Lessons From Sam's New Business Venture, High Stakes Gambling, and More

Okay. I just sent you something hilarious. I've been following this Twitter called Mug Shotdies. And It's like a play on mugshots and we teeth them. We talked about this. Oh, did we talk about mugshotties?

It's so funny. And the tagline is uh The tagline is uh Hope Bay gets bail. Uh and it's mugshouties and it's all like good looking girls who have a mugshot. It's hilarious. It's so funny. Yeah, we've talked about that'cause there was the guy who

His mo shot went viral because he's got like he's just like really stunningly good looking. And he became like a model after afterwards or whatever? Yeah, I remember that guy. People still talk about him. Can I tell you a crazy story? Uh

So Have you ever seen I I think this is probably outside of your You're like kind of orbit of what you pay attention to. But have you seen these gambling live streams where Drake will go on Twitch and he'll gamble like twenty million dollars live on stream. No, really? Yeah. Like a r like a real twenty million dollars.

A real twenty million dollar like he lost like I think seventeen million dollars on roulette one night last like two weeks ago or something like that. Is he really that rich that I mean, like if you're Two hundred million dollar rich. That's ten percent of your net worth. In a night. That's a substantial amount. Good question. I had the same question, which led me to some pretty interesting findings. Okay, so um

So I saw Drake doing this and I've seen other popular streamers like XQC and these guys, they do these gambling streams from time to time. People love to see it because they're playing kind of like high stakes online uh you know gambling. And they're reacting to the highs and lows or whatever. Uh Ben, have you seen this? I I think it's probably also outside of your, you know, Mormon orbit. You know, you don't watch these kinds of sins.

Yeah, so exactly. So so I saw this all uh this is all on Twitch. It's happening on Tw it was happening on Twitch. Maybe some people do it on YouTube as well, but It got me curious. I was like, there's no way this guy's gambling twenty five million dollars, twenty million dollars of his own money. On these things, and I was like, The these streams get so popular. I'm like, this is actually great marketing for the website that it's on. So He's he's gambling on something called stake.com.

S T A K E. And um So I was like, I bet this is house money. that they're giving him in order to just promote the site. And sure enough, that's what it is. So get this.

But is he is he losing it aga when you play blackjack, you lose against the dealer, right? House. Yeah. So they're just Okay. Like if I gave you twenty million dollars to come play my rigged game I gave you twenty million, you lose it right back to me. I get not I and uh you know, I I'm back whole. Um They don't even lose the Vig'cause they're the house. So they would take that, you know, four percent edge or whatever that they would have. They keep that as well.

Um and if you win, maybe they have some deal where like if you win, you keep the winnings. Uh I would assume they have some deal like that with them. But it it it it's electronic, right? Like it's like The cards are digital. It's not like a camera on so then They could just be like, Oh shoot, Drake has twenty. We have to make ourselves have twenty one. Yeah, well that that's yeah, that's a little bit that's illegal for sure, but uh th they wouldn't need to do that. I guess that's kinda my point is that they'll they'll already have a house edge.

And uh over time, like they will win. And so and even if they don't, like this is as a marketing campaign, like uh this is like kind of genius. And so what they're doing is Steak.com is this website and it is the largest cryptocurrency based online gambling site in the world.

And nobody knew who was behind it. Until recently some guy in Australia bought like a thirty six million dollar home. And they were like, Who who is this? Well, you're in your twenties. How did you buy a thirty six million dollar home all cash? Like what's was he he was he was in his twenties? So these guys they're in their mid twenties. I think one guy's twenty five or twenty six, the other guy's twenty eight. And um and so there's this guy, Ed you can just learn search Ed Craven.

Uh Ed Craven Steak and you'll see The secret origins. The secret Australian origins of the world's biggest crypto casino. And so get this. So basically they have a line. There's these guys in um in Australia and they've got this office and it's just and they the office is under this name called Easy Go Gaming. It's like we build online uh games.

And the office is super nice and people would see it on social media. They would see like wow, these guys got like a chef and they got all these perks and they got like they're always going on these trips and like What's going on with e man Easy Go Gaming, you guys must be an awesome gaming company. So uh It must just be like a couple of people and they're just hanging out at someone's house. And so well no no so the so the this is a legit company. But basically EasyGo Gaming is the licensed gaming provider, like they provide the games. to the casino company steak, which is based in some place called Curakao or something like that, which is like

Some Dutch Caribbean island. Uh, where the actual casino is based. And these guys own both. So they were kind of known as only the owners of EasyGo, but they actually own steak. And so It all got kind of like Revealed when the guy bought this home for whatever you can see, even there's like a daily mail article he bought. I'm I'm reading it right now. A thirty.org, yeah.

Thirty eight and a half million dollar. mansion he buys and um They're like, Who is this kid? He's twenty six years old or whatever. And that's kind of how people figured out, like, oh, he owns stake.com. Now I I believe these are kind of like my predictions or my guesses. So stake.com I think is pretty clear

clearing like billions of dollars in revenue. I think both of these guys are now self made billionaires, possibly even ten billion plus is what they've made. off of state.com because this thing is a Absolute.

Cash cow. And you can kind of back into this by looking at like um They do these like Sunday raffle whatever lottery type thing and it's like you pay it's like oh wow You know, two hundred fifty thousand people bought this like ten dollar ticket. It's like oh wow, they they just You know, that that was just like a two two and a half million dollar Sunday for them, and then they pay out this much and they keep twenty six million or fifty million. Like that's just a week for them.

And so um and so you can kinda see You could kinda back into I I did some some calculations on it, but but I'm pretty sure that these guys are both Self made billionaires, if not. Ten billion at this point, uh, in equity value of of stake dot com. And it's just kind of crazy to me, like

That this exists, that these guys are so young. Able to do this and um And people who are just willing to like live on the edge. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna go set up a company at the Dutch Caribbean island of Kurakao, which gives out like Online gambling licenses. Like, you know, my neighborhood gives out candy on Halloween.

And these guys have amassed this absolute fortune. Kind of anonymously building this. Isn't this just Like isn't this kind of crazy to you? Yeah, this is I'm researching and I know how I recognize this. They're a sponsor of the UFC. Yes.

And so they're big UFC sponsors. They also sponsor Watford, the like uh the English soccer team. So they like pay ten million a year as their like lead uh lead sponsor for that too. So I'm doing research just as as you're talking. Um have On LinkedIn there's I I don't

Well here, one guy says he's the CEO, but that seems I don't know if that's legit. Uh this is this is crazy. This is one of those amazing companies This look just like VPN and a few other things, that's completely under the radar. And it's totally crushing. And I've said this to you before. I actually think that people's personal homes

The price of it. It you know, like a rich person can live in a Low priced home. Purchase a high priced home. The likelihood that you're rich is h like it's in indicative of what you have because

It's hard to g it's not impossible, but it's hard to give uh a bank to give you a loan if you don't have a significant amount of income, not just assets. But income. So if he bought a thirty and if he bought a thirty seven million dollar home in cash, is that really what it said? And Yeah, I don't know if it was all cash, uh, but it was like three times more the pr the house sold in two thousand eighteen. For three times less. And then the guy renovated it and he this guy bought it for for whatever, almost forty million.

To buy a forty million dollar home, I would think you'd want to be worth like at least two hundred and fifty million dollars in at least some type of liquid situation as well, not just privately held company. So here's my notes on this thing. So I'm just gonna read you my raw notes from last night. It says Uh small company in Australia in Melbourne called EasyGo. Um looks like your typical successful startup. You got ping tongue tables, you got a chef, you got perks, you're going on on on boat trips with the with the team. But they're hiding a massive secret. They're also the founders of stake.

Which I believe might be the world's largest casino ever. It's crypto only, which is a massive growth lever. Does that mean that it that it's legal? Um You mean illegal? I I don't know the legality of it. That's like probably a pretty complicated thing. Like like full tilt went away if in America I used to play tilt. Yeah, like you can't go if you're on stake.com in the US, you can't go to it. It's like no, this is not available to US citizens. Um, but it but internationally it is, and they they based it out of Curakao, which gives out the online gambling. So I think they are fully licensed.

But they use uh crypto which I think lets them do things like no um Yeah, as I say, KYC A M L, like know your customer. So basically I think you could just transfer in Bitcoin or whatever and you could just gamble it on the site. Uh, you just put an email in and you start gambling. And uh so they got like all these games or whatever. Um

I think that they're paying Drake like$20 million a month. to be the like sponsor of this thing. No way. 'Cause he's gambling at those stakes and I'm pretty sure that's all house money. I don't think Drake is Promoting this company for By by putting in twenty million dollars of his own money and losing it every month. Well they're not.

They're not giving him twenty million dollars. They're saying you can win up to twenty million or you can No, they're giving him house money. They're giving him a chip or a credit line. That basically says here's twenty million dollars to go play on the site. You probably can't just cash that out. You have to gamble it here. Um, but but I'm pretty sure that's how it's working. That would be crazy. I mean I I Like okay, so the private some of some of the private equity guys, like um Steve Schwartzmann and uh

A few other folks who founded Carlisle and BlackRock and Blackstone and all that. There's there's some years where they'll get paid like eight hundred million dollars or five hundred million dollars because of performance. But um True twenty million a month is two hundred and forty million dollars a year. That would there'd probably I can't imagine there's more than a hundred people in the whole world.

That earn that much income. I mean, of course there's a lot of people who earn like Paper gains. But who earn that much income in a given year. That would be absolutely astounding. So get this. So they so the guy buys this house for forty million.

They also own multiple penthouses like the top floor of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne, which was the largest skyscraper. But here's what's even more interesting. When they were eighteen Um when one of them was eighteen, the other guy's twenty, they started something called PrimeDice.com. It's still up if you go to PrimeDice.com. It's basically A crypto gambling site or you just bet is it gonna be uh like w

What what's gonna hap yeah, it's like a head heads or tails. It's like a roll of the dice. And uh you could just wager on it and like You know, here you go. And you can just see people just betting constantly on what the dice is gonna roll out to, right? Uh and like what they're gonna what they're gonna win for it. So They created this when they were

Back in, I don't know, uh twenty thirteen, it says I think on the site says Largest crypto gambling site since twenty thirteen. Uh so they're pretty early on that. Um This site is

Wild. Do you see all the live users betting money? Yeah, it's crazy. And uh his one just look at this one guy, Shane Recover, is just betting over and over again. This company this is this is such an amazing five uh fine. This company alone, this prime dice thing, is awesome. So then let me tell you some of the the other things that c that come into it. So

So basically um I think one of the YouTubers that they pay or or maybe uh Twist Remember this guy Aiden Ross, I think, is Getting paid a few million bucks per month to to do it. That that I think there's pretty good authority on. Um Three million dollars a month.

Yeah. Uh uh no, I think two. Two million a month a month. Um okay, now let me go into more okay, so all of that was like, you know, this is all like not confirmed, but like these are now like some rumors. So uh or I guess this part's not a river. Like if you go to their website, you could see that there's a a company called Medium Rare. N V, which is incorporated in Curaka. That's the company that holds the the gaming license. If you Google map the address.

It's just like a shitty warehouse building. that you'll find of like where this company is based. So I don't know what's going on there. It's like you know when you incorporate in Delaware and they give you like a P.O. box as your address. Um So okay, a and then a couple of other, you know, random rumors are like Uh they had uh they had they added um Dogecoin to their site as like a way to deposit back in the day.

And like when Elon when all the Elon stuff was happening, I think they dumped like hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Doge. They like sold it all when the Elon pump was happening to to Dogecoin. Um And uh yeah, it's crazy. So so anyways, this is just like a crazy thing. Well what like okay, let's say you even had the idea for this. I Googled, I Googled I'm Googling these guys as you're talking. There's very, very, very little information on these folks. There's just so there's almost nothing. I do you think

Can I change my browser to Australia and maybe get better results? Because I'm Googling their names now and there is like There's one picture on them on the whole on everything. Yeah, I like found their Instagrams. Both their Instagrams are private, but like uh Yeah, like I know somebody who who falls over whatever, so I like stocks their Instagram too just to see like what's going on and it's Are they jacked? Are they jacked bros now or are they still nerds? They're Uh there I wouldn't say they're jacked, but they're fit.

Uh, and they're bros for sure. Like Dam and they're breaking the stereotype. You know, like here's the like I'm just gonna describe to you I'll send this photo. We can put this in the Ferrari pictures. Okay, so one okay, picture number one. Uh You would have guessed Ferrari, but here's a close second. Picture of a Range Rover with a giant bow and somebody hugging them because they just gave them a Range Rover. Uh okay, that's a classic. You gotta love that one.

Another classic. You know the like influencer balloons you get when you cross like A million followers or whatever, the yellow giant inflatable balloon of a number. They have that. Uh, and it's like some guy uh you know hugging him doing that. Another one like courtside at the Lakers game, courtside at the French open. Like I could see Nadal's calf like, you know, right behind this guy's head in this picture. So They're definitely living it up. Uh and as they should. This is what I this is exactly what I want my

Online casino dealer guys life to be. This is who I wanted to be. And this is how we want them to live and I'm glad that they are doing exactly what they're doing. And you one of'em's only twenty six, is what you're saying. Yeah, and this article might be a little out of date, but uh yeah. Yeah, wild they definitely hit this scale when they were in their twenties. Like the youngest rich the richest young person in the world. Like

Uh uh Richer than what's his name? The Sam Bankman Fried guy. Yeah, and younger. Or on par with it and and younger. That is outstanding. That is crazy. What a good find. Speaking of young billionaires, uh I think the world's youngest self billionaire now is This guy, Alexander Wang. Do you know this guy? I uh I I don't really know him. I think I was in a group chat with him. Um Is that from that company, uh startup? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what what they do is pretty cool. Um they basically saw the kind of like machine learning Um trend you know like you this is gonna keep growing and they were like well you know one one thing that's like when you're doing machine learning You need like the data to be labeled, right? So if you're trying to teach a computer how to recognize a a a a you know, a kitten or something like that. It's like you first have to train it in some ways.

Or be able to like um Teach it when it's wrong and correct it. And um So that labeling process is is quite like time consuming. And so What they did was they created like a a I think a giant workforce

force of overseas people that will label your images for you. And so like if you're a self driving car company, if you're uh Waymo or or Tesla or whatever You get like tons and tons of footage. And then now those need to be labeled as like

Yep, that was a dog crossing the street. Yep, that's a stop sign, even though it's partially obstructed. And so How does that happen? That's like a human intervention. Humans go and do that. And so scale started off as like a It was labeling as a service. I I'm sure they do a lot more stuff now, but it's pretty crazy. That's like a ten billion dollar company now. And this guy I I think he started it when he was nineteen or something. What Um.

Yeah, he was cool. Uh like I didn't know him for long because as soon as they're it's pretty funny, it's like I'm in this group chat that's like four Founders um Yeah, for a bunch of founders. It's like oh this is kind of like the underground founders hang out, like we we chill here. Everybody's trying to do big things, but then when one guy actually started doing big things, he's like, I'm busy, I need to leave this now. And so it's like the the ultimate signal. It's like oh and it really takes off. You don't stay in these chats. You just sort of like

Go do your billionaire thing now. Meaning you go do your like I'm actually on a rocket ship, I don't have time to socialize anymore. Um, which you know, respect to him. Dude, I was gonna show you something that I thought was like a major Good find and

Now It seems like achievable given that you just set the baseline at to twenty six year olds who are now worth ten billion dollars. This one's a little this one's w much smaller, but still oddly interesting. Uh go to the the MFM or the uh million dollar brainstorm document. Okay.

And scroll down and so you can kinda see that like this is truthful. The guy sent me a picture of his quick books. So You see that? Yeah. Alright, so this guy named Matt Paulson. So you remember when my Twitter got hacked?

Yes. So uh there was the basically people hacked my Twitter and they tweeted out like I'm giving away a PS five or whatever the number is. And just like send me four hundred dollars and I'm donating the money to Saint Jude's. And this guy Matt I when I got back in my Twitter I saw that he sent Two times the asked amount.

He was like He's like, I just wanna set it uh went ahead and sent you a thousand dollars just You know, so Saint Jude's has a little extra money. And I I was like, Oh my god, dude, that that that sucks. I'm so sorry about this. And he was like, Oh, no big deal.

And I was like, All right, well who who are you that you're this nice? And I clicked out and he runs this website called Market Beat. Have you ever heard of market beat? Only when you uh you you shared this in the transcript. So I did a little bit of stalking at that time'cause I was like, What is that? You know, your tweet was intriguing. You'cause you had said something like I met a guy who runs a company. That does twenty five million a year in revenue, only thirteen employees.

And it was like seventeen million of the twenty five was profit. And I was like All right. I'm fully aroused. Tell me more. What is this company, you know? Got'em. Uh yeah. Uh and so he sent me a picture of his quick books and he was like here's the profit I mean keep in mind This doesn't include my huge sal or my huge salary is it part of the expenses, but we actually do seventeen million a profit.

The P L that he sent me, it's like I think thirteen million a profit. So it's called Market Beat. Marketbeat.com. And um for the first two years it was just him. And you go to market beat. Yeah, you you you go to marketbeat.com, like I always Google like hub spot price targets. Because I'm curious what HubSpot what analysts think the pr the the stock might be in one year and he shows up early in Google. One, two, three, or if you Google Amazon price targets. Target price targets. Whatever, like any company.

And it's He calls it a web portal, but if you didn't know better, you would look at it and just call it a media company. So you you see different headlines and different news. It's kind of like Wall Street Journal. But really even more niche and just for stocks, just for dividend stocks. And it's just a way to really quickly see headlines of what's coming up. So it's kind of like a d um

uh a portal or a data data aggregator where you could just like see like All right, um this stock has an earnings call on this date, so it's basically just a place to get information, but it's also part um media company because they have they publish two hundred and fifty Articles a year. Or sorry, a month. And they have contractors who they pay a hundred and fifty dollars per article to write these. But he told me, he goes

Regardless if the articles don't actually add to any of our revenue, people come to the website mostly just to see Like the stock prices and things like that. And so right now the guy uh has eleven employees and I actually have a list of sorry, thirteen employees. I have a list of what they all do. He's got f He's got four developers, four support people, one ad guy, one accountant, one content manager, one marketing assistant. And him.

And uh They make money through subscription and through advertising. Most of which comes through advertising. They've got fifteen thousand subscribers who pay between twenty and forty thousand twenty and forty dollars a month. And uh one ad guy selling all these ads. And it's mostly direct marketing and he's got uh A b a bunch of different brands. Like he's got um

Sorry, you're going faster. So the the just to break down that revenue. It sounded like subscriptions is something like four or five million dollars a year out of the twenty five, is that right? Uh he told me fifteen thousand premium subscribers and they pay either twenty or forty dollars a month, depending on whichever one they get. So let's call it thirty, so that's five and a five and a half million. Uh, from the subscription from the premium. And then the rest being ad revenue. Twenty million of ads. Okay, wow.

Crazy, right? And there's only one ad sales person. He doesn't have a team of ad sales guys. And he'll they'll sell directly to large uh like uh maybe like the Motley Fool or some other like uh stock picking newsletter or some other financial brand or some company looking to promote their stock or different financial brokers, uh financial products like wealth advisors, things like that. But If an advertiser is too small. They just work with an agency and and they just say, Hey agency, you know, we've got some leftover inventory. You wanna put your ads in here? And it's just one guy doing the whole thing.

Yeah. Unbelievable. It seems like the the trick for them, and by trick I mean hard work and strategy. Yeah. I think they've been around for fifteen years. Right. And it was SEO is it's SEO that drives the bulk of the traffic, is that the idea?

I think early on, now it has a little bit of a brand. Before I even knew the guy, I would actually go to it all the time just to look'cause it th interference. I'm on like the Amazon one right now. And it's bas like it has just like a bunch of stuff put together. It's like oh here's the execs, here's the CEO, here's their age, here's their pay. It's like here's the um you know, here's the percent shareholding, you know, amongst these different groups. Yeah, the analyst targets, et cetera. It's kind of ugly by traditional web you know, two point oh standards. Like it doesn't meet any of the design requirements that like Airbnb would approve of. But it in my mind it's perfect. It actually is designed beautifully, like it works wonderfully. And so it's like a cluttered website. It kinda looks like Drudge Report or Craigslist or something or eBay. Like it's this messy website, but I think it's quite good. We need to put together a compilation of what I'm calling Sam's ugly ducklings.

And this is an example of Sam's Ugly Ducklings, which is the his website that like Who the fuck even heard of this? It doesn't look super fancy. It's kind of been around for a while. It's got this like niche passionate audience. Drudge Report is one. This is another. You've showed me like 10 of these in the last year. And I think people are g I think people really dig these. And so we should do an episode. That just highlights each one of these and it doesn't have to be like a podcast. It's almost like a screen share. Uh maybe it's just for YouTube.

Or like there's this guy reaching out. He's trying to turn our podcast into like an ebook or whatever, like a really nicely designed PDF. Um, we should have him do it on your ugly ducklings,'cause he's got extensive notes on what you talk about in each episode. Really? So Uh this guy in India. Yeah, I I forgot his name, but I'm talking to him right now. uh to get one of these made for us because I think it'd be dope, right? Like that'd be sick. It's embarrassing. Like I I get some people who are like Now there's people who are like, I would say

Kinda like a little more successful in the tech industry that are getting into our podcast. Whereas I feel like before we were kind of like A different audience for whatever reason. Like kids. Almost like kids. It was not not kids. It was more like just like Entrepreneurial, I would say is definitely a big component of it. Uh, which might be K's, but might be like somebody in their thirties that wants to make a change or whatever. Or it's just like

Yeah, I own this awesome business. I'm based out of P you know Peoria, Illinois. And it's like, what the fuck? Who are you and how did you find us? And but like that was more of our main target. And now I'm getting people that are like kind of the heart of Silicon Valley that are like, dude kinda got hooked to the podcast and I'm like, dude, I've been telling you about this for like two years. And they're like, Yeah, it's actually good. And they're like What are like the best episodes? You got like two hundred.

And I was like uh I don't really know. He's like Well what's like a place to find the most popular ones? I was like, uh don't have it. He's like, Is there a place with summaries? I was like, nah, not really. He's like, Well you have all these ideas. Is there a compilation of all the ideas? I was like, Ah, there should be. Someone I think all the obvious like Kind of like growth things that you would do or like onboarding things you would do. We've done none of and so I'm like kind of embarrassed about that. But uh I'm not embarrassed. It's working. Yeah, I know. I'm I just think it'd help us. Like I think I think I would want that if I was giving it to a podcast. Let me this is funny. Let me tell you how I found out about market beat. I was reading Starter Story. I like that website Starter Story. And one of the questions is what books and podcasts do you read? And he said On the podcast front, I really enjoyed listening to My First Million, which breaks down unique unique ways that business owners are using

Uh unique ways business owners are generating massive profits. That's how I found out about about this guy is because he said he listens to us as his only podcast. Oh nice. Uh, that's great. Uh who told you that they're listening? Uh I don't want to say their name, but

Uh you know. Someone cool. That's cool. That's always funny when people listen. Dude, I was with my dad when I took I took my parents to Europe. And I brought my parents to this conference and my parents are like you know, in their sixties from Missouri and they were walking around this conference and they were like

Oh we love swag. They call it swag. I think it's like I think it it's supposed to be swag. They go, We love swag, which means free stuff. And they're like, Oh, let's go to this company and get this. And it's like some like European sales marketing company. I'm like You know, dad, like no one gives a shit about like, you know, sales.io. Like I don't know what they do. Yeah, yeah, and he was like He's like, Oh, let's go talk to him. I'm like, dude, I don't like you don't even know what that means. I can tell you what it go, what do they do? I'm like

I can use the words to explain it, but you won't understand. And so he's Well let's go get some swag. They're giving away like free Uh bouncy ball. But it's And he's like Let's go get a ball. We're gonna pick it back for for the kids. Their grandkids. They go, Let's go uh like oh they have envelope openers. Like let's go get one for the kids. Oh, they got candy. I have like

Mom, this is a snickers. Like you could. This is awesome, dude. He's just gonna give it to you in the hotel. He's like, hey kid, I got you this bouncing ball. And you're gonna be like, sweet. Well, and they're bringing like they're bringing like kinder chocolate. You know like kinder like the eggs. I'm like, you guys realize that you can get that at 7 Eleven down the street from your house. Like this isn't special. And they're just grabbing all this stuff. And they brought an empty suitcase'cause they knew they were gonna find swag and just a pile and so like I come home I come home and my four year old nep nephew is like Wearing a t shirt that says like, Hi, we're here to help with customer solutions. Like it is And it's like and the kids are bragging that they got that from Europe. Like, oh my god. Anyway. Yeah, it's European. It's European fashion. Yeah. They're like, what's this brand Gideon? Uh it's just yeah, they're just like crazy. And then they're at this conference And they're like

They're talking to people and they go to people I hear Like I would it was hard for me to stand next to him and I hear him talking to people, they go Hey. Do you like podcasts? Do you like podcasts?

D do you love podcasts? Uh and the guy like Yeah, you know I listen it goes. But they're like Calls up and he goes, Sam, he says he listens to eight podcasts. I'll tell him to listen to yours. What's the name of it again?

And I'm like Uh dad, like how do you know you don't know the you don't know the name. It's call it's called my first one he goes Oh, okay, I'll tell him, Hey, so it's called my first million and then I'll come back goes, Hey, I got you another listener. I made him click subscribe. And he's just going up to people saying like You like podcasts?

Oh great, I got you I'll get you I'm gonna get a heavy subscribe and he and he doesn't know the name of the podcast. Every single time he goes, What's it called? Million dollar podcast? Uh he's like I listen to it all the time, it's my favorite, but what's it called again? My mom does the same thing, dude. She clicks every ad in my newsletter. She's like, I clicked your ads today to help you. I'm like Mom I don't know I don't think that it's not gonna count. It's not gonna do anything. She's like, No no no you said you get paid if they click, right? I'm like, well kind of. You know, you gotta like go buy the thing.

And then she's like, Oh, I'm not gonna buy it I'm like, Yeah, you also don't need to click it. In fact You don't even need to read it. I don't think you're very interested in this subject. That's hilarious. That is so funny. Oh God, it's so funny. You should have seen them walking around just like putting around this conference, like saying like, Oh, Sammy, come look at let's look at this booth. And it's just I don't even know what it is. Like I don't even know what it is. You know what I mean? And it's like procurement. And I'm like, I don't I don't even know what that means, Dad. Neither do you. You definitely don't know what that means. Dude, that's so funny. You said procurement. So so Romine who runs like I uh he's my basic my partner in my fund.

And Romine's got this company that's like a kind of like an old school but baller company in uh based out of like um Georgia, right? Yeah, so he lives in Georgia. Um, so he's like in the tech scene, but he kinda lives in Georgia and runs kind of like a bit of an old school, more more service based company. that like I think h his wife's dad or something started and he like took it over and like grew it a bunch and So I think the business does like fifty million a year or something like that. It's like a sizable business. And so I'm

I've asked him, I think no less than fifteen times. Like so yo, yo, so what does your business do again? And be like yeah, we do procurement. For uh for S and Bs and for whatever enterprise companies. And like

Like you get office supplies? I like you go wrap my head around what procurement is and he's like He's like, You know what the word procurement means, right? And I'm like, Yeah, he's like, So it's that and I'm like But see, I guess I don't know what the word means then because I still don't know that like like does d does anybody use staples anymore? I don't know. And it's like he's like he's like it's not office supplies. It's like you know, you need a vendor for something. But I was like So then why wouldn't you just Google and get the vendor? He's like, Yeah, but like bigger companies, they just do it differently. They need like This middle man who's gonna basically like help them get the things that they need.

And I'm like you're telling me for that? It's like. Is it like someone who just like Yeah, it's on the offenders. I think I still fucking don't know, dude. I'm on explanation number seventeen. In fact

I just feel bad now every time I I ask him or I try to tell somebody else what he does'cause I'm like, I I clearly don't know. It's almost like I You know, like there's like a spot in my brain where there's just like If you did a a scan, it would just be like oh there's some dark cloud here. Like yeah, that's the part of my brain that's trying to understand procurement and it's just never happening. It's just like a a fuzzy region.

So I've got a story related to this. So uh two days ago, Saturday night, I went out to dinner at at like the fan a fancy place in St. Louis and we get to dinner and my dad goes Or I or uh yeah, my dad goes, Hey, the the president of Nascar. I I guess NASCAR like performed or race or you call it yesterday, Sunday in Saint Louis. And he goes, My dad likes NASCAR. He goes That's the president.

Uh of NASCAR, like Jim Nance or I don't forget his name. And uh commentator. Yeah, the football I think it it was Nance, something not Jim Nance. Yeah, not Jim Nance. And uh He uh and I was like, Oh yeah, you know, he's sitting with this guy named David Stewart. He's like the second richest black man in the world. And that's like and it's like it's pretty funny. I'm like I knew exactly who that rich guy was'cause he's he's worth like four or five billion dollars and I and I start researching him and I was like, Yeah, I've seen that guy before, I've seen him on articles'cause he's like the Second or third richest black man and he's from St. Louis. He's like the richest guy in St. Louis. And he's got this company called Worldwide Systems. You've never heard of that, have you? No. It does

Uh fourteen billion dollars a year. Uh and it's like the fourth or eighth, like in the top ten. largest privately held companies in the world and him and his partner just own own the whole thing outright. And what they do is they're a systems integrator. And that's one of those words like procurement. I heard that and I'm like What does that mean? And so I went on this deep dive. I'm like, I gotta figure out exactly what they do.

I I c I don't understand this. And then like it it says they're a Cisco systems integrator and I went to Cisco's website and I'm like Cisco Yeah, I'm like I they're like networking hardware networking or like networking hardware and I've like read those words and I'm like the website would just be like networking redefined. And you're like I didn't I didn't know the first definition. Now it's really Yeah, but we I didn't know we had to change that definition. And then like they talk about like switches and stuff and I'm like I don't know what like a switch is. I guess it has to do electronics. Like I just I didn't have I have any idea what this stuff did. Uh and but I Google it and like uh I know that Cisco's like one of the largest companies in the world, but I'm just I like I don't know what it is and so I had a research it it took me forever to figure out what a systems integrator is. Do you know what it is? Dude, no, I don't know any

I don't know what that I don't know what SAP does. I've been on a mission also down to one SAP desk for a long ass time. And they're European though. They got a different word for everything. We'd never be able to figure that out. I feel like sometimes I'm watching TV and it'll just pop up SAP and I think it means like closed captioning or Spanish or something like that. I'm like, oh, this is different. Now I'm super confused about SAP. Yeah, but I don't even know why they named their company after their stock ticker, I'm kinda weird. But um They uh so so a systems integrated basically so what my father in law does for a living is if you're like

Chase and you've got a hundred employees working on floor eighteen. And you're like, Hey, we gotta move these hundred employees up to floor forty three in the same building. He studies it for a few weeks. And then You go to home for work on Friday and you come back on the floor at forty seven and you sit down at your desk that's already set up and everything just works.

There's no downtime. And I think system integrators kinda do that, but like If you're a twenty billion dollar company and you're selling like a three billion dollar division to this other thing. Like they have to go to work one day and like all their computers are new or like this new setup exists, or if you're like a h a hospital and you're like, we need an app. It's like, well, it's not as simple as just like check it into your lobby and saying you're there. Like we gotta like integrate all this crap into it.

And I think that's what they do. But I don't know why they don't just call it like an agency. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, I I don't know either. But I I do know, like, you know, I guess like jokes aside, you know, there's basically things that are like uh Like you know, Net Suite. Net Suite's another one of these where you're like, I don't know what what is Net Suite? Is that like QuickBooks, but different? It's basically like um

Uh I mean, I'll butcher the thing, but like I mean, people use it for like inventory management, for example. So it's basically like a database. That's like usable for um Like it's usable in a couple of different ways. It tells you what you got. It tells you what's like running out. It tells you Um what you need. It'll tell you kind of like

It'll help generate a purchase order. It'll do things like that. Um, by the way, if you go to NetSuite's website, I just went to it, it says complete procure to pay purchasing. Oh no. Procurement. It has to do with this too. But basically there's there's entire companies. I think this is what um you know, like the P word. What Deloitte and other other consulting companies do a lot of, which is basically they teach your company like

These cu these businesses, there are these programs are so uh unintuitive that there's entire consulting businesses that generate billions of dollars a year. That just t go to a company like, oh, um like right here on their website, Love Sack uses them. So it's like You go to Lovesack, you're like, great, you guys sell giant beanbags, huh? Like yeah, like

You know those things are getting a little out of hands, get a little willy nilly now that it's growing so much. Yeah, it is. Sure is. Don't you wish there was just a way to have everything organized in one place in a system that just all talk to each other and every one of your employees can log in and interface with it? They're like, That sounds pretty good. So I sh I just go set it up on my own. I just go to the website and they're like no no We do that for you. It takes twelve months and we will it we will add Net suite to your thing. We will add Oracle. We'll add these different services to your we will sh we will integrate them into your current business.

And we'll train your employees on how to actually use it. Is that what service revenue in a SaaS Line so if you go to like Atlassian and look at their annual report. There's a huge amount of services revenue. So do they charge an ad I don't know what the serv uh how they uh what what they bucket in services. I would have thought like, does that mean just the software?

But I I I think it's different for different companies, but at the same time, uh this is sort of like if you were like, Hey Sean You know, uh what does it mean to blanch a vegetable? I'd be like You know, I think it uses hot and cold water in some way. It's like you know, I I just don't know, right? Like if you're asking me about like what are these like giant enterprise companies that are like B to B service slash software companies like uh these are like again.

I don't know the first thing about the first thing about the the craziest thing to me is when I think about these is to understand how someone came up with this idea. So for example Uh, there's Octa. Do you know Octa? That's what we use for like logging into like websites and shit like that. Or there's um what's that one Snowflake? You know Snowflake? Yeah, like a data way. So I like those are all companies that are founded relatively recently, like in the two thousand five, two thousand fifteen era. And I'm like, how did a person know that this was a problem and had to get built?

You know what I mean? Well you're just working in a big company, right? Like okay, so for example Um We were talking uh the other day about uh what what is it called? The um like we have chimp for companies. Yeah, exactly. Uh what was the name of it again? I f I can't remember the name off the top of my head. I I just committed to invest into it. But um But basically when we ran a company or like you ran a um uh you know, like an email based company

And so if I asked you, you know, like What does convert kit do? You're like if very well versed on like what convert kit does because you're like, well, like here's a scenario. You get a bunch of people come to your website, but you you know, you want to grab their email because you're gonna be able to market to them later. So you so convert kit lets you put up a little web page, it grabs their email. And then once you have it, you want to be able to like

Tag them or segment them based on like if they've paid for your thing or if they're free. And then like wouldn't it be cool instead of like waking up every day and like Writing the same email over and over again, you could like automate a a a sequence of emails. One that goes out on day one, one goes out on day three, one goes out on day ten. And it's like You saw a problem in your business and therefore

You know, you kind of understand what the solutions are and you can even create them. Well there's another one that's like Uh like you know, that this is basically what happens when you're When you work inside of a large company, you're like, Oh man There needs to be a solution for X. You just see a problem and you're like, there needs to be a solution for X, if you understand that context, because it's like

But Like we spent Basically fifteen years just starting companies from scratch. You started media companies. I started more like Software social networking type companies. Um

And we've done content a bunch, so we can tell you all about content, like We just don't have that s r that same frame of reference to that like somebody who's been like You know, somebody who's uses Salesforce every single day for like Ten years, then they understand why you need this like Salesforce add on, which app All the time I'm like.

Damn, I wish I knew how to do this stuff that people charge a million dollars a year in subscription revenue. I'm like Damn, I just gotta talk to some stupid freaking guy about starting a newsletter give the same spiel constantly. I don't want to talk about how to get a your first thousand subscribers on Substack. You know, I'd rather get paid like a million dollars a year to do X, Y, and Z and you know, get a hundred thousand customers. Yeah, I mean yeah, exactly. And this is why like when I was at Twitch when we got acquired, I had like

I had wrote down, I'm gonna walk out of here. With like ten ideas. And I I use that import export framework, which is like What are five ideas? that Twitch would import a solution for. Like we need something when a country needs something, they import it. They're like, The US needs oil, we import it from uh whatever, uh Iraq or whatever Afghanistan, wherever it needs to come from.

Um Saudi Arabia. And so Uh in the same way companies have these pain points and you're like when you're sitting there and you're like Oh damn, if somebody had us If somebody had a magic way to do this, We would pay.

hundred thousand dollars a month for this. You know, we would pay X dollars for this. Like for example, when I was there Uh I I talked about this idea way back in the day, but like all hands. It's like At our company, you know, if I needed to say something to the whole company as a startup, I would just like Literally if I can stand up at my desk and be like, hey, hey, yo, headphones.

Um We're doing this now. The company we pivoted to this, okay? Good. Uh or like you know, we're at we'd be at lunch and I'd just like stand up and say something. Um but like at a at a company like Twist, two thousand people You know, there was like this organized every Thursday. There's an all hands. It happens at lunch. They do it at lunch because that's where they've like a captive audience of people that will actually sit there and pay attention because they're eating.

And like And they would do the thing and it had like a presentation and there was like a whole there's like a conductor of the whole ceremony and then there's like a QA and they needed like this question and answer thing, then they needed to stream it to remote employees. There's like all these things they had to think about. And we were just stitching together like These four different tools. It's like we use this for the Q and A, we use this for streaming, we use this for the presentation, we use this for new employees, whatever. And I was like

Oh, if somebody just made like a really good Like uh all hands software I'm pretty sure you could get a company like Twitch to pay like twenty five to fifty thousand dollars a year. Uh for your software.

And it would need to be secure. It would need to be, you know. Easy to stream on your phone, it would need to have the Q and A integrated, like et cetera, et cetera. And um I believe that to be true and like I could go validate that, but I could have just gone and talked to like, you know, the head of the all in the uh the all hands thing and be like, hey If this existed, would you buy this?

And like I saw that problem because I was there. Before that I didn't even see that problem. Yeah, and we had talked about it. It was like a High school newspaper, but for your company. Yeah, and w by the way, Workshop is the name of it it came to be now.

So use workshop.com. So it's pretty sick. We've talked about this this before, which is In inside like we all have like MailChimp or you have like Send grid. You have a ton of different services to send mass ema marketing emails. to customers.

But like there's actually internal marketing too that happens all the time. Like a company is like a small, like, you know tribe and like you constantly need like information and sort of propaganda from the top. That needs to get to your employees and whether it's like, Hey, remember this Friday we're doing casual Friday, like, you know, whatever. Don't wear underwear this Friday, but you have to like get some message across about like what's going on. Or it's like Hey, uh we had these wins in the company, like

Congrats to this team for launching this safety feature that saved us whatever. Um And so what Views Workshop does is basically creates like a little MailChimp for inside your company. So let you do list.

But did they launch this because of our podcast or were they already? No, I think they were already working on it, uh and we just got connected from We got connected when they were um They're they were doing somebody pointed it out to me. They're like, Hey, these guys are doing almost exactly what you're talking about. I reached out and they're like, And the guy was awesome. He's like, Yeah, we had this past company that was successful. We kind of like Yeah, like this is our second Mary Go round. We got the team back together to do this.

And then it's like it's working. Hey, we just signed this client, this client, this client, big name, big name, big name. They showed me the chart of revenue and I was like, Oh, this is like so spot on. Like I I really think that too that a tool like this is gonna exist and it's gonna work. Yeah, this is sick. And like the design is just really good. Like if you go to the design of the page, it's like

Just like Clearly these people are good at like they're good at simple products. And that's kind of all you need to do to be able to build something like this. It's like nice, clean, simple. Easy to use. And they have the use cases. So for employee engagement.

Right, a change of management, company alignment. Hybrid work, mergers and acquisitions, internal marketing. It's pretty sick. Uh measuring performance. Yeah, this is awesome. And like you know, you send these emails out normally in your company, you don't have the open rate, you don't have the open tracking, you don't know who's actually engaged and who's not in your Company emails. You don't know how w you you can't test a subject line difference and be like oh This one got way more people to respond to the engagement survey or whatever we we sent out.

And so it lets the internal comms team Like do their job better. They didn't really have a tool before this. I can find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadshearts or dueling databases. HubSpot, grow better. Are you angel investing actively right now?

Yeah. You you stopped, right? Or you like take a break? I I well I've taken a break because A the markets and B Because um I'm working on this. I got my I I could talk about a little bit, but I got like twenty customers for already for my new project. Oh, nice. Okay, let's talk about that second. Let's do the angel investing thing first, though. So

I heard something interesting. Like my initial reaction was to do what you're doing, which was like uh I don't know, the world's crazy. I lost a bunch of money. The ever uh everywhere I look, prices are going down, like you know, stocks are going down, crypto's going down, everything's going down. Um Maybe I should just bunker down for the season and just like, you know, chill out a little bit with investing in these like high risk illiquid startups. But at the same time, um then I heard somebody say something. I I think it was um

Somebody on All in on the podcast, the one of their guests, he had said something he was like He's like, actually they're like, Are you slowing down? And he was like, No, this is the time to speed up. He goes You know, the last few years I was like getting pretty worried and I thought like maybe it's time to slow down because Valuations were getting really high. There's just e everybody was there's too much c capital flowing around, everybody's throwing money at everything.

It's really h you know. When you would do a deal, it'd be like you wouldn't be able to get uh all the information you need. It's like, Hey dude, we're closing, like you're either in or you're out. You don't have time to do like certain level of diligence. He's like, I actually think that those like uh vintages of companies, right? Like you know, like a like a vintage of wine, like the nineteen eighty five Bordeaux was so good.

It's like basically that happens in startup investing too, where like certain vtages Turn out really good and certain are kind of dry. They don't have any big winners. If you look Basically, after every kind of like market crash or recession is like s those next three years are some of the best Vintages for startups. And so like this happened after the kind of two thousand, two thousand one crash.

And like the next vintage that came out was like had LinkedIn, had Facebook, had like a bunch of large companies. I agree with that, but like the valuations maybe it could have changed it's like feels like it's changing week by week. But like two weeks ago when I was looking at a few deals, the valuations were still quite high. Yeah, I I I I think they are coming down and they're coming down week by week. You're you're absolutely right. And I Yeah, you you could be disciplined on that where you're just like, Oh, you haven't gotten the memo. That like You know, what used to be fifty million is now twenty two million and what used to be

Twenty million is now eight. Like you you need to get that memo and some people just haven't got that memo yet. But like a lot of I'm I'm I'm waiting like that amount, like just a few more weeks, maybe, until So that that's what when I say wait, that's what I mean because we were talking to people and they weren't budging and I was like well, all right, we'll wait. And now I'm getting emails from some like portfolio companies and they're like you could see their cash balance and how much money they have left and it's like Damn, man, I think there actually might be like a lot of things going out of business in six months. I I I think there absolutely will be. I mean I've getting a ton of

Hey, we'll just raise this extra money. Like a lot of smart founders basically are are like taking the bag while it's available. Uh, just to give themselves a buffer'cause like who knows how much worse it's gonna get. And um But the value start coming down. So I actually think that like this This year, next year.

The next basically two or two and a half years are gonna be like kind of an awesome vintage of startups to be investing in because you're getting all the you know, like none of the big trends have changed. Like the world's just getting more tech enabled if tech is just going into more and more industries. Size of the price is getting bigger. There's more and more people coming online. machine learning and all that stuff's making stuff better. Like all that's still true. It's just that the prices got cut in half. And so it's like oh good. I'm I'm I'm on board. I'm just like wait, I just think that like there's there's so far been like this two, three week period where it's like

There's a discrepancy. I'll get fixed I think in like two, three, four, five, six weeks. Yeah. You know, I I think that's gonna happen pretty pretty soon. Should we talk about your uh Your thing? Now you wanna do a devoted uh we could throw we could yeah, I don't wanna do a devoted thing because I'm not gonna announce what it is entirely yet.

So but we can kinda talk about it. But basically, uh like I'm kinda going back to my roots. I'm Launching this new thing. I'm not even saying I'm launching it. I'm more so like uh launching uh enough of it to prove or disapprove if it's a good idea. Okay. And I've gotten Mm like

Uh, I forget exactly like tens of thousands in revenue. In the first two weeks. Amazing. And um And I didn't tweet about it once. So so tell me this. Tell me uh what

Are you doing differently this time around than you did So last time you started this rodeo was maybe six years ago, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And so now with you did the whole hustle chapter, do you get acquired, you go to Hub Spot, you see a bunch of things, you meet a bunch of people, you get smarter, wiser, all that stuff. You got some hair on your chest now, and so it's like what's What did you decide like all right, this time I'm doing these things differently? Or was it on?

Early on I was like against outsourcing or hiring anyone overseas or hiring like cheap labor or hourly labor and I was like no I wanna create jobs and I wanna like do salary position with benefits And now I'm not doing that. Eventually maybe we'll add some people like that, but now it's like just how do I automate this? And how do I like get someone overseas just to do this like a machine and I just don't really care if I don't have any employees and I wanna and I I'd prefer being alone. So that's the big difference. The second difference is well The s the same similarity is I'm doing it all by hand. And this is totally the right move. And I stand by that. So before I wrote everything, I sold the first ads. I did it all. This time I'm doing the same thing. So I'm literally doing the cold emailing. I'm getting them on the phone. I'm doing the sales. I'm listening to them. I'm doing that constantly. And getting those reps in is actually really impactful. And you could actually like see

Uh what's happening. But I by the way, I got that revenue. Uh zero percent of the revenue has come through our website. It's all been from cold email emailing people on LinkedIn and getting them on the phone and then just sh sending them a Stripe account. Amazing. What um What else? What else is different about your mindset? I bet there's more.

Way more confident for sure. Um, there is still a sense of urgency. Uh so like wanting to move fast and like I have to get this done. I have to do this. But more so like Um

I have to get this done, but also remember, like I may do this for like twenty years. Right. So like having this longer term, this longer horizon. What I learned with my business, we sold around year five, and the truth is most the value created between year five and year six was more probably than the value of zero to five. Combined.

Right. And I was I wasn't impatient because I'm happy I did what I did'cause it unlocked a lot for my life. But had I not I said this a bunch of times, if I was already wealthy, I would never have sold because Real value seems like it comes like No, I've only experienced a a business from like around year five, but it seems like

Maybe there's something that happens year five, year six, where values created. And then who knows? Maybe someone who's owned a company for years is like, Man, twenty and thirty is when like shit magic really happened. So I don't know. But I I do think like year five, if you bootstrap is around the time where you're like, all right, I recruited some actually good people. I've got people doing helping and everything, but like I don't know. Do you agree with like year five, year six, year seven is where some crazy stuff happens? I think it's just I think it's just generally true, right? Like you you plant seeds. And they you water them and you water them and you're looking at them and you're trying not to just go dig up the dirt and be like, Why the fuck aren't you growing?

But like at some point those things do start to grow. Like We're seeing this with our e commerce business too, which was Um Uh my buddy had told me this, he goes. Because there's this magic moment in e commerce where you've

You've brute forced enough of the like building your brand and getting cut getting new people to try you. Where every month you're returning customers Just come back because they love your product. And you don't have to remarket you don't have to spend money remarketing time. And then the bro business goes from like this giant cash suck.

Two this giant cash cow. If you do it right. And um and I was and we just started to hit a tipping point like that where you could say and it's not every month. But there's some months where I'm like, Whoa, what just happened? And it's like Oh yeah, that's

That's what's happening. Like We actually just last year we brute forced and got a bunch of people to love our product. And then they came back and bought and this like a bunch of them came back and bought this month to where it outweighed all of the new investments that we're making. Like, wow, that's nice. Or like at Twitch we were always doing these like Planning exercises about like

You know These profitability targets. Um, I can't say too much, but like basically profitability targets. And I think Emmet had said something. He was like, Yeah, we from the like he's like pretty early on we modeled it out. And it was like It's gonna take like

Ten years probably and This and he said a a huge number. He's like X billion in revenue for us to, you know, break even. And I was like that's just a crazy idea that it's like We need to get to X billion in revenue for this to be profitable.

Um And like the but it di like that's exact you know, that's the that's what actually how it was playing out. Yeah. Whoa, like I hadn't even really Like Amazon, I think, had a sort of s had a semi similar story. Amazon, I think for fifteen years or something like that was like

Unprofitable on a on the whole. But the difference in Amazon was like the individual divisions were getting very profitable after like a repeatable like a reliable, like I don't know, let's call it four year cycles like Books. Got super profitable. But by the time books was getting profitable, they were investing heavily in CDs and music and these other things. And so then the the total always looked unprofitable. But they knew internally.

This is just a clock that goes, you know, every X it's gonna take four years or whatever it is. For this unit to get profitable. And once they're all profitable, this thing's gonna be like unbelievable, which is where it's at now. Trusting that process is really hard, particularly for first time entrepreneurs with Bezos and Emmett or I guess You know, after like ten years, it's like well I'm not exactly a first time founder anymore, but you know what I mean. Well I'll say the way I'm saying the Twitch one right now sounds a bit like a master plan, like uh

I'm I could see this coming and I'll Oh, whatever. It's like no, it was more like Uh oh shit, we got users. Oh fuck, the costs are really high. What if we raise money? Okay, what are we gonna tell these guys? What are we gonna tell these investors or how they're gonna get their money back? Uh, maybe this business model will work and maybe on this timeline. And then like we update that information every two years and like

I think you'll I think Twitch had like a thing where it's like, we're gonna be profitable in three years, and they've been saying that for the last six, you know, like that's just like been a thing, and that but that's very common actually for businesses. Yeah, like entrepreneurs generally pretty optimistic. Elon's been saying self driving cars will come out this year for four years. Like You know, it it's like entrepreneurs are are usually right about the the actual assessment and they're wrong about the timeline, all right.

Somebody somebody gave me this great phr phrase they go. Uh don't confuse a clear view for a short distance. It's like imagine you're driving, you see something c so clearly, but it's like it looks like it's just Right there, right just uh right around the corner. And like actually that corner is like a ten year Odyssey that felt like oh it's gotta be just two or three years away.

The last big thing that's different between now and then you know, having some experience versus no experience is the ability to say no and be like, Oh, well, you're saying you don't want this product, therefore I guess I should change it. It's like oh okay, well that's okay if you don't want it. You're actually not who we're going for. I I I so you you you didn't You didn't my takeaway from this is not you uh that the my product is not good and people don't want it. It's just that I just ta I I now I know I shouldn't target people like you, and instead I should only target people like this other person.

Right. And that's like the the m a huge thing where it's like The vision is that we are going to be this for this people. Eventually maybe it can expand beyond that, but for a while this is what we are and this is who we are for. And if you don't talk to people who you think you are for, then it's okay. That's just you that's they're not the right target market. Um And I just targeted that customer poorly, but you should only like, you know, be one thing.

for one type of person and you go deep on that. And I'll oftentimes people will be like But that's not that big. But A, sometimes it is that big. Uh and B it's like It that's okay. You just gotta like uh get that initial traction and then more opportunity spots itself, but you have to be this one thing for this one person and ignore everyone else.

So my sister has a business. I don't know, have I told you about her like cloud kids thing? Well, I know she's a uh babysitter's a little that's not uh actually accurate, but like daycare, right? It was well, so it was I guess it was kinda like an in home daycare that became like a preschool, it became like a outdoor preschool. Whatever, it kind of evolved. Yeah, by the way, sorry, I didn't mean to call that babysitting. She would have punched me in the face and and I knew that wasn't the right I knew it wasn't babysitting. I was like I call that I was about to say daycare. So y yeah, it's okay. So

But uh during Covid she pivoted to like an online thing. Like a lot of businesses went from like, Oh shit Brick and mortar is really hard right now'cause they're like, you know, every month the government is changing the rules on what we can and if we can and can't operate our business. So she created this thing called Cloud Kids. So if you go to Cloud Kids with a Z

Uh I think it's preschool.com. Let me see if that's it. Um Yeah, Cloud Kids with a Z preschool.com. So go to that website real quick and just look at this. Um I actually think she's done a pretty good job with clouds kids.

Cloud Kids, what? Cloud Kid I'll just put the link here. Cloud Kids with a Z preschool.com. So check this out. So Um this is like Helping her with this has been pretty fun because

She like she built this in like wicks. I'm like, oh Wix. Who's using Wix? And then and I I was like Alright, you need to add like change the headline. You need to add like a video. The video needs to be not like a full on video, like Just make it look like a teacher teaching something like Oh, dude this looks amazing. Exactly. So now it's really good. It used to be like Um you know.

Get info. Now it's like Free trial, right? Like just optimizing the landing page with her, like Headline, subheadline, button, hero image, uh You know, reasons to reasons to buy, all that stuff. Like and then she's like working with people in like Fiverr and upwork to like do these designs. It's like It's actually turned out pretty good. And so

She created this thing, which is basically like Um, these small group classes like let's say you have your kid at home. Uh either because they're just Like my my like my daughter, she's too young to go to school right now. Like we don't wanna send her to full time preschool. But like

We wanted to like learn something every day and it's like kinda takes a shit ton of energy to sit there and be like The engaging patient parent and like keep your kids attention and be like I'll teach you like how to write the letter W today like But like With this, I'm like I sit her down in front of the computer, I get the materials in front of her with the paper paper and crayon.

And like the teacher is like so good. They'll be like, all right, you know, like hi, hi five, let's sing our welcome song. And then they like do all the things. And so for one hour She gets it's like screen time without the guilt. It's like the the She gets engaged like it's cartoons. But it's not cartoons'cause she's actually like learning stuff and getting better. And so she created this service and it's like I was like, dude, this is actually a pretty qu good product.

And she um she's hired these teachers and the teachers are like Uh like in Florida, different places like that. So So then she was she calls me, she's like, Oh, I'm just like struggling so much with the growth. And so I like

I was like, All right, well like tell me what like she's like I just it's not working. And then what were the numbers? And so she gives me the numbers and she's basically like, I was like, Okay, so let's draw the funnel. And she's like, What's a funnel? And I'm like, all right, just imagine like at the top, you know. You're getting leads like people who come to your website and then some of them give you your email, some of them sign for free trial, some of them actually show up and then some of them become a fully paid customer. So we drew that funnel out as like. Oh, actually this conversion rate's kind of awesome. I was like, why do you and then and those like, so what's your cost per lead? Is that really high? It's like, no, it's like not high at all. And this is with like, you know, this like fifty dollar a day, hundred dollar a day ad budget. Like and she's just like, I don't even know how to do Facebook ads. I just put in like, you know, a hundred and I just wanted to see what would happen. And like

I was like, wow, this is actually like this business is kind of amazing. So you pay back your customer in less than a month. She's like I don't know, if you say so I'm like yeah, like that's what your numbers say. You basically pay back before your Ads bill is even due. That's like the The ultimate

Like thing you want with ads driven business is like To p to get the revenue from a customer profitably before you even pay your credit card bill. And and to give the listener uh context, so it Prices range from forty dollars a week. So you could

All right, all right, I understand. So you can get classes one day, two day, three day, four day a week. They it all ranges from like A hundred and sixty dollars a month to four hundred dollars a month. And you get it's basically it's uh the the tagline is actually quite good. It uh Although the website needs a little work. Like I clicked on the FAQs and it goes to privacy policy. Uh but that's all right.

Live online preschool classes. The number one live preschool program from home. We per this is a beautiful line. We provide the curriculum, teachers, and friends. Right. It's a that that's great. And then uh there's a video who is this like this woman who works for her? You don't have a white sister. Yeah, yes, one of my sisters. And uh It is great. I'm all about this. This is beautiful. By the way, the art is actually really good. Yeah I think it's a great It's pretty good, right? So so this and so then well the the reason I bring this up is is because

You were talking about handling a no, handling an objection. And what I learned when I was like d diving in, I was like Your funnel is not broken. Your website is good. Your services, your retention is amazing.

Um I was like, even your ad like Roas, your payback period is also amazing. So I was like, what are you talking about? This thing's Well I mean like I talk to like you know so many people they all just you know they don't come back.

For the from the free trial. I'm like But you're converting twenty percent or something like that to from free to paid. That's like best on the internet. She's like, Yeah, but like I talked to eight moms that were like, you know, we can't do it for this or this reason. And I was like, Yeah, but eight out of ten is eight out of ten knows That means two out of ten yeses, that's a twenty percent conversion. That's again Amazing. And the numbers back out where this business is like

An awesome business. And I think the s what happened was the psychologie. 'Cause I I told her I was like, hey, if you want to close more people Call everybody who just did your free trial and see if they'll convert to paid and be like, Hey, I'm I'm the owner of the school. How did you like it?

Uh so glad, you know, I sa I saw I dropped in on the class. I saw she was doing great. Um like Do you think you want to continue and like do you want to do more classes? Um and like oh payments a problem like we can help you with a payment plan'cause a lot of the people who are doing this, they're like Detroit, inner city, like there's a lot of people that are basically like

I can't pay for full time caretaking. I can't pay for even full school. Uh or like in Detroit, for example. So what what I learned through this was in Detroit, the public schools are full. So you just can't send your kid. Can you believe that?

So these people are like six years old and they're like Yeah, the school's full and I can't afford private school. Like, I've never heard public school can be full. And like that's what's going on in Detroit right now. Is this Is this is your sister's just like Move over Sean. There's a new there's a new big swinged D in the house. Well the funny thing is she's she's got a better product in business than I have in any of my businesses in terms of all the core metrics are

stronger than all of mine. The product offering, the retention, stronger than anything. The problem is uh not a problem, actually. She doesn't want to like She's not trying to do world domination. She's like, No, this would be great if we got to like fifty students.

And like, well then you'll want a hundred, right? She's like, No, because that'll be way more work. Like I have fifty, I already have these great teachers. I can handle fifty. I just want to fill up my occupancy. And like she truly is like well because when I do that and then I can go work out in the middle of the day and like I just want my lifestyle, I can go to my daughter's thing. No, Sean, you know she has something that you'll never Oh no. Oh no, the E enough. Yeah, she does she does. My uh I I went through I went with my mother in law she's like, Hey Sam, can I drive you to the airport? I was like, Why? She goes, Well, it's two hours to get there and I need you to explain to me how online commerce works because I wanna start a store. This was two or three years ago and I like did the rare and I told how to use the store. Now she's got a business doing like half a million a year.

And I was like, So why don't you scale this? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? You could be like I'm always like you could be like the black Martha Stewart, like crush this. And she's like, But I like taking Tuesdays and Thursdays off. And I was like Oh. Right. Well. But if you made more then you could take two's as a thirds and I'll show you like I could do that right now. Right. So yeah, it's the same exact thing that I'm like but but but

But but and just to finish the point on the the rejection thing. What I learned was when she called people and eight people in a row said no, it was like completely demoralizing to her, and she started to question everything. It's like Am I going after the wrong market? Do I have the wrong product? Am I have am I price too high? Am I this? Am I that? And I think it's really important to be able to back out numbers. I've seen the same mistake on fundraising all the time. So it sounds kinda silly when it's like, Oh, my sister's little preschool

Oh yeah, she has twenty percent conversion rate, obviously that's good. Um, like even if it was ten percent, it would still be great. Like it still work. Um Like, Oh, that's so silly, you know, she got demoralized by by hearing, you know, eight nose in a row, you know, on a on a Monday morning. And um or or not even hearing those, just not hearing back from people.

I'm like Yeah, yeah, but then I talk to founders and they're like, Dude, raising money so hard, I need to Change this, change that. Can you help me with my pitch? I'm like How many investors did you pitch to? And they're like We yeah, we talked to like you know these four last week. I'm like four?

And I'm like, you know, this is a numbers game. This is a sales funnel. And you need you you are selling your uh equity in your business in exchange for money. And like Like you' what you're doing is you're getting highly emotional and you're taking it highly personal That somebody doesn't want to fund your business. And like in reality, yes, you should be learning from like how to pitch better. And like you may maybe maybe in the end you will strike out, but you don't even know that yet. You haven't hit enough people.

Dude, what what a lot of people realize is that like one to three percent conversion rate is like normal, which kinda means that like Maybe you'll go oh for twenty nine and on the thirtieth one you get a one. And that's like boom, you know, you're now you're one for three, or you're uh you're you're uh that's a three percent conversion rate. You're good. Yeah. Or maybe on your ninety ninth one, the tenth one, boom, one percent out of a hundred. That's good. That's why I always joke with Ben. I'm like Mormons are probably the best salespeople because C convincing someone to join a religion has like the lowest conversion rate ever. And then you hear that like you could sell Salesforce and it has a two percent conversion rate and you're like Piece of cake. Confishing a pearl. Man, how many

Like I I I don't know like if that's actually what you did where you tried to get people to like quit whatever religion they were in and join your crew. But how many people do you think who were like either atheists or in another team Yeah, cool. I'll I'll join your thing. How many people what what's your what was your percentage rate? Uh so let's see. I have Did you convert anyone?

Yeah, I converted uh low thirties, uh I'd have to look. It was like thirty two people on my mission, so that was two years. And um Oh man, how many doors do I think I knocked on in in that time? Uh I mean it was it was a couple hundred thousand? Uh it was hundreds of doors a day. Across two every every single day for two years, right? So You knocked on a hundred doors a day.

Easily, easily a hundred doors a day. What country, we're doing some public math. This deserves it. Let's say Well yeah, while you do it, let me ask you a question. So I was in uh El Paso, Texas, but I was speaking Spanish. So if you did a hundred fifty doors a day, which you're saying easily. Uh his his estimate. Every single day, three hundred sixty five days, two years.

You knocked on a hundred and nine thousand. Doors. You d you did a hundred and nine thousand and you did thirty two at a hundred and nine. Uh so that's Point. Oh

Point oh two percent or point oh oh two percent, something like that. Some cr something that's like Yeah. Fraction. Fractions of a percent. Dude, how and how about the fact that your friends were all going to these cool places in Africa or South America and they sent you to El Paso. Yeah, but I mean you know

Yeah, my brother went to Prague, my sister went to Moscow. Uh But uh we had um what's his name Austin from uh Lambda School, which is now Bloom Tech. He was in Russia or something like that. He said he converted zero or one. He was like oh because we had asked what would be good? He's like Great. Yeah. For where I was. So that's that's the trade off you make is that like, yeah, my brother and sister were in much cooler places in Eastern Europe, but like Eastern Europe is hard, man. Like really hard.

But I thought like so I guess you're dealing with uh mostly Mexicans or some type of Hispanic. They they were they're willing to build. So you gotta realize though, El Paso is like a uh very transitory. A lot of people just got there from from Mexico. And so it's like, ah, well, I'm not really going to my church that I used to go to. Maybe I'm looking for something new. Like my life is already changing. I'm open to to something new. You know, Facebook has a similar feature, it's called recently moved, and those are great people to target. It's true. Recently moved his awesome group of people to Target because they're changing their life. Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you have like a weight loss thing. Um, Ben, can you give me the like speed version of what is the pitch? So you knock you literally physically knock on a door. I open up what happens.

Yeah. So uh essentially what we're taught to do uh is No, just like do it. In Spanish. Yeah, do it to me. Do it to me. You guys gotta you gotta bear with me. It's been uh okay, so I'm I'm Um, thirty fourteen. You do this a hundred thousand times. You know this like so uh You know, I'd say Hi, how are you? My name is Elder Wilson. This is I got my companion with me, this is Elder

Lopez uh Uh How are you today? You know, just whatever. Hi, good. I'm doing great. Nice to meet you. Uh gosh, how gosh. I'm sorry. Hold on. Let me think about what do you want. Okay, we'll give you a second one. That's what I'm trying to think of. How many times did people tell you to F off?

I I couldn't begin to tell you. I mean more often than not. Do they train you or you just sort of figure out how to sell this? You go to uh well so You got three weeks of training if you're speaking English. If you're learning a language. It depends on how difficult the language is. I got six weeks of training, I think. Do you carry mace? No.

Yeah. No weapon. No nothing in Like a whistle? You have a whistle? No, I I think maybe the the the women It might be up to their own discretion. Maybe they do some stuff like that. I have a friend who got stabbed. He was in Honduras. Uh Like a good buddy of mine got stabbed on this mission.

Um Yeah. I guess I can just put lethal and weapon there. Yeah. Um Yeah, it starts off with just like

Um Yeah, we're we're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, and y y you start off by asking them questions like Uh do you believe in God? Uh are you someone who who believes in God? Yeah. Oh uh you know like Well what do you believe about it? Do you go to a church? Oh yeah, I go to a church. And so you start with kind of relating to them about

Their faith and then you say. Well, you know, our message is that uh, you know, you said you believe in Jesus Christ, we also believe in Jesus Christ from the church of Jesus Christ to Latter Day Saints. And what we believe is that the same Christ, the same church that Christ established when he was on the earth two thousand years ago. was lost for a period of time. Um and and so no one had the complete truth.

But that it's been restored again that exact same church. And so that's why we're out here trying to To talk to people. If you knew that was true, that Christ's church was was back on the earth, the same one that he established. Is that something that would be interesting to you? Oh my gosh, this is awesome. Just a sales call. The wolf of of offering.

Dude, uh that's fascinating, man. I feel like by the way, you know Whoever runs the budget at the uh you know the Mormon church, me and Sam are available for consultation if you need some uh Some uh you know tips on how to brush up that that opening script. I think maybe the those first few lines maybe we could give you some other hooks. Maybe some other some other uh other ways in. Also, like have you seen the trends on TikTok where it's like a baby or something like running away and they overlay uh Audio that says Excuse me, ma'am, can I talk can I talk to you about the Lord Jesus? Can I talk to you about the Lord, ma'am? Have you been a church lately, ma'am? Can we where you going? Can w can we please talk? It's like always like something funny running away.

Uh, you guys should pounce on that, man. Would it be valid to do your mission through TikTok? Like if you were like I'm gonna make amazing TikTok videos that go viral and help spread our mission, like Could you do that? Is that like or it has to be door knocking? Um well no, so during Covid a lot of Um missions kind of went to social media, essentially. Um Now you gotta realize that like

Your mission is like a v it's a rite of passage, really. Like For two years when I was nineteen to twenty one years old. I Uh Didn't have any contact with my family except for I wrote them an email once a week.

And then I got to call home on Christmas and M and Mother's Day. That was it. So like completely separated from my past life. um like doing this extremely hard thing. En so during covid. Um missionaries did like start doing like social media missions'cause they couldn't go to people's doors and talk to them. But my impression was like

Man, that sounds like it sucks. Like you missed out on the right of passage. Like Yeah. I wouldn't want to do that for two years. Like that doesn't sound fun. Just exploring yourself, losing your virginity, going to parties, converting people. Uh no. This shit baby. Yeah, you're you're saying you you're saying it uh man, that sounds like it sucks. I wouldn't want to do that. And like when you describe like not seeing your family and like you know having to like Whatever you said, like you know, Doing.

Like if you're going to wash your knees every day or whatever. Like you want it to be hard. You want it to be like this, like life changing, difficult, crazy thing that you do with your life. Not like Sitting behind a computer for two years. That's the difference between Mormons and and Gentiles like us. Yeah, exactly. Dude, I spend my whole life avoiding hardship. Well, I would be in the military or like in a the Mormon church or whatever. Like if I if I really wanted to lean into like difficulty, I've I spent my life running away from difficulty. We we are not the same. Oh yeah, but you're not the same. Yeah. It is like a big cultural thing. I it's hard to explain how excited I was for this end of two years.

Oh my God. Well that's why uh your You know Are gonna be probably more successful than both of us. And happier was and happier. Yeah, emotion. I have a ton of respect for anybody who does that. I also have even more respect

For whoever was able to convince people to do this. I think that is like one of the the greatest, you know, like uh greatest like organizations that that's been created. Like with Such a strong pull. that its members would take such a like large, you know, uh movement in in like to to support it. Like

And they're obligated to convince ten other people to join. Yeah, I'm trying to get somebody to give me their email address for like two seconds and I'm like they have to give you ten percent of their income. They gotta give you ten percent of their income and go and recruit about fifty more people. It's the greatest thing. Two years of your life, ten percent of your income, all of your social capital And uh probably something else that I don't even know about. We can't pay taxes either,'cause we're giving it all away. It's the it's the sweetest deal in the world. It is.

It is a great deal. Ten percent is cheap on the on what you get in return. Oh wow. Amazing. And you have to believe it's the greatest deal in the world. Even better. Wow. I didn't even enjoy this, man. I've never seen I'm convinced now. You're like, Do you guys want more? So let me I'll I'll tell you this. I do I do I t pay ten percent of of all my income. I Donate a ton of time.

It sucks all my time. I don't need two I gave two years. I paid for two years to be on this mission. Okay, I get I give up a lot. But at the same time, like If I move anywhere. I Show up at a new place, I call the local congregation, a bunch of dudes come, help me unpack my boxes and move in. I go to church, I immediately have like

A dozen friends. People invite me over to dinner for the first few nights that I'm in this new city. Um If I Ne if I need a job, there's someone d you know, dedicated in the congregation who will help me find a job. If I'm ever like down on my luck and I need food

The Church of Jesus Latter Saints will provide me with food, make sure I don't go hungry, like Um you just described being a famous podcaster also, by the way. Sam just Sam went on a road trip last year and was just like hey Who wants me to drive their car? And people are like, Here, here, here's the keys. Anybody here's wife want to cook me dinner and give me a massage? People are like, Honey, honey, Sam's a town. Yeah, exactly. I mean I l I I look like it. Maybe I am Mormon.

Maybe I should do a DNA test. Jokes aside, and also I don't want to have the wrath of God if he does exist against me. So, you know, uh Uh, I think it is pretty awesome. And also like I think people study like what makes people happy in the end. I think the biggest always religion. That's always part of it. Well it's i I think the biggest one is is like um quality time spent with people you care about, which like Is a combination of like family friends, community spiritual community, all that stuff. And so

What you're describing is basically like meaningful relationships with people who like, you know, have like kind of an unconditional support of each other, which is great and something that everybody would sign up for Um you know. Depending on you know what the situation the cost I do think believer believers in a religion live longer than none. And I also think they're happier.

Uh I I was curious about that. Sean, that was a succinct uh pitch for for why it's a great we need to send you on a mission. I would love to go knock on a I would love to go knock on a hundred door. I w I really wanna just do door to sales just to see if I could do it and how it would work. Do you know what the average life expectancy of an atheist is? Now what if I were to tell you that Mormon believers it's this. Would that interest you? Right. We I don't know if if uh if the church would go for this, but if they would, we should do a YouTube series where like

We send Sean with a couple of missionaries I could hook you up with in the Bay Area. And just go knock on like a hundred or two hundred doors with them. And like

See what it's like, offer your thoughts, and then like Give them some observations and tips from uh Well I would like to just go. Sell my own fake religion and just see uh like how how well I could do. Um because you know, I need a I need that kind of fresh slate. I'm more of an entrepreneur, not an entrepreneur, if you know what I mean. So I gotta create something from scratch here.

And um keep all those tax benefits to myself as well. I've actually considered this many times about creating my own religion. Um,'cause I do have my own philosophy, my own belief system. I do share it with others and uh And uh it's a life operation. And I don't like taxes. And I think that it's fantastic to to own a religion or to own a church of of a religion. And you're Indian, so you know, you you can be a guru, like people expect that, you know? I know. I mean when I had the longer hair I was much w better suited for this. But you know, if I like Sam, what would be your opening line? Like what where what direction would you take it? Like he was like hi, I'm Ben, do you have a do you have a moment to talk about. I would have said exactly I would say, excuse me, ma'am, I know this is so strange, but I gotta ask you a quick question.

What would you say if I told you that the average life expectancy of an atheist was seventy two, but the average life expectancy of a Mormon is eighty four? Would you want to know why? I think they would say. Yeah, I guess. Well you see it's Do you want to see your grandkids someday? Yeah, like well, because when you believe in a religion, it means this, this, this, and this. And it just so happens our religion bel I I would sell them on the wheel. That's why it was good that he he started with Do you believe in God?

Right. Because Yeah, get the losers out of the way. Well no well, you gotta separate. Are you talking to an atheist or are you talking to somebody of another religion'cause you can't you gotta know which way you're going there. The other way is it you know, you do the thing where you're like, um Uh you know. Uh hey, um You know, I was just at your neighbor's house and I thought I would pop by

Um just so you're like I hate when I get which theater. Yeah, it was uh the Johnson's across the street. And um Uh, you know, I thought I'd stop by because um

Blah blah blah. Or like, you know, I I really just wanted to to chat with you for a minute. Do you Do you believe in God? Or you know, maybe go with something that's like, um Uh I was just wondering, have you seen this video? Hold up my phone of that TikTok of the baby uh being chased away. You know, like I'm just trying to like, you know, stun them into not not like automatically rejecting me, right? Like it's like how do I get some curiosity

Which would be something like um You know, I'm going around the neighborhood, I'm just asking, you know, do you go to church uh regularly? And they're like, Oh yeah, right. Awesome. Uh would you say you believe in God? Yeah, I I do believe in God.

Do um you know. Where'd that start? Was that from your parents? Yeah, my mom was super religious. My mom too. And then I like, you know, trying to do something like that. That's off the top of my head how I would try to like You know, build rapport quickly as I get them to talk stick to podcasts.

Hey give me give me a hundred thousand reps at this, I think I'd be pretty good by the end. Yeah, better than Ben and having to think about it. Yeah, but Ben's response made me think he might he might not have uh gone on that mission after all. Hey, Sean, I thirty two converts, you've got zero so far, so you gotta get on my level. I just don't know how you forgot the script you said a thousand a hundred thousand times. That sounds a little suspicious. Uh over a decade's a long time, Sean. A decade's a long time. All right, I gotta go to the bathroom. I talked to you a little bit. Yeah.

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