkedIn or some email or They have sent. And late years later down the track, it's all come back. Well, tell the story about the billionaire. So what what happened there? That started on Twitter? Yeah, uh that was uh that was me just

Like saying I need a I just made this like kick ass investment. And let me like I want more people to know about it. So I I was like talking to Like journalists and stuff like that. Like Hey, write about the story and no one was really Uh taking the time. But there was one dude that was actually yeah on Twitter.

Yeah um I just He wasn't responding to anything else. I went on Twitter. I sorry active there. I was just like I just kept liking his post, I didn't actually say anything. And then like he checked out my LinkedIn profile.

And we started talking, he's like, Okay, yeah, let me write about the story. Right. And it was like it wasn't like a Forbes or anything. It was like a pretty small news side. That it's it's so weird that They posted that article a few days later, a billionaire read that article And then Exactly. Exactly.

And then we'll tell that story. Even that is like um There's this phrase that I read once, I think Mark Suster did a blog post about this called Lines Not Dots. Basically the idea is like a line is just a collection of dots. Right. Mathematically, that's what a line is. It's multiple dots just all all connected.

And so what he says is like, you know, in he's like what people think happens is They see on TV that you go in, you meet this investor cold. You blow their socks off with this pitch. And then they write you this check and say, you know, here you go, son, go go on. And it's like that's not what happens. Like that's movies. That's shark tank. That's not real.

And the real thing is dots. And so he's like, you know. Many interactions that stack up that when you look back later is a line. Um, and he's like investors invest in lines, not dots, meaning they're not just gonna like It's not the very first interaction typically where

It's all just gonna happen for you. So it's Following the person, liking the post, replying to something, they noticed that this person said something smart. Not the first time, but the third time. Yeah. And then after that they follow you back. And then because of that, they see this other blog post you wrote. You don't even realize that one of your Ninety eight views. Yeah was this.

Person who's actually legit. And then go, you know, like and then so those will dots stack up and ultimately that's how trust gets built. That's how framework. This is the the framework king and watch me cook, baby. This is what I do. Uh yeah. So that's I think Yeah, what you've done really well. So all right, so let's get to the part where We break up. So at some point we break up we worked together for a while, like out of a year or something. I think it was actually a couple of years of like knowing each other and like doing stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So we get to some point where um

You're like you come to me one day, you're like, I want a day trade or something. And like to be fair, you were actually Kind of good at this. I remember one time we were on a call. And uh And I was like telling you like some instructions or so like some action items and then like there's like no feedback. And I was like, Yo, are you listening? Like what are you doing? Wha what happened? Where did

Is this thing on? And you were like, Oh, hang on, um Bitcoin just crashed to thirty five hundred dollars. I'm like this motherfucker's looking at the Bitcoin price while we're supposed to be working on our Very important crystal store or whatever we were doing. Whatever, you know, scheme we were in at the time. Yeah.

And I remember being like Like two reactions. One like annoyed. Like dude, this guy's like not paying attention. Two. Wait, Bitcoin's crash? Like should you know. He's buying should I buy?'Cause you told me you're like

The coin crash, I'm trying to I'm trying to place an order real quick. It was down like sixty percent on just that day. Yeah, everyone know everyone in crypto like knows that day. It was a very like it was like in March or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was and like it was like you just never see it happen. This is like this is not some altcoin, this is like V Coin. This is this is Bitcoin. And so When that happened, I was like I I've seen a few of these and I just wasn't a part of it and so I was like Sorry, I know I should be working and listening right now. I was like, I need to act right now. And so

Yeah, I mean I grabbed all the money I had. It was a couple of thousand dollars and I Oh. I didn't just buy the club the the generate in me. I was like, Okay, let me try and maximize this opportunity. So I went on people know BitMEX. I went leverage long on Bitcoin. So I took all my money, did that.

And when I went Leverage long means what here in this case. So you if you buy a thousand dollars worth of bitcoin and you buy at, you know, twenty x leverage, that means you actually buy twenty thousand dollars worth. But if it qu if it goes down by even a little bit. Yeah. You'll you'll you're going to wipe out you'll have you'll experience a thing called liquidation. Right. So getting liquidated um is like your worst nightmare. And I remember you were like

What, four or five grand? You're full, grand. That was my collateral. I was twenty X. twenty five X leverage. And when I click the button to buy. Like everything went frozen. And I was like

I was thinking, oh shit, is it just me or like I'm I'm kinda freaking out. And I go on Twitter and that's why I was I was I was like not really talking. I went on Twitter and everyone else is like BitMEX just furs and I'm like Okay, it's not just me, it's It's like the actual uh exchange. And I was kinda freaking out because I thought, all right, it's gone. I've I've already clicked by

And But I mean when you when you're looking at the chart, if you look at the one minute chart. It was just going down like it went down, down, down, down, and it just stopped. Yeah, you you'd assume that When it like unfreezes, it would have just kept going down'cause who knows, this was like a black spa event, right? So we don't know.

What's going on? And so That's why I was like Frison. For a while'cause I thought I just I'm an idiot. I just lost all my money.

But when it unfroze I saw it was up light. Forty thousand dollars. Oh, is it like my hobble's around there? Yeah, you know. And yeah, that's fun. Uh I think you went on Coinbase. You know, when you told me I was like

I was like, come on, man. I was like, but wait, what? What's the price? And I went and I went and bought twenty five K that day too. Yeah. And so Which is actually an amazing trade. Like we made more money than that. We made more money in that one minute. Yeah.

Then we did like, you know, six months of experiments together, you know, whatever, you know, three months of experiments that we were working on at the time. And there is a lesson there which was like Um Yep. The the best kind of like ideas don't all just come from your head. Like, you know, you're at the time

I like intern chief of staff. But you were like This is a buy right now. I'm gonna do this and By following you, I kind of like Got the benefit of that at the time.

And yeah, Bitcoin wouldn't trade it up to like seventy grand or whatever since then. And then it's come back down to earth, but My takeaway from ten X from that day. Yeah, my takeaway was uh Yeah, it's like

A very few moments where you can make all the money versus like trying to make a little bit of money every single time. I think like I'm not a day trader. I don't think I'd go back to being a day trader or whatever. But I think all the money is made. when there's like a few key decisions that happen maybe once a year or once every few years.

Once every few months, or whatever it is. Um And you just have to act on it with like It's a bit degenerate. You have to like There wasn't a lot of thoughtful planning around I'm going to buy Bitcoin because um This mathematical equation that's full case.

It was just Times like this doesn't occur. Happen every All the time. So let me act on it. In the moment I was like, This guy's a fucking degenerate, right? Like he's twenty I didn't even know exactly how an option trade worked. I was like, Okay, this is crazy. But at the same time, you're right, like

If you go read that Buffett quote where he's like, you know, there are Moments or seasons where You know the the The the sk the clouds fill the sky and it's about to rain and in that he says in that moment, let us not come out with spoons. But bathtubs to sort of like make hey.

There's also, you know, Naval has a quote that's similar to this, which is he's talking about luck. This is one of the versions of luck is being able to recognize an opportunity. Yeah. So it's um the it's the version of luck. It's like he calls it level two or whatever, or He's not the inventor of this. I j I just heard it from him. Um, but you know, the the original guy who wrote this, he basically says, you know, it's sort of luck favors the prepared mind.

Yeah. So Anybody could have seen that price and most people when they see something going down, they get scared. You were like This is Bitcoin. Bitcoin flash crash.

Blink decision that This is a good bet for me, like Whatever risk reward adjusted. Yeah. And uh, you know, you were correct in that. Later I'm gonna tell a story, so You come to the States, we fly you out.

And uh I remember we go to a restaurant and we invite my buddy Sully and we're talking and Silly's like, Okay, Sean, like you know Tell me, like what what are you excited about? Yeah. And uh you go, Oh, I'm excited about this company called Annie Mocha. You had told me about this company three times at this point, and you were like, Oh, I love the stock and in mocha. I like the stock. It was like you were like the GameStop guy, right? You're like, I like the stock.

And I was like, Annie Mocha, I've never heard of this. Sounds like a yogurt. Um And then I was like, Why do you like it? And then you told me something that I I I didn't really ask, but I was like, What does it do? And you're like, Oh, they're making these like Bubble games or something like that. Okay, whatever. Later when we're at this lunch, I was like, Hey, Soule built a mobile gaming company and sold it for

Whatever, hundred million bucks more. Um Tell'em about that what's that mobile gaming company? And you started telling. He's like, Okay, interesting. So I'd heard it like four times from you, never took action,'cause again I was not at that time listening in probably the way I should have.

That's an investment you made millions of dollars off of. Yeah. Tell the story of how After we stop working together, you go from intern to Multi millionaire. In a very short like how long? Like a very short about a type. So

Uh So I've known about Anamaka. It was a Australia, the listed company sales on the stock market. And I initially bought like a few thousand dollars worth and it did well, it went up like four X, something like that. So I was like Okay, great. That's yeah, I've done I've done my done my thing here.

And I I was looking at it as an investment, so I didn't sell it and then The Australian Stock Exchange, they came after it and they're like Uh, you guys are dealing this with crypto stuff. We're going to have to deal with you. Well they were crypto initially. They pivoted to Yeah, they pivot Yeah, so what about the time when I bought so I bought them initially because they had an announcement. And they were like

We're going to do a thing called crypto kitties. Um and we're gonna work with them. And so I saw that as like This was before like a pre boring robot company. Now it's like a Sexy crypto. Yeah, it's like a sexy crypto thing. It's like how do you value a blockchain game? Like this is like Thing things that are like hard to value is kinda what I like, because then nobody knows what the price is. Right. And so like as a degenerate, I like that.

Um and so Yeah, sir. Anyway, it did well. By the way, none of this episode is financial advice. This is actually NFA, yeah. laughing at the craziness of the story. So so let's let's tell the story. So you Yeah, you buy more. So yes, I bought it, it got delisted. And so I'm like, Holy shit, my

Money is gone. How much money you're in at that point? Uh it it wasn't a lot. It was like twenty five thousand, yeah. But to you that was a lot. Oh, that was yeah, that was everything to me. Yeah. So you put you put everything you have, which is twenty f grand at a time, it gets delist off the stock exchange'cause the exchange is like Do you guys now do crypto? We don't know. We don't like crypto. We don't know what crypto is. Yeah. Now you're liquid stock, you can't even sell. Yep. I can't sell it. Um and so this was like tell me this, I'm laughing at you. I'm like Yeah. I I remember you told me this you're like, dude, I got fucked on Animoka and you're like, it's delisted. I'm like, Wow.

I thought You'd probably just lose money'cause the stock goes down. I didn't think you would lose money'cause you just can't sell it anymore. Yeah. But you did something. Even crazy. You double down on crazy. So tell sir throughout that year I did a few things. I weren't about like secondary markets. That's something I didn't Yeah, I wasn't really exposed to before. I learned about that. Um, I did a lot more research into

Like what they were doing and I've always been in the And I was the perfect person because I you know, I had a Minecraft server when I was a kid. So in high school, so

I understood how But if you turn these in game items into something that you could sell. Um, this is a win win for for everyone. So there's that I was a gamer at high so when you when you And I was in Bitcoin w lot way long before maybe twenty sixteen, so

When you mix all of that together, I was like the perfect person to see. The what? Okay, what they're doing is actually Something that I wanna get more exposed to and You know, why buy a bunch of different tokens and

companies but I can just buy the Get exposed to the people that I think will be the the overall winners here. Um Once I Yeah, got

Had that conviction. I was like, Okay, well how about how about I can't market buy the stuff, right? So I was like How do I actually buy this thing now? And this was like a year it's been delisted, so In that time, um I was working for you and then another guy and

I had a few other bets that did really after pay was one of them that ended up being a one too, yeah. You're we were talking about buy now, pay later. Yeah. And I admit Uh Max Lutzer from Affirm. Yeah. I was like, Oh this this was a great startup idea. And you go, Oh we have Actually after pay

It's better. Yeah. And I was like, bro, your little Australian version's not fatter. You're like, No, look at these numbers. It's better and uh That stock just went. That one cracked from you told me like really early on that one.

Yeah, yeah. So uh I did yeah, so I did really well with that. Um I also have a Pretty crazy story there where I followed one of the like I didn't have A level of edge being like a kid from Australia. Investing in a public stock, so I followed

You know, all the C Suite people on Strava. To see where they're at? And um One of them was like near s the square offices and they never like So that's what um

Yeah, they ended up acquiring. So I got like the little Edge millions So that was uh that was like a little hack. You're like, I don't have satellites to track cars, but you f you less legit. You follow the guy on the street. Yeah, and I follow he was at the square offices, you're like they might get bought. So it's a guy from Afterpay, um, the C H O was at He was in San Francisco and he was like Pretty close to square. I was just doing his run and I was like This there might be something I didn't know what was going to happen. I'm like I feel like a partnership would happen, but then you know, Square came out and bought them for like thirty billion or whatever.

And It went crazy. But um that's anyway, I made a bunch of stuff. I met money from doing trades like that. Um working for you guys. Alright, so how do I buy animal? I want to buy more.

And Yeah, the way I went to like Facebook groups initially. Commiserating. It's like we're wailing, yeah. Recovering uh Enabocas stock holders were just there pitching and moaning like They were very disgruntled. Like they were talking about at one point doing like a like a class action against Animok, whatever, like all the stuff. And so I was like

Okay. This like at the time when they were listed, they were worth like eighty million or a hundred million dollars. I was like, okay, I could get a huge discount on that. Um and so Yeah, I went to Facebook. I got a few people and they're like small trades. I was like, I need bigger How do I get like people that have the big money? So I got the list of the top shareholders. You can you can request it publicly in Australia. Might be the same here in the States, but

I got the top holders and I was like, let me go through each one of them. Which one of them is disgruntled and There was A few that I I still couldn't like the Australian press wanted me to like name these people.

Um I think one of them stayed in public, but They're like pretty big time people that I mean, they're already rich. Money. Yeah, they're smart money. They're already rich. They had this because they invest in some funds, uh, had some allocation, blah blah blah. So They were like just willing to get rid of it. They're like it's D listed. They don't know they probably don't know that they're in crypto or their gaming. It's just one of the things in their portfolio that's you know.

And so so you're buying it for like what discount? Like Five percent. Eighty percent. It was more like eighty, ninety percent discount to With the last I remember when you told me I have the Slack messages when you told me I'm buying it for a you know Ten cents on the dollar. Yeah.

And I'm like, bro, you're just lighting money on fire. Like you're going crazy. Like what's gonna like That's a Insane reaction to the bad news bears. Well, I'm gonna like double down. But it works. I think I

Mm. So yeah, I put Everything I have is about a hundred K that I just like. Uh this This should work out. It's also like

Um if I lose all this money. Alright, I'm in my twenties. I'll like You told me this. You go, you're like I'm twenty years old. Yeah. I'm just gonna I'll just Like get a job and I'll save up again and I'll eventually

I'll just I've got this is the time to Do every take all these. Crazy bets. Um I don't have kids, I don't have anyone that's reds on me, so Uh yeah, so I made the bet. Um, I did all the transactions. It it that itself was like a bit of

A crazy thing'cause They take some time to do to do private transits in Australia, like the documentation for that. Um The people that that were handling the transactions, they were taking a long ass time, so One of them, actually the biggest transaction.

after Anamoka, you know, announced they're now worth a billion dollars they did a raise. I was like, do I even have these shares? Cause they'll still they'll still take me time to process. I'm like, I put the money in the escrow account, like I obviously ended up getting the shares, but Yeah, it was like the This whole new world of All right. I couldn't like I wasn't like an angel investor before. I didn't n understand how to do this. I had to just like

Do they gotta know you're like Did these guys know they're dealing with like a twenty year old counterparty? And these transaction that they're like they had no clue that they were Yeah, yeah, that was yeah, it was pretty like these are these are like pretty serious legit guys that were I mean, they thought they were, you know, shoveling dirt onto me and then Right. I was they're probably laughing. Yeah. Yeah, their perspective was let me give dirt to this person. And I thought I was buying a gold mine. And so I was like Uh let me let me do this. Um

But I remember I And it a lot of this there's a lot of luck involved, obviously. Um and so when I bought it Uh Yeah, I I thought this was like a very long term play, like After five years, there might be something here. Um

But it was only after about three months, so I bought it. The valuation I bought it that was like Thirty, forty million. And A few months afterwards. They raise it a billion dollars.

Um, and I remember getting a call. There was like this Hong Kong fun that Reached out to me and'cause I you know I've al I've always I had to like flex little bit to people and I put online that you know, I bought this company. So you're up fifty X. Yeah, I'm up. Yeah, it was it was worth like, I think two million dollars. Um, and I was like Holy shit. Um

Let me But Let me like I I'm not let me like have a think of what to do here'cause people want to buy it. And yeah had a Hong Kong fund that reached out and was like, We'll buy all of it. We'll give you two million dollars today. You're twenty twenty one years old or something. This was actually right before they um actually announced they're raising a billion dollars. Some fund probably heard they were gonna raise it a billion dollars. Then we're trying to get off me out of like

At a discount. So it was like I I think The initi the initial off was like a million dollars or like whatever. And I remember calling my dad, I was like Holy shit, like this is worth a million dollars. And I'm saying like grandparents, you know, this is a million dollars, you took this to general bet, but take the money. Like what are you doing? Take the money right now. Um and so But you said

I was like Just wait a few months. Maybe this will be more. I was like, I was like, I I don't think that like this is it. And especially because I was tracking all the numbers, especially NFT like volume like NFT volume sales and I've been talking this every single month and for like it was like a flat line. It was like someone was dead here. And then in this month there was a little uptick.

So I'm like This these little optics don't just Like stun and here, there's Yeah some like craze that goes on here. So I was like if this is worth a billion now and this

This the hype is just starting now. Let me like write this way. At the peak, Animoka was worth what? At the Pete uh they raise the latest round was six billion. Six billion. So you're buying in effectively like a twenty, thirty million dollar valuation. Yeah. It runs up to six billion. I remember at one point you're telling me in Slack, you're like

These people just offered me two million bucks for this. Yeah. I'm like, holy shit, you did it, dude. We started the podcast My First Million, you've just made your first two million. Congrats. Like I can't believe this worked out. You're like, I'm not gonna sell the And I was like, wow.

This guy's insane. And I was like, That's an insane story. So you held it. Um What's it that now? Uh, who knows? No one knows. I mean, I was with uh I said I met I met Yad and I met the board. It was a few weeks ago in Sydney, um and

That The real thing here is I I forgot who said it, but they were like, Never count your winnings unless it's like Cash and bank it's realized. Um and so

I was like, okay, you have to exit. This and the way to exit it is either I sell it privately. Um all these unicorns they're at Massive discounts right now. So it's like I could do that. I hate like Yeah, at its peak it's worth eight figures.

Do I sell now for seven figures and and cash it in? That's always like a decision that plays on my mind. Right. Otherwise, um, you know, they have plans to list into an IPO and Well you told me at the time'cause I was like, dude. This is the thing. I was like, Hey man, listen. Yeah.

As your Pseudo file the figure here. You should sell this. And you were like I see what you mean, but you were like Wha I what do I need two million dollars for? You're like

I don't have something I'm gonna go do. I'm not gonna change my I don't wanna change my lifestyle. Like I like my lifestyle. Yeah. You were like, I'm just gonna look to invest it somewhere else. And if I think this is still the best place to invest it, I'm just gonna do that. And like Yeah, if I lose it, I'm so young that like Whatever. I get the story and I'll just Keep going. Like I'm not sure it's

And the way you said it, like The my meter went from Oh my God, this guy's insane to like Honestly I see his perspective. Which is that

Two million bucks. Changes most people's lives, but you were like, I don't think that That doesn't get me where I'm trying to go. Yeah. And in fact, uh You know, if I still believe in this, I just want to see where this goes in for you know for a while as crypto can as NFTs, you were right, like became The thing that year. Yeah.

Uh, you know, there was sort of like a peak moment in that Where it became worth more than ten million dollars, right? So it's like would have played out very well. Timing is always very, very tricky. Um Do you look at this as I was trying to try it? I was trying to time uh

A bubble? Or do you look at this as I believe in this company and I still believe in this company and that's why I have the stock. believe in the company and also um I was kinda seeing this as like There's there's like a few people that have like these

Life holds. It's like Uh Yeah, you hold These like this is a lifetime hold. This isn't like you buy in, you sell out, whatever. Umvin myself of that, it's like I w I'll buy this and you know, when this becomes like the next ten cent

I'll have a couple hundred million dollar stake and that's how And I didn't have to do it. This is like the only investment I had to do. I didn't have to make all these other investments. Um There's still some like Part of me that believes in that it's like Uh I I still see a pathway where like in the next twenty

twenty, thirty years, whatever, this is like a hundred, two hundred, three hundred billion dollar company or whatever, and it's like I have I've got a pretty decent you know And so Yeah, that that's what I was like convincing myself of.

That is a bit less now during times like this, but I still have some thing here where I'm like, okay, um Is it hard to Not just get attached like identity wise to like I don't want to be wrong. Yeah. I've made that mistake before. I think you know, especially this is such an extreme case. It's one specific thing. You were so right, you were boy genius. Yeah then

It crashes, but you're like, Am I now boy idiot or am I boy genius? Is this the moment where I held through the tough times or Yeah. Did I just fuck up and I need to learn that lesson, like Yeah. Really hard. Yeah. I'll deal with that.

Well I think um Well I went into Let me just like There's something? Um so I was like

I was still investing some money for on behalf of other people and I was going around and meeting meeting founders and stuff like that and that's why I'm Like I'm doing something else right now. Well okay, yeah, you have other bets. Yeah. I've got other bets. So that that's what got me through and I was like If this goes away, I need to make sure that this is the next big bet. Um I don't need to be Like I don't need to be right on this one. Um Like you know, if it ends up the way it's going, I could

I've got time to make more bets and be really right on something else. Yeah, and also you had done so much degenerate trading that like you don't emotionally mood swing like most of the money becomes play money in a way. Well, aside from Anamuca, I had a bunch of other token investments, especially when when Facebook renamed Meta. Um, remember, I was buying up all the Metaverse coins to Centralland, Axi, Sandbox, and so I experienced, you know, making millions of dollars like liquid cash.

I also I learnt a lot of Lessons that I've also lost a lot of that money. When yeah, I didn't manage my risk post post uh but I I experien like The numbers just became

Like you're looking at the screen, I have no attachment to it. Um I mean like those days where I'd be up a couple hundred thousand dollars. I'm like holy I obviously I spent a lot of it. I was like I was you know All my boys were treated well. We went out. I when I eat we all eat Yeah. It was like um I was a pretty s shy nerdy nerdy guy, right? So I I didn't really know how to talk to girls, but If you want to learn how to talk to girls, get rich. I had it's like a it was like a huge confidence boost. I was yeah, I was

It just gives you the conf it's just the the confidence for you, which I think it was the confidence. It was like Even if she rejects me, I'm still I can go look at my meta basket later and feel good about myself. Yeah, it was it was more like Yeah, it and also for me, like having two million dollars in a bank felt like a billion dollars to me. Of course. Yeah. I'm like I'm spending a lot. And it's just like it's not going down because 'Cause I'm like I don't have kids, I don't have family, I don't have any I have no obligations whatsoever. Um even a lot didn't put a big debt. What did you do anything stupid?

Uh, so yeah, I got an apartment, I got a I got a Tesla, um I spent Like. Doube weekends where I'd get like Limo's app for me and my boy would get like Like I remember like my birthday, we got like three limo as we drove down to the uh Gold Coast, which is like

You know what Goko is in Australia. Um I'm so happy to hear this because when I I I don't know what I was paying you back then. It wasn't much. It was like The the very first thing was it was thirty K a year. I think it was starting at thirty K I think it went up after that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To maybe like Eighty to a hundred. Like that. That's what I was paying you then.

And that well, I remember at the time being like, Oh, this is not gonna work. This guy's getting like super rich doing these like crazy investments on the side, like Yeah. It's not gonna make sense for him to have a job at some point, which is Great. Like my goal wasn't To have you work. For me for twenty years, it was like

Here's a young entrepreneurial guy. Come get some reps with me. Come like Just get you off the traditional path. Yeah. And then like I hope you go do big shit and like, you know, I can be your biggest fan and and all that. That's kinda what's happening, and I'm Yeah. I've had uh my popcorn, you know, watching watching you do this stuff and and

It's being totally entertained the whole way. Yeah,'cause you definitely like had like a roller coaster. Um You're kinda like those like Wall Street bats. Kids, basically. Like yeah, I was on most three bats, like since I was in like high school. Like I was yeah, I was always on that phone. There's

The equivalent yeah in Australia. Um there's a thing called Hot Copper. Which is like the equivalent of all street bets. And on that I was like the most active person. I've got. And my nickname was Mr. Silicon Valley, because I was just investing in tech stocks. Right. And I'm like if you go on my everyone can look at my profile, it's like

I'm oh I'm tweeting about Adamaka. I'm like talking about Adamaka on that platform and There's another company called Brainship that ended up becoming like a multi billion dollar because of AI craze and and stuff like that. Um I was constantly looking at anything to do with What is like the next hundred X?

Stuck.'Cause for me it's stuck's fatal kind of that's you tell me some story a billionaire takes you out to lunch. And it's like What's the next Anamoka? He reads the article and he's like, I gotta meet this whiz kit. Takes you out. He's like, What's the next one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You shit your pants immediately and you're like I don't know if I can know.

Yeah. Because I during that time, like I'm I mean this was Zap error, right? So I'm like everything I'm telling people to invest in. It's going up and up and up and Um

Yeah, I'm a genius. Yeah, I'm a genius. Um, and so I was like oh shit. But I truly believe I was like Animov could just raise it a billion dollars. I was like Uh you should You should invest Anamaka. Anamaka is the thing. That's that is the next thing. And

He was like, Okay, whatever, blah, blah, and in the next few days. But inside he's like, God damn, I love that confidence. Yeah, in the next few days, he ended up becoming like the top ten shareholder in the company bought out. Tens of millions of dollars on the stock. And then obviously, you know, Enemoc could then stop at a billion. Yeah, so you may you know

over nine figures in that Um that's it tip you a little bit on the on the way out or tip the dealer and Uh there's that comment. Fair enough. Yeah. So um all right, so you go through that crazy journey. One of the things that comes out of that

Was You were then On behalf of this guy plus other people, you were doing other investments. Yeah. One of them is shuffle. Let's talk about shuffles. So

Um You had Slacked me a while back and you were like A Crazy story. I think on the pot I was like, Can't say who told me this. Right. Yeah. Now it's all now it's like way more public. At the time that you were like, Hey

There's a company called Stake. Yeah. That is making Unbelievable amounts of money. You were like they had like a whatever. eight hundred million dollar dividend last year.

Like that's just that's the profits they took out. You're like this guy, one of the owners, I don't know how old are they? They're like And then like late twenties, mid twenties. Yeah, like twenty seven years old, bought a fifty million dollar house in Australia. Yeah. And another guy bought like a whatever, a hundred million dollar house. And it's like you know someone's like Rich, by the way, when they're yeah, buying like look at the real estate. Yeah, that is like you know that when they're buying an asset like that, like they're because people didn't know it. The articles are basically like

Mystery, you know, mega millionaire buys fifty million dollar home. And then it was like They had two companies. They had like a software company that makes Like. It's like makes like the gaming software to go play like the games.

And then they have Steak, which is the casino, the like basically crypto casino. And they're like, you know, intertwine companies or whatever. Yeah. Little Alameda uh you know, F T X fish, you know, I'm getting some vibes here as I describe it out loud. But either way like Stake has been, you know, it's become like huge, and they have Drake playing and and whatever, gambling and shit like that.

So you meet these guys who are doing A competitor to that in a way. Yeah. Um, how do you describe Shuffle and tell us about Like This crazy space'cause I only know what you told me about the steak thing at the time. Yeah. And then since a bunch of news has come out like kind of validating what you said. Um

Tell me about the space and tell me about the at the time. So I was so I was traveling around just Australia meeting other founders and I was at this dinner. And at that dinner the guy There's a guy that was uh like Pretty good friends with The stake I found is.

And He would like say these numbers. This is before the articles and stuff like that. So he would say some insane batshit crazy numbers and I'm like Yeah. This is the fastest growing tech style up in Australia in history, like

This is like maybe in the world, like this is like very I mean, they were founded in twenty seventeen and they're under a couple of billion dollars in revenue. This is like some So I initially heard of that. I was like, okay, and then already bef at that time I I remember messaging you about I want to start like a crypto trading Like

Let people do like I want to start a I I think I I titled the document. I wanna build like the world's largest casino. Right. And um I remember the stuff. Yeah. And the way That that product is actually like a huge product now. Um I don't know if you've heard of Robit, but they had like a cryptos trading thing. I was looking to do that. But that's like regulatory just like a nightmare. Um, it's like an unlicensed thing and And so I was like okay, but

I see this gambling stuff. It's it's huge. Steak is You know, they just did a billion dollars in that profit um in a in a single year. How do I get some exposure to that? Um And this

Going back to like how I find these opportunities. I just remembered There was another like Hidden Muni. I lived in a

His research on After Pay. And this was like a couple of years ago. And I don't know why, he popped out in my mind again. So I went looking for the article, I found his name and I uh hit him a uh Message on LinkedIn like

Hey, like You know, what are you doing these days? Um let's catch up and whatever. And Yeah, we caught up and then that's when he started telling me about like These other crypto kids in Australia that

have like made it pretty big, doing all this degenerate stuff and They're starting out crypto casino. And it's gonna be a competitor to not to stake, but There's like that's the thing, the market is so huge. There's I could yeah, there's an there's a few other competitors that also doing a billion dollars.

Um and it's just not really reported on, right? Because it's kind of like a Uh yeah. Kind of shady industry, so I was like Okay. Uh

For me Yeah, coming from Pretty small town in Australia. When I when you meet other people that are kinda like you and We all had a like success in our own domain. I'm like, if we just come together, we're gonna hit something big.

Um and I just want to be around those people. Um And so It was more like a bet on This of the Yeah, just like also ambitious, smart

Slightly degenerate or very degenerate. Autistic. Yeah. Yeah, like uh twenty young twenty year olds, basically. Yeah. And these old people are like and we've all we've all kind of been through the same thing of making a lot of money, losing a lot of money, so We can kind of like Lean on each other in that way. Like They we understand each other in in the in that, so

Um by the way, this happens in like it's happened in online poker. I remember like The rise of online bover and the kind of poker kids who all made it and they all kind of lived in houses together and yeah, figured out how to like each like beat the game together, basically. Uh, same thing happened with social media. So like the TikTokers or the Viners.

Well went and lived in the same building in Los Angeles. Right, yeah, yeah. Collabed with each other, plus traded tips, plus like Got brand deals for each other and they all like rose up way faster than the people who were On their own or didn't have the kind of connection. Yeah, yeah. Uh so um

Yeah, so th th that's how I met them and I was like We all kind of agreed, uh a lot of the background of the shuffle team, they come from like the big exchanges. FTX is one of them, BitMEX, crypto.com, that's all their backgrounds are so We'll hard uh Stanford of the uh of the sketch world. That sounds like we

We all and you know, obviously I I've traded on all of them and We all just had like We all agreed on this macro thesis of Every single cycle there is like This one clear big winner, which is the exchanges, right?

They their business model is Every bet every degenerate bet you take, they have a little fee. Right. It's called transaction fee for them. For us it's called hassards, but it's the same exact thing. Same model. Um the same model. Uh struct the legal structure is actually really similar as well. They will like get a license out in Satials or Or you know, FTX was in Bahamas.

Cryptic Tos out in Dutch Caribbean and Kiris out. So it's like there's only similarity. What is that? There's like some place that's like They just made it their business some some country. Country, right? That's it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Curacella. Yeah, that's the that's it. Where the hell is Curacao? What is it? That's true. It's just a place um where you can I mean anyone if you want to get a license to do like an online crypto casino, um, you could probably spin one up in like six weeks. And it's very and that's their model. They're they're like we're open for business for casino for online casinos, basically. Yeah. And like that's where everybody goes to get their

Yeah, like we're we're like in the same structure as steak and Yeah, all the other guys. Um We're all under the same license and there's some risk to that, obviously. Like what happens to a license, how long can you sort of play this game and You have to uh sort of calculate what what amount of risk you're gonna take there, but Yeah that's

That's it's exactly the same as these exchanges that were Out out um you know, in the Seychelles or or Bahamas and so We saw that we're like Okay. Um

Here's a clear between exchanges and casinos, though. Exchanges are raising at tens of billions of dollars and that they've got all the fame. Um Whereas You know, in

If people just understood, if this was more public on how profitable these casinos are and how they're very similar businesses to Two exchanges then. You know, there there would be some re rating or valuation for these for these play uh for these uh casinos. And so That was like that's but a lot of these investors and funds, they have like a no vice clause, right? Yeah, but they just can't invest in weed. They can't invest in gambling or porn or whatever. Yeah. Even though there's money to be made there. So I think like

That's one of the other reasons is like Yeah. Some people just either themselves individually morally say that or their fund charter. Basically prohibits them from doing those things. So they're just like out on even if they know it's a great business I mean. Who doesn't think a casino is an amazing business. We we ra we raised a seed route and that was like the hardest My biggest regret was uh was not investing. I tried to invest and then I go like

Oh, it's like one entity here, here, and I was like, Oh God, like if I have other people's m if it's my own money. Fine. But when I have other people's money, you know, I have to like, you know. Think twice and just in that time it like closed or whatever. Yeah. But anyway, like that's we we all agree that

Uh in this like next cycle, whenever it is, could be five years down a line, who knows? But in the next cycle for crypto. Um We believe that there will be One, two or three casinos in the top twenty. Of of all the coins and that's billions of dollars of

Although we think that you know we could We could do an and a big difference with us is like like I'm on this podcast right now, like We're not anonymous. Like we're not like These people at all these crypto casinos usually they're like very anonymous people and Um

I mean, if you're putting your money into a platform, you wanna know who's behind it, right? You wanna know who these guys are, but how do you um Like all the F that is do you follow all the FTX stuff going on right now? I'm like really trial. It's like my shoe opera right now that I'm paying attention to. If you're a Roman Empire, that's it. There's my Roman Empire, exactly. Do you have you following it and so like

How do you feel about that how do you think like 'Cause it seems like crypto casino is like risk times risk in that sense of like I don't know. Something be between, you know, malpractice to like, you know The craziness that note comes with with

Just that amount of money flowing through something. Yeah. Um, and you said you have people that worked in some of those places. What did they I guess what stories have you heard and I guess I don't know, like Not like Bishon spokesman, uh you know, like not you professionally, if we can't, just like my friend, like How how do you think about that stuff? Yeah. Um it's like it's

I mean being in crypto already, you already You have like an appetite for speculation. Um and so Anyone that's already in the industry, it's like Your You're taking some

You're taking some risk on Okay, there is some like regulatory risk already that One day this this license might close down and your business is like Yeah, screwed up. Like And so you have to be kind of smart and calculated about that. It's like okay, what are the other licenses can we start?

Build building it up, like we have to build our entire platform like In a modular way, so If something happens to one license, we can split off let's say our casino and then put a license to the sports book and offer it in different region. So it's just like lost it's like we had to move the island. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like we moved it. Yeah. So uh so some regulatory risk there's some like funny like Products have

Most startups have product market fit risk. Like we don't know if anybody wants what we have to offer. Yeah. You have no market risk. Then the second tier is technical risk. It's like uh If we can make a um

Whatever self driving car. Right. People are gonna want it. There's no market risk, but there's technical risk. Can you even build a self driving car? Yeah. But this there's no technical risk either, right? It's like m I mean, obviously you have to do technical work. But it's not That's not the risk in the business. It's all regulatory.

Uh, there's no regulatory risk in this, which is so different than like Ninety nine percent of the other startups I look at. Yeah. Very few times do you just just get regulatory risk. There's also just like actual risk that you have to manage of your book, like limits That view of like

We will sweat sometimes like when we'cause we have to start upping the limits, you know, to some I come and go like Well, I want to do a ten K black jack fan. I wanna do a twenty five K black jack fan. And you're just like Okay, holy shit. We have to well you know, if they have a few good runs, it could be all of a sudden down a couple of hundred thousand dollars a day. So your revenue is not always guaranteed. That's also like the biggest difference. In the in the catch. You guys launched out of no wind.

In February of uh this year. Yeah. What's the what can you share, traction wise? Uh so you know, we're probably gonna do a half a billion in volume. Uh like this month. Um and Yeah, this is generating a few million in revenue a month.

Uh, and hopefully this month will be a few million in profit a month. And yeah, we This is also another thing that like These businesses are built to strip out the cash flow. It's like You you

You build the business and then you have you pay this out. This is not like You're not praying for some exit. We all went into it knowing that no one's going to buy a crypto casino. You build it to Make a lot of money. And then you know

Ship strip the strip the money out, um and pay it out to All the holders of of the business. So um That's also like yeah, it's a very like yeah. That's great. Yeah, it's a good problem to have. So yeah, we've it's only been a couple of months, but um

Yeah, it's yeah, probably fifty million run rate's probably where we're at right now. Super impressive. Crazy. Um, any good stories about like I don't know. How did you bootstrap it? Where'd you go get your first customers? How did you because that was your job. Yeah. Yeah. So'cause you'd be like, Oh, I'm in fucking Asia right now, uh, you know, meeting people. I'm like, what are you doing in Asia? You're like, I'm I'm

Building the brand, I'm gonna figure out how to get this thing out the ground. Yeah. I d I don't know why I didn't really know this, but The people that Come and play on your side.

If they like to gamble Yeah, they probably also have some other vices and like They're probably not. Some of them are probably Yeah, I can get very angry, very The whole thing is about either you make money or lose money. So when they make money, obviously they're happy. When they lose money

You know, right. This place beyond like I'm going to find out where you live and I'm going to find out like We started That was like the when you talk about your first ten customers, like

The first time customers are Pretty rough people that Yeah, to do. So um I mean the first thing we went to was We're all a bunch of crypto kids that made a bunch of money and then we gambled it ourselves.

So like we already had a lot of Other crypto kids I made a bunch of money in. You know, like to gamble. So we went to those guys first and like Hey, come come you know, play on our website and and test it out. And we would you know

There's little tricks and stuff of like Stuff with like deposit bonuses and like Yeah, like standard kind of standard like supposed to play motions and stuff like that. Um One thing that I think we did that was oh that That's pretty interesting that we found out was

Okay, we should stop spending so much time trying to get thousands of people who'll deposit like ten, twenty dollars or whatever,'cause they'll come on. They'll come on your side and it's good for them to you know play, but They will lose Five dollars and then

You know, spend Forty eight hours in your support. Yeah. I'm going to kill you. Where where do you guys live? I need my five dollars back. Versus like okay, let's

Let's maybe try and find customers. That uh You know, not like that. And we got pretty lucky in in some parts of Asia, especially Japan, right? Like they uh They are people who bet really big. And they're very respectful. And they're very like they don't waste any of our time. Like they will lose money. It's like we're gonna Yeah. So it's like okay, these are the customers we want. Now we know the customers that we want.

And it's good for the business. Um And Yeah, we started making some pushes there and And trying to find Uh yeah, this is a pretty heavy like affiliate business. You wanna find you want other people to go out and do the work'cause

You can't do Facebook, we can't do Facebook guys, we're prohibited from doing Google, so you can't do PPC. So you have you have to find really creative ways of trying to Acquire customers and Yeah. Well this is why I like steak, I think bought. Are they created

Okay. Yeah. And they're basically like paying Twitch streamers, you know. Gobs of money reportedly like fifty million, hundred million dollar contracts to come play. Because they're like, Oh, these are popular people. One of the things they'll play is we'll give them money to gamble on our platform that gave Drake like

Tens of millions of dollars of like go play Show people that you're doing a twenty million dollar bet. Yeah. And are you know gambling twenty million dollars one night. It makes you look like a baller. It creates great content that's gonna go viral and get you liked. Yeah. And all those people are gonna see that gambling on stake is fun and Drake doesn't, right? Like that's like their

Yeah. Is that accurate? That's my perspective. So state pioneered that like they're like Uh, we can't bid on these other channels with all these other crypto or like other casinos. Um and so let's try and find other ways and The streaming model like It is the thing that's genius about it also is that

Instead of like an influencer posting a picture saying, Hey, come play on stake They're playing the product. They're showing you how it works. They're seeing the reaction. They're seeing the reactor in picture with the whole thing. So it's not only are you educating people about how to play it and how to Like the this like next level in terms of Um I guess like play of value as well, like

Like they will deposit and you know, they'll play, they'll lose and then once they'll watching the favorite streamer play again, they're like, Uh, time for me to also deposit again. So We had that like the affiliates or the influences that I really like they have a Discord channel or they yeah, they have a you know, they're they're constantly li live streaming. Right. Those people make the most important thing. Something you said like Uh we would not like rather than have you have a million followers, we want you to have

Yeah. Two thousand people. Like active in a Discord that you talk to all the time. That's more valuable, right? Like and I I think this doesn't just it this isn't just for like uh casinos. I think like for e com And they're like there's people that do Facebook groups and right anywhere there's like a concentrated

Like you have like those thousand You know, loyal fans or whatever. Um There is customers are worth. Yeah, all the money. We did a influencer campaign. We spent a hundred thousand dollars on influence probably the first like paid influence campaign we've done. Yeah.

So we put out I was like, let's try a hundred thousand dollars and we're gonna spread that across these like Think. We did. Um Seven influencers, I think. Right. And so these are people who have like, you know, let's call it

Two hundred fifty thousand to like Three or four million followers on Instagram. And I should you not some people some of those people who have a lot of followers literally have zero conversion. Zero. Like

Dude, I could post on Facebook and get one conversion. Like it's crazy. Some people kicked ass and it's like, What's the difference? I've noticed that you know the Instagram has this one feature, which is like When um Not everybody has it, but like you can broadcast. So like I don't know if you've seen this, but like

Group chat. Oh yeah, you can send a message and they can only emoji react. They can't like it's not like your fans can chat back. But it looks like a chat. Right.

And I noticed that the people who have active versions of those Where they'll just be like, Oh, you know, my favorite mug. Yeah. It'll get like Three thousand like lights there. Right. That's a way better signal for who ca actually converts versus like just a generic post or story or follower count.

Yeah. Which is like, you know, neither here or there. And I think so that really move product, you can tell like the difference in it. It's also just about uh high them being like very high intent. And so think about the people that would go into that broadcast channel in the first place. It'd be like a small percentage of like that person's like most loyal like fans or whatever that are active and Yeah, yeah. So I think um

For like that that that can be applied everywhere. Uh wherever you can get like Who cares about trying to get You know, four million impressions. I just want to get I want my product in front of like The thousand.

Most I keep using the word degenerate, but not degenerate you know, whatever the the thousand people don't know. By the way, I use degenerate positively too. When we were hiring, we used to uh you know, co companies have like corporate values. Yeah, and it's like integrity. Yeah. And um honesty and like was like the everybody has the same values. It's like don't kill somebody or something. I don't know. Ours was degeneracy. Yeah.

And people were like, Why does it say you should be a degenerate to work here? And we were like Like that's what we want. We want people who are who like When they work on something like there's just two p types of people. There's some people that like You know, they work to live and some people live to work, right? Like We are the types that when we do a project, we go all in. We love doing it.

We obsess over making something Fucking awesome. That's gonna take a lot of work. And the late nights we don't wanna feel like we're Uh like asking for a favor every time we try to go above and beyond to do something cool. Like right. And but it wasn't about working hours only. That was just like one aspect. The other thing we we used to say is like

We noticed that the people who were the best earlier in their life had a degenerate like obsession with something that wasn't like the thing your parents would reward you for or the school would reward you for. Right. So for a lot of people it was gaming. It's like Oh yeah, I just spend like an ungodly amount of hours in in Ultima Four or like in a RuneScape or something like that.

That was such a strong signal to us. That like This person's gonna be great now with us because They have that switch where once they get really into something They practice to like to master it and they get obsessed. They want to beat the game.

And like They're not doing it for the yeah, because people told them to do this. They're They're doing it because they can't not do it. Yeah. And so we found that people who had early obsessions in life were the best people that we wanted to work with.

You also want that in customers or And influencer who's got people that are diehard fans, like why do people love Taylor Swift? Like Swifties. They just They identify in that tribe is what you want. Yeah. And I think that like whether people like the idea of a crypto casino or that makes them feel like really crazy or whatever.

I think that the marketing lesson about how these guys market themselves is like one of the best Like marketing hacks that created a multi billion dollar outcome was this one realization that hey Let's pay these influencers.

Celebrities just specifically do live streaming on Twitch was not the main marketing channel. Right. For ninety nine percent of other brands. Let's give the money to gamble so that people can watch the the the sort of thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Yeah. Live in real time. And that is the best marketing for our product.

I also I respect that. I also think for those guys, I think they're really They're like one of the most Like fascinating. Entrepreneurs that come out of Australia because I think for kick it's not it's actually I think the goal here is

Uh, they've now you know made this five to ten billion dollar like Crypto Casino. It's like Where's the s they wanna go more now? They know Twitch was valued at forty, fifty billion. I think these guys legitimately just wanna go in and Yeah. Well then if you want to use the money to be twist. They want to leverage they were already working with all these streamers, paying them, you know, millions of dollars to gamble. It's like

Let's actually just Also pay you guys million dollars to stream, but on our platform it's like I think they saw uh Uh I sort of gap here. They they came at the right time. Um

But I I yeah, I don't think it's just for gambling. I think these guys truly Um Yeah. Streaming doesn't make that much money. Yeah, yeah. There is no way that that works. In the sense that uh

You know, th they would really have to be betting that they could and Yeah. Okay. So I don't think it could work. But here's The case where maybe could. So I remember So TikTok now is obviously

Massive. Yeah. Do you remember when TikTok came out? So like Yeah, it was musically and then they did like a Musically and Musically was doing good, but didn't like Make it to like the full mainstream and it was kinda still seen as this like

Kitty lip syncing kind of it wasn't like TikTok today, you can go learn shit. Yeah. You can make You people make you laugh, you can promote your business, you can sell products, you could you know anything. By the time musically was literally like Tween girls lip sticking, right? That's like all it was, right? More of what the m more of what the product was.

So then they rebranded t it's like they get bought. They rebrand TikTok. Which I I remember laughing about the name, like what is that name? And they literally spent a billion dollars. Marketing that app to make sure every Teenager has it installed on their phone. Yeah.

And like I we had a kid who was working for us at the time that was in high school, but he would come and work at our office. I was like, dude. What do your friends think of TikTok? He's like Oh it's like the joke. Gotta say, like Everybody knows TikTok.

He's like There's no one Phillip person in my school that doesn't know TikTok. He's like, we don't think it's cool yet? But like I gotta give it to him like A hundred percent of every

Kid in my school. Is aware that there's a TikTok app. That they want you to know of. Yeah. And like they actually brute force like created the network effect. I guess there's a world where Kit could do that.

But it's also I think they're banking on um maybe they do something where the friction to buy something on live streaming It's lowered and it yeah, that's a whole new like avenue of I I think there's I think they know that The traditional model is not going to ever work and that Let's just get all the eyeballs and then maybe they can flick some switch somewhere. Um and no, like Instagram Reels makes like ten billion dollars a year. I don't know how. Like you could plug into the world's greatest ad engine and the world, you know, Facebook's ad engine is the greatest ad engine, maybe Google's

One or two, but like It's The real's bank money because it's plugged into one of the greatest moneymakers ever. Um and live streaming is live streaming commerce is like a pretty huge thing in Asia. Um if it can if it can somehow work in in Western markets, I think like There's something I think there where they could

Flick the switch and then You know, this is this is how they go from already worth a couple of billion dollars. How do we get to ten, twenty, fifty? And maybe they don't care about how much they're worth, but What's like the biggest game. Yeah, what's like the next They've already won one game, it's like how do we how do we get

Tell the next. So I think um Yeah, that that's super like I think more people should probably know about those guys. Uh and are you like I'm gonna be a degenerate forever? Uh or are you like Yeah, I'm just gonna do this for this period and then I'm gonna do something else. Well I'm I'm I'm just I really want to be a part of something that could be huge and that could grow really fast. Um and so

I I want to do that with Shuffle and Yeah, um ride this wave. Um, like will I do another thing in sports betting or gambling or whatever? I don't know, you know, maybe not, but Um I

Like like I mentioned to you earlier before, it's like you make your nut and go to your noble mission. I I think I think I might Justin Mayer's quote. Love that quote. Um I love that quote, not because I think it's right. But because so many people when they hear that, they're like That's what I'm doing. Cause it's such an easy out to like justify anything that you're doing in the moment. Cause you're like, I'm gonna do the noble mission later. And so I love it'cause it's hilarious how much people love that quote. I don't know if it's good wisdom or bad wisdom, I can tell, but uh

What by the way, what uh Ideas do you have. So Yeah. You know M F M, you know that's what we do here. I'm gonna I'm gonna get out my notes top really quick to say. And we might have already talked about some Just

Uh, really quickly, there was um before we talk about Kids that were playing RuneScape and stuff like that. I literally have already one in here. Incubator around kids who are building businesses within games. Um I like that. Yeah, every so

I guess m during my era, like I'm I'm a bit older now, during my era it was Kids that were building Minecraft servers or Um, I know for the guys that did Steak, they were RuneScape kids. They they built a casino in RuneScape first and then they did They're thinking so it's like Ringscape.

Minecraft. I think now it's like Roblox or like maybe um like Fortnite creator maps and stuff like that. Like If you're building businesses within games, um Every single person I've met that's done that. No, like

Super successful millionaires. Right. I hundred percent agree. I I think I tweeted this out, I go. What people think a success uh the like winners backgrounds looks like. Yeah. You know, what the world tells you is like, you know, good grades. He goes to a good school, has good internships, and like, you know Yeah. After school activities.

Runs for student council, but Like What I've seen is like what the real winners are are like The kid, the guy who's running his own gaming server when he's fourteen. Yeah. Kinda'cause he just wants to be able to buy games. Even running it as a business, right? Like

The sneaker head, like sneak flippers, basically. Um You know, people that are like hardcore gamers that are like become best in the world at a video game that's like super competitive. Yeah. That you know which requires Skill, strategy, communication, like

Ton like obsession. Those are pretty translatable skills. Yeah. Uh, you know, speech and debate is another one. Like there's these like unc unorthodox backgrounds. RuneScape is one that's crazy. The RuneScape Mafia. Yeah. A number of rich young people I've met that The common denominator is Yeah, we used to be like

I d I didn't playScape, but they're like, Yeah, RuneScape has like the the marketplace or the plaza or something. Yeah. And they were like, Yeah, we used to roll we used to run the plaza or the marketplace. And I was like, Jeez, this is something. I have an idea around that, which is uh I was like, I want to create kind of like the outcast conference. So basically what I wanna do is be like

These are actual hotbeds of talent. That nobody's really talking about I want to invite like the people who do that. It's like your point of entry is like you you need to hit one of those criteria. You run a gaming server or like Yeah. You're like elite at this like, you know. I found this one thing called Mindsport.

It's like Some place you go that you pl it's like Olympics, but for nerds. So you don't do you don't run? You play chess and then you play backgammon and then you play like you play like this like advanced version of chess, like you know, you play Go, you play like all these games. And whoever's like the best across these like

Ten. Really hard strategy games is like The Mind Sport Champion. Yeah, and you know that guy's a freak. You know those guys are all gonna be amazing. As soon as they decide, like, oh, okay, it's time for me to have a career now. Yeah. As long as they just get to like

funnel in the right place and don't just go be a a McKinse drone like Yeah, those people are gonna Check ass. So I'm like, Oh, I wan I wanna make a thing where it's free for them to attend, but you gotta be the best of the best. And I want to just be able to like

curate that talent and be like, I'm gonna place my bets on these people now. Like, hey If any of you ever start a company, just remember this goodwill of me bringing you here Paying for all of this. Because I wanna be your first investor. Like I I genuinely think that's gonna be like One of the higher highest ROI things that I could do. Well, I think a lot of them so a lot of them get lost to like banking or something like that. And then um

There's a lot of them as well that They just don't have guidance coming out of w the first thing that they do. And so they fuck around for maybe like a few years and then like That's why I'm going to outcast'cause like they probably feel like oh kind of like A little bit. I w I wasn't doing all the shit that the other like achiever kids were doing. Let's say no no no, trust me.

Let me show you. Ten other people that are like you. And then they're like, Oh. I see myself in them. Like I can do it too. This is this is the basis of like a lot of sports like You see a guy that's from your home town

And now you start to believe you can do it too. Why do you like Australian entrepreneurs so much? Like it. What do you care? It's like because they're from Australia, I'm from Australia. If they made it I can make it that yes. That's cool, but Had you never heard of any You would probably

also be you know banking somewhere, you know, uh on. And also like uh I think a lot of them when you spend your time, well your childhood or whatever, like In a room, doing all the stuff. You're whatever, you're making money or like you're learning business skills, but then you start lacking in other areas. So then like that that's setting up Setting yourself up for failure to waste some time, w whether it's Then afterwards.

You know, you have some girl troubles or afterwards you Don't know how to do something with family or whatever, blah, blah, blah, but Um yeah, I think that That's why I'm going to go. Oh, that's a great idea. I'm kinda high girl. It's like yo, if you haven't had your first kiss, just let's just do it now.

And we're gonna get that all out of the way. We're gonna kill we're gonna crush these like Lingering from your head. Yeah. Uh but yeah, that that was one of them. Um I mean but what was your idea? Uh yeah, giving these kids like mentorship and like just a incubator. Okay, a little Y Com Neta thing for

for these weirdos. Um what else yeah. There's a uh I was just at a conference. I was just really surprised, um I mean, something within conferences where I think maybe more people should Uh make conferences for like cached up niches. Um

Because especially if you do like the exhibitor model where it's like Oh my god, like the you know And some of these people are The one I just went to, they're paying a couple of hundred thousand dollars for for a for a boost. So maybe that starts off as You do your newsletter, whatever. You do like the

The learn effort. thing first, a low price layer of a thing of newsletters, whatever, build that audience and then just immediately Go into Like I'm surprised you guys haven't done a conference yet. 'Cause I feel like that would that would make an M F M one. Yeah, like an M F M. Yeah, but yeah. Um Another one that

Actually kind of related. Um I think this is kinda boring, but like a CRM for again like cash stop niches, so Where I now looking for like a new CRM platform and You know, everyone goes for like Salesforce or whatever, but

They operate in like a hundred different verticals, right? And so who's gonna get our ten K a month? It's going to be the one that Is still. Yeah, built specifically for

I gaming, which is our niche one of us. So right now, like we're making a decision. And we're gonna go with some other smaller c we're not going with Salesforce, we're going with this other one, they're gonna get a you know, ten grand a month or whatever. Um because they're specifically that specifically for eye gaming. Right. Um So that's like another one that's a little bit boring, but it's like if you could just find like

Some nation. What are these other cash up nations? So like one, for example, I think is like farming. Right. Um yeah, yeah. Another I mean any real estate is another one, right? Yeah. And within that you could even be like senior living or HVAC. You know, like things like that were You know that everybody there.

Can spell E beta. Well it's like it's I think for anything that were The interactions or the behaviors of your customer is I value. Yeah, it's very high value, but it's also It's very

Different to like maybe Like an e com or like or like just a transaction, like On our one, it's like you you have a bunch of games that you like and you spend Yeah, we wanna know exactly If you've lost this amount of money

In the next few hours we wanna talk like Make some contact with you and stuff like that. We can't really do custom behaviors like that with like a salesforce. Or or like w whatever L C platform'cause it's It's very tailored to a very broad niche. So

Anything that has like So you're saying high value customers and then basically figure out like First principles, what should this look like for this niche? Yeah. Yeah. Uh I think something like that. That's pretty good. I like that. That'd be a good idea. I think that's a very like That's a very good sandbox for somebody that wanted to explore. And we we just watched this for uh

They could be someone that does like So if in in the gaming biz there's you know VIP like VIPs make up your whole entire business, like we're talking about There's actually other verticals as well where VIPs is like Your thing. It sho actually every single business probably has VIPs. That they're just like not

uh interacting with. Um so maybe like VIP medicine software. for e com for whatever, you know. Even for like retail businesses or whatever, like you probably have Yeah, you probably have like customers that will come in, let's say I I started getting into like the hot cold exposure therapy stuff. So I started going like

How tech pro have you. I started going into these places like, you know, three, four times a week. But Um yeah, if these guys just would have No, that like I'm paying this much m amount of money. Right. Come upsell me on something else or do something else, like I think that

Even like retail businesses like just If you were to focus less of your time on Kind of broaden and Uh like getting re you know, paying on these Facebook ads to get

The next thousand customers. What about the ten that's gonna spend like Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Five, ten times more. on the business. Um so that's probably

I think some VIP management software for Yeah, that's guys. That would be on top of whatever whatever niche you choose. It could just sit on top of the current software and just be like Yeah, but this one is all about your VIPs. And we're just gonna extract the data that we need. And then give you the actions or the recommendations or the The triggers in order for you to like

When should when should we retail? What should we give them? What do they like? It's um that could That could be one. Um This is probably not so unique, but I think I don't I don't know if you've used these used people like this, but like

Uh Agencies for content that do it's like full status of like thumbnails and Um editors and I like I don't know how hard that is to find. Like people that really know their shit About

You know, creating online content'cause it seems like every single person wants to like, you know, be a personality or brand right now. Um And so people that I mean a lot of these are like uni kids that Know how to do this. Um

But it's like exactly how to connect those middle Yeah, they beat a middleman for The United is like done for you. So D DFY. Yeah. So like people who do this at e com now, honestly, I think they're pretty scammy, but they're like Hey.

We will just hand you an e commerce business that makes Cash flow. Right. Like Anytime someone promises you passive income just like run away. Yeah. But like Um That's what they're promising and a lot of people like these companies that are promising this are making a ton of money.

And one of the reasons why is it's tempting to instead of just saying Here, we'll teach you Facebook ads. But now you gotta go figure out the rest. What product? What's the supply chain? What's Well, Google Ads. They're like

We're just gonna give you the whole thing. Yeah. Uh turkey. And so you know, there's a version of that like There's video editors and content. There's you know, copywriters. But like

You kinda want the whole thing, the sort of like done for you package. Yeah, I think like a full service uh agency for all that sort of stuff might might work out. Um Trying to think of what else. Uh Yeah. Oh, this one's kinda related to like

Maybe uh what you did with Shepherd, but Um so recently we like we ex we had to expand to Japan, right? Um and That is like none of us speak Japanese. It's like we don't know how to scale in in that country. And so Well What we had to do was like first let me recess what other companies have done and

I remember reading I think maybe it was like a Chamff video when he was at Facebook and he was like Uh we had some MBAs. And they flew over to Japan, they came back and Yeah, a few months went by, we went growing, we're like, What's going on? We fired

Those NBAs. We got this like young woman from that Who was actually living in Japan. And within the first month we're seeing growth and we're like, Wait, what okay, what are you doing at these NBA people I don't know? She's like Well, I you know, on on the Facebook profile, like we don't care about your relationship status, we care about your blood type.

And it's just like stuff like that that you would only know localization, no translation. And to find those people was like Yeah, it's it's pretty hard to to do that. So maybe if there's some like Agency where um Like so we hired Unikids That uh that speak native.

Like fluent English that we can communicate with them. But also they're floating. You know, in Japanese and Doing that like you know Growth has been like 10X of just like

They know the market in terms of n none of them knew anything about like gambling. They don't need to know that. We can teach them that. Right. They just need to know like What are the people like? How do you communicate with them? How do we uh yeah localize all that content to everything? Um To to cater to this market where

And it's it's in Sandmark very important that you uh respectful and You appear like You're not you appear like you're not a foreign company. That's trying to attract the customers. You appeal like you're born out of that country. Right. Um

So so during that whole process for me was very hard to find like the right people that spoke English. That also was native in in Japanese and and all that, so Uh maybe if there was some like shepherd like Uh Agency to help you Okay, you're expanding it to this country.

Here's like your you know, growth assistants that are naive that language and can do all these things. Um That's cool. I like that. Um Yeah, there's two crazy things on that. One, if you look at the Facebook growth chart. Like one of the key things for Facebook was getting the site translated and localized across like and they did a

They had to do some craped like shit to get the whole site translated'cause there's so many different I mean the Facebook site was kinda complex at the time. And so um I remember seeing that. That was very impressive to me. Second is there's a sub version of this, which is just to do business in certain places, you have to establish an office. Yeah. Um like China. You can't do business there unless you have a local office. You can't do business certain places.

Can't pay internet pay local people unless you have a thing or whatever. And Just that can take like A year. Yeah.

And so like I remember with Twit when we're at Twitch, it's like, Oh yeah, we're trying to Put our servers here. We're trying to do this here. Um we're using that we had to use Amazon's people to do international expansion. Like Twitch even as a Multi billion dollar company didn't have like that expertise in house. Right. And they would be like, Yeah, it's gonna be twelve months, and they'd be like, We're finally live in whatever so and so country with our office. And I'm like, what?

Uh like And they're like that that this has been a year of effort. I'm that's insane. Like that seems like Can we turn that to software somehow? Like the way that Stripe Atlas did for a company corporation. Like is there a stripe atlas for the world in that way? I've been a little funny story about the localization stuff. So

Um, like a ev everyone probably listening is probably thinking like, Oh, but why don't you just get AI to Translate your stuff and it's It's not there to the point'cause we were using just Chat G P T, a bunch of guys that were non Japanese speakers of Chat Gt. And Yeah, we're talking to like very high value customers, right?

And you know, the AI hasn't really caught up in like tone or like certain like nuances and So Apparently like you know, we were talking to a VIP like they were a kid, like we're saying Good boy. Yeah, well, people are into that shit. Yeah, these people like and then you know

Yeah, definitely these people definitely were they were like They still play with us. Yeah, yeah, like disrespecting me, blah blah blah, so Um Yeah, so getting like native way, yeah. Yeah, getting like Well, especially languages like that, like getting like native people to know how to speak. Um

Yeah. No way. So one of the vag one of the projects I worked on when I was at Twitch was like we were trying to grow like crazy in Brazil. And so I was like, All right. Luckily we had a A group of people like there's four people in an office in Brazil that like No one was even talking to really. They were like They were so at arm's length from A headquarters and I was like, Hey

I'm here and you guys are like like key people. They're like oh awesome, we have so many ideas like Can you help us do them? Yeah. Well I was like, What sorts of ideas? And they were like, Well You know our Uh everybody here uses YouTube.

And so subscribe is like how you follow people on YouTube. But on Twitch subscribe is you cost money. So if everybody here, they open the Twitch app and they click subscribe to follow the someone they find interesting and it says pay five dollars. Right. They're like dollars. First of all, five, that's a week of groceries. Yeah. And secondly, this side you have to pay to watch people, screw this. They don't even know that it's free to watch. Right. It's like, can you just change the text on that button? And I was like, Oh damn, how many more of those are there inside this app? And another one was like We were like trying to come up with like these marketing campaigns we had like marketing

Like our marketing experts are coming up with these ideas. I asked the local team, they were like Hey, can you buy the can you just like give me your credit card? I'm gonna buy five iPhones. I was like, iPhones, why? He's like In Brazil, an iPhone is like a gold bar.

He's like, This is like he's like, We're just gonna give these away. Trust me, you'll get like twenty thousand people watching this stream. I'm like what? He's like, This is a gold bar. Imagine somebody just giving out like golden bars. And he just kept saying that. And I he did it. And it was just exactly that. It was like all of a sudden was just Number one most watched guy on Twitch that day was Right.

Any He milked it for like four hours. He's like I'm not giving it away until we get like Thirty thousand people in here. Yeah. And he's like and it worked. It was insane. Yeah, there's yeah, stuff like that that we're that we find out like every week of like, oh shit, you guys actually do it this way and by us Have you heard about what Mr. Beast does?

With this uh is it like the dubbing the video? So first he exploded his growth by Just being the one of the few American YouTubers to like Create his Brazil page, create his Philippines page, create his Indonesia page. He created separate accounts for all those. localized them, hired somebody who speaks the language and like you know, like when we were over hanging out with a

Some lady walked in speaking Portuguese and I was like Like what the hell's going on and is like, Oh yeah, she manages like my whole page for Brazil. Uh you know, like you have to have somebody who speaks the language and knows it. And then what they did was I was like, so do you dub it? He's like

Yeah, we dub it, but we hire like voice actors. I'm like, Why don't you you can use AI. I'm like excited to be like Did he say. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you can. But like he's like what we do is we go and we find the guy Who did the Spider Man voice? In Brazil?

And he does my dub for like Pretty cheap. And then every comment is Holy shit it's Spider Man. Yeah. And like he's getting crazy engagement because they're like, that's Spider Man. And he's like Yeah, it cost me like an extra five grand, but like

Look at what it did to my page. I think they turn that into like a agency where they like they like how they do it for other people as well. Like it's they do the done for you thing. They're like. If we did this for growth, we should do this for twenty other YouTubers. And I was like, dude, of all your businesses, like feastables or whatever. Yeah. This is like the most underrated one because I'm like, This is genius. It's selling your sawdust, your your byproduct. Yeah. Stuff you already built in the house. You're just making it available for others, like

That's a no and you're Mr. Beast. If you just said Hey, every YouTuber, like You can use what I use, they'll all sign up, right? So it's like instant customer acquisition. Tank.

And they take like They're like, dude, you don't even have a page in the Philippines. We're gonna run we're gonna create it, we're gonna run it for you, we get half or whatever. We get thirty to fifty percent. Right. So it's like they don't just take like a monthly fee. They own like you know the majority, you know, with like a huge chunk of that channel. I'm like, that's a really good model.

Yeah, I wonder if anyone's done like a roll up of YouTube. Channels and brands or whatever, like that seems like Seems like every Niche ends up being like you get rolled up. I've heard of spotter?

No, I haven't noticed. So they're kinda doing it. What they're doing is they go to the creators and they say, We'll buy your back catalog. Right. So they say, We'll give you two million dollars today, you can invest that in your videos now. To make better videos. And they're like We can just see with AdSense we'll make our money back in two years and then after that, like

Forever weep. Profit off your back catalog. That's like the equivalent of like Taylor Swiss selling Exact masters, whatever. Yeah, exactly. So they uh th this company is like I don't know, raised a lot of money. I don't know Well the key is underwriting. It's like I don't know if they correctly underwrite these deals or not.

Yeah. But like Mr Beast sold a bunch of his back channel, uh back catalog, a bunch of other people have, so I think they've like Either r raise that a billion dollar valuation or we're close to doing that for you two. I have a friend that I work with who uh manages speeds. I you know you speed the the kid.

Uh he manages his IP I don't know what to call it like Uh, whenever there's a video of speed go viral on YouTube or TikTok, whatever. They will claim it and then they make revenue off they'll they'll actually they'll run ads on it and I think I think very quickly like just speed alone has generated like a million dollars so far and he's like We should just be doing this for like

Not just speed, like all these different creators. Yeah, no doubt is Yeah, create like a big business that so that might be also like a another like Within Because the way that works is if your video, if your IP is being played by somebody else, you can claim it and either they take it down, yeah, or you get all the ad revenue. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And I I think and he should just do yeah, do the the laddera like a Do that, sorry.

'Cause they found like they're like Just uh like for people creators like speed, like A lot of the Eyeballs that are that is on him is not. On his videos.

It's on the millions of flips and compilations and stuff that uh That's that's going unclaimed. Like you're m you just like Easy money that you could be claiming. And getting so um

Yeah, it's probably another thing that People should Yeah, I look into and They're good. Uh this is great. These are some some these are fun ideas. Um I'm glad we did this, man. This is yeah.

Awesome. And uh yeah. Sean, uh, where should they follow you or go what can they do? Uh yeah, you can follow me just like Twitter, um Ashan, uh Ashana Hawk. But the last third letters of my name's cut off, so it's H A Q So And you're your S H A A N I'm I S.

H A N H edge here. That's that's my Twitter. Nobody knows what H is in America. Uh H. Uh but yeah, follow follow me on Twitter if you're or LinkedIn or it's We'll put it in the in the description. Uh

Dude, amazing. I'm proud of you. Um, this has been amazing to I've gone to validation. Yeah, yeah, y you know, I I'll say it. I I am super impressed. I just I'm so glad you kind of You've you've taken, you know, the ball, you just run with it. And you're taking just such interesting shots on goal. Yeah. And like whether any of these work or not right now is

Pretty secondary, like By the time you're third. Your scoreboard is gonna be filled up. You're gonna have made all the successes you Whether it was this or that, or I don't know which one. Yeah. By the time you're thirty, you're gonna have it all done uh in terms of like, you know, the achievement side.

But you're also just gonna have had so much fun. Right. And like, you know, these lessons you're learning about like hiring these kids in Japan because of this. Yeah, those are the real lessons of business and so I'm so glad you're you're getting them, man. This is so cool to see. Thanks. I appreciate it. I've got one last question for you.

I mean, you said So you y I forgot like your one life goal was like I think it was like You wanna educate with the one percent of the world or or whatever? And I what I said what I said at the time was I wanna be Like.

Or one percent of the world I want to be their favorite teacher. Yeah, like you know, which was at the time I think like sixty million people or something like that. I was like if If sixty million people thought like Like for me I'm like, oh, like I learned so much from Tony Robbins or Tim Ferris or Naval or these people like

I'd love to just be that. F For people. I think that's like Yeah. I know what they kind of have done for me. That'd be so cool if I was that for other people. That would I think that would be like

The highest calling for me. Yeah. Yeah. And do you think so is that A is that still the case? And then B Like do you still want to do that? And then B Uh like what do you think will be the Well what do you think will be like the avenue that way you achieve that. Like is it po is it'cause you're already in the ears of you know all these people

Whatever those stats are now. Yeah. Very different to what the stats are starting. Yeah. But um It's not actually that goal. That goal, I think was Arbitrary. Like Who cares if it's sixty billion? Who cares if it's one percent. It was ambitious. It's like it's a little headline. Yeah. It sounded good, but I'm like

I only need to say this to myself. Like I don't I I need to believe it for myself what this what this actually means. And that's not something I like needed to die to do. You know, like I didn't I didn't like feel like it was do or die to do be to be able to pull that off. It was something that like Sounded better than

what I really meant. It was also kind of virtue signaling, like You know, um I don't even know if like teacher is the right word, but I guess the thing that I think about now is Uh almost like the D and I I I stripped the ambition out of that and just made it really simple but more true for me.

Which was I want to be somebody that if I was twenty one, I would look up to this person. Like I'd be like That is what I wanna be. That guy's awesome. And that's a combination of things. So for example Part of it is making content being out there. Otherwise I wouldn't have even known. That this guy existed.

Part of it is Do cool shit. So that like Stuff that like I respect. Uh more think is cool in some way.

Some of it is like Uh, you know, this outcast conference. Like, that's cool. I'm glad like I like his reasoning behind that. I like that he went and did it. Or like, you know.

You know, just giving somebody, you know, a bunch of money because you believe in them and like My version of philanthropy. It's not like Donating to the cause and going and sitting on the board of some nonprofit, but like If you see somebody who's got a dream, like fund it and like make that happen. So I wanna do cool shit that like I would respect.

And the last part is The way you come across. Like I I know that my favorite people were charismatic storytellers, they were funny, they were likable. They didn't feel like they were bullshitting you. They had moments where they were honest and like They could have just not shared that or they could have said

A sanitized version, but they chose to just be real. So I'm like those became my like scoreboard is like Would I at age eighteen to twenty four, like would I have thought This guy's The man?

And like I know even at that time, I like if I saw someone that was awesome, like Elon Musk, oh, he's amazing. I remember watching some documentary about him on the plane. Before he even started like Um Tesla, I think. Yeah. It was like

Long time ago. And I remember thinking this guy's awesome. But he had like had four marriages at that point. I was like That's not winning to me. Yeah. I like that he's an outlier in this one domain.

But like I didn't want to replicate these other three, so like you know To me I'm like The thing I would have respected is Somebody who's like

Just like they're a really great dad. Like, for example, one of the things I want to do instead of Instead of doing another business or write a check. is like I wanna go coach like a high school basketball team like Mighty Duck style for a year. Or two years or something like that. Yeah. And I'm if I may I remember if I had

If old me, if young me had Heard that some guy was just some rich guy was doing that? Yeah. I would've been like, I don't care if he's not the richest or most successful. That guy's awesome and five bucks. And so I just kinda want to be the person like what's that called like Be who you needed when you were younger. Yeah.

Not needed, but like be who you would have admired when you were younger. Right. And uh That's the goal. Yeah. Uh not the like Exactly I had before. Which I don't know if it's better or worse, but like it's more true for me. S

I think you'll say on some pod you're like Yeah. I think you went to LA or something and you met a bunch of like rich people and at uh this point now I've met A bunch of billionaires and other cool people and

The most part, like A lot of rich people are like miserable and Um Yeah, and like we mentioned before about the kids that stay in their room and build these businesses, they lack other Companies of the laugh and I see that reflected throughout

All these people that are Yeah, they've they're They've made a bunch of money or they've done this one cool thing, but they've neglected every other part of their life and it's like okay, it's There's yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't Yeah, trade.

I wouldn't wanna I wouldn't wanna be in in those shoes, um It's similar to what the I forgot who it was with some guy. Talk to the Instacart. Yeah, and he was like Uh Are you how old are you? And he was like, I'm thirty three and he's like I would and this guy's worth billions of dollars. Like, I'll do anything to be thirty three again. Um he'll trade trade all his money. So it's like

I see that a lot more now and I you know I'm Hopefully mature. I was like Yeah, I just wanna Get all this and get the money and stuff like that. Um But yeah, I think that's something cool.

And uh one thing that One of the probably the most important thing not important, but like effective things that I wanna Working on a year, um was I mean maybe it was

Maybe you're talking to Silly or Silly taught you this was like aggression. Like just being like aggressive in like getting Getting things done and what you want. Like I think most people don't Don't do that? Like they don't follow up or Yeah, they don't. They don't be annoying. Like they don't they don't try to be annoying. Um

When I when I started applying that, I was like, Okay, things are Moving a way, way, way faster. Uh yeah, I remember probably like I used to kind of You were like my dear diary. It's like I'd come home and I'd be like

I don't even know what time it was, your time, you know. I I'd be like three a.m. Yeah, yeah, three a.m and I'd be like, hey, I'm ready to work. And like I'd be like I met this guy or I noticed this thing and I would like kind of like use you as my sounding board to like Play some of these lessons back. Yeah. So it's cool to hear what like stuck. But yeah, that that idea of like intensity is the strategy, meaning like Yeah. This guy's not smarter than me. He's not

Yeah. More knowledgeable than me about this. He's not like there's no special aura around this person. What is it that's made this person so successful? And what what do I What's the difference between me and them? And I just noticed I was like Oh, he doesn't have these like imaginary walls where it's like you stop here.

Right. Okay, we wanna do this. Like I remember one time we wanted to do a deal, the guy who We want to invest in this company and he was like Yeah, I was kind of on the fence. And he was like, What if we just wire him the money? And I was like, Two million dollars? And he's like

He's like, Yeah, like he's the honest guy. Like we met the guy, he's like not like a crook. Yeah. Um he's like This is why I'm the money. And then like I feel like that'll tip the scale once the money's in his bank account, he's not gonna like wanna like wire it back. And I was like, this guy's insane. And like we had another moment like that where

We were working on a One of the founders was like, Oh, I really need to raise this round. And they're telling us this urgency. I really got to do this. We're running out of money. Uh the mi the pitches are not going well. The first few pitches didn't go well. Can you guys help?

We're like, Yeah, we can help. Waiting up. Right now. Sounded like an emergency. Oh well, we got a a thing or like You got a thing you just said this is like so important. Okay, whenever you can. They get on they get on the call with us.

We'll go through the deck. Before we we said send the deck in advance. There's like forty minutes before the call. What do most people do? Forty minutes before the call there's uh we'll talk about it in forty minutes. Yeah. No no no So he was like

By the time the call happened he'd already emailed back like Slides nine through thirteen suck. Eliminate them. Slide four is backwards. Put it in slide one. Slide one needs to say this. Had already given him the full first round of feedback. Yeah. They were like, What the hell? So they were like looking at it. And we're like, cool, let's just make these changes right now.

And they're like we don't want we want to be respectful of your time. He's like The thing that's respectful of my time is like showing that you're like Full force going for this. Not That you're not gonna use my time. I'm here to help. But like let's

Do the thing. Yeah. You wanna make this awesome? Let's make it awesome. So if they start working on it. And they're like Okay, we we we know what we need to do next,'cause we need to go pull some data and do whatever. And um

So we'll check back in with you whenever he's like Uh you know, it was like noon. He was like, Cool, like let's check in at six PM today. And they're like two calls in a day. And even I was like two calls in a day. I've never done that with something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever scheduled Two calls in one day with somebody? Like it never happens. It's not that it's so crazy. It's not like

Running into a burning building? But it's kinda the business equivalent of running into it's like Wow. That's unusual. That's like a highly intense way to do this. Yeah.

And you could tell they were kind of shipped by it. And then they did it. And at six Pm it was like still not Not like exactly where we needed it to be, or we realized something. And we're like, cool, nine a. tomorrow, let's do it again.

By the third day, we were like, this deck is in great shape, but these guys were like worn out. Yeah. And so it was like Dude, I'm just getting warmed up. This is crazy. This is like what I live for is Find the thing. Laser in and just go for it and like

Well who says we can't meet twice in a day? Who says That they said no to the first proposal. Well let's What if you know there is some number they'll do this at What's that number?

And like, you know, he'll just think about it differently. Yeah. That stuff with me. I'm glad that kind of that idea stuck with you. I say it out loud so that somebody out there listening will be realise that Yeah, well my intensity knob is stuck at six. Yeah. Like

Ten isn't more hours. It's just Like More focus and it's more intensity at the main issue. And not self limiting in some by by a fake imaginary walls that don't exist.

Yeah. Yeah, you gotta bring the NG. Uh no small boy stuff. That's there we go. All right, that's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world a no way Be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like no day's off On the roadless travel never looking back

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