I make $3M/year helping people fly cheap

0:00Our crew months of 200 to 280k that we're currently doing aren't the biggest. We've already hit over 500 in a single month. It's me present in the moment. I was working with some of the smartest people [music] I've I've met. It was impressive. Like most of them are from Harvard, Stanford. Back then you are actually dreaming about it and now you are basically in Bali, you are traveling around the world, you are with your girlfriend and you are making more money than Mark

0:22Zuckerberg right now. How does it feel? [music and singing]

0:31[music] So this is where you live in Bali. Yes. But most of the time you are in Dubai, right? Yes. And you do half half or how does it work? So I spend a couple months in Dubai, I would say three to six months in Dubai. And then when it gets too hot like in the summer I do Euro summer. And then I think in the fall it's good to come to Bali. And it's back to Arab winter. Like

0:53January is good to go back to Dubai. I met this guy a few days ago actually last week and when I came back from the dinner I got a slap in my face because he's 10 years younger than me and he's making right now 10 times more than me. So can you tell us like who you are and what

1:11you're building? First yeah, so my name's Omar. I'm the founder of trips.com with two eyes. I'm 24 and I'm building trips with I've been building it for the past three years after leaving my job in finance and consulting. I have a co-founder who's not here today but he's also one of my best friends. And it's been an awesome journey. It's a great you know it's a great life to be building trips from all around the world. We're currently in Bali having a great time for the for the next couple of months and it's just awesome to be able to to build something while having the lifestyle that I've

1:39always dreamed to have. So what does trips do exactly? Yeah, so trips is a paid newsletter where people give us their home airport. So it's mostly in the US, Canada, Europe and Oceania right now. And we give them a couple of deals per week. We send them an email with something that is really cheap from their home airport. Let's say 40% below median price. We have our whole statistical analysis of what's a

2:00really good deal. We send it to people. We analyze who clicks on it, and we send them more what they like. And it's for the flexible traveler who, you know, wants to travel somewhere, is very price sensitive, doesn't know necessarily exactly where they want to go. And they're just open to receiving deals. We give them a bunch of dates that they can book. And we also give them the link to go ahead and book. And yeah, we also have a big community portion where people give us recommendations for things to do at the

2:23travel destination. Which is also a big portion of what we do. And that's where it is for now. So, it's a very simple kind of one feature product that is also very cheap uh that we've been doing for the past 2 years. So, you are making now $250,000 a month with trips. We'll talk about the product later. What I would like to know now is how you got there. Like, actually, what is your backstory? How did you end up building a web app and a

2:48newsletter? Yeah, of course. So, I I've had this idea in mind for like the past 7 or 8 years. I noticed a bunch of local players doing it at the city level. All doing it very manually, you know, looking for flights, you know, people that have blogs that have also newsletters that were doing it for free,

3:04but very localized in different areas. And I thought if I'm able to do this at a much larger scale, I can turn this into a real company. And my background was in consulting. I did work at BCG, and I worked with a bunch of airlines on a bunch of different types of projects, including pricing projects. So, that's where I got the understanding of how airlines price flight tickets, how it works, when the dumps happen, and the whole psychology behind it. And I knew that I could turn this into a very simple consumer product that would probably work. And so, we started just in Canada with just one city. We started

3:35everything manually. We didn't have any technology at the at the start just because we wanted to validate the idea. So, we're doing it everything ourselves, making it look like a real SAS kind of product, but it was all manual behind the scenes. And once we got the validation during one city, we expanded to many cities, first all the cities in Canada, then the US, then Europe, Uh and turned it into like an actual technology that does everything in an automated way. Uh so we don't have to touch anymore, but the the very start was from my own knowledge doing it manually and then turning it later into an actual productized uh

4:03thing that we can sell people. What I like about you is that you had a six-figure job before. You were working for a company, you were making good money. So you could have stayed there, but when you actually started, you already thought about leaving the job in 2 years. Can you explain more about

4:18that? Yeah. So the job that I had was consulting. It's a very kind of elite thing that you aim to go towards after business school. Uh it's either you try to go to investment banking M&A or try to do consulting. It's a very high achiever thing to do. So people that tend to do well in school and have big goals for themselves, if you stay within the academic kind of realm and the path you try to go into the one of these careers because they're very exciting, but they also pay a lot and you have a very big learning curve especially at the beginning. And so what I noticed is

4:43that after 2 years the learning curve was a bit flatter. So when first coming into the role, you learn so much. It's all It all goes very quickly. You work with a bunch of clients, you you travel, you do all that stuff. And it was also very hard to get into the job. So you're very proud of yourself. You want to do it for a bit. You make good money like six figures from the start. Uh at 19 20 years old it's really good. Um and then once I realized that, you know, it's not for me. I was looking at the people above me, 10 years above me, 15 years

5:05above me in the company who are making really good money, but couldn't even see their kids after work. I thought um it's impossible. I I always had this entrepreneurial thing inside of me. Uh and I had kind of bigger goals for myself and I didn't I've never envisioned a life where I would just go to work, couldn't see my kids, couldn't see my family, uh and didn't do the things that I really wanted to do. Just working for clients, helping them build their own businesses. I really felt that applying those skills and whatever I learned in that job to my own thing, I thought it'd be super powerful. The only

5:32thing that was missing and that was missing from all the people around me was the ability to take a small risk at the start. Um and I think if you're able to take that little bit of risk and go rogue, uh I think it can really work. So I had the idea of leaving as soon as I started because 2 years in they double your

5:46salary and so it's easier to stay. Uh but I left just before that because I didn't want the golden handcuffs of of having more money and being comfortable in a job that I learned. Um so it was all planned and I was happy with myself by following the plan that I that I made for myself to leave at the 2-year mark uh because it's really hard

6:02to do. So you started at 20 years old to work in this company. You already had this mindset and then you left at 22 years old approximately. Knowing that you could have doubled your income if you stayed, like where did this mindset come from? Um I think it's a bit of risk-taking. I think there is So I I knew that I wanted to make more money. Uh I knew that I wanted to build something that I was excited about and I

6:26knew that I wanted to have the freedom. I've traveled to tons of countries. It's Besides business it's what I love to do is is traveling uh and just visiting countries, discovering cultures, and just experiencing life, experiencing my 20s. Uh every every day is not the same. Uh just it's just what excites me um along as along with the fact of

6:44building a business. And this mindset of wanting to take that risk, uh I think I've always I've just always had it from previous things that I've done. I've started small companies before when I was in college, when I was in high school. I started small companies doing many things and I always had this fire inside of me um that was kept smaller because of the academic side of getting good grades and getting the best job because it looks good on paper, it looks good on LinkedIn. Um but you know, letting that fire exist that you have inside you on the entrepreneurship side, I think is a

7:13beautiful thing. And for a lot of people they have the potential and there's so much money in the world that if they believe in themselves they can go get it. Um so just doing the step and then it was an awesome awesome 2 years since. So you quit your job. What do you do after?

7:26We were in Argentina when I left my job. Uh it was like we finished the we finished I finished my 2 years, did 2 weeks of vacation in Argentina, did like a 10-day hike trek thing, just completely disconnected to make my decision. Came back, it was January in Canada, it was really cold, like snow, dark at 4:00 p.m., um not much to do, so

7:43I was like, "Okay, let's get started." So, I left the job and then I didn't tell anyone. So, none of my friends knew, my girlfriend knew, my parents didn't know, literally no one knew. Everyone thought that I was still going to my old job just because I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to create the pressure of people asking how it's going and and then having the pressure of not being able to go back to my old job or I didn't want to have that pressure. I think creating with a pressure-free environment is really uh important because you can make the decisions, you can pivot. If 3 months in

8:11you decide that it's not the right idea, it doesn't look bad. You can just pivot, you can just do whatever you want to do. Uh and I that was really the key for me, uh just building in stealth. I didn't didn't tell anyone, didn't update my LinkedIn, um didn't, you know, didn't make any noise and really built. And then once it started working really, really well after 6 months, uh which which was like a hurricane month, is is then when I started telling people. But, even after the first month it was already profitable and and making money, so I could have but I didn't want to

8:37get the dopamine hit of telling people, "Oh, it looks like it's working." and then I get uh complacent. I just wanted to continue building and then relax later. So, for the first 6 months I was full foot on the pedal, just working honestly just working the whole time. I didn't take any breaks. And then what happened is at the 6-month mark we did a group trip. Uh we took 12 people from our community that were following us to Colombia and that's when we hit that first big month. Uh and that's when I felt, okay, I was looking back a little

9:04bit and I was proud of what we had done. And that's when I felt, okay, now I can start talking about this and and sharing it. But, it wasn't like I had a milestone of when I make this amount of money I'm going to talk about it because I don't correlate money and success that much. It's more, okay, I was proud of the 6 months that we did. Now I can talk about it and relax a little bit for the

9:21next couple of months. Less so of a money goal because I mean the money it's never been like correlation of how well we're doing in in my eyes. [music and singing] And this is where you meditate every day. I do, actually. Really? Yeah, I mean I So, in the morning I I don't go to the gym or anything. I come here, do my push-ups here. I do my

9:41pull-ups on the stairs there. Uh and I jump into the pool every morning. And then I also read my book here on the on the chair. me. So, you do the pull-up here? I do the pull-up here like this.

9:56And then I do my push-ups here and I do my dips on the the step here like this. And then when I get hot and sweaty, I jump into the pool and then I read my book, breakfast, and then up to work. That's why you get big guns like that. Who are your big inspiration when you started? Like, did you have any people who actually motivated you to do what

10:14you do now? So, 2 months before I left my job, I came here to Bali to spend a month of vacation just to get the inspiration. And that's when I came across Mark Manson. A friend told me about him. And I just thought like it's such a genius thing. He's optimizing for lifestyle. He's making good money. I mean, you don't need to make a million a month. I mean,

10:30he he was making good money already. And I thought this is really cool. He doesn't have any employees, doesn't have anyone that he needs to work with or anything. He's just doing his thing, enjoying life with his wife. And that's when kind of this dream life came into my mind. Uh of wanting to be kind of like that free entrepreneur that

10:47does his thing. And then you just happy. I mean, you just the place of fulfillment and you do your thing and you have a really good life and you play sports and that's really that was really my goal. But obviously some other entrepreneurs like bigger entrepreneurs, but I would say less it's less my personality and more someone I enjoy nature and

11:03I want to be here. So, back then you were actually dreaming about it. And now you have a bikini body, you're traveling around the world, you're with your girlfriend, and you're making more money than Mark Manson right now. How does it feel? I'm I'm not sure. I don't know this month. I think he did the high rocks. And maybe maybe he's making more this month, but how does it feel? Honestly, like first first of all, the money side doesn't really change anything. I mean,

11:24I don't feel 1% different. It doesn't really matter. Just gives a bit of freedom to do the things that I want want So, it's just really such a great feeling to wake up in the morning, uh go to work, do my thing, and then when I want to go to, I don't know, the beach whatever at 4:00 p.m. I just go. I play paddle every day, uh just doing the things that I want to do, and also giving a bit more time to my passions and the thing that I've always wanted to do now that I can just do it. So, that's really what's changed, the freedom to do

11:49little things, uh but still working hard, uh and the money amounts hasn't changed anything uh at all. [music] So, now we're in the AC room, and this is the spaceship of Omar. That's where you're building right now. I saw you talking about it, and I really like it. It's how to find an idea for you. Like, how did you find the idea, and what is your kind of process to find an idea of a

12:10business? Um I think So, right now it's easy to build anything, right? AI There's any product idea that you have, mostly you can build it. Unless there's some sort of moat that you can't really start with. Uh I think the big difference is how you're going to be able to distribute uh your product. So, I think how I think better is finding your distribution edge. So, a lot of people ask you to uh think about what's your edge. So, you know something about engineering, you know something about whatever it is if you're in a very niche topic. I think nowadays, especially with AI, I think you should think about

12:38what's going to be your advantage in distribution. So, when I was starting, I had access to airports. So, I would go to airports all the time, and I knew that I would be able to make really good videos in airports because I was traveling a lot. And so, I was able to make videos in airplanes, I was able to make videos in the airport all the time, like week in, week out, even before I left my job to make some content. Um and I think really thinking about what you have in your day-to-day life, or access to certain people, or access to certain mechanics that you can leverage for your

13:05distribution. So, for me it was being able to make videos in an environment that you don't usually get the chance to make videos in on a daily basis. And I was pumping five videos a day on our Instagram from the airport, and that started getting millions of views uh just because I had that edge. So, reverse engineering how you're going to distribute, and how you can make it easier than others, and then building the product after that, I think is key

13:26in 2026. So, Reels for you was uh the main way to do your marketing for your company. Uh can you just walk us through that? How did it happen and how many views did you get and just the process? So, I think when you start distributing something before thinking about who you're going to hire or how many accounts you're going to do videos with, etc. I think being able to make videos yourself and really mastering your niche and your company and your video style yourself as a founder, as like the founder of the company literally, is

13:55key. Don't think about hiring anyone. Don't think about delegating anything. I think being able to make the videos yourself is the number one biggest lever you can pull, simply because you can iterate. You can post 20 trial Reels in a day. You can change the hook 20 times. You can post 20 Reels. You can repost a TikTok. You can repost a Facebook. You can test 20 things every day. Uh and no one's stopping you. It's just you waking up in the morning, making variations and posting and seeing the results. You

14:16won't have to manage anyone, pay anyone. It's free. You just market your tool. And when you find a couple concepts that work and then uh then you can multiply. You can do a second account. You can try to think about how you're going to scale, but that's a different question. But to kickstart anything, I would get a phone myself and start making videos. I was doing faceless videos myself. I didn't even have my face in them. It was just filming in in the airport with my laptop. Um and it started getting um I think the first biggest one that we got was like a million views, but it didn't

14:41convert that well. Cuz you have to think about getting the views and then also how you're converting in the video. So, you it's you have to be really uh strategic about how you position your product in the video. So, got a million views, not that many sign-ups. Uh and then the next time I think we got two or three million views and then a lot more traffic simply because I positioned it better. I pinned the comments that talk about the website, a bunch of little tricks that drove traffic to the site. And I think after a month or two we were already doing, you know, 10 20 million views a

15:06month uh on that account, which grew. The account started growing and that's like also one of the good parts of making tons of videos on the company account is the account grows and now we have over 450,000 followers, which makes us look super legit and super big uh even as a two-person company uh simply because we got millions of views on videos we made ourselves. And a lot of people they don't make videos on the company account and they have a company

15:27account with like 2,000 followers. You said you did a couple of tricks that made conversion better. Can you talk about that? First of all, how you position your product in your videos has to be has to look organic. So when someone's scrolling on a for you page and this is like basic advice that everyone knows, it shouldn't look like an ad. Obviously, it should look organic. It should look like it just it's just something that is part of the video as someone just found

15:46this trick or whatever and you show it. But then how do you amplify conversions is you can do many things. You can do the many chat trick of comment this word and I'm going to I'll send it to you so it drives a bunch of comments. Or what we what we did is we got, you know, a couple of different accounts of friends or whatever to comment what's the website, what's the site, where did you find this, etc. And we like them, we pin the comments. And so when a random person is scrolling and looks at the comments, there's six or seven fake comments that we put there from

16:12different legit looking accounts for people asking for what the site is. So psychologically, you want to go look for the site and that drives traffic. And then other people ask, other people comment, "Oh, I went to the website. It didn't work." Or then we answer and it creates a conversation or if someone's already a member, they can

16:28comment and be like, "Oh, I love it. I've been here for 2 months. I love it." So it creates conversations. And I would recommend being really intentional with comment sections and engineering them. I want to know the kind of timeline of zero to 10k MR, 10 to 100k MR, 100k to 250. Kind of what you did in each

16:49part of this journey. Okay. So we haven't had the most linear growth. Our current months of 200 to 280k that we're currently doing aren't the biggest. We've already hit over 500 in a single month earlier this year. Like 550 or I think we got close to 600 in January. The growth wasn't completely linear. What's been really hard, I mean not hard, but what we've been working at is having a baseline that grows. Obviously, you're going to have spikes. There's going to be months where you get a video that gets 40 million views out of nowhere, so it's so you spike. And so that's the the thing with virality, but

17:20you want your baseline to be growing. So, our members, I think we went um we started we had a couple hundred in the first month, then a couple thousand. I think we were doing 10k 10 10,000 hours a month in Feb, which was our second month. Um and then by the summer, so 6 months in, we were doing 100k. And uh a couple months later, we started hitting 180, getting to close to 200. And this year in 2026, we've been consistently cracking the 200 thousand dollars a month, sometimes getting close to 300, and on one occasion going over 500 uh earlier this year uh when we had a couple viral videos

17:52hit. So, is it only you and your co-founder there, no employees? How did you actually split the tasks between you, co-founder, and yourself? So, we tried to hire. Uh not many people know, but we tried to hire at different moments, and we had uh two developers at one point uh that were friends of my co-founder, but I mean, to be honest, Collage just got so good that we that we had to to get rid not get rid of them, but just nicely end the contract just because it's I mean, it's the job of an engineer now is so much different. So, now my co-founder is the CTO, he takes care of

18:23the technical side. Uh and it's always it's always been pretty clear. He comes from kind of like an SEO website building tech technical background, and I come from more of a strategic business background, so I'm more uh CEO, I would say, making strategic moves, but also uh the marketing side, which comes natural to me. Um and if it was kind of natural how we split the roles. Uh and we also have a couple contractors here and there helping with customer support, helping with uh managing some of our creators, uh and some but full-time it's just the

18:50two of us. So, you say that the growth wasn't always linear, like it wasn't just a steady growth. What were the different parts where you had like blocks, maybe like maybe too much churn? How did you deal with that? Um so, I think we had the definitely different stages. I think at the beginning we were just I mean, we were learning, so we were focusing on um the top of the funnel. So, I I I everything in a product like this, especially a simple product that has one feature. I see it as a big funnel. So, the attention you can drive at the top uh getting people on your website,

19:19getting people to convert on your pricing page or your landing page, and then getting people to do an onboarding, and then getting people to stay, and then getting people to pay again the year after. So, I see it as a big funnel. And the more time went on, the more we learned that we had to tweak the whole funnel instead of just getting more views and more people into the bucket because getting people into a

19:35leaky bucket uh is just a waste of time. Your company's worth less because you have more churn. So, we learned that, okay, it's great to get more people in, but we don't necessarily get a lot more views now that we than we did last year, but we make a lot more money. What we did is we optimized the rest of the funnel. So, when people get on the website, we did and we're still doing tons of AB testing. We're currently on the website, if you log in from different VPNs and different parts of the world, you're probably going to see different versions of the website because we're constantly testing

19:59different wording, different price points, uh different offers, and different things that we show people. And then when people get in, we have this whole onboarding sequence to create friction on purpose because we noticed that when people get in and you create as much friction as possible, so you get people to to perform small tasks like setting up the profile, setting up a bunch of different things, and we make it mandatory right after purchase, right

20:19after sign up. Um it makes them stay more. Like, it was a huge difference maker for us for reducing churn. Uh and it was one of the biggest moves that we've ever made. And this is one of them is having a good onboarding, but there's so many others that you can do. Um and then getting people to pay again the year after. So, sending certain emails to keep people more engaged that are outside of the deals to get them to update their credit card, for example. We know that in B2C, a big part of churn isn't uh voluntary churn. As you know, a lot of people like their card just fails,

20:46like insufficient funds, uh the card expired, whatever. So, having the right sequences also and really focusing on this side of the business as well has been huge for us. How did you learn that? Like, is it on the go like, okay, churn is bad, I have to learn how to reduce churn? Or did you know that before? Like, did you have a

21:01mentor? Like, how did you get there? I I didn't know anything before. I feel like everything that we've learned, like the big milestones that we've learned, they came after we had a big issue. Like, okay, I just look at the numbers, I do an analysis, I'm like, okay, oh we have to fix this. And then I go into monk mode for like 3 weeks and I I I barely sleep. Like, all I do is I focus on this one issue and I do this less now because now I'm more balanced and I've learned how to be a a better entrepreneur. But at the beginning you're just more stressed and more

21:25anxious when you see these kind of vital issues. And so I just go go into monk mode, I take a bunch of calls with people, I try to learn what's going on and then I try to fix it as soon as possible and then I relax. And the next problem comes up and then I I learn. But how you learn is the issue comes, you go full monk mode for like 2 weeks, you learn, and you try to fix it like as the best you can and then you fix it a little bit and then you can and then you can move on, but you've had a great

21:47learning those 2 weeks. Like you I learned so much during these little periods and then I can use this in this business or in future businesses. It's like big milestones that that I've learned in business in terms of payment processing, onboarding, reducing churn, just like these big milestones that you need to learn yourself.

22:02So, we talked about that last week. Like, for you, is it necessary to lock in and focus on only one product to make make it successful? My my theory is that and this is how my brain functions, I think I prefer to focus on just one thing. I've tried to do different things at the same time and I still take a little bit of consulting here and there now to help people, but my main thing is my company because in the morning when I wake up, I like to think about one thing and before

22:28bed I like to think about one thing. And when I wake up in the middle of the night with ideas, it has to be about one thing. When my conscious is my mind is split between two things, I don't do well in both of them. So, I'm more about focus, but it also helps me live a really good lifestyle. So, we're here in Bali, I'm able to go play sports, I'm able to go to many things because I'm able to take my mind off of the one thing that I have instead of stopping to turning off the laptop for this one thing that I'm doing and then other stuff coming up and

22:54then other calls coming up and having to completely shift what you're working on like your focus to something completely new instantly for me is really hard. So, for lifestyle, for performance, for everything, I prefer to do one thing and optimize this business and my lifestyle in the rest of my life. So you say that you kind of figured out the good life balance now. But how did it go in the past year and a half for you? Like did you maybe burn out? Go

23:20away too fast? Like what happened? So the first couple of months all we did was work. Like literally all we did was work every single day. All I was doing is was working. It was the only thing that brought me happiness. It's the only thing that brought me any sort of dopamine was was doing what we needed to do to make the business move forward. And I think it takes that obsession at the beginning. I have a theory about imbalance in the short term creates balance in the long run. So now we have a lot more balance. Our life is a lot more stable. We have a lot more

23:46customers coming in without us doing anything. But at the beginning you need that imbalance, that obsession to create that luck, to create that arbitrage. It's like in in football. Like you have to make a skill to create an opening and then it opens the play. But there needs to be a spark at the beginning. And for me it's that obsession. It's that imbalance which then you can live from the fruits of it and and have

24:05the balance in the long run. So in your own time you don't believe in the fact that you should choose life balance first. No. It should be like, okay, I find something. It kind of work. I should go all in. And then when everything work out and I'm I succeeded this task, then I can actually think about life balance. 100% but it's never been

24:26a something that I had to think about. It's always been something that's been natural. Whenever I picked up anything, like any business throughout my life, it was I was just obsessed about it. I was in class I was thinking about it. Just because it brings you happiness. It's what you're It's what I'm passionate about. And so in the short run you're really working on it and it's all you're thinking about. And then afterwards you can have more balance. But because it brings you less, probably less fulfillment just from this, so you bring in other other parts of your life. But at the beginning to make something work

24:49for me, at least to a really good level, I think anyone can get to a a certain level um, on the side of their job or whatever. But for me if you really want to get to a good level, you need to go all in uh and do only that for a bit. Uh and that's what's going to make it work. Like, it's so hard to get something off the ground that you really need to put all your power and all your

25:07energy, I think. And to go back on the project, uh you talked about your timeline from zero to 250 and even more. Is there like, if you could maybe list three things that helped you uh unlock certain situation during this all journey, what would it be? So, first big one was posting, like understanding what kind of what kind of videos work for us in our niche and making them work. I think I was one of

25:32the first ones to do it in this niche. At least I didn't copy anyone. I was figuring out myself. Um, so there's many types of levers that you can have in life. Uh getting tons of views as an individual making videos is one type of leverage, cuz you put out one piece of content and if you get a million eyeballs on it, it's a very high number of leverage. Then, once you understand that type of leverage, you understand that you can multiply horizontally by having, let's say, more accounts posting. So, instead of having just one that gets 10 million views, you standardize it and you teach it and you

26:00have 10 people doing it. So, instead of just me, I can have 10 people doing the same and then we have horizontal scale and vertical scale with the number of views that we get. So, that's a big point of leverage. And then, what you understand after is you want less people leaking out of the funnel because if you bring one people into the company and one people exits, you haven't built anything. You just made money. And so, being able to close the the the the kind of the the funnel and so it's not a leaky funnel is really important. It's also a huge point of leverage that we've

26:26learned. It's focusing on the churn is is super important. And then, focusing on the renewals because if you get people to pay once, if you uh do everything that you can to make them pay again next year, even if you offer them a discount for whatever it takes, it's really important for, uh you know, building the business and not starting from scratch every single

26:42month. Um, so I'd say these are like the biggest learnings. It's learning what is leverage, because that's the only thing that you scale something to a big to a big number is the word leverage. It's one input equals 100 outputs and that's through content, many people doing content for you, but also having a product that's good enough that people talk about it to their friends. So now one of the one of the biggest acquisition channels that we have is word of mouth. So when you reach a certain size and you incentivize people with either a referral program or you give them gifts or whatever, they talk

27:11about it to their friends and it grows itself. So it's also kind of like the next step after as well. For you, like the order that you just said, is it like the order to follow? Distribution, share, and then renewal? Or would that you would have done that differently if you knew? I would So I would do a bit of everything at the first level. So before scaling anything to you know, trying to go all out by putting money into more money into ads,

27:36more more money by hiring creators, etc. I would manage and really master my unit my unit economics at layer one. So okay, I'm posting all the videos, I'm getting 10 million views a month on the company account. What traffic is it driving? What's How many sign-ups is it driving? How many conversions and how much money am I getting? So how much money am I making per this amount of views? And am I getting refunds? What am I getting? Am I getting renewals, etc. And then once you understand how much a customer is worth and you you're really strong with your numbers at the low leverage of just

28:04you making videos, no one depends on you. It's just you making videos, get people on the website, you understand your unit your unit economics, then you scale it. And so then it becomes more distribution and then it becomes hiring more people and then getting referrals and doing ads and stuff. But the number one biggest thing is don't scale something that doesn't work at a small scale. Understand your unit economics of a dollar in, three $1 out, $3 in, how much it costs you to get a customer, etc. And then make it bigger. Don't make something big that doesn't make that much money. That's how you get to making $3 million a year with

28:32no margins. We always prioritize margins. Like margins was the biggest thing. We could be making three times as much money that we are right now with less margins. Right now, what we wanted to do is grow it with good margins. So it's growing at a decent pace while keeping your margins strong and it's really by mastering it at a low level with the right numbers that you

28:51can do it. So, you're 100% bootstrapped, and that's basically a bootstrap mindset. Yes. You'll be profitable. If you take the other road, is actually the VC road, it's totally different. You don't optimize for profit, you optimize for exit or just for growth. And you said, I think, at one point that there was investor who wanted to invest in your product,

29:12and you said no. Yes. Why? So, we had multiple times people reaching out to invest. Makes sense. I think something starts to make money, people want to put money to into put fuel fuel in the fire, so it gets bigger. Um, we wanted to keep full control. Um, my philosophy of business is not just making as much money as possible or building the biggest possible thing. It's um, optimizing my up my own personal outcome and my family's up my own personal outcome. Um, and so, what that means is reverse engineering what lifestyle I want. So, being in Bali, traveling uh, to wherever I want. Um,

29:42I spend 3 months here, 3 months there. It's the life that I want for myself. And it means I don't I don't have to uh, give accounts to anyone. I don't have to do investor calls. I don't have to do anything like that. Um, and so, for me, I would rather make less. I would rather build something smaller, uh, but my own personal outcome and level of happiness based on what I want out of life uh, are met. Uh, and so, that's how I think about it. But, there's definitely a small percentage of of your mind that's always like, "What if I was in San Francisco? What if I raised funds? What

30:08if uh, I did this huge thing?" But, I think it's also about knowing yourself to a point where you know those things wouldn't make you happier. And so, for me, I'm confident that this lifestyle and the way that we're doing things is what works for us, and this is how we this is basically how we got here. So, for you, the ability to say no to growth or no to maybe a shortcut to success was a way to keep your freedom

30:30and give you less balance. Yes. 100% Um, being able to make your own choices is key. Freedom is key. Like, anyone everyone that says they want to make tons of money, the only reason is they want the freedom. The freedom is what makes the man for me. Um, So, being able to have that freedom is non-negotiable. Um it's also one of the reasons I left the job. Not so much because I didn't like it, it's because I wanted the freedom. Not the freedom to do nothing because I love to work. But just being able to do this today for example and we're going to go play

30:59paddle after which is awesome to do in an afternoon. Uh so yeah. Yeah, apparently he wants me to beat him at paddle so that's what we're going to do now.

31:15[music]

31:20[music] So right now we are at Buddy's Social Club. The goal of this format is to actually follow the real life of the person and I say what activity can we do? And actually the only activity he does But you play a lot, right? Yeah, no I play a lot. Um more for I used to play like very much for fun like just playing here and there a couple times a week. But now I I started to sign up for like tournaments and now I'm going to start to take a couple coaching sessions. Because I really started from scratch like I never played tennis or anything. So I'm trying to learn. So I

31:51don't start from the same level as everyone but I'm doing my I'm doing my best to improve. Uh networking I have been doing in paddle it's insane like the people I meet especially if you go play in the middle of the day the only people who are free are like entrepreneurs so you meet like some Russian guys with restaurant chains, some Spanish people with I don't know what kind of business. It's really cool

32:09people you meet. Yeah, I remember a few years ago Julian you will remember that is the founder of Sub Launge and I was playing with random people and I was playing with this guy and I was like oh yeah what do you do in life? Oh yeah I have a SAS. Oh yeah nice. How much are you making? 40k a month. And back in the day like I was like wow that's crazy and I was just playing randomly with this guy because usually you have to play two against two and there's always another couple of people that you meet and yeah just for that paddle is amazing. And in Bali

32:38because you meet as you say like people from all over the world. And you play in Dubai as well? I play in Dubai. It's a bit harder because there's less clubs. But it's still a good place to play. On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you to beat him? A solid 10. He's coming from injury. I think I think I got him. Also, I'm a bit

32:55younger, so. He's going to beat me on 1 to 10? Uh all right, there's a big chance because he plays or say 7. Now, I haven't played for a while. I think probably more than a year, but I used to be a professional, so no worries. [music]

33:19[music]

33:24[music]

33:29[music]

33:366-0 for the first. Some good points. Uh 5-0. The heat is killing us. We're sweating. Second round, no shirts. Stay tuned.

33:51[music] 1-0. I think the side was everything.

34:03[music]

34:09There is a hope for me.

34:18I'm winning. 6-3. Second match. First one he just atomized me. 0-0 6-0. Yeah. And second 6-3 from this big man. So he win in business, in life, and in sport. No, no, no, no. So, you say that you're doing that almost every day, right? Yeah. Why do you do that? It it takes my mind off the business. Just instantly gets me present in the

34:42moment. Good to relax, good to move the body. Every day, I think paddle is a fun one cuz, you know, you don't even realize you're doing sports. You're just laughing and then after that you see how many calories you burned and then you're glad you did so. Great one for me. There's one question I want to ask you because you did a tweet not long ago and you said, "I'm convinced that 99% of people in top careers like finance, tech, will succeed in business if they have the risk appetite to start." What

35:06do you mean by that? So, when I was working my job, I was working with some of the smartest people I've I've met ever. This like the the difficulty it is to get into these jobs, it's it's insanely hard, the interviews you have to get through. The work you have to do for clients and the amount of work like just the sheer volume of work that you have

35:24to do late nights and early mornings. And this kind of work ethic and the caliber of some of these people that I was working with, it was impressive. Like most of them were from Harvard, Stanford, or one of the one of the big schools. And I always had this confusion of why aren't these people doing something for themselves? They look so much smarter than people that I know who are running their own businesses. Um but what I learned is just they love the comfort like the salary progression, the easy path forward. They they look up at the partners and the people above them and it's obvious what they're going to

35:51do and how much money they're going to make. And it's, you know, when your whole life you were, you know, getting the good grades and playing it safe, it's really hard to make the jump out of it. And I think it's a risk appetite and just taking a chance on yourself, it's really hard to do. Uh but I think most people underestimate the the potential that they have. I think 99% of them can make something work and a large majority of them of them can make something big, I think, if they just trust themselves and take the

36:14risk. But it's really hard to do. And you're saying that making like these big amount of money before even being an entrepreneur, like making six figures a year, helped you with like kind of mental blocks that you can have when you start because for example, for me when I started, I would have been happy to make 2,000 a month because I never had a job before. So when I reached 2,000 a month, for me that was amazing. Then when I reached 10K, no one around me, my family, or even a friend had made 10K before. So for me that was kind of my mental blocks. Like, okay, 10K is

36:42already huge. Do you think that making six figures a year before and being surrounded by people who make that much money helps you to actually break this barrier? it's the opposite. I think it's harder uh mentally for some of these people because first of all, you're working these jobs, you're making six figures, you're making two, 300K a year, and your lifestyle inflates. Like the amount of money that you spend per month and your lifestyle inflates naturally, your good apartment, the car, um etc. And so when you want to leave that job, you have a baseline amount that you need to to sustain yourself per month. So it's

37:10really hard to get it get that amount at the start in entrepreneurship. So that making that kind of money I think ties you in a lifestyle that's hard to keep up with entrepreneurship at the start. Uh but also these people in these careers, they see people above them making really good money and seeing smart people above them. And I think it helps into the the limiting belief of, well, I see people really smart and really make really making a ton of money doing this exact path, why would I go do something else? And so I think it's actually the opposite than what you think. I think starting from scratch and

37:37starting from, you know, no background and no money, I think it's easier because you have no limiting belief and you just, you know, you didn't see anything that and your lifestyle is basically zero. You can come to Bali, live for like two grand a month, uh and just start from there. I think it's much harder for those

37:50people. Yeah. And now you have like 24 years old, you're making half of 250K a month. You make 70% profit, so you make a lot of money. Uh we had this conversation before, but how did it change you when you started to make that much money, and how did you actually spend this money? Honestly, I don't I can't think of one thing that I do differently than I used to do before. I think maybe easier to spend on, you know, a new pair of shoes or whatever. This one's broken, I need a new pair, it's easier to get those. I think that's much easier because you

38:19don't think about it. But I think day-to-day lifestyle, I don't think much has changed. I was living living with my parents when I started. Maybe now living by myself, I think is is a big one. Traveling, but I mean, I used to travel as well before, so not much changed. I think 99% of what I make goes into a ETFs and whatever investments. Uh it helps that I have a finance background, so I I know what to do with my money. Uh but most of it just goes into the market, compounds, and I'll look at it in the 30 years. Uh probably probably donate it. I probably won't use the

38:45money ever, so. That's beautiful. So, you didn't buy a Lamborghini yet? No, no, no, no. Now you already reached a big milestone. You have a company that works really well. You are happily building that. You have like a good life balance, I think. What's the vision for you? Um I think continuing to work on this for a while. Uh I tweeted the other day, uh what can I sell my company for just out of boredom. Some people were saying, oh let's let's chat, whatever. Um it's not in the plans for now, but one day I think maybe we can sell the company. I can build another one after. Uh but also

39:11I want to build a bit of uh personal brand to help others. I get so many questions all the time, and I spend time helping people. I did a little bit of consulting here and there. Uh but now um I have I created like an X account, so I'm I'm starting to to to grow a little

39:22bit on there. Uh I think that's cool. Uh you know, growing a little bit of personal brand, uh and building business on the side, cuz I think it's it's I don't want to do a personal brand and not have anything. I want to have a business and make a personal brand, cuz I think it gives the legitimacy the legitimacy and everything, so uh that's going to be it for now. And always build businesses in

39:39the future. I will put the link below of this man X account. Thank you. We didn't press that. What [music] did you Yeah. I just want to be free.