Transcript
Raw auto-generated captions — not yet polished.
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en all right we’ve got our buddy sah balk on today if you don’t know s he is one of the few people on Earth who has bootstrapped a company to a unicorn status a billion dollar company without ever taking outside money the guy’s a legend he’s in his 30s and he’s done all this what I liked about this episode is most people we talked to a lot of guys who have made it but they’re kind of just like you you ask them what would you do today and they kind of just shrug like I don’t know that’s what worked for me back then but good luck to you and you’re like [ ] all right I got to figure this out myself say’s the opposite he didn’t close the door behind him he kind of just puts a ladder down and he’s like hey here’s three specific opportunities that I see and what I liked about these opportunities is he’s very specific he says exactly what he would do and actually that he’s looked into doing some of these things uh the second thing is that he these are not like moonshell ideas it’s not like oh invent the next big AI thing these are just ideas that will just work like if you execute them well they will work this is one of those episodes where I actually was like writing down what he was saying I was like oh I should do that I literally slack B I was like Ben Ben call me when you’re free call me I got to talk about some of these ideas and by the way at the end we talk about money and we ask a little bit about what people’s numbers are you’ll understand when we get to that part about what your number is I want you guys to do me a favor if you’re listening on uh your your podcast app go to our YouTube page obviously you have to subscribe because that’s the gentleman’s agreement you subscribe when you when when we create valuable content for you all we ask is just for a subscribe but tell us in the comment section what your number is you’ll understand when you get to that part and also you can view what other people’s numbers are so this will be like a little bit of a social [Music] experiment S I don’t know if you’ve seen this do you recognize this from the camp I haven’t seen s since uh since Camp MFM I don’t know if you see this yeah aquapa so Sam when we were at the camp um first of all microplastics all the rage right now in rich guy circles and so people are like oh yeah I had my gut tested I my microplastics are like off the charts and they’re they’re like what but you’re so like you’re so conscious about it and the person was like yeah I know and I’m conscious about it and I still have like a credit card in my belly of like plastic and uh we were like damn and so then I noticed Joe gbia the the Airbnb guy and we are all drinking water bottle like Fiji water bottles they had like a thousand Fiji and I was like dude I’m living large everywhere I look I could just grab ice cold Fiji but Fiji comes and plastic and I noticed he’s only drinking from his own bottle that he’s sourced from somewhere I was like do this man bring his own water on the trip and he’s like and he doesn’t say anything of course not preaching to anybody but I’m like I notice you’re only drinking that like is there something good about that he’s like I just try to avoid you know Plastics and you know everywhere I was like he only drinks glass water I only drink glass water immediately immediately went home ordered it and so since then I’ve only been drinking this and we uh we have to do an intro Sean yeah so Sayad was on the the podcast like six months ago you were a hit people loved you basically the gist of the Pod is you have this Empire that you own that you’ve not raised money for it mostly started as a WordPress blog on WP beginner and then you saw which WordPress plugins among other types of businesses were most popular you bought them or invested in them now your Empire is doing something like over a 100 million I think you were somewhat vague but I think you said over a 100 million in Revenue the whole thing you own gas stations I think you own um tons of real estate so you’re just a uh you kind of have your hands in everything the title last time the catchy title which I thought was really cool s is one of the few very few people on Earth who is a bootstrapped billionaire meaning or has built a billion dollar company sorry as a Bo bootstrap so not taking external money um and did it kind of slow and steady and in a really unique way where you you really uh grew inside this WordPress ecosystem and WordPress turned out to be really big Andrew Wilkinson came on and called this strategy the Barnacle on the whale so there’s you know a whale and it’s a it’s a growing whale and if you can be the right Barnacle you can actually just kind of grow with it and you can ride that you could surf that wave and actually build a large business yourself and by the way for the record we have to protect Sayad here he never said billionaire I think I think we said that so that’s us he could he he doesn’t have to deny or confirm it I I tend not to focus on the valuation the the goal is to keep building cool things that our users are loving um and with the team that I enjoy working with and have a good time and if you want s’s like backstory you know from we were talked about like when you were a kid what you were doing in your teens to how you built this Empire like we did that episode so this one we’re going to do something different which was just we were like hey come back on you’re like well I kind of told my story already but we said actually just come and just hang out with us like we do a normal MFM where we’re going to talk about five different things it’d be great to have you here just to talk about those whatever random things that come up uh along the way so if you want the backstory go there if you want to hang out come here so sad where you made this amazing document you have another topic on here that I know that’s just gonna get uh that’s gonna it’s gonna make Shawn just super horny because he’s gonna be able to promote his own thing uh what do you have here about let me get warmed up while you do this go ahead I’ll stretch well I I see you know there there’s a massive opportunity in in product High Services uh with offshore Market um especially in industry where the Tam is really really high uh I believe this is greatly underestimated everybody’s trying to go build this massive big idea business and spending years and years building software um which may or may not work or if you’re good at sales and you have some sort of audience taking this model and going to town where as a matter of fact I was evaluating a business earlier today that just came to my table that that’s doing product I Services all right everyone a quick break to tell you about HubSpot and this one’s really easy for me me to talk about because I’m going to show you a real life example so I’ve got this company called Hampton join hampton.com it’s a community for Founders doing between 2 million all the way up to like 250 million a year in revenue and one of the ways that we’ve grown is we’ve created these cool surveys and so we have a lot of Founders who have high net worths and we’ll ask them all types of questions that people typically are embarrassed to ask but provide a lot of value so things like how much the founders pay themselves each month how much money they’re spending each month what the payroll looks like if they’re optimistic about the next year and their business all these questions that people are afraid to ask but well we ask them anyway and they tell us in this Anonymous survey and so what we do is we created a landing page using hubspot’s landing page tool and it basically has a landing page that says here’s all the questions we asked give us your email if you want to access it and then I shared this page on Twitter and we were able to get thousands of people who gave us their email and told us they want this survey and I could see did they come from social media I can see did they come from Twitter from LinkedIn basically everywhere else that they could possibly come from I’m able to track all of that and then I’m able to see over the next handful of weeks how many of those people actually signed up up and became a member of Hampton in other words I can see how much revenue came from this survey how much revenue came from each traffic Source things like that but the best part is I can see how much revenue came from it but a lot of times it takes a ton of work to make that happen HubSpot made that super super easy if you’re interested in doing this you can check it out hubspot.com the Link’s in the description and I’ll also put the link to the survey that I did so you can actually see the landing page and how it worked and everything like that I’m just going to do that call to action then and it’s free check it out in the description all right now back to MFM what’s an example yeah give an example because I don’t think most people know product I service offshore Market that’s a lot of words sure sure so we took an investment stake in a company called Seahawk media uh and they offer custom WordPress development Website Maintenance basically other Web Master related services at affordable prices and we can also do it white label so this is like if you’re a small business and you can’t afford to hire a full-time developer you can go here you know basically get a developer for hire kind of thing at very very low rat because a team is based out of in India um and you know there’s a white label offer there as well so other agencies by hosting companies businesses can add like add-on Revenue uh you know by reselling Seahawk but other example could be take like very large market like bookkeeping right there’s this company called bench I use some yeah they charge you between like $299 or $499 and then more right per month to do your bookkeeping and they’re really really slow um one of our portfolio companies were using it and super and we brought this thing in house um but I know that many accounting firms now have offices in Pakistan India latam Etc uh where they’re doing this fractional CFO task like very very basic task like bookkeeping in basic panl um at super low cost so someone can go in and say hey we will do the bookkeeping for you at this rate uh I know of course like Shephard right this is this is one of the companies um I think that there there’s a large opportunity here where you take a market where Tam is really high especially a Services market and then you turn it into a product High service you offshore the talent and then you add like a reseller or a white label model I think the uh the one that I I was looking at was bookkeeping and I think the The Tam there so so large and the key is is is the reseller and white labeling model um which is what we learn from Seahawk media so let’s let’s talk about Seahawk right because you have a tactical example here so Seahawk is basically your Outsource WordPress development agency and how much does it cost roughly let’s say it costs like $1,000 to build a website I’m just making this up um and you’re a web hosting company and a bunch of your clients are coming to you and saying Hey I want you to maintain my website and you’re like well we just do hosting I don’t want to build a services department so they will go to Seahawk partner with Seahawk and say hey can you manage these clients for me and we do a ref split um so now there are many web hosting companies that are effectively wh labeling Seahawk media’s team um and offering add-on services to their customers like custom website design um maintenance by the hour you know site optimization hack site repair all sorts of these Services um have been productized and delivered with without you ever building your own team so in that in that same way by the way this is something that we’re going to do on on WP beginner I know team is working on it and it’s going to go live is we will start offering professional websites so anybody who comes to WP beginner um can get a website done and so on but you can do the same exact thing in every space so let’s say bookkeeping I can go to all the smaller CPA firms that don’t have the economics to build on their own bookkeeping and just say why don’t you just white label my services and this is like you know now Joe’s CPA bookkeeping you’re getting all the clients you charge whatever markup you want um you’re paying the X uh so on the back end still works the same way so if you’re like for example Shephard uh can can like instead of doing a traditional affiliate model you can do this white labeled model where other people or or just becomes like your lead I have a question for both of you guys Sean with Shepard and s i I’m sure you you know a bit about this as well when you guys are out so I think Sean you guys have people in Latin America I think you also have people in Asia yeah uh when you are going out and I don’t know how many people you guys have but let’s just say hundreds when you’re going out and you’re like finding these people how hard is it to find them how hard is it to train them and how hard is it to keep the quality High um I mean it’s the main thing right if you don’t provide quality Talent or if you’re not able to provide higher quality Talent than somebody could just easily search for then you don’t really have a business so for example with Shephard they have a hundred recruiters like I remember when I was doing the investment I was like hey what’s this like Giant payroll thing I thought there’s like nobody here like what’s what are these hundred people who are these hundred people where where’s your office he’s like we have an office in the Philippines we have an office in ladam and what’s in that office is just recruiters who are constantly searching for talent and then basically testing them filtering them and trying to because you’re like the whole game is people want to hire overseas they want the cost savings but what you don’t want is the average person in the Philippines or the average developer in ladam you want the top 1% the top 5% and so who’s going to do that filtering and that’s the that is the whole service of what Shephard does is goes to find that so to in order to do that is it hard I don’t know if I would say it’s like it’s not like rocket science but it did take somebody on the ground in the Philippines who started an office has 100 recruiters there and then they have a whole system and process how they intake talent and so they’re getting thousands of resumés and then they’re trying to filter down okay when somebody comes to us asking for a designer or bookkeeper how do we give them the best and not the average person so you do want to have that so that’s the like that what s saying is you’ve already built that hard infrastructure now you could go to Joe the CPA and say you need a bookkeeper well I actually already have the good bookkeepers here um you already have a customer relationship why don’t you create an add-on service it’s extra revenue for you without extra work that’s really smart right yeah and you know same to Echo Sean’s Point quality is very very important if you can’t deliver quality doesn’t work but the good thing over the years that we’ve seeing is that Talent across the world is getting better so if if you go 10 years ago and you’re trying to hire uh overseas whether it’s Philippines India you may not have had that same level talent but the new generation much better English uh you know more techn technologically adapt and so on so when we’re hiring in Seahawk for example this this is you know super bettered Talent we know they can build WordPress website or you know if you’re a business owner you’re like how do I know when I go to upwork that this person actually knows what they’re doing anybody can go make a profile on upwork there’s not a lot of vetting being done here you know that this is a vetted person who can do it and it’s in Seahawk’s best interest to vet that person because if that person is working on a a client’s website for some big hosting company you’re not just going to lose that one client you you might lose a contract right of white labeling the service for that big hosting company and so are you s are you going to start this for accounting the product I service of accounting or uh bookkeeping no I’m not I’m not actively uh looking to start it but I’m studying it um right now and I talked with one of the influencers in in the accounting space uh to see what if there’s a JB potential I bet that guy’s just a thrill to be around accounting influencers yeah it’s like oh he’s got his he’s got his top button on button you like to party like that guy’s just a thrill so you have another one here which is ecosystems and this is the kind of Barnacle on the whale idea that we were talking about earlier so you were like here’s what you wrote you go I’ll be the first to admit I’ve benefited tremendously off WordPress and the growth of Wordpress and I’m grateful for that Andrew has talked about how he with wec Commerce benefited from the growth of Shopify he got in early started making Shopify themes and then as Shopify grew his themes business grew and then they bought more Shopify apps and you said there’s got to be more of these basically that this there there’s not just those two there are more so what are some other ecosystems that you see that you think are exciting uh the one that I’m excited about is uh QuickBooks and the Zero apps so these accounting uh platforms are very very sticky I missed the deal here it was a really really good business um they’re doing like $3 million in Revenue extremely profitable uh and I believe there’s a lot of value in someone acquiring multiple one of the these uh QuickBooks apps or zero apps or maybe QuickBooks apps and then you port it over zero and and so on uh and and then you cross sell so it doesn’t matter if the user switched from QuickBooks to zero or wice Versa you’re still keeping that customer um you can even multiply that effect by going and tying multiple ecosystems so you can say uh QuickBooks and Shopify or in WordPress and and so on I think there there’s uh serious potential here uh when you’re looking at these businesses dude this episode I know this episode is good because s is saying ideas and I’m literally like opening up an email thread being like we got to do this we got to do this right now and like it looks like I’m sitting I’m almost like on my toes up ready to like go Sprint because I like he’s saying things that immediately I could see the opportunity this this is good Sean do you know how many us this is shocking do you know how many users or how many customers QuickBooks has I would guess like two million I would just guess a crazy number say do you know go ahead I believe 30 I think it’s 30 million people wow 30 million 30 million customers QuickBooks have which is insane what does zero have it’s smaller but it’s it’s in the millions as well am I right is is it about 30 or is it even more I my number could be old I think I think you’re you’re you’re you’re you’re spot on there and what do you think’s the play is it software plugins or is it agencies that manage service I think the the software play the one I was looking at was software play and I’ve seen like other software plays in this not like the one that I really wanted I missed it is so stupid um I can see the regret in your face dude I’ve never seen you have like fomo this is amazing but like you know there there there are other you know implementation Partners um around these that have Bill adjacent apps uh that you can go in and then use that as distribution this is is a very essential tool like you’re not going to not get rid of so he’s had two great loves of his life his wife and then whatever this app is that got away he’ll never stop thinking about this app no I’m I’m studying the ecosystem um and I think this ecosystem you can find like wonderful businesses that they’re not going to be Venture growth right they they’re not going to have Venture growth but they’re going to be extremely profitable and you know that people are going to keep using uh quick booster zero because they as long as they have a business Okay so I’m what you’re talking about is the QuickBooks I just Googled QuickBooks plugins so you’re just talking about something like that so there’s like um that’s right there’s a a variety of plugins that you can buy I imagine they cost money um yes how much uh are are you the biggest WordPress uh plug-in business on WordPress I think collectively when you look at it um after automatic we would be the the biggest who okay and I I we promised that we’re not going to dive deep on numbers can you say like the second or third place like what how big of a business would they have also tens of millions of dollars yeah um and so how big of a business do you think you could build just on the QuickBooks uh platform or the QuickBooks ecosystem I think if you look at the App Store you know just like Shopify has an app store QuickBooks have an app store um and if you take couple of apps that might be doing three million four million $2 million dollar in in that range and you tative by five and you buy five of those 2 million doing 2 million you just built a $10 million a business that may not be cross- selling enough so you can unlock more value they might be mismanaged gems uh by the way if someone wants to do it reach out to me I would like to invest in it yeah yeah I’m studying this and if you have a if you’re listening and you have a quick se.com I’ll forward you to say you don’t worry yeah you’re GNA be like the mafia like where’s my cut [ ] there’s no direct access here yeah yeah yeah what uh what um so like when you do I imagine that there’s so there’s software like jungle Scout I think for or there’s a bunch for Amazon where you could see which services or products are selling the highest I imagine there’s the same for Shopify when you’re studying QuickBooks I can’t imagine that that software exists what does studying mean think you’re you’re looking at the number of reviews that the a specific app has you know all the signals they might be featuring something that’s in the popular um looking at what’s in the new you can Google or search in in the QuickBooks like a category uh you know the tags they’re using and see how many uh Solutions show up in that and Gauge by okay if only three or four% of users are going to leave a review that’s probably how many users that they actually have so if somebody has like 100 reviews that’s only 4% of their user base potentially um so you can you can sort of make a hypothesis there and say okay this category or this keyword uh maybe receipt management or whatever it may be um has 20 apps and that’s that’s how big the market size is for a receipt app in QuickBooks if that makes you’re gonna you’re you’re basically a billionaire building these like plugins basically and I think that that’s I mean that’s that’s awesome like that’s just so funny because the people listening to this you guys should actually go to the YouTube because you’re smiling as if it’s like too good to be true you’re like no one’s talking about this I can’t believe why is no one talking about this like that’s of the vibe I’m getting from your facial expressions I enjoy the game of business and I enjoy find finding these opportunities that allows uh us to compound and and that’s what’s exciting dude anytime I hear a billionaire talking about where he’s founding compounding I’m like talk dirty to me baby yeah like like you’re you keep saying billionaire which is not by the way I’m completely making that up I want to I want to respect that I’m I was being hyperbolic there it’s a state of mind baby it’s a state of mind it’s not a so um yeah let’s do open source because I was reading today why combinator put out a like request for startups they like kind of update this once a year and one of the things one of the top requests that they had was more four profit open source companies and they were like we funded gitlab and they they named like five they we we funded 150 of these and we want to do more like we like this model this is a good model and I was reading it and I was like I think I like I know what it is but I don’t know why it’s in why it’s like particularly interesting or why it’s unique and special and so tell us about the open source stuff what what is intriguing to you about open source I believe that open source is one of the most powerful ideas of Our Generation because it gives you many freedoms so anyone from anywhere in the world can look at the code and learn from it imagine like you know having some of the best programmers in the world writing code and then you some some new kid um in India or Pakistan or us wherever you are be able to read that code and then when you see something that maybe there’s an idea that you have you want to contribute back to it you can just write a patch and commit that patch and then the project maintainers can say okay this is great um they can adapt your code and all of a sudden your code is now being used on millions of websites can you explain because this is a kind of counterintuitive idea right like normal business would be it’s our product we hire people they build the product we would never want others to see our secret sauce our code or be able to use it or Fork it which means just basically remix it for themselves and so like I do I don’t know is there anything interesting about the origins of this like when it came out was this a controversial idea because it to me it’s pretty anti- the way you would normally build a business can you paint that picture kind of from first principles and and why would anyone want to contribute so well one it’s it’s very very controversial in the beginning right it was copy you have copyright and this is copy left like hey everything we’re building is for the good of society for progressing technology for Innovation um so there’s a lot of people that get behind that Vision the freedoms that it offers um in in countries like a lot of people can’t afford some of the more expensive enterprise software maybe they’re in in Pakistan or maybe they’re in Africa somewhere where they don’t have the resources to have those kind of tools to build their business and now you have this open source platform let’s say WordPress it gives you the freedom to publish anywhere maybe there’s censorship happening on on any other social media platform or publishing platform and you can self host your own WordPress site and you know put your take out there so that Vision uh you becomes really really important I think when you look at longterm anybody can write code you can hire developers anywhere so it most markets will get competitive and your vision becomes a USP okay and and that’s what open source brings to to the table and it’s going to disrupt basically every established Market that exists and um there are startups that are coming out I was I was looking at this guy I talked to this guy named Joseph he runs OSS capital and he’s deep into the open source Community he’s looking at you know various GitHub projects uh and he he has a pretty cool method right he sorts them by the number of stars that means how many developers are really liking that code um and then Gets behind them so one of the things that he invested in was app flowy which is a notion competitor but open source and affordable so now I can make my own notion and use it maybe I can self-host it uh and significantly reduce cost in my business let’s do some examples so there’s Windows the operating system then you had Linux the the open source counterpart and Linux is like a what like 20 billion or something like that it’s like a big very big like kind of Enterprise and they make their money off just the services right because the product is free that’s kind of the whole point point of open sources you could just use this self hosted for free but if you want the like is that all that they do with red hat is is it just services that generates so much revenue services add-ons uh you know pre premium versions of that so like engine X for example there’s a free version of engine X and then there’s the pro version of engine X which gives you a lot more features Etc um to save you time and convenience same thing in WordPress the core of Wordpress is free and does many many things and there’s then there’s plugins and many of the plugins are free which gives you a lot of cool things but then if you want more convenience you pay for um additional updates and support so you have WordPress which is the free you open source publisher I don’t even know what the closed Source version of of Wordpress is maybe it’s just social media um but then you have like uh Android open source iOS the the Apple you know operating system closed Source there’s always this kind of like dual winner and um it’s so people have this strategy of just like X but open source like slack but open source notion but open source is that generally like a good um like I like blueprints when it comes to business somebody told me about a blueprint they were like just superum for X the way superhuman just took one piece of work software and was like pay 20 bucks a month but I’m gonna make it like really slick and like incredible ux and just way better design and like uh linear was a good example of that linear was basically super human for jira for the ticketing system and it worked it’s like a very successful company is a blue is a successful blueprint in your mind like popular thing but open source does that work absolutely I think you take something that has a large t uh and then you make open source version out of it that is cost effective affordable and now you grow with the community over long term like I don’t think anybody could build what WordPress did as a proprietary software but the reason why WordPress was so successful was because all the other website building platforms uh or all other hosting companies as should say that didn’t want to have their own website builder they started contributing to it so go at instead of building their own website builder I mean they have one but they went in WordPress and start contributing to Wordpress uh and and and many other hosting companies did too so Shopify which is essentially a hosting company uh same thing with wi at the core of it they’re hosting um they have their own proprietary platforms versus WordPress is built by and built on top of by many many many other hosting companies and the sheer number of contributors are a lot and you you see the same thing um in in Chrome as well and and others but can’t you say that okay so WordPress Powers how much 35% of the internet probably a little more like 40% okay so 40% okay so Shopify has a today they’re at worth a hundred billion dollar I don’t know what WordPress is worth I don’t know what their revenue is because they’re a privately held company but for controlling 30 or 40% of the internet you you should be making many tens of billions of dollars a year in Revenue you think the WordPress has over a billion in Revenue I would think no so I think when you think about WordPress WordPress is a community project and there is a uh proprietary company that the founder of Wordpress uh Matt MWI started called automatic automatic has good size revenues they’re private company so I don’t know what what those revenues are um but I it would be fair to say that it’s not as high as as Shopify but when you look at the collective ecosystem of Wordpress and all the companies that are in it um you take godadi how big is godadi you take many many many other hosting companies or WP engine and so on and you put collectively together I would say that the market cap will be bigger yeah Auto so automatic was valued at three billion and it was valued at 7 billion at some point in its private these are I don’t know if this is rumors or confirmed but it’s like published in a bunch of different places and so that’s what the automatic is kind of the the uh the company that like kind of I what would you call the steward of the open source program or the open source project I’m not sure what you would call it they’re essentially the red hat what red hat was for Linux automatic is that for WordPress right they have the same Founders yes yeah and plus Sam you you get all the developer Street K cred bro like I mean Matt Mullen that guy’s right he’s a made man he’s Untouchable there’s no doubt that it’s awesome I think actually when I think of like internet Heroes I think Matt mwag is is is up there I actually used WordPress so check this out let me explain the difference in business models I used WordPress for the hustle the hustle ended up being worth tens of millions of dollars it reaches hundreds of millions of people uh and we are small compared to many of the others on WordPress you know so I know I had a friend that had a WordPress site that was doing 100 million monthly uniques um and so there’s no doubt that it’s the best but check this out I bought wordpress’s software called the woo Commerce woo commerce was uh $300 a year I had a business on there that was doing five million a year in recurring revenue and I paid them $300 every single year If This Were Shopify or something else I would have been paying them I believe 50 thou I think is it 10% or 5% so i’ have been paying them 25 to 50 Grand a year and I was like this is a [ ] steal I’m stealing from these guys and I I was like I don’t understand this business I’m getting all of the value and they’re getting virtually none well well I think the value is disproportionately favored in in in for the consumer and that’s what you want in a business right you want your users to have disproportional value uh coming from you and I think like if when you look at products and this happens you’re studying long term when your product can’t be 10x better in a specific space uh it it it really becomes all about the brand uh and the value that you’re delivering when customers aren’t using your product like actively so having that value being so disproportional makes your business far more stickier uh than your competitor who might be charging an arm like I have a bad idea for you say so where where else have we seen this where oh the customer is just getting an incredible deal deal uh one idea that comes to mind is Costco and Costco is basically like hey we’ll sell you the goods at Cost Plus 10% and that’s just going to cover the kind of the carrying cost of putting these items on the Shelf so like if whatever that bag of rice actually costs it’s that plus 10% that’s the that’s always the price and we’re going to negotiate the [ ] out of these vendors by the way to get the lowest possible version of that price and we’re going to use our scale to do that and all you got to do is pay us $120 a year that’s like $120 I’m saving that in one grocery trip two grocery trips this is a no-brainer and they’ve built a like you know huge subscription business off this do you think somebody could do that in the software world because I’ve I’ve seen a couple examples of this where I bought this um screenshotting tool that’s really good it’s called cleanshot X and uh free free shout out for those guys they uh so it’s really good like screenshot tool but one of the ways you can buy it is off some some service that like it’s like it has all the random software tools put there on the Shelf like a like a Costco like an Amazon for random software tools and it’s usually at a lower price than if you go buy direct than on the site and I think it’s if you have a if you have a membership to the overall thing then you can just get these tools for free I kind of wonder if somebody could do this with the open source community and just say all right pay us ,000 a year and then you’re going to get you know woocommerce you’re gonna get all these things at the lowest possible price or you’re just gonna get go go round up all of the software and say hey you’re going to be selling at cost plus 10% and we’re going to have this uh um uh you know the subscription Revenue to for our members who who want to shop there is that a how bad how bad on a scale of one to terrible what where is that idea two-sided marketplaces are generally a tough business to to build so look there are challenges in there challenges in in the model but uh but you know you can you can try it and I think there there are companies doing it I think if you focus it on a maybe a sub subset let’s say um agencies and you say hey development agencies we can get you access to these softwares uh at a lower price probably that’s where I would start and then you try to make it broader verus saying we have every software Under the Sun um because you have to do some backend integration of sdks a lot of Indie softwares don’t have the ability to have reseller models and versus like hey here’s here’s my thing take the payment give me money in the back end that’s generally not how software provisioning works so that there’s uh a little bit more Nuance there than what Costco has so what is this OSS Capital doing they basically you said they go through GitHub projects and they look at like which things have like some combination of engaged users large Tam and what do they do they invest in them or they add they build products for them they’re they’re investing in them um and and investing the open source Community he’s like what they just give them hugs and [ ] what where’s the money of this whole business what’s going on they invested five high fives no I no they’re they’re investing um capital in in those businesses and helping them come into market like I mean if you look at at gitlab for example it’s like 11 billion market cap right now so like app flow going after the notion Market or or like cal.com going after the scheduling Market I think we’re going to see many of these establish uh companies that might be unicorns right now in the project management spaces and such get disrupted by an open source solution uh and then what’s going to happen is like you and I can take app Floy and say we’re making notion for doctors and we can take the code Fork it make it better and then contribute back to it because the way the licensing is done so there will be flavors of these open source softwares that that will get created like there flavors of Wordpress that are created um and that’s what makes it so disruptive uh because like a doctor who might be using notion will say well I want to go use this tool because it’s it does like the extra 5% that notion won’t do well which categories and products do you think you think this model would work for where you’re like you see a particular product category you say if we if we did if we attacked that category with this open source blueprint or framework I think that could be a winning combination I think uh the open source CRM that that does a well good enough job will will will be quite disruptive um perfect segue to our sponsor play the ad baby that but but I think uh you you take you take any you know large uh Tam market and software and you add open source component but like Sam Doo stability AI they’re basically open AI but open source they’re the ones who make stable diffusion right so how big are they they’re multi-billion dollar right it’s like AI hype cycle they’re they’re very big right but but people actually use you know stable diffusion a lot right it’s like a it’s a big project um we invested I think Sam you invested with me right in cal.com which is like the call Kenly but open source uh competitor because C Le is like really expensive and the cal.com guys have done a good job of building the open source version of that I really like this thesis in fact I think this OSS Capital thing is really smart like there’s a few like strategic Venture fund ideas that I really liked this is one of them um another one that I had heard was somebody who’s just taking prattas so they’re like oh you do all the work of finding the company uh you know 30% of them are going to die or whatever before they raise their next round but of the ones that raise their next round you have prata you could top up and keep your percentage but most investors don’t want to do it or don’t have the capital to do it so these guys are just pra and pretty smart I think there’s a few like like strategic Venture funds one I really wanted to do was just a flipper so you basically you would say hey I want to invest but I’ll be out when you raise your series a I’m gonna do I’m really helpful in this zero to one but as soon as you get to your series a I’m out because a normal Venture fund is like seven to 10 years and you’re hoping for this like thousand X outcome but the seed to series a valuation lift is like 3x and it’s usually in 12 to 18 months and so if you could just pick well of like what SE startups are most likely to get to a series a or you’re just in an environment where a lot of companies are able to raise their next round you can flip and for the founder it’s great because you’re like cool I could take this Capital today but it’s actually non-dilutive like they’re going to be out by the next round and that same those same shares go to the next investor so it’s actually less dilutive than normal Capital but wouldn’t you be accused of a like a pumping dump but you’re not pumping it though like when somebody buys a home and and then sells it a year later is that a pump and dump like no well no because well I would argue a a home has uh like realized value which is that’s what happens from a seed startup when you invest or precede startup 18 months later they’ve now built a product they have customers they have some traction they their story is so much better right like they are a Dr risk startup in some way if they’re able to raise theoretically but not always usually you’re right you’re right but but the risk goes a little bit lower um and you were in the you entered the riskiest stage at seed so the problem is it’s just like a faux PA like uh startup investing is supposed to be this like True Believers I I I was in and I’m here for the Long Hall and like you’re going to change the world whereas when you sell at the series a you’re like you might change the world but probably not uh all I know is you change my bank account you know by 3x if I if I sell this right and so I think that’s the problem is it’s so like it’s an anti- signal like nobody wants to see that your first investor wants out right away it’s such a bad signal so you would have to first build your brand of this is what we do it’s not like for any company we do this it doesn’t mean anything about them we do this with every company we invest in and you’d have to frame it not as like a quick flip because that sounds like self-serving you’d have to phrase it as like non-dilutive it’s like we are the early stage guys we’re really helpful early we don’t know anything after that and like we want you to not dilute yourself so much so take our Capital because we’re going to basically give you back those shares to sell to the next guy rather than just losing more and more Equity as you go yes still still very very high risk you have to be a very good picker and say yes this is going to go from C to a but like I looked at my portfolio so I looked at like a 100 companies I don’t remember the exact numbers top of my head but basically it was like out of a 100 Angel Investments that I did uh then I looked at what percentage of them raised the next round and what was the average multiple of the companies that raised the next round you just multiply those together and it’ll tell you like what’s your expected value and the the math math when I did it last time which was basically that enough companies raise the next round at enough of a multiple where you would be getting a good return I think it was like 30% I was I the the math was basically that I would be making 30% on my money uh which was fantastic and better than almost every Venture fund out there but I didn’t I didn’t actually do that strategy because I thought of it later and also it’s really hard to get around that perception problem I thought of it when one of my PR companies raised the series a and I was like this company’s not going to work I wish I could just sell right now and uh bro that’s ex you’re proving my point you You’ just proven my point uh Point there’s no point no that proves my point that you could you could well you’re not pumping you are dumping though yeah you’re dumping yeah exactly yeah uh that’s you that’s what you should call it your dumping scheme speaking of numbers I tweeted this out this morning I want I’m curious what you guys will guess so I asked a question I’ll tell you I guess I’ll give you the background so I was talking to I heard this like coach like a exec coach or whatever and I was telling him I was like yeah I’m trying to do he’s like what are your goals for the years I was like yeah I’m trying to do this this and this and one of the things I said I was like yeah if I sell this business I think I’ll make and I I don’t know what I said I was like I think I could make 20 million bucks and I was like and then I was like that’ll be great because then then I paused I was like I was like I don’t actually I have no idea what I have no idea what will change and I was like I was like because no it’ll be cool because then I can um then my life will be better because I’ll uh what will change and I was like wait what am I doing what is there any benefit to incremental and so I I started thinking about this I was like I do want this however I do think it’s a little silly that I can’t point to maybe an area of life that I want to improve using the money money’s a tool I believe that but I have no idea what I’m going to use this tool for I’m just going to Home Depot trying to get a tool and it’s I you what do you need this drill for and I’m like I have no idea so I thought was a little silly so I tweeted out a question today I said how much money do you think you need to live your desired lifestyle because I think I’m very close to just living the exact desired I have I don’t really have any more like desires of what I want to change so what is money good for in that sense and so I asked people I said Z to 1 million 1 to 10 million 10 to 50 or more than 50 50 plus and I said how much money do you think you need in your bank account in order to be living your desired lifestyle one of the anwers got 47 or 48% which one do you think it is say and what’s your answer yeah well I think if if you’re if you’re looking at between those four choices most people probably said at 10 to 50 that’s what I would have guessed um okay that’s what I would have said myself also I think that’s like the like kind of my my nothing think it’s per not Utopia where somebody’s feeding me grapes and [ ] like that but like the what I actually want what I actually care about I think is is totally achievable in that range so do you uh and so Sam’s question was a good one what what would your answer be like you’ve surpassed all these great what what but what do you think actually made a difference in your lifestyle where you’re like oh I now have the money to live the lifestyle I want I call it the threshold number you know I have a very simple life I don’t I don’t have these crazy desires of wearing the fanciest clothes or any of those things um for me the the $10 million number was more than enough uh to have a good life um you know I do what I do because I enjoy it what would you know I want to be productive member of society and this is fun for me but you know people might say their number is uh more do do you think anything changes uh like maybe like as you go as you go up what gets unlocked at those levels of the game the only ones I could think of I’ll just give you my answer so I was like I think if you go above 50 or go above a 100 you know private travel is like you know the big unlock where you know you don’t have to think you just fly private everywhere do do all that I think that’s the biggest one and the second one is if if you really care about you being the one to give to charitable causes I think that’s the other thing that you could do is you could make large charitable donations I don’t really know what else gets unlocked past that but you know you might have other ideas am I missing anything what gets unlocked over 50 I think it’s it’s just the level of convenience uh that you get whe whether it is and whether it is through private travel whether it is through um private he home and so on and then then the level of that that you can you know access just just get get elevated also you think there’s a difference between 50 and 500 like is there like a number where you think the level of convenience is mostly quite similar like is it more convenient to have a significantly larger plane than a smaller private plane yeah yeah I mean it makes a difference on how far you’re trying to go uh the poor rich guy in his small plane just puttering out he couldn’t make it across the Atlantic just I mean yeah yeah like you know you can spend any amount of money that you want if if you have money you can spend it do you really need it I don’t know um and that’s that based on each person but even if you look at Taylor Swift right she had to take she took a private jet but it was not hars like she contracted a service to fly from Japan or wherever she was to Super Bowl because her own jet can’t fly that far right um now does that mean that she she can’t afford a bigger jet no I’m pretty sure she can um but it just doesn’t make Financial sense for her to maybe have a global 8,000 or something like this what was your number Sean mine was in the 10 to 50 I thought 10 to 50 like that’s that is past that there’s there’s very few things that are as appealing or just like big diminishing returns but this is my persective my my number my perspective 10 years ago would have been 1 to 10 um you know I would have been like oh 10 past 10 what does it matter and now past 10 you’re like it kind of matters and maybe that same thing happens again I’m not sure that’s why I kind of like I say I want to ask other people’s opinions um because again I think a doesn’t get talked out talked about much uh but clearly we’re all acting on it everybody who’s listening to this podcast everybody on Twitter you’re all playing a money game and you’re spending a huge portion of your life earning earning money and it is probably worth knowing what’s wor uh where does money really improve the quality of your life and what are those thresholds where and what are the things you can unlock and so you could decide for yourself if it’s really worth devoting this much energy and this much time to accumulating more I think 10 10 10 gives you a a a base you’ve got your Fortress of Solitude 10 is enough that you could tell most people to [ ] off because you don’t need much from anyone um I actually still think you can lose 10 if you make a handful of bad Investments um uh what s you’re gonna look at me stupid because I you can lose 100 if you make a handful of B investment there’s no no no number you can’t lose that’s true um and I think I think a threshold is 10 I think another threshold is 50 that that’s my current thinking what do you think happens at 50 what’s the difference I think at 50 you can fly private safely uh like with that like it’s no big deal you can fly private most every time you want and that and that’s the only difference um well you could have a you know at with $10 million liquid I wouldn’t buy a $5 million house a certain number your Nanny speaks Spanish and the next number she speaks English and Spanish next number she speaks English Spanish and French right that’s what else changes but like SE where where you live you live in one of the most expensive like 50 m radius parts of the world uh like a really sick house is probably $6 million right yeah you’re not going to buy that if you’re worth 10 but you would buy that if you’re worth 30 probably right challenge accepted something I will but you know no matter how big your house is you can you’ll only ever be sitting in one seat at a time so it’s it’s important to have like perspective to not let the let the gold post keep moving you know forward and then for what like I mean there’s a house here that’s $170 million for sale like you know not too far away from so somebody who was at the camp with us I won’t say their name but they uh they have a like a probably like A52 million home and they called me yesterday and they were talking and they were like oh sorry I’ve been on like I because I called them they were like oh sorry I’ve been house hunting all day house hunting you just bought like your dream home last year and you told me like we went crazy on this house because it’s our dream home and it’s it’s it’s what we’ve been working for all these years why we we made all this money and then they were like he’s like God he’s like yeah but he’s like our HVAC broke and he’s like he’s like you know that’s 50 Grand to fix that he’s like my the guy fixing our fixing our AC he’s got like engineering degrees I play pay two grand a month to our our pool guy our pool gu making two grand a month he’s like and another four grand for landscaping he’s like it’s just annoying he’s like everything that’s it’s all my problem he’s like he’s like yeah it’s great when we entertain people but most of the time I’m like you said I’m just sitting in one chair I’m sitting in the same chair and I have whatever 10,000 extra square feet or 20,000 extra square feet of like empty house and so and it was just like such a visceral reminder of the like the age-old wisdom of like first you own your things and then they own you and it was like he was just explaining all the ways that his thing now owned him and he had this like reaction where he’s like I gotta change this because like this is not my dream actually I thought this was my dream it is not my dream actually because I don’t want to be owned by this where now my monthly nut is so High I have to stress about you know about all these things or when things break it’s such a colossal break I feel so wasteful you know that I’m spending this much just fixing our whatever pool or whatever it is when in reality that money could like I remember what that money could do for me I used to live a whole year off that money and now it’s just you know going to to one little thing how many square feet was this place uh I don’t know it’s probably like 15,000 square feet or something like that that’s [ ] insane that is so insane is it 15,000 it’s more than 10 less than 20 I think dude you need that’s a commercial property basically you need like a property manager that’s insane I think it’s important one of the things that a lot of people don’t think about is the holding cost of anything that you’re that you’re acquiring uh whether it’s a property or a business or what you know understanding the holding cost the real holding cost uh may help you not make certain decisions there’s other there’s other hidden cost do right holding cost is one opportunity cost is another that people usually discount there’s a great tweet that was going viral I don’t if you you saw yesterday but the guy said he goes he goes I think making between 150 and 250k is the worst it’s like what he’s like is he’s like it’s the worst because it’s too much money to just say [ ] it I’m just going to go do this thing I really want so it’s like too much money to walk away from but it’s not enough to ever like actually get escape velocity financially because you’re paying like a huge amount of taxes and then you probably live in a your lifestyle creeps up and so and I and I saw like I see this so often which is that there’s some range I don’t know what the like the numbers depend on where you live and what industry you’re in but something like 200 Grand to 500 Grand is like the it’s that’s the real golden handcuffs and that’s the real like danger zone that doesn’t sound like a danger zone it’s a hit but it’s a hidden danger usually because if you’re making that much you’re probably very talented however it is so hard to walk away from that amount of money if you once you get to that and take a risk maybe start a business or take another job that might give you all kinds of other things but maybe have less certainty or less annual guaranteed pay um and I could see that tweet going viral because I think it resonated with so many people the guy had like no followers but the Tweet had like 20,000 likes you know uh I mean it also depends on your personality my uncle who moved to us 40 years ago he’s a teacher um and you know teachers in America don’t make a lot of money but he’s still retired millionaire so I think it’s all about how you invest that and yeah compounding I think that tweet is really [ ] stupid um why do you think I think that if you make $250,000 a year you can live a very rich life um I think that you could have a beautiful rich life I think you can retire by a certain age I think I think that that is an outof touch tweet I think that tweet is true if your goal is to make tens of millions of dollars or Be Your Own Boss at a young age I think it’s I think it’s true for the people it’s true for right which is if you want to be an entrepreneur or you want to uh be financially free and not have to trade your time for for a salary right no you can be financially free on 250 a year and I I live in California I’m using California as my frame of reference here right yeah where you live definitely changes things and what your burn is but New York California like a lot of places like stuff I don’t know like what’s the amount of money you need even if you’re living in Texas like what do you think is the real amount of money you make 250 a year and then you have taxes so you’re taking home I don’t know what the Nath is but like something like 175 or 180 something like that and then you pay for life and you might be stashing away 100K a year how many years do you have to stash away 100K in order to like be financially be be financially free it takes a decade plus yeah a decade least right and even to get to 250 that takes you usually seven to 10 years to get to making that much right seven years to get to that that salary threshold too right so now you’re 17 to 20 years in that’s a lot that’s a long time s what are you gonna say I you don’t like what Sean saying right now I can tell I think it’s there there’s certain something about the guaranteed payment and it really depends on your personality like the folks that are going to become an entrepreneur they don’t need to walk away from 250 a lot of times like I mean when I started I had nothing no salary right um so a lot of folks start out and they don’t have a salary and they they just kind of go and pursue it the few if that’s what you want to do you go do it you have you have to have conviction and I think that’s that’s key to the success anyways um I’ll clarify one thing I’m not giving advice to other people for what they should do or what the average person should do I’m saying from my perspective of what I would want and my life which is the only thing I can really speak on is the things that I know about myself and I know that most of the people who listen to this podcast are going to be people who are like-minded otherwise how did you get to episode 500 if you weren’t into entrepreneurship or you weren’t like-minded in in in some way with with our ethos and for people in our world I think then it’s a valuable message right like um I think there’s a lot I know I have a lot of friends personally who are in this situation I know what they actually want out of life I know where they where they live and the lifestyle they desire and for them that is a very dangerous thing of course to an if I’m just speaking generically that advice totally doesn’t apply it’s totally out of touch and it’s it’s a total Overkill I get that I think that’s fair we I I wanted to give you an Al I wanted to give you an Alo it’s like I shot myself in the foot and then I put a Band-Aid on at the very end uh where do we want to go from here let’s do a couple other ones that you have on this doc so you have um let’s go to the bottom here with the strong strong opinions or philosophies and so you talked about acquiring a business versus paid marketing I think this is kind of interesting I think most people don’t really think about this I know when I was running my company I never thought like hey let me grow through acquisition that wasn’t just wasn’t on my radar uh what’s your point here what what do you what do you think is the the takeaway I think uh when when you think about growing a subscription business there’s only three three ways to grow it you get new customers you expand the existing customers you reduce churn and in the new customer bucket most of the people are always looking at um PPC and especially a certain scale you might be spending a lot of money in PPC paperclick paperclick exactly paperclick advertising um and your C might be high especially in a very very competitive market um in that sense it makes sense to just go pay a revenue multiplier to buy a business that has the customers that you that you’re Target getting anyways and then cross out um and I would say that that’s that’s something that more CEOs need to think about um when they’re thinking about gr you know who knows about this your boy I sold the hustle to HubSpot because I actually didn’t know about this they knew about it they they made the right I know about it in that I know a guy I I know a guy no I know a guy who did this and they bought my business that was the whole point of SP that was the whole point of this podcast now I don’t have too much information I haven’t been part of it forever but I think it’s working so are you talking about buying other like products or like content sites anything and everything I I was looking at this publicly traded company um and where I was looking to potentially establish a sizable stake and their revenues were growing steadily but not exponentially because they couldn’t compete with the larger competitors um but the reseller side of their business was great one of their resellers were actually making more money than this company was what’s a reseller like C can you give an example that isn’t related to this company sure so like I could for example resell uh hopspot or any any other you know hosting I can be a hosting reseller uh I can make my own hosting company selling Amazon I can be Amazon reseller and so on um so so for this business they basically just uh acquired one of their resellers and boosted their revenue so it’s just like the same customer that they had that and bringing it in I wanted to work with the management and just kind of fund their acquisition of the reseller because the margins if it was in house would be much much better how can a reseller make more than the main thing if you’re just reselling and then presumably giving a cut back to the the mothership how does the reseller ever make more money no it’s it all depends on the pricing and how you’re licensing and what you’re charging on on your end okay um so like let’s say we we both could be Drop Shipping the same thing and I could charge like five times premium because I know how to Market better and you’re charging only 2x okay right so but but that’s just one example that you can you can look into your own ecosystem and start acquiring your resellers and bring that customer in house but also what HubSpot did with the content site makes total sense what um what zenes just recently did um with K clous uh makes total sense um and and so on so I think that when when you’re looking at you know acquisition and growth like you know I’m talking about acquisition from like new customer acquisition think about m&a as a uh as a viable option especially when your PPC budget is is high could your WordPress Empire have existed Without You owning WP beginner so WP beginner for The Listener by the way it’s like a Blog if you Google how to set up an email service on WordPress WP beginner which say owns always shows up number one so would your Empire have existed without WP beginner well no the answer is no but for many reasons no I think you can’t build solutions to solve problem that you don’t fully understand and for me to be able to build the best solution in the market I had to communicate with the audience I had to understand their pain points um and that I believe was our biggest advantage of course the marketing and having the audience is very important too uh very very important but um I think that understanding of the paino is crucial like for example uh in talking to their customers and also my various company Founders and GMS I realized that uh we were not happy with a help that software so we went and and acquired uh stake in groove right which is a help software that will uh drastically reduce cost for anybody who’s using zenas or anybody using helpscout but now I know that like certain customers that are that are using Groove also want our other Solutions and I know that many of our customers and agencies and so on they’re all using a help you know help that software so I can uh you know cross promote group to them and say hey if you switch from uh zenes or whatever you’ll say 40% if you if you’re an agency you using front for your communication switch here and you’ll save 80% so that level of synergy um gets unlocked um and can be quite lucrative can we finish with these two like life uh life lesson type things I think they’re both good and I know we’re on time but I want to do it anyways compounding Goodwill is the best form of compounding what do you mean by that I think uh too many times we are very transactional in the relationships that we’re in uh in you know we’re doing something nice and saying hey do something back and return for me I think just giving um with no expectation return a lot of us are very smart uh and sometimes in that we can be kind of you know a holy you know and and not so nice so I think intellect is a gift and kindness is a choice and if if we choose to be kind um over long term this this comes back multi multi multifold so not letting your ego or the keyboard Warrior get to you and and you know I’m smarter than you you’re 100% wrong you know just just go going along and trying to help out wherever you can even if you feel like you’re in the right sometimes it’s better to just be kind anyways uh you know sometimes I I get stuck on that where I’m like this is but this is right that’s what what we said and actually it doesn’t matter what we said I should just in that moment it’s it matters more to them than it does to me to just let it to just be kind and just go their way rather than than mine I’ve learned that lesson the hard way a couple times absolutely you wrote this guy’s named gu spear I’ve seen this guy around but I don’t know him who is this guy he’s got something special he host some conference thing right that people really like who is this guy why is he the example of that yeah so he he’s a really good friend now um and we’re in a forum together so he his conference is called value X very well-known value investor um has a book as well and you know he talks about compounding Goodwill um in his book uh and the intelligent investor uh educational value investor actually um and I’m always really really Amazed by his level of generosity the amount of like hey you need this let me just connect you with X and Y and Z and longterm what he’s been able to do is build this amazing Network work of super duper talented people that like you know if he Rings they’ll pick up and you help out whatever and nothing nothing in in returns I think he is an amazing example and uh I learned a ton from him even you know in Chicago couple months ago and he gave me an idea to acquire like the very cool deal idea um of doing Acquisitions and then long story short I was able to actually use it deal came and use that exact tactic to make a make a purchase in a very tax efficient way so I think his ability to just you know do that is really good but I you know I don’t know you that well we’re friends but we don’t hang out too much if I had to guess I would say that you’re a very shrewd negotiator and I would say that you’re probably a very disciplined and firm manager I think you’re probably quite nice but I think that like you’re a very disciplined person which sometimes times people would say well you’re just being an [ __ ] or something like that you know if you have enough employees some of them are going to think that about you how are you balancing being a nice person and also like trying to get the best of a deal or uh trying to capture uh a little bit more value for yourself than for the other person I think not all juice have to be squeezed if you think about value on a very long-term way so part of the discipline is to say okay well we don’t have to squeeze all the juice today you know that that’s the whole point about compounding Goodwill you know if if I acquire something from a Founder um and let go of a few percentages because that helps me have a great long-term relationship with this person um that’s a worthwhile decision rather than saying you know what you’re down and I’m going to like you know kind of crush it and that that that’s not good for reputation long term go into do you go into a negotiation saying here’s my threshold of I can no longer do or I won’t do it at this number but I will do it anything below this and then you go with like a number and you leave room for that negotiation or for that threshold and then you just don’t ever cross that particular number like good and you’re like super calculating about it you’re like negotiation like a trick well because I know I know that he’s a value investor and a value investor they like at some point they’re like you you make money on the buy you make money when you buy at a low price and so like there has to be like a threshold of like it doesn’t make sense after this and so I just can’t be a nice guy anymore just because you’re winning it doesn’t mean the other person has to lose and I think that’s a very important uh aspect of compounding Goodwill you know that that’s also the example of like you know just because you know you’re very smart you don’t have to prove the other person wrong you can you can agree to disagree or move on and just saying okay you know this is fine maybe it’s worthwhile considering this and you know letting that conversation be and and and going away and of course in business you have to be very very disciplined if especially as a capital allocator um and that’s that that’s that let me tell you guys a quick story as we wrap up here uh that was like the best good guy story that I heard I heard it on another podcast but apparently Adam Sandler Adam Sandler was uh in New York he was taking acting class classes and the uh the teacher was like Hey I want to take you out for a beer let’s talk so teacher takes him out and he goes look Adam you don’t have what it takes and I just want you to quit doing it now because I don’t want you to waste two decades and it’s just not going to go your way I want to show you love and respect by telling you now obviously 10 years pass Adam Sandler’s still doing this he’s an epic star uh he’s at the top of his game he’s at a bar in New York he’s with his friends he’s with his buddies he sees that Professor that teacher out and he’s and I imagine in his head he’s thinking like well should I go rub it in this guy’s face and being like told you I win he walks over to the guy and he uh brings his buddies with them and Adam looks at his buddies he goes hey I want to meet I want you guys to meet Professor blankety blank they were the only Professor that was kind enough to take me out and buy me a beer and I heard that story and I was like that is one of the best stories I’ve ever heard about treating people respectfully even though you know you may be a little bit angry or you didn’t like him at the time but Sean did you you saw I saw that clip I love that story uh it’s Brad Pit telling the story by the way which just makes it even better uh you did good but Brad Pit telling the story was a little bit better I think just hey no I saw Andrew Santino say it oh okay maybe it was somebody else um I think Sam did an excellent job yeah you’re my bread pit Sam both both both uh hot guys from Missouri I’ll take it uh yeah Sayad thank you very much that’s the Pod thank you