Syed Balkhi: How He Went From $0 To +$100M Before Age 30

Yes, in the early days I Saved everything. I mean I did I did not my buy a bed until I got married, dude. Just to put in perspective. No, there's no bed. I feel like I can rule the world I know why Be what I want to

I put my all in it like my day's all on the road, let's travel next to the city. I think we've been talking about you for like two years. I think you told us you're like, hey, hey, guys, don't put me on blast like this. Uh we were like, You gotta come on the show. You're like, nah, you're just gonna ask me how much money's in my pocket right now. And I don't know if I wanna do that. But somehow Some way We convince you to come on. Said Balke, you're here.

Uh, first, why did you just change your mind? How did you decide to come on? Yeah, talking with Sam over Twitter DM and that's how it happened. Well, what I told you a lot of people Think that Sean and I are like really aggressive about questions, but what they don't realize is like

We'll ask an aggressive question, but if you say, I don't want to talk about that, we just go, All right, cool, we'll we'll move on. Like we don't we're not like Gigging that hard. Uh so hopefully that changed your opinion. That did. So you're kind of an amazing guy. So let me just set the table here for people. Let me just give you a little Let me just

Tease everybody with the appetizer. So I think you are one you've done something that I don't even know five other people on earth who have done what you've done, which is that you've basically Bootstrapped.

A unicorn. You've bootstrapped a billion dollar Company. Um You've done it.

You're only thirty two years old. So you did this by thirty two. You also didn't like invent the next big thing. It's not like you did this because you're super genius. You know, you're not you you didn't you're not like uh uh you know Vitalic, you know, and creating Ethereum on the blockchain or something crazy like that. Like you just did a very

specific set of like prudent, smart actions, and it just added up in an amazing way. We're gonna talk about it. Um But also I didn't know shit about you. Sam's known you for a little while. He brought you up on the pot a while back.

He goes, I know this guy or I met this guy. It's really interesting. He does this WordPress stuff. Have you seen him? And I was like, No, we went to your personal website. I don't know if you ever got this clip, but like way back in the day, we went to your personal website. We were talking about you, but we didn't know too much. Then We do Camp M F M, which was my my basketball fantasy camp where we invited like twenty five other founders and we had an NBA guy come

Basically treat us like we were, you know. pretend we're a pro for the weekend and uh When we were there There's so many people to get to know again. I w I didn't really get to know everybody at the same time. But then Mr. Beast did something amazing. So one night we were all in the kitchen, basically. We're all hungry after basketball.

And Mr. Beast just sets a chair in the middle of the t in the middle of the room. And he goes, I don't know who any of you guys are because he's like, if we've just been playing basketball all day, and now I'm curious, like Who the hell are you guys? You tech nerds, basically. And he's like, Sit out of this chair, you sit out. And then he would just interrogate that person be like, All right, what do you do? Who are you?

How does that work? Is that big? What's your dream? Okay, cool. And then he would like go to the next person. And I think you were maybe the third or fourth person in the hot seat. And I was like, Oh, this is great. I actually don't know too much of Saeed's story. And then you just blew us away. You blew us away. Your story was so good. Mr. Beast was while he was interrogating you. I thought, um It was just like the perfect interview. If we had just recorded that podcast, I would have been happy. So we're just gonna try to recreate that moment right now.

Well, and side you you were the one of the quieter more humbler people there. And Probably the most impressive in terms of like traditional business uh accomplishments. And it was very fascinating what you've done. I basically heard about you through my friend Neville Medora.

And What I know about you is that you had this blog called WP Beginner. Which wrote really Uh a ton of articles. Some of it really simple. Like how do I set up a WordPress site? And I think that ended up getting

or it still does has a ton of traffic. And then if I remember correctly, and this is just from an outside perspective, you'll have to tell me if I'm right or wrong, you basically started buying different WordPress plugins. that I imagine you saw were popular on your blog. So it was like How do I set up Um

a form to capture emails on my WordPress blog and you it probably got lots of traffic and you're like, Oh, I should just go buy one of these or here are the best Here are the five best plugins. for this thing. Or here's the five best themes. And if you put your cursor over the links on WP beginner, You'll see which of the links are affiliate.

And I just g I'm guessing that like of the Top five. Let's say forms for WordPress. Based off the URL, you own like three of the top five. And through that, you've like built this into a business. By the way, you've never told me, I'm just guessing

That makes High tens of millions of dollars in revenue. No, Sam. Not tens of not tens of millions. Hm.

Nine figures of revenue. Over a hundred million dollars of revenue. No, I did not know that. Okay, wow. So just to paint the picture here, you have Uh W P engine and we'll talk about how uh sorry. Weginner.

So WP beginner and we'll talk about how you got to that. But that's the content site. That's just providing free help. you know, content to other people like you who were Trying to make sites in the WordPress ecosystem. That's the the the mainstay. And so I'll draw an analogy here,'cause uh we've had Andrew Wilkinson on the pot, I don't know. A dozen times or something.

He's probably one of the most famous guests and w most uh favorite guests of the audience uh of of our community. So Um You have a Business does a lot like his.

He's got a portfolio of companies? You've got a portfolio of company. He had Meta Lab, which was kind of his like core business cash cow thing that allowed him to buy these others. You had

Your uh your WordPress site that w the the the content site that was your core engine. Um In but I think you've actually done I think your model actually might be a little bit better. That's no knock on Andrew, it's just to get So basically You

I think have a more like one ecosystem, you're like, okay, I'm gonna like dominate this WordPress ecosystem. And the good thing is that WordPress, I think, powers like thirty or forty percent of all websites. So it's You know, it's huge, basically like, you know, a huge chunk of the internet. Um and then all your stuff fits together. So you You know, you have one customer, they're trying to, you know, uh make a successful website and grow and

And solve all their problems. You're like, Great, I have The content. That will help you. Then I have the tools that'll help you and you either buy them or you build them. And you've created this portfolio that now does

You know, nine figures of revenue probably worth a billion dollars. You own the whole thing yourself with no out no outside investors. You're only thirty two years old. Um you know, you you've built kind of an amazing thing. So that's the Just to sketch out like the the blueprint here for what What you've done.

Um Sam, does I think would you add anything to that description? Well, then there's all his side hobby stuff which like I I read his annual report and he's like I bought a gas station or I bought like eight or ten gas stations. So that's like a whole nother conversation. But yeah that that's a that's do a quick thing on the on the origin story so that people people have it. You told me once on the phone you said I think you were doing consulting or something. You had like an agency. You were like, Oh, I was helping people make websites.

And I was building like CRMs or whatever for them. And then WordPress came out and I was like, Oh, this is way better. They should use they should be using WordPress. You started to help it You just were a service agency, right? And then you started And WordPress. Became your your

core service and then you're like, Okay, I'm just gonna help people Make WordPress. uh sites for their business. Is that right? Pretty much. So remember. Uh

The very first websites that I built were online proxies because I wanted to play games in school. Um, and I was making ad revenue on proxies and some arcade turnkey sites, and I was helping small other, you know, local businesses set up their websites. I tried making my own CMS uh with PHP. By the way, I I can code, I'm not the best at it. Uh I would say now I probably suck at it. And what age what what what age was this? Thirteen, fourteen. Um so

So I would I would build these websites super cheap. call it like two hundred fifty dollars, three hundred dollars, I will make you a website, uh, back in the day and But what happened is that these clients would always rely on me to make changes to it. Changes to the websites. And as I started doing consulting at a bigger scale,

Um I didn't want to do this uh the small in Smaller things. So And I discovered WordPress around this time. This was two thousand six.

Um And I said WordPress was only in inception for three years. So WordPress started in 2003. So I discovered it in 2006. So to put in perspective, I've been I'm thirty two now. I've been in WordPress half of my life. You know, this is the result is compounding in one thing for half of my life now. By the way, you're thirteen, fourteen doing this. Are you like at the dinner table at night being like uh

My clients are pain in the ass right now, mom. Like you know, what are you saying at home? And and also how are these people finding you? Are they coming to your middle school and you're handing out flyers? What's going on? No, no, no. So We moved from Pakistan to US when I was twelve. Okay, my dad had a mechanical engineering degree. but it did not validate when he came to US. So he was working sixteen hours a day

as a gas station clerk attendant, you know Just swiping things. Sixteen hours a day. Kid you not. Every day. Monday to Friday. And on the weekend he had his third job. So I didn't really see my dad. Uh, my mom was busy'cause there's three of us and the fourth one on the way.

Right. Uh my youngest brother was was born in US. So There was not many dinner conversations happening. Um I wanted to figure out a way to have some chunk of change in my pocket so I can buy junk food like Mountain Dew and Kit Kat and Snickers and all all the shit that you buy when you're in high school.

Yeah. Yeah. Dad was at the gas station, man. You had the hookup. You just uh you just needed to ask. He was he was not cutting you any any breaks there. No way, no way. My dad would never do that. By the way, you went to high school at age twelve also, right? Yeah. I moved here. I had just finished seventh grade in Pakistan.

And I came here in March, so there's this two month gap. The school system is like, Well, we can put you in eighth grade. Worst case scenario, you'll repeat eight grade because that's where you're supposed to be in anyways. But Our education system in Pakistan is far better than the one we have here in US. So they're like You can go to high school. So I'm like twelve.

In high school, uh the youngest person in school. I did not speak English that well. Um, I would say probably very little English with it. I knew how to read English because we were taught alphabets and such. But my communication skills were not there.

Um So yeah, that w that was that was a pretty challenging time for me. And I spent most of the time in the library. During lunchtime, I was in the library. And I wanted to play games'cause I'm like, I can't talk to humans. So

I would I would just play on the computer. And those game sites were blocked. I'm like, how do you unbloc this thing? And that you know, drove me down. In terms of how I was getting clients. It was through these forums online.

Right. So you had forms like DIFORM, Digital Point, NamePros, bunch of these, you know, OG communities online. The where you can get You know, business. And my cousin got me into one of those They don't know you're thirteen. You're just a guy in a forum. No. Yeah. Well, like so

We had like a family friend who needed a website and you know, they had a bit local business. They knew how old I was and they're like, Oh, you can do it and I'll pay you three hundred dollars to build my website. I'm like, okay, sounds good. And then you know that that's how that that funnel started. So you're doing sites, you're trying to make your own CMS, you discover WordPress, you're like, Oh, this is way better. Here's a CMS out of the box. Uh what's what becomes the aha moment and uh when do you create the blog? So

Had had discovered WordPress moved these clients over, I had affiliate sites. I was doing affiliate promos at the time. I was discovering this. Um I had directories that I was telling you about earlier. That um So I wanted to get more traffic. So I had these m I created these Micspace profiles, they were fake profiles, um and got hundreds of thousands of followers and I would send bulk. you know, DM the coolet, which were called bulletins on MySpace, right? So I would just want more traffic and I

Went down the rabbit hole of SEO. Which brought me to WordPress and And then 'cause WordPress was dynamic content. So I added the blogs to the directories, started using uh WordPress for the clients.

And I had these social media profiles uh on dig and stumble upon that were super power users and such. And Essentially when I wanted to get rid of this business, the consulting business. I wanted to figure out how how do you do this. I ask other agency owners and they're like

Well, you know, we just have these PDFs that we give to our clients and I'm like, but WordPress updates all the time. How do you keep those PDFs updated and they're like Oh no, we uh we update the PDF. I'm like, that's dumb. You should use WordPress to update those documentation. So essentially W beginner started that way. It was the Unofficial documentation.

For WordPress. Now WordPress had documentation, but it was it was written for developers by developers. Nothing was for business owners. And begin what year was this? Two thousand nine. Well one good point here is that That's now six years after WordPress started. And you're making the beginner site and there really wasn't a great one.

Mm most people I think Uh there's a lesson I've seen many, many times as we talk to different guests, which is Sometimes you feel like you're late. But you're rarely ever actually late to the wave and uh Kevin Van Trump told us this one time, he goes for all the best things

You always get a s always a second turn to get on the train. Like uh Feel like you're late, you feel like you missed it. But Often uh you're not you're not that late, actually. Don't talk yourself out of it. There's there's almost always another another another chance to hop on. It look according to similar web, right now you get like

Two or three million. visits a month. The early website shockingly doesn't look significantly different than how it looks now. You kind of nailed it right out the gate. It's like it was a simple website. Um, where you just have articles about picking the right name, how to install W WordPress, selecting the right theme.

Picking the right web hosting. But were you writing this stuff? Because I know you're in English as a second language person, so were you are were you actually writing these articles? Because a lot of them are long. Like look. Fifty five of the most wanted WordPress tips, tricks, and hacks. Yeah. Like these are like pretty like in depth articles, as well as you're playing the game of SEO and like you clearly understand like English. Yeah. No, by by this time, I was already in college, right? So I I started high school at twelve, started college at sixteen. By that time my English had gotten uh much, much better. So I was writing uh these articles on WP Beginner. I had a team um of two other people that were helping me uh with with with the website.

The website looks similar now and what it was in two thousand nine. There was a period when when I changed it. And there was a mistake. People were you know, I changed the color scheme too much and the audience were like they they didn't resonate with it. So I change it all back. Uh, and haven't changed it since then. Because the big lesson was, you know, big companies don't really change your stuff because they know if it's working, don't you know

Break it. If it's not broke, don't fix it. Don't interrupt compounding unnecessarily, as Charlie Munger says. Uh so I made a Go back to what it looked like. And it's been that way since two thousand twelve. And what tools do you use to figure out well,'cause I I I imagine most of these articles are

You're writing them based off of what people are searching for, is that right? Yes. Uh it's a combination of that and what they're asking us through our contact form. what they're asking us in our Facebook group. I think our Facebook group has probably over 90,000 members um and support requests are coming. So yes, we have our own keyword generator. If you go on Wegeginners kind of hidden on the free tools page. It's a keyboard generator and you can put in anything in there like WordPress and it will tell you what people are searching for.

Um and you have a lot of comments early on. June uh in two thousand ten, a year or two after starting, you already had twenty six responses on just I just clicked on a random article. So you're like getting traction. Yeah, so a couple of things happened that that worked out for me. One You do you guys remember Dig.com? Yeah. It was it was a really popular. So I had a power user profile there. So what I like

If one out of two articles that I would submit would hit the front page. So of course I use that to my benefit and I use that network to my benefit. How did you get a peer user profile? Because uh there was uh there's legitimate ways and illegitimate ways to do that. I'm curious. What how did you end up having that? It's just a social circle, right? So there there's these engagement pods. the that you go on and back back in the day was on MSN Messenger and well um aim so so we just had the engagement pods. So if I submit something like you know with a group chat and everybody would jump dump their items in there and you would upload it. So yeah, with the engagement pod.

And And what year did this Did W P beginner cross a million in revenue, in annual revenue? How long did it how long did that take? Maybe a year and a half or so? Oh damn, you crushed it right away then.

You know, we had a good revenue stream. So Let's let's let me take a step back. So there was this business and uh Lystical business. So collectively past a million uh in in a year and a half. So about

Two thousand eleven. Yeah and twelve. And so you're early twenties, uh, basically at that stage, you're a millionaire. Um that was my first million. How does that feel? You said you grew up your parent you know, your dad worked you told me you were like, Yeah, my dad worked at a gas station, and I thought Guy says gas station. You I know you own gas station. I was like, Oh, so your family owned gas station You go, No

He sat in the gas station. He w he swiped the cards in the gas station. Uh, and you were like everybody in my family I knew, you were either you worked at a gas station or you're like, Oh you're You're real smart like You you get to be a bank teller. That's all you can do in your bubble. So

Tell me two things. How did you Yeah. Because you gotta kinda see the possibility. Uh being a business person or being wealthy before you're gonna even do it.

Uh so how did that happen? And how did it feel? When Like the name of the podcast, my first meal. I'm curious, how did it feel when that first happened? What was do you remember your reaction? Yeah, so I'll tell you how it how I knew it was possible.

So I used to play cricket. Um, which if you have a lot of listeners in Pakistan and India, you know, they love cricket. We love I love cricket. So I was playing cricket and there are many leagues in US. In South Florida there was one. And there's many now too. I met this Pakistani gentleman and he was the sponsor for our team. He's a crazy cricket fanatic, and he became my mentor and now he's a family friend.

Um But back then I just see this Pakistani guy. You know, driving uh S class. And you know, just super humble, super nice, and I'm like

What do you do? Are you are you like born into money or what's your what's your spiel? I was pretty blunt as a kid. Um so so he's like No, I have real estate. I came to the US with like five hundred dollars in my pocket or hundred dollars in my pocket. You know, those typical immigrant story. Um and then he, you know, after we would win the games, he would take us out to eat. Sometimes he will invite us all to his house, which is like, you know, big mega mansion, right? You know, fifteen, eighteen thousand square foot house. Um and his kids were my age. So we'll just kinda go over to his house, hang out. Sometimes we would go over to his house.

to watch cricket games because they're happening on the other side of the world. So time zones are different. And in between breaks. I was the one who took interest in his business. Yeah. And his kids were all roaming around, but I was I'm the

Tell me how this works. Tell me how this works, right? So you would tell me stories like, Oh, this is how I took over a Burger King for free, or this is how I did this, and this is how I started. So I I absorbed a lot of the earlier lessons on business, finance, just hustle. From him. Right. And he was always super encouraging. He'll ask me, How's how's this going? How

You know and I felt like I could talk to him about it. So that That was the early stage. Oh, me knowing well this is possible because nobody in my family um had any any wealth.

Uh they were just working at gas stations. All my uncles, everybody and if you're Really smart. You're working at the teller at the bank. Um, so so that was the motivation part. In terms of how it felt when I hit my first million. You know, you would think it would be like the joyous moment of Oh my God, look at this.

I was more scared than than uh than anything because I was is this gonna is this gonna last? That's the question that you have, you know, in your twenties, you're like You come from nothing and you have this thing, you're like Is this going to last forever? Like what what is the what am I supposed to be doing? I have no guidance. So there was like

This inherent fear. So I always lived below my means, like way, way, way below my means. So when I was in college I uh I did not buy any furniture. I just slept on a on a floor, on a on a blanket. 'Cause I mean, that's how I grew up in Pakistan. So I'm just like, I'm not gonna buy any furniture. Why why why waste time and money with this? So in my in my apartment I had

uh a blanket and I I got a desk from Goodwill. So that's what I worked on. And w and I mean what's amazing is You said

I I would have thought the first million came sooner than two thousand twelve. But because in ten years you've grown that From one to A hundred plus or whatever it is. When were the inflection points?

where you're like, all right, blogging is cool and it's working. Yes. Uh let's get beyond. Yeah, so I launched Optim Monster in uh two thousand thirteen, list twenty five in twenty eleven. Um, these things started really cranking.

I had some really sweetheart affiliate deals with certain companies. Um that worked out really, really well for me. And So that was good. In that time, you know, we were coming out of the economy, the recession.

So real there's still like some real estate deals to be had. So I bought my gas station. The first one. Primarily because I wanted to offset uh offset expenses with an appreciating asset, which was a lesson I learned from my mentor, right? Yeah, let's let's let's talk about that one real quick. So just do a quick quick little monologue on Why did you buy a gas station when you found out you were having a kid?

So One of the things I learned from a mentor early on, I was like, how do you how do you like justify buying a Mercedes? Cause that's a depreciating asset. And he's like, Yeah, but you know, when I drive it in this people think of me better. Like, you know, there's the impression game, et cetera. And how I justify it is I buy something that's an appreciating asset, like real estate, and I just use the income from that to also pay my lease payment. So my principle never disappears. And I was like That's a good idea. Your principal continues to appreciate and you're using something

uh you know the income from it to offset And it also helps you stay disciplined because you're not gonna go, you know overspend your money because normally when you get a raise or something like this Everybody just thinks in monthly payments. So this takes you away from that monthly payments mindset into thinking a little bit bigger.

So When I was about to have my son. Uh twenty six By this time guys, like I was

I was doing all right. You know, I I had I had all these V C firms reaching out to me, you know I I could I could have had a a solid eight figure exit, like you know, to a high eight figure exit. I had offers for that at the time. And I'm just like, As in ninety.

I was in seventy. At the time. Seventy. For the for WP beginning. No, I had Opted Monster at the time and I had uh Uh the gallery solution at the time and I had uh I had WB forms, I had analytics. So the were you close to taking it and how did you decide not to? Yeah, I I I I definitely thought about it.

But then I was like, What will I do afterwards? Like my son is gonna you know grow up seeing me not work. 'Cause I'm like, I'll be stuck with that bunny. Right. I would not go to anything if you I mean if you have ten million dollars, twenty million dollars, you you put it in the bank and you're like, Okay, this this is it. I wanna have a lot more than Yeah, I was gonna have a lot more than that.

That's that's what I'm saying. Even after paying taxes I I would have a lot more than I would be set. So The the the The factor that my wife and I talked about was

What instilled my work ethic was watching my dad work. And I wanted my son to at least see that. Right. What was the multiple on that for to get to seventy million, is it as high as ten X multiple? At that time. Um no. It was lower than that.

So So you turn that down. And I turned that down. You turned it down. Was it really you turned it down because you were like, I want my son to see me work? Yeah. I and uh also I didn't I did I wasn't ready to give up my baby. Okay.

And uh Okay, so fair enough. So you you um basically so here's the thing. So so at this time My son is about to be born. And I'm like, okay, how much does a baby cost?

Right. What are the causes of the baby? And they're like, Okay, well, you know, you're gonna have diapers, you're gonna have, you know, schooling and this and that. And I'm like, Well What if I buy something that gives me at least five or six grand a month, nothing, nah, net? Um and then the baby costs are covered for. So it's like you know, it's gonna give me Sixty to seventy thousand dollars a year.

Um, and No, I don't have to think about it. And my family's taken care of no matter what happens to me. So Yeah, that's that's w that's what I I got for a baby shop.

take the money they make and then they're like, All right, that's what I have to spend and they spend it. Well you do from your mentor is You take the money you make. That has to now go to buy an appreciating asset that will spit out cash flow. Yeah.

And then you could spend whatever that one makes. So it's kinda like a a a a savings program, basically. Um, so you you you spend what the you you go by the gas station. The gas station's gonna pay you and you're like that will pay uh for this child, you know, like I'm gonna provide my I'm not gonna provide my for my family this gas station. It's gonna provide for my family. I'm gonna put food on the table.

It allows me to one sleep better at night and to be more bullish in the deals that I'm doing. How many gas stations do you have now? Ten. And you own a bank, too. I I bought a big gold. Yes.

That was far ago. Well as far'cause I you have a cool blog post where you're like, uh I used to go to the spake all the time. And I decided to buy it this year. Yeah, I used to ride my bicycle around it. I couldn't go to the bank. I didn't have a bank out at the time. I used to ride my bicycle around that bank'cause there was a sports authority there, an office depot there. I would just like ride my bike into that and then I bought that building. What amazes me is is how Like I I don't know if you're similar to Web

Estimates are right. But Can d do do you say what your monthly traffic is on WP Beginner? No. But you know it it's in the millions. Okay. So let's just let's just assume that similar web is roughly correct. Two to five million. We'll give it a huge range a month.

That's a lot. That's not that much. Like what's crazy to me is that I mean that's high intent traffic. It's likely people who are coming for to buy something like they wanna in the email software, so they're coming for a review. It's just amazing to me that that much traffic has created

So much value. I think when you start um your online business most people think about maybe a CPM model of monetization or a CPC model of monetization. There's far m uh there are other and better models of monetization. Right. Um you can have

CPLs, you can have CPA, you can have a combination of CPL, CPA. You can have recurring, you know, uh commission. You're talking about uh uh CPM meaning just uh th ten dollars per one thousand visitors for a display ad. versus cost per lead or cost per acquisition, which is someone buys something, they give you a hundred dollars per month. If it's a MailChimp and it's someone's paying five hundred dollars a month, they'll say, All right, you get a hundred dollars per month while they're a customer. Correct. And there are verticals that are not available on W Shoe Beginner, because remember I was telling you I'm I I did a lot of affiliate marketing as well. Um There are articles that will pay you on a lead basis.

And hundreds of dollars. Just for a lead. Not for not for a commission like as an affiliate, not like you made a sale. Just a lead will get you hundreds of dollars. And and it's so so I did a lot of those. Um and I still do.

So that that's that's a good cash cow. Um, so those verticals are available where you can go and promote something and get over hundred dollars in a lead. Has the WP beginner revenue grown like the rest of the business? Or is that just like you're like I'm I'm perfectly fine with it just being a steady ten or fifteen million dollar a year thing and I use

I bet you it's super profitable. I'm looking at your team page. I would bet you make fifty percent profit or something crazy. And you're like, I'm just gonna take that profit and buy more stuff and I'm okay with that being steady. Pretty much. You know, on on a content business. You cannot compound it as much. you know, eventually what what happens is you will hit the traffic mass that you hit. Um and you can

unlock as many levers as you can, but it the compounding will stop because it's a recurring revenue. You know, like the person that I referred this year to something is not going to compound next year. I'm not going to get that plus new customers, which is what happens in a software business, which is recurring revenue. So yes, your assumption is right. that while WP beginner has grown, it hasn't grown at the same pace as the software companies. And that's like a very big, you know, mental shift in uh between recurring revenue and recurring revenue for all the creators that are listening. Um Because Once you understand that, you'll start thinking about your business a little differently. So I I took all of our profits and

Invested in um you know software and tools. I I still have niche tools that are not even related to WordPress, um, that I bought off of Flip Uh and sometimes just private outreach because I knew those verticals were gonna be lucrative because I had a better offer than they were promoting. And I paid like One guy, I think like fifteen thousand dollars uh up front and in the very first month it made me eighteen grand. And now every month it makes me over ten grand. And it's pure profit. Nobody touches that too. Right. So

I think about that just as good as a gas station. Because Like my hosting cost for that tool is maybe like eight dollars a month. Right, maybe ten. Um is and and that's it.

So so you can have these cash flow income streams that come through. And that's how I was able to buy the businesses that I did without any outside financing, without any outside debt. I was also in a market That wasn't Fully mature. So So like there there was that advantage that you know, those shrewd PEs and V Cs are not in in the in the market, they didn't understand the market.

Um and I could see what the potential of a business. So I w I might buy something and You were you're saying well this this has no revenue, it just has user base And I can come in and say Yeah, but if I do this and this

It can It can be a seven figure business. So I might buy something for like You know, six figures. And then

In two years, that thing will make seven figures in profit. You told me something once that sounded almost like a real estate Um philosophy. So like in real estate they always say, uh some people say You make money on the buy, not on the sell. Meaning like you should buy something knowing That it has both a margin of safety and

That you have the plan for what it's gonna how it's gonna be different. than what the current owner values it at. I think you had a similar thing. I've I forgot what the example was, but it was sort of like uh Like let's say for example you're like Great. I buy this company and they're paying

three and a half percent on their payment things, but I have a contract with that same payment provider because I have more scale. That's at two percent. So now I know I have one point five percent off just off the gross. From day one, because I ha I have this contract. Uh and you kinda have these this principle of like

Almost like you make the money on the buy'cause you already know. Well I have I know I can throw this much traffic at it, maybe from W P beginner. I know I can renegotiate these payment terms because I already have the contract with the payment provider or the affiliate contracts. with the companies on the other side. Is that uh Is that accurate?

100%. 100%. So this was one of the lessons I learned from from a mentor, right? If and who had a real estate background, so the philosophy is very much derivative of real estate. You make money in the buy. You have to be. Otherwise, if you're paying a high multiple thinking uh based on future, I mean, yeah, that might work out. But It has a bigger risk. So from my perspective. You know, I wanna have heads I've been, tails I don't lose much.

And I got that, you know. formula from reading Monashbobri's bug. Huge fan of his now we're friends. Um But yeah, so that's very much Finding margin of safety.

Heads I win, tails I don't lose much. Um what what does that mean and what's an example? So a good example would be the if if a business in your perspective intrinsic value of it is a million dollars and you end up paying Seven hundred thousand dollars today. heads, you know, you're gonna win if this business continues growing.

Tells you. You know, you you'll still have so much of upside. that you know,'cause you you pay three hundred grand less, thirty percent less than market value. Um, that in case something don't doesn't go right.

Be like 40% doesn't go right, and you still only lose hundred grand in that in that situation. So you need to be able to look at the deal and say, what are my downsides? You have to invert the situation. Um, think about like how you're gonna die in this and Then don't go there, sort of thing. You sort of had this you you sort of have this like Pay attention to the cents and the dollars will follow type of vibe. Where like You're really not

You're not I guess I'm surprised at how Maybe I don't know if it's still the same way. I'm surprised at how small Some of the the things that you do

And yeah. Because you own thirty or forty of'em. They're really accumulating. Exactly. So dude, when you come from nothing, you have you have to have a good sense Of where the money's gonna go.

Right. And you have to be very conservative to not lose it all. Because I came from nothing. I don't want to go back to that. So I've I'm very, very cautious. The funny thing about compounding is And if you compound it a healthy rate, and I I have a very, very good compounding drug recorder. W what is it?

I've I've been compounding it of in double digits in For a for a Test. Seventy years. What's that mean? Twenty percent? Like what would what would be considered good? Like uh you know, like for for for you, you're like all right, thirty percent or forty percent, that's like

I mean, that's amazing. You can't get that in any normal investment, right? Exactly. So m market compound of what, eight percent. Yeah. Um private equity might get might get you in teens. You know. I I'm way, way I'm double private equity. More than double. So so that's and that only happens when you can identify a mismanaged gem.

Okay. Um When some somebody has a uh has a business And they might only be thinking about monetizing monetizing from one angle. They're not thinking about it from a full perspective. So I can look at it and say, Well

Yes, this is the current revenue today and I'm getting a bargain on today's revenue. But Here are my contracts that I have with so many different partners and vendors and such that I'll be able to unlock extra revenue here, here, here, here, here. So I turn this business that has one revenue stream to having like multiple revenue streams. Um and and that's how you take something that was doing like no revenue.

to or or very little revenue to having You know five, eight, ten million dollars in revenue. Um And you do it enough times and you just let it compound. Like these businesses are not rocket growth, right? So this is not a Um

Business that's gonna hit uh one business gonna hit a billion dollar in revenue. That's not what's gonna happen. But these businesses are gonna consistently compound because more people are gonna need websites. Um the web presence just keeps growing. You you had a tailwind, which was WordPress was just gonna keep getting more and more and more popular, right? That's a huge tailwind. That's like a generational tailwind.

That's huge. This is already it's gonna grow. faster than like an average growth rate because of that. Then you could do things smart operationally. But I gotta ask you a question. So our buddy Moyes has this phrase, he goes, the two sexiest words in the w in the in the English language are

Distressed asset. And you just said mismanaged gems. As a as a catchphrase of something you look for. I like that idea. But also I'm kind of a lazy motherfucker and when I hear distressed asset or mismanaged gem, I think work.

Oh, I gotta go clean up. I gotta manage this better. Um, isn't that gonna take a bunch of work and a bunch of mind share to turn things around versus It's kinda like the Buffett cigarette butt companies versus like just buying a beautiful business that's already working and letting it letting it grow for a long period of time. Um Am I wrong? I must be wrong about the the amount of effort that goes into fixing a mismanaged gem or a distressed asset.

What do you think about that? So I think Distress asset from a real estate perspective, I would say slightly different than what a mismanaged gem is. My real estate buys, uh Sean, that I did. Uh in in early days.

were distressed assets. Okay. Um, but it was just The banks needed to get this off their books. Right, and I was a cash buyer.

Um, you know, I'm not looking to finance anything. I'm a cash buyer. I had the right contacts, so I was able to buy some of those gas station properties. They were already leased out to uh triple and at least down to like Kushdard, the Canadian multi billion dollar company that owns Circle K. All I had to do was just give cash to the bank and take take the you know, Dover. So those are distressed acid and I I got lucky. I mean I bought a gas station

Um, when it was all said and done, I paid ninety grand for it. And you're like, holy crap, how'd you do that? Um that was a distressed asset because you had to do environmental cleanup on that thing. Okay. That was work. So so those are distress assets. When you're thinking about a mismanaged gym, um this is a property where

somebody maybe due to the lack of effort or lack of experience have not fully understand the potential that is there. What are the commonalities of not realizing potential or common mistakes? So you know, y you might you might be a creator and you have a lot of user base and you just haven't think about monetization from you know all the different potential monetizations. That that that can be had in that in that one business. We have we have a friend that was doing this. They were just looking at businesses on Flippo or the like we know, websites to uh you know products to buy companies to buy.

And they were like, Yeah, I just want an owner who just cared a lot about product. And thought ninety five percent of the brain just had the word product stamped all over it. And then you're like, cool. So what were you doing for marketing? And they're like, Well, it's word of mouth. And they were so proud of the word of mouth. He's like, Great. As long as their answer isn't Facebook ads, then I'm just gonna start doing Facebook ads. Or even if their answer was Facebook ads, like what's the budget? Like

Oh, you know, like eight grand a month. It's like why eight grand? It's like Uh, you know, I didn't want to spend too much. He's like I wanna spend eighty grand on Facebook. You know, like and basically that was his entire

Like You'd think, Oh, this person made twenty million dollars. Wow, they must be a genius. And it's like no. I just found a business which was so common Somebody makes a product and all they like think about is product and they really care about product. They don't spend much on marketing it. Maybe none because they don't know it.

Or a small amount,'cause they're just kind of like They don't think what like they don't ask themselves the question, why don't I spend ten times more on Facebook ads? What would that take? And that's literally the only change they that they did. That's a good barometer. The other thing that that worked in our favor was the ecosystem effect. So

If I buy an analytics software, I can cross sell open monster and vice versa. You know, if I if I buy member press, then I know that All the people who are creating a course will need to buy opt and monster to have lead generation, or it will need analytics to track all the things. So The synergy effect uh

Compounds. And and that That was a big uh Big up for us. And I read somewhere that

Y you said something like I don't buy whole stakes anymore. I don't buy one hundred percent of the company anymore. I try to buy forty nine percent because I can't I have too many things. I can't run all of them. And then in the pre call that you did with Sean, you have this really cool line. It's in quotes. It says how I manage a billion dollar portfolio without stressing out. And uh That was Sean who wrote that. Oh, really? Well when I met when I met him, he was like

You said something like you were like, I travel. I was like, What are the you know, what do you do with your time? Like, how are you spending your time? And you were like, Oh, I'd love to travel. My family we we go travel and I was like, I thought you meant like You know, like I don't know, LA or you know, like we go to see the Grand Canyon anywhere like we're going to Egypt. And then we're going to like the Serengeti and we're going to like I was like oh okay, this guy's like Doing like exotic travel every month. That's cool. He you said something like I don't know if this is exactly right, but

My brain heard You basically stack a bunch of calls with your kind of operators. In the last week of the month. And like that's your only time to like stress out or think about like those calls and then the rest of the month you're not thinking about those things. You're reading, you're

Playing basketball, you're doing other things and um So A is that accurate and B like I interpreted that as Wow, this guy's managing a billion dollar portfolio and he's not stressed out. That's awesome. Yes, that is that is fairly accurate. Now it now it didn't start that way. I wanna I wanna emphasize that. It didn't start that way. Um, I didn't figure this out up until maybe

Two years ago. Okay. So just just to put in perspective. Uh in in terms of like me being as Chill. What was like what were you doing before that? You know, I I would have to go in, sometimes clean the business and you know like oh this this is not doing right. I would get get involved too much. Were you a hard ass?

Depending on who you ask, yeah. Sure. According to me, no. According to everyone I ever worked with, hell yeah. Like you you seem like you have a ruthless side to you, even though you're polite and kind. You seem like you could be ruthless. I I would say I could be very disciplined. Uh ruthless might not be the right word. Did that sound so ruthless the way you said that? That was awesome. Yeah. That's a ruthless thing to say. So so the trick is, you know, like people say, How are good people get out of the way. But That sounds easier than it is. So we use

EOS in our companies. And some of you audience might be familiar with it, others might not be. It's entrepreneurial operating system. Um And adds transparency and accountability. Oftentimes when you know, I I've found I've sometimes bought businesses from the founders who were who started delegating, but they really abdicated. And then the business went down. And then you know, that now they're like

They're already checked out. So now they're like Ah, this this thing sucks. Now I'm back into business and it's a mess. And they will come and exit to us. That's a mismanaged gem, by the way, because Oh, what you gotta do is

put back those accountability things and maybe put a right team member. And this will th this will start uh kickstarting again. So you have to Delegate, but not abdicate. So the EOS scorecards and good PLs uh monitoring will help you with the accountability piece. So The PLs for all of our companies, um are managed by my finance team at the h HQ level.

That's cool. So you um I wanna talk a little bit about Ideas. So Uh you've built this amazing thing.

Uh, and you've been basically kind of like building cool stuff, making money since twelve to thirty two. So you've had this run. Um I'm curious, you know, one of the questions we always get Is Alright, well

You know, now it's easy for you, it's easy for you to just keep doing what you're doing, but like I'm not you, so that's you know, it's inspiring, but it's not entirely helpful. Uh, what would be more helpful is like what ideas or opportunities do you see that like somebody else could do. You're too busy to do them or they're too too small for you now. Um What ideas or opportunities do you see that other people could do?

I think about cash flow. So If I had nothing. Yeah, of course it's a lot easier for me now I can say hey Andrew, I want to spend I want to invest in tiny. I want to go do this. And I can do a lot of those with the means that I have now. But if I was starting all over the first

thing would be to go build cash flow again. And the easiest way to build cash flow is services. um you know agency business. Right now, uh content agency since I know content well using AI I would crush it.

You know, because I already know that Brands like Shopify, et cetera, are using AI agencies to create top of the funnel content. Of course, there's some human editing involved, but this changes the game because If an article used to take maybe four hours to write, now you can do it in Forty five minutes.

Right? Because you g if if if you know the game right. So A hustler younger version of me. That's what I'd be doing. content agencies, copyrighting agencies, all AI powered plus human review. I would

I would use like tools like uh clay.com. I'm not sure if you've if you've seen clay.com. But it uh It h helps you automate your sales outreach. You dump a profile in it finds all the data on on that person. You can write you can use GPT to write emails to them and then just hit them up, right? Just Call out rich, call out rich, call out rich because So not everybody, but a small portion will you know take

Take you up on it? Deliver a great service. Go above and beyond with them? Watch the Mart Board of Mouth take your places, you raise prices. Um and I think that's uh

That would be the way to go for me if I if I wanted to Start all over again. Step one, build cash flow, then figure out. how I can take this cash flow to build some recurring revenue stream because in agency you're you still only have recurring revenue stream.

And so um then you would Uh, would you buy versus build from there? And talk about that distinction because you started off as a builder. You've now bought like I don't know, thirty companies or something like that along the way. In I think you studied Not just

Charlie Munger and and Warren Buffett, but also Um, Mark Leonard at Constellation. And you had told me something like you read all his annual letters and there was one thing in there that really stood out to you about building versus buying. What was that? Yeah. It was one of his earlier letters, maybe Maybe like a third one, or fourth one, or something something like that. Um, where Mark talked about that there were three types of growth that Constellation was experiencing.

One was growth through organic, which is just your business growing organically, in in their case, maybe seven, eight percent, whatever. Um the second part of revenue growth was coming from acquisitions. Um where they would just go buy revenue. And the third one was initiatives. And initiatives will be things like new bills. I have this product, now I'm gonna build a second product.

And He was like, these turn out to be very expensive because it required more resource than time that you plan for. It takes away time of your senior people. Um And you're not even counting those things. So they're distracted. And He's like, you know, I'm a capital allocator.

And from a pure capital allocation perspective, the return on invested capital isn't always great because bills have higher risk so if it doesn't work out It's crap. Um for the first year or so when you're building There's zero percent return on your investment in that time. So the compounding return is lower. Um, and this this was my take was, you know. You can have ad spend of three years CAC. At that point, why not just go buy a company that has guaranteed revenue.

And then you can cross promote. So so that sort of took me away from the initiatives idea. So most of our focus and all of our focus is on um Is on buying. One thing that Uh uh.

I I imagine Sean is a little bit like this. But I'm definitely like this where Creating products and uh new businesses is is part self expression where like it's just exciting. It's fun to do that shit. And I'm not like the most disciplined person when like the reason I don't like real estate is I'm like, dude, I

I I'm not very great at just looking at at this Excel sheet and unlocking value. Like that's not my that's not m what I'm skilled at. And I don't know if I even particularly like that. Where did you learn how to like unlock like find value that you could unlock? And what are some of the like common themes that you see? Uh with that.

I don't know, Sean, are you like that too? Yeah, I am. Uh, but then I'm also a short uh a a natural shortcutter. I like to find The simplest path.

To the solution. And that so like while creating like you you had this thing you said on the pod that was hilarious. You're like I'm an artist, bro. I'm just an artist. I gotta create. And I definitely feel that. I have a creative itch to me. But I also have a uh path of least resistance itch to me where I'm like, Oh, there's some beauty in just finding a simpler a simpler way to win. Um

You know, like I agree with that. I also think it's fearful, or it's it's fear to to outlay. To pay like With the internet, you could start with nothing. And spend time and you can get something. Yeah, but I think that's like you could build something new. High chance it's just not gonna work. It's a zero.

It's also gonna take a long time. If you're buying something that's already working, Yes, you outlay cash, but are you actually taking more risk? There's a difference between putting out cash and putting out risk. But that's what I'm asking is the difference between the I I'm I'm asking the difference between

putting out cap like how do you make that gap small? So I'll I'll say this. When I started, Sam, I was very much an artist like you. I enjoyed my creation. I enjoyed putting my you know Fingerprint, footprint, whatever you want to call it, on those. So when if you were looking at the early days of Optim Monster or those products, you would have my footprint on them.

And you had like a$20,000 bill to the Serengeti with your family of five. No, they're like I I was not doing Serengeti when I was building the business. I was not doing Serengeti when I was building the business. I was very, very much involved. Um but a big mindset shift that happened in my career. Which has led to, I would say, tremendous growth for automotive. is the mindset of going from a creator and operator. to a capital allocated. Right. And this happened when I was studying uh Buffett Munger, uh Monash, et cetera.

Office says I'm a better investor because I'm a businessman. And I'm a better businessman because I'm an investor. Now you you read that and you're like okay, sounds good. Right. But when you think about that from a first principles point of view, what's the commonality between the two is that both investors and the businessmen are resource allocators or capital allocators. So when you can when you tie that together, that was the aha moment for me when I when I think about okay if I start this new thing, yes, I'll make X, but if I buy something, if I if I shortcut it and let's say I buy something that's doing two million dollars in revenue.

I you know twenty percent or thirty percent of two million is always gonna be better than, you know ten percent or thirty percent of hundred thousand or hundred percent of one hundred thousand for that matter. See what I'm saying? W what's the biggest what's the biggest deal that you've bought? You don't just say which one, but like uh what

Checks out what check made you sweat? What check made me sweat? None of them. Because I'm not buying like I'm I'm not putting eighty percent of my net worth or my cash in any any one of those deals.

But have you bought things for t tens of millions? No. No. Have not bought anything. in the tens of million dollar range. But these are so s single digit millions and then single digit millions. Single digit millions. That is fucking insane that you've built that much value with like these little small like what's that whatever Sean said, the cigarette butts, like you've made the cigar with it.

But um And are you doing all cash up front or I There's no way you do that. You're you're You're way too sophisticated. Mostly. Mostly all cash up front.

You do do that. But one of the advantages that They we have uh compared to somebody offering like a higher valuation is that we can make the process really seamless for for the seller. Um that also allows us to have get get a better and a more attractive valuation.

Um, but you know, you you if if you try to ever sell to like a private equity or a VC, mostly private equity. You you'll be on in on the hook for like six months. They'll be dragging you, asking you for all sorts of nonsensical stuff, and by the time the entrepreneurs just burnt out and it's just a shitty feeling. Um With us, you know, you send you send me a message all over the website, my assistant sorts through it. I'll look at it and say, Okay, yeah, this is good. Um Yeah.

We'll we'll like look at it and ask you for the P N Ls. Within like A week or week or so time we'll give you an L O I and then we can close in thirty, forty days after that. Holy shit. Are you the only decision maker?

Yes. That's insane. I I I I like to think that I'm the chief risk officer of the company. You told me a story about risk.

You'cause I I was like, Okay, you buy all the stuff, um Like how much debt do you have? You're like, No debt. And you're buying, you know, with a margin of safety and you're like even with his mortgages. He says no mortgages. No mortgages. And and look. Look, there's a gonna be a lot of financially savvy listeners here, and I have many, many financially savvy friends who are billionaires. Uh and they disagree with me on this. You know, but but the way I was raised in And in Pakistani culture, that is considered bad. It's considered taboo. And short leverage can help you grow faster, especially when you use in a smart way.

But it also takes away the margin of safety which in troubled times can really destroy your autonomy if you're not being careful. So, you know I'm okay with getting rich slowly. Um and I think I've done all right.

For where I am, I see myself with a turtle in the rabbit race. Bro, you're a thirty two year old like Pretty much billionaire, dude. Yeah, you didn't go that slow. You know, in in sixty years I think I'll be okay. Um it helped me sleep better at night, be more bullish. I don't know, Sean, Sam, do you do you know about uh Charlie and Moran's third business partner?

No. No, tell the story. See, nobody knows about the third business partner. Um so they did have a third business partner. Uh his name was uh Rick. Right, Rick Warren or something like this. And Who's just as smart as them. But was in a hurry to get rich. And Monish asked Warren about what happened to Rick at one of the lunches that he he had. And this is public. I'm not sharing with you anything. Warren's like Rick's a bitch. No, no, no. War War Warren said War Warren said something along the line with like Charlie and I always knew that we would become like, you know, incredibly wealthy.

But we were just not in a hurry to get wealthy. We knew it would just happen. Rick was just as smart as us, but he was in a hurry. So Like in the seventies, like seventy three, seventy four downturn. what ended up happening was that Rick had margin loans. He was highly levered. And the stock market went down 70%. So all those margin calls happened, and he had to sell his Berkshire shares to Warren.

And More and bottom for like forty bucks apiece, right? So now the same share is like half a half a million plus. I'm gonna get a frame picture of this guy, Rick, on my wall, and it's just gonna be a reminder every day. Don't be in a hurry to get rich. It'll happen. Don't don't be in a hurry. I That's going on my wall. Uh, Sean, I cut you off. What were you gonna ask him?

Um oh I wanted him to tell that story, but also uh wanted to go back to ideas. So you had given us the First move, uh, if I needed a cash flow right away, I would do service agency, maybe something around creating content for brands, using and use AI for leverage or generating leads for brands and creating a lead agency using AI for leverage. Um Okay, that's the get started plan.

But you don't wanna be in the service business forever. And you wanna you you wanna get that's just the get You know, the the escape from broke jail. Plan. Okay, now you've done that. What are what's kind of like level two

type of ideas or opportunities you see. Uh I I I would look into the quick cash cow of tools. Right now they are these AI wrappers, right? So you think like Upload your PDF and we'll turn this into a chat GPD. There's several of those out there right now. But you can make it vertical focused. That's what I would do. I would like chat GPD for lawyers.

add all of your internal SOPs and now your team can just talk to it. Um Real state internal processes, you can do this. My team build this internally in about a week. So it's not very hard to build. You can pay somebody on somebody on Upwork to do it and then work with

The different uh AI influencers on TikTok, IG, et cetera. And This can easily get you to ten K plus a month. I know as a matter of fact like several kids that are making ten K

over ten K a month and some even over a hundred K a month. uh doing just this just the AI rappers. So I think that's uh that that's that's pretty easy. Um, I would I would look at how I can Um

A leveraged uh Freedom of information act to my advantage. Um trying to go into the student businesses. Are you familiar with FOIA? No. What is that? Okay, so basically In the United States. This works only if you're in the United States. We have such a thing called a Freedom of Information Act.

That allows you to request any kind of data from Any government run. No, authority. So journalists use it. So we used to use it at the hustle all the time. So like when big stories break, oftentimes it's because the journalists did that and they like un uncovered some you know, controversial fact. So now now you can you can get creative with it, right? So you can you can go and say

Um to a government agency, maybe a university or whatever, uh, hey, I want to see the contracts of your last three or five construction projects that you undertook. Um, and that will give an advantage. Um in terms of how to approach terms and pricing that was approved before. So when you're submitting your bid. It's it's better. So but you can get really creative uh like that.

I remember I was talking to this this was a while ago, um I was talking to a guy, uh, he was in the Atlanta area. And he would request student information from universities, so public universities. Um, and he was targeting like nursing school graduates and so on. If you were coming out of nursing school, uh, you know he he he wanted your information and schools have to give it to you and you might pay them like a processing fee of like hundred dollars or something like that. But you get the whole graduated class's name.

email address, the you know, their physical address that the university have compiled. They they give they give that to you. Um and then he would send those students an affiliate offer. for student loan forgiveness program that was passed under the Obama administration, right? And So

The finite offer was for a company that would Fill out those forms for you. Right. And they would charge the charge you like I don't know five five hundred, six hundred bucks. And they would pay this guy. And he was like I just send one email, I make six figures and I'm one. So I I would ex find arbitrage opportunities like these

To build up more cash flow. Um And then I would go invest. So but you know, Sam, when you're when you're talking about in the earlier days, you're f very focused on the W Shoe beginner. But there was a lot of creative things that were happening like this.

That was helping my cash flow. Um grow. Uh and that allowed me Or some fun creative cash flow things you were doing at the time. I I'm not gonna talk about this There's gotta be one prolific one that that is uh I've heard a bunch through Friends of Friends. I'm not gonna mention any of them, but I've heard I've heard some of your things. I mean like The space that you're in

Everyone starts sometimes black hat. Gray hat. And then as you like start making real money, you're like, all right, I gotta go legit. Uh but I've I've heard some crazy stories about what you used to do. That's good Justin Mary's had a good phrase. He goes, Uh, do whatever you gotta do to make your nut and then go on your noble mission. And um and I was like, I don't know if I agree with that, but I like the way you said it. Um, let me put it that way, and I know several people who have done that where

It's like okay, what were you doing before this? Oh, I was running um No, this dating uh dating site affiliate, you know, affiliate ad network. It's like okay, cool. Plenty of fish. Like you know, this is not really where you want to hang out for too long, or like these poker uh you know, poker arbitrages, poker affiliates, uh Or selling ringtones with subscriptions.

There's a guy who emailed me that was like, uh I think he said you could say this on the pod. He's like, Yeah, like uh I go on sportsbook, every sportsbook has a welcome offer. So he's like I go on Sportsbook A and they have a welcome offer of like they'll match up to twenty percent of your deposit up to whatever, thousand dollars on it. And B has the same welcome offer. And I go max out both welcome offers and I bet on the same game for team A, team B.

I lose the small rake, but I take the whole welcome offer. And I just do that again and again and again. And I was like, I love it. This is so simple and so funny that you do this. What are you have you ever had liquidity from selling a business, or is the majority of your liquid wealth come through annual cash flows? And are you pulling out a significant chunk? From the From the business.

Yes. Um I'm pulling out Yeah. massive chunks from the business. Um In terms of liquidity event.

Yes, I sold uh Two two businesses Relatively small, you know, all seven figure exits on both of those. One was the YouTube channel business and another was a was a software photography software business. Um

In terms of the cash flow. You know, we we operate with a very healthy cash flow. So I moved that out to the to the hold call level. Um, and then use that cash to invest, um, you know, in the private businesses as well as in real estate and public markets.

If you had a pie, a good question Sean always ask is what do you do with your money if you had a pie? of your uh net worth. What's that allocation looking like? By chart. Not just a pie. A pie chart. Or a pie. Yeah, or a pie.

towards my business, the online business portfolio. Extremely, extremely heavily skewed. Um I would say then a g good chunk is in the in the public stock market. Um, and then I have Cash. Do you actively manage your portfolio or are you uh are you just doing boring shit?

Big chunk of it is boring, uh you know, dollar cost average index. Um I have begun to play with, you know, a little bit of money to uh To see what I can do with it. I've d I've I've been all right.

Like stocks or other stuff. No no stocks. This is only I'm only talking about public investments, because real estate is separate. You um You talked about like kind of s coming from nothing, literally sleeping on the floor, uh, because you're like Why would I buy furniture? I should not buy furniture, even when you had money.

Um But I believe two things. A money is a tool. It's not the like end goal. It's a tool to to enable you to do something with it. And B. Um There's no point to money it except for two, you know, it uh

You know, Enhance your lifestyle, other people's lifestyle, you know, in improve lives in some way. Right. It would be a shame to just Uh have the money and never use it. Have you and and spending money and spending money is as much of a skill as making money. You just you know, you just start it later in life. Um

Have you learned how to spend money and uh What have you learned? W uh what can you teach us? Yeah, uh Yes, in the early days I Saved everything. I mean I did I did not my buy a bed until I got married, dude.

Just to put in perspective. No, there's no bed. Ladies find you a man like Find you a man with no pad. So so you know, I I I met my wife in high school. Um, so she's known me since I was broke, and you know, her f her parents weren't that well off either. So um So yeah. In terms of learning how to spend the money, yes, now I have.

Right. For me and the culture We take care of family first. Um, and my first thing was to ensure my parents are retired. Cause my dad worked really, really hard when I you know, when we moved to US. So my my parents are retired. I mean, they go to Pakistan maybe like four times a year.

They're in Pakistan, you know, like right now, for example. So um So yeah, so that that that was first thing first in terms of making that impact. Um In terms of travelling. I I I realize that I get

a lot of creativity and joy out of just going and seeing new places. Um and I spend the money on those those things. Are you giving equity? to your uh people? Like is the structure where is there like a whole code that you fully own?

And then the whole co owns eighty percent of this company, seventy percent of this company. Yes. In the early days, that's what I did. No, I don't do that. Now you don't give equity to the operators.

Do you regret giving equity? No, I I enjoy working with those co founders and I I don't think I would be able to do what I did without them. What now? You're only thirty two. Like what are you gonna like how do you get up in the morning, feel motivated? You know, what do you what's what's driving you now? I want to build a generational company. Sounds like you're there, though. No, I think it's generational when m like you know, when my kids kids are older and grandkids are around.

I I'm I'm probably gonna be doing this till Till I'm dead. Um, I enjoy the game. I enjoy the fun of it. Um I know Sam doesn't get excited about uh about buying it rather than fixing it up and growing it.

Uh I I get I get a thrill out of it, you know,'cause For me, that's the opportunity, that's the hustle. Like Finding Finding the edge.

Um getting that deal. Uh you you can say in in some sense Um Just just getting an unfair advantage. Um but But it d no knowing those tricks, knowing those tactics, giving me a head, like you know, like if you play basketball, I mean we all play basketball and I sucked at it, right? But there were some people like Alex was amazing, right? Because Alex had been doing this for a long time and he has tactics he could just cross you over or whatnot.

Um I like having those tactics in in the business. What's crazy is you might be Like Probably the top.

Fifty Richest. Maybe maybe top one hundred, top two hundred, richest under forty year olds in America. I've kept a very, very low profile and the only way this would be validated is if I was ever to raise around. Or if I was to exit.

Right. Um so right now what I can see and looking at Our are our numbers and what similar company straight at and and you know exit add. My assumptions are based on that. Um

But It actually doesn't matter to me one way or another. I'm pretty I'm comfortable. This model of buy, don't build and um of becoming a whole co and having a portfolio. Like there's a whole bunch of people who I know that are trying to do this right now. I'm sure you get a bunch of questions. I think I've called you asking you a bunch of questions about this.

Um What do you think uh they get wrong? What's the common mistake or trap you think smart people can fall into? trying to do this path or what's a misconception That smart people have when they come into this. One thing that I've I've noticed, uh noticed c several things, but this this is this is the primary thing.

Is that The excitement takes them away. So they they will overpay on a deal, uh and then regret it later on when when they find out because Oftentimes they're taking investors' money. Um they are on a timeline.

you know, most of them are trying to raise a fund, you know, your typical ten year plus two years, whatever. So they have a they're they're not disciplined enough. uh to wait and I have no rush. Like you know, if I don't buy a company this year No, doesn't make a difference. Um But yeah, so so it allows me to be more measured and disciplined in in the deals that we do.

Um And That's that's probably the biggest thing. Yeah, and And or underestimating the problems that exist in a business. The first interview that I saw with you was it looks like it was on Mixer G our friend Andrew Warner

It looks like It might have been two thousand fourteen, but I think it was even before that. And Andrew was like, How much revenue do you do you do and it go you go, Andrew, I told you, I'm not gonna tell you this.

And uh it was pretty funny. I did I asked you to come on here and you're like, I'm not telling you these numbers. You've told us a lot of shit. Like it seems like you're you're you're in a different

uh sphere than you were before where you don't mind Talking about some cool stuff. And I think that That's neat because You're like maturing from like this. hacker, probably gray hat hacker from

You know Twitter. fifteen years ago to like Kind of a tycoon. I think you know when

When I was younger I was afraid. Um either Just from a taboo things, but also I didn't I want to fly under the radar and I still do. But I wasn't very vulnerable.

Um I struggled with vulnerability. And That That change as my network changed. as as I continue leveling up.

Um, you know We With I mean now my my form is amazing and with IPO Well it's not a YPO forum, but everybody's in the YPO. Um And th those kind of, you know, groups really, really help you

mature and find your blind spots and Things like that. So So I I'm yeah. Definitely appreciative of of the friends that I have. who call me out on those things and

They have helped me become better. I'm gonna have to use that little clip for my new company as an ad. Thanks. We'll use AI to replace what The company you stay with him exactly. Uh no, man. I think by the way, if your goal is to have a low profile I have a feeling that's gonna change when the headline of this of this podcast comes out. Because uh

I I don't think honestly that he's trying to keep a low profile. I just feel like you care about being humble and and uh you came across a lot of humility. Uh, you know, and not false humility. You know, false humility is basically like Uh I'm gonna downplay everything and not tell you anything. And um That's actually like a different form of sort of uh, you know, I don't know, arrogance or narcissism. The the non flex flex. Yeah, the not flex flex, right? Or the it's kinda sort of this close the door uh behind me on the on the way in. So, you know, I'm in, but you can't get in because I'm not gonna really

Do anything. Like, you know, I think the best people are the ones who Sort of become the person they needed when they were younger. And I think that like, you know, the younger version of you If you heard something like this, like all right, this guy came from nothing, moved here for Pakistan, didn't speak English. was like sitting in the library because he didn't know how to make friends in the school, was like, all right, I wanna play video games

A library had a firewall, so his first business was creating a proxy to get around the firewall. And then he started giving that to other kids as a b both a way to like make friends and make a little bit of money. And then he took the money and like It was like okay, how do we get more customers? And it's not like he's some business savant, he just kept asking, How do we get more customers? Oh, what if a directory posted about me? How do I get them to do that?

What's in it for them? And like you know, use one foot after another. So I think you Uh yeah, I think he did a good job of basically like without Um putting yourself in a position where you said something you're uncomfortable with, you know, you you did share stuff that I think is you know, for me at least pretty uh pretty inspiring. You're somebody that

Uh, you know. I gave Ben a list of like five people. I was like, you know, who are the five people that we've met?'Cause we met a lot of people last two years. I said In the last two years, who are the people that we've met that were kind of the most inspiring. They seem to have a blueprint. For life, not just business that was working for them. Yeah.

Their business part of their life was working. But they were also like content. And they weren't, you know, like In the first five minutes of meeting them, like Weirdly bragging about stuff or like

Saying something that revealed some like weird insecurity that's driving them still and they haven't gotten over it. It's like I don't know, those people are the they're characters, they're fun to be around, but like I'm not trying to be them. Um you know, like somebody who's Yeah, has a family life that they actually care about. So We put you on that list. Um

And I'm glad you came on because For sure. I don't think most people even know uh your story and that's a shame, you know, like Uh I think more people are gonna know your story now after this. Where should people

Like follow you or where do you want to send them to uh Really quick, Sean. Before we wrap up, I wanna tell you something. So he has this website. So Google Sciads uh so it Uh I want the listener to Google this. So S Y E D and then his last name B A L K H I And then Google that.

And then the word net worth. He's got this hilarious blog post. Oh, this is yours. Sam told me about this. Yeah. Yes. It says what is sci what's sciad's net worth? The first line, you're probably thinking and so his his his website comes up first and it's a blog post. You're probably thinking that I'm some sort of narcissist writing about my own net worth in third person. It's quite the contrary. I was looking through search traffic for my blog and I noticed that I have a lot of type in traffic for users simply searching my name.

Uh, and then the term net worth. And then he goes on to explain that it's like it's always changing, but it's not But knowing someone's net worth is not gonna help you succeed. And he's got those hilarious posts. And he and he and it was really funny. And uh then you also I wanna give a shout out. We talked a lot about money and shit. You've got uh Amazing posts where you do an annual wrap up. I've been reading that for years. I think you started in twenty seventeen. Fifteen, twenty fifteen.

twenty fifteen, you you put a big emphasis on philanthropy. So like you have a school, uh I I think you're big on schools, right? You build schools, I I forget where in Pakistan, I think, and you like are giving away uh you you put a lot of emphasis on uh philanthropy. And then it's you and your wife and your kid and a lot of these stuff, and you have your own foundation. You're giving away a lot of stuff. And so um I think it's awesome. I think that to to reiterate what Sean said about being like a You know, he has this joke about being a total man about and uh in in a way that's kinda like what you are, is like you're like a holistic person and you're Your personal

website does a really good job of explaining that. Yeah, you know. I I started doing those write ups when my son when we found out we're gonna be you know, we're gonna have my son. Um, I was like, Okay, I should start recapping this. Um Well, we we start trying to have a kid. I'm like, I should start recapping um what's happening in my life so that way uh I'm gonna forget it. And at some point, you know, I I may want to tell them, Oh, check this out, check this out. And

That's how those year end reviews yeah came about and I enjoy writing them and Oh a lot of people love reading him, including you S thank, Sam, for reading it. And In terms of education, I

Do believe that. levels of playing field. And that's why we're you know, we do what we do. Well I was gonna say Sam gave you a compliment, I'm gonna make fun of you. The homepage Needs a revamp. You go entrepreneur, investor. And marketing extraordinaire. With extraordinary in italic. And then there's a uh a photo of you with the the headset. The bottom mic. The ted the Ted. The Madonna mic. You got the clicker and you're doing the hand gesture talking about, you know, you gotta start with why. And uh you're above that now, bro. You you've elevated to tycoon status. Now you gotta have the super minimalist.

Yeah, all why and it's like um You know, we buy We buy companies Of all sizes.

Um Please inquire for detail. Yeah, like if you have a company for sale. I like to buy it. If you if you if you if you go to awesome motive website, I I really want people to know about awesome motive instead of me, right? Um, if you go on my website, I barely spend any time. I write once a year. That would that's the year end review, and it's that's really more for me than for anybody else. But if you go to

Awesomotive.com or AM.co. Um that website hopes we should uh It says Helping small businesses grow and compete with the big guys. Now that's what we're talking about. That's a good one. Um, and it has all the companies that you've you've That that are in

Under the umbrella. Uh They do want to come uh do wanna keep coming back? You gotta keep coming back on. You're you're fun to talk to. That's Sam's uh That was pretty good for me. Was that good for you question? No, you're fun to talk to you. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Happy to come back. I told you we're not we're not we're not Assholes.

No, I loved it. More importantly, are you in for Camp M FM part two? Uh that we're about to host in a few months. I I'm in. All right. And that's the pod. Feel like I can root

Well be what I want to I put my all in it like my day song On the road less travel never looking back

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