# He Sold His First Software Business For Millions with No Experience

Channel: Brett Malinowski
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9o2NOueAwg
Duration: 2 hr 4 min
Language: English
Words: 28052
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/K9o2NOueAwg

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[0:00] if you try to build software where you don't deeply understand the problem or you don't deeply understand the customer you're never going to succeed because you'll always be one step behind a competitor that does I I didn't want to just be like a Facebook ads monkey anymore if I can just stack up enough money to start a software company I think that's where I'll make the real money all three of my software companies have just been productized apis I always knew that I wanted to do something in software that's where the high leverages you can sell the same thing over and over and over again you get 10 15x

[0:34] multiples on you know the value of your company building no code software companies or just productizing an API selling them on acquire. comom they're making them millions of dollars a year it's not hard to start a software company in this day and age these large language models have apis if I were to start a SAS company for the very first time in 2023 I would welcome to the we're going to make it podcast where we talk about the nitty-gritty Tac I that underground entrepreneurs are using to build their businesses to the seven and eight figures the goal of this podcast is to go into excruciating detail on the

[1:09] tactics and strategies that they're using right now so hopefully you can implement it into your business and see more success if you like tips like this you can always subscribe to our free newsletter but other than that please enjoy the episode Kieran I guess Kieran O'Brien my longtime friend I suppose at this point but brother you have sold two software companies in what the last 18 months yeah yeah roughly 18 months incredible and it's cool because you've done two different kinds of software you have like a typical software company and then you have like a micro SAS yeah and Iman got what Iman actually ended up buying

[1:42] the micro SAS yeah he did so that's a cool story I want to get into later in the podcast let's start with media kits because that was the big one for you now for legal reasons guys you know I love to ask how much money people make right out the gate but Kieran signed a contract he can't talk about it but he's doing well let's just say that and he had tens of thousands of users so do the math but basically what was media kits how did you come up with the idea and just tell me all about that yeah so mediak kits.com was basically like it

[2:06] was a SAS platform for data and analytics for influencers and online creators and so basically it would take all the apis of the popular social platforms and it would put all your analytics into like a one pager that you would then use to connect with Brands so we had some of the biggest influencers in the world celebrities using our product and they would basically take their their link with all their analytics and you know when an influencer goes to a brand and they want to do they want to promote the brand they want to do a shout out or get paid for for something like that um typically

[2:33] they would always go to their analytics and take screenshots and so we kind of saw that that was an outdated process and wasn't it wasn't very scalable and the the analytics always get outdated and so we basically just built like a really clean ux around some apis and um turned it into a product that ended up going really viral on Tik Tok and Twitter and some other places so basically people like influencers would try to get sponsors to make money to monetize their exactly and so they had a really hard time sponsors would want to know how how many views do you typically get how many followers do you have

[3:02] comments engagement AG age and gender breakdown geographic location of your followers all of that and there's really no easy way to find that information there's a bunch of tools online that that scrape that information and guess it but nobody knows that information accurately other than the platforms themselves and so you kind of have to go to the source and then the next issue beyond that is it's on a per platform basis so if you're a brand and you want to pay an influencer for a shout out on Tik Tok Twitter Instagram and YouTube those are all different that to that don't share data between each and so you'd have to go and

[3:34] screenshot your analytics on each of those platforms one by one to be able to give the brand a view into that and that makes a lot of sense because they'd only want a video on maybe Tik Tok for this specific campaign right yeah and then another thing you mentioned when I was watching your video guys check out his channel he makes a lot of great YouTube content on this Kieran O'Brien but you in that video you were talking about not only were they struggling to even get it but it constantly is changing because every month your views are different so you guys kept it live updated with the

[4:00] apis exactly every day every week um you know people were going in and updating their media kits previously like before our product people would use Photoshop or canva or something like that and they would be going in there updating it every single day every single week in a lot of cases graphic designers full-time job right there exactly so they they would have graphic designers on staff a lot of the talent agencies that we worked with so we had a B2B model too where we'd sell both yeah we'd sell bulk seats to talent agencies that's actually where we made most of our Revenue um and so like they would have full-time

[4:30] graphic designers on staff just updating media kits like changing ones to twos and threes to fours and it was just ridiculous and then the individual creators they would have Freelancers that they had hire to do like graphic design to update their Media Kit or they'd be doing it themselves and it would take them hours and hours every single week so I mean ultimately the product just solved a problem that was painful enough for people to be willing to pay for it okay so two things I want to point out here one you're just referencing that you're using apis so I feel like a lot of people over

[4:57] complicate software can you just expl exp like what an API is and how you can wrap that into a software company yeah absolutely so an API is basically U data structures that a company will make public um to to their own platform so most large technology companies have apis where sometimes they're gated you have to apply for them um but sometimes they're public and basically you can tap into these these endpoints in in these apis and you can pull valuable data so for example meta API which we used for media kits things like you know follower count and gender uh breakdown and Geographic breakdown and you know

[5:35] follower growth over time and all these things and so we would use those apis we'd make API calls through our application to grab that data and use it in our product and so you know same thing with with the company that I sold to Ean it was just an API that we put into a really nice user experience from a CRM product that didn't have a very good reporting dashboard and so we built a reporting dashboard for this CRM and productized it and then my new SAS company too were taking apis and productizing it so you know I always tell people starting a SAS company starting a software company you do you

[6:09] do not need to know how to code you do not need to come up with the next Facebook it can be something as simple as a noode uh simple clean ux that just takes an API and productized it you said endpoints and data structures I just want to clarify for everybody basically if you have a Twitter API and you tweet you can connect the API to your own software and the tweet on twt will show up in your software right exactly yeah simple yeah that's one example of it yeah and so all you have to do is find like a specific use case of that information and then brand it and Market

[6:39] it towards that demographic that has that problem yeah and you can sell your company for a lot of money essentially exactly and I get another simple way to break it down would be like companies have apis to make the user experience for their users better and so we'll use the Twitter example that you just gave right so Twitter has all this data but they're not using it in every single possible way that you can use that data right Twitter is using it to create a social platform right and so making their API public allows developers and you know people like us to go and build software companies that solve like more

[7:10] Niche problems around that same data so let's say you know Twitter's really focused on just building a social platform and they're not as focused on helping creators get brand deals so somebody like me can come along and build medak kits.com and take the Twitter API and use that data to extrapolate even more data dat and like make inferences and and create uh you know different data based off of the the parent data if that makes sense so we'll find Trends in the data that Twitter doesn't even like hyper specific exactly and then we'll use that to build a product that allows Twitter influencers to get brand deals right and that's not

[7:47] something that Twitter is going to build themselves but they give all that data away to the public to make to make life easier for their users like why wouldn't they want somebody who's a Twitter influencer to be making more money it'll keep them the platform so you know these platforms that have apis are incentivized to open source them to developers and entrepreneurs to make even more specific products around them it sounds really complicated but it's truly really simple and the apis exist for that reason ex they public like make them publicly available so people like you can use them for your own software your own use case because it makes their

[8:21] platform better exactly and it's called an API key you just have to go to their website apply for one copy paste just like that you have API so you know these API exist but how did you come up with this idea like you don't just know that you need media kits if you've never been in the industry so how did you come up with the idea in general yeah so the crazy story about media kits is I came up with the idea when I was 17 when I was in high school and then I didn't actually start the company until almost four years later and so yeah that's what

[8:48] a lot of people think that like you know that we just came up with this idea and then we we built you had the idea four years before you like started it yeah and so I'll give you I'll tell you why okay um there's actually two reasons so the first reason is basically I just didn't know what I was doing and I knew that and I was like I'm not going to start a software company because I don't have enough money and I have no idea what I'm doing I don't even know where to start um and and that's totally totally a valid thing and you know maybe I could have started

[9:12] and who knows what would have happened if I started the company back in 2017 but um the other reason is that I just felt like the market wasn't ready so influencer marketing kind of blew up in like 20156 with the rise of Instagram and then there was kind of this lull from like 2017 to 2018 and what really brought back the Creator economy and kind of created this new Resurgence of um you know of of activity in in that industry was Tik Tok and so I noticed that and that's that's why we launched media kits kind of at the at the very early stages of 20120 like during covid

[9:46] everyone's locked lock down at home they're on their phones Tik Tok blows up that's when you know like Charlie demilio Addison Ray all these Tik Tok influencers kind of blew up and that's when we started media kits because we kind of saw that Trend and we're like okay the incer economy is back we have an idea for a tool now we have you know the resources and the connections to actually make this work so let's do it so that's where you saw the timing which is super important because there's so many stories I know there's a company that had like a almost like an iPhone S

[10:14] level phone in the early 2000s and they invested millions of dollars into it but it was just too early the apps this like ecosystem internet mobile internet was horrible so it didn't work but 10 years later when Steve Jobs rolls it out it's a hit even though the technology really wasn't much different so that's a really interesting insight and I loved hearing that but how did you actually come up with the idea how did you identify that problem because with influencer marketing there's like 20 different steps to go into it and I think you did a really good job of identifying like one clunky pain point and then hyper

[10:43] focusing on that so do you want to go into how you identified that yeah absolutely so uh when I was 17 I was running a marketing agency and I was I was helping and when I say that I don't want that to sound intimidating to anybody because it was literally just a glorified freelance business like I was running Facebook and Google ads and helping with influencer marketing for like three three businesses and so one of them was a company that sold Auto Parts online and so they had a budget for influencers and they wanted to try to you know to spend this Budget on some on some influencers and one of my best

[11:15] friends uh Jr garage has a big Automotive YouTube channel and so yeah he's right down the street and I was basically connecting my client with him to do this brand deal and they were like well can we see his insights can we see his data and uh they they actually specifically asked for a Media Kit and when they said that I'm like I have no idea what a Media Kit is like let me just Google this real quick I'm like what is a Media Kit it's like oh it's like a it's like a page like a one pager with all of your analytics and data and

[11:40] media kits actually before the whole influencer marketing thing uh existed even before social media media kits have been used for decades in uh the journalism space so newspapers print magazines traditional media they've always used media kits to Showcase like their their monthly readers and stuff like that and so Media Kit was a very popular term in in the journalism space and it started getting adopted in the influencer space at the time and so I'm online I'm like oh cool like yeah let me just go make a Media Kit for Jr real quick there's got to be a website that just does this for you like of course

[12:12] duh it's like the most obvious thing ever I'm like looking around like there isn't like why why does this not exist and so you know that's I actually did kind of start media kits back then like I I got the domain I actually even did some yeah I did some mockups I got the Instagram handle got the got the the web domain did some initial UI mockups and then I got a quote from a from a web development agency that was going to build it for me and I'm like 17 at the time I'm making like a couple Grand a month like running this freelance marketing business and they quoted me

[12:47] like $25,000 to to build this software and I'm like that's the most amount of money I've ever heard in a sentence before I'm like I don't have $225,000 like I I barely have $500 so I'm like well that's that like let me just you know keep doing these marketing services and so I kind of just shelv the idea I always knew that it was a good idea I always thought like maybe one day I'll build it but uh again like the market timing wasn't right and I didn't have the the resources or the knowhow at the time to do it and back then you know for everybody listening I

[13:22] didn't know about no code I didn't know uh you know about like building an MVP and and doing something kind of like really like low or no code and then you know building something bigger later I didn't understand these Concepts I did I knew nothing about software I didn't even understand the concept of fundraising that I could go out and get other people to give me money to to build this thing so kind of just continued on with life I built I built that marketing agency into a seven figure company and I did really well with it and that's actually how I made like my first kind of like real money

[13:53] which I then used to start media kits you know four years later you hear that story a lot the agency cash flows and then you dump that into like a higher leverage opportunity absolutely but you actually ended up raising money for media kits so that's really interesting first off how did you have one more backtrack how did you have the self-awareness not to start it or to wait so I'd love to sit here and tell you that I'm super self-aware and that it was like a but dude honestly it was the fact that if I had 25 Grand I probably would have done it and I

[14:24] probably would have ended up broke with nothing to show for it because looking back at that development agency probably would not have been able we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building media kits so knowing what it takes now uh like 25 Grand no way we would have had anything that actually worked it's safe I would 100% say with confidence that software is the best business like the best business model absolutely as far as like just objectively High leverage for curring revenue and your ability to exit yep and so many people don't think that it's like beginner friendly so now that you've gone through it cuz you kind of

[14:54] said you didn't start it at the beginning because you weren't it's too hard there's too high of a barrier to entry in my mind but do you think that's true now do you think software people should like if you're going to start a business objectively you want to start the best business and so if software is the best business is there anything holding back a beginner from just jumping straight into software it's never been a better time to start a software business there are so many resources out there there's so many ways to to build a software business both conceptually and tactically um that that have just kind of leveled the playing

[15:23] field like it's really a game of distribution and marketing now at this point did you study like why combinator on YouTube or how did you end up getting those skills not really like I didn't even know about like the whole VC World until we started raising for media kits like I didn't even know that it existed quite frankly like I was like I was in this world with with like Iman and these guys like in like the digital marketing space like that was my world from 2016 to 2019 I didn't know anything about like Silicon Valley like of course like I knew that it existed but I didn't know

[15:57] any of the intricacies about like how to fun raise and how to you know take an MVP to Market or like join y comat or any of these things didn't know they existed until I started raising for media kits so you did raise money for media kits what was that experience like I don't want to really go into like how to do it necessarily because we'll talk about that later but in general obviously it worked out because you sold the company but I've always been like I feel like that adds another level of pressure to you yeah so is that if you had the choice again would you do it

[16:25] again it's a complicated question um for a couple reasons but what I will say I want to preface this by saying that we bootstrapped media kits first so by like by 2019 when we were kind of thinking about starting it I'd saved up like a couple hundred grand and that was from my marketing agency and I started spending it on on media kits so I was paying for everything out of pocket so we hired uh two engineers and a software designer and I was spending like 15 to $188,000 a month of my own money when I only had I only had a couple hundred grand in bank and I was spending like

[16:58] almost 20 grand a month just to build the software I almost ran out of money like what the cost mainly just developers uh two developers and a designer designer were they were all about like five 6,000 bucks a month each and then you have server costs and you have all these other things on top of it and yeah I just started to run out of money and so out of desperation I started to learn how to fund raise and so I guess to answer your question if I had like millions and millions of dollars back you know in 2019 probably wouldn't have fundraised but I'm glad that we did looking back

[17:29] the only reason that we had the success that we did with it was because our investors opened so many doors to us you know we had Whiz Khalifa We had the guys from [ __ ] Jerry we had you know so many influential people in the space that just opened doors to us whether that was to our B2B uh customers talent agencies getting some of the biggest influencers in in in the space on board getting some of the biggest music labels you know we we signed contracts with a couple of the I can't talk about it but a couple of the biggest music labels in in the world

[17:58] because of the people that we had on our cap table the people that we had as investors so as I'm hearing you say this I'm like damn this guy's like connected out the ass he's got it all it's like no wonder he's successful but I really like want to focus on like the time when you were bootstrapping like the amount of time you had to spend waiting I'm sure cuz you're not are you technical yourself so you can't code could your partner code at all nope it was yeah Casey couldn't either both of you are non-technical so you had to hire the technical team yep I only have one quick

[18:24] Interruption for the podcast today guys we're in the future and right now you can actually build software with no code on a platform called Bubble not only that you can actually plug AI into bubble to build any AI software tool you want very quickly we actually figured out how to build a AI tool to help students with their homework in just a few weeks and we actually made a free course showing exactly how we did everything from plugging in the AI building the actual app itself and even connecting stripe to accept payments and again that's a completely free course that you can find in the link in the

[18:57] description below other than that guys enjoy the podcast share it with your friend if you're learning something this has been a really good one so far and it only gets better you're spending 15 to 20K a month to get it built by these developers but really you're just kind of telling them the general idea and then you have to wait like a week or two for them to build it yeah it's like first off that's stressful as [ __ ] super stressful when you're making no money too and you don't even know if the idea is really validated so did you have any form of validating the idea and what

[19:22] were you doing in the meantime while the developers were just working yeah great question so you're trying to start a software company this is something that we did at media kits we did this kind of well um but my my next two software companies after that we did we've like obsessed over this and that is um basically going out to your to your target audience and surveying them and getting feedback on on a concept or an MVP so MVP stands for minimum viable product that's like that should be like your North Star if you're thinking about starting a software company Define what your MVP is going to be so what is the

[19:58] least features the the the basically the most stripped down version of the perfect product that you have in your head that you can build for the cheapest amount of money in the quickest amount of time get it to Market stress test it see if people would pay for it so like one core function that is like the main value driver it doesn't even have to be software it can be a clickable prototype it can be a it can be a Wix website that has a couple hyperlinks on it like literally our first Media Kit that was like our you know our MVP was literally just a a fig prototype like we put a

[20:29] couple screens inigma and you can like link things in figma to make it in a prototype to make it look like it's a real app and we just had a clickable prototype and we would send this to influencers be like hey if this existed would you use it yes great how much would you pay for it so you would send them like a landing page explaining what it is and then just say hey is this something that you would use if it actually worked right now but they couldn't get any output yep exactly so so you but you're verbally asking them we're we're we were in DMS we were dming

[20:56] people cold dming people we were reaching out to friends who were influencers and having them message their influencer friends and just like Network effect we put out a type form that I think got like three or 400 responses okay cool um so even like down to our price point like we charge 29 bucks a month for media kits our price point was determined by surveys that we sent out to our users how did sorry keep going no I was just going to say we're we're we were very data focused and again in retrospect we didn't even do it to the extent that I would have wanted

[21:25] to like it was kind of an afterthought it was like holy [ __ ] I'm spending 20 grand a month let me let me make sure people would use this so it was a few months into that that I was like let me go ask people if they would actually use this so we did it retroactively but you know I think anybody out there who's thinking about starting a software company if you can come up with an MVP it could be no code it could be just a clickable prototype you don't have to know how to code the the barrier to entry really is that low for ex creating

[21:50] an MVP get out there talk to your customers everyone says that but until you're like in that moment it's kind of hard to like consider it so what what is like what did the survey say and how did you incentivize people to fill it out yeah so it would be um so to incentivize them to fill it out they would basically we' promise them that they would get like Early Access and that they would get like a discount on it when it when it eventually came out so that was that was pretty easy and like there's plenty of ways to incentivize people to do things right um so yeah but the the main

[22:18] thing is it was like a logic based survey so we used a type form so was like if somebody clicked something on the on page one it would take them to a different page than if they clicked something else right it yeah so there's a bunch of logic into it so like would you use this if yes then well why would you use it he's like well I'd use it for this reason there's like a drop down with like four different things and it's like okay and then you know use it for that reason like well how often would you use it and how much would you pay

[22:44] for it and this this and that it's like well if you wouldn't use this why okay for that reason okay well what would make you want to use it right so we just collected as much information from our Target users as we could and that kind of helped us inform product decisions down line okay so that's another interesting point you said down the line yeah I'm like non non-technical but we're building software right now and I have like a million different feature ideas that I want done but I'm getting so ahead of myself because like we're just now getting the MVP done yeah every idea I have could add two three four

[23:14] weeks of an expensive developers abut so what like First off how did you choose what's Implement what not obviously it's probably just like a risk reward but like tell me more about what you were doing in that meantime while you were waiting so there's there's this concept called called A control point so it's like you want to create something that becomes like the control point for the rest of your products so what is like that core product like for us it was the media kit at at media kits right and then we can expand from there okay okay so if we can build the best simplest easiest to use Media Kit

[23:44] product out there then eventually we can go build a Marketplace or we can build a B2B offering for talent agencies or we can do this this and that right and even so uh to give further context on that our MVP was just uh Twitter Instagram and Facebook we didn't even have Tik Tok or YouTube when we launched so that's another example of how you can do an MVP like limit Integrations limit the amount of UI that you're building limit the amount of functionality and so the idea the goal of your user interviews when you're early when you're when you're building your MVP should be to find out

[24:18] what is the one thing that would make them use it what is the one thing that's non-negotiable right and then from there you can build the rest of the features but you got to get their attention you got get them in first and so what is that thing that's going to get them in and what you'll find this goes for anybody building any kind of software whether it's a no code like bubble software or something really complex doesn't matter what it is what you're going to find is your early adopters your early users are are going to use just a couple core functionalities and they don't care about everything else

[24:49] all the cool feature ideas you have in your head there are definitely people out there that would use that and that that would also think it's cool but in the beginning there are plenty of users out there that use and pay for just the very very simple version of you know just your core functionality and so that's kind of what the goal of the survey is is to see what most people are trying to use it for exactly and you might find out I'm sure you didn't but you might find out that like almost everybody's using it for a complete different reason than why you make it so

[25:14] you might have an idea to Pivot but exactly was it pretty consistent it was pretty consistent I think we did a good job at collecting the feedback and understanding what people were were saying you know the old saying is like if you try to please everyone you'll please no one that goes for all areas of life but especially in software like if if you it's called feature brain if you're too feature brain and you're thinking and this is this is both on the product and the sales side if your product is too feature heavy and not not outcome or solution heavy then it's not going to work and on uh conversely on

[25:43] the sales side if you're selling software even for anybody listening if you're maybe working for a software company and you're selling software for a living if you're just selling the features all day like no no one buys features people buy outcomes people buy solutions to problems a lot and so if you can think about that from a product perspective and build software that solves problems then the features will come M because all people are thinking about is how is it how does it benefit me directly absolutely and they're not thinking about the technical API connection they just want to know how I can use this to make my life

[26:14] better yeah and there's so many rabbit holes we can go down here but like what I'll say is like if you go to media kits.com and like you look at our old like our website I don't obviously I don't own the company anymore but it's still there you can go to our website all the copy on the website it's not um it's not uh you know come and you know show all your analytics it's like get more brand deals right it's like the end result exactly it's the outcome like make yourself look more professional right impress Brands like this is the type of copy that we used on our on our

[26:44] website because that's what the product does the product gets you to an outcome gets you to finding a solution for this really annoying problem that you've been having and a lot of a lot of software companies and quite frankly any kind of company like if you don't know what your customers are looking for in terms of outcomes and and solutions to their problems then you're never going to build a good product it's like that's such a good point it's like why does this exist because you could say two different things in your landing page get all of your social media statistics in one place that could be your landing

[27:15] page copy or get more brand deals y exact same product but that one actually resonates with people much more strongly ex that's why they sign up that's really cool outcome based outcome based selling outcome based copy that's a great one okay thank you for that that's me a really clear Insight now Okay cool so is there anything else during that like to optimize your time in that building phase when you're just sinking the money in that you decided to do that was like helpful in any way you think of freak out worry about it that's totally get that um you know honestly man that that part of my life was like a blur like it

[27:49] was just so are you still doing agency work on the side oh for sure keep alive I was just like barely like I was just trying to break even every month like I was like if I can make like like my agency at the time I was doing like maybe 50 60 Grand a month in in Topline Revenue so I was taking home like 20 or 30 and I was spending all of it on software and then everything personal for me yeah that's all net negative at that point so I'm like freaking out and um we were trying to figure out like how like how do we get this to Market like

[28:20] you know just like how do we put this out there so that people can start using it and hopefully pay for it and when it became obvious that we were too far away from that I was just kind of doing the math I'm like all right I've got this much like dry powder left dry powder is another word for like money in the bank like I've got this much money left and I'm spending this much and we need this many more months before the product is in a place where we can sell it which by the way in retrospect totally flawed thinking I could have I could have

[28:46] shipped the product way earlier than we did and started generating revenue and that's one of the biggest mistakes looking back were you focus too much on like the design how it looked totally and that's every first time founder every first time software company makes that mistake they think the product needs to be perfect before they launch it so yeah in retrospect should have launched way sooner but hindsight's 20120 at the time I'm like we don't have enough money to get this to a place where it's sellable and so that's ultimately why we decided to go out and try to fund raise and that's what I did

[29:15] with a lot of my free time is okay so I have then I think this is a good time to go into it so sure first off why did you even decide to fund raise and go through with it instead of just saying I wasn't over my head I'm just going to stick with my agency I'm making 20 a month I'm killing it I'm only what 21 at time 20 like I'm killing it making 20K a month what made you like take that challenge head on I wanted change so like like you kind of mentioned I knew that there was that there was a glass ceiling on agency

[29:44] work it was it was basically just my face like I had like a one toone relationship with all my clients I had a team but like it was me like I was basically a freelancer with a team at that point and I wanted more I wanted to I I didn't want to just be like a Facebook ads monkey anymore like I was literally like every every day I was just in Facebook ads just like tweaking campaigns and I'm just like I wasn't finding fulfillment with that and like I'd put away a decent amount of money I'd made a lot a lot of great friends in the industry and I just wanted to do

[30:13] something different and I always knew that I wanted to do something in software because to the point we made early in this podcast it's like that's where the highest Leverage is you can sell the same thing over and over and over again you get 10 15x multiples on you know the value of your company and so it just made sense to me logically I'm like if I can just stack up enough money to start a software company I think that's where I'll make the real money and so that's kind of how I was thinking about it and then you know my my business partner Casey Adams he had a

[30:42] podcast uh where he interviewed like a couple dozen billionaires a bunch yeah a bunch of really successful people a bunch of venture capitalists and so we're just kind of sitting one day and at this point you know we' become co-founders of media kits and we were just again self-funding it he comes to me one day he's like hey Kieran like what if we ask some of my podcast guests to like invest in media kits and that literally it broke my brain it was like a it was like a whole new frame a whole new way of thinking and I'm like wait a minute like you're telling me that

[31:14] there's like wealthy people that would give us their money to build this I'm like of course I know that that exists like I know that venture capital is a thing but I just couldn't wrap my head around why someone would want to give us their money to to build this thing it was just it was just like a foreign concept to me and so sure enough like a couple weeks later we put a little pitch deck together and we went out and we started talking to some some of these people that Casey had on his podcast over the years and we start we got a $25,000 check and then we got a $50,000

[31:44] check and then we got $100,000 and then $150,000 check and these investors like these wealthy people are friends with guess what other wealthy people and they would tell their friends that they just invested in media kits and then they'd be like well I want to invest in Media KS too and then they would write a check to us and before you knowe we had a million and half dollars in our in our checking account for this business oh my God I didn't know you raised that much wow yeah wow is there like a first off is there like a standard for how much Equity you give away per round because

[32:12] it's like your angel round right your seed round what is it it it was like a it was a seed round yeah seed round typically you want to give away like 10 to 20% but there's so much Nuance to it I mean it it depends on I mean the type of business you're just making it up at that point though right like you're totally 10% I'm going to guess my could potentially be worth $10 million so well it's it's just like anything else it's whatever people are willing to pay right and so it's like um I don't I can talk about this number we raised our first

[32:38] round at a at a $5 million valuation okay and that's like a relatively standard seed round um like even like a lot of YC companies they'll raise their first round of funding at a $5 million valuation did you have any customers no at that point no customers no available no it was it was mockups and click and clickable prototypes yeah and so yeah I mean ultimately like the fundraising process again it's a game of of describing your vision and helping other people see your vision and it's also a game of fomo like when a bunch of really notable investors put money into something you know just like any other

[33:14] Market whether it's stocks or crypto or whatever else it's like other people want in right and so it's it's the same thing but you just you have to manufacture it on like a Grassroots level which is the hardest part but um yeah I had no clue what I was doing and just to clear I don't want to make it sound like this was super easy or anything we fundraised that that million half doar took us over 9 months to raise from start to finish how many people did you talk to oh great I have those numbers I actually have the old like fundraise CRM from media kits still on

[33:44] my computer because it's like motivation for me we talked to over 350 people and we raised money from 30 and those are all like one-on-one calls pretty much one one calls usually 30 minutes to 45 minutes you had you talked to 350 people and only 30 people only is a lot but that's so many calls like like that's so much time yeah so I mean the typical rule I always tell whenever a Founder asks me for fundraising advice I'm like talk to about 10 times as many people as you think you need to talk to how do you even find that many just friends like referral referral referral yeah F

[34:13] friends of other investors that's that's the biggest one uh Twitter is amazing for uh for finding investors there there's a whole dude yeah there's a whole VC community on Twitter a lot of like early stage Venture funds will even have like public links where you can apply and send your pitch in I guess their job is literally to give money so that's one of the let me let me talk about that for a second that's one of the biggest Paradigm shifts for anybody listening that's thinking about raising money whether it's for a software company or a consumer package company or you know even like a real estate project whatever

[34:44] it is if you're thinking about raising money from investors you got to understand how investors think investors are literally capital allocators for a living their job is to put money somewhere it might as well be with you because you're building the next big thing and the other paradigm shift that I had and this has been so helpful um you know for fundraising even like for my new Venture is if you are 100% certain that whatever you're building is going to be successful which of course statistically not everything's going to be successful but if you're not 100% sure and 100% confident in yourself then you probably shouldn't be starting a

[35:22] business anyway but if you are absolutely certain that you have an idea that's going to change the world or that's going to change an industry or that's just simply going to make money and be successful it doesn't even have to change the world if you're so confident that it's going to do that then it should it's a privilege that somebody is allowed to invest in my company definitely you definitely flip that like the topig founders a lot of Founders feel like feel like they are like begging for money from investors and as soon as you feel that way or that you position it that way or you give off

[35:53] that energy you're you're you're going to lose when you come into a call it's like all right this investor I might give them the opportunity to invest in in my company because my company is going to make them so much money and it's an opportunity that they that they would be stupid to pass on but you cannot say that you can't say that you just have to be thinking arrogant that's a 100% true because you can only raise a million dollar or $2 million that's just for simple math 100,000 each yeah they get 1% each only 10 investors can do that and if you're right that could turn

[36:24] into millions of dollars for them absolutely and so then all these inv start foming in like if my three friends here said I invested in this company 50 Grand then he starts my other friend invests $50,000 I'm going to be like oh [ __ ] I'm going to miss out there's something here so you can definitely create that fomo from investors 100% I never thought about it like that yeah no it's literally their job and all you really have to do is like you don't have to be qualified you don't need a degree a college degree to raise money you literally just have to have you just

[36:50] have to convince a rich person to give you money is that for sure and I want I want to bring this back down too for you know any of the any of the younger guys or the beginners that are listening to this it's like you were 20 i w yeah but I I want to say like it's not as intimidating as it might seem once you start to understand the intricacies and I will say um there's a book out there that really helped me with fundraising it's called fundraising by by Ryan brlo uh he's the founder of Bolt like the oneclick checkout company they're like a

[37:17] 10 billion dollar company or something um if anybody's thinking about fundraising go buy that book on Amazon and read it it's like the best book for for Founders to read about fundraising but the next thing that I'll say is you don't have to know wealthy people to to raise money from uh you from somebody right you can crowdfund there's platforms out there like republic.com for example um that you know where you can crowdfund invest investment um you know again you can go and you can just cold Outreach to to VCS on Twitter like there's so many ways if you're Scrappy if you're a hustler if you truly believe

[37:49] in what you're building that you can go and find money there's there is such abundance in this world and there's so much money out there that looking for a home that's looking to be allocated somewhere and all you got to do is find it yeah cuz I mean people have tens of millions of dollars they want their money to do the work for them and if they can find some smart person with a good idea to do all the work and they just have to fund it absolutely no brainer and even if they lose a few million dollars that one hits they make their money back so well yeah that's

[38:16] that's the thing like concept makes sense again a venture capitalist if they invest you know if they if they have $10 million and they invest in 10 companies a million dollars each and you know five of them go to zero it's like yeah they lost five million dollar but if one of those 10 becomes a billion dollar company then you know they they just you know 10 or 100 x their money or whatever in terms of like dilution and everything else that might have happened in the meantime but you know they made all of their their losses back and then some and so these investors are also playing

[38:44] a game too they're playing a numbers game yeah and so again you just have to believe in yourself and be confident enough to to know that you're going to do whatever it takes to make this successful and if an investor can see that in you if they know that you're going to do whatever it takes to make it successful then they're going to invest in you every time okay that's really good advice I do want to take the conversation a little different way because I know a lot of people out there are going to be like still like even though we're saying that still intimidated scary they just don't want

[39:09] yet so but just to wrap this topic up if you had $15 million liquid at that time or moving in your future Ventures would you still choose to raise money knowing that you could like there's a pressure that you're losing somebody else's money like me as a person I would rather lose my own money than someone else's even though that's probably not the best business choice so if you had 1.5 million would you do it yourself and bootstrap it or would you have investors neither I would do a hybrid okay so the reason that again a risk tolerance balance basically not risk uh opportunity okay so a big reason why

[39:42] people raise money from what we call Strategic investors is because they can open doors that you can't by yourself so I would raise way less maybe only like a couple hundred grand but if an investor that has a crazy Network or access to certain things inside of your industry that are very specialized and they can open doors to that they're much more inclined to open doors to that if if they have skin that's why wh khif Makes Sense exactly gotcha yeah cool so whis kifa was one of his investors initially and so you got the money it was pretty much already built almost kind of pretty

[40:15] much and then that just kind of gave you the piece of mind then you could start planning so how much got devoted to like marketing and growth and how much got allocated towards Building Product yeah so this is where we can really get into tactics uh we spent $40,000 on marketing the lifetime of the business wow yeah on on paid marketing so that's the theory that if you make a good product that people want they're going to share it and Word of Mouth will take it absolutely so if you make a good product you don't really need to Market even though you were a marketer so you could

[40:40] have if you wanted to oh we still we still marketed I just said we didn't spend a ton of money on it we absolutely marketed I'm ready to hear this yeah well and that's like in terms of like really tactical stuff like to get a consumer product to go viral I mean I don't think anybody does it better than than Hunter isacson good buddy of mine who's behind NGL app I'm going to on here soon you got to he's oh my God he he's going to he's going to dunk on anything that I'm about to say in terms of in terms of product L growth but he

[41:04] definitely did not hold back his opinions oh man it he's great I I love Hunter but yeah I mean the big reason like we got to 30,000 users in like under six months because we went viral on Tik Tok and so I know you had Oliver on who talked about the same thing he's he has a cpg company but this just goes to show like we had a software product he has a a you know a physical Goods product and both of us basically built our business is on the back of Tik Tok organic virality but I want to understand it cuz his makes sense to me

[41:32] cuz it's sex chocolate it's controversial catches your eye media kits I'm not necessarily going to naturally send this to my girlfriend or send this to the group chat of the boys no I mean yeah and just Apples to Apples like we probably didn't have nearly as many like views or Impressions or anything like that Oliver does because he can sell to literally anybody anybody with a credit card can buy his product versus like media kits you kind of have to be like a social media influencer to do it so the key for us was we went kind of like Niche viral inside of a couple key communities so we went viral first

[42:04] and foremost in like the Tik Tok influencer space so there was uh a Tik tocker named Josh Richards who was also uh an investor in our company oh really yeah and we basically we literally posted a video you can still find it on our on our media kits Tik Tok if you scroll down enough but it got like 1.5 million or or like almost 2 million views uh in like a week and it was literally like this is the media kit that Josh Richards using to get brand deals with like that robotic voice from Tik Tok like that was literally all it was and it got like two or 300,000 views

[42:34] overnight and we went from we we launched we had like 2,000 users and it was literally like our launch party in August was like a big spike and then September October we're getting like five six signups a day it it was just dead for like two months we were freaking out yeah and then this video I think we posted it in November so you posted it uh I think Casey posted it okay um like did you have like a company Tik Tok or was it yeah we had a company Tik Tok okay yep and had that's what I meant so media kits oh yeah medit Post

[43:07] Yeah Yeah my business partner made it media kits account posted it and it went viral in November I think it was like the first week of November and it just went through the roof we went from getting like five six signups a day to like 500 signups a day so that borderline major company that one like one Tik Tok that one Tik Tok and then well the and the second wave of virality that we had that really that really helped was in the twitch streamer community so I don't know if I don't know if you know this I didn't even know this until until this happened but the

[43:38] twitch streamer Community is like massive and like they there's like this crazy crazy community of twitch streamers and they only have like a few thousand followers each but the influence they have because it's long form it's like a Tik toer their friend at that point exactly a Tik tocker with 2 million followers in my opinion has less influence than a twitch streamer with 10,000 Tik tokers have the least influence exactly you don't even like search for their content you have like you don't even know who they are you don't know their names you don't know what their voice sounds like exactly so these twitch streamers have these cult

[44:09] followings and they're also another thing about them is they're all friends with each other yeah and so we then after going viral on Tik Tok we went viral on Twitter which is where all the twitch streamers hang out when they're not streaming um and that sent us through the roof again and we actually um we we didn't even have a twitch integration at the time but we had a couple twitch streamers that were using it for their other social platforms and then we built a twitch integration and then they started talking about it and it just boom Another viral hit and it just went crazy on Twitter that just

[44:38] makes so much sense because at that point you like want your friends to also succeed and if this helps you make more money you instantly tell your friends about it exactly exctly that's really important with any SAS and now you're in B2B SAS so that absolutely same concept B2B or BTC there is something called Product Le growth so the the termin it's plg if you ever hear plg in the software space that means product L growth and that means that the product does the marketing for you mhm and so you know you don't have to put money into ads you don't have to do any of this because the

[45:05] product will Market itself for you and one of the ways that we had plg at media kits is when you signed up you would get your link and you're kind of inherently you inherently you want to share your link because you want to get brand deals right so guess what people started putting it in their link trees they started tweeting about it they started posting on Instagram they started posting it on Twitter they started pulling it up in the middle of their twitch stream and so it's basically just free distribution free marketing for us as a company and that was how we hit product Le growth and and specifically

[45:38] in the twitch streamer Community like we had these twitch streamers that would sign up for the product and then immediately post their link on Twitter and then their friends would see that and they would sign up and post their link and it was just this viral like Network effect because they don't have to like tweet it say hey check out my Media Kit but it's there and then other people that are like kind of looking at what are they doing what can I add to my game they see that like look into it then they make their own account so it has like an organic ability that's

[46:00] really smart so I was going to ask you that's like what that Tik Tok is what made it go big kind of like your moment but you did have an interesting strategy with your launch party and you launched on product hunt so can you explain this to you real quick yeah so product hunt for those that don't know is basically a platform that allows people to like crowd vote um on certain product ideas so literally anything like there's there's B2B stuff on there it's mainly like b2c stuff but there there's some B2B products on there and it's everything from like little tiny like micro SAS apps all the way up to like

[46:35] proper companies like companies that you that are like household names that you and I would know have been launched on product hunt um and so yeah basically like you go on there and you just vote on your favorite products and we posted media kits on there the day after we launched and uh we got second highest voted product of the day which is annoying I wish we got first we we uh two's good yeah you it is what it is but yeah there the product before us was was super sick so can't complain but um but yeah it's great exposure um product hunt combined with our launch party got us

[47:05] our first couple thousand users and um yeah product Ton's great if you're thinking about launching a SAS platform like launching on product Hunt is a great way to get some initial exposure from you know mainly like the software and the development community and um yeah our our launch party was kind of um it was it was very intentional so case and I before doing media kits we actually used to throw networking events in La we would like rent these crazy houses and I think that's how our Network got connected ex yeah exactly so all of a lot of our mutual friends like that's how I met them is I'd throw these

[47:40] parties in LA with KC we'd sell tickets for like 50 bucks a piece we'd rent a house for a day up in like the Hollywood Hills for like6 or $7,000 which back then was like all the money casy and I had like we I'm talking like 17 18 years old we'd spend like all of our money on like renting this crazy house and then we'd sell tickets for like 50 or 100 bucks a pop and then we'd have speakers and then we'd have like a little party at the end we'd have catering and whatever we did this like four or five times was it profitable um no it never

[48:07] made money but in fact it lost money most of the time but open doors yeah open doors exactly and you know even a few people that we met at those parties like ended up investing in media kits so it just goes to show that everything comes full circle but yeah basically like Casey and I had thrown these parties and we knew that it was just a great way to to bring people together and so we decided to throw one for media kits and basically we just like got this event space which is uh was owned by one of our investors again so there's another reason like why you want to

[48:33] bring in smart money um and strategic investors but yeah we got this event space um Whiz Khalifa gave us like a massive discount on his appearance fee again because he was involved in media kits and so yeah we had Whiz Khalifa come and perform and it was just like a great networking event and we threw it in LA too so of course um some of the biggest influencers in the world were there which also meant that pretty much everything at the event we got for free so all the drinks all the catering like all the stuff that was there for people all the products and and uh beverages

[49:06] were all sponsored cuz all these beverage companies wanted their beverages to be in the hands of these big influencers that they knew were going to be at our party yeah we kind of like gain the system in that way and uh and then yeah it was a hit we got a couple thousand signups off of it Whiz Khalifa got to meet him in person that was sick that's dope um but yeah I mean like I said from there we hadn't really figured out product LED growth yet so after the launch party the initial hype couple thousand signups it just flatlined for about 2 months until that

[49:33] Tik Tok video went viral did you ever struggle with turn after that event um not really um we didn't even have our paid subscription out back then it was just free only um so so no we did have a we did have some struggles with like product adoption so people would sign up they'd make an account and they wouldn't actually build a Media Kit cuz there's like two steps to using our platform free for that part yeah okay yeah it was always free it was a premium product so it was free to make a Media Kit and then if you wanted like the bells and whistles and like the upgraded stuff

[50:01] then you could pay for it what were some of the key upgrades white labeling it so like removing our logo um customizing it adding more than I think more than three platforms I think is where we limited it at so if you wanted if you had Instagram Facebook and Twitter and you wanted to add twitch or YouTube or something you'd have to pay for the upgraded program um there was uh like like Pro analytics we had additional analytics that we that we uh kept behind a pay wall there was creating more than one Media Kit was a big one for us so like you know you

[50:29] might have one Media Kit that's specific to your Twitter and one that's specific to your YouTube got um and so that was another big one so on our free plan you could only have one Media Kit so there's there's a bunch of stuff that we put behind a pay wall could do you know the ratio between people who just use the premium or can you not share that can you share that um I mean I'm sure people could like reverse engineer the numbers if I shared that so probably not but yeah it it was a pretty decent conversion rate okay yeah that makes sense the multiple Media Kit T the

[50:51] YouTube so that makes a lot of sense Okay cool so by the way the product launch was basically since you lived in LA right yeah he lived in LA influencers are your Target demographic so just throw a party of influencers put media kits everywhere say media kits launch party and you have this core base it's going to look into it and then you basically started you didn't have the product Le growth but after that you learned you needed that figured it out so the premium version people could just use it if they wanted to put it into like their link tree and their bio people would initially find it yeah

[51:19] exactly so let me recap you had the idea in 2017 but it was too early you didn't have the knowledge or the resources then later around Co you see this probably before Co right right right after Co hadit right around there you see a Resurgence and Tik Tok influencers coming huge and so you're like hey that idea is something I want to pursue you hired two developers and a designer you spend way too long designing it before launching it to have to figure out how to raise money you do it with your network and then from there you're able to get it done don't do a ton of

[51:48] marketing you launch on product hunt uh you do the launch party get to enough users but then you find out the product leg growth problem and you come up with that idea and then your strategic investor Josh Richards makes a Tik Tok that goes viral and that skyrockets the growth of the software absolutely a good way to recap and yeah and then six months later we got acquired six months later you got Acquired and you chose to sell basically because you were pretty much out of that Runway and so you had either raise another round you had a lot of users so you're making decent revenue

[52:17] and so but you still need to raise revenue to or raise money to continue that level of growth I assume yeah exactly we actually um we literally had the acquisition offer and an offer to raise another round of funding at a pretty like a at like an eight figure valuation um both on our desk it really just comes down to how far did you want to take it yeah and then ultimately who has who's in a position to actually make this successful yeah and you basically looked at the market and you saw a lot of competitors again he made a whole video on this go watch his channel yeah

[52:47] but competitors that were like small companies like our size and then we also had meta rolling out a medit tool and rolling out a media kit tool and I can't help but think that maybe we influence them a little bit definitely I mean it's like it's like it's like Amazon you know like Amazon has all the data and so like they have Amazon Basics and so they'll just like see which products are selling at a really high margin right now all right let's just figure out how to make that real quick and then stop it's the same in software and like we can talk about this too like in software um

[53:17] software in it of itself is not IP anymore like it used to be because it was so hard to build but the the barrier to entry is so low now that like anybody out there listening if you build a great and you start making a bunch of money someone is going to rip you off it's not if it's when exactly and so the way that you build defensibility and IP in software is brand and distribution and so with media kits we had brand nailed down pretty early like things like our domain and the people we had involved and stuff like that's brand right and then distribution would be things like

[53:47] product LED growth or Channel Partners or you know investors that are walking us into the you know the biggest U music labels in the country to get us you know Enterprise deals like that is how you build a moat and how you build IP and defensibility around a software product the code itself is never going to be defensible there's always someone out there that's going to be able to take what you're doing and re-engineer it it's like your advantages that other people can't replicate exactly even though they're not like you don't create them it's just your relationships or something that you other people have built up for you and you combine forces

[54:17] cool that makes a lot of sense but this kind of actually is a great segue into micro SAS because that was something that most Facebook and YouTube have a broad product they were NEC that but over they're getting a lot of things done they're ready to tack that now they're see it's a market they can clearly see how successful it is in all these link trees your competitors see that too and so you saw a lot of people kind of starting it you saw that you weren't you were self-aware to know that you probably couldn't compete with meta and a company that wanted to buy it was

[54:44] like actually had a lot of those advantages exactly and so you wanted to hand it off to them because you think they could do it well did you have to work there at all I did yeah I worked there for a few months so did Casey um and then I left cuz I want to start something but you were allowed to leave like was there like contingencies yeah there was an earnout um I left before it was like fully vested um but it is what it is it's at that point it was an opportunity cost thing for me it's like you know I made a little bit of money on

[55:07] the acquisition and then I could have made more by staying but I chose to I chose to bet on myself and start something new as opposed to waiting there okay so then let's just go straight into what right when you left I would do the same thing I don't think I could work for something like that I get it um but next you went into what we're going to call the micros sast phase of you're life did you sell everything moved to then just make that real quick no so so the crazy thing about that I don't even know if I went into this in the video but yeah basically the

[55:33] software company that I eventually sold the Ean um we built it so so keep in mind I had my marketing agency started media kits the marketing agency kept running and it was actually we never took a salary from medit like Casey and I never paid ourselves and one of the reasons I was able to do that is because I had this marketing agency that was still making money of course and so I had a business partner at the marketing agency Kaden um who was running it when I was running media kits so he was just keeping you know just basically maintaining it keeping keeping the clients happy and uh we used this wh

[56:03] labeled CRM okay and this wh labeled CRM had a problem on a per client basis we could see everything like ad spin click-through rate like all these things that you need to know as a marketing agency like all your analytics but you could only see it per client and so you'd have to click into every account go to the analytics ironically very similar to the problem with media kits is like the analytics are there they're just dispersed in a way that like isn't easy to access and so I always joke that um this company agency reporting.com was like it's like media kits for marketing agencies it's like kind of the same

[56:35] concept is just taking analytics from an API that already exists and just centralizing them in a in a nice UI like that's basically what it was but anyway we had this problem where like we had we had over a hundred clients at one point and we just couldn't keep track of all the different metrics and like we we jump on a client call and it' be like oh well like how are the leads doing this week where's the ad spend in relation to the monthly budget or where is the click-through rate where you know versus last month and like these are just basic answers that or basic questions that we

[57:05] couldn't answer as easily as if we had it all in one dashboard so what we did uh in the spirit of building an MVP uh we went and just um basically pulled the API into a Google Sheets originally but it was a disaster like my my business partner Kaden's like a wizard on on Excel and Google Sheets and so he did it and it worked but it was just it was slow and it was like things would break all the time like you know the logic that connects everything would like break and like things would like airor out like man what if we just built our

[57:34] own software to do this and so I found the domain agency reporting.com bought it for way less than you might think I bought it for um and basically we went and we took all of the data from this wh labeled CRM across all all of our clients and we basically built a dashboard the way that we wanted to see that data and we built it for ourselves and we NE we never even thought that we would sell this to anyone else we just built it for our own agency and we used our own profit from our agency to pay for it and uh and then once it was built

[58:03] we shared it with a couple buddies that were using the same white labeled software and they were like yo like can I use that like sure yeah how was how difficult was it to transition from internal use to productized I mean in terms of like was productized I guess was it kind of like we we built it in a way that it was scalable um we just didn't have like a way to take payment so it was basically yeah was just creating a new user account we're like okay yeah just put like a let's put a stripe pay wall on this thing and see if people will buy it just connect their

[58:32] account interesting so yeah I mean basically what we did is like this this white labeled uh CRM company has like Facebook groups with like tens of thousands of people in them that are all like agency owners like we were and uh I went in there and again just like media kits I was like Hey guys like if something like this existed like would you use it and then I went and everybody that said yes i' just pm' them on Facebook I'd be like hey check this out and I'd send them the link they go sign up and they originally it was a weight lless and then eventually we started

[58:58] taking taking payment um yeah we had like 400 agency owners that signed up for the weit list oh my god um in like a day holy [ __ ] and so we're like wow well this is very clear product Market fit um that's another term in software that's use very often pmf product Market fit it means that your product actually resonates with your target market um you validate that they want it exactly yeah so yeah that's that's how we uh that's how we got our first customers for that and um yeah we're like okay cool well we're selling this now we got it up to a

[59:30] decent like Mr run rate um but it wasn't something that like we wanted to do long term and when we launched it was right around the time that I sold media kits like we were kind of like working on this just like in our free time yeah and um it was like making decent money and I was like I have I want to build something else like I already knew like the next like big company that I wanted to build and like this is just going to be like a distraction it's like I I don't want to have a side hustle I don't want to be distracted by this thing and

[59:57] there's a whole Market out there for micro Acquisitions there's even um there's even a company called acquire. that's literally built around like Andrew Gaz Dei he's amazing if you if you guys want to follow someone in the software space on Twitter follow Andrew he's amazing um but yeah he literally has a Marketplace that's for this for these like1 to $100,000 Acquisitions of just like these software companies that are pretty basic that just solve one problem really well and uh anyway so there's a whole market for that and we actually listed on micro choire and we got some inquiries but then I was like hm like who has like a large

[1:00:34] following of agency owners that like might get value from this software so you reached out to him directly and uh yeah and I was like Iman like let me let me just text Iman and like Iman Iman and I have been friends for years like we we connected in 2017 we hung out in London a couple years back so we've always stayed in touch so I shot him a text and I'm like hey bro like I've got this software that does this and it's like built for agency owners to like consolidate their data and we're doing this much in revenue and I just want to get rid of it because I'm building

[1:01:05] something else I don't want like I don't want to be distracted by it like do you want it and he goes yeah bro I'll buy it like name your price I'm like okay well like here's my price this is like this is like how much we put in and like I want to make a little bit of profit obviously so like this is what I'm willing to sell it to you for he's like cool yeah let's just jump on a zoom call and figure out the details we jump on a zoom call it's like 30 minutes we're just like shooting the [ __ ] I'm just

[1:01:30] giving him like the rundown on the numbers and then he's like all right cool like yeah just let me know like send like send me wire info like I'll send the money and then yeah like a week later he sent the money and we just transferred him to the domain and the the database and that was it super simple yeah it makes sense it could benefit his user base exactly yeah you didn't need anymore yeah that makes a lot of sense and I love the story about both your ideas cuz they both came from firsthand experiencing the problem that is the biggest thing in software if you

[1:01:58] try to build software where you don't deeply understand the problem or you don't deeply understand the customer you're never going to succeed because you'll always be one step behind a competitor that does I think that's a lot of like people don't understand the big companies like the ones in the hundreds of millions or billions are the ones who have just built these softwares for their company yeah and that's why they're able to scale because they have advantages or they have better information or they can communicate more quickly so they save time can talk to 20% more customers a day yeah it's like these internal softwares for companies

[1:02:31] are what make them great and so if you have the problem firsthand you work at a company and your job is something and then you have the problem that's a huge opportunity for you to just go build an MVP on the side and then start trying to use it at your company or sell it to other companies like that's just a tried and and I think this is one of the biggest points like we were talking about before the podcast like this is one of the things that I want to drive home it's not hard to start a software company in this day and age all you have

[1:02:54] to do is find a product with an API a software with an API that has an underserved segment of the market so with media kits we found that analytics were convoluted and they didn't talk to each other across platforms so we took all these social media apis we built a really nice uh UI on top of it and just show like a UI is just the analytical Dash exactly it means user interface it means like what you can see like so there's the front end and back end in software the front end is what you can see the back end is the code that makes it all here on the screen right and so

[1:03:28] yeah basically if you find an API and productize it you can sell that and you've got a software business and that's literally what I've done all three of my software companies have just been productized apis with media kits it was social media apis with agency reporting it was the API of this CRM platform and then with my newest company it's apis of these like Small Business Point of Sales softwares have you been plugging in AI apis of course we can talk about that we'll save that for the end but I think that's like this is like the biggest generation for our age like absolutely our parents are the

[1:04:03] generation for us at the internet we have ai every software is going to use Ai No software has AI just a big opportunity there's no other way and no code apis no code SAS Builders like bubble it's never been easier and so I think the reason most people say that software is not for beginners is because it's only not for beginners who have no experience working anywhere because you don't know the problems that exist you have to have a job or be working on something every day to see a problem yeah but now with the no code tools that you mentioned earlier like if you see a

[1:04:36] problem you can build it without knowing how to code there's API no code like make.com or Zer yep and then you can literally just start bringing it to Market without having to put any money into it so now the best business model is beginner friendly yeah you just have to find an idea and then validate it by taking surveys yeah fun fact my business partner Kaden's on make.com homepage cuz he's a power user of of make.com yeah we've been using we've been doing exactly this like that's what we're doing exactly what your new business is let's just go ahead and go into that so you sold the micras the agency software

[1:05:08] yeah because you saw one micro problem on go high level yeah and saw that they don't like show one aspect of the analytics so you just made this for yourself you realize hundreds of other people could benefit from it and then you sold it to someone that serves those people yeah super straightforward and again you just happen know Ean personally but you could have sold it on acquire. no I I want to yeah I want to uh say that too like we had offers on acquire. comom Iman was just willing to do the deal faster and and you know and easier like there's a lot of paperwork

[1:05:39] involved no Fe exactly yeah no commission Etc like acquire. comom is an incredible platform and if Iman had said no to buying agency reporting I can guarantee it would have sold on on acquire. comom for sure I mean you see sales all all the time on there like I know someone who literally just makes the same CRM every single month he makes one a month makes the same CRM and just sells it on there for 30 grand there are people that make millions of dollars a year just building software companies building no code software companies or just productizing an API selling them on aire.com they're making them millions of

[1:06:10] dollars a year yeah it's literally just like this guy makes he just connects the analytics and makes a CRM for one specific industry and then just sells that to one company and plugs in their actual API Keys exactly so they get their analytics he could make it and then productize it but then you have to like he just doesn't want to do it so he just likes making it selling it it's kind of like an agency almost like an internal dashboard agency it's cool but okay so this this product had product Market fit your micr s and it was clearly working and you could have scaled it so why but you saw a bigger

[1:06:41] opportunity yeah so even without that validation you still chose to pursue this one that you didn't have validation on yeah first off how did you find this problem yeah and then tell me if you want to go into it yeah sure so so I'll talk about it at a high level but um we did have validation on this one um because I've been doing this so it might seem like on this podcast like I'm kind of all over the place but I've kind of I've always done one thing um and for a long time like when I was 16 years old my very first job in high school was

[1:07:09] working at an auto repair shop so I've always been a car guy I've always been in the automotive industry so my first agency was for which is how you got with JR which yeah exactly so yeah media kits was like a weird tangent like it was like a consumer SAS company in like the influence marketing space which is so foreign to what I was used to like my first two businesses were both in automotive and so and even like agency reporting we built that for my Automotive marketing agency right so everything like the non-sexy stuff in my career has always been in the auto repair industry which is kind of crazy

[1:07:45] because it's like one of the most unsexy Industries ever but um but it's an underserved industry and it's it's an industry that I know very intimately and that I've been involved in for like a long time and uh yeah basically we're building uh kind of an AI powerered vertical SAS company for uh for the auto repair industry and that that's my new Venture I'm telling you like I I'm going to scream it on my YouTube channel for the last four or five months and I really feel like people aren't like grasping first how important his speed is but how big of an opportunity this is right now like this is like Drop

[1:08:16] Shipping in 2014 2015 SM at 2016 like it's you could scale it to the highest level and you don't have to make the anymore just plug in an API it's [ __ ] crazy yeah yeah and and like to your point like so open AI you know went viral back in November December for launching chat GPT um the irony about that is so gpt3 has been around for years yeah and there there's actually a bunch of companies that are multi-million dollar companies that started Jasper is a great example that started back in 2016 17 18 just productizing gpt3 and then chat GPT for some reason is probably

[1:08:56] just the UI ironically um I didn't even really think about that until just now but like literally chat GPT was an internal tool that was just a productized API of something that already existed at open AI so if you think about it that way like that is the epitome of what we're talking about is what open AI did with Chad gbt but furthermore um you know these large language models have apis so a lot of these AI startups that you're seeing out there all they are is open ai's API with a wrapper around it that's geared towards a specific industry and like you can build a big business doing that you

[1:09:33] like that's why they that's specifically why they released the API to then see because they don't have like there's only 100 people there they don't have the creativity or knowledge in these industries to know all the different ways it can be used yeah since it's such a broad thing so they open it up and give these people access to the apis then collect all the data on who's actually using it and then they'll make better decisions from there they want you to yeah there's also this concept of guard rail so gp4 GPT 3.5 like these large language models they have access to all of the information on the internet but they

[1:10:04] they don't have the context to put guard rails up around what's important and not important in a certain context so to to make that even simpler um for a dentist office like sure you could just use the raw API from from open AI to respond to some somebody who wants to book an appointment at your dentist office but what would be even more important is if you can provide context and guard rails almost like at a bowling alley like the little things that pop up on the side like that is what the big opportunity is because if you're a dentist or you own a dentist marketing agency and you can go

[1:10:43] and say all right I have all of this data from previous customers or from their Point of Sales software or whatever it might be and I know XYZ needs to happen before they can make their appointment or I know that they um were supposed to get braces last time and they didn't right now I can build that into my product and it's going to inform this open AI uh endpoint to say something with more context so you know instead of being kind of like this very generic uh you know text generation you can actually make it industry specific by giving it more data that's contextual to that specific use case and so

[1:11:26] um yeah we can dive into that if if we want to get more Tac when people say they're training AI That's all they're doing is like say you're dentist and you recommend one type of toothpaste yeah and so and then they want to ask what's the best toothpaste you don't want them to answer your competitors toothpaste you want them to answer exactly what you recommend you did a much better job of simp you train it you know what I'm saying so that's kind of like the private data that's what stable diffusion's whole business model is they give everyone access to the large language model but then they go ahead

[1:11:55] and train private companies private data for their own use case for exactly exactly every company needs that every company yeah so it's massive if I were to start a bootstrapped SAS company for the very first time in 2023 I would take a large language model API like open aai I would take a no code platform like bubble and then I would go find a really Niche very unobvious problem in a specific industry and I would solve it using contextual data comp combined with so so contextual data from an API from something that's already in that industry combined with the large language model from open Ai and I would

[1:12:37] use that to create a product that solved that problem really really well and then I would sell it on aire.com for 500 Grand pause the video go back 30 seconds watch that three times until you exactly understand what he means because that is exactly what me and my partner are doing and I have not told him that word for word what me and my partner are doing out of all opportunities we could do with our Network and everything that's what we're doing and he said that without knowing that I'm doing that I did not and if you think he's a smart person if you think maybe I'm a smart

[1:13:07] person rewatch that and really internalize what he just said but you're doing it do you want to share the industry overall we're doing it in the auto repair industry because you're only solely BR because you're a car guy I would say yeah car guy and just happen to have like a lot of cool like knowledge and Connections in that industry and so it's just something that I'm very familiar with that's another really important thing we're doing it in the real estate industry neither me and my partner have any experience in the real estate industry but we have a friend here who is killing it in the

[1:13:34] real estate industry and that's such a big market so it's like choose the big Market find a specific non-sexy problem make the UI better and add AI anywhere you can first one to do it like there just like a no-brainer playbook in my opinion you know the less sexy the problem is the better um there's somebody on Twitter called Cody Sanchez she's yeah so she's an investor in my new oh really that's and she talks about boring businesses and that's literally she buys laundromats for a living it's the most unsexy thing ever but if you can build soft and car washes too and car washes yeah if you can build

[1:14:08] software for laundromats or car washes or dentists or whatever it is and do exactly what I just said like there's a big business opportunity there again it's like the mobile app change like every company already had a website but now it's mobile app so you can that's an opportunity make them their mobile app and now every company will need AI so you just make them their AI version most of them aren't going to figure it out internally and so if you just make it for the industry you're in and then you can sell that to other people you know the unfortunate part Brett this video is

[1:14:37] going to get I don't know tens hundreds of thousands of views and 99% of the people listening are not going to do anything about it I can't it's not complicated like we are we like we have four developers on our team yeah and we're choosing bubble and make.com we're choosing both no code yeah to learn it I'm going to look in the camera right now and I'm going to say if you are listening to this podcast and you are one of the people that actually takes action on things and that actually listens and applies the information that you're finding on the internet like this video like you did not end up watching

[1:15:07] this long into this video for no reason go and actually make an effort to do what we're talking about because if you just watch this video and then you skip to the next video and then the next one and then eventually you forget about this video entirely and you never take action on it then you know there's nothing bre or I can do to help you so and we're not selling anything no we're just what we're doing we're just hanging out man we're just talking about life like I just don't know how else to word it for people like you don't need to have the problem yourself find a friend

[1:15:38] that's in a big industry and see what problems they have and then just be the bubble person or or if you don't want to start that business just hit me up and come work for me and I'll I'll teach you teach you the ropes yeah or hire our agencies I guess it's not whatever so but how are you going about like actually building it out or hiring like finding your developers or what's your team structure this time around we have a great development team they're all in house we're doing it right we're doing it um we're doing it like the I guess the more traditional way um but for us

[1:16:07] it's like you know this is going to be a big business for us this isn't this isn't like sell it on my on on aire.com or anything like this is like a proper like multi8 maybe nine figure business that that we're building and um you know we we want to have the proper infrastructure to do that what do you think out of all the software companies you've started like what were problems you ran into that you didn't think would be problems or what was something that you basically like believed going into it that turned out to be completely untrue um build it and they will come is not

[1:16:41] true okay it's true to an extent yeah and it's it's not that it's completely untrue it's just not uh it's not like the most accurate description of how things actually work um you actually have to Market your product Believe it or like you actually have to get eyeballs on your product for it to work that should be a core thought process before even choosing what product to make is your ability to get eyeballs on it in the first place in my opinion absolutely a firsttime Founder focuses more on product than they do on distribution a second time founder focuses more on distribution than product and I am even with product L

[1:17:15] growth absolutely I am I am a embodiment of that we waited way too long to launch Media kits we even talked about that right because I was too focused on product I thought the product had to be perfect versus this time around our product has been launched for six months already in a beta like we we've had paying users for six months and we haven't even launched publicly yet has the course of the product changed from what your initial idea was to what it is now AB 100% And this time around we focused on distribution through Partnerships and through um you know we own one of the largest Facebook groups

[1:17:49] in our industry and like there's these other like you built that first yeah absolutely so we built the distribution Chann channels before we even built the product versus at media kits we built the product and then we were scrambling to figure out distribution so going into the Facebook group that's kind of interesting I don't think a lot of people would think about that I'm a huge Community guy and I see the value of that so explain your thought process yeah um yeah basically we uh we started a Facebook group that now has thousands of members in a in a very specific Niche um and we're just in there thought

[1:18:18] leadership we don't even we don't even sell our software in there it's literally just for um business owners in this niche to connect with other business owners and that's that's literally all it's for and they just kind of help each other out they talk about certain things and then the best part is we don't have to promote our software because our customers will promote our software for us in this Facebook group and so all we have to do is just be the stewards of like Good Vibes and like you know good conversations like you know as long as as long as nobody's in there selling or

[1:18:49] promoting anything you know as long as there's no spam as long as there's no negativity or hate happening in the group like that's all we're there for is to moderate that um it just Grows by Word of Mouth you know these people invite their friends and then our customers will go in there and talk about how amazing our software is without us even having to ask them to do it communities are probably the most valuable part of the internet and all you have to do like it sounds C it's not you create a place and then you like just maybe share some resources to start it off and you start telling people one

[1:19:17] by one by one hey there's this Facebook group for all car people there's a Facebook group where you can learn about this and we can share this interest and share our problems and you get like people there they start talking each thenone else they're like hey welcome to the group and it just starts like live it's like a living breathing organism dude I think Facebook groups are the most underrated thing in 2023 Facebook specifically just online groups Facebook groups specifically Facebook specifically Facebook groups I use Circle so why Facebook or Discord so why Facebook well so for me specifically like because we're in like we're selling

[1:19:46] to small business owners like that's where they are like that's really the only place they are that's the only answer to that question yes um but no I but I I see your point though I think Discord community are great for discord's for younger people abely circles if you want it proprietary but Facebook is where if you're older demographic that are into cars that's where they live then you make Facebook group sure you pick one B you need to be intentional I guess yeah if you can be and this goes back to like this this is human nature in general this goes back to like Casey and I throwing those

[1:20:13] parties in in the Hollywood Hills to to network and meet people like if you can be the steward of like a good time or a positive environment for people to hang out and meet peers M like you will be seen as an authority in that industry right and so it's like I had no business like the the founder of my space came to one of my parties in La that Casey and I threw and like I have his cell phone number now because of that and and this is just it's just the one random example but like no 19-year-old kid has has enough like enough credibility to to

[1:20:48] like hang out with the founder of Myspace for 3 hours at some crazy mansion in the Hollywood Hills the only reason that that happened for me and for Casey is because we were the stewards of this event and he wanted to meet the people that put it on and the same thing goes for online communities right it's like if I can bring a bunch of like-minded people together on the Internet or you on Circle you if you can do that and bring people together and and have them enjoy what they're doing and have a great time and and talk and network and you're the one that's

[1:21:20] facilitating it like you're going to reap the rewards of being that fac faor so Community is everything on the internet and but the reason he does this for your SAS and you're doing it preemptively this is this would have been a good answer you didn't do it with media kits I guess but when you're building the product this is a perfect answer build a community of people that have that same problem preemptively so then you have a group of 3,000 people that you can then be like oh and magically guys out of nowhere I found this software tool yeah exact but we created it but I think it'll help you

[1:21:51] guys cuz it helped us a lot now so you fostered that now you have your core user base and there's a Facebook group for them to give you feedback and Inter rate which you're already benefiting from it's genius and so same thing goes for like that's why I have my YouTube channel like yeah I was talking about a way different subject a year and a half ago than I make a video on AI when Chad GPT came out it's not when the API came out but when chat GPT came out got popular I understood the concept made a video on it now everyone thinks I'm an

[1:22:18] AI guy I'm not like some huge AI expert I get how it's good for people and how it's going to benefit in business yeah but like on the internet Perce yeah and there and there's always like there's always got to be somebody who can articulate information in a digesti way yeah and even like the example earlier that you made where I tried to explain something and then you explained it way simpler than I did it's like that's that's a skill like that's superpower and I think that's why your content does well it is solely my intention like I optimize for understanding in as few words as possible yeah that's the goal

[1:22:48] of the channel yeah so I'm glad I appreciate you saying that yeah of course but brother you are super successful in software and that's what we're tackling right now now so this is something that I'm actually genuinely interested in and so have you found like any sort of like actual marketing channels outside of organic product Le growth that worked for you guys like you said you use Tik Tok with Josh Richards but he was an investor did you guys try Facebook ads anything you didn't see working um I mean yeah we we've done everything we've done Facebook ads Tik Tok ads Snapchat ads um you know uh my

[1:23:18] my new company is a lot of like inperson like uh trade shows and and and Expos and stuff like that um but yeah I mean I think it's different for every SAS company I think you just the fundamental question you to ask because I I don't wna I don't want to go into a whole monologue about Facebook ads even though I even though we could um if it's not applicable for you but like as a as a software founder what you have to ask yourself is where do my customers live where do they hang out where do they spend their time and then where are my competitors hanging out and

[1:23:49] spending their time and that should lead you to the answer to that question of how do I Market to these when you say competitors you more so mean where are they like marketing to if you take one of your customers and open up their credit card statement all the other businesses that they're buying from where do those businesses find your customer so how are they marketing yeah and then just do what they're doing essentially okay well well don't don't copy what they're doing but understand that there are certain channels and certain ways whether it's um you know like inbound outbound selling like you know uh organic marketing paid paid

[1:24:27] marketing like whatever it might be like there's so many different marketing Avenues and strategies and channels that you can utilize but you have to first understand which ones your customers are actually on and where they spend their time and their attention and odds are if they've if they're marketing on those platforms they've been in the business for years they probably have figured that one out so exact take an educated guess yeah that they didn't they know what they're doing yeah okay so who do you learn from cuz you found success really young how old are you now 23 yeah you're still really young you're killing it so where did you learn this from um

[1:25:02] so I think that I've always I like to think that I'm like a student of life like I just love I love just digesting information and it was a really weird uh pivot for me like from like the internet marketing world to like the venture-backed like startup World those are two very different communities that very rarely overlap ironically Jasper is a great example of one company that did overlap cuz those guys came from like the internet marketing world and now they're like a big VC backed SAS company but it's very rare um and so yeah I mean I I try to consume content kind of from

[1:25:35] all sides whether it's like you know a a a keynote on Venture Capital by Sam Alman or something like that on YouTube or you know a video by Iman or by you like I'm I'm I'm always trying to just kind of learn from everybody that has different perspectives on things and take the things that apply to my business and and and apply them um and I I think that's one of that's one of the skills that that um if people can learn that early is is really powerful is understanding that not every piece of advice even not every piece of advice that Brett and I are giving you in this

[1:26:05] video is going to be applicable to what you're doing but there's at least something I'm sure and if you can identify what that is and then take it and actually take action on it then you know that's the most important part so again software is like really honestly straightforward to see success with if you can see a problem and you can fix the problem it'll work for you it'll work for somebody else now you just to tell other people that this solution exists it's simple it's not easy that's a really good that's what I like to say why do you think I guess the barriers to entry you raised money for

[1:26:35] your new one yeah I did a little bit strategically so you just found investors that you think could get you into those type of businesses that you sol for yeah and so you're this is the now you have the mindset of giving them the opportunity and then it's a no-brainer because they know they have the connections yeah and and of course like the second time around you know once you have like an exit under your belt it it instills a lot more confidence in investors they're like oh he's done this before he knows what he's doing right and that's why um I say that to say that it's really important in my

[1:27:05] opinion that everybody's first business is bootstrapped I do not recommend raising money for your very first business I do not recommend starting a software company as your very first business I think if you can start a Professional Services business a marketing agency something similar to that Iman talks about this all the time on his YouTube channel if you can start as a freelancer turn that into an agency turn that into a cash flowing business have some cash and then start something like you know even um to use Oliver as an example again like a cpg company that's selling physical goods cpg and software are very similar in the fact

[1:27:34] that they have very high startup costs you're not going to do that as a first-time entrepreneur you have to sell something that's scalable that has low overhead like marketing services or or some sort of agency model that you can do to stack some cash get some experience then you've kind of like earned the right to move into something like d Toc or or software M and and I truly feel that way and the cool thing is you can start a Services bus that's in the same niche as the software company that you might want to eventually start right you did you were a marketing agency for car people

[1:28:07] exactly yes so that that's a great example like if you can go and figure out the pain points of a certain industry by providing services to them that you know something that's unscalable that's that's not sexy that's not you know going to get get you some crazy multiple or some crazy acquisition but purely just to learn about your Target customer and to learn how to run a business and file your taxes and just the the basic stuff right then you can go and and start a software business I do believe that like your first business has to be a service agency business of some sort it could be mowing lawns you

[1:28:40] could have a lawn mowing business and then the people that are booking your services don't like they are just calling you on the phone you're like what if I just made a Marketplace for people in my local area to find people to mow their lawn yeah that's your software company can build that on bubble with a template with no code the lawnmowers of Arizona even though there's no grass here you might not see a lot of success yeah maybe not here but if that makes sense in your area you just sell that as a service then you see a problem that people are having a hard

[1:29:07] time booking people and then you make a software company around that and you just use those people and they're like oh I don't like it it's clunky I'd rather just call you then maybe you have a bad product you're making me want to go start an artificial turf company here in Arizona but that's how like a service is literally anything just so you can learn the problem space and then you can build a softare out of that because objectively software is the best business model but it's not maybe so it's good software is beginner friendly but not first business friendly not first time friendly yeah not first time

[1:29:35] so you could it could be your first business if you understand a business if you have a job and you need to have some conceptual understanding of how to run a business and and at least some conceptual understanding of how software works and how it scales and how to get distribution and if you've worked in a business you understand how a business works for sure I think another another great thing I I really like to push back against this idea on like on YouTube and like this whole like internet marketing like kind of like self-help industry I think pushes like the anti- col anti- job kind of narrative and I completely

[1:30:09] disagree with that I I push it hard my next video is very anti- col anti- job so so here's the thing that's fine that's fine and for context I've never had a job and I didn't go to college me neither well I didn't go to college the the point that I'm making though is I think sometimes for some people it might be good and get a job at a that's similar to to in an industry that's similar to something that you want to start a business in and I think sometimes you might even learn more doing that than trying to start something from scratch and just failing over and over again I

[1:30:40] am anti- colle 1,00% not anti- job necessarily I would I don't think I could ever do it unless it was for that specific reason if I was so aware of what I wanted to do for a living so intentionally then it would make sense to go work for a company to learn the industry learn the tools they use learn how they communicate and learn their problems then go do it myself but it would have to be hyper intentional I just don't think people that are just starting out at 18 are even close to knowing what industry they want to work in and so they don't do that but yeah

[1:31:10] that's a really good point but going and just going and just working for a business that's run by an entrepreneur that is like an entrepreneurial culture is it doesn't even matter what industry is in you're going to learn so much about how to run a business how to do customer service how to you know take care of your employees like there's so many things that are intangible that you and I probably had to learn the hard way because we've never worked somewhere yeah oh my God it's like I think about this all the time I'm I'm like damn like things like HR and like payroll taxes

[1:31:38] and like all these things that I I don't know how they work because I've never been on the flip side MH so I'm like oh man like if I had just worked a regular job for like a year I would probably know how these things work but I don't and so I have to figure it out on the Fly and you pay for that yeah exctly you literally pay for that like that lack of knowledge and typically you just have to hire someone who then has done it before and then that's the only way you do learn exactly interesting so do you think that I just don't know like what how

[1:32:06] what age were you when you started consuming YouTube oh like 15 14 CU I feel like all everyone I've had on this podcast all of us in our Circle all lived the same life 14 to 15 years old we were all watching the Ecom smma YouTubers then we all kind of went to these networking events out in California and then we all met and then now everyone's at this 22 to 25 range making hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars dude that's how that's how Iman and I met I was making smma content on YouTube when like I had like a couple thousand subscribers and

[1:32:36] so did Iman he had like a couple thousand subscribers and this is back in like 2016 like late 2016 and he like shot me a DM I still have it I I went back and like read it the other day because I was like I was like looking at his channel I'm like damn I'm so proud of this guy like this is crazy but like he reached out to me he's like hey Kieran like you know great to connect like I like like your smma content on YouTube's cool and like we just kind of hit it off and we've stayed in touch ever since and now

[1:33:00] he's like the biggest Creator on the platform growth the last year in that industry it's like and it's so impressive but he just takes everything so seriously and it's just become such quality so he deserves every but it's also interesting to me to see and he's so young dude he's just been in the game SCS of 14 it's so cool but uh it's cool for me to see also because I'm a little older I'm 26 and so I'm starting to see like this like cuz I was watching Ean when I was like 5 years AG doing my SMA but now we're seeing like these new wave

[1:33:25] of like a new generation of influencers all in the same coming up with no code SAS AI yeah the new like generation businesses of the future is what I call them yeah and so it's really cool to see that that it's like it works we kind of laid that framework down because it's like almost like one of the first generations of like internet money kids running Facebook ads the gurus abused everybody like we just went through it I love I love Bea he's like one of my favorites and then there's this kid called uh Kaden Bo I don't know if you've seen him on Tik Tok you got to

[1:33:56] check it out he's hilarious he'll take like these these like super basic concepts like like mowing lawns and stuff like that and he'll he'll just go out and like make a bunch of money doing it but he has like this comedic effect to it and the videos are hilarious kid's like 17 or 16 what's the angles like because it's like it's easy he's just showing people how easy it is to go out and make money doing stuff almost everyone's just like in their mind in their room but he makes it into like a skit so it's hilarious but anyway yeah like there's so many kids doing this and

[1:34:21] it's it's incredible to see so I also find it so interesting of like the influencer dynamic of like growing a following then do you start the business or start the business then grow a following and so I do want to ask you because you made YouTube videos like way back in the day and you have what like over like probably 11 12K but you have videos with hundreds of thousands of views but you took a when you started media kits you stopped yeah so and I still I I've been like basically not on the internet for like the last six months cuz I've been building my new

[1:34:53] business you sold everything yeah I did um I'm of the opinion that like so my new business my new business does not benefit for my personal brand at all right it's just not like my my my personal brand is like in the same space as like younger guys that are like up and coming in business and like I'm selling to you know brick and mortar small business owners with my new my new company so I just kind of made the decision like my personal brand has been amazing to me over the last six years it's allowed me to connect with guys like you and Ean and Casey and Jr and

[1:35:23] all these guys and it's amazing but for me like I've just recognized that I've I've picked a lane that doesn't require me to be like on the internet and so I've kind of taken a step back do you prefer that I do I think it's more peaceful um and I don't want my business to be dependent on me uh because it's less sellable and so um I think there are people that do it really well like there's plenty of people that have a personal brand that's really big and also a business that's unrelated that makes a bunch of money and that's great but if if somebody's business relies on

[1:35:57] their personal brand that's just that's not for me it's not something that I want to do because I don't see it I don't see it as having longevity I prefer to talk to people who don't have personal Brands because even though I'm in this group too like a lot of the success of your business if it's from a personal brand is solely because of your personal brand and that actually almost is the business you know what I'm saying and that's why you're successful so when I can talk to people who don't have a huge following but their business is making millions it's like you know it's

[1:36:23] because their tactics and their product was so good yeah and everybody everybody realizes this eventually like you see all these influencers launching product lines that are like branded separately and like all these things and uh even Ean like his software company it's like yeah it benefits from his personal brand but like hopefully he'll be a to to keep that separate yeah so it's like you know people people realize this eventually and and you know I think for me it's like maybe I'll come back on YouTube and Instagram one day and like try to grow my personal brand in you know in the next few years but for now

[1:36:54] um kind of just keeping a low profile I mean I guess that's why but I why Alex Heros came back like so heavy YouTu because he saw how like powerful like Kylie Jenner and Mr Beast were but he also sold his business and it was it was like that's it and he was doing something different now so now he has a

[1:37:10] really cool model yeah the acquisition. comom model is really cool why' you sell everything mve to Bali I you you don't know how much time how many times I fantasized about that I been texted you I was like dud yeah it's uh it was amazing yeah so for context I lived in Bali for four months MH um and it was it was a few things so selling media kits was like it's a big thing for me because it was like my identity like it's all I did for two and a half three years it's all I was focused on and so having that weight off my shoulders like you know investors

[1:37:43] employees like you know a bunch like issues with the software bugs ask you about that one what was it like was having investors really stressful it wasn't stressful like on a day-to-day basis but like on a macro level yeah because like you owe people money and you got to make sure pych I think that would really impact me yeah so it was you know it was the first time in my life where I had no responsibilities or obligation like when I sold media kits I stayed at the company for a little while and then I then I left um and I had no responsibilities I had gotten rid of my

[1:38:14] apartment I had uh I had sold all my cars I had sold media kits um and I literally just had zero obligation I had no employees I had no investors I had nothing I was just free and I was like I knew I wanted to build my next SAS company and you know my so my business partner Kaden and I were like all right where can we go for like 90 days to just lock in and be focused time zone doesn't matter um you know distance doesn't matter um you know price to a certain extent doesn't really matter because like we're just going to go somewhere

[1:38:45] nice and just enjoy it and like especially like in your early 20s like having like basically no responsibility I don't have a dog or anything like I don't have a girlfriend you're a car guy I surprised you the r yeah you know I owned it for like two and a half years so I was kind of ready for the next thing but um but yeah man it was just great like being able to go there and just live out of a suitcase for four months and just do whatever I want like was there like a clear goal like an outcome you wanted or like to build my

[1:39:12] next company to decide what it was or you already had the idea we already had the idea it was to build the MVP got and also that was on like the business side it was to build the MVP for my next business and then on the personal side it was kind of like just like this sounds super cliche but like ReDiscover myself like what are my core values and beliefs what do I want the next 3 to 5 years of my life to look like how am I going to kind of like reinvent myself after media kits because so much of my personal brand and my like reputation

[1:39:38] was wrapped up in media kits and I I wanted to you know pivot away from that um you know hormos has even talked about this recently he uses the example with um who's the actor from Wolf of Wall Street no the the other guy Jonah Hill um the the oh yeah Matthew MCC Matthew mccon yeah I think hosi made a video about this he's like Matthew MCC mccon used to do like romcoms and then he disappeared for a couple years came back did like you know more serious characters and like I kind of went through the same thing is like you go through these es and flows in your life

[1:40:08] in your career like almost like these character arcs where it's like Kieran O'Brien the the marketer like the internet marketer guy and then it's like Kieran O'Brien the SAS founder in like the influencer space and so you know 23 years old now having gone through the kind of those two phases I'm like this next one is is a whole different identity it's a whole different kind of like like brand and and it's a whole different way that of that I want people to think about me and more importantly that I want to think about myself and so it was kind of just like a reset it was

[1:40:40] like I was off social media I deleted everything off my phone it was just like a cleanse so it's almost like people the world's always trying to put you in a box to like categorize you and understand you but I love the fact that people like Kanye West was like the best want it like completely Reinventing yourself dude and I've always respected that cuz he used to be the shutter Shades guy when I was in Middle School then he went to yeus was completely OPP now he's a fashion like now he's CRA sometimes sometimes you just got to change your environment to be able to see things like from a different

[1:41:07] perspective so I highly recommend oh yeah you know if if any like young people are watching like go out and see the world like you you don't have to have a bunch of money to do it either like you know you you can these businesses we're talking about starting you could do that from your laptop from anywhere you like evolve as a person if if you go to like a third world country or like not necessarily third world but like I went to the country of Columbia by myself oh yeah like traveled there by myself for one of my agency clients and trying to just communicate with people

[1:41:32] who don't speak English and and like a meal's $2 like dude your whole world view shifted yeah traveling to a third world country and then more importantly what you just mentioned solo travel is so important like I think everybody should do a multiple week if not multiple month long solo trip somewhere with no friends cuz it's 100% on you to figure out and solve every problem you're facing exactly and then you don't have Wi-Fi half the time yeah yeah it's it's such a it's such a paradigm shift and it's it's just like a different perspective on life and um yeah I recommend it to everybody yeah

[1:42:02] huh so what have you thought about like as you've come back from that have you like tried to like I feel like there's a huge shift in like team size going down are you like optimizing for like the most lean team possible or do you like view this as like I want to make this a thousand person company no headcount is not a measure of success and that one the things in Silicon Valley it always used to be raising money how many emplo raising money and how many employees you have it's like those are stupid metrics no what's your eida what's your Revenue you know what's

[1:42:33] your net retention what's your what's your Revenue per employee like those are the things that I care about and yeah for this new Venture like I'm focusing on quality of people way more than quantity of people and one a player is worth five C players how have you gone about finding them I think it's just intuition man and like this is one of the things like like it's all of this stuff when I was coming up when I was like basically like a freelancer running my agency I I always thought stuff like stuff like culture and stuff like um you know your values and your mission

[1:43:06] statement and all this stuff I thought it was like cliche and kind of stupid but if you actually do it right and you actually like do it in a way that's that's profound and that that people can get behind and like turn it into like a real movement um then you know the the results of that are like crazy so there's more fulfillment that people can get out of like working on a problem that feels important absolutely than just money like especially people who aren't naturally entrepreneurs they want to feel like they are important at the job they're playing a big role and they're working on something that's

[1:43:38] actually making the world a better place yeah 100% And you have to be you have to evolve so much as a leader to attract and a lot of it like the law of attraction is very real in every aspect of of life and to attract a player Talent you have to be an a play like an A+ leader right and not saying that I am I'm working towards it every single day I don't think anybody's a perfect leader but like I've been like another thing I did in Bali is I studied leadership a lot and I read a lot of books and um really went down like this Rabbit Hole

[1:44:10] of like human psychology and how that like relates to leadership and so you know for for people that are watching if you're thinking about you know starting like an AI startup or starting like a no code like Bubble company or or starting a lawn business it doesn't really matter what you're doing um eventually you'll get to a point where you need to start hiring employees and building a team and understanding how to do that in a way that builds real culture and that actually gets buyin from your team members and like truly does that right not just you know like the facade of doing it where people stick around for

[1:44:44] six months and then they leave like if you can really nail that like business at a high level is a people game and that's it like product IP patents trademarks you know all that stuff it doesn't matter you're in the people business if you can't nail that then none of the rest of the stuff I just listed really matters too much because it'll just implode yeah it's like human capital your your company's the average value of the average IQ of your company in way yeah so like if you have really high quality people you're going to take it way further so absolutely I really do you like go for all full-time

[1:45:21] employees or do you lean towards contractors more um we're very contractor heavy yeah so there's no right answer um everybody on our team right now uh except for like one person I think is is full-time um and that's very intentional because we want to build a culture in that way I think sorry is it because sorry you finished no no you're good I I think a hybrid is is the right approach in in the beginning even like this new business that we started we were a hybrid approach in the beginning um but like the status of an employee being a 1099 or w to isn't what makes them a

[1:45:55] contractor right it's it's about how ingrained they are in your culture and so you can make like someone who's technically like on paper a contractor you can make them a part of your culture and then you know eventually transition them over to like a full-time position when you're when you're able to so that's all semantics it doesn't matter is it more so to sell your company though yeah I'm not I'm not worried about that it's it's like it's more just like building building a team that actually cares about what you're doing right like a freelancer is not going to care about what you're doing so I think

[1:46:25] there's like there's different types of of tools in the tool box right it's like you've got like your exacto knives and you've got like your machetes it's like you you can hire and and the the verbiage that I like to use is like missionaries versus mercenaries MH so your mercenary is like your I know this one yeah exactly yeah your mercenary is like your machete and your missionary is like your xacto knife it's like they're they're for different purposes and so your your mercenaries are the freelanc the guys that are just going to come in they're going to get [ __ ] done and they're just going to do it because

[1:46:57] they're getting paid to do it and there is a time and a place for that in every business sometimes there's a time and a place for that in you know in a business for a very long time even once you have an amazing culture there's still a place for outside Consultants you know mercenaries to come in and just and just do one task really well and then leave like there there's absolutely a place for that um but the core of your team should be missionaries they should be people that are there for the that you're on that are Marching with you that are like side by side like shoulder

[1:47:28] Tosh shoulder with you in combat so to speak like those are the people that you want there day in and day out and every now and then you might have to bring in a mercenary to get something really specific done do you try to optimize for everyone to work in person uh we're balancing that um we're about to open an inperson office here um but uh but yeah we we do have employees that are in other cities that are uh in the same city as each other and they'll work in person together at like wew work or something sense yeah Okay cool so you were able to achieve a lot of success

[1:47:58] very young like you're still young but even before your software companies you were successful and like what do you attribute that to what do you think was in you that like cuz so many people like can't ever wrap their head around making $10,000 a month or can't ever wrap their head around even starting their own company so what like what was a how were you able to do that bro I you know I think about this a lot and I don't know like innately what it was like I always as a kid like I always wanted to do things like differently I always had like this yeah like I I had

[1:48:35] this like I I never did well with authority like coaches teachers stuff like that I I always wanted to kind of do things my own way lemonade stands flipping sneakers on ebay like I did all that stuff and I don't know like innately what drove that but I always think that it was like kind of a fear of being average like I grew up in a like a middle class family like I wasn't I wasn't poor by any means like I never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from but like you know I went on like a vacation like every other year

[1:49:04] maybe and like my my dad drove a Honda Accord and like we lived in a like a modest house in a modest neighborhood and like there just wasn't anything crazy like I never I never saw entrepreneur no no both both neither of my parents were entrepreneurs so I didn't even know what the word entrepreneur was until I was like 17 and so I say all that to say that like I grew up in that like typical like white picket fence type you know type situation and you know sometimes like a lot of people that grow up in very underprivileged situations they they hustle because they want to get out of

[1:49:37] that and I totally understand and empathize with that for me it was more so like I see the people around me and they're kind of like they're just scraping by like they're they're they're fine like they're living for the weekend essentially ex I the bare minimum to get my next to get off exactly and I just didn't I didn't resonate with that I always knew from a young age I'm like I want to do I know there's something Beyond this like I know there's another level above this that I can get to um and I just wanted that I didn't even know what what it was necessarily I'm

[1:50:09] just like I want to do more with my life than than what I'm exposed to on a day-to-day basis I'm so fascinated by how many like pure quantity like 20 to 25y Old millionaires there were 20 years ago or 30 years ago internet it I know so many kids Mak 100K a month so many people that have cracked the code with whether they're a go high level affiliate or they're running an smma or Drop Shipping whatever it is there's so many and it's just cuz like if you just fill your mind with the right information on the internet like just got to do the work at execution

[1:50:41] yeah like there's I don't I just don't get it how whatever I'm just always felt like an entrepreneur naturally so I've just always been watching these YouTube videos and then over time just start doing something one thing leads to the next one thing leads to the next you meet better people cooler people you slowly rise to the top feels really long in the time like when you're in it but dude I want to touch on that too man like the people you do it with is everything like everything like having a friend having a friend group and a network of people that are like killing it in their own respective ways and

[1:51:12] being able to be around them and spend time with them like that's why like Casey Jr and I and a few other people like we all moved out here Seb too like we all moved out here to Scottsdale around the same time like when we were all like 17 18 years old you know and like that was I think I attribute a lot of My Success to that just being around those guys like most important thing we weren't even doing the same stuff none of us are even in the same industry doing the same thing we're all doing like the stuff we're doing couldn't be more different in terms of how we make

[1:51:39] money but we were just around each other and like we'd go to dinners and we'd hang out and I think that's like a big big piece of it is just being around like-minded people I mean how much has been seeing isan's success been motivating you from afar oh dude absolutely absurd like I love that guy and so it's just like we're not even remotely in the same industry but just seeing that makes me want to be better and like that's so so critical and that's what I was seeking for a long time which is what online communities are also great for especially when you're starting and the problem when

[1:52:07] everyone is Young is I feel like they think money is the issue and that is like really not the issue from for go to 10 to 100K really isn't money no it's just information and your team like the your who's who you're doing it with essentially yeah have you are you doing the next one with Casey uh no Casey's uh Casey's not involved in this one he's he's doing his own thing also in the AI space so if you're not doing something if you're not building Ai No code SAS or AI SAS like I don't know why bro yeah Casey got everyone I know is doing an AI sass

[1:52:39] Casey's got a really cool product it's basically like uh you could even use it for for this episode it's like AI for podcasts oh cool so it does like show notes and and descriptions um and titles for podcasts you just upload your audio do my uh time stamps time stamps yeah you got a customer Bud there you go because I hate doing I do half of it and like loading yeah but that's really cool okay so but ultimately like you should be doing things for free for people like getting access to higher quality information getting access to an industry whatever it is do a favor for

[1:53:09] people show them you have a skill is there like any skills that you had or like what are like your most if you had like Flex right now and you're good at something like what are your hard skills like I can say for me video lighting oh by the way yeah dude like your setup is crazy this I'm a nerd bro lighting I'll talk about lighting for 10 hours if you want but dude I need help with mine this is my first I got you oh do you record yeah I just in my apartment like I'm like even just my zoom call setup I let me come over I'll get you a nice ass

[1:53:38] webcam the whole shebang hell yeah uh I think my skills are um like product and marketing and when I say product specifically I mean like understanding consumer psychology and why people want something like I I can look at a soft sofware product or I mean to an extent like any kind of product but um software product specifically and I can understand why people would want it why why they maybe wouldn't want it um and if I had that product like how to Market to them did you choose that skill you know to an extent I think some of it is innate some of it is like just

[1:54:12] like n it's like nature vers nurture type thing right I think some of it is nature but I also think that spending the first four or five years of my entrepreneurial career in marketing and having to think like a marketer has always made me now that I'm building software products makes me think about my software products through a marketer's lens like when I'm building a product I'm thinking about how am I going to Market and sell this once it's once it exists and I think thinking about it through that lens kind of allows me like a unique perspective versus if I was like a software engineer

[1:54:41] by trade you know you might not be thinking through that same lens okay and then what about uh marketing as far as like the skill itself yeah I think I think marketing I mean it's it's a very broad term but like in software specifically just understanding how and where and when to reach your target audience like how to do activations which channels to pick how much to spend on things like you know the the little like the little hacks like the like the like hacking the organic Tik Tok algorithm for media kits or you know you know getting into Facebook groups and like you doing organic like Gorilla Marketing on

[1:55:14] Facebook groups for my new company like um you know understanding paid ads I've spent like tens of millions of dollars on paid ads um as a as a marketing agency I got to manage like you know almost $ hundred million worth of AD budgets and that gave me like a plethora of knowledge about like things like payperclick and and and Facebook ads and so um I'm always just trying to kind of expand my skill set in like the realm of marketing and understand the different types of marketing the different channels how it's done um but the most important thing is is human psychology that's the one thing that's never going

[1:55:46] to change say it louder right so it's like the channel might change the strategy might change tactics might change the one thing that's never going to change is why does somebody buy something 100% if I started my YouTube channel when I was 20 would not be successful at all but the fact that I was doing a marketing agency around 2122 that's where I learned to say make like optimize for understanding and as few words as possible guys go go study Brett's thumbnails and titles go back and ask yourself why did you click on this video what made you click on this video like making thumbnails and

[1:56:23] titles on YouTube is a science and an art but mainly a science and it's like that's marketing like understanding understanding what makes people want to click on a video like in it of itself I learned from Ean yeah Ean is another the best I hope he's watching this because we we've shouted him out so many times he the best thumbnails the best titles every single person I tell absolutely it's a clear point you know exactly who it's for and what you're getting out of it in like seven words 50 car it's so impressive it's an art form but that's what I was good at marketing like

[1:56:51] messaging but as astics or Med buying whatever never my strong suit but the language that's a skill that has now translated to every business I've ever done or every aspect of my life that I've gone through yeah and psychology is like my most I just watch psychology videos all the time all the time it's one of the most interesting things for me to learn about um I talked to Dan Co the other day and he said he told me about the nine stages of ego development watch that cuz you can like really I will that sounds interesting actualized.org it's really interesting dude but this is been

[1:57:22] like a really like I don't know how else to put it cuz this wasn't like one where we were like getting like all like excited and hype and happy and like mind blown but it's like that should be why this podcast is so valuable for people because it is so straightforward on how to build a successful SAS platform we've talked about so much too like we kind all over the place yeah I feel like there's so many nuggets in this and again I I truly hope that people watching this like take something from this video and apply it to their lives and their businesses and and and do

[1:57:52] something with it and send us a message if you do like let like let us know that um you know that you've taken it and and applied it so are there any YouTube channels that you're a big fan of right now I mean Hermos big one U Iman of course um yours um that's probably not helpful because you're already here um but uh but yeah th I watch I watch those and then um for SAS like Dan Martell makes good content okay um he's a good like like kind of sass YouTube channel so yeah it it seems pretty straightforward dude understand a a job or a space find a problem try to fix it

[1:58:27] with software how did you hire developers can I ask that real quick sure one um there there's a bunch of great platforms of hire developers you can find them on upwork sometimes you can find good ones um there's a platform called lemon. um that we've used in the past that's that's really good um if you can like if you have the luxury of this try to find them through your network if you know anybody that has a software company um or you like you you know someone who's a software engineer try to get them to send referrals your way um that's always going to be the best way

[1:58:58] um you know just because they're going to be a little bit more vetted and you're not completely going into it dark um you know and then another piece of advice is like just try to have at least a baseline understanding about how software Works um and at like specifically like the types of languages that you're going to be building your product in you need to have like at least a baseline understanding there's plenty of YouTube videos out there to teach you how like react native works or how a nodejs works or whatever it is just have like a baseline understanding so that you're not completely like

[1:59:26] confused by what's happening when you eventually do hire a developer yeah I think uh Brandon always says to hire like a uh a like a technical adviser yeah for someone to help you hire so at least you can explain the idea to them and then they can explain it as like a translator almost yeah cuz I would be people would take advantage of me if I just started talking dude happen at media kits man we we went through two Engineers that that we burned so much money on and it just didn't work out I don't know if I ever met a developer who's told me they can't do what I'm

[1:59:54] asking for so just keep that in mind they're all going to say they can do it better than the other guy yeah and so you kind of have to really put those types of people to the test absolutely but or you just learn bubble but that is one thing I want to say there's a really cool I have a friend who literally started learning about bubble like right when I started talking about it in January within two months had a good grasp on it and within two months after that had 25k a month in bubble development agency clients wow so not only can he use bubble to build his own

[2:00:22] SAS he can now cash flow a bubble Dev agency that's amazing so I thought that was pretty interesting because that's a really fast come up and it's a good skill that's going to be relevant for a long time but guys follow Kieran this camera's dead follow Kieran on all social media platforms Kieran O'Brien what is your main that you're most active on dude none honestly right now sorry to disapp point um yeah I mean like Instagram I'll post stuff here and there um yeah I don't know I I think maybe the best way is to keep tabs on what I'm doing like with my companies that's probably a better way to to

[2:00:53] really learn versus like the content I put out because again I'm kind of like kind of in like monk mode right now just kind of focus on the business so do you put a lot of focus on health or like like are you not on social media specifically for like dopamine reasons that and yeah I mean I'm doing 75 hard right now it's my fourth time doing it good um thank you yeah I work out twice a day so just don't have time to make content to be honest have you like but have you like consciously like put this is something I actually do want to talk

[2:01:19] about real quick yeah we're not saying goodbye yet is like monk mode you went to Bali for this like how much that is something that I actually neglected for a long time was like quality of food I was eating how much dopamine can like using social media can affect your desire to do work is that something that you were big on at all or have you just been like to an extent I so deleting social media off my phone has been a big one like the only the only social media app I have on my phone is Facebook because that's where my customers are but like there's no Instagram like if

[2:01:48] you search Instagram on my phone like it doesn't exist I think that's so yeah I think the best advice I got from Alex Becker was don't put yourself in a position where you have to use willpower yeah just make it not an option and then dude same thing like man if there's a if there's a box of Oreos in my in my pantry like I will eat it if there's a if there's a tub of ice cream in my freezer I will eat the whole thing in one night why don't why don't you have Oreos why don't you eat ice cream well that that's the whole thing like I I

[2:02:11] just don't let let myself have them like if I really have a craving for something like that like I'll get in my car and drive to like an ice cream shop and have like a little thing of ice cream but like yeah I just try to keep my environment like conducive with the type of life I want to live so I keep healthy food in my fridge I keep social media off my phone I don't my phone is on my desk away from my bed like you know I I I just try to do what I can to control the controllables why is that important to control though what if you didn't

[2:02:39] what would happen to your day-to-day life I just noticed like you just notice you're more distracted uh you like you don't like you don't the dopamine hits kind of like you have to always search for more so you spend way more time on these platforms like now when I do go on Instagram and like look at stuff or Twitter or whatever like I'm going there I'm seeing like couple of my friends couple things that I like and that's good enough for me like I don't need to keep like Doom scrolling because I'm so used to not having it in my hand it it's just it's they're designed to addict you

[2:03:11] yeah food social media video games everything so I don't know do you feel like there's I feel like there's too much content on selfhelp out there but it's just so like it's like a fundamental thing yeah and I always just ask like I want to be a top performing person so I if I'm like feeling tempted i' be like would a top performing person do this no and that way you just optimize every aspect of your life to get the most things done absolutely and it's all just noise okay sorry side note everyone every one of our friend group like has an extreme emphasis on that yeah and I just want to

[2:03:40] point that out yeah it's it's a common denominate I don't know a single person that is at our level just eating like [ __ ] doing all this B stuff so we have we have had our fair share of uh of dopamine and you know nights out in Vegas but well that that's that's celebrate you here and there here and there but yeah it is important to have fun is my point 100% that's what we do it for yeah I love to have fun but not in the work week or and it's like phases dude it's phases of life we're dragging this goodbye out okay guys Kieran thanks see

[2:04:07] you later thanks for watching guys appreciate it that was fun bro

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