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Kind: captions Language: en you said a couple interesting things so let’s let’s break this down we have no money we’re bootstrapping let’s get ourselves on GLG as experts I’m like okay my my charge is $500 an hour she goes no problem but we talked to like someone after a few weeks and he goes do you guys have research and we we looked at each other we’re like yeah yeah we have a report it’s $5,000 so I was joke that was ampush as Angels round we raised $150,000 selling research reports to hedge fun people that’s pretty sick that’s an amazing story and by the way there’s eight of them that all have like high eight or low nine figures in the whole category has just crushed the two takeaways from this by the way are sell to the rich and then your way of figuring out what they need [Music] was Jesse what up dude how are you doing man what’s up guys I’m pumped to be on here good to see you uh where should we start you sent us a doc had a bunch of cool ideas on it which one do you want to start with yeah I mean maybe maybe some of the stuff we’ve learned at Gateway X as we’ve been building new ideas I think the idea I’m most excited about which I think Sean you and I have talked about is aux insights Sam do you know about this business no what is Ox insights oh dude this is sick okay tell us about this business You’re Gonna Love It Sam so you know one of the things I I as we’ve learned starting new businesses and some of them you guys probably know like Kahani Sean you were a customer of it it failed it didn’t or we stopped doing it and one thing I’ve learned sitting in the seat is it’s really important to like understand demand and that there’s a customer who has a problem that you need and then go like stand up the thing with growth assistance that’s what I did I already knew people needed it I just stood it up and immediately started to work and so you know I started my career in finance in Consulting I went to pen I got a million friends who are in private equity and after we sold ampush I would get a call from one friend once a month without fail who worked at Blackstone or worked at tpg or worked at one of these fancy private Equity firms and they’d go hey I um I have this deal in front of my investment committee it’s a billion company and I’m getting asked all these questions about their Google and Facebook ads Jesse like what if they don’t perform well or how do we know they’re good at them and they’re asking me to like look at the web traffic and make some analysis Jesse I have no idea and my my investment Comm is not happy because I can’t convince them to buy this business what should I ask them so the first few calls I’m like well the same thing you any of us would do well go look at the Google analytics well how many how many creatives are they testing my fourth guy was like dude can you just do this for me and I’m like you know me I’m like well yeah couple hundred thousand dollars I’ll do it for you and he’s like oh that’s it yeah done let’s go do this and so Ox insights is essentially a private Equity Consulting business it works for private Equity firms specifically in office of the CMO marketing related diligence and what what’s called value Creations value Creations after they buy the business they want you to spend time helping them put together a strategy for how they grow the business and there’s businesses like accordians a cool example 300 million Revenue 100 million ebit dot it’s only a 12-year-old company they do the same exact business for office of the CFO what so anything Finance related yeah accordion I mean you can look at lek is 800 million and 250 in EIT uh McKenzie has an over billion dollar business just for private Equity firms that’s got 55% ebit down margins and when you say they’re office the CFO so let’s let’s break this down so you said a couple interesting things the first was it’s a lot easier to Succeed in Business If you first find the starving crowd so find the really hungry Market versus how you and I Sam like started at least I should just speak for myself I don’t know if you did the same thing but like I would always be like what’s a cool idea or what’s something I could make or what’s something that seems easy to do and it was easy at the start because it’s so familiar or it’s like just nearby but I have no idea the demand or the demand is all in other broke people like me so it’s going to be really hard to sell and make money or I need so many customers to make money whereas you’re like well let me work backwards who are the richest people and richest companies it’s like private Equity hedge funds that type of customer they’re not price sensitive at all urgent and they’re super rational they’re like cool if I can buy something for $100,000 but it’s going to help me make a $10 million decision great uh you know the math maths I’m in so they’re they’re they’re wealthy they’re not as price sensitive they’re rational and in your case you figured out what the need was because you had one fortunate circumstance which was like they were calling you to ask you about this thing and you basically so so what you built was like a marketing due diligence so they’re looking at a company they need to know is there are there digital ads performing very well not so good is there any red flags in here any concerns in the same way that if I want to go buy a company and I get a bunch of financial statements I might ask a super financially lit to go look at it yeah yeah like hey my account like can you look at this can we do a quality of earnings can we get can we get some understanding of like are these numbers solid or not they are really financially literate but they’re not as Facebook ads and Google ads and Pinterest ads literate as you are so you’re providing that diligence and then after they buy then you’re like cool and then we’ll help you like lever we’ll show you some levers that might be able to grow this this thing after you buy to create the value right you should get background so you started and sold ampush for some tens of millions I think dollars digital marketing agency and then with that money you went and started Gateway X which is almost an incubator yeah we call it a studio me told Co where you have started three or four or five businesses we started six we’ve shut down two one is kind of going sideways two have crushed it aux being one of them and one is new got it okay and and let me jump in and say two things we what we call it at Gateway X and the studio Sean is we have to have a unique insight and an unfair Advantage I want to build like in 10 years I want this like holdco Studio thing where we’ve got five to 15 I don’t care what the number is operating companies they’re all profitable they’re compounding on top of each other and we’ve got this super cool culture of Builders basically inside of it you don’t raise money at the start for them right we don’t raise money we tried it with Kahani as you know and and it didn’t work like it wasn’t it just wasn’t for me I shouldn’t say it was fine it just wasn’t for me what what what’s Kahani well it’s was a great example of Shan’s point of like a cool idea so that you’re going to think the idea is cool the second I tell you in in like a shitty idea business I was like look e-commerce sites look like they’re 10 years old and meanwhile Instagram and Tik Tok have got these like full vertical videos so let’s make a plugin to let e-commerce companies change themselves to look more like Tik Tok and Instagram so the first product was the little stories nav bar at the top of of every e-commerce site and we had it on Sean’s site and I was like oh it’s going to people are going to engage with it the content’s going to look bigger it’s going to and we launched it and everybody people thought it was a really cool idea right but nobody actually by the way I I thought it was an awesome idea in fact I kind of still think it’s an awesome idea a good idea but it doesn’t solve anybody’s problems and nobody’s nobody’s lining up for it and then we’re like oh it’s improving your conversion but then it’s like well it’s not not sure it’s improving our conversion it kind of seems like people engage with it and then people are like it’s kind of slowing my site down or takes me too much content and they just ripped it off the site was it basically just a plugin it’s a it’s a plugin just a plugin so I mean we had a big vision for it right You’ have landing pages and you could put your influencers I we I still think someone’s going to figure it out but I sat there and I was like I got this other business growth assistant and here’s a funny story you guys will like this we go to shop talk and you know shop talk matches you and I have one sales guy from Kahani and one sales guy from growth assistant and they both do the matching thing the Kahani guy gets three meetings the growth assistant guy gets 25 meetings one selling like marketing talent in the Philippines and I go man if there’s ever a signal for like solving a problem versus you know just a cool thing this is it and that was like one of the key decisions where I was like I don’t want to do this anymore and with Ox so so with Kahani he’s like yo you want to invest would love to have you boarded here’s a deck and I’m like looking at it I’m like I kind of like the idea but I’m not fully sold so I ended up not investing with Ox he half tells me the idea a text message and I’m like I got to invest in this somehow right like even I was like instantly I was like this shit’s going to work this is a great idea much easier to solve and one really cool thing I I had heard Jess talk about this which is earlier when you were doing ampush you signed up for GLG which is a like expert Network where where basically Rich dudes on Wall Street will call you and be like hey nerd you know a lot about this biotech thing or you know a lot about newsletters it’s like uh if a banker is about to take a company public like a email software company public they want to talk to all types of users of email software and ask them questions so they could have more conviction in their decision yes and by the way there’s eight of them that all have like High eight or low n figures in eitaa to be clear there’s guid Point Global there’s Alpha sites the whole category has just crushed and it’s basically like if Brad Pit called you and was like Hey you ever been to this Italian restaurant in New York he’s going to take a supermodel there but you’ve been there and he’s like how’s the parm and you’re like that’s pretty good actually and then they’re like cool they hang up you don’t know why they asked you and they pay you $1,000 dollar for the for the for the feedback well here’s the this the story of GG is hilarious so I don’t usually tell this part of the story but it starts earlier young Jess’s an associate at Goldman Sachs he decides my best friend who’s my co-founder’s hedge fund blew up during the financial crisis so he doesn’t have a job so he kind of sits around he’s like I don’t want to get a job Jesse I want to start something he gets me excited enough that I’m like all right I want to start something too let’s go start something in a few months I give my notice at Goldman they’re like take 90 days wind down and I was like me I’m like hey do you mind if I use the firm’s resources to research my future business idea and Goldman by the way probably has a multi-million dollar subscription with GLG so we have an unlimited calls they don’t charge us per call because at Goldman they’re paying them so much money so me and my co-founder line up three phone calls a week with like digital ad experts and Lead gen people and we research e-commerce like you name the category we were talking to an expert in it for like the 90 days before we left before I left Goldman we also had all the saleside analysts come and tell us like what are the internet trends that we should be paying attention to so this was the research before ampush started I’m 24 25 years old then I start ampush Quinn Street which you guys may or may not know is a publicly traded lead gen business goes public and the same thing happens a couple of my hedge fund friends call me and go dude isn’t this what you’re doing like and I go well here’s what you need to look at and here’s how their margins work and then I get the idea I’m like we have no money we’re bootstrapping let’s get ourselves on GLG as expert so I call my old rep and I go hey can I be an expert on G on your GG are they asking they go yeah we need someone I’m like okay my my charge is $500 an hour she goes no problem so now me and my co-founder are doing on the other side of the marketplace we’re doing five calls a week we’re making 25 you know it’s good money but we talked to like someone after a few weeks and he goes do you guys have research that you can put together because you can the way you’re explaining is so helpful and we look at each other we’re like yeah yeah we have a report it’s $5,000 I’ll send you guys a report you can link to it it’s super outdated at this point it’s a 50-page report it’s gonna explain the lead genen industry to you tell you who the competitors are blah blah blah blah blah he’s like yeah I’ll take it so we’ we basically spend four days all weekend putting this report together and then GG is like Hey we’re getting a lot of other questions this report can you sell more of it by the time it was all said and done we sold 30 of the reports so I was joke that was ambush’s Angels around we ra raised hedge fund people that’s insane all right guys really quick so back when I was running the hustle we had this premium newsletter called Trends the way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts and we created this sort of playbook for researching different companies and ideas and emerging Trends to help you make money and build businesses well HubSpot did something kind of cool so they took this Playbook that we developed and we gave to our analysts and they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that anyone can download and it breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcoming trends for spotting different companies that are going to explode and grow really quickly it’s pretty awesome that they took this internal document that we had for teaching our analysts how to do this into a tool and are giving it away for free that anyone can download so if you want to stay ahead of the game and you want to find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea they exist this is the ultimate guy so if you want to check it out you can see the link Down Below in the description now back to the show I don’t know if you heard on the Pod but Anand from CB insights did the same thing did you hear did you hear his story he basically no sold he’s smarter he turned it into a huge business well he started with the with the PDF and he’s like you know he’s trying to charge like $500 and then he’s like the best thing that ever happened to us was my buddy was like no no no you need to charge like $112,000 minimum 25,000 as your medium and then have a $100,000 option he’s like dude it’s a PDF like are you sure that’s what they did and they made like 300 Grand that year it’s a giing good yeah right he gets more value when people think it’s uh it’s more expensive I mean that’s for pricing for aux we charge $50,000 a week for for a team of consultants and McKenzie Bane and BCG charge $200,000 a week so our argument is we’re 75% cheaper than them but way better in our world of online Market you know the world that we know extremely well how come you don’t charge 75% more and say we’re better that well so one of the things I didn’t tell you when when I my friends were calling me and I was like isn’t there someone who does this why are you keep calling me about this and what they told us this was part of the market research was they said look McKenzie Bane and BCG are $200,000 a week and they don’t they’re not practitioners of marketing Jesse so they don’t actually know the answers and then every time we ask an agency agencies come back with recommendations like change your match types or do more lookalike audience or whatever and they’re like we don’t know what the [ ] they’re talking about like we don’t understand what they’re saying what they want is you do this and this much revenue neita will come so a big part of our work is literally just translating marketing levers into Revenue nebit terms so that they can actually understand what they’re what they’re going to spend money on or what the risk levers are in the business do you run like fake ads like um like you know a lot of people when they have a company they’ll be like you know we want to make this product but we’re not actually sure if anyone’s going to buy it and so they make an ad for the product that doesn’t exist and sometimes the landing page will be like oh you caught us a little bit too soon but let us know uh if you want this whatever we’ve done it in value creation we haven’t done it in diligence diligence is like you’ve got four weeks they’re trying to discern whether they want to buy the business and you’re just like you’re head you have so much data you have to figure out what’s going on and be able to give them a smart answer value creation you have 12 or 20 weeks sometimes depending on the engagement there we will definitely run experiments we’ll make ad changes we’ll do all these things and come back to them and say hey this is a good idea this is not a good idea so to make this actionable like even for me or Sean or listener what do you look for like what can I look for in my business and I assume obviously this is only if you are running digital ads Facebook and Google basically ads what can you look for to be like there’s opportunity here or this is stupid shut it down yeah I mean we we approach it in a few different ways right one is top down like we use veros and a couple other thirdparty data sources and our own data to figure out benchmarks of the company so if you’re an e-commerce business with a you’re selling water bottles what should your click-through rate what should your conversion rate by Channel what that’s our top down way of kind of assessing where they stand and so that’s just whatever you can get that data anywhere online and then the bottom up part of it is for example for Facebook right we’ll say like is the account structured correctly often times there’s too many ads trying like breaking the signal in too many different places and it needs to be Consolidated the other question we’ll ask is is their event match quality good oftentimes these old old school companies owned by private Equity they don’t even they have like a three out of 10 match quality which means Facebook’s signal is super crappy for them and I bet Sean’s company and most startups have nine out of 10 because they’ve like made sure Facebook’s getting all the right data then there’s all the creative stuff are they you know the easiest thing someone says my performance is bad I’m go how many creative test a week a week what are you talking about oh we do two a month well yeah of course your performance is going to be horrible right so creative testing is one of the easiest levers to pull in terms of improving faceb and if a business that you’re looking to buy has all these things that they’re doing wrong and they’re still succeeding and you for you you’re like there’s opportunity here if they get this right you’re going to be even better after buying this exactly and size right so the key deliverable the first five sides of every deck are here’s the grade for every channel and then here’s the waterfall that says what’s your carita and then if you improve the things that we think in a pretty moderate way here’s what your ebit do the business could be and that’s the money chart for a private Equity guy that’s pretty sick yeah it’s it’s a super cool business and and honestly like the validation that we’ve gotten like that’s the other cool thing is my one of my other tests for a business is if in my Discovery phase people start asking me to buy it I know I’m on to like that’s what happened with growth assistant that that’s what happened with aux in early days I’ve ampush that happened I was like hey this is an idea we have we want to get you offshore marketing people like can I get one of those people and I’m like oh okay we’re good same thing with a private Equity I call some of my buddies I go here’s this idea we have we want to do he’s like oh I actually have a deal right now can you guys start looking at it that’s awesome how big is this business now is it a year old could you say like it’s like five million it’ll do five million this year dude that’s insane yeah it’ll do five million and we by the way we invested one tenth of what we put into Kahani into it and by the way Sam like I think the the key because you were like what are the marketing levers and like he gave you like a as good as answer you give not having like the thing you need it’s like doctor what can I do to be better here’s none of my data none of my scans none of my it’s like well you should I guess you know check on your health so the key here with this business though is it’s he won’t say this it’s not part of a sales pitch but like it’s not that he has to be like this marketing Savant that’s going to like find the genius levers these companies are really buying certainty and it’s it’s cya right it’s why a lot of consultants get hired in the world is is there’s a c component you’re doing a deal you need to understand that the thing you’re buying doesn’t have any like you know hor horrible warts that’s the first piece and then cool what is a like best case Bas case worst case kind of scenario of what we can do to grow this thing and it’s not even like a specific tactic like oh change the audience segmentation but it’s like we need a plan made by people who know a lot about this and that’s enough to like kind of move the ball forward and then of course like when you could go in and you actually do the [ ] you’ll figure it out Case by case like there’s not like like you go to a 100 e-commerce companies and you could take the 10 smartest people in Facebook ads and Google ads they’re going to give you 10 different answers for every single company because one guy likes cost caps another guy likes ASC another guy says simplify the structure another guy says use all the new [ ] you know another guy says do this attribution method another guy says this there’s no real uniform answer for like how do you do how does this work better versus worse yeah well I’ll I’ll disagree like I’ll show you can I share my screen yeah yeah I mean this is an example of the internal tool or the internal like analysis to give you the detailed answer Sam of like everything we look at when we’re trying to assass and grade inside of a private Equity right so there it’s top down it’s bottom up how much spend is getting spend Place what’s campaign structure what’s how fast you made this I mean my my team made this yeah that’s so cool um so this is what we go through and do and we’re gonna turn this into software at some point by the way any colorcoded Excel sheet we like ah this is [ ] great I remember Steph Smith came on and showed me like a just like a beautifully formatted Excel sheet I don’t think I even read anything that was in it but I was like you’re great this is fantastic like I’m such a sucker for formatting on an Excel sheet well but and Sean’s right which is like the other thing I would think about too that I think a lot of entrepreneurs Miss because we we’re so caught up on ourselves is the humanness on the other side of the table so [ ] you say private Equity Firm and you’re like oh yeah private Equity Firm but what’s really happening is there’s a there’s a mid-level partner if they buy a business and Facebook blows up in a year on them it’s career limiting for them right so the human being on the other side wants to go in and sell this deal to their committee be able to put a good good case together and the reason McKenzie and Bane both built billion dollar businesses doing this is because those people wanted to go look McKenzie says the market is big now the the dream is they go look Ox says there’s x amount of ebit available in marketing and look at the analysis they put together that’s convincing of that what percentage of the deals do say it’s [ ] you’re like no dude like there’s no opportunity here we’ve had I mean it’s it’s a young business we’ve only done 20 projects but let’s say in 25% we’ve said we we should you should stay the hell away from one I mean one there was just straight up in the SEO backlinking that they would have never spotted without us that was a huge win and I mean they paid us obviously they didn’t do the deal and then we’ve had a couple where we were not convinced that there was as much leverage like the management team puts together projections right so they they share projections in these things and we look at those projections and we basically go dude this person would have to be the best Facebook ad marketer on the planet to hit these projections like we we think they can grow but we don’t think the projections they put together are reasonable we need to double click and as they double clicked on that they lost about the deal wow what a cool business good job thank you much better than Kahani so you’re thing was like kind of office for the CMO you talked about how accordion and there’s there’s the equivalent for the CFO side can you talk about other businesses that are like this that sell to the like Ultra Rich customers so let’s call it hedge funds investment Banks whatever I heard you talk about a business that I had never heard of called I think it was first ring or first Rain r what is that that sounded very interesting well the first thing I was tell people to go like who’s the richest man in New York Sam who’s the richest man in New York I don’t want to ruin your story I’ll who’s the richest man in New York do you think long here’s the homie guess here the homie guess a hedge fun guy some real estate guy yeah Daniel o or Steve schwarzman or whatever nope nope nope it’s Michael Bloomberg it’s the guy who’s selling information and so sitting at Goldman I like had this terminal we were paying $1,200 a month for and you know they never negotiate price every single terminal they never do volume discounts and you’re like damn this guy’s just I mean they’re printing money in that business it also helps that he owns the entire thing owns the entire thing but dude whether he did or didn’t it the thing makes like five 10 billion a year and but uh it’s huge it’s a ridiculous business right and so I’m sitting there I’m an entrepreneurial person and and my boss comes up to me and she goes you got to set up first rign Jesse and I’m like oh cool what’s first rain and I’m like looking through it and it’s like pull the stock ticker and get an alert to your inbox when there’s news about this company and I’m like this is just Google Alerts she’s like what’s Google Alerts and and I’m like what do we pay a month for this she’s like oh we pay like $2,000 per license and I’m like well our group is like 40 people like we’re paying $80,000 no no we got a discount it’s $50,000 a month we’re paying for for this Google analytics thing I’m like what the [ ] and so you know one of the one of the categories for us now and again remember unfair Advantage is very important I I happen to have a lot L of friends in this world because of where I went to college just whatever unfair Advantage where’d you go to college I went to Penn fancy the Wall Street you know TR training school so a bunch of my friends work at hedge funds and private equity and you know these guys want information like that they’re willing to pay tons and tons of money for they’re not price sensitive at all they if they can they can the ROI of everything they every decision they may because that was what we got told about first Reign they go oh it’s $50,000 a month but if it gets us one trade ahead of somebody else it’s paid for itself for the full year so because of the numbers they’re dealing in they can just pay anything right just like the $200,000 to to diligence the project for a half a billion dollar deal it’s nothing for them right so this category is a great one to sell into and actually I have another funny story you guys will like so on GLG GLG has been like my life my savior in business you what happened for me I became like a regular take that term any way you want for hedge fund dudes for Facebook every quarter 10 same people would call me and they would go how’s the quarter going Jesse do you think Spen is going to be up or down because they own huge positions in Facebook right so one of the guys eventually is like Jesse I want access to your data like I just want the AG I’m allowed to share it’s my data at ampush I’m spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year and he goes I want I want just full real-time access to your data I go I can give it to you an aggregate I can’t give you any client data and he’s like but what can I get to you and I was like Well bootstrapped Company right I’m like you know we’ve been dealing with this like working capital situation with with our bank like will you just give me a $5 million doar interest free loan he’s like done he’s like done so this guy Peter he’s a good friend of mine now he gave us a $5 million loan so we didn’t have to pay any interest to our bank to do working capital and all I had to do was basically gave him a realtime feed from our Tableau or whatever our aggregate CPM CTR whatever all of our data for for Facebook so anyway first Reign is is a basic software tool you sell the hedphones because they’re willing to pay anything for it and so one of my ideas by the way and if anyone’s listening wants to build this with me I need someone very good at analytics and and decent at sales is I just in my network I could probably get five billion in in meta Facebook spend of and give people a survey every quarter did you spend more or less how excited are you get like a detailed survey it’ have to be a really robust survey then I’d go to all these hedge fund people and I’d say you can have access to this data every quarter it’s a it’s $50,000 a quarter and you have to guarantee me two years of a subscription and I think I’d have people align out the door people willing to pay for that data and then I would do it for Google then I would do it for Amazon then I would do it for all of these different platforms D dude even easier we uh like why not just go to Triple well who already has all the data yeah and be like hey triple well let’s uh you know do this line of business basically 100% yeah let me license your data for the exclusive use in the financial service that’s not going to be important for them and then you can basically create a thing that hedphones would pay for and the best thing you what I would do to hedge Fones I’d say I’m only going to sell it to 20 of you but let’s do a reverse auction so now make them bid against each other for this data and as long as you limit it they’ll do that because they don’t want everyone having the data right that’s a really important thing to them but anyway the the the lesson here is that category alternative assets are a great thing to bootstrap into because they like one deal basically can make you as a business and then you can go from there yeah my my old uh business partner used to call it just adding a zero he’s like basically what what Market or product can we go into where we do the same exact work but we just add a zero to the end of the the dollar amount that we’re able to charge like Sam you you told me this with your events too you used to charge I think like $300 a ticket but then other people charge 3,000 and then I forgot who it was like recode or whoever it was charged $30,000 a ticket and it was like the same work same product it was ridiculous and I did the exact same thing Sean that you said you did where you’re like I have an idea but I’m broke so I’m just gonna assume that everyone else is broke go hang out with other broke people doing the easy thing with like the two takeaways from this by the way are sell to the rich you know you’re going to be able to add a zero to to what you’re what you’re doing and then your way of figuring out what they need was you had friends in that Circle you could go make friends or you were using GG you were like I have one area of expertise that could be my calling card to get in the door and then that will be how I you know understand what these people need and then maybe I can pair what I know with what they need and to a you know either a data product or a Consulting product yeah and to tie it tie them together actually anyone listening I would say what is it that you know extremely well or a couple things that are across sections of each other and so first figure that out and then figure out who’s willing to pay you the most money for what you know that’s essentially what I did with with Ox business I was like I know this thing who’s gonna go pay me the most for it and that group is gonna pay me the most by far can I you didn’t put on this sheet but I want to talk I want to ask you a couple questions about this particularly because I don’t know if Shawn knows much about this company and I know a little bit about it but I know that what I know they’re like crazy impressive so I think you sold your company to Red Ventures is that right so we s it’s a longer story we sold a minority they wanted to buy the whole thing we couldn’t get to terms we sold a minority we gave them an option to buy the rest of the business they started buying content assets and decided not to buy the rest of our business so we ended up eventually selling it to someone else but we did for basic got to know them for two years we operated as one company because the plan was originally for them to buy so I know them and Rick incredibly well do you know about this company Sean Red Ventures I know about the surface level and actually we’ve we’ve hit up Jesse being like dude this is fascinating should we get Rick on like and I would I want to know more well but there’s one part of the story that I just want to mention which was amazing is like he started this thing and then he was actually on the plane uh that Su landed in the in the Hudson and he like gave this like amazing talk when he he was like I was like one or two years into my business and for some reason that life and death that life or death situation kind of changed his outlook on life and now Red Ventures is known as like one of the best places to work and it sounds like they’re it’s a great company so yeah what’s the background yeah so the story the way that they tell it they started the business in 2000 so Rick and Dan are the founders and they’re both friends and both multi-billionaires and they they actually met at cendant in the late 90s you guys know what sendin is they had like the the coupon book they launched orbits they were like the original internet hold Co they met there very direct marketing heavy so in 2000 the two of them broke off on their own literally months before the internet imploded they started uh red f is what it was first called five years later in their their story their telling of it not mine Rick says dan give me a dollar Dan gives him a dollar he goes you can have my half of the business I hate this business I don’t want to do it so they do a hard reset five years in I think they barely were doing a million ebit du and like these guys are the best Learners you’ve ever met so then at the time go back 2005 there was this new thing called Google AdWords and there was agency starting and there were leg gen businesses and they for whatever reason they had a relationship with Direct TV they said hey D Direct TV if you remember back then was looking for satellite people to sell in the mall like these resell so Rick or one of them had this idea of let’s go to go go to Direct TV and become a dealer so they go hey direct you want to be a dealer go sure we love dealers what’s your territory they go oh this new thing called the internet will be our territory they go okay sure we don’t know anything so they became direct Star TV authorized dealer of Direct TV but as a part of their thing they owned all the web rights they owned all the AdWords rights they owned all the SEO and in four years they built a $75 million bit. business just selling Direct TV subscriptions because they would run the media take the phone calls and all these things that are commonplace today where like what you do on your website gets cookie and then you know on the phone call they were they were pioneers and all of that stuff and basically if if someone became a reseller of the TV tech uh Dish Network or whatever it was direct TV they gave Red Ventures like, $500 Bounty for every single customer they get and Red Ventures just had to do it for less than that right and so between their media and of course after a few years DirectTV is like well we can’t get rid of you because you’re driving all of our customers but we don’t like the deal we made so then they renegotiated a million different times and I you know they still probably work with them but then they went and took that out and then General Atlantic the big private Equity Firm invested and has crushed it on that deal and they um they went and did that for any High LTV purchase you can imagine so every credit card company worked with them American Express um Verizon Wireless people who sell Pest Control like anything that was like a long-term purchase basically Red Ventures was either running their marketing and when they invested in us we wanted to do the same deal for direct to Consumer companies which did not work nearly as well as it worked for them which is a different story for a different day but that’s what they got to then they got to 2015 they’re doing two two 300 in neita and there’s no more growth left which is why they invested in us and they bought they did they did a bunch of other things Rick’s really smart and he goes okay I’m gonna invest in Jesse he did five other deals at the same time same year and a year later ampush is going okay the other one went down to zero one you know but they bought an SEO business that they Ed their same Playbook and within nine months they took it from three in ebit da to nine in IIT da and they go oh [ ] so that worked okay let’s go do a bigger deal so then they bought like a $10 million ebit SEO content business and then they took it to like 25 when you say SEO content business you’re talking about like uh the Points Guy yeah the first one was reviews.com the second one I’m forgetting the name of it but yeah like the points then they finally RI like he did a couple of those and Rick’s like all right I’m ready for the big time he went and bought Bankrate which is a billion dollar public traded company for 100 in ebitda it owns the Points Guy it owns creditcards.com it owns and in less than two years they tripled the ebit da of the business and then they bought Healthline they bought CNET I mean so they basically took their and now the services part of their business is a tiny part of their business and the SEO content part is a massive part of their business but the same culture the same Playbook and it’s it’s an incredible business incredible so can you explain what they’re doing so they buy these SEO businesses which is let’s just take bank rate as an example people Google best yep mortgage rate current mortgage rates whatever and they Bankrate has done the content work and the SEO work to be the top thing that shows up on Google so then you click it you go in and they have like these affiliate offers and that’s all great and what what red did was they basically am I right that they bought a business that was like primarily SEO driven and then they layered on paid to that is that the main thing that they did or what what did they do to the assets there’s four major levers they pull and the first thing I have to tell whenever I tell the story is Rick and it’s the most unique culture like at some point you guys I just take you there and you got to tour the campus and check it out because you’ve never seen anything like it and there’s a great New York time article where they describe it as like part Wall Street trading desk part like Southern politeness and part like hardnose direct response marketing and that’s exact like is a very AP description but anyway well and that’s why I wanted to ask you about it because Rick seems like an anomaly like he seems like a like a like this is normally like kind of a not this could be a shady industry it often is a shady industry he does seem like a shady guy and they seems like like people love working there which is rare he’s one of the most special people I’ve ever met in he’s one of the most special people in the world I think what would we notice if we toured the campus what would we see it funny you asked that so one of my requests to him when when they invest I want to Shadow your leadership team for a week me and my my 10 leaders are going to Shadow your leaders and I want to see what you guys do and what you’d find is you know these things that are like startup adages they’ve done at a scale of 5,000 people every meeting is short every meeting starts with a bottom line numbers are the only thing that is ever talked about in levers and every person is basically trying to optimize more ebit and in any discussion they’re having and they don’t talk about the work that gets done as a independent of that right it’s like another example is like they shape teams so and you know for digital marketers they don’t say like we have a client team and we have a marketing team we have they go we have like team click-through rate and we have Team conversion rate and we have Team traffic volume like they literally organize people by the kpi that they’re trying to drive so that there’s a deep deep focus into it they have these really cool things called business reviews where basically Rick and the leadership team sits and you have 20 minutes to come in give an update on your business real decisions are made about the business and he does like 40 of the or like 40 over two days basically so it’s a high energy very smart it’s like it’s a very unique culture but anyway so the culture is a starting point by far because without it I don’t think any of this works they have four main levers the first is Improvement of traffic acquisition both paid and organic so to your point Sean they’ll they’ll layer on paid in a really smart way they think a lot about cost per visitor Revenue per visitor and get that equation working extremely well but they’ll do a lot of SEO as well and they’ll get volume up right so I think I remember high level when they bought the Points Guy I’m making these numbers up but it was doing 70 cents in Revenue per visit and maybe 40 cents in cost per visit and two years later was doing like a dollar a170 in Revenue per visit and like 90 cents in cost per visit but the visits were up by like a factor of two or something like that right so so first lever is traffic acquisition second lever is they’re extremely good at on-site optimization if you guys pull up the Points Guy or any of those things now you’ll say wow Platinum American Express is plugged here but it’s plugged in a smart way but I want to click on it but it doesn’t feel too sales even they’re very good at getting basically the on-site optimization to be significantly higher the third lever is they’re incredible Geniuses when it comes to pricing to the efficient Frontier of a customer’s curve you guys know what I mean when I say that you’re using a lot of words my friend dependently but when you put them together that way it was just a combination I wasn’t familiar so when you’re a credit card so you’re American Express right and American Express is probably worth willing to pay $700 per credit card application but their person on their side will pay 200 if they can right so but the only way if you can figure out the exact willingness to pay for an incremental customer by your customer in their business your profits Skyrocket so they basically basically you could call the simple way to say it is they’re good at pricing they they can really charge more for what they get and this I’ll tell you a funny story the guy who’s who’s retired now but he’s a good friend of mine he’s a southern dude he’s very like disarming but then he’s smart as [ ] and he’s like Jesse we were 60 days from close we were going to close this bank rate deal and their team told me there was a bided auction for how you bought credit card applications and no technology could beat it and he said I looked at it and I said discovers only paying 500 for an application and they said they’re willing to pay 900 why are we not charging them 900 he’s like well that’s how the algorithm Works he’s like buying this deal he goes the day we closed the deal Jesse I threw away that algorithm I pulled up a spreadsheet I called all the customers I said what are you willing to pay what are you willing to pay I got them I charged them exactly what they were willing to pay and I got 20% more in iita over like within within the first month I owned the business and so that’s the third lever they’re good at and then the fourth lever is they’re they’re not Crash and Burn people but they’re very thoughtful about and when when they invested in ampush I cut the head count under their sort of toage by more than half and our Revenue grew during that time so they’re very good at like truly challenging the the bloat in an organization and being like how many people do we actually need like one story you guys will love is one of their Executives said they bought some like government-owned thing it’s a really weird business that mails you all the mailers when you move I’m forgetting the name of it right now but I hate that so it’s actually was owned by the USPS and then it got now Red Ventures owns it I goes so how did you decide how to reduce the headcount he goes we took the top three managers in the company and we held a draft so we basically put everyone’s name on the board and and we said you there’s only 40 people of 80 staying now go draft your best people and again they you know they’re compassionate with obviously the people they like go it’s not that’s not it’s not meant to be a negative towards them but like these organizations they’re very good at leanly Staffing these organizations right so those are the four big levers and that’s how they get the kind of results they get that’s dope I appreciate the uh the Red Ventures master class that’s great they’re like a juggernaut that I didn’t know much about in terms of how they actually operate your boyfriend uh the guy from Silver Lake the guy you love who’s the guy what his name that you have a crush on uh I should probably know his name if he’s my boyfriend uh e Egan what his name Egan I think he’s on their board yeah he’s on their board um ga’s on their board and I mean look they they they’re all minority holders they’ve never raised a dollar of primary Capital so they’re in my opinion they’re a bootstrap giant right they’ve taken secondary but they’ve never raised primary they headquarters in like North Carolina or something right yeah they’re in Charlotte but again dude Rick is the Hustler of all Hustlers it’s right across the border in South Carolina because the state of South Carolina has paid for the whole thing with tax incentives you you have on here every profitable founder should understand PE and rollups what’s that mean yeah I think one of the biggest value creation levers if you’re running a$ two to5 million ubit business is a rollup and I’ll tell the story of the company that ended up buying ampush because it’s kind of like still hurts me a little bit when I tell it so there was a business called Elite sem is an sem agency 4 million iita same year that I think ampush had like six or something in 2015 we ended the steal with Red Ventures whatever learned a ton but these guys sold to a business called Mountain Gate capital and let’s assume I don’t know what they paid but let’s assume it was on eight times eitaa which is fair multiple so they paid 32 million for the business right the founders rolled 30% I don’t know for a fact but I’m just let’s making that up in this scenario Founders roll 30% of the value they take 20 million off the table and they they roll the rest in Mountain Gate goes and another six different businesses in the 1 to two million eitaa range now for those businesses they pay like five four to five times eitaa then they grow the whole thing organically right so then they go for was math four let’s say they buy another five or six companies they buy 10 and eitaa right total invested capitals call it 60 ballpark but now the business is worth 15 times correct and it was bought by new Mountain who bought who bought ampush it was bought by new Mountain for 15 times which is 225 million EIT so the founders got 20 million plus then got another bite of called 40 or something like that plus the PE Fromm obviously crushed it on it my push to Founders would be like if you understand that multiples are a function of growth stability and like and margin or defens ability however you want to think about that and all those things improve with scale and so there’s just what they call the finance nerds call it multiple Arbitrage which means I can buy at a low multiple and then I can sell in a few years for a higher multiple and I think a lot from if I’m a profitable bootstrap founder including myself like even for growth assistant and other things I’m like this seems like such an obvious path to create a tremendous amount of value that’s that’s like better than the Venture path for so many different reasons more apt on and more just you know but yeah I think I think everyone should look at it in their space and by the way I think I’ve been approached multiple times and pitched on this and it’s on my list of like creative AI meets rollup so Jesse go let’s go buy a creative agency redo their processes with AI right then once figured that out let’s go buy 10 more of them and not only will you be able to roll up and get the all this multiple Arbitrage but you will create a much more profitable business so I think there’s a lot of strategies out there and I would say like I think a lot you can do with private Equity without private Equity but but the founders of running these businesses should be the ones leading them and the more the founder has the strategy the better they’re going to do with the PE firm if they ever need the capital to go do it right you mentioned AI I want to ask you about that because you were early to the social networking wave I think you were doing like a social networking type of thing and the first year Facebook I think there’s some story where Zuck called you and uh I called him on his cell phone pretended to be somebody else that was a good one oh you called Zuck uh tell that story by the way who did you pretend to be so summer of ’ 05 we’re like Facebook’s oh my God Mar Mark zucker’s a year old he’s our age right we’re like he’s our age he’s like gonna crush it but he’s never gonna go into High School somebody should start a high school Facebook and we’re like why not us so we start the high list I have like I have like the docs we these little I iconography and all this stuff we basically rebuilt clone of Facebook and at the beginning of the summer we went to go by hsf facebook.com and some kid at Columbia I don’t even remember his name maybe he’s listening and he can he can throw himself he owns it and he goes well I’ll sell it to you for like $20,000 and we’re college kids we’re like no thanks we’ll call it the high list and we say peace we build the whole product we launch it literally on the eve of the launch he calls us and he goes Mark Zuckerberg wants to buy HS Facebook so I’m giving you a last chance buddy like you can get it and and I was like oh my God we need and I was like my first question was is he going to launch in high school he’s like yeah he says he is and I’m like no are you sure like I think the guy’s bullshitting me so I’m like prove it so he forwards me the email from Zuck and this is not this is just a guy named Mark Zucker it’s not Zuck Zuck today right and the guy includes a 917 Areo code number sorry Zach that your air code’s 917 on your cell phone and I don’t know what the rest of it was I don’t remember but basically it has a cell phone number so I’m like okay how do we call and how do we verify this is true so I call Zach by the way I call him from summer internship office at Bane Capital so I’m like sitting inside some Finance Company calling him and I go my name is Tom Goldberg I’m partners with this guy Bob and we own HS Facebook together so I want to make sure that you’re not like I’m not getting cut out of this deal that you apparently have with him and he goes yeah I’m gonna buy it from him and you need to sort that out with him and then I go well what are you gonna do with it and I kid you not he spends 30 minutes and to his credit he outlines the entire strategy that Facebook has executed he goes first we’re going to go to high schools then we’re going to go to workplaces then we’re going to go into pods then we’re going to like he had the whole strategy this is in ’ 05 dude this is a year into Facebook and he’s like he’s like I’m start wearing chains and cool shirts right around he’s like 22 or I’m 21 and then he’s like wait by the way what was your name again and I’m like click needless to say our high school Facebook plan did not work out they they launched and they crushed us and we went and got jobs at in finance that’s an amazing story sad story um and by the way isn’t the funny thing that like the actual answer was go join Facebook like just go do whatever every point in my life that has been the right answer to maximize my outcome and when I started ampush dude for 10 years like I was before all their ads and I did the math because a buddy of mine got a job with same resume got like a Corp Dev and he didn’t take it I was like he’s an idiot but he didn’t take it but he we have his offer we have his physical offer still it’s like oh that would have been worth $75 million dude I know I talked to a guy the other day who was like the two or three 100th employee of Facebook and he was like I had $100 million in Facebook stock yes you know he worked there for seven years or something like that what I should have done is said hey look I started this High School competitor do you want to hire me dude because I’d probably be like a billionaire right now because it was a year into the business existing and by the way like to start Facebook unbelievable amount of work and and and genius to be the founding kind of like first five 10 15 20 people there tremendous amount of work you’re scaling something that’s that’s massive and you got to be like really sharp or you’re going to get washed out to be the H 100th or 200th person at Facebook don’t need anything special to be honest all you do around hey get over here can you lift boxes for a bit all right he lifted boxes for a bit hey can you um we got a bunch of spammers can you look at all these and figure out like what we’re going to do tell the team like we need people to filter this at by employee 200 you no longer need to be at the top of the genius curve nor my God work you know an incredible amount and you still get rich I four years into ampush I was looking for a head of sales and our best place of higher salesp people was from Facebook itself because they knew how to navigate the Beast and get us more kind of leads from that get this guy we love each other on the first dinner you know he meets two other people on teams and he’s four four interviews in and I do the classic talk all right let’s talk comp for a second right we’re a startup we’ll give you a couple points of equity and he like gets this very scared look on his face he goes Jesse I’m investing $800,000 a month in Facebook stock how are you going to match that I’m like I’m like dude what what why good to meet you buddy we’ll see you later that is absolutely insane uh Sean have you heard the story about Noah Kagan and how Noah was hired to work at Facebook Noah was the 32nd or 30th employee employee and basically what happened is he uh was out at a party and he was drunk or something like that and he tells a reporter a reporter we’re going to launch this thing and that thing and it’s going to be the best thing ever and it becomes a news article the next day and Zuck goes to his desk and he goes you’re [ ] with my company you’re out and he fires him on month nine so Noah was three months away from his first vest and Noah told me he goes had I just made it that three months those that those shares today would be worth about $ 100 million those three months all because he kind of had a big mouth when he was W and drunk at a party he was he was ambush’s first Facebook ads client believe it or not appsumo was that’s awesome I bought his first I got his first customers for him yeah and now it’s like you know a business that does 100 million year in Revenue so it kind of worked out but it would have worked out a lot easier if they uh kind of kept his mouth shut yeah you know but my thought I don’t know how you guys feel about that I I I’ve done that math and I’m like but I don’t think I could have worked like I don’t want to work for someone of course you can’t look back and be like but even if I could even now make that decision I’m like I don’t think I would have wanted to work for Facebook or anywhere for that that long or like dude I would that would been awesome we gonna say SE I think they’re both right so the the math on this just to put it in perspective let’s say you join when Facebook is valued at a billion dollars which I think it was like a few like a few years in I don’t I don’t think it was like right away because at the time it was unclear social networking would be that big and so let’s say you join at a billion dollar valuation and you’re employee you know 400 and you’re so junior you’re junior and they give you $10,000 of stock a year you’re gonna make a you get a $100,000 salary and you’re GNA get 10,000 of stock over four years you you’ve accumulated $40,000 of stock at a even at a billion today Facebook is a 1.35 trillion dollar company so that’s you get thousand bagger multiply by a, $1,300 1300 times your 4,000 it’s a $54 million stock option you got for being the janitor at Facebook at the right time which tells me a couple of things number number one picking the right company and project will be like by far picking the right Market to be in the and then the the winner of that market if you’re in the tech industry is by far the most impactful thing you could do in your bit in your like career it’ll it’ll beat your hard work it’ll beat your own like you know intelligence it’ll beat being right many times in a row like you just got to be right once in that right time and I should point this out which is that at the time or like every kind of like four years it’s pretty obvious what like winning companies look like so my version of this was I I only did two job interviews in my life the first one was at Monkey Inferno which was the the studio I ended up joining because I wanted to be in a studio and the other one I did was stripe and I could have told you right then like stripe is the winner like it’s the winner of the star the reason that was the only other interview I did was because I was like stripe is the winner it was super obvious and I’ve done the similar like heartbreaking math of like wow even if I had joined I would have just been like a sales guy B bis Dev guy like I had no like I would no seniority would have made an absolute Fortune now other hand you have the Jesse thing which is like do you want to do it would you would you actually have stuck it out and even beyond that is would you have held because there’s no chance that I would have held I bought Bitcoin in 2014 I did not hold all the Bitcoin I gambled four Bitcoin away on a poker night one night because I was just like playing online poker I did all kinds of things that’s now a four times $60,000 you know thing at the time Bitcoin was like 300 bucks so it was like I thought a$1 thousand investment it was actually a quarter million dollar investment and you know there the idea that I would have held is ridiculous and I don’t think uh I don’t think it the math is actually real because nobody holds for that long I agree that’s insane I’ve got the same story by the way with Airbnb I think I was going to be employee 120 or something and I don’t know also it was a $20 an hour job I don’t even know if the equity would have been a lot but you do the math and it does it does sting a little bit but dude I I mean the one way like I was I worked at Goldman I was 25 my 29-year-old boss made $2 million a year my 35-year-old boss was making $15 million a year and I got off that path because I was like I don’t want to like sit here and look at spreadsheets all day like it’s a very not Dynamic job I didn’t I looked at my boss I said do I want to be them one day and I said no and I literally wrote this down to keep myself honest I said I would I’m okay with like half my personal expected value to be able to like do my own thing in the future I don’t I’ve have never rerun the math but but I had to like make that you know decision for myself what’s a $15 million a year employee at Goldman do there’s a bunch of jobs that make that kind of money but in my world I was in the like the buy side hedge fund they were investing we had a$7 billion doll fund two in 20 right if the thing delivers 10% a year they make the fees on 7 billion are like what 140 Plus on 10% is 700 million it’s like 350 million in carry and there’s four senior people now Goldman might even get half of it or whatever but like the they’re paying 50% out of whatever people make in the so but then Bankers make that much I mean all these financial services at a seniority level they all they all make tons of money there was a guy who inou a scholarship I got when I was at pen who was a partner at Goldman at the head of the infrastructure fund I was making 55 a year is what he told me and then when he told you did he just like smirk the biggest smirk you’ve ever seen in your goddamn life and it just could it was permanent he had a faci I saw yeah but you’ve been there 30 years and like if You’ ever been in those atmospheres none of the three of us would last more than a two or three years in those atmospheres they’re not they’re political they swarm it’s not I don’t know there’s more than money right I I totally agree I think our our actions have showed that but I also think it is entertaining to see like just the the the sort of mindbending amounts that people make doing certain things and in the in the case of uh joining companies early like wow that that’s kind of it that’s all you really had to do in terms of like financial success there’s a funny tweet that chth put out the other day where he was like Bill Gates um you know if he had just basically held his Microsoft stock would be I think the richest man in the world or you know number one or number two something like that and instead you know he did The Gates Foundation he did a whole bunch of other things he like sold and then has his family office and um the top reply which was like a huge ratio was like now do you with meta right because he leaves Facebook he’s like great I got a billion bucks and then I’m going to do social capital I’m going to do this I’m going to do that and for you know to do spaxs I’m going to do all these things for like you know the next 12 years 15 years and if he had just simply like held the meta stock and and chilled he would have financially out far outperformed his own you know his own Brilliance doing all this different investing action yeah I you know but that’s the thing that’s why you got to do things that you actually care about or that light you up or that you motivate you in a way that’s different from cash because I mean dude the other thing how many I mean you guys probably have friends like this I have friends who are worth more than I am who have much more money and but they got it through like a meta type situation they’re like the most insecure like they’re like oh I just got lucky they’re afraid to talk about it like it seems like a like a horrible existence like and there’s a lot of people I know like that I met one of the founders of YouTube once and the guy was like my lotto ticket success you know I don’t like he was he was very unhappy with the amount of money he had made so you think that it’s like I’m on Easy Street I get it like but the psychological thing though people feel like fraud I mean it’s a whole another there’s a whole another Vector of challenges that come with it versus I think all the three of us are founders you start a business whatever it is you made you made it you know you did it like there’s a different element to it in my opinion I like talking about it the same way I like looking at mega mansions on the Internet it’s fascinating to one part of my brain but then the main part of my brain’s like I wouldn’t even want that out like yeah exactly like not even in the in it’s like dude that’s way too big that wouldn’t be fun to live in that’d be uncomfortable and man the maintenance of that would be like a pain in the ass like that’s not what I want in the same way that when we got acquired by twitch I had thought in the last seven years I had worked towards like I want to build build a you know like a successful tech company right I was in the inter Capital World success in that world is you build a billion dollar plus company we were doing like a social type of product a media product and twitch is like one of the 10 winners that that like actually existed and then I saw emt’s day-to-day and I was like oh man I would be miserable if I was doing this and not even in the like like it was just that wasn’t fun like his job fundamentally was like putting out fires and you know all problems roll up basically like it’s the worst problems roll up yeah [ ] rolls up hill exactly and it’s the worst problems that rolled up past your executive team because they would solve a bunch of them but the ones that they can’t really solve cleanly roll up to you so you get the worst of the worst that that roll up to you and he would sit in the conference room and basically you know his calendar was managed by somebody else it’s a 30- minute block and another 30 minute block another 30-minute block and he’s reading memos and he’s doing decisions all day and I’m like man this is not like like the fun factor is not there and that’s when I started asking a question it’s why I started this podcast is I was like who’s having the most fun rather than who is the most successful who is the most rich it’s just fundamentally who having the most fun and I remember looking at Joe Rogan I was like I think Joe Rogan’s having a blast it seems like he basically he podcast which is like a unedited unscripted thing he’s hanging out with comedian friends or super interesting scientists and paleontologists and just fascinating people like that and then then on the side he does comedy which is like you know a craft that he really cares about that he does he does the UFC which is like a his Hobby and he gets to commentate for that be sit ringside but he also doesn’t overdo any of the things meaning he doesn’t um do his podcast in a way that’s like optimized for views he’s not like he’s like I want to do a three-hour conversation because that’s what I want not because that’s optimal for the algorithm for UFC he doesn’t travel he’s like I’ll do the ones that are nearby me but I’m not going to fly around the world every weekend commentating this like I hope that works for you guys same thing with this comedy stuff he’s like you know I’m gonna do it the way that I want to do it and when I saw that I was like okay that is a different model of success that I you know I want more than than kind of what I wanted in my 20s you use Joe Rogan but I honestly think you can apply that to anyone like my hedge fund friends who love hedge funding they’re happy they love it it’s it’s finding your thing it’s finding the thing that you really enjoy and then just going all in on it those are the people I think who are winning you really got to enjoy like doing it a lot because it’s it it all really sucks to get there like to do you guys remember Zuck in ’ 06 to maybe it was like 08 to like 15 like I would not have trade places with them I would I would never in a million years trade places with either on mus but the idea of like having all these things me neither no trade I also reject that trade SAR yeah very very very fair of him to say that uh but it does seem cool like I guess what I mean is like I could acknowledge that um that seems awesome that would be cool to have and also uh I’m not willing to do it but it’s that’s like fantastic yeah I think one of the most powerful things is figuring out what’s there’s a difference between cool for you and cool for me right like there’s so many things where I see people’s life setup and I’m like that is super cool for you and like I don’t mean that in a negative way it’s like I do think it is super cool and I think it’s even cooler that it’s what you wanted but I have to figure out what is cool for me look like you know what’s funny is uh our last episode you talked about the seven spiritual roles uh and I you you talked about that book that you were reading um um or how you were thinking about reading it or something like that and I I went and bought it because I personally I’m in a little bit of a a place now where it’s like uh I think some people call it the second Mountain you know you already like achieve a little something to where you’re like you you’re secure but you’re like all right but what’s a problem that I want to work on or a way to spend life that may be a little bit higher up a maso’s hierarchy of needs and so I’m personally still like asking myself I it’s not defined yet for me Jesse do you have one I’m curious yeah you know I’ve done I think Sean you know this I’ve spent probably better part of six or seven years on this personal growth Journey which has turned into like a spiritual journey and the the moment came for me maybe three years in when my coach was like what’s the one thing you can’t not do it’s like a really weird question and the exercise for you know you can do it Sam right now what’s the one thing you can’t not do write down a few sentences and then every week look at those sentences and see if they seem to grow with you that’s a good idea and and in one funny way he say like what’s the thing that comes in the room when you show up like what’s the s because his his point was we try to make purpose this far out thing we have to go get and it’s actually the thing already inside of us that we just need to like tap into and live more fully and for for me it was I love helping other people like be the best versions of themselves like raise their game to the next level of what they’re capable of even in this podcast like I think I taught you guys two two new things like it just it comes out it’s not purposeful NE I’ve made it more purposeful now but like at the time it wasn’t but it was a thing any of my friends would tell you about me any my employees would tell you about like dude Jesse walks in and like the bar goes up and it’s like an exciting go up and and so I really like one one of the interesting examples of this he goes so how do you keep your to-do list Jesse and I was like uh initiatives or clients and and it’s like what if you kept your your to-do list based on your people you worked with like Executives and how you’re helping them be the best versions of themselves he’s like you probably still like get the work done that you need to get done but you do it in this very inspired way and Gateway X I mean Gateway X is a whole function of me going the thing I want to do is help other people learn and grow I’m not the CEO of any of these companies like now I do actually keep my to-do list that way I don’t write growth assistant or aux I write Adrien and Casey and I’m like how am I helping those those people and I find it’s a weird thing when I frame success or my life through the pnls of those businesses I get very like NE like I’m not I’m not as powerful I’m like a you know more a scarc minded person and when I frame it as the like how do I help those individuals which is the same [ ] because they’re running the businesses I’m like creative and I’m happy and I’m I’m more flowing so for me it’s like that’s the thing it feels Everly energizing for me like I think I could do it for a really long time and obviously the setup the way I’ve got it setup matters a lot too like I’m you know not running any of the individual businesses I don’t think I want to I don’t want to run staff meetings I don’t want to run comp plans hiring Pro like all these things I did it you guys have done it like it’s not what I want to do but I do want to help grow each of these businesses dude you’re awesome I appreciate you doing this thanks man what do think turn on great to see you by the way how’d you get Nelly at your birthday party what was that about tell that story before we go a quick one so I turned 40 in May as you guys know and I have a cool V video montage of the party my wife feel an awesome party but I’ve been telling telling all my friends about St Louis since I was 18 so I went to college I’m like St Louis is the best city whatever and everyone’s like I was like I’ll move back there one day they’re like no you’re not and then I moved back and they’re like oh [ ] you moved back and so I had 200 people in town who I’ve been raving to about St Louis for like 10 plus years so I’m like What’s the most ridiculous thing you could do if you’re me having your 4 like Nelly I mean you guys are somewh similar in age from my high school to Early College Nelly was like the biggest rapper on the planet and he’s from my hometown Nelly was our guy he was the first famous St Louis guy and it doesn’t matter what race you are where how old you are was like our son he made us so proud if you’re in your 30s or 40s Just Close Your Eyes I’m just going to say a few words that’ll just take you back Country Grammar Air Force Ones EI hot her oh my God like just the memories that come with those words so so so I’m like all right I’m I’m you know what’s the ridiculous thing I could have my party I’m like have Nelly perform there so my wife goes through the normal channels they’re like you know he basically doesn’t do this right so he’s like look it’s 300,000 just as a starting price by the time you do it all it’s half a million dollars and I’m like I I I want to die with zero but like that’s a little little Rich for my blood so I live with zero yeah so I’m like all right we’re not gonna do that and then I kind of am sad for a few months and then and then the entrepreneur me goes wait come on there’s got to be another way to approach this right so St Louis is not a big place I asked a couple people I go you know Nellie’s people right and I’m like can you introduce me and so I get to know they’re great by there there’s this guy Mike cha and there’re the one wonderful guys I get to know them and you know they introduce me as this guy who’s like an expert digital marketer e-commerce guy so I’m like hey what’s going on what’s going on in your world oh a you know Nelly is actually working on two big e-commerce businesses like his team is and I go oh tell me more and they tell me all about it and I’m like okay well here’s the thing you should think about and make sure you tag this Pro and and they’re like oh wow you know a lot about this and I’m like okay how can I be helpful right and and then I just basically have been working with them and right here’s the Shopify app do this here’s a good contractor for this they helping their team get it going and at some point it came out the aux business came out and I’m like yeah I charged private Equity firms like2 $300,000 to do this nice right and they’re like oh but You’ just been doing for free like what can we be helpful I’m like it’s funny you ask a young man’s dream would be to have Nelly at his birthday party and you know they’re they’re his people so they’re like well let’s go talk to him and they go well he’s got to meet you because he doesn’t know who you are and if doesn’t know you so I take my wife you know I get my I get my sort of urban like going I’m there and we become he’s super nice guy really friendly dude have you ever been more nervous walking up to that meeting I was nervous my wife was super nervous like why the hell am I here right now we meet him in like this the Soho wannabe in St Louis so Club wannabe you go for the handshake D up what are you doing yeah you know not the handshake but the you know yeah yeah of course and and so he that goes really well yeah my God you start using that phras my guy yeah and he asked me what do you want to do and I think like I was like oh man you got to come out to EI we gotta have the intro it’s gonna be like and and he like looks at me he’s like okay you’re a real fan I’m like yeah man this like you were you were the guy so then they’re like okay Nelly loved you we’re in then they’re like wait what was the date again is May 25th like well he’s in Napa on the 24th night at some festival and then he needs to be in Vegas on the 26th day for a day party and they’re like there just he he would do it as a friend now because you’ve helped him but he just can’t make the date work Jesse and so again I I’m like depressed for 48 hours and I’m like no [ ] this I’m like what if I fly in private both ways and they go we’ll talk to him come back next day okay he’ll do it but it’s got to be a G4 or better oh my God does not fly in anything below a G4 so I go and I do a bunch of like you know I’ve I’ve been flying private a little bit since the amp for sale but I was like talk to a bunch of these Brokers and I basically get them to beat each other up and it was round trip so it got a little cheaper per hour than it normally would but for 60 Grand I got him a round trip on a G4 Napa to STL STL to Vegas and he rolls into the you know he roll and he by the way he was amazing at the party like I’ll I I’ll text you guys videos and stuff like he but it was scary because he wasn’t under any contract with me so he could have come out said hey happy birthday Jesse eii eii and he could have left he ends up doing a 45 minutes set and he he told like his manager manager told me he’s like dude he was like so hyped it was like all these Indian people who like knew his music like he was so pumped that you guys were all just like rapping my brother and I are on stage rapping eii with him like it was dude it was a top three life moment like it was unbelievable that’s so awesome it was the like it was honestly one of the best hours of my life that super cool Little Dicky if you’re out there listening I would uh I’m turning 40 in a few years I would love to start you know you got save that dude you got to save that money you yeah you have to hope that like career just goes down I told my wife I’m like for your 50th I’ll get Beyonce because hopefully by then I’ll have a little more money and you will her stock will be down yeah we got to just catch them right before they hit Cameo so they can’t be peeking they got to be on some sort of a decline but like not all the way Rock bottomed yet so that’s that’s what we’re going for um Jesse we appreciate you you’re the man thanks for doing this you too guys good to see you all right that’s it that’s the PA