The Reddit Revolt, Turpentine, & Shaan's Latest Business Venture

So that was the other thing that sparked drama. Now you got leaked phone calls. You got the CEO calling a guy crazy. He said, she said, and so that Raise the profile of what was otherwise kind of a small thing. Is the thing on Reddit? Small things can turn into big things. That's like part of the beauty of Reddit. And that's what was happening here. Dude.

I first of all your energy. It's gonna be Sight. This is a this is a great story. I have a little more for you here. Are you ready? This is the part that that's the background.

Okay. Now let me give you some foreground. Right? Let me give you a little future future play here. Future play. Um I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day song on the bar. Um Dude, have you seen this

Reddit revolt. That's happening. Are you aware of this? I am aware of it and uh Is it gonna matter really? So basically what happened is there's this app called Apollo, right? Apollo?

Yep. Here's kind of the I would say the zoomed out version of the story. So What's happening today is if you go to Reddit right now. The whole site is down. So they broke all of Reddit. What they were trying to do was just

A bunch of subreddits, so these communities on Reddit. We're trying to protest some new Reddit policies, so It started with a few of them that said, You know what, we disagree with this policy change that's going on. Yeah, we're gonna do this forty eight hour blackout. We're gonna go private. We're gonna go dark and they called it Reddit go this summer, it's going dark. And more and more started joining to the point where

seven thousand subreddits, including some of the biggest ones on there, like R slash funny and R slash picks and stuff like that. And I believe that's thirty percent of Reddit. That's what I read. Yeah, it's basically uh it's a huge amount like uh you know, there's there's there's this couple of cool websites that you can go to. In fact, uh we should go to So Um go to this site. So it's red dark. So reddar.unt uk. Very strange site, but uh you can see in real time this thing's almost like

This This tool's even almost broken'cause so many are going dark at the same time. Uh and Ben, if you could share your screen. So It says seven thousand two hundred forty out of seven thousand eight hundred and six. That's like ninety percent or something, right? Seven forty out of seven eight out of six. Ninety three percent of subreddits have gone dark, um, which is just an insane number. And if you do it, you can if you click the large thing, there's like a live feed.

It'll be like Um Animals with jobs has just gone private, five thousand members. Music sh music uh hoarder has gone private, five thousand members. Um Crusty Windows has gone private. You just see like in real time. And I've been watching this since yesterday. It's crazy. When I s when I opened this up yesterday, it was at two thousand, and now it's basically all of them. It's seven thousand out of se out of seven thousand two hundred out of seven thousand eight hundred. So almost every Subreddit has decided to join this protest.

And so you say, Well, what's the policy? What what's so bad? And what happened is Reddit wants to IPO. So Reddit wants to go public in the future. Reddit is not currently profitable. They make about I don't know, c somewhere between four hundred and five hundred million dollars a year roughly. And um they're still not profitable.

And these apps that other people had made, called third party apps, were just used to like you could browse Reddit and they built like special features into them that made them maybe easier to use for certain types of people, power users or moderators, things like that. So that's why people loved Apollo is because they had some power user features that were great for moderators. And the the Reddit made the mistake of not they were thought they were picking on Apollo, but in fact They were pissing off moderators, and that was a really, really big issue. I'll tell you why in a second. So Reddit goes and says, Hey, look. We can't keep giving these third party apps

Full access to Reddit. This has a couple of problems. First, they're hitting our servers with a bunch of requests. That costs us, he said what the CEO said was tens of millions per year in server requests. The second thing is those server requests are now serving Reddit content onto someone else's app. So that person could monetize their app.

And Reddit doesn't get a piece of that. So they were like, all right, we wanna cut costs. We wanna increase revenue. And they had a third problem which was They didn't want their data going to all these different places'cause Basically, open AI and ChatGPT had the scraped Reddit. Reddit was like one of the key sources to make ChatGPT so good. And Reddit kind of was asleep when they did the first scrape, but now they're like, Oh, no, no, no, no. If any other AI company wants our data, you're gonna pay us a huge amount of money for it. So to do that, they needed to

to basically paywall the data. They need the data only to live inside their own their own walls. So they upped their API pricing. They basically said, For every server request you do, it's now gonna be whatever. Ten cents and uh a fake number. But but the result was that a little a app like Apollo, which is made by this basically this one dude who made it, you know, as a passion project out of s out of college. He would Have to pay twenty something million dollars a year just to maintain Apollo.

And so he's like dude, that's unfeasible. I can He's like, I have uh fifty thousand paying users, they pay me ten bucks a year. So he's like, I make five hundred K on this. Now I have to my costs are gonna in thirty days my costs are gonna go to two million a month. And he's like, uh that obviously kills my app and it kills not just my app, all of all the third party apps. And Reddit's answer was basically like

Shrug? Like, you know, all right, well Sucks to be you. And um And then the way that they kind of responded Well, so wait, hold on somebody. I wanna ask you a question about how

The word got out. But first we have to get background here, which is Even though so I just looked it up, Reddit is like the ninth most popular website in America. And even it's like You know, it's like when someone says uh use it. Well, it's like uh you know no one goes to that restaurant anymore, too crowded. It's kinda like that. So Reddit is basically a Um

Uh, I don't even know how to describe it, but basically a hundred thousand plus forums all on one website. And the reason why this matters is because each forum which is called a subreddit, and there's basically a subreddit on any topic you can ever imagine, in most viral news in America or viral memes. Start at Reddit. And it's Subreddits are forums that are owned by volunteers. So someone comes up with one and they create it. Yeah they run it.

And then they run it, and I didn't realize how much autonomy they are giving. Divid. And the reason why this is port is important is now like this has happened before. Apparently Reddit fired one woman named Victoria like eight years ago and she was a community moderator and everyone loved her. And so all these other s sub Reddit Forum leaders like Did the same thing but where they shut it down a little bit. Now

But by the way, and the result of that was the CEO got fired. They got two uh back then they got two hundred thousand people to sign a petition saying Ellen Powell needs to get fired. And so she Step down. Like I don't know, a week later or days later after that happened. So they you know, they they do wield a lot of power. They'll talk about it. So but here's what's crazy. A It doesn't make it that much money for how large it is. It's w it's if you look at the top thirty websites in America, I bet you

I I'm not researchers, but I would make a bet that it's on the very, very low end of revenue. Or even value created per user. Per user. And part of it's because people are anonymous and Redditors are typically horrible with clicking ads and things like that. Uh and the other part of it is that They're kinda in a weird way. This guy Steve Huffman and Alexis O'Hinian, they created this company, read it, and it's amazing. And their users own the platform a little bit.

And that's what we're seeing here is these people basically set their channels or set their subreddits to private. So you can't access them. So that's what's happening. My question to you is. When this guy we'll call him Apollo, when Apollo guy announced that he was gonna shut down his app. out that it happened and how did all these people rally around this? Well again the people that use his app were power users. And so when he said, Hey guys, you know, here's what's going on and it actually happened in multiple steps. So the reason this got so much Heat is because it happened in multiple stages, he said.

They announced the they announced that they were gonna update their pricing. He's like, Hey We're gonna have to keep an eye out for this, but I'm optimistic. Like I'm sure Reddit's not gonna They're not gonna like just Do something that that doesn't make any sense. take this and take everybody's needs into account. But we will have to update the pricing. And he's like, you know what, that's reasonable.

Can't wait to hear back what you guys have in mind. That was like post one. And he shared that. But where do you share that? He shared it on subreddit. On Reddit and maybe in the Apollo subreddit plus some others. And so like the mods subreddit, because again, a lot of moderators like Apollo because it helps them do their job faster. Um because these guys do subreddit owners make money? No, they make nothing. So Reddit has this huge fleet, like of the moderators that are in the dark one, I think, right now.

There's twenty eight million moderators, I think that that was the number. Um that are that are Like participating in this. Some some insane number. Let me see. Uh I had a subreddit. It was called like apartment hacks. And I was like trying to get people in it and it very quickly got like a thousand people, but I I quit working on it. Sorry, I got the number wrong. Twenty eight thousand moderators on the seven thousand subreddits so that are participating in the In the in the blackout, basically. So These moderators basically they're constantly fighting spam. So when you have a site that's as popular as Reddit, There's a huge amount of people that are trying to get you to buy their crap.

That are trying to get you to subscribe to their OnlyFans, that are trying to get you to click this link and install this virus. And um, or just doing clickbait, like just making it where. They post something super outrageous just to get clicks and engagement, upvotes, and a big battle in the comments. But then it kind of turns off people who were there for like Yeah, they wanted they wanted the entertainment without it getting ruined, without the party getting ruined. And so the moderators were the people that were keeping this house party. Working where it's like, Yeah, we want people to come here and have fun, but no, dude, you can't bring seventeen kegs in here. No, you can't just come here and flyer your own party inside my house. Like, no, no, you can't do all that crap. And they're fighting this constantly, and they do it as a giant unpaid thing. Now, what they pointed out during this protest very

Reasonably was that. Dude, we're Red Hat's one of the only networks that's all run by unpaid volunteer moderators. So, for example, Facebook has a huge moderation program. They spend about 200 or 300 million dollars a year just on moderate content moderation. Twitter spends a bunch of money on content moderation. Um and so content moderation can be a very big cost center. And so the the moderators are like, hey You're trying to save ten million dollars by Shutting off these third party apps?

Have you thought about what happens when we stop doing all this free work and like now you have to pay for content moderation or this whole site goes to shit? Like uh what's gonna happen then? Maybe you should listen to us. And so that's the That's where this has escalated to. But I'm but just to finish the the story. So he goes He sa he says up front, okay, Reddit announces change, it's gonna affect us, but hopefully it's all good. And some people in the comments were like, dude, you're being naive.

These corporations are they're like just like Twitter sh killed all the third party clients, Reddit's gonna do the same. These guys wanna go public. They're gonna want to own all They're gonna want to you own the user experience for all all c all users of Reddit. They're gonna kill you. And he's like No. They've they said like, you know, they said they're gonna be fair. A couple months later it comes out and they're like Here's the pricing.

It kills you. And it takes into effect in thirty days. And he's like, What like First of all, ridiculous pricing. Second of all, thirty days. Like I couldn't possibly try to like change my app to maybe make less requests to your server or like I couldn't do anything in thirty days. Like you're just gonna kill my whole business. And I took yearly subscriptions. So I'm not only am I app gonna die. I'm gonna have to refund, like two hundred fifty K to people who paid for a year's subscription because my app's no longer gonna work. So he was in a world of trouble. So he contacts Reddit.

And he does a call with the team from Reddit. And he records the call. And after the call. Which state is he in? You can you can you're allowed to do that in some states, but not in every state. Did he do it? The right way. Dude, in Neckbeard Nation, it's all good, baby. It's all it's all legal. You're the little guy fighting the big guy, you can do whatever you want. And so So he uh first he doesn't do anything with it.

Then Reddit comes out and says, This guy's crazy. He's making outlandish claims. He tried to extort us for he asked for ten million dollars. um in order to like keep supporting the app. We're we can't do business with this crazy guy. And they basically like kind of like Just you know, uh slandered him a little bit. And he's like

What are you talking about? That's not what I said. And uh what do you what did I say that was so outrageous? And he's like, Here's the recording. People can listen to it themselves and decide. Oh man, did you listen to it? I even listen to the whole thing, but there's a s part in there where he's like, look Like Does it sound reasonable? Yeah, he sounds very supporting. He's basically like look, um You know, obviously I'd love to just keep going independent.

But you guys are saying it's too expensive, you want to raise pricing. That makes it untenable for me. But people like this app and they're gonna be upset when this app goes down. He's like, you know, you guys bought Alien Blue back in the day and you made that the Reddit app like Have you considered just buying this app so that you can Like you don't have to pay for all these ex you know, it's not some external party that was it. You guys can okay. But at least it lives on and like it's a win win solution potentially for for all of us. And so he was like, you know.

Um He said something like you're saying this costs you uh this will cost me twenty million a year, you're saying this costs you tens of millions a year. Like you could buy the whole thing for ten million dollars and that's you know, six months of my operating costs and you know, like it could work out that way. And um Steve Huffman on the call is like look like you know, I don't I don't appreciate the threat type of thing. He says something about like that's a threat. And he goes, Wait, what's a th what's a threat? What do you mean?'Cause the guy said something like he goes, um

Uh You know, if you if you if you don't want all the like all all this noise about this, like you could just do this. And he kinda took it as a threat, like oh, you're threatening you're gonna make a bunch of noise if we don't pay you ten million dollars. He goes, No, no, I'm saying Um We have like the uh you're saying I'm making too many API calls. So if you don't want all the server noise for the API requests.

You could just own it and just use your internal systems to do it instead. And he's like, Oh sorry, like okay, my bad. Uh I didn't realize you're talking about API requests. Like I apologize, I didn't mean to Like s say that you were threatening it. Okay, no problem. Like I just want like we're clear on that. Then later he comes out and says he threatened us. He's like, dude Even on the call, you apologize saying saying, uh sorry, I misunderstood you. And then you took that out of context and tried to make me sound like a a guy who's trying to profit out of this. Um or like trying to make unreasonable requests.

So anyways, that caught the so so that was the other thing that sparked drama. Now you got leaked phone calls. You got the CEO calling a guy crazy. He said, She said, and so that Raise the profile of what was otherwise kind of a small thing. As the thing on Reddit, small things can turn into big things. That's like part of the beauty of Reddit. And that's what was happening here. Dude. I first of all your energy

It's gonna be Sight. This is a this is a great story came up here. I have a little more for you here. Are you ready? This is the part. That that's the background. Okay. Now let me give you some foreground.

Right. Let me give you a little future future play here. Four play? Um So ready May have forgot, but this is how Reddit started. So Reddit started because the the popular forum side of the day dig Made this big update and everybody hated it and Dig said

Screw you guys, this is better. And they said Fia. And they went to this little site called Reddit and Reddit blew up. But that's how Reddit became what it is, is that the dig fumbled the ball. release this anti you know, this this anti user update and the user's just called it to the man. Yeah.

Please stuck it on. Well who's to say that doesn't happen again? So I have a little proposal. Uh uh somebody should run with this idea. I bought this domain. Okay.

And uh I think somebody should do this. If not uh uh you know, s I this is what I would do if I was uh If I was a little little younger and hungry than I am today. So here's what I think somebody should do. I think that was the perfect time. The younger you, the equally conniving, just a little bit more ambitious you. Just my T levels were a little higher back then. Yeah. I'm a mellowed out dad now. You know, my daughter paints my toenails. I can't be doing all this kind of stuff. Yeah. If you had if you woke up at 10 a.m. this morning and you wear a hoodie all the time, uh you know, this is for you. Neckbeard Nation, this is. This is the call out. It's the mayor. Okay, so I want you to just check out this little website here. So Sam, I don't know if you know what uh the CEO Steve's um handle is on on Reddit. Do you know what his his username is?

I used to yeah, if you said it I would remember it. Dark dark something? Uh Spe was it? Speak S P E Z and so I don't know, I just woke up this morning, six AM, and I just looked at GoDaddy and I just saw that Spezless.com was available and I thought, huh. One cent for SPESLI.com. So I bought it. I said. What's Svezless? I think it's It's Reddit without spez.

Would you like Reddit without Steve? Well here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna make a Reddit It's very, very, very, very, very similar looking to this website. But with one difference. Th there's there's no steam. There's no corporation that's gonna

Th dude, the tagline needs to be same, same, but different. Same, same, but different. Exactly. Same, same, but different. Exactly. So here's uh Ben threw this up while while we were talking, because I gave him a rant this morning. I was like, dude, here's what someone should do. And I think he just bought he told me right before we went on air, he goes, I'm gonna buy the domain, I'm gonna put it up. So he goes, um It says I love Reddit. I just don't like don't like SPES. Uh so I'm gonna create a newsletter new Reddit. It's called Spezzless. It's Reddit without Steve. Uh here's the master plan. It'll be a very, very, very similar website to Reddit. Um

It's gonna be a nonprofit. And any revenue that it makes will get funneled back into the communities or moderators. Um Because this blackout Like this this forty eight hour protest that they said.

It's cool. It's gonna get headlines, but Reddit really doesn't care. They're gonna lose about three million dollars by being down for two days. And then they're just gonna move on with life. And the the the protesters made a big error that which is they said how long they would protest for. They said the pain will stop at forty eurs. So all Reddit has to do is just ignore it for forty eight hours. Uh they're gonna keep doing what they want. So when your when your voice doesn't work. You gotta exit.

And uh so here's a here's a little little exit boat for you. It's uh it's basically Reddit without the bullshit. And um There's the little email sign up box. So if a million people sign up Then uh Who knows, maybe we can create something here. And so, you know, why do this as a nonprofit?

Your boy's already rich. We don't need to we don't need to make a profit on this. We just Create this for fun because it's fun to to see something burned down. I don't even have a problem with Steve Huffin, by the way. I think he's you know he's like Steve smart guy. Uh I think he's he's fair in his opinion, but also this is the internet. And in the internet. You you really gotta know who you're pissing off, and I think he's pissed off too many people with this move. I can't believe that nobody's making the alternative to this.

Uh the people that are trying to make alternatives, they're all trying to do it so different. You don't want to do different. It needs to look almost exactly the same. Change the shade of red by like two hex you know, like little hex color over to the right. And then uh it needs to be the same site with the same structure. Everything's the same. Except for Who decides what happens, or how the money flows. And if you just change that, you could do this as a nonprofit thing and I I think it would be uh very entertaining.

In lieu of your morning cup of coffee this morning, you had a cup of rage. And I and I and I dig it. Dude, first of all, a few beautiful things. Neckbeard Nation. That was nice, right? That's our new that's our that's our fan base. So we hired this woman to help us with some t shirts, if she's listening. Uh she dude, this lady by the hilarious hilarious thing you did. So listen to this this woman.

This woman sent me this beautiful Uh no, so the whole thing, what does she do? So you get something in the mail? I get this thing in the mail and it's like this beautiful like ten or twenty page outline. It's clever and it says what she's gonna do for us to make t shirts. It looks like a giant PowerPoint deck that we just printed out because she knows like ah he might not click the link, so let me just print the PowerPoint out on white and black Yeah, paper. Put it in an envelope for him. It's beautiful like when you see like a neckbeard guy doing very neckbeard thing where you're like, I'm just happy this exists. This is a beautiful display. It wasn't physically beautiful, but it was very it was it was very clever.

And she said, You can reach me at my first thought. at gmail dot com or something like that. Or you can DM me. Right. Yeah, T H O T Thought, which stands for that hoe over there. And or she said, You can just DM me on my first thought. And so I talked to her and I was like, This is awesome. Let's do something. We'll we'll work together. It worked.

I email her with you on the line and I go I think I said dear thought or comma Deer thought. And she was like, Great, I mean, by the way, uh you should look up what thought means. And I was like I know what it means. I thought that you said Yeah, you said it first to me. That was your Twitter handle. I don't I'm not trying to disrespect you. You said it, not me. I'm just repe I'm just playing the game here. By the way, the funny thing is you go, All right, let's do this. Yes,

And she was like I don't think you know what thought means. Otherwise you wouldn't have called me that. She goes, LMAO at being addressed as my first thought in your email. Urban dictionary below for your amusement Yeah, and I immediately replied, I was like I'm sorry, I thought I thought I thought this was a shtick. Uh I uh you're right, I'll call you your real name. My apologies. So we didn't get off to the doctor of night start right away. Ha ha ha.

So Dear thought we're gonna uh This is why we only have four female listeners, is because of this type of behavior. I I you know, I was trying to relate. I was trying to like show that I read. Yeah, it didn't work out well. Yeah, it's like when you hear hear someone call their friend, they're like, Oh, Nicky and you're like, Sub Nicky and they're like, It's Nicholas. Uh

Nickel. Sorry, I was just uh I was in uh LA this weekend and I went to like the LA Tech Week thing and we went to this event and there was like three hundred people and I'm not exaggerating. I had thirty people of like the three hundred people come up to me and like say like hey, love MFM. I'm a total man. And so two episodes ago or one episodes ago, Sean came up with this idea of this total man. We got a lot of flack for it. I don't know if you saw it.

But people loved it in general. And I had literally twenty or thirty people like in a row come up and be like, dude, I'm the total man. I love it. You're doing it wrong. It's not. Total man with like a space in between,'cause then it's like, yo, I'm I'm the total man. It's I'm a total man. It's like one word. It's like it's a it's a thing. You're a noun it's it's a different type of noun.

You got Yeah. You know, mammals. You got Humans.

And you got Total man. It's just like a separate species. Yeah, get rid of the space. It's cleaner. I got you. Yeah, we're gonna get rid of And uh so Total Man That that's a hit. I think Neckbeard Nation With you being the mayor. I mean that or you being the president. That that that's that's our new that's a new thing. We did it. We got a new thing. Um

Totally agree. Um which side are you on? I think I'm team Reddit on this one. But they screwed up. They shouldn't have done it this way in the first place. Uh you know, their venture capital company, they've got hundreds of employees, probably thousands at this point. Maybe

They fumbled the bag here, not on the P R Press or PR front, which they did. But like letting this get out of hand the way it has in the first place. I mean you've gotta the you gotta pay the bills. Why are the what are they doing? Letting people build build the stuff on on their land. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah, I I get where they're coming from. I think they uh like many tech companies fumbled the communication and execution.

Um but I'm also horrid at That so you know I would have done this twice as bad if I was in their position.'Cause I'm always like I'm a very much rip the bandit off type of person and also like Because I'm

very far on the spectrum of not easily offended. Like it takes a lot to make me feel like mad or upset. I severely underestimate. how easily I can make other people mad or upset. And so uh I I get their position Um, I think you know, most likely unless Unless bezel becomes a thing.

They're just gonna be like cool. Nice protest. We hear you. We'll take you into account in the future. Continue using Reddit. You know, like i i life will just go on and nothing bad will happen from this unless

Literally somebody sees the narrative. That's the thing. There's a narrative right now, and somebody could come in and they could surf that momentum on the narrative and be like we are the thing. That's hard. Uber had the same thing. Do you remember when in the it was trending delete Uber, like I think these things come and go. Like that this happened in the crypto. Crypto world is like the most like ruthless. It's like just like night fighting in the streets. And so OpenC had some policy issue or some change. I don't do what it was? It was like fee change or something. I forget what it was. They changed something.

Hasting of royalty. Yeah, they change like the royalty take rate. Worst podcasting etiquette ever to ask the guy in the room who's sitting like ten feet behind you with no mic or headphones to ask him his opinion. Have you seen Joe Rogan? If Joe Rogan does it, anyone can do it. So basically V OpenSea, which was the big NFT marketplace, by far the dominant hundred percent market share type of thing. Um

change something in the policy. People didn't like it. And literally like In like a forty eight hour period, somebody spun up a competitor and they did what was called a vampire attack, which was the In crypto, you could do this thing where you could be like, okay, who are all the wallets on that use OpenC? I can find them, they're all public. Then I can airdrop them tokens that say, if you come over to our platform and claim them, create your account here, you get free tokens.

And people were like Token. Might be worth something. And so they just like they basically like Vampire tech, they just suck the blood out of one network to another. And this has happened several times in crypto where they've basically tried to do this. Now it's not always 100% successful, but To go from you didn't even exist to like A million to two million users with like a shot at hey, if you deliver a dope user experience, you know, this can work.

Yeah, that's like better than nothing. And so in crypto, this has happened a couple of times. A couple of the like DeFi tools have had this happen. Where oh, we don't like your policy. We're gonna fork your source code, rename it. And uh we're gonna incentivise all the major players on yours to come over here and get like a bonus token if they if they come claim their thing here, which builds the momentum and the narrative. Well I don't I mean uh y like your energy I don't know how to like one up you here. Uh you know, like they say when you're like supposed to like meet people, you're supposed to match their energy.

Uh to like make them feel comfortable. I don't know what to say. I feel like I feel like we're going to a m a monitor truck rally, like Sunday Sunday, Sunday. Like you're a grave digger right now. Now I'm just in the stands trying to keep up with earplugs. You know what I mean? Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. That's so on fire. How do you even remember or know that? That's like their radio ads, right? Monster Jam. Have you been to a monster truck rally in the last seven hundred days? Is the Pope Catholic? Of course I have. Yeah. I've gone to Monster Truck all the time. I've gone like five or six times. Do they do backflips now? I'm not not gonna go see a big ass truck do a backflip. Um that you actually are know more than me about, I think, because you're friends with them. Yeah. Uh and then I want to talk about a lot of stuff. Okay.

And then I want to talk about I wanna talk about the second thing about Milk Road and and and that thing. And we'll we'll leave time for that. So Uh Turpentine. Is that what's called a turpentine? I think time, yeah.

Uh so basically there's a guy named Eric Tornberg, he's been in the game for a while. He's just done a bunch of stuff on the internet, including founding a company called On Deck. He launched this new thing called turbid time. It was very nice, he gave us a little shout out. Uh but basically what I believe it to be is just a podcast network for business content.

Particularly some type of like startup y related stuff. So there's like one on media. Yeah. Yeah, tech. There's one on m media. I think there's one on uh on fin tech. Uh a few other things. He announced it. Have you seen this? What d what what am I missing? I've seen this. Uh so Eric Tornberg's behind this. Eric's awesome guy. Um Did he talk to you about this before he did it? Because I feel like if I was gonna do something like this

You're my phone a friend. Right. No, you didn't talk to me. You're my phone a friend on that. I've never talked to him. Oh, you never know. Oh, so you don't know each other that well. Okay, gotcha. Um he's he's in our like friend group, I guess. Um Okay, so I'm curious what your take is on this, because I think you know a lot about this.

I have a strong opinion, but I want you to explain it. I mean I think you said it well. He's trying to create like what Uh I would say the easiest analog is like the ringer. So the ringer was started by Bill Simmons. So kind of like famous notable guy in the in the sports journalism landscape basically was like, I'm gonna create a network of sports podcasts. I'll have my show, I'll have this guy do NBA, I'll have this guy do NFL, I'll have this guy do um, you know, pop culture, I'll have this guy do whatever. And so they created a network of podcasts, ended up selling it to Spotify for a few hundred million dollars, two hundred two hundred something million dollars. And um

Really that was mostly because Bill had the number one sports podcast and he's like very influential and Spotify had a strategy there. So Um Eric's trying to do that for tech. So he's like, How do I be the ringer? How do I be bar stool, but for the tech industry? Can I basically create uh like intellectual Ener entertaining but also highly intellectual conversations about things that people care about. Um

In tech and then he's looking for shows. So like basically If we were you know Not the badasses that we were. We could be like, Hey, we'll let's join Turpiton, we're gonna get their back office. We're gonna get them helping us sell ads. We're gonna get like, you know, help with production and we'll get cross promoted amo amongst um, you know, their their network. It's very similar to like Work Week, which we've talked about on here before. Work week's doing this kind of with like Newsletters and um

Turpentine is trying to do this with uh Podcast plus newsletters plus other things. That's kind of the thing. His tagline is where experts talk. So it's a network podcast covering tech, business culture, and trends that are driving the future. And he's got, I think three or four shows right now. Oh, it looks like maybe five. Three that he's doing. And then uh a couple that other people are doing. But they're all like very like fancy schmancy like the cognitive revolution. Um You know

Media Empires Moment of Zen. And so they're they're kind of like, I would say, highbrow compared to What most podcasts are. Yeah. So Here's my opinion. Um

I don't think anyone that you mentioned or anyone up there is really doing it perfectly. But This is beautifully done. Uh you go to his website. Wow, I thought you were gonna be anti. You're pretty anti most media things, so I'm gonna be able to do it. Oh no, it's gonna come. It's gonna come. Uh you're doing you're doing that sandwich thing? Yeah. Yes. Sandwiches always have it's not it's not. Like a sandwich is not meat, cheese, bread.

It's Bread meat cheese bread. Okay. It begins and it and ends with that. No, I I do like it. So here's the thing about these companies, I think If he doesn't raise money I think it's awesome. I think so long as he doesn't raise money.

I think this could be really, really cool. I think owning this outright Is amazing. I think that's really cool. I think when I go to his website, I think See borderline, like if it was done a little bit. The other way.

It would be really douchey. But the way that he's done it, it's actually quite awesome. Like, for example, he quotes Pablo Picasso. And You know. That could go either way. That could go either way. He went the right way. I think when you go to the website, I think the name is nice. It's all like pretty slick. It's upscale. It actually looks really good. I think that if you if you if you did that a little bit differently, it would not work. But he's done like what's the what's the quote for Pablo Picasso in there? Do you see it?

Uh yeah. It says when art critics do get together They talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together to talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. Cool. I think that's cool. I think it's cool and it's got a nice little picture of Pablo. I think it's awesome. Yeah. Uh my next company I'm gonna Get a quote from Benny Blanco. What's it gonna say? I'm gonna get Benny Blanco on the side. We can do Bugs Bunny next, too. I think it's good, man. I think it's good branding. I uh so my opinion is I think it's cool if you own it.

I think it's cool. If you I don't know if you know this. You probably don't, because who cares? But business insider's writer. The writers are on strike.

Do you know that? Yes. Well a a lot of like isn't Hollywood also on strike right now? I think they're totally unrelated other than maybe they inspired each other. I think there was like a contract up and uh insider formed a union or something like that and they are protesting and they're doing this thing called a digital

Pick line, I guess it'll Uh a digital picket line where they're like Telling all the customers like not to click on business insider links now. Uh which is crazy. I mean, someone who follows a business insider journalist is probably not also someone reading business insider, I would imagine. So I I I don't know if that's gonna go well. But

If you have to if so if you're gonna start a media company I think you have to be incredibly careful. Not to hire folks who will unionize. I think that is actually an existential crisis to a lot of media companies right now. Um I and I think that that's like a real so if you're so here's the takeaways. I think A, it's awesome. So you're gonna do this?

I think it's cool. I think you should own the whole thing. B Look out for union types. See Him going B2B, that's 100% the way to go. And I want to give you an example. But is this B2B? I don't think this is B2B.

What makes you say it's a B to B? I think he just has uh I think he has uh probably going for like High end customers more so than B to B, right? Yeah, but your ad salespeople can spin that nicely to Salesforce. Uh like it's not like true crime, you know what I mean? It it's borderline. It's kissin' cousins with the with the B to B uh Real B to B. It's it's close.

But let me give you an example of a real B to B one. Be the Bish. Yeah. It's it's Bish. Um Have you heard by the way, did you see that guy who's getting in trouble? His name's George Santos. He's like clearly I think he's like from South America, uh, but he was um I'm gonna butcher it, but he was some type of elected official out of Long Island.

And uh he's getting in trouble because he did a bunch of fraudish stuff. Think but w one thing that's funny is he told everyone he was Jewish. And he goes Well, I didn't say I was Jewish. I said I was Jewish. Like I'm friends with the Jews. I was Jewish. Like, you know, like I I'm I'm bunnies with them. Have you not seen it all time. All time excuse.

He like stole five hundred thousand dollars, so he's actually a crook, but like the funniest part, he goes, I'm Jewish and you look at him and he's uh Uh like from Brazil or something like what? Uh, so that's pretty funny. But uh anyway, I think that instead of going B to B ish. Gotta go all the way. Have you heard of aging media?

No. Okay, so type in aging media. It started by this guy named John. John's a member of Hampton, but everything I'm actually about to say, I just kinda stole from Uh similar web.

But I have heard some rumors about them. But basically if you go to aging media, what's what what's the uh You mean on his Hampton application where he had to write his revenue, profits, uh names of all his children and social security number? You may you may have some info on this Look, I'm just gonna go. I just click similar web on their site.

No info. So I know you ain't getting shit from Similar Web right now. Oh yeah, y yeah. So here's why. Here's I'm gonna explain it to you. Yeah, but you know, listen, aging media is their like corporate website. So what's it say? They have like their brands like senior housing news, hospice news, skilled nursing news, that sort of thing. So what what what's the what's the meta tag on their is it like Uh nursing home profession or media for the senior care industry. Yeah. So click like one of their websites and you can go to similar webs. Each website only has something like fifty thousand visits, I believe.

It's like it's like not a lot. But they're doing something like twelve Or eleven million dollars a year in revenue. And like three or four million dollars a year in profit. And this is a B to B hardcore B to B site.

They make their money through Lee Gen, so basically I imagine they'll do like a webinar or something and if you like are in the nursing home industry, you give'em information. They also have ads and I think I don't know if they have podcasts, but they do have newsletters. This is a hardcore B to B This is yeah, uh

And I love it. I love it. I love this. You just did this guy such a disservice by Seeking for

four four to forty copycats on'em by talking about how good of a business this is on here. Well no so like people listen to this podcast are like if Sam or Shans say the N word I don't mean the N word, I mean newsletters. If they say this is a good newsletter business Instant copycats, bro. They saw what you did with the hustle, they saw what I did with Milk Round. They're instantly looking for a new newsletter to close. I apologize in on behalf of w whoever this guy is. I DM I DMed him on in the Hampton. I go, hey, don't tell me anything, but just Can I talk about your company on and I I said here's what I see on Similar Web You didn't know what he was saying yes to. No, I I got permission. I go, here's here's what I see on Similar Web. This is what I'm gonna say. Are you cool with it? And he gave me a thumbs up. Like literally a thumbs up emoji. That's how I roll. I get that emoji. We're good.

Um that's a hardcore B2B media company. So anyway, my point with this turpentine thing. I think it's cool. I like it. I think it's cool. I hope he pulls it off. I've thought about doing this idea actually in the past. I ruled it out for a bunch of reasons, but it's moreybody else. I think I think it'd be great to do. It takes a lot of energy and I'm totally with you that I hope he didn't raise money. He in his tweet thing uh announcing it, he didn't say he didn't say like so happy to have Mark Andreessen investing in this. So so I think there is uh I I think there's probably a good chance he raised money, but He didn't raise okay he didn't raise money. So so I hope he is taking it that way. Well he'd probably learn from uh

From his other company on Deck. Like that's another company where I think they raised a hundred plus million, I forget, but I think the valuation was five hundred million dollars. So I don't know how much they raised, but I imagine it was the nine figures. That's another company where it's like That could be cool. if you don't raise money. Basically screwing up your cap table is like one of the only

Mistakes in business that you can't really make up for. Um speaking of screwing up your money Can I tell you what I did? Post milk road. With the with the money that we made?

Well, I do know that you sent me a text. I f I would have to go look at when that came and you said I've sold all my equities. I think it's gonna go to the I think the market's going down. And since then do you've uh it's double. It's it's about double a lot of the other so I know you did that with your money.

So what else did he do? Yeah. What else did he do besides not make money off your money? For the record, for the record. Uh I've actually I would be About even from where I was with my equities on the on that. Because I kept well, I kept a portion of it, but I also uh The stuff I sold has not doubled. You just look at HubSpot stock'cause you're like I got HubSpot. So you're like HubSpot is the market. HubSpot is not the market, exactly. So uh so I'll tell you that. So let me um

Let me tell you s about what I did. So we got this money, so Cell Milk Road. Got a couple options. So it's like do we Just buy treasury bills, make four percent on that.

Uh. What bank did I use? What do you mean? Chase or one of the other ones that got screened. I'm not there's no upside in the answer to this question. Did you did did you use one of the ones you you did were using one of the ones that got screwed up? No no no no I didn't use Vad make. No. So Money sitting there. Uh as I could buy treasury bills. Uh no that's

Too boring. Um could do what Sam does, I could just index into the stock market. That's reasonable, but like, you know, I think uh Seems like we're coming off of a of a thirteen year old market. Um Don't really need to to

put this or the full amount in right now. Uh let me just kind of wait and see what happens there. Is there something is there something that can do better than the eight percent uh that I might be able to get on that. I thought well should should I just invest in a in a new company we start? Uh I don't know, maybe if we have a great idea we'll do that, but but let me just Let me not do that. And so I started doing this process where I was like Can I

I I worked backwards for basically like can I get thirty percent a year compounding? And thirty percent of your sounds like a high number, but we have a few friends who have done it and the way that they've done it has been through buying private companies. So they buy businesses and they own them. And Andrew Wilkinson, I think, is the one that most people who listen to this pod will know because he's been on a bunch of times and talked about this, how they built Tiny from A few million dollars into

Yeah, five hundred million dollars by doing this sort of thirty, forty percent compounding over over time. Did we have the uh tiny annual report? We we'll have to talk about it next time. Yeah, I I I read this hand you a letter. Um Yeah. So I've uh and I we have a few other friends that have been doing this as well, uh that are less public about it. So I said, Okay, well let me do that. I said, but I don't want to buy these companies and operate them. So I thought

What if I bought thirty percent stakes? So sort of like uh can I buy a minority position? In companies. So that they keep running them. But I give them capital. So basically like the founder oftentimes was like not taking a lot off the table or they were kinda always worried, like Should I put this in my pocket and spend this? Well, I don't know. What if the company needs it? Um, even if we're profitable, they were kind of worried about that. So I said, here, let me give us some money and then could I help them grow?

And so I went through this exercise. I don't I don't think I've told you about any of these, but I talked to about twenty five companies in the last I wanna say six months. Dude, every company that you talk to DMs me. And they say something of a variety of I was talking to Sean and now we're not talking anymore.

But they like they like messaged me to like Talk to you and I just ignore it. Yeah. They're like the wing man who refuses to wing. I already know probably half of them. My funnel was this. I was just doing a review of this. I thought it was kind of interesting. So talk to about twenty f twenty four companies, I think. Um got serious, uh like did like did diligence. I would say talk to means like uh talk to means like I was interested. You know, obviously we s we looked at a little bit more than that. But Talk to was like

Oh, this could be interesting. Maybe you could kinda squint and see a possibility. then got into kind of like more serious talks, either negotiated numbers or diligence. With about nine. Uh got to a L O I stage. With

Three or four. and ended up doing one deal. And the last I want to say six months post uh post sale. And so This range from everything from

Um So newsletter businesses, OnlyFans businesses, journal apps, virtual events, bookkeeping companies, merch companies, and then a bunch of random stuff that I know nothing about that were like, Oh, that sounds interesting. Like uh Some company that like Does something called laser peening on machines to make the the parts last longer and they their clients are like Boeing and stuff like that. Or um autism clinics that seem to make a ton of money, but I'm like I don't really know how I would add any value to this. And uh In each one I was like, all right, can I find a good operator where I can acquire a minority stake of the business at a good deal?

And I can help them grow. And ideally they're the category winner for for what they do. And so that was kind of like my process. I wanna pa before I tell you about the deal that we ended up doing, I wanna hear any uh Any thoughts or questions on my my approach here? 'Cause there's a bunch of learnings.

Yeah, there's no way you're gonna get thirty percent. For that long, right? Do you actually think that's possible? What do you mean for that long? That long means what? I don't I mean, I don't know anything about markets. I'm n I I haven't read like a Warren Buffett biography, but like what's he compounded at every year. Oh oh Yeah, he's been at twenty percent for like fifty years or something. Okay, but if he but if you gotta protect ten years that he's putting billions and billions of dollars to work and uh that's very different.

Right. Okay. I think that's smart. Do you think you're gonna enjoy this? I think you'll enjoy it, right? I'm not sure. So this was a test basically to see like, is this fun to do? It's definitely fun on the learning side. Uh now that we made the first acquisition or the first like kind of I would say not acquisition, like kind of minority investment. Um and it's different than startups. Like we we've done startup investing. Startup investing is very, very different. Startup investing is You look at a business

You're trying to figure out is this Are these three dudes in this bedroom gonna be able to build like a multi billion dollar company, right? Like is this husband and wife couple gonna be able to pull off this this Gargantuan exit. And like kinda right now they have usually Nothing. Just an idea, product, maybe a little bit of a lot it's it's way more of a lottery. It's a lottery and you put in a hundred thousand dollars and then you do that with forty companies and you know that thirty eight of the companies are gonna be kind of like just write off or cost of doing business. And two or three of those those thirty or forty companies are going to

Be your winners, but hopefully they're winning at a hundred X or a thousand X or more uh returns. And so it's very lottery like, and you you spend very little time with them. So you're not like um They don't want you advising them. You answer questions when they call. You can proactively nudge them a little bit, but you're more mostly hands off, I would say is uh angel investing. Whereas If you buy fifteen, twenty, twenty five, thirty percent of a business, uh, you're a little more involved. Um, you know, you care. A little more active. These businesses are not like all or nothing businesses. They're like

Oh, this is already a good business. It's profitable. And it's already growing. So the question is can we accelerate the growth? Right. So like the one business we bought is I don't know, s super profitable. It makes millions of dollars a year in profits. It's uh, you know, more than fifty percent margins. And um Yeah, we were able to buy a piece of that and I think that

Uh that's just so different than every startup investment I had ever done. It's probably not gonna become a multi billion dollar business. I would almost guarantee that, but it doesn't need to, it's not supposed to. It's a cash flow business. And so Isn't it funny how You have mocked me for like the last eight years about my slow and steady approach. And now You're you know, look. You're still

At first it was like laughing at eight percent. I'm going for ten X every year or whatever. Right now you're now it's it's it's coming down. No, thirty percent is really attractive, which I agree, that is really attractive. Before you know it, you're gonna say No, dude, that's that's not true. Even in a startup fund

Even when you have your winners that become billion dollar companies, the overall fund, like a great fund. is doing thirty percent IR or twenty percent IR getting more boring. It's still getting more boring. No, it's no no no I I reject that. I reject that premise. I would say you used to make a live streaming app and now you're looking at uh a company that sells parts to Boeing. But cashmow is always interesting. It's always been interesting. Um And now it's more interesting than it was in the past. I really didn't I really didn't have a lot of exposure to these types of business. I lived in San Francisco. You say cash flow, and people think you're talking about like, you know, like a leaky faucet. Like nobody knows what the hell the hell that means. And so uh once I To start doing this podcast, we got a lot more exposure to like most of the people who listen to this podcast are entrepreneurs all around the world. And so when they reach out about their business, it's like oh, this guy in Minnesota with this

You know, marketing agency that does this per year, or this person sells parts and this person does whatever. Uh, you know, they're rolling up bookkeeping services. And so you you learn about different types of businesses more through this. And uh so I've been getting my like MBA on on non Silicon Valley businesses for the past. Look, the cool thing is is that You know, we research stuff. And like if I really dive deep into a topic, I'll research it for eight hours. And I that's not enough to make it an investment, but it's enough that

I say to myself, Oh wow, this space is really intriguing. You know, I I could see myself doing this. You're doing that, but instead of eight hours, you're doing weeks. And so It's oddly in the similar vein a bit. Uh of course you have to do more due diligence and actually look at the numbers and get to know the people, but yeah, it's like getting use of the space. So the the most interesting thing is what happened between the four deals that we signed LOIs on and the one that we closed. And I'll try to do this without giving away any info about the companies that we didn't do the deal with uh I can talk about the one we did, but uh I can't talk about the one we didn't um But the things I the the reasons that were the mistakes that we were making along the way. Here's here's trap number one that we already experienced. Um I can fix him.

Like the classic girlfriend mistake. Like Yeah, he you know. Sucks, but maybe I could fix him. Maybe I can fix this business. And when you do this minority investing

You're not the majority. You're not gonna be able to fix anything. And so that was uh you know Trap number one was getting really far down the road with a business that I thought had a ton of potential. But for finally realizing I'm not gonna be the one to fix it and fixing it is the wrong approach to doing to going into a business like this. That was mistake one. Mistake two was

I can totally m I can totally uh see this working. But working at a small scale. And so you have to remember basically like as you play the game, it's kinda like this is how I felt about like your Airbnb, which is like You do one Airbnb that's You basically can't do one Airbnb. You can only do one as a test to see if you want to do a bunch. One Airbnb is like

A bunch of headache without the size of the prize being big enough. And so we had looked at one business that was like, Yeah, this could be a good thing. Which is what I have, by the way. Yeah, yeah. It was we all make this this mistake. But I think you were at least looking at it the right way, where you were like, Maybe I could do a bunch of these, you talk to people that had fifty of these in their portfolio. And you have to do one to know if you want to do fifty. And so We got really far down the road with this one that like if it all worked. It's like, dude, we could be making two hundred thousand dollars a year off this. It's like wait.

What are we doing? Why are we doing this? Like, yeah, it's a great deal and it's highly likely to work, but it's highly likely to be very small and like not worth the mind share of even doing this. And so we pulled out on that one. The one that we did was basically uh company people probably know. So it was in a cat so I this one was Not even name it. Yeah, yeah, we can name it now. It's it's official. So we first looked at the category. So I was super bullish on

companies that let you hire internationally. So specifically like how to hire the Philippines and Latam. And you know this. Why? Why were you interested in that? What insight did you have kind of scar tissue? Like dude you came to my office. I remember you you came to my office in San Francisco when I was doing Bebo and you were like, what's your burn rate? Which again is like a question nobody asks somebody else out loud. It's like, you know, that's like asking somebody that's asking a woman their weight. Like ask a founder their burn rate. See how they feel. In my head, I was like, That's bubbly. Yeah, the bubbly burn, man. And I was like Three million a year. And that's what we were we were basically a startup that was burning three million a year pre-product market fit, because that's what it cost. We had we basically had a team of engineers, so we had like, you know, I don't know. Within a month. It's like two hundred thousand a month. Two hundred four I think we were doing like two hundred and forty thousand a month in Bern.

So you like and that's net burns. Does that mean n no does that assume no revenue? Um, we had revenue for one of our projects, but like no, I was just saying like the overall bill. So um So we uh basically you hire ten people that are two hundred thousand each, you're doing two million plus you pay rent, plus you have your cloud bills, plus you have whatever else. And uh So that was really expensive. And those were all Silicon Valley engineers and they were below market sell so those people, if they're working for us for two hundred K, they could have been making four hundred or five hundred K at Facebook, but they wanted to be a part of a startup. So I did that and it was very stressful to have a very high burn rate.

uh for a company. Like I just didn't like it, but I didn't know any better at the time. And then afterwards as I get a little more savvy, like with our e com biz. We'll do probably Somewhere but like A little under twenty million this year in revenue.

Uh, we're profitable because sixty five percent of our team is overseas. So we have our like our our data analysis person, Argentina, our designer, India, our customer service, Philippines, are the person who's running our whole wholesale channel, like Built it from scratch, it did not exist, and now it's like a new revenue unit. In the Philippines. And we did the same thing with Milk Road. We were profitable with Milk Road from day one. Like I remember coming to your office at the hustle and you had like, I don't know, fifteen people running around there in San Francisco and like That's a bunch of San Francisco issues. They have to go home and pay six thousand dollar rent. So you gotta pay them money. And

For us, we had one person in the US for milk road, and we had everybody else in the Philippines. And so it was again lean, mean, profitable machine. And I was like, Oh Um Not just is this cost savings, like if you hire some of the Philippines, they're basically ten times cheaper than the US. So like, you know You can hire somebody in the Philippines for a thousand dollars a month, so twelve thousand in a year. That same person to the US will cost you

eighty to a hundred twenty K um And these are skilled people, like in Laddon, like the guy we have doing our data stuff. He's like and you know, got his MBA. Like they're these are highly educated, highly you know, he's like a wizard i with like, you know Power BI and Looker and all these like data tools that I I couldn't even start using. Do you get to know? Yeah, yeah, of course. I'm talking to them all the time. The one good thing is Especially with the Philippines, uh this sounds terrible.

But I'm gonna say it anyways, because it's honest. Um I hate managing people and I love hiring people to the Philippines because they need so little management. Like I uh why does that sound horrible? What did I miss there? 'Cause I think what people want is for you to be like I'm a good manager and I talk to my people and I'm like, dude, it's fucking great. I only talk like, for example, my assistant, I only talk to her on Fridays. People are like, well that's kind of mean. Or like it's great. They don't want one on ones and like career tr trajectory coaching and they don't want like Like

The same like in San Francisco. I had say I was eight direct reports, that's eight weekly one on ones I had to do. Well dude, I've had a That's essentially eight hours out of the hundred and sixty hours a week that you know that that that I have that I'm like Uh, you know. I'm spending doing basically like touchy feely stuff, which is fine. I understand it.

But it's really nice when you don't have to do that'cause it's not the baseline expectation. There's a bunch of roles where you don't want someone who's entirely ambitious. Like with an assistant. It's like you don't want someone that's like, No, I don't want to give you all these other opportunities. I want you to be great at this thing and Not bail. Like I I don't I this is what I need. This is the tool that I need and I want you to be that. I don't want to have to promote you tons and tons of tons. I've hired a couple of people uh for like our hold co basically, um and They're they're cool, they're they're they live in San Francisco, they're awesome, they're super motivated to work with me.

I'm like, great, what do you want? Like I want to be you. And I'm like, Wait, what? And then I'm like, cool, like, you know, someday they're like, Yeah, but I'm also spinning up my own newsletter, my own podcast, my own investment arm. Like I'm like, Okay, well Like That's great. You could do that, but you that makes for kind of a shitty person to hire onto my team because like Part of being on this team is being down for our mission, not like your own mission necessarily. And I totally get if you want to go do your own mission, but you gotta go do that on your own. You don't get you don't get to have both, um, you know, at the same exact time. You could do one and get mentored for a bit and then go do your own, but you can't do them at the exact same time. And so It has been very nice to have people that are just like

They cl like literally like our our management style is they log in, they say login in, here's what I'm doing today. If you have any adjustments needed, you say something. If not, you just Don't say anything. At the end they say, Long enough. Here's what I got done today. Here's everything I did. Here's the files. Here's the d here's the info. Logging off. So how much are you spending now on on these on these folks? I mean, dude, I have like

In my own company's probably Almost fifteen to twenty people that are international now. And so And what's the average salary? Um, it ranges. So like on the low end, uh eight hundred I think about it months monthly,'cause that's like when I push payroll, that's what it says. So like, you know, eight hundred a month would be the the low end. And that's like I would say most common. So that's like customer support, personal assistant, things like that could be that low. And then uh The higher roles will be like

twenty five hundred to three thousand. And then there's one guy who's just amazing and I've promoted him up twice now. Now he gets paid Like a US employee'cause he makes the impact of somebody who's like driving a ton of growth. So I'm like, Oh, great. Like You keep getting rewarded. You're

At some point you break break through where you're dr if you're driving growth. You get rewarded for driving cross. And you also I got an email, you you have a course on this now too. I have a course on the personal assistance side. Yeah. I just created that it's not even a course actually. It's just uh I don't like I don't go and teach it. It's just a system. It's like yo

Basically the best hire I made this year was I hired my personal assistant. And I had thought Okay, personal assistant is uh Um yeah, personal assistance like for rich people.

For like mega it's like for Jeff Bezos. It's like mega busy, mega rich. And uh and I also was like, uh, I don't wanna have to tell somebody what to do all the time. Like that sounds like it's own pain in the ass to come up with shit to do. And then I heard a few friends talk about theirs and I was like, maybe I'm wrong. Let me open my mind to the possibility that I'm wrong about this. Three people tell me, three people that I trust tell me that it's like been a huge game changer for them. Let me try to- Send it to me. I wanna use it. I'll use it. So I basically created the whole thing last week and I was like, here's my system. So for example, like Here's my my email system. Like I used to be terrible with email, and now my email system is like super organized on top of shit. Here's exactly what I do. Here's the exact scope of work. Here's how it works here's how it works. I just texted Ben. I goes I said, Send it to me.

Yeah. Um and so and we have by the way, there's like a a a funny offer we did with it, but I'll I'll explain the company that we ended up investing in. So I looked at all the ways you could do this. I'd done all of them. So you can hire direct if you want to hire somebody in National, you can basically have three options. You hire direct. So you hire somebody on like a job board Upwork, online job, something like that.

Upside. It's basically free. You just pay the software subscription like you know, ninety nine bucks a month. So, you know, you pay a thousand dollars for the year to be To be a pro member on there. Downside, you have to do all the hiring, vetting, training, sifting through candidates yourself. Like you put up, hey, I need a customer support person or a personal assistant, you're gonna get two hundred applications and like good luck trying to find somebody good.

Um You could also go on the high end and use like a managed service. So this is things like um Growth Assistant or Athena. They're great. They do the they do the vetting for you, but There's this huge upcharge. So those guys charge you three grand a month.

For somebody that Actually cost eight hundred dollars a month. So you're paying an you're paying three X the price Or more. Every single month forever. How big are those companies? How big's Athena? I heard they're huge. They're big. And they're big because this is like a huge ARR thing for them and people don't really know about it. People don't really realize like you didn't have to pay triple the price every single month. And so that's like You know, one path. And and they're but they're good at what they do. I've tried them, you know, I've tried a bunch of these.

Um the one I like the best was the one we ended up investing in, which is Shepard. So people have probably heard of Shepard before. I think the URL supports shepherd.com. Well I like Shepherd was It's kinda best of both. So they do the like Filtering, screening, background checks, all that stuff. So basically you just say, I want a personal assistant, they present you

three great candidates. So they present you five great candidates for you. And they're they're filtered, they're checked, and they're basically like these are the best of the best. So they save you a shit ton of time, which is like as any business owner you kind of need that. And the other side, you don't have to pay the monthly upcharge. So they'll say, Great. Here's yeah. You can make the hire directly and all you pay is the one time finders fee. For us having found you the candidate.

And so it ends up being, you know. 10 to 20 times cheaper than these other ones in the long run, because you just paid, you know, the one time finders fee. So I like that model the best. I was like I long term, I think this is the most sustainable because if I'm making in my business Like I did. Fi fifteen hires internationally. I w I don't want to be paying like this bloated cost every month from there on out. Or nor do I want to do that all that work myself. So that was the the business we ended up investing in. Um super excited to do. The branding on their website, so it's supportshepherd.com. Yeah. You have to be one of the testimonials. You need a testy on there. But uh

It looks good. It it it's cute branding. Uh so Marshall Haas is the guy who started it. Marshall, I've known Marshall since two thousand twelve, maybe. He's the type of guy who Whenever he does something It's awesome. It looks cool. Uh so like if you follow him on Instagram and on Twitter, he's got showmanship.

He's got showmanship. He's got the juice. He's got the juice. So Whenever like for example, I think he just bought a new house and I'm like following the bill about he also like He likes cars, so like I saw him like redecorate his garage. He owns like a boutique hotel. He did this like e commerce thing that was like Super simple and actually like a really good b like, you know, a successful business successful econ business that was just like Yeah, it was like a phone case. And like yeah, it was just that. And like when Covid came out, they came out with this little like

Hook. Thing like your Captain Hook. I was like, You can use this to open doors without having to touch the knob like a peasant. I was like, dude, this guy's great. He just makes these like simple little businesses and he runs all the reason he did this is he ran his businesses using international hiring as his like workforce. So then he partnered with this guy in the Philippines, opened up a uh office on the ground there With a bunch of recruiters to do all the vetting on locally on the ground.

Is he going to the Philippines? His business partner lives there and is has the the the office open there. So that's like how you that that you you gotta commit if you're gonna do these types of things. And so he basically partnered with the guy who's doing that And that's how they created Shepherd. And it started off just like, you know, solving their own itch, but turns out like a lot of people have have this itch. And so and myself included. So uh I file I I've n I've not used it, but I will I will use it. I I would like to use I'm gonna I'm literally I just text Ben, I'm I really actually want your course. I want to figure out how you do this'cause I want this. And maybe I'll use these guys, but

If his business is going so well, why would he sell a portion to you? Like my head is I'm greedy. I'm like, get the fuck out of here because I mean obviously We're gonna drive him a little bit or a lot of bit of traffic. The pod will. Is that the only reason why?

You would do this? Uh yeah. Basically they don't spend any money on marketing. Um at all. And so the way that it spreads is just word of mouth, people coming back. And then the other one is like

entrepreneurs who have an audience saying saying the word. So they first did this with Nick uh Huber And Nick drove Nick has drove them a ton of business because Nick uses it. uh for all of his businesses. And so he when he talks about it, they get a bunch of uh they get a bunch of traffic. So I think he saw the success of that. And um Basically, you know

We have a a large audience now, like through Twitter, through this pod, through other things. And so there's obviously a benefit of I don't know, like the brand association, like as well as like, you know, the the ability to reach you know, reach a large audience that I think was appealing to him. But I bought in. I didn't get free shares, right? Like I bought I bought into the e to the equity pool. But I agree with you. When you have a really good business, you're always hesitant. It has to be like the right fit. And so I think the other benefit was he listens to the pod and so he seemed, you know

If you listen to this, you know how we think and you can agree and be like, This person's great or this person's an idiot. You know if you want to if you would want to do business with them. if you've listened to the pod regularly, you'll you you have a very good idea. There's no hiding our personalities on this. Do they have a M FM like Coupon code, is it coupon, coupon. So if you go to my website, if you go to shonpouri.com slash remote assistant, basically here's what I got them to do, which is better than a coupon thing. So I was like, all right If you want to do the personal assistant thing the way I did

Uh, I was like, all right, here's my systems, two hundred fifty bucks, you get the whole like all the templates, all the thing, or whatever. But I was like, um, I only want to make money from people who don't take action. And so here's here's how it works. Basically if you just buy the course and you don't actually hire an assistant. I keep your money. But if you actually go to Shepherd and you hire your assistant then Shepard will give you two X the money back. So basically you pay two fifty, you'll get five hundred dollars if you actually take the action and go higher. And I was like, that's kind of a no brainer offer. I was like, Marshall, we gotta do this. Like Do this where if people

Want their own assistant. And they actually go s like take the action and go forward with it. pay them back not just what they paid for the to the system, pay them double. Because uh like I bet a bunch of people are just not gonna take action, but who cares? Like I want the people who who will take action to be rewarded for doing so. And so that's a pretty pretty sweet deal. Basically it's like a You said you get my system for free, plus you make An extra two hundred fifty dollars if you uh if you actually go go forward with it and make your hire.

So first I want If you're into this sh uh I have no stake in this, by the way, uh but go to support Shepard. I I do want them to sign up because here's what I want. I want you to report back and I want to hear if this whole influencer buys company thing actually is Good. I wanna so I want I want the results to be reported back in like a month.

And so I am curious to see like what the demand is. I bet it's gonna be quite good. Number two, what I'm curious to see is if you like this. Uh I don't know if you're gonna like it or not. I could see going uh fifty fifty, either way. So far, how do you feel? I mean, look, if this deal works, then this is the greatest thing. Oh no, this one's a no hard part. This is already easy. This is already a successful company. I'm already religious about hiring internationally, anyways. Personally in my own businesses, it's like I didn't have to be convinced that this is a good idea. Like I already knew this is a good idea. The question was am I gonna start my own of these?

Or should I Invest the one that's already working that I like that I use. And it's like okay, cool, let me just do the second one that seems Like way less work, you know, to do that. So I think this one is kind of a no brainer in that It's kind of a proven business.

I am a a genuine believer in it. And whether we actually drive extra traffic to them or not, I think is It's sort of s like I don't know, like I obviously for them they want that then and I would like that too, but I for me it was already it was already business. What percentage are you is that too much to ask? Or to reveal it.

It's their business. I don't wanna I don't wanna give that away too much. But you know, it's a it's a Good chunk. I think but uh do you think they'll ever sell the company or do you make your money just through dividends? Yeah, just dividends. Like it's a profitable business. Um It just pays out dividends. Like I got our first dividend check.

Yesterday. It was awesome. You did? You got one already? Yeah. It was fantastic. This is gonna be your C's candy, maybe. I mean If this works out, that's exciting. I'm curious to see if you're gonna like this because On one hand, I can actually see you loving this because you get to spend time seeing how things work and you get to use your skill set, which is content, to tell people about it. Like this segment that we just did.

I'm actually interested I want to keep talking about this just'cause I want to hear the story behind it. I think that's interesting. And so it's kind of a win win in that regard. But I'm curious if you're gonna enjoy all the due diligence. Like when I talk to Andrew Wilkinson He actually I don't think does a lot of the due due diligence. He's got a team to do if you are able to pull that off. I think you'll be uh In a win situation.

Um So as long as you like like doing that. Yeah, I'm gonna try it with two or three. This one I knew was a a slam dunk. Because I'm just like Just a total believer in it. What's gonna be interesting is what happens with Ones that aren't like perfectly in my zone of like, I get it, I used it.

I believe in it. Like it's like this one was like bullseye. I don't expect every business to be exactly bullseye. So the question is, what happens when it's not exactly? Is it still fun? Do I still believe? Do I am I still willing to talk about it? Like this one, I'm willing to talk about because I'm like, I literally wouldn't have my econ business work the way it does or Milk Road work the way it did. If I didn't use the strategy. So I'm like, I could talk about that.

Like one degree separated from that. Am I still gonna wanna to to tell a story on it. Maybe it's not even that interesting of a story and I'm not gonna do it. Like I'm not gonna come on this podcast and bore everybody with like a story that's not that great. So I can't I can't commit to that yet. But I don't know, if s somebody wants me to buy Yeah, a minority taking their business. Hit me up. Let's see. Let's see what happens. I'm gonna try two or three of these and see see how it goes.

Was there anything uh that you learned looking at the twenty four other than what you said about the uh Uh Like fix me shit. Like was there anything Any other revelations, not necessarily about what they had wrong with them or but maybe what they had right with them, any commonalities between the winners. Yeah, uh yeah, definitely. I would say that

Um The businesses that I was most interested in. Were ones that had a clear Um

A clear sales model, I would say. So They knew how they were gonna get their customers now and in the future. And um I w I don't want to say moat because it's like you're just trying to be Warren Buffett. Like it's not like it's not that they had a moat, but they had, you know, either recurring revenue

Or they had something that was like they're the they're actually the category leader. They're the go to leader, and that there's some reason why They're not just gonna get copied into oblivion by everybody else. Maybe it's Maybe they have operational advantage. Maybe they What's Shepherds. I mean, I think branding is actually a uh That separates them here. I think that that they they look cool. Is there anything else? Yeah, I think Shepherd's uh real advantage is that they're uh they picked a business model that's actually more customer friendly, like I said. So like

Um If your two other options are Spend a bunch of time, have a bunch of uncertainty, hire somebody unvetted. And you save a little bit of money. Or

pay a three X monthly upcharge. Like you're kinda nuts to do the three X monthly upcharge for a long period of time, especially if you're gonna hire multiple roles and eventually in your company. Like just not a sustainable path. So to me Support Shepherd's choice on the business model separated them from the current competitors. Now somebody else could try to do it, but what are they gonna have to do? They're gonna have to go set up Boots on the ground in the Philippines and in Latam and really be good at recru you know, recruiting recruiters who are then gonna recruit the talent to actually deliver on these roles and h hire high quality people because they they don't really like the money's not made in your first hire. The money's made when you're like you see the light and you come back to them for your next six hires. Like what I did with e com is like I started with customer support and I was like Cool. I need somebody can do in inventory forecasting. People in the US really expensive for that. You know, a hundred forty K for that that role here.

Could I find somebody overseas that could do inventory forecasting? Can I find somebody that could do can run our Amazon uh ads? Can I wind somebody who could do wholesale as a channel? Like can I find people that do influencer? Like You start to be like, Oh, wait, this isn't just about what it used to be, which was like VAs equals low cost labor. Now it's like Dude, they're pretty talented people that could do these things. They got three or four years of experience doing that at another company.

And so you're able to just pluck from the remote talent pool versus just your local talent pool. Dude, I'm excited to see how this Turns out. Do you guys have any Overseas people yet or no?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. We have like the guy who made our website is overseas and he's on staff. We have our accounting folks the who like The they they're call fuel finance. They're overseas. If you go to Uh, like we have this whole back end thing built where people can log in. It was built by a guy in Hong Kong. Um, yeah, we have a ton of overseas and Marshall's a member and so we're gonna actually thinking about starting to use them for some data analytics stuff.

So yeah, like the funny thing a lot of overseas stuff. When I was using uh for are e coming, a lot of e com people use agencies. I uh I'll hire an agency and then they like they're like great, let's add can you add these three people to Slack and all of the things that you can do. And you go talk about their names. Yeah. And I'm just like So like for example, um design pickle. I think is like a ten million dollar a year business to basically like design unlimited designer on demand. Uh we tried them out for a little bit. Every single designers in the Philippines. Um then I hired this email marketing guy. I was like, Oh yeah, just do our email email marketing and flows. He's based in Colorado.

Every employee's in the Philippines. I was like, Okay, that's another one. Um I hired a a website, uh w web dev shop. Yeah. Owners in the US, entire team is in India. Uh you know, another one that did the entire thing in Ukraine, and it's like It's so funny that people are basically this is now a business model is basically like Owner in the US does sales, fulfillment all done by a and they're they're good. I'm not even saying this like a bad thing. Like they're talented, but I'm like wow.

This is a whole business blueprint a template that they could use which basically like Make the margins work. Uh for you. When are you gonna go there? When are you going? When the Philippines? Yeah, where's when's Neckbeard Nation go to the Philippines? We should host the next live pod there. Do we have a following there? I I have no idea. Uh unfortunately I don't think we do. I don't think they give a shit. Dude, you gotta go there. Um

I've been to the Philippines, it's awesome. Very tonight and I've never been. I I'll go. Tonight and tomorrow I'm taking a uh fifteen hour road trip in my Tesla. Uh, my first time doing it. We're gonna see if I love it or hate it. So I'm gonna report back on Wednesday. Fifteen an hour, you said? It normally takes twelve, but you add three hours for charging. Yeah. I did a Charging rotables horrible. Where are you going from? Where are you going to how what's the distance?

Uh Austin to St. Louis. Okay. I'm gonna visit my family. Uh you get the X or the Y? Which one are you doing? X long distance, three hundred and fifty miles. Is it a new one? Because the thing I screwed up was the one I rented on Turo was like five years old. And it just needed charging every ninety minutes. It was an awful experience.

Well, how fast do you go? I mean it's like highway, right? So you're going like whatever, seventy five miles an hour. I mean I speed usually I mean I'll I'll go eighty five or ninety, so what's gonna happen. Crush the battery. Uh absolutely crushed the battery. At least that that one that I had, it absolutely crushed it. We had a terrible We did a seven hour fourteen hours because we had to charge so many times. And by the way, you know the charging thing? It's not like You can't just like charge like there's like certain chargers that are fast and some that are slow, you know. Like don't you just use the thing on the screen that like tells you what to do?

It tells you where the charges are. But I'm saying some of the charging stations. And some of the spots are fast chargers and some are slow. Like there's a a Like it's like a gas pump where one will fill it up at twice the speed as the other. So make sure when you do it You know that. So you go only to the fast chargers, uh and none of the slow ones. The slow ones are Like

You you had to be like, I wanted to s go watch a movie so that I could do the slow charge. No, I I use there's this app called A Better Route. I think it's called like has built this whole like thing just on routing out people's electric charges. And so I'm gonna use that. But my wife's my wife's flying and I was like, I'm driving. I wanna drive. I wanna see what it's like. And so I'm driving and I'm gonna report back on Wednesday to see how it feels. I did it, so I I'm gonna leave tonight, so I'll get a few hours in and then tomorrow, that way I can Like I plan my life around this pod because I was like It's we record eleven my time. It's like I can't arrive that morning otherwise I'll be like tired. I won't have to research. Right. So I have to plan it so I I get there Tuesday night, but I need a full night's rest.

So I can like wake up and like research and shit. Do you plan your life around this pod? Uh yeah, to an extent. Right. Like you know. This is uh this is the one unmissable appointment on my calendar. Everything else is flexible. This is the one non flexible thing. It's no days off, I think. I mean, we've recorded on the We missed last week, though, so I guess we can't really say that right now. Well wasn't there like an issue? Yeah, we we had a sound issue, but uh we were like no days off. People were like You missed last uh the last up. Yeah, it was like a technical error, but we've done like Wh whatever the most recent holiday is, we were recording whatever. I think we've done Christmas Eve before. We we always record.

Big thanks to everybody who listens. This is a fun thing for us to do. Thank you for listening. Uh Yeah, this is like one of the one of the The dope parts of our life. And I think it's attracted a bunch of l like uh I mean neckbeer neckbeard nation, right? It's it's attracted a bunch of people whose whose brain is weird in the way our brain is weird. And uh I think that's a lot of fun. I wanna end with this. So I was at this I'll tell you a very, very, very quick story. I was at this LA tech meetup. First of all,

Our fans are that sounds weird, but our listeners They come in all shapes and sizes, man. All colors. All I like I love it. Like I had what does that mean? What are you trying to say there? Dude, like I had this guy that looked like he was seven feet tall, guy, like basketball player. And I thought he was like a famous guy and he comes up and goes, Total man and he gave me like you know, like the black guy handshake of like you are a total man. Like this You didn't even need to say it, bro. We know that type of handshake, you know what I'm saying? And uh and then I had this like Fifty five year old woman who w was with her kid at the airport, say what's up.

And I just want to say First of all, if you're a fan, thank you. And second of all I can tell like walking by if someone listens or not. Because if they're wearing like Lululemon A B C pants or like If they look like they go to like Columbia like university. And they like make eye contact with you in a particular way, I can tell. And I would love for you to come and say what's up. So long as it's like a quick like

What's up? Total man. Like you could say something. You come over. You Fist pound, not handshake or hug. So get let's do NUC. That's the way we do it.

Too too much uh Not trying to be palm to palm with anybody. And so uh Give me the ducks. You can say uh you can reference it. You can know small boy stuff, uh Total Man, you could use any of the any of the isms that you want. That just means I know you and I'm I'll give you the head nod back, like, yep, you're one of us.

Take the selfie together. And then uh and then we kind of, you know, we keep the show rolling from there. But here's the shick that I need to announce to people. And they and we we gotta put this in every episode because Oftentimes if they see me with my wife, they'll say what's up. If they see me with like my in laws or out to eat with friends, they won't say what's up. And every once in a while they will. And It makes me feel

So cool. Oh my God. So the more people I'm with, the more I need you to be over the top with it. Yes. My wife doesn't listen to this podcast. She never heard a single episode. So she doesn't Think this is cool. She thinks this is me uh playing video games up in the bedroom right now. So only when she sees someone come up in person. And then Even you know I I was with her mom there and they were like, Wow, what? My dad was there and he's like he m he my dad literally goes He must have thought you're someone else.

We are famous enough that like our friends and family actually understand. And so if you see us out there, please say hi. Particularly if we're with friends. You have to do it. That will make my day. I was out to eat and like Three different guys. When I was on E I was with my coworkers said what's up. And I played it up like Oh man, I can't go anywhere, you know what I mean? Like

And in my head I'm like, I hope there's a fourth. I hope there's a fourth. And my co workers are like Does this happen all the time? Embarrassing version of this. So uh when we were selling a milk road, I went to meet up with the the guy uh who bought it, Kendall at a coffee shop. And we're at the coffee shop for a bit. And I see someone kinda like looking. Like I think they recognize you, but I'm not sure and I'm like, Come over, just come over right now because he doesn't

Listen to the podcast and I'm trying to do this deal. And I'm like, I think it would help if you felt like I'm a big deal. I was like, I think that'd be a little nice of the match. Yes. The guy doesn't come over, right? So we go outside, we say I say bye, he starts walking away. And the guy comes over and he's like, Sean?

And I'm like, Yeah, he goes, Hey man, I literally go I was like Oh Kendall, I want you to read my I was like, hey, uh have you met Kendall? And you guys like no? As I Kendall, yeah, um this guy just

He listens to the pot. He I just wanted you to And it didn't even make sense. And I was like, I forced it so bad, dude. So Validate me, please. How do you take a cool moment and make it the most lame? Well it's being like, Hey, wait! You didn't hear that he recognized me? Come here! Have you guys met? No. Of course not. Oh my God. I uh I've said that before where I'm like, hey, say what you said again, but do it in front of my in-laws.

So I just this is the public service announcement. If you think you know us or if you think it's us, even if you only think it's kind of us. Uh just take a chance and say what's up. And uh feel free to be over at the top. Like you know, it's awesome. We love it. Uh it makes me feel good and it More so makes me look cool, which is what I care about more than anything. So anyway, that's awesome. That's the pod.

Good episode. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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